Speaker 1: All right, this is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording,
Speaker 1: uh Prince Wales Island. I'm here with one of my
Speaker 1: favorite people on the planet, Mr Ron Layton. What's your
Speaker 1: middle name? Ron? No middle name, no middle name whatsoever,
Speaker 1: Just Ron Layton. And also Joannice, the Latvian lover who
Speaker 1: tell us who just got himself his first sick of
Speaker 1: blacktail box. Purely recreational hunt, not like a thing I
Speaker 1: want to be in the hero. But but tell him
Speaker 1: you're hunting story, honest. You know. I was retelling my
Speaker 1: hunting story about an hour ago over here, and I
Speaker 1: found out that I killed Jones Buck. No you did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did. I just told you I liked the hunt.
Speaker 1: Down here in the lower Muskegs. We were no muskegs.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's not There are bucks all over the place.
Speaker 1: What about the other forky that he didn't do? You
Speaker 1: need to tell your hunting story. I snuck up through
Speaker 1: some muskegs three nights ago. This is record. Why are
Speaker 1: you hunting at night? Let me set the stage. Would
Speaker 1: you like to dusk? Pre dusk we're out working on
Speaker 1: a secret project and in the morning and at nighttime
Speaker 1: there's a little free time, which you're honest who you
Speaker 1: might know from his famous T shirt line, the Hunt
Speaker 1: to Eat T shirt line. You can go to hunt
Speaker 1: eat dot com by when he's on his T shirts
Speaker 1: and helped make him even richard than he's already become
Speaker 1: selling his T shirts. You should send Rohn a free
Speaker 1: T shirt. I will um Joe would like one the
Speaker 1: Alaska shirts on its way. So you're making an Alaska
Speaker 1: Hunt each shirt. Okay, So so do you have any
Speaker 1: boots to go along with that shirt? Nope, he's not
Speaker 1: in the bootmaking business yet, just T shirt man. So
Speaker 1: uh yann, He's been feeling some of his free time,
Speaker 1: like the time normal people would spend going home watching TV. Afterward,
Speaker 1: Yeani goes out and looks for blacktail box. Tell me
Speaker 1: your story, Johnnie. I was sneaking around with bad wind.
Speaker 1: I ended up on a little knob like you were gassy.
Speaker 1: No bad uh. There There were no steady thermals. It
Speaker 1: was just the wind direction kept going. How what do
Speaker 1: you call it? Willow wa willow? That's a bad wind. Well,
Speaker 1: you never know which way is gonna be blowing. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it's not consistent. It just it'll shift. It might
Speaker 1: be coming out of the east, one time out of
Speaker 1: the south another and then it's called the willow wa Willowa.
Speaker 1: I had willow, and it betrayed my location to what
Speaker 1: I thought was a buck. All I heard was boom
Speaker 1: as it bounded off. So I ran over to where
Speaker 1: his bed was. That I saw then, so he was
Speaker 1: in his bed. He ran off. I stood there and
Speaker 1: looked for ten minutes nothing. I started still hunting down
Speaker 1: through the woods. Waited for another thirty minutes, and I
Speaker 1: heard him again, and he drifted off. Never could catch
Speaker 1: up to him. But he just knew he was a buck.
Speaker 1: You could feel in your bones, a single animal, you know.
Speaker 1: He sounded heavy to swear he was bed at. He
Speaker 1: had himself a real nice perch for the nice outlook.
Speaker 1: Seemed like a buck bed. It seems like a place
Speaker 1: you just sleep if a deer. Steve and I came
Speaker 1: back next night, sneaking in real quiet, real quiet, was
Speaker 1: great wind from a different angle. We got to about
Speaker 1: I don't know, a hundred yards or so, maybe a
Speaker 1: little less of his bed, and we sat down. Steve
Speaker 1: blue on his gear called it Ron gave him it's
Speaker 1: called the summiner. Do you do not name that called
Speaker 1: the summiner. Really yeah, because it summons him. That's exactly
Speaker 1: righted it. That's why. Yeah, I'm gonna get to blacktail
Speaker 1: deer calls your blacktailed deer calls in a minute. But
Speaker 1: finished story because I blew the summiner. Yep, we waited.
Speaker 1: It felt like fifteen might have been ten. But I
Speaker 1: had it in my head that we should be moving.
Speaker 1: I was getting ready to say, let's go, let's go. Picture.
Speaker 1: This is dank, dark, temperate rainforest nastiness. Here's that old buck.
Speaker 1: It looks thick when you just walk around it, through
Speaker 1: it or whatever. Since the minute you start to hunt
Speaker 1: in there and try to find a small h what
Speaker 1: do you think that buck ways a hundred fifty pounds
Speaker 1: or so? I didn't see it all that average blacktail
Speaker 1: buck probably that. I think it look like a hundounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so not not a giant animal. But man, when you
Speaker 1: start looking for those suckers, then you go, man, this
Speaker 1: place is really thick. It really is a jungle. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: we laid down some sweet notes on the summer. We
Speaker 1: had one good shooting lane. Ten minutes later, I was
Speaker 1: looking up the top of the hill and it's a
Speaker 1: little brown patch. Move well, Steve quit moving, so I
Speaker 1: probably he said don't move, So I quickly moved in
Speaker 1: order to look where he was looking by glassed him there.
Speaker 1: He was looking down at us, looking for that What
Speaker 1: are they coming to look for? Ron? When they hear
Speaker 1: that call, they were curious. They're very they they become
Speaker 1: very curious. And normally you're not going to get a
Speaker 1: buck to come to a call this time a year.
Speaker 1: Usually usually they will come, you know, during the rut.
Speaker 1: But well, we had going for us. As we snuck
Speaker 1: in on his bed, I think all he had to
Speaker 1: do is basically stand up to be like, what the
Speaker 1: hell is that? Well, I think that's basically what he did.
Speaker 1: I don't think he traveled. Probably probably was like what's
Speaker 1: going on? Well, curious again? But when you, hey, Yanni,
Speaker 1: go grab a couple of Ron's deer calls. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't want to blow them. They'll blow damn thing. Um Ya,
Speaker 1: Yanni shot the buck. It was a good shot. It
Speaker 1: was Yanni's first sick of black tail. Now, Ron, let
Speaker 1: me set the stage here little bit, because I was
Speaker 1: playing Ron you'r. Ron was born in catch Can, Alaska
Speaker 1: many years ago Um spent his whole life doing a
Speaker 1: variety of things, but always hunting, fishing and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: Yanni just laid down a large collection of Ron's Uh,
Speaker 1: primarily handmade Sitka black Tail calls or black tail calls. First,
Speaker 1: I got a question for you, ron Uh. Before I
Speaker 1: was questioned, I was playing. There's just the of like
Speaker 1: you have the rainforest round here, just thick ass rainforest,
Speaker 1: live is old growth. Love has been caught at various times.
Speaker 1: It's just really hard to see. But here and there
Speaker 1: there's these features out in the rainforest called muskeg, and
Speaker 1: I think it's successional like they were wetlands, you know,
Speaker 1: marshy ground where Pete got built up and it crazes
Speaker 1: these openings. It's like it seems metal like, but it's
Speaker 1: very heavy moss and sedge in there, and it's like
Speaker 1: the only place you actually see what's going on. Ron.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the black tails like the muskeg
Speaker 1: or is it just you can see him because it's
Speaker 1: the only place you can see anything, Like, do you
Speaker 1: think that they're actually in it or you just notice
Speaker 1: them because it's the first time you can see beyond
Speaker 1: arms reach. Well, I take uncertain days, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: in those muskegs because of the sunn's out and they're
Speaker 1: they're just million around um normally. I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: a real bad day, if the sun is really pounding down,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find oh, most of the deer in the
Speaker 1: tall timber. And if you've ever been in the edge
Speaker 1: of a tall timber and have a breeze go through there,
Speaker 1: you'll understand why then, because it's probably a good maybe
Speaker 1: twenty degrees cooler, and especially with the breeze coming down
Speaker 1: through the the tall timber and the trees there, it's
Speaker 1: real comfortable. I know it was comfortable for me when
Speaker 1: I'm standing there in tall timber rather than out in
Speaker 1: the sun. And a lot of people don't realize it here,
Speaker 1: but the last couple of summers was almost record breaking
Speaker 1: as far as yes it is, and I've had that
Speaker 1: throughout my life where you do have warmer summers than others,
Speaker 1: So I know what standing around and a muskeag could
Speaker 1: do to me, you know, And especially if there's no
Speaker 1: breeze at all, you're gonna overeat heat, especially if you're
Speaker 1: in your camel gear whatever. So they like to feed
Speaker 1: in that muskang is there grass or anything that grows
Speaker 1: in there. And they you know, they like to forage anything.
Speaker 1: And in that muskeag there are a lot of them.
Speaker 1: You might might see that slow. Okay, Well, they do
Speaker 1: eat the slough berry, and if you look close when
Speaker 1: you're through there, you'll see a lot of the slough berries. So,
Speaker 1: and they'll forage on almost anything in there. Um normally
Speaker 1: they eat they eat on a plant called dear heart.
Speaker 1: And this dear heart the reason why why it's called
Speaker 1: dear heart. It the plant, the leaf itself is in
Speaker 1: the shape of a dear heart. But they find this
Speaker 1: very good. And there's been talk about how clear cuts
Speaker 1: will expose a lot of dear heart to the sun,
Speaker 1: which actually is bad for the dear heart. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of the nutrition out of it. So a
Speaker 1: deer eating that is not going to have near the
Speaker 1: nutrition that it would have if they were eating that
Speaker 1: dear heart under the canopy, you know, in the tall
Speaker 1: timber and in the wintertime, especially with deep snow and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, they are dependent on this dear heart
Speaker 1: in the tall timber, and that's how help gets them
Speaker 1: through a deep cold winter. I've seen deer when there's
Speaker 1: a lot of snow forced to the beach, and years
Speaker 1: ago when you had a lot of snow forced to
Speaker 1: the beach, then there was sometimes that they had to
Speaker 1: actually bring bundles in of hay and start dropping around
Speaker 1: on the beach edges just to help some of the
Speaker 1: deer survived the I've heard that when you get bads though,
Speaker 1: they'll come down to feed on like sea lattuce and
Speaker 1: kelp that washes up on the beach and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever they can get, whatever they could eat on. I
Speaker 1: see him on the beach all the time eating and
Speaker 1: they there. I think they are eating the goose dung
Speaker 1: and the beach of sparages and and maybe even some
Speaker 1: of the pop weed or the bulk kelp. I know
Speaker 1: up at atln Island when they brought in transplant to elk,
Speaker 1: they have found that the elk really like the bull kelp.
Speaker 1: So they would come down and they'll be all over
Speaker 1: the beaches eating the bull cell. And they are thinking
Speaker 1: that maybe that is why this here group of elk
Speaker 1: here have some record sized antlers and getting minerals and
Speaker 1: stuff from the minerals, Yes, and and they do. They
Speaker 1: won't allow those antlers to be entered in or counted
Speaker 1: within any of their boone and Crocott because introduced or
Speaker 1: something experimental. They color experimental herd. So you know those
Speaker 1: elk like Land is the one they swim off when
Speaker 1: they come to Prince of Wales, right correct, Yes, well
Speaker 1: they swim They were transplanted only on Atland Island in
Speaker 1: the area there, but since then they migrated over into
Speaker 1: uh what's another island? I want to say, Samobia, But
Speaker 1: and now you can't hunt these the on both of
Speaker 1: those islands, at Land and Samobia. It's only a drawing
Speaker 1: for for elk. Yeah, but if they make it to
Speaker 1: this island, you can kill him on a deer tag
Speaker 1: or non resident can kill it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: a resident is, but a nonresident if you see an
Speaker 1: elk on this island, the deer tag is all you
Speaker 1: need to hunt that elk? Is that true with you?
Speaker 1: Should they keep making they keep liberalizing it? How much?
Speaker 1: How much was your deer tag? Because when I here
Speaker 1: for non residents A hundred fifty bucks? Okay, because when
Speaker 1: I talked to him here, I was just checking in
Speaker 1: it into that just for you. Um, because and they
Speaker 1: talked to about how it would be I think two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars for you to get a permit
Speaker 1: to get an elk on this island. A man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they keep changing it, man like, they keep making it
Speaker 1: more and more easy. Well, it's probably because it's they're
Speaker 1: they're becoming thicker, and they don't want to until they
Speaker 1: fully understand what type of impact they would have on
Speaker 1: the on the uh local deer population and I sit
Speaker 1: good deer black tail. So until then, I think they
Speaker 1: want to be cautious about allowing them to spread. And
Speaker 1: they are spreading on the north end of the island.
Speaker 1: Here there's a pretty good uh I heard that was
Speaker 1: established in there getting after those things. Man. They yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was two. There was a Roosevelt elk and
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain. Rocky Mountain introduced And I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: don't know the difference between either one of them. You know,
Speaker 1: if I if I was elkus and elk, you you
Speaker 1: might be able to tell the difference. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some on the extremes on a big
Speaker 1: on up one. I can look at him and tell
Speaker 1: just on just sort of like the way they're shaped,
Speaker 1: you know, what I'm saying, they're like stubb here Um.
Speaker 1: Just for background, I always tell the story that when
Speaker 1: the way I met Ron, like I would, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have met you if it weren't for you giving my
Speaker 1: brother Danny a jar of smoked octopus. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that was, because he came to your house in
Speaker 1: two thousand two. Right, he came to your house and
Speaker 1: you drove him around while they were doing some work.
