Speaker 1: Clean, You're gone, and tune your bowl. Where the Hunt
Speaker 1: Collected show calling Hunters new and all the Hunt Collected
Speaker 1: show working pig and shovel or working bening hand. We
Speaker 1: confregate nice lovers of the lake, my ball, and we're focused.
Speaker 1: We're just living for the search of dreaming of the
Speaker 1: fire and a salty gild burn. But we ain't coming
Speaker 1: back till it's colden lake. Taking it slow so we
Speaker 1: can shoot straight clean, You're gone, Tune your bowl. Where
Speaker 1: the Hunt colective show calling Hunters new and all ain't
Speaker 1: no cold, iime told, we're knowing too good. We're all good. No,
Speaker 1: we got feel to eineer calling any shooters blow hard
Speaker 1: times calling and bitter vegans crying Revember, there's always been
Speaker 1: old Brian ruined by reasons are collected by taking it
Speaker 1: slow so we can shoot clean your gun, Jen your bow.
Speaker 1: Where the uncollective show I'm calling Hunters new and all
Speaker 1: uncollective show with thanks or fanks and opinions are subjective.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the whole collecting. Hey, everybody, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the last episode, the final episode, never gonna be heard
Speaker 1: or seen again. Phil the Engineer and Benjamin Patrick O'Brian, Phil,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir? I'm doing great, I am, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm refreshed after our our weekend. Yeah, we had quite
Speaker 1: We had quite the adventure. Tricky hunting in May in
Speaker 1: Montana requires lots and naps and there's a little sleep.
Speaker 1: We went through many, several i'll say days and nights
Speaker 1: where we went to bed at eleven and got up
Speaker 1: at what three thirty? Yes, so it leaves you a
Speaker 1: little loopy, It leaves you a little strong out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's it's not just it's not just the couple
Speaker 1: hours asleep. It's then the you know, twelve hours of
Speaker 1: hiking that happened in the days after that. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, thirteen hour days rolling around, uh, trying
Speaker 1: to find turkeys, finding turkeys, doing the dance. Everything we
Speaker 1: love about hunting. We've been doing it this week and
Speaker 1: and it's been it's been awesome. Even though Phil and
Speaker 1: I do this show together, we didn't really haven't really
Speaker 1: spent that much time together. You know, you don't really
Speaker 1: spend that much time together with anybody outside of your family,
Speaker 1: your close friends, you know that much time, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve thirteen, like you said, pretty much an entire day
Speaker 1: going through the ups and downs. And so it's been
Speaker 1: fun man's planning getting to know you. And as I'll say,
Speaker 1: as you'll hear a lot on this podcast, Phil, Phil
Speaker 1: came out strong. I tried my best. I knew, I
Speaker 1: knew what we were doing out there, making making some
Speaker 1: making a good podcast. And you know, this was my
Speaker 1: first Hunt. I wanted to I wanted to get know.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to slack. Yes, you did not slack.
Speaker 1: It's very impressed after all the talk about what would happen.
Speaker 1: It's very impressed. But I also was impressed by you know,
Speaker 1: obviously weeks ago, roughly a month ago, we announced the
Speaker 1: end of the show, and and over time, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of great commentary has trickled in and we've
Speaker 1: been thankful for that. We've been thankful for that our
Speaker 1: final show can be Phil's first Hunt. It means a
Speaker 1: lot to me, it means a lot to a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Um but last week I threw up a
Speaker 1: post on Instagram just to thank everybody, and I think
Speaker 1: that reinvigorated the commentary around the end of the show.
Speaker 1: And I was very appreciative of of all the well
Speaker 1: wishes and very appreciative of everyone that you know, spent
Speaker 1: all this time with us over over the last three
Speaker 1: years and roughly five four months. Long time in my
Speaker 1: life and an important time in my life. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna read a couple of important emails with people that
Speaker 1: wrote in with best wishes and thank you's, and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to part two of Phills First Hunt.
Speaker 1: So we got a good ending for you. I think
Speaker 1: you'll like what we have in store. But before we
Speaker 1: get to that co stuff, ote Dr Gus. Now, Dr
Speaker 1: Guss has written in a bunch of times, but he
Speaker 1: wrote a great email to see us out, and he's
Speaker 1: a doctor, so smart man. Dr Guss said, first of all,
Speaker 1: have your Mother's Day to your wives and your mother's
Speaker 1: I hope you all had a great time with family today.
Speaker 1: As I sit here and eagerly await the conclusion of
Speaker 1: Phil's First Hunt, I wanted to express my sincere appreciation
Speaker 1: to both of you for the last couple of years
Speaker 1: on the THC podcast. By now, I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: both received tons of emails and d ms, but I
Speaker 1: had to write you before the finale to share with
Speaker 1: this podcast and this cult has meant to me. I'm
Speaker 1: a vascular surgeon Houston, Texas, which means I don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the outdoors a vascular surgeon film. Wow,
Speaker 1: this is the upper crust talking about attracting the best. Here,
Speaker 1: Dr Gus trying to manage a busy practice in a
Speaker 1: family I adore, leaves little time for me to pursue
Speaker 1: my passion of hunting. In fact, before I listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast, I really didn't know that hunting is conservation.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what the Pittman Robinson Act was,
Speaker 1: or how serious c w D is public land access
Speaker 1: hunt recruitment, or the pillars of the North American model
Speaker 1: of conservation. I joined b h A and TRCP and
Speaker 1: donated to the Army F because of th HC. I
Speaker 1: didn't know who Valerious Guy Easter Shame My Honey were
Speaker 1: and how vital they are to preserving our hunting traditions.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that just a few hours away from me,
Speaker 1: out in the big empty as he describes it, lives
Speaker 1: a poet, cowboy and trapper Wyman Menzer, who takes the
Speaker 1: most breathtaking pictures of the Texas Plans. I didn't know
Speaker 1: Charles Rodney, an African American man who grew up in
Speaker 1: jim Crow, Louisian in a hunt rabbits with hounds in Maryland.
Speaker 1: Hearing his story of how he grew up in segregated,
Speaker 1: rural Louisiana had a profound effect on me. What an
Speaker 1: amazing man. I didn't know who Colonel Tom Kelly was,
Speaker 1: and that there are people who are more crazy about
Speaker 1: turkeys than deer. I even bought The Tenth Legion because
Speaker 1: of you and read it twice during Turkey season, but sadly,
Speaker 1: I have yet to go on a turkey hunt. I
Speaker 1: didn't know Canadian bear biologists could be so damn sensitive.
Speaker 1: Every Tuesday morning, when I walk out my door, I
Speaker 1: make sure the latest episode is downloaded so I can
Speaker 1: listen to it on my drive to work and back home.
Speaker 1: I called it Tuesday's with th HC. Well that's nice, Phil,
Speaker 1: Tuesday's with HC. Why didn't you think of that? I
Speaker 1: didn't think that was great. It was my It was
Speaker 1: my hour and a half of outdoor education. To me,
Speaker 1: it was a time where I could escape the rigors
Speaker 1: of my job and all the stressers that come with
Speaker 1: life and learn about fellowship and humanity and the appreciation
Speaker 1: of this beautiful world we live in, no matter how
Speaker 1: ugly society gets. To me, the podcast us was my
Speaker 1: virtual bar where we can congregate once a week and
Speaker 1: hear stories in different perspectives. It was fun and beautiful
Speaker 1: and I am so sad to see it go. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I am excited for you and your new opportunity with
Speaker 1: Meat either. I just want to thank you and Phil
Speaker 1: for giving so much of your time to this and
Speaker 1: truly incorporating your audience to help shape this podcast, this
Speaker 1: beloved cult we all hold so dear. I hope one
Speaker 1: day we can cross paths and shake hands and tell
Speaker 1: stories and who knows, maybe end up on the same
Speaker 1: public land going after elk or a mule deer or
Speaker 1: even maybe a turkey. But if not, I say to
Speaker 1: you God speed, keep fighting the good fight and keep
Speaker 1: telling your story. You never know where you might who
Speaker 1: you might inspire, even old grumpy surgeons like me. After all,
Speaker 1: I can always tell my kids that I wrote a
Speaker 1: part of the podcast theme song. Maybe then they will
Speaker 1: think I'm cool all the best. Dr Gus Missouri City,
Speaker 1: Texas pretty cool or philm what's your reaction to that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Um, we were we spent some time talking
Speaker 1: about just people's reactions to the end of the show
Speaker 1: out there. Uh, we're hunting this weekend, and um, it's
Speaker 1: those kinds like the one one you just read that
Speaker 1: just just affirm everything that you've been doing here for
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. So it's always that's just
Speaker 1: you know, it's really moving and and sometimes it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to forget after you know, you get some a
Speaker 1: lot of responses on the Internet and then you get
Speaker 1: some that like that one that just kind of tell
Speaker 1: you that you're doing the right thing. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really it, man. It's it's emails like that that make
Speaker 1: that have made this show worth doing, and we'll have
Speaker 1: we'll keep it going. You know. It's folks like Dr
Speaker 1: Guss and everybody that has joined our cult over this time.
