Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt. First light, Go farther, stay longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're good. Yep, we're recording now. Why didn't Steve sound
Speaker 1: as loud as ours? We are in a Ford Sprinter
Speaker 1: from Enterprise. I don't think, well, I don't know Ford
Speaker 1: whatever the hell sprinter type man cargo though, no seats
Speaker 1: except for the front and back, front and passenger. Steve,
Speaker 1: what moment? Hold on, We're trying to get something on
Speaker 1: your voice. There's a knob broken off of this that
Speaker 1: I didn't see. Um, what where's the chord here? Going
Speaker 1: to Steve? Just as Steve's right here, this one and
Speaker 1: that is the one without the knob. Man, it's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to podcast in a van down by the
Speaker 1: then you would think, all right, so you've got to
Speaker 1: change that too, right, Okay, Steve, talk again? You turned
Speaker 1: me off? Now you should be good, right, not romantically,
Speaker 1: but just can you hear us? Now? No, I can't
Speaker 1: hear anything? Well his his Oh here we go, so
Speaker 1: new snow on the hills. Miles to go, No more
Speaker 1: than that, oh on fuel fuel and to the next
Speaker 1: gust nation, shake one down, best of around, miles to
Speaker 1: go to go in the van. Is it on? It's
Speaker 1: still a little hot? Uh, it's well, it seems hot
Speaker 1: to me. Try it now again, No, my things on?
Speaker 1: Well you just turn it off again. Are you there?
Speaker 1: Phil recording? A little up on him? Just a tiny's
Speaker 1: coach halfway test test. There you go. Are we rolling?
Speaker 1: We are recording. This can all be in the show.
Speaker 1: It'll help. Yeah, okay, everybody, welcome to me either podcast.
Speaker 1: Now everybody is realized. We we struggle hard, We struggle
Speaker 1: mightily to bring you, you know, three episodes a year
Speaker 1: and of quality programming. And in my mind that quality programming.
Speaker 1: There's two things that go into that. On one hand,
Speaker 1: good quality content, right, stuff well considered thoughts. Um, you
Speaker 1: know news, Uh you know that keeps you up to speed. Um, oh,
Speaker 1: good entertainment, right, so you learn stuff. Two is we
Speaker 1: strive for good audio quality, which is impossible right now
Speaker 1: because Chester keeps messing with my thing. Look at that, dad,
Speaker 1: Look with Steve. I will apologize, but I'm really trying
Speaker 1: to hear you're peaking, which means that your little levels
Speaker 1: are hitting the red line chesters in the back of
Speaker 1: a band. We're on a road trip right now. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to set it up. We're trying to set it
Speaker 1: up like it's a special episode, and you keep turning
Speaker 1: my thing down. Well, Telty, we're crossing cathedral rapids. We
Speaker 1: try very hard to bring you a quality show that
Speaker 1: sounds good. That's why we have filled the engineer and
Speaker 1: we have our studio and everything. But it just so
Speaker 1: happens right now. Circumstances have worked against us. And I
Speaker 1: checked with with our our of it producer, Karin, and
Speaker 1: we need to roll with this. We are recording the show.
Speaker 1: My apologies to you on audio quality. We are recording
Speaker 1: the show in a van driving through interior Alaska. So
Speaker 1: if you imagine Alaska and you go all the way
Speaker 1: east where it butts up to Ukon Territory, and then
Speaker 1: you go pretty much dead nuts between top and bottom
Speaker 1: north to south, that's about where we're at, driving down
Speaker 1: the road in the new kind of van that I
Speaker 1: think it's like like vans, what do they call these vans.
Speaker 1: Everybody calls him a sprinter, but a Ford it's a
Speaker 1: rental for no, because like a creeper van is like
Speaker 1: my old van. This is like a like a high
Speaker 1: end van podcast van. This is the cool it's like
Speaker 1: these days. It's the kind of van where people go
Speaker 1: stay in the van for a summer and have a
Speaker 1: van life experience. Yeah, it's pretty nice. I kind of
Speaker 1: want one of these for fishing. Oh no, you just
Speaker 1: drill holes in this, drill holes down through the ice.
Speaker 1: A tuber tubanbile mobile. We're on a road trip. It'll Alaska,
Speaker 1: and we're recording the show from here, and it's the
Speaker 1: same show, same titillating subject matter, but we're just in
Speaker 1: a van. And I was just explaining to the boys.
Speaker 1: Off to the left, we have some beautiful snow capped mountains,
Speaker 1: and I was explaining to the fellows, here do we have.
Speaker 1: We're joined by Lauren Molten, driver UH clayt nwcom Chester
Speaker 1: Floyd and UH fan favorite dirt myth how Hannie Uh.
Speaker 1: I was explained to the boys that on this drive,
Speaker 1: which I've done the number quite a number of times
Speaker 1: over the years, on this drive at this time in
Speaker 1: the evening this time of year, if one takes a
Speaker 1: speedy glance down all of the gravel roads coming into
Speaker 1: the highway, you will often catch grouse out pecking grit.
Speaker 1: But we haven't seen any yet, but I'll keep you
Speaker 1: listeners a prize on that situation. I'll point out on
Speaker 1: our thing because I did this drive one time with
Speaker 1: my son coming back from Caribo hunting, and we saw
Speaker 1: seven grouse. And my son pointed out that every grouse
Speaker 1: we saw it was on the left side of the road.