Speaker 1: Right when I when when I sent him home with
Speaker 1: a jar of smoked octopus. He brought that jar of
Speaker 1: smoked octopus to my house to share it. I ate
Speaker 1: the smoked octopus. This is the best thing I ever had,
Speaker 1: And I said, I want to meet the dude that
Speaker 1: made that smoked octopus. So that's how you got up
Speaker 1: here to the following year, then when we came up
Speaker 1: to fish, right, and I thought of you, and before
Speaker 1: I didn't know your name, but I called you the
Speaker 1: smoked octopus guy, smoked octopus guy. Ron does a lot
Speaker 1: of shrimp trapping. Explain shrimp trapping, and explain how you
Speaker 1: get octopus in there? Now, now all the trap is
Speaker 1: big enough. Yeah, And actually I had some octopus in
Speaker 1: there that we're pretty good size. And of course, the
Speaker 1: the entry holes on a shrimp trap or for the
Speaker 1: most part about two inches across maybe round. And the
Speaker 1: size octopus that I got that trappter, I just I
Speaker 1: have to think, how how do they get in there?
Speaker 1: But because the thing's thirty pounds to get in there? Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And their head is as big as yours. I mean
Speaker 1: it's the biggest human head at that point. He's just like,
Speaker 1: I don't get it either. How they get in there?
Speaker 1: And and they get in there because they want to
Speaker 1: eat the shrimp right right, The basically their tentacles is
Speaker 1: actually about the size of what would slide through there.
Speaker 1: So they have the the eight tentacles bluss their body.
Speaker 1: So they have to they have to probably do it
Speaker 1: slow and and squeeze in there. But I guess they
Speaker 1: do it. I mean they do it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shrimp trap like picture in your mind, like like picture,
Speaker 1: oh man, like like a bushel basket. It's quite a
Speaker 1: bigger a bushel basket, and but the same basic shape
Speaker 1: and like a compressed cylinder, you know. And you put
Speaker 1: bait and the usually use salmon parts heads whatever fish heads,
Speaker 1: clean fish, and you put a halbet head or salmon
Speaker 1: head in there. Yeah, I don't know. In my shrimp pots,
Speaker 1: I don't use allibant carcasses. It doesn't seem to work
Speaker 1: as well as it does with the salmon salmon heads
Speaker 1: or carcasses, So that I want to when I put
Speaker 1: my pot I want to be as efficient as I
Speaker 1: can because obviously the price of fuel there's an issue.
Speaker 1: So when I set my potts, I want to be
Speaker 1: very efficient. And uh, I learned um over time. You
Speaker 1: know when they call hanging bait, well, you don't ever
Speaker 1: want to hang bait in your pot? Hang it from
Speaker 1: the top down. Yeah. What do you say about is uh,
Speaker 1: let me, let me finish this, let me I want
Speaker 1: to get this explained to people. A picture we're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's like a cylindrical trap and it has funnel shaped
Speaker 1: entries on it, so you know, the shrimp can kind
Speaker 1: of he wants to get in there, and he finds
Speaker 1: his way through the little funnel entries and it's harder
Speaker 1: for him to get out. It doesn't prevent him from
Speaker 1: getting out because you see him squirting out of there
Speaker 1: all the time, but only holds them in there. And
Speaker 1: these shrimp are big like the ones you target are
Speaker 1: called spot shrimp, big as shrimp, deep cold water, and
Speaker 1: they we're going feed off. Salmon Heads are just carcasses,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, you set in between thirty and
Speaker 1: fifty fathoms of fathoms six ft so deep water. Actually,
Speaker 1: different areas cause you to fish at different depths. So
Speaker 1: wherever wherever I find. So if I move into area
Speaker 1: with my pots, and I have ten pocks, I want
Speaker 1: to set them in vary in various different depths. So
Speaker 1: I want to spread out and try to find where
Speaker 1: I get the best pots, where the the depths that
Speaker 1: they're fishing best at. In certain areas, you might find
Speaker 1: around forty fouthoms, is if and that's the best. Other
Speaker 1: areas it could be sixty and where I'm at now
Speaker 1: that's the case about sixty sixty two is what I
Speaker 1: target now sixty water, right, yeah, And it's what we're
Speaker 1: saying about hanging bait. You don't like the name hanging bait.
Speaker 1: Hang bab means just taking a carcass, like people use
Speaker 1: different baits for shrimp. Like you can take this stuff
Speaker 1: like it looks like dog food's actually made like a
Speaker 1: commercial bait looks like dog food. You fill it full
Speaker 1: of a little can, but that's all ship you gotta buy.
Speaker 1: You know. Hanging bait, that just means like a carcass, right,
Speaker 1: you put it on a skewer like on a club.
Speaker 1: Looks like a souped up safety pin. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: souped up safety pins. So you you pierce your fish
Speaker 1: parts and usually go through the the both eyes and
Speaker 1: the head and then bringing the tail. So what I
Speaker 1: The reason why I do that is I don't want
Speaker 1: anything floating the top. And that's what I'm saying. When
Speaker 1: and they say hanging bait, it's a misnomer, it's not. Well,
Speaker 1: actually it is floating baits. So I put my bait
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the trap so that it won't
Speaker 1: float up to the top. So if you have it
Speaker 1: on the top hanging down, then your base gonna float
Speaker 1: up to the top. And I saw the shrimp half
Speaker 1: to do. For the most part, trap sit on top
Speaker 1: of the trap outside and eat so you're not catching
Speaker 1: the amount of shrimp you could catch if you had
Speaker 1: it on the bottom. And that's what I found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll point out I have shrimp pots and I don't
Speaker 1: get a I mean, I don't get a fraction of
Speaker 1: the shrimp of roskins and his pots that in the
Speaker 1: same water kind of pisces me off. But that's one thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a big cold you' here, he got a
Speaker 1: cold out deer hunt. He's not used to being cold
Speaker 1: and wet when you used to. Uh, did you ever
Speaker 1: commercially shrimp? No? Well I had a little bit, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh it was just for a couple of seasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was nothing big. You know, it qualified me
Speaker 1: for a pot fish free license. But for me, I'm
Speaker 1: not into that. I'm not into going out running pot fish. Uh,
Speaker 1: pot fishing. So what do you mean, it's just like
Speaker 1: you just didn't enjoy it, well, that kind of fishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really, I really didn't. In the time of year
Speaker 1: that they set the season for is a bummer because
Speaker 1: that season there, it just happens to be executed at
Speaker 1: the time when the shrimper fully egg and everybody are
Speaker 1: you know that the shrimp or unise unisex, so they
Speaker 1: both if there's such a thing as both male and
Speaker 1: female orphro did it right, so they are all egg bears. Okay,
Speaker 1: So visualize the time, the time of year, I start
Speaker 1: shrimping in in June or July, you as personal youth
Speaker 1: like subsistence use as my gathering. Yeah, I don't like
Speaker 1: the word subsistence, but so I just call it the
Speaker 1: use of the resource or customery and traditional use. So
Speaker 1: this uh this uh shrimping. When I shrimp, maybe one
Speaker 1: if that are egged. But if you come into October,
Speaker 1: starting in in late September, they all become started to
Speaker 1: get become an egged, and it's going to turn it
Speaker 1: around to where upwards of are egged. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: bothers me that this yere is allowed to go on.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was this way in British Columbia and
Speaker 1: it became problemmatic h to the quantities of shrimp. I
Speaker 1: mean they started dropping and they figured out why. So
Speaker 1: what they did is modified their seasons too. I think
Speaker 1: they start in April, so they're all spawned out. They're
Speaker 1: already hatched, so you're not they can shrimp outloaded. You're
Speaker 1: waiting till it's matched. And by doing that, they're having
Speaker 1: a pretty good uh season down there. For for their
Speaker 1: commercial guys. Another they may have been doing down there
Speaker 1: is they would they wouldn't go back of fishing an
Speaker 1: area until after three years gone by. So they'll fish
Speaker 1: this one area let's say two thousand and one, they
Speaker 1: won't go back to that same area until about two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. So what they do is send their
Speaker 1: fleets out to a different area. But everything rebound. Everything rebound,
Speaker 1: no chance of it be becoming damaged. In everybody, all
Speaker 1: of your consumer groups, whether it be commercial or personal use,
Speaker 1: or sport or anything, have a better catch rate, a
Speaker 1: better success at their ability to get shrimp. So here
Speaker 1: I've been I've been trying to convince uh A biologists
Speaker 1: and catcher can two dropped the season down a little bit,
Speaker 1: let it rebound. I've had commercial uh shrimp fishermen say
Speaker 1: they should do this, they've noticed to catch declining. Well,
Speaker 1: sure they did, and and a lot of them just
Speaker 1: that they can't bring it upon themselves. They even go
Speaker 1: out there and fish it. But does that mean it's
Speaker 1: going to rebound. Maybe not. There's other people that come
Speaker 1: in here and fish. Maybe they don't know there is here,
Speaker 1: But every time a person moves in, he doesn't come
Speaker 1: in with one pot, he comes into a hundred and
Speaker 1: some of them have a d permit, our license so
Speaker 1: even by that, even by coming in and experimenting and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, you're still catching fish and removing them
Speaker 1: out that are fully eggs. So how do you describe
Speaker 1: the area where shrimp? How do you describe area where
Speaker 1: you like to set for shrimp? Well, like, what are
Speaker 1: they looking for? Because it just seems almost kind of arbitrary.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not. I find the areas that I
Speaker 1: like the UH set by pots. M hmm. You could
Speaker 1: see on your sounder the colors and whether colors are
Speaker 1: darker or more color there that anser bottom with a
Speaker 1: denser bottom. That seems to me that you have better
Speaker 1: success with that situation. And if there's no color in
Speaker 1: there are very little and you can see a little.
Speaker 1: But I find that to be a real muddy bottom.
Speaker 1: And I've brought some pots up after setting there, you know,
Speaker 1: and it just covered with that claygy type mud and
Speaker 1: I had rocks up on top of it everything, And
Speaker 1: I don't know what was going on. Rocks on top
Speaker 1: of the trap rocks, I mean mud type rocks, and
Speaker 1: I think probably when I was pulling it, maybe it
Speaker 1: shoveled some up. But that tells me then UH bottom
Speaker 1: is pretty deep in that mud. Yeah, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: the place where they spun. I don't know. But you
Speaker 1: don't have a real success rate of catch there because
Speaker 1: of that. And I know that when I bring my
Speaker 1: pot up that their mud really has a bad spill
Speaker 1: with phosphors. Bad spill. So explain what you do, like
Speaker 1: when you catch the octopus? How do you how you
Speaker 1: prepare the octopus? And I know that you turned that
Speaker 1: when you catch me, you turn his head inside out,
Speaker 1: turned the mantle inside out. Well that's part of part
Speaker 1: of how you kill him. That I mean, I like
Speaker 1: to remove the mantle as soon as possible. And and
Speaker 1: you don't cut that meat up. I do, and I
Speaker 1: have and I will, yes, But for the UH smoke
Speaker 1: docks octopus in the jar just tend to use the tentacles,
Speaker 1: which makes better texture everything everything down. So when I
Speaker 1: when I UH, when I get that uh I put
Speaker 1: in a bucket, you can still see even with the
Speaker 1: head off, that tentacles are moving around. They're still trying
Speaker 1: to crawl out of the bucket. So so after I
Speaker 1: get back, let's say, after I get back, then what
Speaker 1: I do is I cut away each tentacle and then
Speaker 1: with a suction cups still on and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Put on my sink and then I take the hide off.
Speaker 1: After I get the hide off, how you do that?
Speaker 1: Boil it off or skin it off? I skin it off.
Speaker 1: And I found that if you take and he has
Speaker 1: a stainless steel sink there, and if it's not been
Speaker 1: frozen or cool too much, you could put the suction
Speaker 1: cups on there is they stick to the side, so
Speaker 1: then you can take your other hand and pull that
Speaker 1: hide and it stretches out quite a way. So you
Speaker 1: do that in at same time you sit down there
Speaker 1: and cut your with your knife all the way down.
Speaker 1: It removes pretty easy. It doesn't remove everything but yet
Speaker 1: because you have a little bit around tentacles. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to remove that because are the suction cups.
Speaker 1: I don't want to rem me with that because I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose any of the suction cups. That's
Speaker 1: all part of that good part. Good part. You know,
Speaker 1: skin each arm out, skin each other arms right be
Speaker 1: four ft long, three ft long, right might be, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter on the size or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just I want to get the skin off of it,
Speaker 1: hied off as much as I can. Then I put
Speaker 1: it into uh boil and water, and I bring it
Speaker 1: back to a roll boil, and I'm talking vigorous roll boil,
Speaker 1: and allow that to boil away and keep it in
Speaker 1: there for about thirty minutes. And any other fish you
Speaker 1: do this too, it's gonna tough in it or or
Speaker 1: fault have it fall apart eventually one or the other.
Speaker 1: But tasty well on on the octopus there actually it
Speaker 1: tenderizes it. So after that then I take it out
Speaker 1: and then it's the time that I cut him up
Speaker 1: into the size pieces I want. And then then we
Speaker 1: go to a brine, and I use a dry brine.
Speaker 1: It's four parts brown sugar to one part salt. I
Speaker 1: don't want to use a lot of salt in there
Speaker 1: because the octopus meat really draws a salt out faster
Speaker 1: than any the sugar. So I go a four to
Speaker 1: one brine. And then once that's brian enough, which doesn't
Speaker 1: take very long, and the pieces not the whole arm,
Speaker 1: but you gotta cut up. I gotta cut up there
Speaker 1: already hot dog for a little kid, right, and and
Speaker 1: that's the pieces that are going to go into the jar.
Speaker 1: So it's already to go into the jar after smoking.
Speaker 1: But I mean, so once you're doing that, then then
Speaker 1: we take them out, And I say, we a wife.