Speaker 1: It's the ways that it will have shaped me and Phil,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, the ways that I'll have shaped to
Speaker 1: you that you take forward into the future, uh and
Speaker 1: do good with. So I'm happy, uh to have have
Speaker 1: read that email and gotten to know Dr Gusfie email
Speaker 1: and gotten to know so many of you via email
Speaker 1: over time. I mean, I can't if I had to count.
Speaker 1: Right now, there are two thousand three emails stuck in
Speaker 1: the old inbox, and there are eight hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: three that I had to read in the last two
Speaker 1: and a half weeks. It's been a big part of
Speaker 1: this show. And that's that's a fantastic email to end on.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Dr gust. Thank you to everybody that
Speaker 1: ever wrote in to h C at the media dot
Speaker 1: Com that, as we said last week, that will continue.
Speaker 1: You can get at me and even at filled by
Speaker 1: proxy through that email inbox, So keep them coming. But
Speaker 1: I think people came here filled it to hear a story,
Speaker 1: the particular story about your turkey hunt. Now we're gonna
Speaker 1: take it. We're gonna continue to take it linear where
Speaker 1: we left off. If you haven't listened to last week,
Speaker 1: go listen to it now We'll wait. Welcome back. Now
Speaker 1: you're you're salvating after that cliffhanger of last week, right, Phil,
Speaker 1: we went out hunting, we train you up on the
Speaker 1: on the shotgun, we ran into a mutant Turkey. And
Speaker 1: if it turns out that the only video I had
Speaker 1: at the mutant Turkey is the best like most mysterious
Speaker 1: video of said mutant turkey. So if you didn't see
Speaker 1: it on my Instagram stories, I'll put it back up
Speaker 1: there for you. It was fantastic. It was a shadowy,
Speaker 1: just glimpse at the mutant Turkey. But we left you
Speaker 1: at a moment where we had just stepped out into
Speaker 1: the woods for the first time and after a couple
Speaker 1: of years of waiting to get filled out there, and
Speaker 1: we had a little bit of we were crestfallen, at
Speaker 1: least I was. I was immediately in despair, immediately in
Speaker 1: despair that we that I took you to a place
Speaker 1: where turkeys live and no turkeys. We're a goblin Phil.
Speaker 1: And And as as we tracked through this story, you'll
Speaker 1: you'll see that I have my emotional ups and downs
Speaker 1: are very exaggerated, but Phil stays pretty consistent the entire time.
Speaker 1: Tell him about that. Phil, You're happy to be here.
Speaker 1: The weather is nice, and I'm over there going I
Speaker 1: don't even know if I can live. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if you know the step forward. You have years
Speaker 1: of context and experience to kind of, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: put put this hunt into perspective, and I do not.
Speaker 1: So I'm just out there. I think I said in
Speaker 1: one of those videos that you posted on your Instagram that, like,
Speaker 1: if there was a blizzard happening and we're pouring down rain,
Speaker 1: if there were forty mile winds, I might have been
Speaker 1: looking at my clock and looking at you, like staying
Speaker 1: out here. But it was just nice to be outside
Speaker 1: and you know, hearing all that, just all the wildlife
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning. Um, so I was not.
Speaker 1: You know, we weren't hearing any gobbles that morning, but
Speaker 1: I was. I wasn't itching to get out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was in the game. I was in a different
Speaker 1: game than you were in. Yes, we're trying to relate
Speaker 1: to each other because the game I was in was
Speaker 1: a game success of failure. Yeah, it was a game
Speaker 1: marked by things I had done in the past and
Speaker 1: experience that I had done in the past. I pretty
Speaker 1: consistently would be like Phil, last time I was here,
Speaker 1: the turkeys were over there and they did this. You
Speaker 1: kept trying to justify being there. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say make excuses, that's not what it was. But you
Speaker 1: were trying to really, Yeah, but it was it was unnecessary.
Speaker 1: Desperately provide context so you can understand why I was
Speaker 1: doing the things doing. But we stepped out. You know,
Speaker 1: we explained to you guys that we stepped down. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a for me, a very desperate situation.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have that first morning kind of crescendo
Speaker 1: for Phil did not happen. But we continued as we
Speaker 1: continue the story, we continued, we'll take you into the
Speaker 1: field now. We continued to discuss what it was like
Speaker 1: on that first morning. So, Phil, we're taking a little break.
Speaker 1: We haven't heard of gobels. So for your first daid
Speaker 1: Turkey hangever. We built this up. We talked about it
Speaker 1: for years, and we have, you know, a little false start. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's fine. You were you were kind of expecting this.
Speaker 1: I think a little bit at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of a you know, slow start. Yeah. The Turkey poversations
Speaker 1: around here locally aren't great, um, and the opportunities for
Speaker 1: public land which we are sitting on right now are
Speaker 1: not particularly abundant in terms of Turkey habitat, and so
Speaker 1: it's a little tougher. It's a little tougher equation than
Speaker 1: than other places. And I'll also add Phil that I
Speaker 1: have a curse m. Montana. Yeah, you talked about this.
Speaker 1: I was hoping to help you break that curse. So far,
Speaker 1: I haven't had much luck, but I just want you
Speaker 1: to know that I'm I'm trying. You and I have
Speaker 1: killed the same amount of turkeys in Montana. Oh great, Wow,
Speaker 1: that makes me feel pretty good. All right, Well we
Speaker 1: have to talk about the curse, the Montana turkey curse
Speaker 1: that I have going now. Is it do you think
Speaker 1: that contributed to of the final like that that contributed
Speaker 1: to this hunt that I kept talking about the turkey curse? Yes,
Speaker 1: because I would say whenever we I'm not gonna spoil anything,
Speaker 1: but whenever we ran into any bad luck or something
Speaker 1: happened that wasn't great, I think you would mutter something
Speaker 1: under your breath, like God, Curtana. I will give that.
Speaker 1: The context I'll give it there is that I've hunted
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, no more than two days
Speaker 1: in any other state to fill a tag, no more
Speaker 1: than two and any other state. And when I say
Speaker 1: any other state, I'm talking six states total. I've traveled
Speaker 1: to and got tags, and each one of those six
Speaker 1: states I'll field attack and under two days or right
Speaker 1: at the two day mark and sometimes multiple turkeys Montana,
Speaker 1: I'm going on. I gotta be going on day by
Speaker 1: the time me and you get to day two and
Speaker 1: other other days to come. And so really this story
Speaker 1: is about can we break that curse. I keep bringing
Speaker 1: it up because I'm just it's like, that's the baggage
Speaker 1: I'm bringing to this event. Yeah, I'm bringing a lot
Speaker 1: of baggage. You could feel my emotions. I'm sleep deprived.
Speaker 1: I could, and I'm sure the audience can as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sleep deprived. I'm not really I don't understand what I'm doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: even in that audio from the field there, you can
Speaker 1: hear that it we're just both like, I'm just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's sounds so tired. And so at this point, we're
Speaker 1: just trying. I'm just trying to keep it going. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to keep pushing forward and be positive. But the
Speaker 1: emotional strain is clearly taking its toll heading into morning
Speaker 1: number two. And and to put a bow on day one,
Speaker 1: no gobbles were heard on day one, no turkeys were seeing.
Speaker 1: Nothing happened of note. Day one was a bus Now
Speaker 1: here we go with morning number two. All right, morning
Speaker 1: number two, it is five oh two in the morning.
Speaker 1: Is you can hear my voice? Is will tore up.
Speaker 1: I'll play with the kiddos up early with Phill the
Speaker 1: engineer pulling into the parking lot here, or we'll hike
Speaker 1: out of to meet old Phil. He's on time, fills
Speaker 1: an on time turkey hunter, which I appreciate, and I'll
Speaker 1: see how he's doing this morning. One of the secrets
Speaker 1: of turkey hunting is every time you hear a train,
Speaker 1: we can't figure out if that's the train. Is that
Speaker 1: a train horn? What do you call that the train whistle?
Speaker 1: I think we did that idea. Yeah, listen for the
Speaker 1: che choose. It's technically a whistle. Okay, technically the train whistle.
Speaker 1: If hunting your train tracks, you really got a key
Speaker 1: in on that train whistle. Important musing. But we're on
Speaker 1: this day, day two, and Phils, you have to hear
Speaker 1: a gobble in the wild other than some nuclear turkey
Speaker 1: in somebody's front yard. We need again, we need at
Speaker 1: least hear one. That's it. Just hear one. That's all
Speaker 1: all right. We just heard her first gobble ever and
Speaker 1: fills the first turkey on as I feel it feels
Speaker 1: pretty good. The the descriptive skills of Philly engineer. The
Speaker 1: emotional depth is on full display right now. So we're
Speaker 1: set up in a little blind that I made with
Speaker 1: my son, and we're feeling these birds are just about
Speaker 1: where I thought they would be on their right, tucked
Speaker 1: up on the river. It sounds like last time we
Speaker 1: didn't hear a gobble. Something good to hear the want
Speaker 1: to roost goblin. Now we gotta make decision to stay
Speaker 1: here or do what I've done that asked and bomb
Speaker 1: right up to the private fans there. Let's see what
Speaker 1: we get. We'll keep listening. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: judging distance because this is new to me. How how
Speaker 1: far away do you think that gobble was? Well, that
Speaker 1: rooster's right behind us. That gobble, you know, a quarter
Speaker 1: of a mile, not far from us. I only know
Speaker 1: where where there's another one, back further in the river. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard not to go over there. It's
Speaker 1: back where I thought they would probably be. Keep listening, Okay, Phil,
Speaker 1: do you remember what it was like just to hear
Speaker 1: those first distant gobbles in this case, one a couple
Speaker 1: of distant gobbles, but one pretty clear. There was one
Speaker 1: where I was like, Oh, it's happening. Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: had tied those distant ones. You had kind of said,
Speaker 1: it's probably across the river over the chances of them
Speaker 1: coming over from that over from over there pretty slim.