Speaker 1: Was he sitting on the south side of the road, No,
Speaker 1: he was on the right side. I was, But that's
Speaker 1: how it went, and it was true. And once I
Speaker 1: reviewed it in my mind, he was cracked sharp kid. Well, yeah, observant,
Speaker 1: almost a little rain manny, not him, the observation, but
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Uh so for companies to get into
Speaker 1: up top here as we as we cruise along. Um oh,
Speaker 1: this is good. So I'm pretty this this is exciting
Speaker 1: in a little a proud thing for me. We have
Speaker 1: a whole new season and meat Eater coming up soon,
Speaker 1: Season eleven of meat Eater. What we are able to
Speaker 1: do now, what we're able to do now. Um, we
Speaker 1: just filmed the end of the season coming back from that.
Speaker 1: Right now, what we're able to do now is we
Speaker 1: are going to here's a TV here's a little TV
Speaker 1: business tidbit. Uh. We've always so me and my my
Speaker 1: original partners at zero point zero and now our our company,
Speaker 1: Meat Eater, We've always owned, um, we've always owned our shows. Right,
Speaker 1: We've only ever licensed our shows out, meaning like normally
Speaker 1: if you make like normally if you watch TV show
Speaker 1: on cable TV or whatever. Uh, the distribution channel owns
Speaker 1: the material. So a production company will make a show
Speaker 1: for someone, Um, and then once you produce it and
Speaker 1: make it, it's like a contractor who makes a house
Speaker 1: for some and like you hand over the keys of
Speaker 1: the house, you never walk back in there again. Right,
Speaker 1: and then the you know, the distribution the distributing platform
Speaker 1: owns the material. We've always owned Meat, We've only ever
Speaker 1: licensed our show out. So we are able to now
Speaker 1: do something that's pretty cool. We're able to do our
Speaker 1: sort of first window on our own platform. So when
Speaker 1: we kick out the new season eleven of Meat either
Speaker 1: the first place we're gonna kick it out as we're
Speaker 1: going to kick it out on our own website. So
Speaker 1: at the meat Eater dot com is where you'll be
Speaker 1: able to go watch the show early first before it
Speaker 1: appears anywhere else. And that will be coming up pretty
Speaker 1: soon and I'm excited about that. Meanwhile, over at YouTube,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon's Uh Deer Country show has launched. A few
Speaker 1: episodes are already out. The show runs through mid October.
Speaker 1: Go find it at the meat Eater YouTube channel. Stay
Speaker 1: if he came and hunting with me? I think the
Speaker 1: episodes out the one you hear it, Yeah, he came,
Speaker 1: he came down to Arkansas, man and uh killed a
Speaker 1: deer public land. So tune into that Folks for Love
Speaker 1: and that Mark Kenyan's Deer Country on YouTube at the
Speaker 1: Meeting YouTube channel. Uh. Not thing is It's like this
Speaker 1: is a even though we're on a road trip through
Speaker 1: Alaska for a couple of hours. Here we're and Lauren
Speaker 1: observed that we have enough gas to get us to
Speaker 1: the next gas station plus one mile to Delta Junction
Speaker 1: and the tank said one miles to go. Excellent. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's a little show business tidbit. Are It's so frustrating
Speaker 1: when camp Fire Stories Volume one came out, so it's
Speaker 1: Meat Eaters, camp Fire Stories, Close Calls. When that came out, instantly,
Speaker 1: uh was the best seller, and and it got it
Speaker 1: was best seller a bunch of platforms. But then it
Speaker 1: made the New York Times Audio Book best Seller, which
Speaker 1: is a weird thing for an audiobook. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why. Most books that make most books that make
Speaker 1: the New York Times best seller list in audio are
Speaker 1: books that were print. So a big book will come
Speaker 1: out in print, and it'll become big best seller in print,
Speaker 1: and then the audio hit. And that that that print
Speaker 1: thing kind of generates a little bit of buzz, right,
Speaker 1: and the audio hits and the audio does correspondingly. Well,
Speaker 1: it's exceptionally hard to break into the audio book best
Speaker 1: seller list with an audio first book. But Meets Can't
Speaker 1: Our Stories, Close Calls did just that. Now we just
Speaker 1: released this is very aggravating. We just released Meetators, Can't
Speaker 1: Fire Stories, Narrow Misses, and more Close Calls. Now we
Speaker 1: have intimate transparency into the sales of this thing. We
Speaker 1: know how it's doing. It very much earned its position. Well,
Speaker 1: let's hear me out. It very much earned its seats,
Speaker 1: but we don't have seats. But carry on, no, you're
Speaker 1: actually no, they're sitting on Duffel bags in the bag
Speaker 1: of man, I'm writing shotguns, I can watch for the
Speaker 1: grouse um and or it had the numbers like it,
Speaker 1: it earned its spot on the list, but it got
Speaker 1: flagged for this reason by The New York Times as
Speaker 1: the best anyone's been able to explain to us there
Speaker 1: was an overconcentration of sales from a particular source. It
Speaker 1: seems as though the overconcentration of sales from a particular
Speaker 1: source was those crazy e's over at Apple. Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: the folks who brought you the iPhone and where you know.
Speaker 1: Historically the vast majority of podcasts or listen to is
Speaker 1: at Apple. Too. Many of our listeners bought their copies
Speaker 1: from this single source. Now, if it's a print book,
Speaker 1: the New York Times will put an asterisk next to
Speaker 1: the title and point out that something fishy has gone on,
Speaker 1: and they'll asterick it like it might have had a
Speaker 1: big single sale or a bulk purchase, or something weird,
Speaker 1: or someone trying to buy their own book onto the
Speaker 1: bestseller list by ordering a ton from a weird bookstore somewhere. Okay,
Speaker 1: I understood, we have no such anomalies, no kind of
Speaker 1: weird sales, no kind of any purchase that would happen
Speaker 1: like our number one place we sold Apple and they
Speaker 1: docked us for it, docked it and because with audio
Speaker 1: they don't do the asterix marker, you just get kicked
Speaker 1: off the list. Mm hmm. What we're gonna do so irritating.