Speaker 1: My wife is either doing it or assisted me in
Speaker 1: doing it, and uh, she is getting pretty good at it,
Speaker 1: probably better than me. You know what, ladies are good cooks. Well,
Speaker 1: it's true, not yours. And well you got a modern
Speaker 1: I live in a modern family, man, you do, Yannie
Speaker 1: lives in the modern family. I know. I think your
Speaker 1: brother does to that he does in a modern family,
Speaker 1: cooks more in your family. Honest, you do the most
Speaker 1: to my wife, and I yeah, I do. Did you
Speaker 1: know that that's how she is now around? How would
Speaker 1: I know that? I don't know, just talking to guys like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've I've noticed. I've noticed a little bit with
Speaker 1: your brother when I whenever I travel North, I go
Speaker 1: out for does their place for dinner, And yeah, he's
Speaker 1: doing something, he's doing the cooking. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: that was all the time. Constantly more and more dudes,
Speaker 1: like more and more dudes nowadays, especially guys I know
Speaker 1: the hunt, Um, they always cook. So do you think
Speaker 1: do you think that it's the woman that is becoming
Speaker 1: more not lazy. I wanted lazy. No, no, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say lazy, I would say smarter. I know
Speaker 1: what it is. Man, Well, I don't know. I I
Speaker 1: could cook, and I have from time to time, and
Speaker 1: it's probably rare that I do, but sometimes I do. Um,
Speaker 1: but I interrupted you to talk about the problem with
Speaker 1: another problem. Actually I'm joking. I prefer it that way.
Speaker 1: I like to cook. Uh. So you got the octopus smoked, Well,
Speaker 1: I got talked pus section and Brian. So I take
Speaker 1: it out of Brian and I wash it off, so
Speaker 1: I get all of the Brian that's attached to it
Speaker 1: off and then from there then I go out, I
Speaker 1: put it on my smoking racks and I let it
Speaker 1: tack up, become tacky. That's to me, that's the most
Speaker 1: important part of smoking than any other of your brianing
Speaker 1: or what type of what type of would you're going
Speaker 1: to use the smoke? It's a muss. You have what's
Speaker 1: the name of that that the pelical pelical form pelical.
Speaker 1: So once that's for him, then you can fire up
Speaker 1: your smoker and get it going. And we don't because
Speaker 1: it's going to be jarred. You don't want to overspoke
Speaker 1: it because the jarring process enhances the intensity of the smoke.
Speaker 1: So just by doing a real light smoke, Uh, you're
Speaker 1: not trying to cook it there because you already boiled it.
Speaker 1: It's already safe to eat, right, that's right, it's it's
Speaker 1: safe to eat. And but you don't want to overspoke it.
Speaker 1: It's it's a must because even your salmon, you have
Speaker 1: to be real careful because it might look good, it
Speaker 1: might be good to eat then, but when you go
Speaker 1: to put it in the jars in through a pressure cooking,
Speaker 1: it tends to really enhance that smoke flavor. And it
Speaker 1: might even coming out there looking a little bit different,
Speaker 1: a little bit more dark than you would like to see,
Speaker 1: and it might be coming out a little bit more
Speaker 1: dry than you would like to have. You think, in
Speaker 1: a jar and stuff like that wouldn't be dry. But
Speaker 1: I've had some come out, uh in a less desirable condition.
Speaker 1: And well that's one of the weird that knows when
Speaker 1: you're smoking stuff, like when you smoke, when you smoking
Speaker 1: jar salmon, we're seeing jar the time about putting in
Speaker 1: you like mason jars or curve it, you know what
Speaker 1: it It really doesn't matter anymore. Now. I used to
Speaker 1: like U or Bell Ball. Oh h yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I used to like I like the ball because they
Speaker 1: had a different membrane on their ceiling jar to the
Speaker 1: tops um then they the cur did and the cur
Speaker 1: had more like a paper uh deal gasket like to
Speaker 1: seal the product. And I just didn't It didn't feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with me. So but now they're all now they're
Speaker 1: more of the same. I think they're all they're running
Speaker 1: all that same type rubberized membrane in there, so it's
Speaker 1: more safe. I think that way. Well, they say, is
Speaker 1: what North when you do when you smoked octopus, and
Speaker 1: when you smoke some of your salmon and jar it,
Speaker 1: you have like a like there's air in the jar,
Speaker 1: not air, but there's a vacuum. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: full of liquid. So you could take your smoke doctopus
Speaker 1: and rattle that ship around like a like a rattle
Speaker 1: inside there. Yes, and you don't need any liquid in there.
Speaker 1: And if that's one thing good about the jar. And
Speaker 1: I started using jars, and it was by accident. I
Speaker 1: used to use cans, steel cans, steel cans, and then
Speaker 1: had to go through and use the tour can seiler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my brother Danny has on those few. I ran out,
Speaker 1: I ran low on cans one time and I still
Speaker 1: had some fish, so I had some jars and lids
Speaker 1: and I put them in there and I pressure cooked
Speaker 1: him in the same batch, mixed them, intermixed them, put
Speaker 1: them in there, run them through it. But I noticed
Speaker 1: something that I probably would never have noticed because of
Speaker 1: that because now it's the same heat, the same length
Speaker 1: of time, everything, but the product came out of the
Speaker 1: jar a lot better than out of the camp. And
Speaker 1: when I seen that, I opened up can in a jar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I put him out and it's it was obviously different,
Speaker 1: a different texture, different flavor, everything, and the jars were
Speaker 1: a lot better. So I used so I started, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went and I switched to it now. Also, the
Speaker 1: jar is what they call South Anny, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't realize it. On that can sealer, you
Speaker 1: have the numbers. So what you're supposed to do as
Speaker 1: you go and you set that uh numbering sequence there,
Speaker 1: run your can and seal it to the first portion
Speaker 1: to the number two, take it out so aside, do
Speaker 1: the next one. Now you have to back it up
Speaker 1: to one again and do that and keep on doing
Speaker 1: this until you get enough. Then you run it through
Speaker 1: your pressure cooker for about and reach your ten pound
Speaker 1: pressure uh and bring it up for about oh maybe
Speaker 1: ten minutes. Then shut your pressure cooker down, take those
Speaker 1: cans out. Now you have to handle them when they're hot.
Speaker 1: Then you start from the number two infinny ceiling them.
Speaker 1: That's how that works. That's how it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1: Nobody uses that, nobody understands why. But that's part of
Speaker 1: the venting process. In other words, if you run your
Speaker 1: seiler through number one and then run on to number two,
Speaker 1: you're not allowing that that canned event properly. So that's
Speaker 1: why they do it that way. That's why it's recommended
Speaker 1: that way. So on a jar it's automatic itself any
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of reason why it's a better product.
Speaker 1: And I took one down to one of the local
Speaker 1: fish processing processing plants and catch again one of my
Speaker 1: jars down glass jar that was full salmon, sam you know,
Speaker 1: sock in it. And I asked, a god, did you
Speaker 1: catch sky here? Are there any runs around here? So
Speaker 1: runs on the island there are, yes, there are several
Speaker 1: in various states of whether they're out fished or over
Speaker 1: fished and stuff. And most of your streams, mostly all
Speaker 1: the stream sky streams are taken a hit. They have
Speaker 1: taken a hit. Yeah, it's they they really need. They're
Speaker 1: in bad need of some type of enhancement program or
Speaker 1: back off from the commercial fisheries. I think are our
Speaker 1: fisheries in Alaska. And I'm getting off the subject again.
Speaker 1: It's tough to stay on it, but I'll bring you back. Well.
Speaker 1: Our fishery in Alaska, the border fish. The court ruled
Speaker 1: year about nineteen I think it was eighty something a
Speaker 1: D four maybe sometime in that area. That the Board
Speaker 1: of Fish has also been authority since that ruling came down.
Speaker 1: The Board of Fish does not have to listen to biologists.
Speaker 1: So if the biologists comes out and say, don't open this,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hurt and damage that resource, they don't have
Speaker 1: to listen to them. And I have to ask because
Speaker 1: a bunch of all their interests all have their ear
Speaker 1: well they might be like serving other interests. Yeah whatever, No, no,
Speaker 1: that's true, and uh, and I think that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Another important thing about this is that they have one
Speaker 1: Board a Fish in Alaska and it will meet down
Speaker 1: in Southeast Alaska once every three years. So you have
Speaker 1: three regions, so you have the Western, Central, and Southeast.
Speaker 1: So at any given time, and this is this is
Speaker 1: the problem. At any given time, anybody that the majority
Speaker 1: of the people voting on open opening or a closure
Speaker 1: of a fish season, they're not stakeholders, so it's easy
Speaker 1: for them to say, well, it's not gonna affect me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead and open it. I'll vote the way you
Speaker 1: want me to. And that I think is the worst
Speaker 1: thing we have going for us. So I've made suggestions
Speaker 1: on all levels of government to do away with this
Speaker 1: here statewide board of Fish and go regional. Have a
Speaker 1: Board of Fish just for the Southeast region. That way,
Speaker 1: you have people that have a stake in it, and
Speaker 1: everybody local expertise, local expertise, local knowledge, and they have
Speaker 1: a stake in it. And not only that, if they
Speaker 1: make the bad decision, they can't blame it on somebody
Speaker 1: up north, you know, and maybe they'll make a better
Speaker 1: decision that way. But when you have two thirds of
Speaker 1: that board voting on it that aren't even from the area,
Speaker 1: it's easy for them to say yeah, but they voted
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah. See I had nothing to say about it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't me in other words, So yeah, and I'd
Speaker 1: like to get that fixed. So we're going to go
Speaker 1: back to wet again. I want, so I bring my
Speaker 1: your canna sok salmon. I bought my cannasake salmon to
Speaker 1: the local. You caught and smoked yourself, caught and can yourself,
Speaker 1: that's crewe. Yeah, And it wasn't in a jar. And
Speaker 1: I was curious. And there's a way. They have a
Speaker 1: method in there to check at any given time the
Speaker 1: pressure in a camp or the suction in the camp.
Speaker 1: I think they call it the mercury pressure. So I
Speaker 1: asked the fella there if he could test us. He
Speaker 1: sall yeah, yeah, and he says, did you do this
Speaker 1: at home? Yes? Well, and then he went through a
Speaker 1: big speech. He says, well, I'll tell you what do
Speaker 1: you guys, we have special equipment here, and our equipment
Speaker 1: is that just before that can is sealed, we have
Speaker 1: a vacuum that vacuums out all the air. So we'll
Speaker 1: get nine pounds of mercury pressure in a camp and
Speaker 1: that's all you're gonna get is about three pounds maybe
Speaker 1: at the most three and a half. I says, okay,
Speaker 1: could you check mine though? Yeah, So you went in
Speaker 1: and checked it, put the pin in, you know, into
Speaker 1: the lid, and it went right away to twenty nine
Speaker 1: mercury and which is three times? What is this? What
Speaker 1: theirs is? And he was puzzled. You did this at home?
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, amazing, we want to get nine
Speaker 1: pounds and you got twenty What is what? Why is
Speaker 1: it more pounds? You just got it because I, like
Speaker 1: I said, and I'll reiterate, the jarring method is self vending.
Speaker 1: So when it's self vending, it gets that to a
Speaker 1: precise vending thing. It's not a guess. It's not a
Speaker 1: vacuumine out. It's actually in there, in it it. As
Speaker 1: it heats, it really eases all the air in there,
Speaker 1: and then when it collapses and seals, it's perfect. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as well as you're going to get vented. Did
Speaker 1: you ever jar Do you ever? Uh? Jar halbot? Canon
Speaker 1: jar Helbot? I've canned and jarred both helibate, Yes, now
Speaker 1: you okay, you've always fish halibut m hmm. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: did you call your first Albert when I caught my
Speaker 1: first halibut, I think I was about eight eight and
Speaker 1: a half something like that maybe, um, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: was eight. Um. So I was down at New England
Speaker 1: fish docks. I was down there to cut halibate cheeks.
Speaker 1: And let me explain that what that means, why you
Speaker 1: were doing that and what that means. Well, I went
Speaker 1: down to cut helibate cheeks so I could just sell
Speaker 1: them to the rest round. So we used to go
Speaker 1: down there and cut about twenty pounds of alibut cheeks
Speaker 1: to day and then go around the restaurants and sell
Speaker 1: it to them for fifty cents a pound. And they
Speaker 1: are a tickle pink with it because they get number one.
Speaker 1: They get it delivered, it's very fresh, and the price
Speaker 1: was right in the cannary. They weren't using the cheeks
Speaker 1: at that time. No, they were not, So you can
Speaker 1: just go and dude didn't care. You just dig through
Speaker 1: their pile fish carcasses and caught the cheeks out right.
Speaker 1: And I don't I think to this day they're not
Speaker 1: using them. I think to this day they're not not.
Speaker 1: I can't be certain of that, but I know back
Speaker 1: when I was longlining that they wouldn't pay you for
Speaker 1: the head. So when they wait, wager hallibit, they removed
Speaker 1: the head. So they're actually not buying the head from you.
Speaker 1: So the head belongs to you. They leave the collar
Speaker 1: around the fish, but caught it from the gilt cover
Speaker 1: forward right right, and and so that head really, uh,
Speaker 1: it belongs to you. And after I'm done, I might
Speaker 1: have a couple of toads are full of heads. So
Speaker 1: I just alert somebody and that I talked to the
Speaker 1: VFW to go down there and have them cut the
Speaker 1: alibut cheeks and stuff like that, and maybe they could.
Speaker 1: When you were long lining, you do that right now,
Speaker 1: This is when I was long lining. But when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, you'd go down and cut the cheeks out.
Speaker 1: How many pounds did you cut out? Twenty pounds a day? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's how long did that take? Well, it didn't take long.
Speaker 1: I mean we didn't have the best knives either, but
Speaker 1: you know, so I I'd bring a pairing knife from
Speaker 1: home and get down there and get it done, and
Speaker 1: then you make your rounds to the restaurants to catch
Speaker 1: can Then we started down and make a rounds and
Speaker 1: most of the time we sold them out, what would
Speaker 1: you get for fifty cents a pound? So I make
Speaker 1: ten dollars a day. What did you do with the money. Well,
Speaker 1: that's another thing there. I bring it to where my
Speaker 1: mother charge their groceries, and I just walked in there
Speaker 1: and give him ten bucks. Stay here. But this is
Speaker 1: on my mom's accun. I used to bring it. I
Speaker 1: used to bring it home. I used to bring it
Speaker 1: home to my mother. And that was back when bingo started.