Speaker 1: But then we heard that one that was that sounded
Speaker 1: really close. Yeah he was, I said a quarter a
Speaker 1: mile there, like in in hindsight, Man, he was close
Speaker 1: way five yards maybe less. And at that point you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're in the right spot. So we talked
Speaker 1: about it, and we decided we're gonna stay here. As
Speaker 1: I explained in a couple of these clips, Um, we
Speaker 1: just I just feel like these turkeys are in a
Speaker 1: spot where they're either going to filter towards the river.
Speaker 1: They're not going to casually just fly across the river.
Speaker 1: They're either gonna hang out basically where they're roosted, or
Speaker 1: they kind of have to come our way. There's no
Speaker 1: other there's there's really two directions they're gonna go. So
Speaker 1: feeling like we, as we talked about through this entire thing,
Speaker 1: we want to be where they want to be, right
Speaker 1: if we're in a position to be calling from an
Speaker 1: area they're headed to. Anyways, we have a we have
Speaker 1: and I, you know, we can speed up that process,
Speaker 1: and we're just catching when they're gonna get there anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we decided to stay right where we were.
Speaker 1: And then this happened. So as as often happens, we
Speaker 1: got on the fly down. We got the bird flew
Speaker 1: down as my guess hit the ground, gobbled once. It
Speaker 1: sounded like he flew down closer to us. And then
Speaker 1: when when quiet, So I kind of predicted that, I
Speaker 1: think a little bit. We haven't haven't heard of goblin
Speaker 1: several minutes. So basically, Phil, we're gonna sit here the way.
Speaker 1: We got no other options. We'll sit here and wait
Speaker 1: and just be ready because you know, turkey's coming in quiet.
Speaker 1: They got great eyesight. They're gonna come and look at
Speaker 1: We'll just hope that when he gets in and tight,
Speaker 1: I'll hit it, you know, just hit him with a call.
Speaker 1: He's tight and kind of shock gobble at us for beating.
Speaker 1: Really be fired up when he's in tight. But we
Speaker 1: got you sit here a while. I just hope that
Speaker 1: he wants to filter this way, check us out. We'll
Speaker 1: call every five ten minutes. I hope to catch his attention.
Speaker 1: It sounded like he was roosted either by himself or Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say he was either rooster by himself or
Speaker 1: what is some less than vocal hands, But I would
Speaker 1: guess he was by himself. Okay, birds go quiet. This
Speaker 1: often happens. This happens, especially this time of year, pretty
Speaker 1: often more often than i'd like. Where the birds hit
Speaker 1: the ground, they're just being completely quiet. Then you're you're
Speaker 1: in a deer hunting situation. You gotta sit there. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be quiet, you gotta be still, you gotta be vigilant,
Speaker 1: you gotta wait. But we were kind of we went
Speaker 1: from no gobbles to Gobblesville. That's really the underlying clarity
Speaker 1: that we need to be like, you got some cobbles
Speaker 1: and that that when when that bird hit the ground,
Speaker 1: the gobble was close but then quiet. So what are
Speaker 1: you thinking at this point, Phil, where does your mind? Dad?
Speaker 1: We're sitting in that blind I'm trying to remember. I
Speaker 1: honestly think I was starting to lose hope at this point.
Speaker 1: You're finally you finally on my level. Okay, Well, you
Speaker 1: know it's hard to say. It's hard to understand kind
Speaker 1: of like the ups and downs of things like this
Speaker 1: because as we talked about later in this in the story,
Speaker 1: everything in hunting is fiction. The story you've drawn up
Speaker 1: in your head is fiction until it becomes fact. Right.
Speaker 1: It's it's like you've drawn up I drew up a
Speaker 1: story that, like this turkey flies down, he's by himself.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's by himself or not. He
Speaker 1: could be with I have no idea. I only heard
Speaker 1: one gobble, right, So in my head I've drawn up
Speaker 1: this story that there's a single turkey he heard us,
Speaker 1: he flies down. I hit him as soon as he
Speaker 1: I didn't. We didn't really talk to him while he
Speaker 1: was in the tree. I don't think we talked to
Speaker 1: him't make any noise while he was in the tree.
Speaker 1: But as soon as he hit the ground, I started
Speaker 1: calling him, hoping that that would draw him our way,
Speaker 1: and hoping he wanted to come our way anyways. And
Speaker 1: I made up the story that it was just one
Speaker 1: turkey and he wanted to come over. We just had
Speaker 1: to sit and wait for him. And so I had
Speaker 1: made up this what essentially he is a fiction about
Speaker 1: this story h And I think that's what all hunters do,
Speaker 1: That's especially what all turkey hunters do. You make up
Speaker 1: a thing, you say like, this is based on my experience,
Speaker 1: this is going to happen. You know. It's like setting
Speaker 1: out a strategy and then you do actions have to
Speaker 1: marry up the strategy until in case you want to
Speaker 1: change that strategy, then you gotta change your actions so
Speaker 1: that all that makes sense. Feel I'm always was always
Speaker 1: rationalizing these things in my head. You have to. You
Speaker 1: have to, yeah, otherwise you just as I often do,
Speaker 1: feel like an idiot. So we're sitting here. We haven't
Speaker 1: heard a gobble since fly down. It's now seven thirty,
Speaker 1: so it's been you know, an hour, and so you know,
Speaker 1: over an hour and hour and fifty minutes, almost two
Speaker 1: hours now, and we're talking about what goes through your
Speaker 1: mind at times like this when you know there's turkeys around.
Speaker 1: So there's a few things we know, Phil. We know
Speaker 1: that there's turkeys around, right, at least a couple we
Speaker 1: heard several gobbles coming from different places within five yards
Speaker 1: of our location. There was plenty of turkeys to just
Speaker 1: wander through this meadow that we're sitting. So we know
Speaker 1: that there's turkeys, right. We also know that they're not
Speaker 1: making any noise. But in our minds. In my mind
Speaker 1: and my turkey under mind. Every minute I'm like, well
Speaker 1: what if I when if I just if I went
Speaker 1: over there and I just made a call and I
Speaker 1: got my fan out, I'm trying to fan them over.
Speaker 1: I'm always thinking about other things that I could be
Speaker 1: doing while sitting here, absolutely zero action. And what we
Speaker 1: were talking about is Phil had a good analogy for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am terrible at this. It's like when you're in
Speaker 1: line at the grocery store, like you're at a costco.
Speaker 1: It's busy, and then you notice the line next to
Speaker 1: you is moving really quickly, so you're like, oh, let
Speaker 1: us hop over into that line, And as soon as
Speaker 1: you get into that line, the other line starts moving,
Speaker 1: so you hop back into that line. Like when you're
Speaker 1: trying to change lanes during a traffic jam, it's probably
Speaker 1: best to just stay where you are. In this case,
Speaker 1: the same. But you know this, this podcast, now that
Speaker 1: we're actually out here hunting, is really going to be about.
Speaker 1: I said, I like where we're at, Phil, because I
Speaker 1: think it's emblematic of a lot of turkey hunts. It's
Speaker 1: not emile back of all of them. Because sometimes you
Speaker 1: sit down and you all and when comes in and
Speaker 1: you shoot it, it's like, well that's easy. But two
Speaker 1: most turkey hunters like this is a huge part of
Speaker 1: the game where you're unsuccessful, and it's sometimes it seems
Speaker 1: really hopeless, like there's not like today the sun is
Speaker 1: about to come out from behind the cloud. It's fifty
Speaker 1: degrees maybe degrees. You know, it's it's the first day
Speaker 1: of May. It's there should be some things happen. We've
Speaker 1: heard every other type of bird that you can think of,
Speaker 1: and um, it might seem hopeless for turkeys, but it's
Speaker 1: just never. It's never hopeless. So it all turns. It
Speaker 1: turns in like a moment. It takes one weird moment.
Speaker 1: Like I was telling you this year in Texas, we
Speaker 1: were sitting in a spot like this, I told the
Speaker 1: story in the podcast, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was a turkey there and I shot it. Like
Speaker 1: it felt really good to be able to pay off
Speaker 1: that patience. And I hate to be hyperbolic, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of a nice life lesson, always trying to find
Speaker 1: life lessons in the woods. Phil. Now we're back to
Speaker 1: the present time and you couldn't tell by the step,
Speaker 1: the sound quality. Sound quality, that's the only way to
Speaker 1: track two people in different you know, jumping through time.
Speaker 1: I can make it sound like like we're still outside
Speaker 1: and just trying to check them out. Don't put any
Speaker 1: gobbles in the know. They'll know it's not real. Um
Speaker 1: as you can tell if we were let me just
Speaker 1: say this, if we had been in Turkeys this whole time,
Speaker 1: we would have never had this, these back and forth,
Speaker 1: these rationalizations, this back and forth like what is turkey anting?