Speaker 1: We need to go and turn around and repair it.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna stick another. We're gonna put I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to do us. We're gonna put our probably
Speaker 1: my favorite story, no offense Clay, no offense taken, probably
Speaker 1: my favorite story from narrownesses and more close calls. We're
Speaker 1: gonna tack it onto the end of the episode. Oh
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, we're gonna put it on here because
Speaker 1: that helps a lot. Now, keep in mind, if you
Speaker 1: heard the camera Kirkconnell's story where the guy shoots his
Speaker 1: body through the fin to save his life, here's the
Speaker 1: story has to do with a guy shooting himself. It
Speaker 1: is a harrowing, very touching story. Instead of a guy
Speaker 1: saving his body's life by shoot him through the fin underwater,
Speaker 1: a guy's dog saves his life. You're gonna hear the
Speaker 1: story and then hopefully you'll be so inspired you'll go
Speaker 1: out and we'll make this October list. Okay, Uh there
Speaker 1: you know when you get this though, there's still hours
Speaker 1: worth the material you haven't heard you were you're just
Speaker 1: getting like a smattering, right, But we're gonna stick that
Speaker 1: on the end of the show here to help move
Speaker 1: that thing along. And another news bit a former podcast guest,
Speaker 1: Duke waste Me who works for First Light. He's been
Speaker 1: on the show before, he's been this show before. Uh
Speaker 1: the dude was out he drew a big horn tag
Speaker 1: dude was out hunting big horns and him and his
Speaker 1: wife they lost their home. There was they have a
Speaker 1: condo and part of the condo complex whole damn thing
Speaker 1: burned to the ground. Everything he had is gone. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've been we've been driving people towards to go fund
Speaker 1: me site. So if you happen to be out there
Speaker 1: and you're you're you remember being uh, you know, doing
Speaker 1: athletics with uh Duke or hunting with Duke, or you
Speaker 1: know Duke from when he used to be a customer
Speaker 1: service rep first Light. He always liked that guy. We
Speaker 1: have a go fund me set up go fund me
Speaker 1: dot com him. Um, it's helped Duke waste and eat
Speaker 1: w A S T E n E Y recover from
Speaker 1: a house fire, go fund me, and we've been to Steve.
Speaker 1: Let me say something about Duke. Can I can I
Speaker 1: give a Can I tell him about Duke just a
Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, So Duke. Duke is like an eccentric, incredible,
Speaker 1: great guy. He's like five seven probably ways about a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty pounds, is an ultra marathon runner, and
Speaker 1: he can run. A former Division one wrestler and he
Speaker 1: he ran track, he was a bull rider, and he
Speaker 1: is an absolute hunter of hunters, the guy and and
Speaker 1: just a great guy. I mean, you can't There's never
Speaker 1: been somebody that met Duke that didn't like him, and
Speaker 1: so it's pretty tragic that he lost his his house.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so just trust me, you'd like Duke
Speaker 1: and you'd want to give him some money. Uh. Moving
Speaker 1: on to the Wyoming Corner Crossing. Thanks for that, Clay.
Speaker 1: Moving on to the Wyoming Corner cross or case update.
Speaker 1: This is interesting part of this deal we had the
Speaker 1: This is also like Duke was a former podcast guest
Speaker 1: We had the guys. If you're not familiar, if somehow
Speaker 1: you haven't been listening to the show and you're just
Speaker 1: catching this one. Now. We've covered extensively, including having like
Speaker 1: the defendants came out from Missouri to be on the podcast,
Speaker 1: the Wyoming corner crossing case where some guys used the
Speaker 1: ladder two cross from one piece of public land onto
Speaker 1: another piece of public land. They had to cross where
Speaker 1: the two set corner sections meet. Never stepped foot on
Speaker 1: private land, but they were in for like some second
Speaker 1: or whatever the hell, however long it takes you to
Speaker 1: jump over a little step ladder. They were in the
Speaker 1: air space of a rancher. Uh, they got criminal, they
Speaker 1: got they got a criminal trial, had to go to
Speaker 1: a jury trial, a criminal jury trial. In the criminal trial,
Speaker 1: they were found not guilty. They were found that, uh,
Speaker 1: no trespassing had occurred. Who Lauren hold On really click
Speaker 1: gotta pass? We just blew passed and desan rogue. So
Speaker 1: get out of the way, Jack, So oh you know
Speaker 1: what here? You know, remind me of the new song
Speaker 1: in a second. But let me finish this corner crossing deal. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hype that song for us even written we listen,
Speaker 1: I gotta get you gotta piss on your post. So
Speaker 1: in the corner cross the case that the defendants came
Speaker 1: on the podcast after they were found not guilty in
Speaker 1: their criminal trial. If you remember back though, remember back
Speaker 1: to O J. Simpson. There was once a famous football
Speaker 1: player the name O. J. Simpson killed his wife in
Speaker 1: a waiter with a knife. And if you remember, he
Speaker 1: had his criminal trial and then when he was acquitted,
Speaker 1: the glove don't fit right, you gotta acquit. He then
Speaker 1: turned around and had his civil trial and he was
Speaker 1: found guilty in the civil trial, and the judge baked
Speaker 1: all this symbolic stuff into like his punishment. And when
Speaker 1: they had the trial and the guilty verdict and all that,
Speaker 1: and it was basically like they're saying, like, you committed
Speaker 1: the crime, now you have to pay. He never paid
Speaker 1: the families the money, but he lost his civil trial.