Speaker 1: You know bingo? Yeah, you know Bengo. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: funny thing about that is that Bingo was first introduced
Speaker 1: in the catch can by the churches two so to
Speaker 1: help them raise funds, and so it started out one
Speaker 1: day a week, and then another church will bring it on,
Speaker 1: so there's two days a week. Then another church it's
Speaker 1: three days a week, and then somebody else would want
Speaker 1: to bring it on, and they'd have Bengo and catch
Speaker 1: Can six days a week. And when they start that Bengo,
Speaker 1: it's at seven clock it starts. But my mother and
Speaker 1: everybody else would say, no, no, I want to get
Speaker 1: the best seat, and I want to go down and
Speaker 1: get the best cards, because they picked her own cards
Speaker 1: and they like combination numbers on our cards, so they
Speaker 1: get down here a good hour ahead of time, so
Speaker 1: they're leaving right when dinner should be. So the church
Speaker 1: has helped remove the family from a home y, you know.
Speaker 1: And and that upset me a little bit there, because
Speaker 1: one time a week is not bad, but turned into five,
Speaker 1: six times a week, it's bad. And then my mother
Speaker 1: was really stretching it to pay her charge building at
Speaker 1: the deal, and I heard her, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: how I'm going to do this. But everything that I got,
Speaker 1: every nickel diamond I could scrounge up or whatever I
Speaker 1: used bring home here. Well, it wasn't doing me any good.
Speaker 1: I was just supplying her habit to go to Bingo.
Speaker 1: So I'm not talking down on my mother, but that
Speaker 1: was I could see where it was a problem, and
Speaker 1: I really did. He dearly loved my mother and she
Speaker 1: was the best lay lady on earth. But I realized
Speaker 1: that I got to do something different, so I started
Speaker 1: bringing home. I just go down to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: I knew the owner and I trusted him. Of course,
Speaker 1: there was no no receipts had given. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what a receipt should have been here but it
Speaker 1: saw my mom's account and I had had it. He'd yeah,
Speaker 1: he passed away when I, uh, when I was seven,
Speaker 1: and there were six of us, so it was tough
Speaker 1: uh time. And but my mother it was also tough,
Speaker 1: and uh she kept the house together for the most part.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a lot. That's a lot to put
Speaker 1: on someone. It's a lot, yeah, and we I think
Speaker 1: we were very blessed and fortunate that my stepfather came
Speaker 1: along and they fell in love and got married and
Speaker 1: they had one other child after that. But that's that's
Speaker 1: a lot of burden, you know. I mean, it's something
Speaker 1: else you get married, but get married with six kids already.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys were in the art direction, man,
Speaker 1: I know. So anyway it worked out, it worked out good.
Speaker 1: And uh, I've I've been through and involved in fishing
Speaker 1: and stuff like that for a long time and I
Speaker 1: can remember talk about that. Hell but then when you
Speaker 1: were caught in cheeks, oh yeah, So I was looking around.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go ahead and put a line down
Speaker 1: over the doctor. So I started looking around the New
Speaker 1: England cantry for a hook, and I was finding all
Speaker 1: the hooks. Most of the hooks they didn't have a
Speaker 1: a circle in them like hook sports hooks to. These
Speaker 1: were all flat and that's how they tied them on to.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's no eye in the hook. There was
Speaker 1: no eye. And I got to like smell it on there, right,
Speaker 1: And I was young, and I didn't know anything about that.
Speaker 1: I knew how to operate a hook, you know, with
Speaker 1: a circle in it, tying out there, but that I didn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure it out. So eventually I looked around
Speaker 1: and I found woman was already tied and I tied
Speaker 1: a knot in that, and then I found some other line,
Speaker 1: uh long enough to wear it will go down and
Speaker 1: just right on the bottom off the dock of the cantry,
Speaker 1: off the dock of the can Henry. I wasn't thinking.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I'm down there and I tied it
Speaker 1: off on a big cleat and they had these big
Speaker 1: boat cleats. So I tied it off air went and
Speaker 1: cut the aliba cheeks and everything like that. And when
Speaker 1: I was done and went back, I grabbed that line
Speaker 1: and something heavy on it and I started pulling it
Speaker 1: and started jerking back and my brother was with me,
Speaker 1: and we pulled that thing to the surface and I said,
Speaker 1: that is too big. Now I'm looking down at this
Speaker 1: and it's a good forty ft drop from the dock
Speaker 1: down to the water. So there's no way are we
Speaker 1: going to get this halibit, which, as near as I
Speaker 1: can remember, I mean from what I know, it was
Speaker 1: probably a two pound hello, So there's no way. So
Speaker 1: I let it go back down and I ran and
Speaker 1: I found the superintendent and I said, hey, I got
Speaker 1: a big hell of it online down here, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm gonna do to get it. I mean,
Speaker 1: can you help us? So he went down there and
Speaker 1: we brought it up, and he's seen how big it was,
Speaker 1: so whoa wait a minute, you know, So he goes
Speaker 1: rigs up one of these uh totes they had a rope,
Speaker 1: toote and stuff, and put it down. This was made
Speaker 1: out of wood and but big enough to handle that
Speaker 1: hell but for sure. And he had a big crane
Speaker 1: to do this with, you know, and everything. So that's
Speaker 1: how we did it, and then we brought it back up.
Speaker 1: He's operating that and he has a dip down in
Speaker 1: such a way so that when we got up we
Speaker 1: could just pull it and slide it right into it
Speaker 1: and it landed in there and he brought it up.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't tell you. I can't remember how
Speaker 1: much I got for the hell a but but that's
Speaker 1: the first fish I sold. There wasn't a bunch of
Speaker 1: money though, well it was, and I can't I can't
Speaker 1: remember how much. Okay, so but it seems to me
Speaker 1: like it was maybe twenty But that's that's a lot
Speaker 1: of money for me. For me anyway, So that was
Speaker 1: a good day. I had by ten dollars and for
Speaker 1: the cheeks and plus the hellibit deal. But that was good.
Speaker 1: And what when did you start? Like, because you did
Speaker 1: it several seasons of commercial halibut fishing? Right, I started
Speaker 1: there Joan and I bought they also uh in uh
Speaker 1: and that was when I went out trolling and then
Speaker 1: also long trolling for salmon. Right, well, how does the
Speaker 1: long line? How's the halibut long line work? Like? How's
Speaker 1: the commercial halibut fishery work? I mean just the mechanics
Speaker 1: that catching the fish? Well, like how would you guys
Speaker 1: get him? You know, like just like the actual fishing
Speaker 1: part of it. We had we were running snap on gear.
Speaker 1: It's a skate I had eighteen skates. Each skate i'd say,
Speaker 1: is a thousand feet long. And how many hooks you
Speaker 1: clip on that thing, It depends on how close you
Speaker 1: want to clip them on. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: I it slefts my mind. How many purp there's an
Speaker 1: awful lot of hooks. And then you let us soak,
Speaker 1: you try to pick go back. You set that thing
Speaker 1: down like you got the anchor, like you're running on
Speaker 1: the bottom, it's not hanging suspended, right, anchor on the bottom.
Speaker 1: Then a thousand feet of line with hooks, another anchor
Speaker 1: on the other end, and then a line goes out
Speaker 1: to your booty. Actually, when you run on my run,
Speaker 1: about maybe six or seven skates skates all in one rowe.
Speaker 1: So you have six or seven thousand feet of hooks
Speaker 1: down there over a mile, all right, at what depth?
Speaker 1: The whole variety of depths? Well, actually, yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a whole variety of depths speak stretch that long.
Speaker 1: It's all the same. Well, you'd be surprised sometimes out
Speaker 1: there there there are some of them like that. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, yeah, Well you can bait for
Speaker 1: with several things. Um I I wish we could bait
Speaker 1: with salmon. But and maybe some people do. Now you
Speaker 1: could buy it. You could buy salmon if you could
Speaker 1: get it, you know, I mean there are certain people
Speaker 1: that have the ability to get salmon. There's other people,
Speaker 1: you know. They have to settle for herring. You settle
Speaker 1: for hearing. You have to brian it because they just
Speaker 1: picked that ship or off the hook. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then then then you can get squid. What does
Speaker 1: it brine? Do you know, Harry, We've been using their brine.
Speaker 1: Like I take the herring out, you know, when you
Speaker 1: buy them in the box or buy them in those
Speaker 1: little trades. I take them out for donald layer. Are
Speaker 1: you cream salt or rock salt? Put down a layer herring? Salt?
Speaker 1: Herring salt? Herring? Don't? I don't think it messes. I mean,
Speaker 1: they still smell nice, they're still oily, but they just
Speaker 1: don't rot as fast. Man. They stay really nice, and
Speaker 1: they get leathery after a while, but they still I
Speaker 1: don't think. I mean, I'm not a alibet, but in
Speaker 1: my opinion, I think even by salting them, they fish better.
Speaker 1: Also because what it does, it concentrates, it shrinks it down,
Speaker 1: takes some moisture out of it and yet more oilier.
Speaker 1: So they really said oil off more than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course you know you get a hit
Speaker 1: on a smaller fish and stuff on an area's not
Speaker 1: scripting your bait off as fast. But so and which
Speaker 1: is something that you want them? So you could not
Speaker 1: you like, you didn't were able to use just salmon
Speaker 1: bellies or flames cut up into strips. You guys, you squid,
Speaker 1: you could, you could. You could use that, like I say,
Speaker 1: if you get there at the right time and stuff.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't moxy enough to a lot of the guys,
Speaker 1: A lot of the guys that fish at our sayers themselves.
Speaker 1: So they'd go out at the end of the season,
Speaker 1: they'd get the best of the chum they could, and
Speaker 1: they would freeze their own bait. Yeah, so they'd have
Speaker 1: their own uh freeze locker at the at at the
Speaker 1: cool stories or whatever. And these are the guys that
Speaker 1: have been in it for a long time and they
Speaker 1: know and they're they're fishing big time other fisheries. So
Speaker 1: it's what you know. So you were using primarily herring
Speaker 1: and squid, yeah, primarily, But that's at times I could
Speaker 1: find and locate some plibate are not hell but excuse
Speaker 1: me salmon, but it's it's uh, it's something that you
Speaker 1: had to really look for and get ahead of time.
Speaker 1: And of course, where am I gonna freeze a bunch
Speaker 1: of this bait? You know, because you need a huge volume.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge volume at bait. You know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: hooks and thousands of hooks. Yeah, so you run that
Speaker 1: thing out and you'd get all those hooks laying along
Speaker 1: the bottom at what from what depth? To what depth? Well?
Speaker 1: I like to write right around a hundred fathoms six
Speaker 1: ft of water? Yeah, it is your fish way deeper
Speaker 1: than sport fisherman or fishing for the both part, for
Speaker 1: the most part, Yeah, I don't I don't know. And
Speaker 1: we fish halibut half that depth or even a third. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well your reels probably don't have enough line to get
Speaker 1: down and it's just get way issues and current issues
Speaker 1: and you know, your bolts over one place and your
Speaker 1: apples ds away because the current. So how long would
Speaker 1: you let that thing soaked in? You don't want to
Speaker 1: her for rule of thumb, you don't want to let
Speaker 1: us soak any more than six hours because the sea lights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have sea lice problems. And if you get too
Speaker 1: much sea life lice in there, you're gonna have an
Speaker 1: issue that it's going to be no more number one grade,
Speaker 1: it's going to meet the number two. And the prices
Speaker 1: really dropped drastically if they see those lights on the fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I went in. I went in to deliver my
Speaker 1: load one time and I went up and the sky here,
Speaker 1: so that's number two. So I grabbed it. I got
Speaker 1: my flight knife out and I played the thing out
Speaker 1: and everything and laid that flash down there and says,
Speaker 1: where why is this number two? Well, let's around the
Speaker 1: outer fins there it's eating away. Do you sell those fins? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: Well again, why is this number two? So he had
Speaker 1: to give me number number one price? But what he
Speaker 1: didn't give me a number one price on? I said, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll bring it back down the boat. Then, oh, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna sell it? And I said no, I'd rather
Speaker 1: give it away, didn't get screwed by you. I'd feel better.
Speaker 1: So that's what that's what I would do. Ye know,
Speaker 1: how many like when you pull it up, how many
Speaker 1: helbet might be on there? Again? How many might you
Speaker 1: deal with in a day m hm oh maybe roughly
Speaker 1: around maybe individual fish, right, and and then that day
Speaker 1: in a day, you're going to say in a day,
Speaker 1: but we have a twenty four hour open and we're
Speaker 1: fishing around the clock, or you might only get twenty
Speaker 1: four hours to do it. Well, that's what it was.
Speaker 1: They had some some openings were forty eight hours, but
Speaker 1: most of most of the last ones were twenty four
Speaker 1: Your whole season, yeah, well twice a year twenty four
Speaker 1: let's put it that way. But yes, and you can
Speaker 1: keep a boat and maintain a boat, and maintain a
Speaker 1: license and maintain all the gear in order to fish
Speaker 1: forts Well again you're you're you're also fishing your boat
Speaker 1: is fishing to other fisheries, okay, but for the most part, no,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to and if you're only fishing
Speaker 1: long line in hall of it because the season is
Speaker 1: too too short. So they had you come in and
Speaker 1: go and it just I don't know who was doing
Speaker 1: the selection as to what day the opening would be,
Speaker 1: but whoever that was was very accurate on picking it
Speaker 1: the worst possible time of the year because of the weather.
Speaker 1: So the last Haliban opening that we had that I
Speaker 1: fished and the last one we that was pad, I
Speaker 1: mean they quit after that went to I f Q.
Speaker 1: I was fishing uh west side of Forest dr Island,
Speaker 1: and the both Canadian US weather said that I was
Speaker 1: blown thirty five knots when we put uh later a gear.