Speaker 1: What are we learning? Why are we here? What's life about?
Speaker 1: We would not we'd have been we'd have been talking
Speaker 1: about how to coax these silent tom's or in this
Speaker 1: case nonside times over. But here we are, so we ride.
Speaker 1: We're gonna show you the truth no matter what. And
Speaker 1: we gotta transition now to uh the next day because
Speaker 1: on that day we didn't have any action. We sat
Speaker 1: there for a while and no gobbles, so we went
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of went back through where the
Speaker 1: one was roosted, did a little calling. Nothing not a gobble.
Speaker 1: We didn't hear a distant gobble after the fly down,
Speaker 1: we didn't hear I mean, we're in a spot where
Speaker 1: we could have heard gobbles from just about any direction.
Speaker 1: But after that initial fly down, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the turkey that we were hoping to kill flew down,
Speaker 1: hit the ground, gobbled once in the seconds after he
Speaker 1: his feet touched the ground, and then silent, and every
Speaker 1: other turkey so the credit of the one we thought
Speaker 1: we might kill was silent as well. We didn't hear
Speaker 1: another gobble at all. And so that's just as part
Speaker 1: of the game. As we said, it's part of the game.
Speaker 1: But now we gotta we gotta get to the next day,
Speaker 1: all right, So now, uh, we made it. We made
Speaker 1: a big change. We've hit our local spots. We had
Speaker 1: to still manage our families and work, but we decided
Speaker 1: to pack up our camp gear and go to a
Speaker 1: spot where that is famous for guys killing turkeys, especially
Speaker 1: people that work at meat eater. Yes, my curse is
Speaker 1: now on the day like fifteen, and we're looking to
Speaker 1: go to a spot where we can be sure that
Speaker 1: there's more turkeys than their words in the places we're
Speaker 1: hunting prior. Okay, so that's what we were doing. We
Speaker 1: use about four hour drive from from Bozeman. We're gonna
Speaker 1: camp overnight and We're gonna spend a couple of days
Speaker 1: trying to kill turkeys, right, we keep going. Now. The
Speaker 1: only limiting factor ful filling I is that we have families,
Speaker 1: that we have jobs, and that we have real lives.
Speaker 1: We can't just be out there for days upon days
Speaker 1: upon days, but we can be out there for these
Speaker 1: two very important days that we were out chasing turkeys.
Speaker 1: I say they're important because we're we're in a good spot.
Speaker 1: We had good weather the first day, and um, I
Speaker 1: was very excited. We got there late. We couldn't find
Speaker 1: any birds on the roost. We went to bed Phil
Speaker 1: about eleven thirty. It was, yeah, close to midnight. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get it doesn't get dark. Fly ups not till
Speaker 1: after nine thirty or so. We get back to camp.
Speaker 1: We crawl in our tents. I don't think you slept much,
Speaker 1: did you, buddy. It was a cold night that was
Speaker 1: there was no cloud coverage. Uh. I was fully dressed
Speaker 1: in a sleeping bag and my zipper got stuck. When
Speaker 1: I went to bed, I was like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: So my zipp was only kind of like half not
Speaker 1: a sponsor. No, I'm not going to mention the brand,
Speaker 1: but they're not a sponsor. Um and about I wake
Speaker 1: up about one o'clock and just this just cold air,
Speaker 1: just sneak it into my sleeping bag. I got probably
Speaker 1: like two and a half hours of sleep. Maybe, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We got up at three thirty. Alarm hit three thirty.
Speaker 1: The idea was that we had to drive a little
Speaker 1: bit of ways. But this is a roost tree where
Speaker 1: I had been during the aforementioned first like Turkey tour,
Speaker 1: we had gotten on birds. They're not been successful, but
Speaker 1: I knew, you know, I had been there twice and
Speaker 1: birds were roosting in the same ridge both times I've
Speaker 1: been there, and so we may I made the calculation
Speaker 1: that we're gonna go to this spot because at least
Speaker 1: I know we have a real good chance of having
Speaker 1: birds roosted on this ridge. We're gonna hit it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna hit it early. We're gonna get in there with
Speaker 1: plenty of time to kind of explore the space and
Speaker 1: be in the right spot for fly. Now. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: At this point, we were very excited. I'm back on
Speaker 1: the horse. I'm like, this is it, man. We have
Speaker 1: basically have two days to get it done, and then
Speaker 1: it's gonna be tough after that. Uh, these two days
Speaker 1: that we were investing before we you know, before this
Speaker 1: podcast aired, was really the time we had the pressure
Speaker 1: was on. We needed to get a turkey for phil
Speaker 1: Or I specifically would look like a fool. At least
Speaker 1: that's how I drew it up in my head, right Phil, Sure,
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever said that out loud, but
Speaker 1: I knew that's what you were thinking. I made it clear.
Speaker 1: I made it clear, so we're both like. I didn't
Speaker 1: even I got out of my sleeping bag. I didn't
Speaker 1: even I slept in my hunting clothes, I got my
Speaker 1: boots on. I didn't even bother to do any you know,
Speaker 1: really any hygiene work. I mean, I just was fully
Speaker 1: immersed in turkeys I was thinking about I didn't think
Speaker 1: about anything else. I think about anything, no work, not emails, nothing,
Speaker 1: you know. I thought about my family a little bit,
Speaker 1: but then it was like full onto turkeys, fully just
Speaker 1: thinking about turkeys. There was nothing else, but like, where
Speaker 1: are the turkeys? How am I going to find the turkeys?
Speaker 1: If Turkey's come in, what are we gonna do? Trying
Speaker 1: to plan out the days in my head, it was
Speaker 1: very exciting and important to me. Phil, What were your
Speaker 1: head acause I was in the Turkey? I love it
Speaker 1: for that reason. Well, I was in I was in
Speaker 1: a you know, I we're not gonna say where. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I wasn't a part of the state I had never
Speaker 1: been before. I was just like happy to be there.
Speaker 1: It was more beautiful than I thought it was gonna be,
Speaker 1: seeing all this new country. Um, you know, I I
Speaker 1: don't own a truck and you do. So we were
Speaker 1: on all these roads that I never would have been
Speaker 1: able to drive on and just just getting out into
Speaker 1: the back country and it was just fun being out there.
Speaker 1: I could tell you were you were vibrating, you were
Speaker 1: on a different plane. You were you were leading the
Speaker 1: charge quickly on these trails, and I had to kind
Speaker 1: of I had to kind of, you know, keep it up,
Speaker 1: to stay on on on on your tail there. I
Speaker 1: had to you you you were putting me into gear
Speaker 1: and I was. I was there for it. You were
Speaker 1: there for You're there for it. You know, sometimes when
Speaker 1: you get it's just a mode that you get in
Speaker 1: the woods where you're not even thinking about and it's
Speaker 1: probably not a great thing to not have empathy for
Speaker 1: the person behind you, or like you're just like I
Speaker 1: gotta get that guy over there and go and if
Speaker 1: you can't keep up, I'll stop maybe, but I'm definitely
Speaker 1: gonna go hard. You know. We had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a walk in the morning. We had to drive
Speaker 1: in the morning. But we made it happen. Man, I was,
Speaker 1: I was my on X really wasn't downloading the way
Speaker 1: I wanted it to side know where the roads were.
Speaker 1: It's pitch dark while since I've been there. We made
Speaker 1: it in parked, the truck got out hiked probably had
Speaker 1: probably about a mild hike in. We got there perfect timing,
Speaker 1: I mean perfect timing. We were there about twenty minutes
Speaker 1: before what I would say is fly down. We had
Speaker 1: plenty of time to hear a gobble, to sneak in,
Speaker 1: to set up the decoys, and to make love to
Speaker 1: the turkeys and get him to come over. It was.
Speaker 1: It was perfect, and it was kind of like a
Speaker 1: very invigorating moment for me. Reinvigorating. And so we'll take
Speaker 1: you there. Okay, Phil, We've now traveled very far to
Speaker 1: find turkeys. What do you think, Uh, well, so far?
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I said it last time. I'll say
Speaker 1: it again. Weather's nice. We we haven't had to this point.
Speaker 1: We haven't really had any scenario where I would say
Speaker 1: we've had anyhow well, someone's called luck. Well, we're in
Speaker 1: a spot, another spot rough rooster turkeys were I know
Speaker 1: they're at. Where have they been at in the last
Speaker 1: a month or so? I haven't heard him go yet,
Speaker 1: but we got plenty of time. We're in here kind
Speaker 1: of perfectly in the morning, good friends, We're gonna do
Speaker 1: some hiking, see who I can find. We didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: Did we feel you're just cutting right to the chase,
Speaker 1: right to the chase? Nope, nothing. Frustration is in the
Speaker 1: name of the game. We didn't find anything. Nothing. Let
Speaker 1: me just say, let me just say, I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you something. Would you say my spirits throughout these two days?
Speaker 1: Would you say my spirits? I'm not gonna say hi,
Speaker 1: but would you say that they were like moderate? Two?
Speaker 1: Good enough? No, you're you're you were there? Okay? Good?