Speaker 1: The owner of Elk Mountain Ranch and Wyoming, who's got
Speaker 1: a real case of the ass against the corner crossers,
Speaker 1: is now pushing for a civil trial. And this is interesting.
Speaker 1: He is claiming seven million dollars and damages from four
Speaker 1: Missouri hunters who used a step ladder to cross from
Speaker 1: from public land into public land on a surveyed corner
Speaker 1: having never actually stepped foot on his land. That cost
Speaker 1: him seven million and damages. M hmm for them being
Speaker 1: in his airspace seven million. Well you know why. Here's
Speaker 1: why it's seven million in damages. Because they had felt
Speaker 1: as though they had felt as though that ranch and
Speaker 1: all the public land on it was private, and it
Speaker 1: seemed like that because no one could go on it.
Speaker 1: Now they're like, well, now that the public land is public,
Speaker 1: it's not my private land. The private land lost some
Speaker 1: value in their mind because they thought it was valuable
Speaker 1: how they had public land that no one could use.
Speaker 1: And now they're saying the damages. I used to have
Speaker 1: all this extra acres that didn't pay taxes on and
Speaker 1: didn't actually buy but at exclusive to it. Now I
Speaker 1: don't own that. I don't kind of quote own that anymore.
Speaker 1: Any Joe schmuck can go on there and hunt out,
Speaker 1: and that's putting me out. I don't think I had
Speaker 1: heard a really interesting rumor. It hasn't been corroborated that
Speaker 1: I was to be subpoenaed for this um very interesting.
Speaker 1: Now we uh the their legal defense fund, the corner
Speaker 1: Cross is legal defense fund. I'll just tell people this. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's short money right now. There's short some jingle And
Speaker 1: I just was checking some emails, and I know Callaghan,
Speaker 1: our own beloved Ryan Callahan, is fixing to take some
Speaker 1: of the money that we have in our Land Access initiative, Kittie.
Speaker 1: He's doing like a property shopping thing. We're hoping to
Speaker 1: buy land to turn it over for public access. But uh,
Speaker 1: he's hoping to draw a little money from our pool
Speaker 1: to kick in on the legal defense fund. But they're
Speaker 1: a little short and the legal Defense Fund and hoping
Speaker 1: that they don't wind up that it's seven million damages
Speaker 1: for four Missourians having their shoulders go through the air
Speaker 1: over your place for a couple of minutes. I know
Speaker 1: people who've had their house broken into that didn't get
Speaker 1: that kind of damages. Mhm hm. Uh, this is something.
Speaker 1: Chester is gonna be quaking in his little boots back there.
Speaker 1: What do you have on your feet? Chester? Wow, he's
Speaker 1: qua He quaked in his boots so hard as boots
Speaker 1: fell off. Uh. We put out a call for a
Speaker 1: polygraph examiner. We have a lieutenant for the Detroit Police
Speaker 1: Department works in homicide. He's a polygraph examiner for the department.
Speaker 1: He will come out and test people for us. He
Speaker 1: has the equipment. Just let him know. So that's happened.
Speaker 1: What do we what do we test it for? Who
Speaker 1: stole my cooler? Fish at work? And I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: get into this letter. And that's why Chester in his
Speaker 1: boots say something after We got a guy right in
Speaker 1: that he's already solved the mystery based on when we
Speaker 1: discussed in the past. He feels the Chester failed to
Speaker 1: put it in the freezer. Oh, once it rotted, because
Speaker 1: he left it land somewhere. Once it rotted, he dumped
Speaker 1: the rotten contents out through the cooler because this happened
Speaker 1: to him. This happened to him in a different cooler. Git, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he don't know Chester. Yeah, but I wouldn't lie
Speaker 1: about that. Well, we'll find out when you do the
Speaker 1: polygraph about polygraphing. Let me tell what I learned about polygraphing.
Speaker 1: You start off, Chester, You listen up. When this guy comes.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see that he starts out with some real softballs.
Speaker 1: He's gonna be like, what's your name? I'm not very
Speaker 1: good at hitting softballs, Like, is one of your name?
Speaker 1: Is Chester? The molester. Then he'd be like, where'd you
Speaker 1: grow up? They're not your chimman. Where's the fish man?
Speaker 1: And we'll find out. And you know what I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We will tell you. I'm going to
Speaker 1: try a hot tip on how to beat a polygraph.
Speaker 1: He's I'm gonna polygraph this the driver, Yeah right, because
Speaker 1: he was probably one of the disgruntled parties who felt
Speaker 1: like some of that fish was his fish. Steve, I've
Speaker 1: got a question for you some am I a yeah,
Speaker 1: my fish got stolen. I've got a question for you.
Speaker 1: Come look at my freezer. Did you ever grab fish
Speaker 1: out of that freezer? No? Okay, Well then and I'll
Speaker 1: take a polygraph. Yeah okay. Well, so I talked to
Speaker 1: Breathe the other day, who is CEOs assistant exactly the system,
Speaker 1: and she I went in there and dropped stuff off
Speaker 1: in that cooler, and I don't know what else it
Speaker 1: would have been, because it was in that same time
Speaker 1: frame she saw me put it in there. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: polygraph her, She said, Yeah, how certain are you, Bree? Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the other thing. You know who also gonna polygraph
Speaker 1: just just because I know what it's gonna score. It's
Speaker 1: gonna score perfect is I'm bringing my neighbor, Pottery Pat,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna polygraph him because Pottery Pat was with
Speaker 1: me when we discovered the theft. I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, Pat, you don't need to worry about fish.