Speaker 1: But we did it because both Canadian and US said
Speaker 1: that the wind was supposed to subside. I had and
Speaker 1: dropped back. Well, it didn't increased. It went up to
Speaker 1: fifty and which made it almost impossible to get out
Speaker 1: there and fish. I mean fifty knots twenty ft seas
Speaker 1: you know it's but but yet yeah, I feel you
Speaker 1: have to. But while we're out there, one of my
Speaker 1: deck hands actually I popped the hydraulllet cles and when
Speaker 1: that happens, your deck becomes extremely unsafe and and slippery,
Speaker 1: so because it's hydraulic fluid, right, So I just pulled
Speaker 1: everybody into the wheelhouse and we went in into the
Speaker 1: lee of the Forest R Island there and cleaned tried
Speaker 1: to clean that up and fix the hydraullt holes, but
Speaker 1: tried to clean the deck up. I mean, we've done
Speaker 1: a pretty good job on it. But while we were
Speaker 1: out there. The one guy them my crew members slipped
Speaker 1: and said he heard his back and he didn't really
Speaker 1: look really really good. I mean he had some discomfort,
Speaker 1: it was obvious and his pulse. So got a hold
Speaker 1: of the coast guard, let them know, and they came
Speaker 1: down to the island with the plane tree and I
Speaker 1: could see him there. But they wouldn't get within a
Speaker 1: mile of the island. They're afraid of the rocks or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I tried to explain to him,
Speaker 1: he comes straight in, you bring that ship right into
Speaker 1: me if you want. But they didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: So they launched a hard bottom rubber dinghy and I
Speaker 1: cast him when they come up because during the blow
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, I ripped off a rubb rail
Speaker 1: on the starboard side of my vessel, so there was
Speaker 1: some exposed uh screws that were in there, and stuf
Speaker 1: off and I told him, you come up on my
Speaker 1: starboard side, you're gonna get a whole pope poked in
Speaker 1: your boat. And I said, come onto my port side.
Speaker 1: What do they do? They come on my starboard side
Speaker 1: and it's rocking and rolling out there, and there they
Speaker 1: brought out their corman or whoever he was. But he
Speaker 1: done some check in and it was his idea that
Speaker 1: they were going to go and air meta acam just
Speaker 1: sit you And I says, okay, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to take him in that hard bottomed skiff for you.
Speaker 1: And they sees back to your boat with a bad
Speaker 1: back or damaged back, injured back. Oh no, we'll do
Speaker 1: that nice as now I could take the all soul
Speaker 1: going to lee of the your ship, then we do
Speaker 1: the transfer in the lee. Means your ship doesn't want
Speaker 1: to come here in here to get into the lee
Speaker 1: of the island. So anyway, I couldn't talk him out
Speaker 1: of that. And uh so that's what they did, and
Speaker 1: they ever met a act um off. All this time
Speaker 1: it was taken. I was having to be laid up
Speaker 1: and stuff. And so by that time we're done there,
Speaker 1: and I went out and I had just enough time
Speaker 1: to get all my gear pulled in and I didn't
Speaker 1: have enough time to reset, because yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: whole day all right, And I was right down. I
Speaker 1: mean I went right down to the wire. I get
Speaker 1: my last skate on board. I mean it was close,
Speaker 1: because they're pretty sticklish about that. And if you're flying
Speaker 1: over and you're still pulling gear. After that's down, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll side you. Is that your last year doing it?
Speaker 1: That was my last year doing it, and all of
Speaker 1: the years and I fished, they didn't count that towards
Speaker 1: an i f Q. In fact, I think they stopped counting.
Speaker 1: That's the quota system, right, that's I uh, individual fishing data,
Speaker 1: so like just for listeners, like rather than a lot
Speaker 1: of fisheries have gone to this. They used to have
Speaker 1: these gang busters seasons where they opened it for some
Speaker 1: set time, like Ron saying regardless of whether if you
Speaker 1: want to make a play, you gotta go out and
Speaker 1: do it when they say they go do it later.
Speaker 1: They came up with a system, much safer system. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's cons to it, but one of the pros
Speaker 1: is much safer because you'll tell a vessel it's licensed
Speaker 1: what he's allowed to catch, and he's more at his
Speaker 1: leisure to catch it. Let me know another important faction
Speaker 1: to that too is when they went to this system,
Speaker 1: I normally fished up through at Coronation Island. When they
Speaker 1: went to the individual quota. No before that, that was
Speaker 1: my normal spot. The only reason why I went to
Speaker 1: Forester Island. As my brother Ivan, he was on board
Speaker 1: and he says, we gotta try that, we gotta go
Speaker 1: out there. It's gonna be good. Buh. Well it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, I fished up there at
Speaker 1: Coronation Island. And it's my belief that when they went
Speaker 1: to the individual quota system, they use your fish tickets
Speaker 1: to establish amount of quota you're gonna get, okay, and
Speaker 1: each fish ticket also puts down what area you got
Speaker 1: your fish from, So most of the guys would go
Speaker 1: to their same area over and over. They're they're comfortable
Speaker 1: that way because they know by going to new areas
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, you can get into all kinds
Speaker 1: of problems and stuff like that, not not knowing that
Speaker 1: there is coral trees down there and you're gonna damage
Speaker 1: and ruin a lot of gear and may possibly lose them.
Speaker 1: So it's good that you go back to your same
Speaker 1: area because you know, okay, it's free of coral, and
Speaker 1: the halibut are there and uh several things and not
Speaker 1: a lot of by catch. So that's that's what you
Speaker 1: gotta watch for. Two. You know, I mean, the only
Speaker 1: allows to keep like ten percent by catch on your
Speaker 1: yellow eye or your link d So if you get
Speaker 1: into a lot of them when you first start, how
Speaker 1: much are you going to keep? You know, so you
Speaker 1: have to discard it all right, because you don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean they have this here magic number, you know,
Speaker 1: and back then, back then, they didn't have the safeguards
Speaker 1: or a way of or or a procedure or or
Speaker 1: a law stating that. Okay, now I think they have
Speaker 1: to go ahead and at least bring him back down
Speaker 1: or to have a way of removing the air of
Speaker 1: yellow eyes stomach so that has has survivor ability after
Speaker 1: being cut drastically increased. So like uh, yellow eye, yellow eye,
Speaker 1: rock fish and rock fish along with some other species
Speaker 1: don't have a good way of regulating for pressure. So
Speaker 1: when you're fishing in even of water two of water,
Speaker 1: and you catch a yellow eye and their bottom fish
Speaker 1: and you crank them up in a hurry to the surface,
Speaker 1: by the time he gets the surface, he's cashed out.
Speaker 1: I mean he's got like his stomach hanging out of
Speaker 1: his mouth because there's swim bladder erupts with the alleviation
Speaker 1: of pressure and shoves it out of their mouth. For
Speaker 1: that reason, you're not supposed to size grade uh rock fish.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to You're not allowed to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll hang on to him and keep or I'll throw
Speaker 1: him back and keep fishing, because the thinking is you're
Speaker 1: gonna kill the thing. For a long time, people would
Speaker 1: take a needle and and try to puncture that swim bladder,
Speaker 1: and you can do it if done right, you can
Speaker 1: do it and let the pressure out and put the
Speaker 1: fish back. But people tend to puncture the stomach, which
Speaker 1: is fatal for the fish. So now there's these released
Speaker 1: devices we've been messing around with him where you pull
Speaker 1: that fish up, you put this release device on there
Speaker 1: and send that something gun right back to the bottom.
Speaker 1: And apparently you have very high success survivor raids doing that.
Speaker 1: But still even with that, you can't size grade rock fish.
Speaker 1: Like if you catch one and you're gonna continue fishing
Speaker 1: rock fish, that fish goes in the boat. You don't
Speaker 1: throwing back and continue to fish. I think you're noting
Speaker 1: too yellow eye. As a non resident. I'm allowed too
Speaker 1: yellow eye annually one a day to annually. But you
Speaker 1: guys would get big hauls of them. But in a
Speaker 1: commercial deal, and I was fishing up there and I
Speaker 1: got in close too close to the rock one time,
Speaker 1: big mistake, and I got a massive amount a yellow
Speaker 1: eye and link good. So I moved away from there
Speaker 1: fast because I didn't like what I was seeing. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're discarding, you have discarded back and they're
Speaker 1: all floating. Some of them for whatever reason, uh could
Speaker 1: go back down, but for the most part they're just
Speaker 1: sitting there floating till they're done or tell some critters
Speaker 1: get them or eagle or whatever. But I didn't feel
Speaker 1: good about that, so I'd move off of it, avoid
Speaker 1: that area as much as possible. But um as I
Speaker 1: knew what I was catching and stuff like that, then
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable with keeping them on board so that
Speaker 1: I don't don't go over that ten percent because when
Speaker 1: you go over it then they could find you, and
Speaker 1: the finds a pretty steep and uh you had you
Speaker 1: had a lot of people viewing this uh fishery, so
Speaker 1: that when I go into the port and I'm eventually
Speaker 1: get under the hoist to be offloaded, then they'd have
Speaker 1: somebody from using the coast guard or somebody in there
Speaker 1: with ah. You know that with a type deal where
Speaker 1: they use the measure of your feet when you go
Speaker 1: get a new pair of shoes. Well, they had that
Speaker 1: set up, and they had it set up at thirty
Speaker 1: two inches and under ideal conditions and stuff like that
Speaker 1: that pull it through. Well with that halibit didn't meet that,
Speaker 1: then you're fine. So also you're you're supposed to turn
Speaker 1: out any how, but under two is supposed to be
Speaker 1: out with the cap on the top end for egg
Speaker 1: bearing females, like we're allowed to keep three pound halibit.
Speaker 1: You were allowed to keep them at back then. Um
Speaker 1: and right now, I've been out so long, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what what what their limit is on
Speaker 1: the high end, but this, uh the system here when
Speaker 1: they went when when they go in they closely you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like say you're sixteenth of an inch under
Speaker 1: you know they'll get you. But so I just put
Speaker 1: a mark on it thirty two and a quarter. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, let's let's face it, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna waste that. Your your tossed and
Speaker 1: you're turning. You don't have the best light. You've been
Speaker 1: up for already maybe forty hours, you know, without sleep
Speaker 1: because you have that baiting getting ready going fishing, so
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of things in your favor
Speaker 1: for getting it right or very accurate. So to be
Speaker 1: on the safe side, they just marked a quarter inch
Speaker 1: over um right, and they do they closely do that.
Speaker 1: I mean they'll sit down there and have two or
Speaker 1: three people there with her to tow measuring device. And
Speaker 1: so how many years did you do that for? I
Speaker 1: just I just did it for the three three four years.
Speaker 1: Make money? You did? You made money, but you didn't
Speaker 1: you didn't get rich. I mean you made it. You
Speaker 1: Let's put it this way. I always made expenses. But
Speaker 1: uh and even on that trip that I only had
Speaker 1: one pull, you know, but that again was you know,
Speaker 1: it happened. So when you went when you quit doing
Speaker 1: that and you went back to just fishing and halb
Speaker 1: but with the rod and real did it feel funny?
Speaker 1: Like did it feel like because here you are catching
Speaker 1: hundreds of halbitt and also you're back out just a
Speaker 1: guy catching halbit for his own freezer. No, it didn't
Speaker 1: feel funny because I was doing that before I went
Speaker 1: long lining, you know, So I've always I've always fisted
Speaker 1: rod and reel, you know. So yeah, it was easy
Speaker 1: to get back into it that way. But did you
Speaker 1: miss the commercial stuff for you just done with it? No?
Speaker 1: At times they did, but they had it so goofed up.
Speaker 1: I don't, you know. I didn't miss probably as much
Speaker 1: as I would have if everything was going rosy and fine.
Speaker 1: But going out there and they're there, they're fishery. You know,
Speaker 1: though the fish the Halibate is monitored and controlled under treaty.
Speaker 1: So you have a treaty with Canada and the United
Speaker 1: States on that on the Halibu that is caught within
Speaker 1: their waters, right within their water and our so, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't have to say over what the season is
Speaker 1: going to be or anything like that. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could probably put in a suggestion to the North Pacific
Speaker 1: Fisheries Management or the Halibate Commission. But how far that
Speaker 1: is that going to go? You know, how many years
Speaker 1: did you do salmon? For? It's about about the same
Speaker 1: a little longer, um. But I seen Handwright do on
Speaker 1: the wall. Uh things well with regards to the price
Speaker 1: that I was getting at the h cold storage or
Speaker 1: the Canaries for hooks not nets. You're trolling salmon, right,
Speaker 1: But but you're you're sitting down there and they're giving
Speaker 1: the same price over and over and over again. The
Speaker 1: price never seemed to fluxuate very much. It did at
Speaker 1: the beginning of season, and if you were, if you
Speaker 1: were fishing winter kings, the prices were up then. And
Speaker 1: I I never did go up travel I was I
Speaker 1: was going to try to go up to sit and
Speaker 1: fish that out of there for winter kings because of
Speaker 1: the price, you get a better price, or you get
Speaker 1: a more fairer price. And I don't to this day,
Speaker 1: I wonder why it didn't follow through. Why why shouldn't
Speaker 1: there be a good price for king salmon all season?
Speaker 1: And you fish kings around here? You fish kings around
Speaker 1: here instead around Yeah, around Prince Welles Island. You know,
Speaker 1: the West coast was my favorite spot for kings. That's
Speaker 1: where I done most of my fishing. How was the season?
Speaker 1: How many days a year were you doing at? Well?