Speaker 1: Because I just want to because I just wanted. We
Speaker 1: drove a while aways, We drove aways to a place
Speaker 1: that I heard not just from you, but from multiple
Speaker 1: people at this company. I mean, just turkeys you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna find turkeys turkeys. And so, when we were hiking
Speaker 1: through these woods in the dark and I had gotten
Speaker 1: no sleep, and I was I was tripping over all
Speaker 1: these rocks following you, I was thinking, this is great
Speaker 1: because it doesn't it doesn't matter. We're gonna get it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna I'm gonna hear. If I don't get them today,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But I'm gonna hear turkeys. I'm gonna hear
Speaker 1: some turkeys. I might even see some turkeys. I might
Speaker 1: even call some turkeys in that didn't happen. Nope. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I've been out there when turkeys got shot.
Speaker 1: And then pretty much the exact same spot we were in.
Speaker 1: We walked past spots where I know turkeys have died
Speaker 1: this season if we walk past spots, we walked past
Speaker 1: way points I had to give other people that work here,
Speaker 1: and they killed turkeys in the spots that I had
Speaker 1: given them. Oh, that was your first mistake right there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but maybe would have spread the love. Um
Speaker 1: and so, and we had some friends. I had some
Speaker 1: friends from Texas in camp. They also heard no gobbles,
Speaker 1: and so it just seemed like things were off again.
Speaker 1: Let's let's be honest again. It was a nice morning,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, beautiful morning. Yeah. I mean I just want
Speaker 1: to say, if anyone podcast needs a meteorologist, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I'll pop up to say, hey, whether's motivation is pretty good?
Speaker 1: Or else say yeah, whether it could be better motivational
Speaker 1: speaker media both. But we continued on and there was some,
Speaker 1: as I said, frustration. Okay, Phil, here we are, and uh,
Speaker 1: roughly the third or fourth spot I've taken you to,
Speaker 1: or I've said all the things a turkey hunter might
Speaker 1: say to quit, you know, convince you that it's gonna
Speaker 1: work out and there's turkeys, and that we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into him. It's gonna be fun. And it's not happened.
Speaker 1: It's not even close thus far. What What do you
Speaker 1: gotta say the people out there? Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: has been fun. I'll say that it's that we've been
Speaker 1: getting some some hiking, hiking miles in. Um, there's nary
Speaker 1: a cloud in the sky around here. Here we go,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know it's it's gonna happen, then it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Keeping I'm keeping my head up. I gotta
Speaker 1: persevere in these cases. It just takes one moment, one gobble,
Speaker 1: one second, one shot. You got one shot, one opportunity.
Speaker 1: Something about moms spaghetti. Yeah, alright, we're back to present day.
Speaker 1: Enough of that ship. Like at this point, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: you'll see you'll understand that I was like getting a
Speaker 1: little loopy. Yeah, this this is when the muttering about
Speaker 1: a curse was as happening loopy, sleep deprived. No, nothing's
Speaker 1: going right. The story marked by failure. Okay, so next
Speaker 1: we hit another spot. Okay, with little hiking. Now it's
Speaker 1: it's roughly oh eight thirty nine o'clock, and we decided
Speaker 1: to hit another spot where I know that are turkeys
Speaker 1: have been seen in the past, heard in the past,
Speaker 1: a similar spot. It was actually the spot where I
Speaker 1: had I was choosing between two historical roost areas and
Speaker 1: I chose the one we went to, and there's no
Speaker 1: turkeys there. So I was like, secondary, we'll just go
Speaker 1: check this spot out. So we get in the truck.
Speaker 1: We like back to the truck, do a lot of calling,
Speaker 1: walking and calling back to the truck and getting the truck.
Speaker 1: We drive over there and I should I get out
Speaker 1: the ONYX, I say, Phil we're gonna walk up this
Speaker 1: ridge and there's a park up here. There's a meadow,
Speaker 1: there's that has a a knob of tip right in
Speaker 1: the middle of it, and the park that surrounds it.
Speaker 1: And I begin to explain to Phil that I feel
Speaker 1: like these turkeys love to be in these parks. They're
Speaker 1: wide open, there's a lot of grassy cover, and days
Speaker 1: like this when the sun is shining, they can they
Speaker 1: can eat pine seeds, they can eat like grasshoppers or
Speaker 1: other bugs that they just do their thing. They love
Speaker 1: to kind of be on the edges of these big
Speaker 1: Ponderosa pine ridges that are kind of flat, that have
Speaker 1: flat parks. So I explained that the films that we're
Speaker 1: going with up this ridge, we'll call until we get
Speaker 1: there and then we'll we'll see if there's any turkeys
Speaker 1: they want to play. And so um, we get to
Speaker 1: hike and fill and we hike up, up, up, up,
Speaker 1: and we get right to the lip of the ridge
Speaker 1: where the park begins with the flatness starts to grade eight,
Speaker 1: Grade eight flatten out and I look, I'm looking, and
Speaker 1: I see a stick and this stick it looks like
Speaker 1: a turkey's face, And yeah, turkey yeah, weird. You know,
Speaker 1: turkeys normally do where they're like moving around, right, They're
Speaker 1: bobbing their heads, they're thinking about ship pecking, they're doing
Speaker 1: their thing. This turkey was completely still. You know, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: is was a fucking turkey. Oh yeah, okay, you just
Speaker 1: gave it away. It was a turkey stick. It was
Speaker 1: a It was a turkey. And this turkey, I mean,
Speaker 1: this turkey was like what ten feet away, it was
Speaker 1: ten yards away. It was. It was fairly certain it
Speaker 1: was a jake, just by the way its head looked,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. Tom was a male turkey. One we
Speaker 1: would have shot if we had a chance. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had called, we're ten yards away from this turkey.
Speaker 1: We had just called like twenty yards before that, and nothing. Nothing.
Speaker 1: We were like, okay, let's just keep trucking. So we
Speaker 1: I was like, filky, damn, that is actually an actual turkey.
Speaker 1: After like a couple of seconds, probably five to ten
Speaker 1: seconds of looking at this turkey, and it didn't move.
Speaker 1: It didn't move its head at all, and I thought
Speaker 1: it could be a turkey stick, but then it yeah,
Speaker 1: turkey headstick. And then it started to move slowly, so
Speaker 1: I was like, get down, let's get up, And so
Speaker 1: we crawled up this little ridge and we poke our
Speaker 1: heads up. We crawl up behind a tree. We get
Speaker 1: set up. I thought, well, maybe this this Jacerb will
Speaker 1: filter down into you know, into this depression, and he'll
Speaker 1: he'll calm down because he's clearly seeing us, or he
Speaker 1: knows something's up, and then he'll come. We'll call him
Speaker 1: back in. So we set up, we start to call
Speaker 1: nothing that Jake has gone. But in the distance, feel
Speaker 1: what happens? Well, as you were calling trying to get
Speaker 1: this turkey, we just sawed back in. We heard was
Speaker 1: that our first gobbles. It was a one of our
Speaker 1: first gobbles on the ground. And we're now on day
Speaker 1: out of the day four. I believe it's like one
Speaker 1: of our first gobbles on the actual ground. And it's
Speaker 1: in the distance. It's it's a ways away. But immediately
Speaker 1: I was like Phil, I was like, I showed him
Speaker 1: the onyx. I said, I know where this turkey is.
Speaker 1: Like when I'm looking at this park, it's got this
Speaker 1: knob in the middle and then on the on the
Speaker 1: I guess with the south side of the knob were
Speaker 1: on the northwest side on the south side of the knob.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be out of the wind. This point, the
Speaker 1: winds kind of kicking up. I know where these turkeys
Speaker 1: probably are. Let's just go chase a gobble for once
Speaker 1: in our damn lives. Let's go chase a gobble and
Speaker 1: chase a gobble. We did, and we got a couple
Speaker 1: of responses, and um, we ended up actually hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was some there was some tracking happening. We were
Speaker 1: we were, we were we were on birds, on birds,
Speaker 1: that's what you say, right, Yeah, we're now on birds
Speaker 1: and some birds for the first time many hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: so like that, you have a face mask. I put
Speaker 1: it on as quickly as I could, and so I
Speaker 1: gave Phil forgot his head net that I gave him,
Speaker 1: and I gave him my first like gator, a neck gator,
Speaker 1: and he put it on. I'm looking at it, and
Speaker 1: you kind of looked like you look a little bit
Speaker 1: like a pilgrim. Well, here here's the thing, you this
Speaker 1: is when, this is why, this is right after you
Speaker 1: had seen that turkey from ten yards away and everything
Speaker 1: just started happening incredibly quickly where I was like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: it's going down. You started I like, because I had
Speaker 1: the decoys, you had the rifle, right, and so then
Speaker 1: I had shotgun. I had to put like carefully put
Speaker 1: the decoys down without making any noise. I had just
Speaker 1: unzipped my coat and it was like just kind of
Speaker 1: flailing in the wind because it was getting hot. And
Speaker 1: you were like, You're like, yeah, it's fine, So I
Speaker 1: like put on the decoys. I'm trying to like zip
Speaker 1: up my coat so I'm more covered in camo. And
Speaker 1: then you were tossing me a gator. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what a house, so, like I thought it was supposed
Speaker 1: to go over my head as well as covering it was.
Speaker 1: I thought it was more like like a balad quava.
Speaker 1: But you know it was just a neck gator, you
Speaker 1: know how. And like Et has the hood like he's
Speaker 1: pecking his little face out of the hoodie riding the bus.