Speaker 1: Bro I got fish coming out of my ears and
Speaker 1: I take him down to the office to get my fish. Weird,
Speaker 1: you miss you're missing the whole cooler. Yeah, we recovered
Speaker 1: the cooler fish there, but it's empty. Huh, you got chester.
Speaker 1: I can't even eat gestures. Forgot about that one. How
Speaker 1: come you know what I got? Polygraph him about the fish?
Speaker 1: How come you are like? How much? I can't wait?
Speaker 1: He's not allergic to tuna. Yeah, anyways from Detroit homicide dude,
Speaker 1: this guy is gonna be one of them hard boiled
Speaker 1: detective types. And he's before before he comes. I want
Speaker 1: to tell you in private, my my hot tip on
Speaker 1: how to be a polygraph. I can't say it on
Speaker 1: the air man because I don't want all these people
Speaker 1: learn it. I don't Steve, you have to take that
Speaker 1: test too, absolutely, yes, then Clay can't give you any tips. Oh,
Speaker 1: everybody in this tell me the tip right now. Well,
Speaker 1: if we all know, then it will all be equal
Speaker 1: because they kind of, like my understanding is they kind
Speaker 1: of fine tuning. Okay, so they ask you a softball
Speaker 1: questions that are the truth, and so they get a
Speaker 1: baseline reading of your of your lie because your name
Speaker 1: is it's in your voice and something about it bumps up.
Speaker 1: You know, there's like a baseline. I don't even This
Speaker 1: guy says that you hold a water bottle under the
Speaker 1: table and water bottle and when you tell the truth,
Speaker 1: you squeeze the water bottle so that like intensity comes
Speaker 1: out of you even when you're telling the truth unseen like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you, I got graphic diameters. So I go.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukele, and I squeezed it. You
Speaker 1: see my forearm flag my name is Clay Nukeles. That
Speaker 1: his gums kind of received. Here's a hot. If you're
Speaker 1: giving a polygraph exam, make sure they don't have a
Speaker 1: water bottle under the table. That's a hot. That's how
Speaker 1: polygraphic standards can beat people who are beating the polygraph.
Speaker 1: The guy who who told me that that technique was
Speaker 1: used to win a big Buck contest where a polygraphing used.
Speaker 1: Moving on, let's break from this company. I gotta get
Speaker 1: into this like the whole pit toilet thing. Who the compost? Well, no,
Speaker 1: the guy that this story is really just blown out
Speaker 1: of proportions, the guy who got stuck in the pit toilet.
Speaker 1: I'll bring everybody up speed a lot of major developments.
Speaker 1: We have a very exciting guest coming out of the show.
Speaker 1: Really is involved? Really coming on the Evolved? Did they
Speaker 1: shower up before they can come on the show? We're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to answer a lot of questions about this,
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, today we we uh, Clay, you
Speaker 1: sing the first, you sing the chorus as much of
Speaker 1: the course as we have, and then we'll all do
Speaker 1: the course and so people can get the course twice. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, do they need any context for how this
Speaker 1: song was written? Uh? Yeah, okay. So if you're approaching
Speaker 1: an area that you think there might be a bear in,
Speaker 1: it's customary to yell stuff, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: people are at a loss for what to yell, and
Speaker 1: you'll just yell hey bear. Yeah. Well one time we
Speaker 1: had had a run in with a bear. And then
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to scare the bear. The bear is already
Speaker 1: in amongst us. People are trying to scare the bear
Speaker 1: by yelling hay bear. And I said, it's stop saying bear.
Speaker 1: Unless you see the bears. I can't tell if people
Speaker 1: are like, hey a bear, hay bear. So I was like,
Speaker 1: no more hay bear, Um, just whatever, go whoa yeah
Speaker 1: yeah uh so. But today we're doing we were doing
Speaker 1: hay bear to to approach a kill site. We're approaching
Speaker 1: to kill site where we had stashed meat, and we
Speaker 1: were doing hey bear, just to give a bear a
Speaker 1: chance to run off. Yeah, and Clay we started to
Speaker 1: write a song about it, and Clay came up with
Speaker 1: just a Ripper, Just a ripper, great little jingle, and
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of the parts of the song,
Speaker 1: but Clay kind of came up with the what do
Speaker 1: you call that in a song? It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the chorus. Course. Yeah, of course, Okay, Clay hit him
Speaker 1: with the course. So we're walking, we're walking down the
Speaker 1: hill me steven Chester, and we said, hey bear, what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do when we come and take that moose
Speaker 1: meat away from you? Hey bear? What you gotta do?
Speaker 1: From d what you're gonna do? We take that moves
Speaker 1: meat away from me? And then I wrote a really
Speaker 1: really great part that they're trying to cut out of
Speaker 1: the song because they're trying to cut me out. So
Speaker 1: you can keep the guts in hide, but you can't
Speaker 1: have the meat. I got family to feet, dude. The
Speaker 1: sun is coming up and the super cubs are coming down.
Speaker 1: I gotta get back to Mama. We're headed for town. Bear,
Speaker 1: what you gotta do when we take that away from you?
Speaker 1: And then we did have the one that we said, hey, Bear,
Speaker 1: I'll make a deal with you. You can keep the
Speaker 1: guts and hide, and that's as far as we go.
Speaker 1: I'll make it with you. I'm gonna sing it if
Speaker 1: we get it all together. I'm gonna sing it in
Speaker 1: Moose Hunt. I mean that that that's what's about. If
Speaker 1: I have time to write the rest. So I've never
Speaker 1: played an instrument in my life, and I can't sing.