Speaker 1: The kings season fluctuated, Uh for the amount that was allocated,
Speaker 1: and UH it varied. It went went between two days
Speaker 1: to five days opening season, um, and then after that
Speaker 1: that would close down. You'd go ahead and fish coho
Speaker 1: for a while. Even that would close down for a
Speaker 1: short period of time in August. You know. So you
Speaker 1: had your various fishings, but the one thing that was
Speaker 1: discouraged and to me is that all your gear prices,
Speaker 1: your fuel prices, your oils prices, your hydraulic fluids, all
Speaker 1: your part prices, everything was always going up, always going
Speaker 1: up with costs of living, everything like that. It increased
Speaker 1: moving up, but your salmon never seemed to increase that
Speaker 1: much that fast. So it was costing the fisherman. Uh
Speaker 1: you were losing a lot by that because of the
Speaker 1: prices for the fish that you were getting. It was
Speaker 1: remaining at a certain level, the same level. And uh
Speaker 1: so ices. Now this isn't for me. I just I'm
Speaker 1: not one that I like to be taking advantage of.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to hang in there allow it
Speaker 1: to happen. You know. Um it's just me. Did you
Speaker 1: buy the l sold just for those that purpose to
Speaker 1: do hel but and do salmon? That's correct. Yes, I
Speaker 1: got into it. I always wanted to go back and
Speaker 1: do try commercial and uh I did you know I
Speaker 1: I started commercial fishing with my grandfather yea, when I
Speaker 1: was about eight. And uh he always fished the West
Speaker 1: coast and he was always the first one out last
Speaker 1: one in. So I went out there and he showed
Speaker 1: me how to gil and got him and ice him
Speaker 1: and everything. That was my job. And it was a hot,
Speaker 1: hot day then, I mean the time of year. I
Speaker 1: was like, sort of like what we we've we've had
Speaker 1: here this summer hard to a breeze and it's down
Speaker 1: there and you're out there getting redouble reflection from the
Speaker 1: water up in your it, and it really whammed with that.
Speaker 1: And I'd go down below after up there getting them
Speaker 1: and gilling them and gutting them and getting enough, and
Speaker 1: then I go down below the ice m and as
Speaker 1: I was down below there, it's just nice and cool, pleasant.
Speaker 1: And when I was down there, I noticed three or
Speaker 1: four coils of line back in the back underneath the
Speaker 1: poop deck there, and I said, that's uh, it looks
Speaker 1: almost like a hammock. I figured, you know, So I
Speaker 1: hopped up there. I hopped up there and lay down
Speaker 1: and see how comfortable it was. Well, I fell asleep,
Speaker 1: and the fish starts stacking up. My grandfathers so he
Speaker 1: went and looked down on the fish hoold. He didn't
Speaker 1: see me there, so I figured I was in the forecastles.
Speaker 1: So he went down the foecastle I wasn't there, came
Speaker 1: back yellowed out of the fishhold. I didn't answer, so
Speaker 1: he put the dreaded call out to the fleet that
Speaker 1: had fallen over. Of course, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of the fleet was after looking for me and stuff,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure a lot of them were. And
Speaker 1: I'm all the time I was down there sleeping, And
Speaker 1: to this day, I could not tell you how long
Speaker 1: I was asleep down here, but I could say one thing.
Speaker 1: When I did come up out of the down blowing hold,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was coming out of the wheelhouse. He had
Speaker 1: one foot in, one foot out, you know, and he's
Speaker 1: a big man, but his eyes meant me, and I
Speaker 1: was the first time in my life I ever visualized
Speaker 1: or seeing that he didn't know whether you wanted to
Speaker 1: kill me or kiss me look, and I think he
Speaker 1: went with a little bit of both. But he caught
Speaker 1: up to me eventually because it wasn't always that type
Speaker 1: of weather. So the weather had changed became a little
Speaker 1: bit rough, and that there was my first experience with seasickness,
Speaker 1: and I got sea sick. So he pulls out and
Speaker 1: back then we didn't have any plastic pails or anything
Speaker 1: like that. So he pulled out a Galvanis bucket of
Speaker 1: salt water, put it up on the hatch cover, and
Speaker 1: gave me a coffee cup, and he says drink, and
Speaker 1: I drank. He says more, and I drank more water, Yes,
Speaker 1: salt water, and I drank more. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much I drank. And all of a sudden I became deathly,
Speaker 1: you know, And I know I was down on the
Speaker 1: deck and I was rolling around like it felt like
Speaker 1: a bowl of jelly. All of a sudden I had
Speaker 1: to let go and I went with the edge of
Speaker 1: the boat and litterfly. I I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one thing. That was the first and
Speaker 1: last time in my life I was ever seasick. Really,
Speaker 1: it cured me. And I don't know whether it's a
Speaker 1: fear that I might have to drink all that salt
Speaker 1: water again or not, but it did cure me. I've never,
Speaker 1: to this day since then, ever been a seasick. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try that because I still get seasick. I'm about fifty.
Speaker 1: When I think you have to have somebody bigger in you,
Speaker 1: you're a big old grandpa to make you do it.
Speaker 1: And I can force myself to when I when I died.
Speaker 1: When I'm diving, yes, I'll usually uh. Remember we were
Speaker 1: up here a couple weeks ago we went looking for scallops.
Speaker 1: I got I dranking the salt water that day where
Speaker 1: I threw up a little bit, not like you're talked about,
Speaker 1: just little SIPs and it makes my you know, but
Speaker 1: not like uh, it just makes me kind of you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of throw up in your mouth a little
Speaker 1: bit like that, yeah, snorical hanging out of your mouth.
Speaker 1: Try well, you don't get seasick to you? You don't
Speaker 1: think you don't. When I was a kid that we
Speaker 1: get seasick on Lake Michigan, but Lake Michigan get like
Speaker 1: six ft waves are big in Lake Michigan, but would
Speaker 1: be enough to make you seasick. My kid got seasick
Speaker 1: because he wasn't looking. He didn't know to look at
Speaker 1: the horizon. You know, he's like sicker he got, he's five,
Speaker 1: you know, sicker he got. The more he'd slink down
Speaker 1: the bottom of the boat. I can tell him, you
Speaker 1: gotta sit up, man and look around. I'll be looking
Speaker 1: at the boat you know, so what do you do
Speaker 1: when he is? He said, look as a boat a rising,
Speaker 1: I focused on the fishing. Usually if I focus on
Speaker 1: the fishing, I get better. But the horizon, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: Or I just you know, make myself let it go
Speaker 1: and I get better. Do you know that you honest?
Speaker 1: Is woman's father as a boatmaker? No? I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: What type of boats? And make am a deep v
Speaker 1: uh bay boat? And then they make a flat bottom
Speaker 1: skiff North Carolina? Not man for rocks. I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: well up here, right? So did you guys see that
Speaker 1: that boat out here that I told you about? Did
Speaker 1: you look at it? The Japanese skiff? No? I found
Speaker 1: a Japanese gas can yesterday two days ago. Yanni found?
Speaker 1: Who found it? I did? Yanni found he saw something
Speaker 1: red up in the tide rack there. Went over there
Speaker 1: and it was a gas can with Japanese script on it,
Speaker 1: and I cut that off. I cut the Japanese riding
Speaker 1: out and nailed it to a post on my shack
Speaker 1: as found art. You know what found artist? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: so so so you're you don't do you don't report
Speaker 1: this stuff? Then? Who there's a site that you go
Speaker 1: on and report anything that you found, and uh, I'll
Speaker 1: put my job. I found a huge bottle of detergent,
Speaker 1: five gallon tank of detergent not longer on the beach,
Speaker 1: and I found a strip basket not long on the beach,
Speaker 1: and my Jimmy Carter had Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter nuclear
Speaker 1: sub hat. Oh okay, alright, I'm a beach coleman, son
Speaker 1: of a gun man. But uh so no, but there's
Speaker 1: a Japanese boat, the washed up new here there is
Speaker 1: out there, and Grendel, how are you going to look
Speaker 1: at it? I did? I went looked at it, and
Speaker 1: it's really a scuokum built boat. Uh. It probably came
Speaker 1: across a Pacific upside down the way it sits. And uh,
Speaker 1: I say that because the rails portion of the boat
Speaker 1: in areas is just pounded where it's been off and
Speaker 1: on beaches or whatever, hitting things. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: I ain't get salvageable. But it does have the Japanese
Speaker 1: name on the hull itself. But somebody, how long is
Speaker 1: the boat? Uh? Close to nineteen? Could you get it
Speaker 1: off there and drag it home? Oh? You could in
Speaker 1: a super high tide. Yeah, you found it right. Well,
Speaker 1: what I'd rather do is just go out there. I
Speaker 1: didn't get a picture of it, and I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: out there and get the whole name off of it.
Speaker 1: And there's a site that you go to, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the people on that site speaks and writes
Speaker 1: fluent Japanese. Oh, on a site that you are reporting into.
Speaker 1: So if you take a picture or anything that he'll
Speaker 1: be able to decipher what it is and and be
Speaker 1: interested to find out, you know, maybe who owned that
Speaker 1: polt or who? Oh? Yeah, man, it'd be super interesting.
Speaker 1: You had a gas can I founds busted up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it looks like it's been in the water
Speaker 1: long time. Do you know what they say in eighty
Speaker 1: million years that Japan we'll have a created all of
Speaker 1: the illusions and be docked up against Alaska. H What
Speaker 1: what difference is that today? It doesn't make any difference today.
Speaker 1: Something look forward to. Well, do you know your state
Speaker 1: originally accreedd and banged up against California, then rolled a
Speaker 1: transform and fault to where it is now. I don't
Speaker 1: doubt that a bit, you know, I mean you can
Speaker 1: picture I could picture, yes, Well, what did they say,
Speaker 1: Now your tallest mountains and your biggest valleys and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, in your biggest canyons, or blew the water.
Speaker 1: There's a book, there's a great trilogy written by geomic
Speaker 1: Fee about geology called Annals of the Former World, And
Speaker 1: in it he says, if I was going to sum
Speaker 1: this book up in one sentence, it would be at
Speaker 1: the top of Mount Everest is marine limestone. Well. He
Speaker 1: also says another thing in that book that's interesting. He says,
Speaker 1: if you imagine the history of the Earth as your
Speaker 1: arms spread out as wide as you can spread them. Okay,
Speaker 1: he said, you could remove all of human history with
Speaker 1: one stroke of a nail. Files are problem seem like,
Speaker 1: uh no, I know that. I mean the Earth. They
Speaker 1: date someone data back to billion years old. That's a
Speaker 1: lot old. I think the Earth in the midlife crisis
Speaker 1: because in four billion years the Sun's gonna burn out.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle, We're halfway there, is halfway done.
Speaker 1: I told my kids the son is gonna burn out
Speaker 1: and it really affected him and I couldn't explain to
Speaker 1: him that I meant in a long time. Shouldn't it's old?
Speaker 1: That little mean? You mean Yanni. What concluding thought, Yann,
Speaker 1: you took off your Lavian power ring? Yeah, the the saltwater,
Speaker 1: I think it's a saltwater there. It uh caused me
Speaker 1: to swell up a little bit. So it's getting a
Speaker 1: little a little snug as part of being a Latvian janice.
Speaker 1: Where is a Lavian power ring called names and it's
Speaker 1: something to Laban's And we were talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I think so the Laban stole it from the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: or Yanni would argue the Old Testament stole it from
Speaker 1: the Latvians where some guy had it where he's gonna
Speaker 1: go kill the Latvian king. And he said, just look
Speaker 1: for the guy with the Latvian power ring, and all
Speaker 1: Latvian dudes went out and got a ring just like
Speaker 1: the king's, so that no one could tell who the
Speaker 1: king was. It's old memory health you put a stripe
Speaker 1: put a red mark on the door in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: So Yanni, in order to protect nam as the king,
Speaker 1: where's his Lavian power ring? One time I was making
Speaker 1: a off color jokes, I don't want to tell you
Speaker 1: about what about Yanni, and he was telling me that
Speaker 1: some one of these the next time I make that joke,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see a flash of blinding silver as his
Speaker 1: fist glides in my face. But it's his NAIs and dance.
Speaker 1: It would be well deserved, right. My grandmother made that
Speaker 1: for me. His brother has one too, and he's got
Speaker 1: a lavian our tattoo. I think, I think, Steve, when
Speaker 1: was the last time you were ever disciplined? I'm forty
Speaker 1: years old, man, Well that's true, But when was the
Speaker 1: last time your wife's eighteen nineteen? Oh no, my wife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my wife has a way like she has a disciplinary method,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it works very well, uh rihanna. Any
Speaker 1: concluding thoughts? Oh, another thing about the lab empowering. You
Speaker 1: told me that you think about not wearing any rings anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because no, because who just some celebrity just got what
Speaker 1: do they call that when your ring pulls your skin off,
Speaker 1: your whole finger hurt. Now there's a term for that,
Speaker 1: there is, Yeah, collared sleeved, Yeah, something like up. Anyways,
Speaker 1: I know quite a few guys have you know, being
Speaker 1: had that happened to him or had it close to
Speaker 1: happening to them, and so instead they've just gone to
Speaker 1: a tattoo for their wedding band. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I quit wearing a wedding band, not because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do something wrong, but for a lot of those reasons.
Speaker 1: And uh also, I had these watch bands and they're
Speaker 1: all metal, and then you could break them open to
Speaker 1: take them off, you know. And I had one of those.
Speaker 1: I'm working on my car, and I had this wrench
Speaker 1: and his source tightening a post down, and somehow that
Speaker 1: shorted across to the negative, and I think it's when
Speaker 1: I came down. My watch came down on the post
Speaker 1: of the negative and I had a hold of that,
Speaker 1: and it gave you te bolts more well that twelve
Speaker 1: votes with a lot of an preacher. I mean, I
Speaker 1: took my watch band off and I had that burning.
Speaker 1: It was just welts all the way around, just ring
Speaker 1: on a battery, and I caught it on a couple
Speaker 1: of tree limbs, and I proposed to my wife I
Speaker 1: stopped wearing it, and she said, I can get the tattoo.