Speaker 1: What it looked like. It was just like that. So
Speaker 1: then we went back to feel describing what's happening back
Speaker 1: to the future. Clearly I did not do it correctly, Okay,
Speaker 1: we ut. We just had a little jaker right out here,
Speaker 1: probably spooked him. We were walking up into this park,
Speaker 1: but we got a gob but probably say about three
Speaker 1: d yards away, and he got but three times and
Speaker 1: then he's kind of shut up. But it is windy.
Speaker 1: So Phil, should we go over there and potentially bump
Speaker 1: him or stay here the whole titan see if he'll
Speaker 1: come across this this park and come see us. You're
Speaker 1: asking me, Yeah, I'm asking me based on your experiences.
Speaker 1: There's no wrong answer. Based on my experience, I say,
Speaker 1: we go up there. Damn right, Phil, You damn right, Phil.
Speaker 1: So um, at this point we're in the game. Finally
Speaker 1: we're about to go try to kill this turkey. So
Speaker 1: we hoof it over there. We get up on a knob, call,
Speaker 1: call call, We get up on top of the the
Speaker 1: tip that's in the middle of the park, just to see.
Speaker 1: I love to have turkeys in this country, especially these
Speaker 1: piny ridges come up to you. You always want to
Speaker 1: be above him when you're calling to him. It's just
Speaker 1: this a better way to go in my experience. So
Speaker 1: we get above them a call and they're respondent like
Speaker 1: we got I don't know four or five, half a
Speaker 1: dozen responses from from these bird, this bird, or these birds.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, man, if they'll keep goblin at least
Speaker 1: we're in the game. It wasn't. I told you they
Speaker 1: were kind of courtesy gobbles the way I explained them
Speaker 1: to you, Like, this is not I'm coming like, let's
Speaker 1: have a conversation. This is like I hear you, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay in my zone here. I'm not. This
Speaker 1: is not an interaction where I'm excited about you because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm it's the courteous thing. I hear you over there. Um.
Speaker 1: So we kept going, but at this point, like it's
Speaker 1: the wind kicks up, I'm not. I've been in these
Speaker 1: situations before. I know we don't have a fired up gobbler,
Speaker 1: but we have a gobbler that's better than nothing. And
Speaker 1: so but I think we're feeling feeling a little bit loopy.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I mean one of the things
Speaker 1: you deal with phil a lot when you're tricky hunting.
Speaker 1: Because my foot is completely asleep right now. M this
Speaker 1: is a common turkey hunting issue. They call it turkey foot. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm having the same problem. I got
Speaker 1: these new snais bear tooth o ge just got a
Speaker 1: lot of circulation coming through like zero gez no, it's
Speaker 1: zero zero g and expect people not to call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well thanks for laughing at my dad jokes. They call them.
Speaker 1: I think zero GE's but you do what you gotta do,
Speaker 1: all right, Here we go zero ge sounds like they'll
Speaker 1: make me some loop, that's true, Yeah, which at this
Speaker 1: point would be preferable to walking. So here, Ah, we're
Speaker 1: silly bitches. Uh. At this point, we're feeling a little loopy.
Speaker 1: We decide we gotta keep on truck and get over
Speaker 1: these turkeys because they're basically every gobble that we get
Speaker 1: is either in the same spot or a little bit
Speaker 1: further away. It seems yeah, they were moving, it was there,
Speaker 1: it was getting further away. As I said, these are
Speaker 1: courtesy gobbles, and so we're gonna cut the distance. And
Speaker 1: we decide, you know, after understanding that we're in a
Speaker 1: place where we explained where we think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of turkeys. You know, as has been described to me,
Speaker 1: there might be a turkey down every road or every
Speaker 1: two track. I know other places where we've seen and
Speaker 1: heard turkeys in the past. So I just want to
Speaker 1: give them that. We don't have a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of get like, are these turkeys
Speaker 1: gonna commit I'm not gonna spend all day on these things.
Speaker 1: Then we're gonna do the best that we can. And
Speaker 1: so we we go at them. A lot of crow calls,
Speaker 1: a lot of hard yelps, a few cuts, big time clucks.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go. We're gonna cut cover this country. Get tight.
Speaker 1: See what happens. Okay, Phil, we're back in the truck.
Speaker 1: It feels good. I would I didn't have any water.
Speaker 1: It's probably stupid, but now I have water. It is,
Speaker 1: it's new and we've been hunting. Oh we hit I
Speaker 1: think we hit the woods about four five in the
Speaker 1: a m. It's noon, five hours asleep. Oh you got five?
Speaker 1: Good for you? Yeah, about five and Um we started
Speaker 1: out with no gobbls this morning in a spot that
Speaker 1: that I have roosted birds in the past. Hit a
Speaker 1: second spot where we have been into birds in the past,
Speaker 1: and there was turkeys in there. Spooked to Jake and um.
Speaker 1: Then proceeded to spood four times. That's right, you you Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about your spiral and how how you just
Speaker 1: you you get into this pit of despair. Um, you
Speaker 1: sound like you're there now, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just saw some turkeys, So I'm not too disappointed. They
Speaker 1: were big that last time, that big Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: a big, big, beautiful white tips. Now I'm spiraling right now.
Speaker 1: You know, when you get in a situation like that
Speaker 1: and you screw it up, or you're making a decision
Speaker 1: that results in spooking turkeys, I don't think I think
Speaker 1: those are the first turkeys I spook this whole year.
Speaker 1: Us The thing I'm gonnaok, on the bright side, here,
Speaker 1: we we needed to eat. We're we're both getting kind
Speaker 1: of tired, and so we made a play and I
Speaker 1: think it's a I don't know, maybe not a win win,
Speaker 1: but but we we needed to get back to the
Speaker 1: truck anyway, and and uh, you know now, and now
Speaker 1: we know where there are some turkeys. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a bad, bad deal. No. And the
Speaker 1: decision I made was basically, listen, you know, we gotta
Speaker 1: we gotta cover country. We gotta find birds that are workable,
Speaker 1: that are responding, that are firing up, that will come
Speaker 1: to the call. You know, we gotta Yeah, these ones
Speaker 1: were these ones are slippery, for sure. We gotta find birds.
Speaker 1: These birds I think had been we've been hunting quite
Speaker 1: a lot, and to that end, weren't really They would
Speaker 1: give us a courtesy gobble when we got tight and
Speaker 1: they felt they needed to, but they really just weren't
Speaker 1: gonna weren't gonna play, They weren't gonna come to the decoys.
Speaker 1: They weren't gonna really get fired up and come see us.
Speaker 1: So I figured, well, where either gonna spook them, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna see here for four hours and wasted really
Speaker 1: the only full day of hunting we have on a
Speaker 1: set of turkeys that, yeah, marginal at best in terms
Speaker 1: of my prediction that they'll come within range. So that's
Speaker 1: the decision we made, and boy did it work out
Speaker 1: the way I thought it was. All right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: back into present, and as I played that back in
Speaker 1: my mind, I feel the same way. I feel like,
Speaker 1: fuck this, I really do. Um. It was a struggle.
Speaker 1: It was a struggle, um, for anybody who's ever built
Speaker 1: something up in in your head and and had it
Speaker 1: go the opposite of the way that you thought. We
Speaker 1: kept running into situations that just didn't feel like we
Speaker 1: were on the right track. Um. As we've said many
Speaker 1: times on this show, there's some days you wake up
Speaker 1: and you are a confident turkey hunter, and a lot
Speaker 1: of those days the turkey, as Tom Kelly would say,
Speaker 1: it takes that confidence and breaks your neck with it.
Speaker 1: At this point, I felt broken, Phil, broken, Phil Um
Speaker 1: is it okay? If I say that later in the
Speaker 1: day it gets even worse. Then later the day it
Speaker 1: gets even worse, and we continue to just talk about
Speaker 1: how bad it is. So here we go, you know, I, Phil,
Speaker 1: I'll say this to you, even though right now we're
Speaker 1: a little bit down, You're you're a little bit down.
Speaker 1: You're up. Yeah, you've done great. You've really done great.