Speaker 1: I'm joking. If Chester has time to work out with
Speaker 1: Clay Chess is gonna play it when he opens for
Speaker 1: Trampled by Turtles in Atlanta, Georgia on December one, tenth
Speaker 1: Buckhead December one, six days before the Pearl Harbor anniversary. Chester.
Speaker 1: So you're sitting there saying, uh, you know to your husband,
Speaker 1: Oh you know, Pearl Harbor anniversaries coming up in six days.
Speaker 1: You'll be like, oh ship. Chester was playing at night
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. He's opening for Trampled by Turtles and he's
Speaker 1: a French dan. Uh, he's got Chester. There are a
Speaker 1: lot in Chester. Up to forty five minutes. I told
Speaker 1: Chester about the curse of the opening act. I have
Speaker 1: been trying to implore Chester the grouse you see it.
Speaker 1: I didn't see it up. Yeah, they switched over from
Speaker 1: the other side since a couple of years ago. Uh, Chester,
Speaker 1: I was telling them this. I didn't. I said, I said,
Speaker 1: nothing personal, right, yeah, no, yeah, you said that before
Speaker 1: you went into this. I said, we're sitting a seek tent,
Speaker 1: which usually means it's very personal. It's very person it's tight,
Speaker 1: it's warm, it's tight, a lot of wet clothes drying out.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot of steam in the air. And
Speaker 1: I said to Chester, in this uh, warm, steaming environment,
Speaker 1: I said, Chester, nothing personal, buddy, but and I hate
Speaker 1: to say it to you, Chester. Remember I said all this,
Speaker 1: like yeah, and people aren't there for the opening act.
Speaker 1: Some are maybe just my mom and dad, but most ain't.
Speaker 1: And what you don't want to do no, no, what
Speaker 1: what you said was a great descriptor of it. You
Speaker 1: said people typically have the attitude of just endure in
Speaker 1: the first act of live music, waiting for it to start.
Speaker 1: Just they're just there, you know, they're just enduring it.
Speaker 1: Like when I went I just recently got to go
Speaker 1: see Chappelle, but he was doing this thing with He's
Speaker 1: doing this thing with it was this thing with John Mayer.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting there waiting for Chappelle, but I listened
Speaker 1: to John Mayer sing songs. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I want to get to the Chapelle part, and I'm like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: and my wife's like, oh, I just love him, so
Speaker 1: you know, so I never got to my advice. My
Speaker 1: advice was six songs. Keep it tight, keep it because
Speaker 1: you know what they're gonna give you the ben for
Speaker 1: the doubt. No, I like that advice, Steve, keep it tight.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna be like, um, you could have people
Speaker 1: won over at at twenty four minutes that you've really
Speaker 1: really lost at forty five minutes. Just professional advice. We've
Speaker 1: covered diminishing returns. You gotta find that sweet spot. We've
Speaker 1: covered publishing. You know what I'm gonna try to do.
Speaker 1: Here's what we'll try to set up between now and then.
Speaker 1: We'll try to get a call in. Here's what are
Speaker 1: you comfortable with this? I don't know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 1: We'll get, we'll get, we'll get We'll get Luke to
Speaker 1: call in to the podcast, and we'll just put the
Speaker 1: question to Luke. Yeah, this is good if you agree
Speaker 1: to go with what he says. But so, how do
Speaker 1: you feel that forty five minutes if you just just
Speaker 1: want Mike drop and walk off the stage? He gets up,
Speaker 1: he leaves them hot and bothered, and he walks off.
Speaker 1: And well, and you you also advised him to play
Speaker 1: strongly on his his his true authentic Wisconsin roots, like
Speaker 1: just stay true to bear song. Okay, use carlt. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing about the pit toilet deal. And this
Speaker 1: is where it really gets rich. After we got the
Speaker 1: after we covered the mysterious case of a man who
Speaker 1: dropped his phone into a vault toilet at a fishing
Speaker 1: access site in Montana, something stripped down. Get this, He's
Speaker 1: stripped down buck naked, okay, and climbed down into the
Speaker 1: vault where he got stuck. Oh I read this littlemportant detail.
Speaker 1: I'd say his phone fell in there. Yeah, totally naked,
Speaker 1: nothing between him and the lord except the house. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna well, uh down in the pit toilet and
Speaker 1: he was rescued. Now we have we put out that
Speaker 1: we really were dying to get anyone we can on
Speaker 1: um to cover this more thoroughly important news item, and
Speaker 1: we have a phenomenal podcast guest teed up. People are
Speaker 1: gonna be on the edge of their sea is it
Speaker 1: the guy who fell into the edge of their seats
Speaker 1: to get it when they hear this, when they hear
Speaker 1: this harrowing account of being stuck in and being stuck
Speaker 1: in a fishing access toilet vault. And we got an
Speaker 1: email on If you go on my Instagram at Stephen Ronelle,
Speaker 1: you'll find a very intriguing picture of a young woman,
Speaker 1: a cheery young woman half in and half out of
Speaker 1: a toilet like the toilet top add about her waistline,
Speaker 1: and she's trying to fish her phone out with her feet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would They were able to recover the phone with
Speaker 1: a grabber, as they described they found someone with a grabber.
Speaker 1: We also got a sign from a humpy road. We
Speaker 1: got a sign from a pit toilet thing and handed
Speaker 1: though where it's like things you're not supposed to do
Speaker 1: in the pit toilet, and one of them include someone
Speaker 1: standing there with a fishing rod fishing in the toilet.