Speaker 1: But I made at this fine life without a tattoo.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go get a tattoo. Now. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask her if I could just start taking a
Speaker 1: magic marker every couple of days, and magic mark ring
Speaker 1: mark just before you travel to me. Whatever. She just
Speaker 1: likes me to have it on. Meanwhile, meanwhile, sometimes you
Speaker 1: don't even know where hers are. I find him laying
Speaker 1: around now and then one day I found one in
Speaker 1: her damn shoe. So you're married. She's not. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: always like, oh she got him both on none on
Speaker 1: one on, don't know where they are. And meanwhile, here's
Speaker 1: me puffy old finger, the ring on it. We'll tell
Speaker 1: her you to turn that in for a n They
Speaker 1: actually gave this to me when I bought her ring
Speaker 1: nilon and ring or something. I thought about getting one
Speaker 1: of those silicon rings. You said, I can do that
Speaker 1: if I want. Well, Joan had Joan had one. I
Speaker 1: think it was jade jade ring, your solid jade ring?
Speaker 1: Was it? At one point in time? I thank you
Speaker 1: still have it? Oh maybe she didn't that It was
Speaker 1: up made out ja dyke, very expensive. But um there's
Speaker 1: a thought too, So y'all he's gonna quit wearing as
Speaker 1: possibly all right, Yanny. Concluding thoughts, you wrap up questions
Speaker 1: you're gonna chance for quickly thoughts. Ron When after John's
Speaker 1: turn I guess I have a concluding question. We might
Speaker 1: gonna squeez be able to squeeze another hunting. How far
Speaker 1: do we have to go up the hill so that
Speaker 1: we're not hunting like a low end muskeig. Dude, listen,
Speaker 1: I don't believe any of that. You don't. I just
Speaker 1: want to stay on everybody's right side around here, are you? Okay? Okay?
Speaker 1: You guys know this buck NI killed personally? Okay? What
Speaker 1: was his name? Did he have velvet or not in velvet?
Speaker 1: Name was Bucky? And he was not in velvet. And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you had the most symmetrical two points that
Speaker 1: you ever saw. That's not this one. Oh yes it is.
Speaker 1: So I you know what you ahead and do your
Speaker 1: hunt and stuff like that. But you know, really, I
Speaker 1: thought you guys were sport hunters, No meat hunters. You're
Speaker 1: a meat hunter or a sport hunter? You like the challenge? Yes,
Speaker 1: then you're a sport hunter. Do you like the channel?
Speaker 1: You don't want to be accused of being a sport hunter.
Speaker 1: I hunt for fun and meat. I wouldn't ut, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't hunt. Then let me ask you this challenge sporting meat.
Speaker 1: I'm a sporting meat guy. So let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: why don't you shoot your critters in the head. I'll
Speaker 1: tell exactly why don't shot critters in the head Because
Speaker 1: I was brought up or my father. The more reasons
Speaker 1: to this, but I'll start with the first one. My
Speaker 1: father would hold up a tennis ball, volleyball. Okay, you'd say,
Speaker 1: which would you rather hit? That was the first thing.
Speaker 1: Later in life through I've been fortunate to do quite
Speaker 1: a lot of hunting, I have generally found that at
Speaker 1: aiming for the lungs is consistently. When you puncture the lung,
Speaker 1: you have a dead animal, you have a huge margin
Speaker 1: for air, and oftentimes you have very very very low
Speaker 1: meat wasted john broadside shots. When I have seen people
Speaker 1: do headshots, if they're not an expert marksman and they
Speaker 1: don't know their own limitations, they're dealing with a very
Speaker 1: small margin of air. Like when you're off an inch,
Speaker 1: you're off and it leads to blown off jaws, punctured ears, whatnot.
Speaker 1: It's just bad. You can hit the rack and split it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's gonna ring its bell and knock them down. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I don't think guys, don't guys
Speaker 1: who shoot lungs. Aren't shooting lungs strictly for the reason
Speaker 1: they don't want to mess the rack up. Well no, okay,
Speaker 1: but to me, all your dear head, yes, or the neck,
Speaker 1: but most of them in the head. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I do that is we utilize the heart in
Speaker 1: the liver. But he likes the Yannie likes the lips. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you like the lips and the nose, ears, cheek meat.
Speaker 1: I like cheat meat, right, No, you ever roast deer's head,
Speaker 1: picked the meat, the tacos. No, I have waste all
Speaker 1: that meat. Well, I don't call it waste because that
Speaker 1: there's a given. I mean, you gotta hit him somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so you know, and tell and tell I
Speaker 1: acquire a taste for brains, tell them if I ever.
Speaker 1: But even if I do hit it in the head,
Speaker 1: I can utilize the brain if I wanted to tend
Speaker 1: the hide with it, you know. So it's not a
Speaker 1: waste there. But I don't. I don't want a chance
Speaker 1: of And I always give my son and his friend
Speaker 1: a bad time because sometimes they don't bring back the
Speaker 1: heart liver because the shot of the body. No, no,
Speaker 1: they always should. They always do head shots, Well, what's
Speaker 1: how far? Like, what's the maximum distance you shoot at
Speaker 1: at a at a black tail? Typically the maximum distance,
Speaker 1: like it will be a long shot for you, the
Speaker 1: way you want to fifty yards for the head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care. If you're Lee Harvey Oswald, I think
Speaker 1: that that's a bad aim. Well, that was a really
Speaker 1: bad thing. I just said. I didn't mean that. The
Speaker 1: reason I just talked about Lee Harvey Oswald's earlier, I
Speaker 1: was talking with someone about going to the museum in Dallas,
Speaker 1: the Book Depository Museum, and I remember looking out the
Speaker 1: window and expecting it to be a much longer distances.
Speaker 1: It was a very short distance. People always made a
Speaker 1: big deal about how could he have done it if
Speaker 1: you hadn't have had this, and that it was impossible
Speaker 1: they could have made it with a site open site,
Speaker 1: And I said that went around like that is not everybody,
Speaker 1: All the guys that hang out with the do that
Speaker 1: shod no problem Anyeah. I should have said that that
Speaker 1: was insensitive. However, I don't care if you're a great shooter.
Speaker 1: I think that you Well, let's let's when you said
Speaker 1: that maximum okay, and most of my shots are within
Speaker 1: a hundred yards some of them even, you know, like
Speaker 1: when I got that one big four point, you know
Speaker 1: I didn't even use my scope. Who was so close?
Speaker 1: I mean so when you say my maximum shot, well
Speaker 1: that was you know when I took and when I
Speaker 1: got Here's what this this are. I'm not gonna have
Speaker 1: this argument with you because you've been hunting your whole life.
Speaker 1: You've killed umpteen million deer. Like, you know what works
Speaker 1: for you. Okay, you know what your capable of, you
Speaker 1: know what works for you. But would you agree with
Speaker 1: this statement? You have a grandson, right, did you tell
Speaker 1: your grandson hit him in the head, hit him in
Speaker 1: the lungs, hit him in the head. His his last
Speaker 1: year he shot it was a five point? Yeahs was
Speaker 1: that his first year? Was was that his first year?
Speaker 1: And he shot it right and knows put it down
Speaker 1: pretty quick on all right. I'm a long man. Yanni's
Speaker 1: a long man. An Yeah. I had a couple of
Speaker 1: bad experiences. You know, I had some good experiences put
Speaker 1: down this animals very quickly with the head shots. But
Speaker 1: I had a couple Its uh for me, It doesn't
Speaker 1: warrant taking that shot anymore. First year, I ever shot
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, shot him in the head, had to
Speaker 1: run him down, kill him with a knife, And that
Speaker 1: was probably Josh shot exactly. Now. Another thing I saw
Speaker 1: happen some years ago when they started. You know, when
Speaker 1: when buffalo leave Yellowsto National Park, the way the laws
Speaker 1: are set up down in Montana, Wyoming, when buffalo leaves
Speaker 1: they Also National Park, he goes to being wildlife to livestock.
Speaker 1: Unlike every other animal. If a wolverine, wolf, elk, black bear,
Speaker 1: grizzly bear, mule, deer, antelope leaves the Also National Park,
Speaker 1: he's wildlife. Buffalo which is just as native and has
Speaker 1: just as might have the right to the lands any
Speaker 1: of our creatures leaves ye Also National Park, he becomes livestock.
Speaker 1: The Department of Livestock rounds him up and sends him
Speaker 1: off to slaughter. When they first started open up some
Speaker 1: permitted hunting for these things, and it wound up being
Speaker 1: in many ways to serve the interests of killing them off.
Speaker 1: But the various tribes in that area who had a
Speaker 1: historic claim to that area were allocated tags to go
Speaker 1: kill buffalo. When I was working on my book about buffalo,
Speaker 1: I went with not with but I accompanied without them
Speaker 1: actually asked me to accompany, but I went out with
Speaker 1: the net purse when they were there to shoot five
Speaker 1: buffalo and they were doing headshots. At one point in time,
Speaker 1: I think that they had all five of the ones
Speaker 1: they hit in the head. We're still wandering around with
Speaker 1: holes in them trying to It's like you need to
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're doing. Had they been shooting for long,
Speaker 1: they would all eventually got them all. Had they been
Speaker 1: shooting for long, you hit it through the long, it's
Speaker 1: gonna die buffalo too. I don't know what what type
Speaker 1: particularly around you're using that you gotta have a sturdy one.
Speaker 1: But I was just sorry of those we were up
Speaker 1: BEYONDI was there. We were talking to these uh choot pigascimo.
Speaker 1: They shoot walrus is a two threes in the head,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, So if you know about shot placement,
Speaker 1: those boys, do you know exactly should exactly where to
Speaker 1: hit the waters? Said? The waters can't get off the
Speaker 1: ice when they hit it like that. It can be done,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people don't have that skill set.
Speaker 1: So it's clearly you know what you're doing. You've been
Speaker 1: doing your whole life. Do you average Joe Schmo. I
Speaker 1: think it's better off aiming behind the shoulder because he
Speaker 1: can be all shaky and all nervous and all kinds
Speaker 1: of crap like that and still be six inches off
Speaker 1: in any direction and kill the thing. You could take
Speaker 1: and getting your or your canoe and go right out
Speaker 1: here now, even in that big right here. Now, set
Speaker 1: yourself up a target over there, take your rifle and
Speaker 1: try to hit that target while you're in that canoe,
Speaker 1: and saw how much how many times you're gonna miss? Well,
Speaker 1: it's illegal. You're talking about the Eskimo shooting walrus from
Speaker 1: their kayaks, and this is an open open and this
Speaker 1: is open ocean, and they have a way of knowing
Speaker 1: and timing their shot on that thing. Rocks and rocks
Speaker 1: back up. They do expert expert marksman, no you get.
Speaker 1: I mean, they definitely know what they're doing. But I
Speaker 1: was a distinguished marksman, a little bit better an expert
Speaker 1: in the military, a little bit better an expert. But
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I've been shooting all my life. My father,
Speaker 1: if you be where he died, and he goes about
Speaker 1: five years old, he bought me a single shot twenty
Speaker 1: two and he would go out target practice and he
Speaker 1: was teaching me certain how to handle it, care for
Speaker 1: it as that. When I was young. After he died,
Speaker 1: of course, I couldn't utilized or going with it, you know,
Speaker 1: do the gun again until I was a little bit older,
Speaker 1: and a new way my mother would allow me to
Speaker 1: do that is I had to go down and at
Speaker 1: the Civic Center and catch again. They had actual indoor
Speaker 1: range and I went down there and went through marksman
Speaker 1: course you know and stuff, so you were pretty closely
Speaker 1: supervised for safety and everything like that. So I was
Speaker 1: taught then, but I was also taught sighting, you know,
Speaker 1: using your site patterns and this and that, and I
Speaker 1: got pretty good with it, and just over time I
Speaker 1: got real good. I mean they're in UH pistol, you know.
Speaker 1: So what did you shoot when you were in the military. Well,
Speaker 1: I shot I shot the A R fifteen M sixteen
Speaker 1: h A R fifteen what a lot of people know
Speaker 1: of that semi automatic, but ours was fully the M sixteen.
Speaker 1: I shot the M sixty machine gun. Is that they
Speaker 1: have in the helicopter doors. Yes, and then the also
Speaker 1: UH qualified with a M seventy nine grenade launcher and
Speaker 1: a three point five rocket launcher which is the bazooka,
Speaker 1: and those I used caliber side arm. Uh god, what
Speaker 1: else they took away from me? When I went entered
Speaker 1: into country and Psycho on Tauson Air Force Base, they
Speaker 1: had just put it over their duffel bag. Put it
Speaker 1: between your feet there and you're standing there, wait, and
Speaker 1: they came through and started taking everything on my douffle bag.
Speaker 1: But I brought brought with me. I brought I brought
Speaker 1: my thirty eight Smith and Weston pistol and they seized it.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was the dumbest thing they could
Speaker 1: ever do, you know, because I'm I'm used to that weapon,
Speaker 1: and what's gonna hurt? Just another weapon that you have
Speaker 1: in a war zone, you know, mean while you got
Speaker 1: an M sixty door gun, well sure you up there?
Speaker 1: Well no that yeah, But I mean I thought awful
Speaker 1: funny about that. I thought I would never see it again.
Speaker 1: You know. He got back, It got back, and they
Speaker 1: nailed it right back to my our post off the box.
Speaker 1: Back then. I guess they could do it, you know,
Speaker 1: not anymore you can't mail to the post office box.