Speaker 1: You're kicking at thank you. I you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to just I'm just doing what you're telling me
Speaker 1: to do. Oh you're punctual, well dressed, and um man,
Speaker 1: you're we're hitting it hard and you're right there ready
Speaker 1: to go. Every single time, Phil, Phils, You've You've stayed
Speaker 1: positive through all this, Phil, you stayed positive. You were
Speaker 1: in it with me the whole way. And I think
Speaker 1: the listeners of this show have seen your evolution, and
Speaker 1: they've seen you kind of be more excited about video
Speaker 1: games than hunting. But I think something even from the
Speaker 1: very beginning something had to have changed in your perspective,
Speaker 1: like you had to have started to like really understand
Speaker 1: the game of hunting. It felt like it felt like
Speaker 1: you were starting like gradually understanding the game. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say, I mean, i'd say they were they were
Speaker 1: too specific moments that happened on this hunt where I
Speaker 1: understood it more. That was the first one. When we
Speaker 1: were those we were calling at those birds and like
Speaker 1: you said, they're called you know, like you call them
Speaker 1: courtesy cobbles. They're not. They don't have any interest in
Speaker 1: coming in and checking you out. They're just kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: like I hear you, I'm gonna go over here now,
Speaker 1: have a have a lovely day. Um. And when we
Speaker 1: were I don't think we we talked about exactly what
Speaker 1: happened when we saw those toms. We had been calling
Speaker 1: them and calling them the gobels kind of stuffed, and
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, well let's just go down and see
Speaker 1: if we can see them. We were walking along the
Speaker 1: trail and you copped them out of the corner of
Speaker 1: your eye to the left, probably like seventy five yards away,
Speaker 1: and you turned you I saw you like, like do
Speaker 1: the your freeze face at me and we turned to
Speaker 1: the left and they had seen us and just booked
Speaker 1: it away. And in my mind I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: great turkeys over there. But my first my first thought
Speaker 1: was let's go get them, and you you were like
Speaker 1: that that can't happen right now. I'm sorry to disappoint you,
Speaker 1: but we have to leave, which which I didn't really understand. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course, if you know, if you're a wild animal,
Speaker 1: when you see something foreign and possibly aggressive, you're going
Speaker 1: to run away and be on edge. It's going to
Speaker 1: be hard to to get them. Yeah. To me, this
Speaker 1: is like a just a complete and utter despair moment, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I don't spooking turkeys is something that
Speaker 1: haunts me every time it happens, and it gets in
Speaker 1: my psyche and it stays in there. Um. But in
Speaker 1: this case, it was windy, the birds were not gobbling
Speaker 1: very much other than our courtesy gobbles, and we just
Speaker 1: needed to go find them, and we needed to see
Speaker 1: if we could get in tight and make them work.
Speaker 1: But we got in tight and they just gave us
Speaker 1: a slip. And the crazy part is that they're as
Speaker 1: they are running away, I look and I see this
Speaker 1: giant I see two times ago up the hill, then
Speaker 1: another than the fourth one, and where I'm talking probably
Speaker 1: a four year old bird, huge beard, just the beautiful
Speaker 1: white tips, big old red head, just kind of like
Speaker 1: the turkey that you would want anyone to get. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not trophy hunting here. We'll take a jake, but
Speaker 1: this is a big old mature time. And he was
Speaker 1: with three other mature times, and so we we went around.
Speaker 1: We went to the next pot where I said, hey, Phil,
Speaker 1: you know this is the spot where I've heard turkeys before,
Speaker 1: I've seen him before. Let's go there. We'll spend the
Speaker 1: midday kind of just piking around. You had some lunch,
Speaker 1: took like a thirty minute nap, and then spot a
Speaker 1: fifteen hour day here. I'm like, let's just take it,
Speaker 1: you know, Let's grab a ten minute power nap and
Speaker 1: the sandwich and we go right back at it. We
Speaker 1: get back at it. I take Phil to the spot.
Speaker 1: We start driving through this meadow where we're gonna park
Speaker 1: and walk on a road and kind of call down
Speaker 1: in these two different um ravines. It's like you can't
Speaker 1: really call him a drainage. It just kind of cuts
Speaker 1: or turkeys like to hang out out of the wind.
Speaker 1: It's now you windy. We start driving up this park
Speaker 1: to get to where we're going to stop and do
Speaker 1: some calling, and there right by the road is a
Speaker 1: pile of fresh feathers from that morning. Someone had shot
Speaker 1: at turkey there that day that morning. And so yet
Speaker 1: again it's like, wow, okay, all right, that's another sign
Speaker 1: it's not a great thing. Keep on keeping on. We go.
Speaker 1: We don't hear a gobble um, and then we move. Well,
Speaker 1: then we start to strategize. And at this point that
Speaker 1: Phil starts to get into strategy with me, Like we're talking,
Speaker 1: we're having a conversation where it's not just me saying
Speaker 1: we'll go over here, Why, it's Phil starting to have
Speaker 1: ideas about where we ought to go. Well, I just
Speaker 1: knew that the clock was the clock was ticking. We
Speaker 1: had the rest of the afternoon and then just a
Speaker 1: few hours in the morning before I had to head home.
Speaker 1: So you were kind of toying with the idea of
Speaker 1: trying going back to the area that we went to
Speaker 1: in uh in the the man, I tie, I'm the
Speaker 1: time has just gone in my head. The very first
Speaker 1: area we we went that morning. We're like, let's I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about going back there, we'll scope it out again,
Speaker 1: or you were thinking about one more new area, and
Speaker 1: I in my head, I was just like, I think
Speaker 1: we should go back to the place where we saw
Speaker 1: the turkeys, because it's still in my head. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the only place we know there are turkeys,
Speaker 1: and and we don't have a lot of time left.
Speaker 1: And you knew that that they were slippery, they were wildy,
Speaker 1: they were not responding you. You like your theory was
Speaker 1: that they had been pressured throughout the season. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were big birds, they've been around a while, they
Speaker 1: probably knew kind of what was up, and they did
Speaker 1: not want to play game, play play ball. Um, but
Speaker 1: I still was just fixated on going back. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: had two other groups of hunters with us that were
Speaker 1: in camp, were running around. None of them heard any gobbles,
Speaker 1: none of them saw turkeys. And so I'm sitting and thinking,
Speaker 1: this is the only turkeys that roughly seven hunters that
Speaker 1: I know of that are around running around here, I
Speaker 1: have seen or hurt. And we've been like we've been
Speaker 1: we've been going between and all of us we had
Speaker 1: like gone ted, like all all over the place around
Speaker 1: cut every creek We've we've called up every creek that
Speaker 1: we can think of, and so at this point it's
Speaker 1: just not working out for anybody, let alone us. And
Speaker 1: we got one spot with turkeys and listen, I've I've
Speaker 1: killed hard turkeys before, you know, and I've I've been
Speaker 1: able to make it work. So we're just gonna try
Speaker 1: to make it work. And we're just gonna have to
Speaker 1: be aggressive it just just because of the time. We
Speaker 1: don't have time to pop up a blind and sit
Speaker 1: in it all day and wait for these uh call
Speaker 1: shy educated as we call it in turkey hunting birds
Speaker 1: to come and decide that they're they're gonna play. So
Speaker 1: here we are. Okay, Ben, Throughout this whole experience, you
Speaker 1: have been very very gracious about You've just been very open,
Speaker 1: like Phil, do you have any questions, like like anything,
Speaker 1: just ask me anything You've I'm I'm an open book.
Speaker 1: Have at it. One thing I never thought of and
Speaker 1: just the one thing we just never talked about, because
Speaker 1: throughout this whole trip, you you, I mean, you just
Speaker 1: have the eyes that are tuned for this. You were
Speaker 1: seeing things I never would have seen in a million
Speaker 1: years signs tracks. You were seeing turkeys from just from
Speaker 1: far away, and you you know you've done this before,
Speaker 1: You've been doing this for you for for decades. One
Speaker 1: thing we didn't talk about because throughout I've I've been
Speaker 1: just I was walking behind you through a lot this trip.
Speaker 1: One thing we didn't talk about was what happens if
Speaker 1: I see a turkey? Yeah, and you don't and you're
Speaker 1: in front of me. Yeah, so what happens next? It doesn't,
Speaker 1: it doesn't form that it's but it's a bit chaotic. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll give you the we'll take you back in time. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what just happened? We were walking along this ridge
Speaker 1: looking for turkeys. Were actually just headed back to the
Speaker 1: truck because it's getting a little stormy. And then I
Speaker 1: saw a couple of a couple of Tom's puttering around,
Speaker 1: I don't know, about a hundred yards away, and then
Speaker 1: I got too excited and point it at them and
Speaker 1: then yelled at back. So we decided to go back
Speaker 1: to the area. It's now, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: three hours before fly down, we're gonna go back to
Speaker 1: the area where we were before, and we know the
Speaker 1: turkeys are, they're tough. They're not gonna gobble, But we're
Speaker 1: gonna go and we're gonna see if we can't a
Speaker 1: light touch hike around and very slowly work the country.
Speaker 1: If we can't get them to gobble, at least try
Speaker 1: to get them going back to the roost, you know,
Speaker 1: and see what we can do. Because we got one
Speaker 1: more morning to hunt, right, that's the plan. We're going
Speaker 1: at it. We're not deterred. So we go back, go
Speaker 1: up the go up the ridge. As we crest the ridge,
Speaker 1: we look to the west and is a lightning storm
Speaker 1: that looked pretty scary. There's it's black. Yeah, it looked
Speaker 1: like it was coming our way, and the wind is
Speaker 1: kicking up, and so we get to the top of
Speaker 1: the ridge, like, man, we better just go to the
Speaker 1: truck and ride this one out. It's not looking great.
Speaker 1: We better at least work our way back to to
Speaker 1: a spot where we can get down the ridge to
Speaker 1: the truck pretty quickly. If we start, you know, we
Speaker 1: getting hammered by lightning or something here. So we start
Speaker 1: working our way back very quietly. I'm calling about every
Speaker 1: hundred fifty yards and Phil has kind of starts to
Speaker 1: flank me to my left as we are working this ridge,
Speaker 1: and then I look over and feels like I see
Speaker 1: two turkeys, Like Big Ben, I didn't not to get
Speaker 1: your attention without turkeys, and so I let me just say,
Speaker 1: I should have put together just by watching the way
Speaker 1: you've been behaving throughout this whole trip, Like when we
Speaker 1: saw that when we were ten yards away from that
Speaker 1: turkey the first time, or earlier in the day, how
Speaker 1: you we were so close and you were it was
Speaker 1: with the game. It was about moving as slowly as possible,
Speaker 1: like stop walking, get low but not too quickly, crouched down, slowly,
Speaker 1: no sudden movements. But when I saw those turkeys after
Speaker 1: we had been looking for so long all day, and
Speaker 1: I was I was trying to get your attention and
Speaker 1: bit and I like quickly shot my hand up and pointed,
Speaker 1: and that got their attention. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: what spooked them at initially, but I think they stopped.