Speaker 1: And it came from a guy who the joke came
Speaker 1: from when they found a guy who was trying to
Speaker 1: use a fishing rod and awaited hook recover his phone
Speaker 1: out of the pit toilet man. Okay, we get a
Speaker 1: letter from northwest New Jersey where they have in one
Speaker 1: of he doesn't say it, but he says it's one
Speaker 1: of New Jersey's best wallet lakes. Uh, there's a state
Speaker 1: park and they have a car top boat launch so
Speaker 1: not the kind of boat launchry back trailer into the
Speaker 1: water where you can unload canoes and small craft. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's Walleye Links. And they have a pit toilet, a
Speaker 1: state park and a pit toilet there. Now here's where
Speaker 1: this gets interfesting. This individual's friend is a local fire fighter.
Speaker 1: They get a call on their system about a man
Speaker 1: stuck in the our house. They think it's a joke
Speaker 1: and don't respond. They think it's a prank call man.
Speaker 1: The call comes across again and again, at which point
Speaker 1: they're like, really, maybe a guy un They run down
Speaker 1: there with their fire truck equipment. They find a grown
Speaker 1: man stark naked, stuck up to his chest in the
Speaker 1: seat based portion of the toilet. Why the nakedness He
Speaker 1: tried to want to get his clothes off fishing access sites.
Speaker 1: They question him what happened. He says he was attacked
Speaker 1: by another man and stuck in them. Shouldn't laugh, that's
Speaker 1: let's listen. Why did this seem fish you to the
Speaker 1: first responders, Well, his clothes were folded up on the
Speaker 1: floor and his phone was on top of the stack
Speaker 1: of clothes. There's a woman pacing around out in the
Speaker 1: parking lot. They asked her if she has any relation
Speaker 1: to the man in the thing and if she knows
Speaker 1: anything about it. She says, he called me to help him.
Speaker 1: But where did I just say? His phone was on
Speaker 1: the top of the clothes. He doesn't have access to
Speaker 1: his phone. He's start naked in the in the toilet
Speaker 1: bolt m they called before they loom him up with
Speaker 1: warm water and dish soap. Still cannot free him. They
Speaker 1: then pry the seat off the vault top and he
Speaker 1: goes into an ambulance. Where this is from a firefighter.
Speaker 1: They're like, bring out the heavy duty drama. He goes
Speaker 1: into an ambulance wearing the toilet seat. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a cartoon. Well, here's where the story gets interesting. It
Speaker 1: already is. Further questioning. Further questioning reveals that this man
Speaker 1: is a fetishist oh, and that the curious woman pacing
Speaker 1: around was involved in this man's fetish Oh. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it because it's a family program. So
Speaker 1: point being the guy says, to sum up, you're just
Speaker 1: like man be where everyone gets stuck in the toilet ball.
Speaker 1: So it might be. It might be the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where we need to bring the polygraph to this interview. Wait,
Speaker 1: he's coming to them. No, no, no, no, that's a
Speaker 1: guy in New Jersey. This is just a wet Yeah.
Speaker 1: Give us a road up day, Lauren. We got the
Speaker 1: law pulling somebody over up ahead of us. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: probably us. Uh, they're gonna pull us over. No, No,
Speaker 1: we're good. That dealta junctions. Last sign I saw thirty
Speaker 1: seven miles in our fuel to emptiest as Sam ahead
Speaker 1: of us, maybe you should Sam's ahead of us, she
Speaker 1: could tow us. Let's see let down because there's a
Speaker 1: get some better mph dang Man. Very intriguing story. A
Speaker 1: couple of corrections. Dobs and Iowa. We had someone a
Speaker 1: lot of corrections of stuff that I screwed up and
Speaker 1: other people screwed up. I kind of want to get
Speaker 1: to doves I always had. We were talking the other
Speaker 1: day about how Iowa for a long time didn't have
Speaker 1: a dove season, and we were wondering if they had
Speaker 1: gotten themselves a dove season going. And someone said, you know,
Speaker 1: Idaho has had a third Sorry, Iowa, my bad has
Speaker 1: had a duve season since so starting an Iowa got
Speaker 1: got their dove season put in place, and they've been
Speaker 1: having great. Uh. They've been having great duck hunts since then,
Speaker 1: barring a bunch of emotionally charged reactions to the I'm
Speaker 1: distracted by the law enforcement action, so that that that's correction.
Speaker 1: We we questioned whether they ever got it. They've had it.
Speaker 1: They've had it for over a decade. M here's another one,
Speaker 1: and this is one I caught. Someone said, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I didn't feel like jumping on him. We
Speaker 1: guests said this, I didn't feel like jump in their
Speaker 1: case about it. But I even knew it was wrong.