Speaker 1: But they made it back. It was every when I
Speaker 1: got back anyway. Uh, well, last question, what do you
Speaker 1: what's your how'd your dad die? He's so young. My
Speaker 1: father was in the engineers Army engineers and they went
Speaker 1: Toknawa and they were gonna pull their invasion going on
Speaker 1: to Okinawa. So he and his squad went on their
Speaker 1: first undercover darkness to start clearing away so that they're
Speaker 1: not bottling necked on the beach by obstacles and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So they went in and started working u
Speaker 1: stealth and and and wiring it up so that when
Speaker 1: that started, then they'd start blowing all these obstacles up
Speaker 1: and clearing the way so that they're not jammed up
Speaker 1: waiting to get for seed off the beach. And in
Speaker 1: that process they were they were still working on the
Speaker 1: roads and stuff like that that there getting the stuff
Speaker 1: up off the beaches. So his whole squad was facing
Speaker 1: towards the beach, so they get out the way of
Speaker 1: all the amphibious vehicles coming up off the beach. So
Speaker 1: they had the you're being cautious about that, and one
Speaker 1: of the fellows that were driving one of those amphibious rigs, Uh,
Speaker 1: they shelled him and he went into shell shock. Life
Speaker 1: uh like uh, and turned his amphobious vehicle back around,
Speaker 1: started heading back down the beach and ran over half
Speaker 1: my father's squad, including him. And I can remember as
Speaker 1: uh the child. I could remember looking at his back,
Speaker 1: you know, when he had a shirt off and you
Speaker 1: could actually see it still see some treadmarks and big
Speaker 1: scars and everything like that where they had straightened his
Speaker 1: back out. Well, he always had problems. They're always in
Speaker 1: and out of the v A hospital all the time, constantly.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know how my mother had six kids,
Speaker 1: but she did, you know, so something was working. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, he was pretty sick, pretty sick person.
Speaker 1: And as near as I could tell, he had problems
Speaker 1: with ulcers. I think he probably had some cancer. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know though, but he went down. It was
Speaker 1: in the hospital. Uh. My younger brother, Ivan was just born.
Speaker 1: I think Ivan's birthdays. See, I don't know d end
Speaker 1: of June one July. But my father died before he
Speaker 1: could see him. Uh. He died in the hospital in Portland. Uh,
Speaker 1: in the VA hospital. After he died, and the v
Speaker 1: A knew it was service connected, they knew damn all
Speaker 1: it was, but they did not they denied my mother
Speaker 1: any help. All right, yeah, you know, and that always
Speaker 1: rubbed me bad because when a veteran. I wasn't married
Speaker 1: when I was in Vietnam, but I couldn't. I've seen
Speaker 1: other veterans that had a wife and kids home, and
Speaker 1: I've seen the fact they had on him and they
Speaker 1: really missed him, and that was the most important thing
Speaker 1: to him, and they didn't want to get blown away
Speaker 1: and leave there wife and kids without any means of support.
Speaker 1: And so Joan and I at one time we were
Speaker 1: going through Seattle. We're at the Red Lion Red Line,
Speaker 1: and this one fellow from Ketchikan there was going back
Speaker 1: for American Legion convention, and I told him, I says,
Speaker 1: you know what really bothers me that a veteran, when
Speaker 1: they're having a disability and they're married and they have kids,
Speaker 1: but they're having a they're getting a disability pension from
Speaker 1: the v A. If they die, that pension goes away,
Speaker 1: and that's not what that veteran wants. And while and
Speaker 1: I told him a story about when I was over there,
Speaker 1: I seen how what effect it had on the soldiers
Speaker 1: that did have a family back home, immediate family, their
Speaker 1: wife and kids, and how they were saying anything else,
Speaker 1: all the anxiety about their financial well being. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: if anything happens to them, whos how are they going
Speaker 1: to be taken care of? In other words, And that's
Speaker 1: true back then, if something was to happen to him,
Speaker 1: their wife and kids didn't get anything. I guess imagine
Speaker 1: they have so securities help them a little bit, but
Speaker 1: for the most part nothing. And that was true up
Speaker 1: until actually when the guy listened to me and he
Speaker 1: went back and it made a difference. That's when they
Speaker 1: started the process. So I'm one disabled now, anything happens
Speaker 1: to me, now, at least Joan will get some of
Speaker 1: my pension. But before then that at came in. If
Speaker 1: I was to die, she would get nothing. Boom be.
Speaker 1: So if I was making house payments and we had
Speaker 1: house payments and she didn't have any other income and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but maybe so secared or something, she
Speaker 1: would be hurting and probably lose her house. So they did.
Speaker 1: They came through and they said that right now she'd
Speaker 1: get a third of what I get. Uh, I feel
Speaker 1: it should be a little higher. When I retired from
Speaker 1: law enforcement, I reduced my monthly Uh what they're going
Speaker 1: to give me two as sure that Joan would get
Speaker 1: something when I passed away, pass away. So what I did?
Speaker 1: I set her up to where because I was wasn't
Speaker 1: taking my full retirement, some went you know, kept back,
Speaker 1: but anything happens to me now and I died before
Speaker 1: her or whatever she'll get sev. There was another one
Speaker 1: where I could have set it up for fift but no,
Speaker 1: I mean she was on there going going through what
Speaker 1: hardships and stuff like that. I went going through the
Speaker 1: police department and going through different things, and you know
Speaker 1: you do, and so I know there was a lot
Speaker 1: of times I had a phone home and tell her, hey,
Speaker 1: locked the door a little to rifle, you know, because
Speaker 1: just be on the safe side. You never know because
Speaker 1: of the case you worked or something that's going to
Speaker 1: be big out for vengeance. Yeah and what what what
Speaker 1: the person told me, you know himself. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was So that's what I'm helcol about the military there
Speaker 1: there they turned around a little bit and just like
Speaker 1: I'm maybe keynote speaker for the upcoming UH gathering for
Speaker 1: the he had error veterans over in Craig of September.
Speaker 1: I was asked to give a talk for about a
Speaker 1: twenty minute talk and uh in there. You know, the
Speaker 1: United States government for in the last decade, let's say,
Speaker 1: has realized what especially since the returning from the veterans
Speaker 1: returning from Iraq and Afghanistan desert charm. They came back heroes,
Speaker 1: you know, and we never did. I mean I came
Speaker 1: back walking through Stack Airport, had some demonstrators in there,
Speaker 1: and they're calling me baby killer and one spat spat
Speaker 1: on me. I don't think you'd be spent on anybody
Speaker 1: else after that. I mean, I think you learned this
Speaker 1: lesson because changed a little bit. Well, I knocked them
Speaker 1: out and I was putting a bathroom in there and
Speaker 1: cleaning off all this bit, and then walks too poor
Speaker 1: to Seattle Police Department be personnel and two MPs. The
Speaker 1: one guy asked me, did you hit that guy out there?
Speaker 1: And they turned around. I pointed, put my finger in
Speaker 1: the chest each one of them. I said, it hit you.
Speaker 1: You you and you as you called me a baby
Speaker 1: killer and spit spit on me. They did that, and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I showed him where they spent. By
Speaker 1: the time I got out of there, they were gone.
Speaker 1: So which was good. But I was coming home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was coming home. They gave me a brand new uniform,
Speaker 1: fitted me for it, and I got home. When I
Speaker 1: left the house there, my mother was in the kitchen
Speaker 1: painting totem poles and the seat seat sitting there, and
Speaker 1: when I came back, snuck in the back door there. Well,
Speaker 1: I got my stepfather down to the bar. We had
Speaker 1: a few tips in my uncle, and I had another
Speaker 1: guy that I ran into. He was in the Navy
Speaker 1: coming back. So we're sitting there in a bar, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't twenty one yet, so I told him and
Speaker 1: neither neither neither was it. Neither was it was this
Speaker 1: other guy, So I told him, he come on, we
Speaker 1: deserve it, you know. So we went in there, and
Speaker 1: even the bartender once in a while to buy his drinks.
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty cool. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: when I got in there and I got home, my
Speaker 1: mother was at the kitchen table there painting total bulls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she turned around, looked, went back to painting total bulls,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden to realize I was back home.
Speaker 1: So that was about welcome home enough for me, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Rannie got any concluding thoughts. Yeah, I do,
Speaker 1: you know. Lately here I realize one thing, and I
Speaker 1: came to a conclusion there's only one thing good about
Speaker 1: old age that it doesn't last long. And that's the
Speaker 1: only thing good about it. So anyway, no, I'm I'll
Speaker 1: tell you. I'll tell you another one too. I I
Speaker 1: added on to this when I heard of someplace house,
Speaker 1: but I added a few other things. But the Golden years,
Speaker 1: it's not the Golden years. It's what I refer to
Speaker 1: as a metal years. It's where you get silver in
Speaker 1: your hair, golden your leading, your ass our deficiency, your
Speaker 1: brain is, our mind is like a steel trap, rusted shut.
Speaker 1: You have enough platinum credit cards to buy the world,
Speaker 1: but not enough gold to pay him off. And I
Speaker 1: think that they're more accurately describes it than the Golden Years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I since nineteen two thousand, uh, nineteen nineteen two,
Speaker 1: since two thousand seven when I had my episode of
Speaker 1: the last cloudy and stuff like that. My before that,
Speaker 1: I wasn't as good as shape as you, maybe even better.
Speaker 1: But now I mean I've I've been crashing going downhill.
Speaker 1: And then I had at open heart surgery and one
Speaker 1: of those metal valves put in and that they're further depleted.
Speaker 1: I mean, anybody could look at me and it was
Speaker 1: and you're not disabled, you know, but looks ain't it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's what I can there could. I can't
Speaker 1: do anymore. And because of all this here going on
Speaker 1: at one time and the medications they got me on,
Speaker 1: you can't. I mean, yeah, how old are you? Well
Speaker 1: past retirement age? What's retirement age? Sixty year older? Now? Well, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am, but that has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: I mean really, I mean, Joan isn't in better shape
Speaker 1: than I am? Yeah, you know, and she's older than me.
Speaker 1: She was the she was a founder of the International
Speaker 1: Order of Cougar's her. I just kidd none, you, yohn.
Speaker 1: What can I tell about your wife? Johnnie? I never
Speaker 1: got to wrap it up. Tell about your wife? You
Speaker 1: go tell these guys about your wife, Johnny. Johanni's wife
Speaker 1: asked him to get married and he said no. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he loved his wife so much that he broke
Speaker 1: the Latvian uh like ring broke the Lavian bloodline. Really
Speaker 1: so that I'm gonna blow your I'm gonna blow it.
Speaker 1: Quick note on you're I'm gonna close the episode with
Speaker 1: a quick note, did you make this one? No? No,
Speaker 1: this one for sure. That's a nice one. It looks
Speaker 1: like the Summiner. Yeah, it does. Look it's just like
Speaker 1: the Summiner. I'm gonna start out with uh made in
Speaker 1: call and then here's a here's a wounded calf. Yeah
Speaker 1: you like that? Ron, which one do you get better? Responsive?
Speaker 1: The wounded calf makes dose come and snort at you
Speaker 1: bucked their feet up and down and as that could
Speaker 1: bring in a buck Yeah heard doing all that? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had that happen to me all the time, and
Speaker 1: especially this time a year Doe roiled up in the
Speaker 1: buckle show up. Yes, yeah, eventually I will, because that
Speaker 1: does doing a lot of stomping against norton. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you'll keep holding her attention as long as you can. Yes,
Speaker 1: I will as long as I can. And you have
Speaker 1: to hide real good. I mean I was down for
Speaker 1: curiosity up. Yeah, I was just gonna go with some dude.
Speaker 1: I was down underneath the log stick. Dear, call out
Speaker 1: and boat again. As soon as she comes back stomping
Speaker 1: real close by. I mean I had to stop, stop
Speaker 1: a foot away from my head, you know. But I'm
Speaker 1: under the log and I'm all right, and she'll act
Speaker 1: like that as long as she can't spot. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: don't know the source one. No longer you could get
Speaker 1: her to stop and snort and stomp and snort, the
Speaker 1: better chances are and getting a buck to respond. Those
Speaker 1: are bringing blackberries to all constantly all the time. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of one of the times,
Speaker 1: I was up there at Paul's bite on a road
Speaker 1: system and I see look down below and here is
Speaker 1: two do down there. So I tried to get them
Speaker 1: to stomp and stuff and I blew and they did.
Speaker 1: They were stomping and snorting and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: I said, this is pretty cool. When I was up there,
Speaker 1: and never once while as soon as they slowed down
Speaker 1: the blow it again. They continue stomp And I see
Speaker 1: something on the tree line coming in, so I scope it.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I seen what it was, I
Speaker 1: sent a chill up by spine. And I didn't realize,
Speaker 1: but this bear, black bear was move crawling in real
Speaker 1: slow on his belly, yes, coming in, and that just
Speaker 1: sent a chill up my back because I'm in a
Speaker 1: muskag blowing my dear call, and I always hear a
Speaker 1: little subtle noises around the back of me or off
Speaker 1: to the side, you know, and I figure, well, there's
Speaker 1: got to be a buck coming in and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Well it never did come in, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 1: And I had a friend of mine that was sitting
Speaker 1: in a small muskag and he had his rifle down
Speaker 1: one of the chamber safety off. He's blown his derkle
Speaker 1: and he's sitting on this stump or or logged and
Speaker 1: a bear come bolting out of the other side of
Speaker 1: this year short must gag and before that bear realized
Speaker 1: that he was not a deer or something, the bear spun.
Speaker 1: As he spun away, the ass of the bear came
Speaker 1: around and knocked my friend off the log on his back,
Speaker 1: and he never even had a chance to raise his rifle.
Speaker 1: That's oh, they're fast. They come in very fast. And
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to stick around and see what
Speaker 1: that bear was going to do with the doze, but
Speaker 1: he probably should have. But I had a hunt to do,
Speaker 1: and I started going up throat, but I only took
Speaker 1: a picture, you know. He he was coming in south
Speaker 1: and get in within that prancing distance of maybe what
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred fifty two. So that's right, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: you have right here. Bears are fast, but not as
Speaker 1: fast as you should run. Two hunting dot com by
Speaker 1: one of you his T shirts. I like that. I
Speaker 1: love it. Thank you. That's h U N T t
Speaker 1: o e A T dot com. Remember I get nothing.
Speaker 1: I get nothing for promoting Yanni's T shirts, sides, free
Speaker 1: T shirts I have too, free T shirts. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make you if you don't send Ron and Jonah free
Speaker 1: T shirt, I'm gonna quit plugging hunting Well. I take
Speaker 1: you out a plan. Plug the Cassan Restaurant. If you're
Speaker 1: passing through Cassan, go to the Cassan restaurant. All you
Speaker 1: can eat everything for one dollar one dollar. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, tune in next time