Speaker 1: And then so that I got down, like because we
Speaker 1: were walking through some tallish grass, I got low enough
Speaker 1: where I couldn't see them anymore. But just because I
Speaker 1: couldn't see them doesn't mean that they couldn't see me.
Speaker 1: So then I lifted my hand again. It's over by
Speaker 1: that tree. And then you were like, shut the You
Speaker 1: didn't actually say that. I said no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: You're like, don't wait at them. Yeah, I actually smacked
Speaker 1: phils hand out of the air, and I think you
Speaker 1: can hear it in my voice. And that last audio
Speaker 1: clip that's that's when I was down the same pit
Speaker 1: that that Ben had been in a few times. Because
Speaker 1: I was walking around like I'm messing this up, and
Speaker 1: Fils walking around like I'm happy to be here. And
Speaker 1: then he got like once we got to a point
Speaker 1: where up, I might have messed something up, we're both
Speaker 1: kind of able to commiserate in the messing up, but
Speaker 1: we're still on birds. I mean, this bird's kind of
Speaker 1: just like the one bird that I saw kind of tried,
Speaker 1: you know, he like tried it all. If he didn't fly.
Speaker 1: I saw him kind of go down over the ridge
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, let's just it's windy, the storm's coming.
Speaker 1: We gotta go back to the truck. Let's kind of
Speaker 1: work our way. I'm just depressed, but I'm like, let's
Speaker 1: work our way and just see if he's gonna run
Speaker 1: down in there. He's going to roost somewhere. We're an
Speaker 1: hour and hour and a half before fly up. He's
Speaker 1: gonna go down that hill and find someplace to roost.
Speaker 1: These turkeys want to be in here. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away from where we saw the first
Speaker 1: turkey earlier in the days. Like, this is a place
Speaker 1: where these turkeys want to be. We have royally fucked
Speaker 1: this up, but we're gonna stay on it because we
Speaker 1: kind of we're here to roost turkeys. We still do that.
Speaker 1: Like we bumped them down the hill. They they're fully
Speaker 1: educated to our presence at this point. It's probably every
Speaker 1: hunter and every call. So we just gotta get We
Speaker 1: just gotta play the game that way. And then we
Speaker 1: started working down the ridge a little further and this happened.
Speaker 1: All right. We now spook that same turkey four different
Speaker 1: times and one day within about thousand yards of it
Speaker 1: each time. Philis when we're making the podcast, put yakety sacks,
Speaker 1: and it's that kind of this, because that's what it's
Speaker 1: kind of the time laps of us running into Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: you can tell he wanted to roost, and you're still
Speaker 1: you didn't want to. I mean, these turkeys are so
Speaker 1: educated that it's like I said, it's you hunt turkeys
Speaker 1: like this, and there's just you gotta be delicate now
Speaker 1: now that we've educated and don't forget, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: go very far. We'll be over there roost We might
Speaker 1: room in the morning on the roost um, but we
Speaker 1: haven't really got a whole lot of choice. Got dance
Speaker 1: with the ones that h burn the hand. I'd like,
Speaker 1: don't bite the hand that took it to the dance.
Speaker 1: That's a good analogy. You felt well done. So at
Speaker 1: this point you can here it's windy. It's just that
Speaker 1: storm is still rolling in. It's still rolling in. We
Speaker 1: spooked this bird. Now this bird actually flew down. So
Speaker 1: this was what five minutes after we spooked those three,
Speaker 1: we were like, oh ship, well let's keep going. And
Speaker 1: then there was one. It was just a single time
Speaker 1: with I mean that it was. That was a gorgeous bird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the same one, the same one we were
Speaker 1: describing early. It's the same turkey. Uh. We spooked him again.
Speaker 1: He flew this time down the hill he went and
Speaker 1: again I'm calling four fifty sixty yards from him, and
Speaker 1: then we crested the ridge and there he is, and
Speaker 1: I could have if I had a shotgun in my hand,
Speaker 1: I could have probably took a running shot at him,
Speaker 1: which I never would have done. But he was that close,
Speaker 1: like they just were. These birds were locked down and
Speaker 1: they was just to hunt it. A silent bird in
Speaker 1: this way and wind like this, you just gotta get
Speaker 1: so damn lucky to see him before they see you.
Speaker 1: And we just we just didn't. Um, we just didn't.
Speaker 1: But the storm moved through and we started to we
Speaker 1: we worked our way down the bridge and we sat
Speaker 1: on this ridge and it was a beautiful evening. The
Speaker 1: storm moved to the north of us. There was it
Speaker 1: was like a very unique orange light kind of like
Speaker 1: working its way through the trees as the sun was
Speaker 1: going down. The clouds have now moved past, the wind
Speaker 1: is a little calmer, and after a pretty tumultuous day,
Speaker 1: Phil I said, Phil, let's just sit down, man, and
Speaker 1: let's just listen, and let's just enjoy where we're at.
Speaker 1: Because we have endured uh an ass kicking, but over this,
Speaker 1: over the times we've kind of been punched in the
Speaker 1: gut by these turkeys and we've had this all this
Speaker 1: failure I've been able to watch Phil have an understanding
Speaker 1: of what's going on around him in a way that
Speaker 1: only I think somebody failing that hunting can have, but
Speaker 1: also somebody that's just immersed in the hunting experience. And
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty unique. So we got to sit
Speaker 1: on a ridge and talk about and think about where
Speaker 1: we were, how we got here, and why it's important
Speaker 1: to be in this place in this time. Well, Phil,
Speaker 1: now we're in the strategy at least we're sitting here
Speaker 1: talking talking turkey strategy. Yeah, I'm throwing out ideas like like,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm talking about. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: we're talking about earlier. We talked about this in this
Speaker 1: podcast for a long time. That, honey, is it's a
Speaker 1: game like Pursuit Man, you other than the heroes and villains, possibly,
Speaker 1: this is a strategy game. This is a a game
Speaker 1: of cause and effect that being out here in a
Speaker 1: wild place like this hunters downs acres, free to roam,
Speaker 1: land of sunsetting right over here right now, and sitting
Speaker 1: here talking about what a turkey is going to do
Speaker 1: in the morning and what we need to do is
Speaker 1: the essence of what sucks people in about hunting at least.
Speaker 1: I think if we tell ourselves it's the food and
Speaker 1: it's the culture, and we tell ourselves I think the
Speaker 1: story about what truly draws us into hunting. But I
Speaker 1: think what we're just doing, sitting on this hill thinking
Speaker 1: talking about turkeys, immersing ourselves in their behavior in order
Speaker 1: to find them, pursue them, and kill them is very
Speaker 1: human endeavor. It always has been, and that is the
Speaker 1: essence of what draws us in the rest of it
Speaker 1: is very essential gravy, but gravy none less to make
Speaker 1: any sense. Yeah, I'm with you. Listen, if we end
Speaker 1: up this episode of the podcast ends and we don't
Speaker 1: get a turkey, the truth of the matter is, the
Speaker 1: truth of the entire thing is, I don't know why
Speaker 1: we all hunt, right. I think we've invent reasons and
Speaker 1: manufacture reasoning to kind of justify social norms or two
Speaker 1: you know, further or concrete our connections with each other.
Speaker 1: There's lots of things. But when you become a hunter
Speaker 1: and you start to understand the pursuit of a wild animal,
Speaker 1: I think you understand something pretty raw. It's about what
Speaker 1: we are m hm and what we're capable of, and
Speaker 1: that is that is essential? You know what would this?
Speaker 1: This podcast started when I was sitting on a ridge
Speaker 1: not so different from this one in Mexico Steve Rinella,
Speaker 1: and we were asking questions like the ones will will
Speaker 1: be asking forever. But at some level what fills learning
Speaker 1: right now and what I know to be true is
Speaker 1: that there is a primordial drawl to this chase, to
Speaker 1: this pursuit, and there's human frailty. There's so many emotions
Speaker 1: baked into it. Ego, all these things are paramount and
Speaker 1: Hunt woods. It's hard to go, you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to ignore them. But the ups and downs of Hunter
Speaker 1: like nothing else that I've experienced outside of my children
Speaker 1: in those very human moments of being a parent and
Speaker 1: loving someone. This is like a very close second to
Speaker 1: that in terms of what it feels real in my life.
Speaker 1: It feels important, essential, And if you can share that
Speaker 1: with someone, even the little parts of it, even like
Speaker 1: little shadowy corners of it, can be can can find
Speaker 1: some light for someone else, and then one day they
Speaker 1: can put that whole package together in a holistic way
Speaker 1: mm hm for themselves. That it feels pretty good. I
Speaker 1: still like to hear of Godblough, Phil I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to wait until morning for that small, small,
Speaker 1: slim possibility. M hm