Speaker 1: The size of a snake, that it's a myth that
Speaker 1: a small snake has more. It's a myth that that
Speaker 1: it's like getting zapped by a small snake is more deadly,
Speaker 1: more venomous, because they like can't control. There's like this
Speaker 1: thing that they can't control how much venom they're giving you,
Speaker 1: and an older one can control. And so getting zapped
Speaker 1: by a young rattlesnake, he's he can't she doesn't have
Speaker 1: a good shut off valve and gives you more venom.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to that. That's a wives tale. And I
Speaker 1: was wrong about that. Another thing you talked about me
Speaker 1: being wrong about is I we were talking about someone's
Speaker 1: bringing up if you go to change your motor oil
Speaker 1: and if you pour your used motor oil out in
Speaker 1: the dirt, are you just putting it back where it
Speaker 1: came from, meaning it came out of the earth, and
Speaker 1: so you're just putting it back into the earth where
Speaker 1: it belongs. Yeah, of course that all right. And I
Speaker 1: made a thing like if I take rattlesnake venom and
Speaker 1: put it on your food. Uh Am, I just putting
Speaker 1: it back where it belongs because it'll get back into
Speaker 1: the earth. And someone said, uh, pointed out that I
Speaker 1: might be that's very faulty logic. And he points out
Speaker 1: the snake venom would most likely not impact a person
Speaker 1: if ingested. Now that might warrant. That's not that's more
Speaker 1: of a call for expertise. He doesn't say, He's just
Speaker 1: saying that that logic is faulty. And it's like it's
Speaker 1: meant to be administered into muscle tissue, right, and that
Speaker 1: you ingesting rattlesnake venom, right, whatever. So it would be
Speaker 1: great if a snake expert, I imagine to be something
Speaker 1: that would be right up. Helfle finger. Would you know
Speaker 1: a helffle finger got kicked off Instagram? You know, he
Speaker 1: keeps saying he doesn't know why, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: He doesn't He does a lot of shooting tournaments, like
Speaker 1: they kicked him off for shooting legally shooting his gun
Speaker 1: at a shooting range. I don't understand. It's horrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think he's trying to find out what his account question.
Speaker 1: They banned his account. M hm, but havelf a finger
Speaker 1: Instagram was heppal finger um who knows everything about everything?
Speaker 1: I bet you he can answer to us. Why uh
Speaker 1: if if like, what is up with ingesting, rattlesnake venom
Speaker 1: clay you know a guy that knows? Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: we need Dr Chris Jenkins from Georgia to answer that
Speaker 1: for us. Here's a thing, herpetologist, do you want to
Speaker 1: hear this? So a guy ruining um. Snake size plays
Speaker 1: almost zero role on how bad a snake bite can be.
Speaker 1: The largest role and how bad a snake by is.
Speaker 1: This is I'm quoting from the person that wrote in
Speaker 1: Very Informed Gentleman. The largest role and how bad a
Speaker 1: snake by is depends on when the snake last fed. Hm.
Speaker 1: If you are bitten by a snake that fed within
Speaker 1: the last day, then you get almost no venom. And
Speaker 1: if the snake hasn't fed in a week or longer,
Speaker 1: you will get a very nasty bite. That's good to know. Man. Again,
Speaker 1: I know we're taking a vote of whether that is
Speaker 1: always true. Well, you got herpetolog just gonna come and
Speaker 1: tell us. Can you get us feedback from the first
Speaker 1: because when they you know, I just don't think that's
Speaker 1: uh well, I'm I'm not answering because we're doing corrections
Speaker 1: stuff we got wrong. I need to know because I
Speaker 1: got a bad snake problem at the fourteen Steve, Well,
Speaker 1: what's that? I got a bad snake problem at fourteen
Speaker 1: on the river plate? Kind of snakes? You got dirt rattlers,
Speaker 1: i'd say, western divingback like real bad. Really, so I
Speaker 1: need to know if I'm feeding them, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: as bad, you know, if your feed a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Here's a here, here's one of you guys. Listen, you
Speaker 1: guys got paid careful attention. This is like I want this.
Speaker 1: I like this to be like a quick panel discussion.
Speaker 1: You know, I caught this this news stories all over
Speaker 1: the place. But there's a moose draw okay in the
Speaker 1: British Columbia Cariboo region. Caribou not spelled like how we
Speaker 1: spell Cariboo. We spell Cariboo c A r I b
Speaker 1: o U. This is Cariboo c A r I b oo.
Speaker 1: So British Columbia's Cariboo region. They had a moose draw, okay,
Speaker 1: and this guy's party, him and his friends were very
Speaker 1: excited to have drawn moose chat tags and they're chosen
Speaker 1: area first year they ever went into the lottery. The
Speaker 1: BC government had increased tag allotments this year and they
Speaker 1: put in and they drew recently and he's here's these articles.
Speaker 1: These are articles that people have sent me, but I
Speaker 1: haven't heard anybody impact from that. Recently, a couple of
Speaker 1: articles have come out regarding the indigenous nations of the area.
Speaker 1: So the first people's nations of this particular area in
Speaker 1: British Columbia asking hunters not to come and hunt in
Speaker 1: that area. Their claim is that the government's population studies
Speaker 1: are incorrect and the tag amount should not have been
Speaker 1: increased this season and there's not enough for them to
Speaker 1: hunt and other people to hunt too. However, he goes
Speaker 1: on to say, drawing these tags seems like it is
Speaker 1: a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience something amazing
Speaker 1: and grow as hunters ourselves. Having the request to abandon
Speaker 1: our tags definitely feels like a dampener on the situation.
Speaker 1: I would be interested to hear your opinions on where
Speaker 1: the responsibility lies, whether it falls on the hunter who
Speaker 1: drew a tag or the government who issued them. I
Speaker 1: don't even think of it that way. I would think
Speaker 1: of it this way. Your governmental game management agent, see
Speaker 1: is the law of the land. Yeah, they issued you
Speaker 1: a legal tag. If you wish to go, I would go.
Speaker 1: I would not bow to any kind of public pressure
Speaker 1: campaign to make you feel unwelcome in doing something that
Speaker 1: your government is allotted you the opportunity in a way
Speaker 1: to draw the tag to go moves I would not listen.
Speaker 1: If there's not a suitable population there, some of might
Speaker 1: go like, oh, they got it all wrong. Who better
Speaker 1: to know? Then It's like, let's say they do have it.
Speaker 1: Let's say let's say they're off a little bit. Whose
Speaker 1: work is? Whose work do you view if you view
Speaker 1: it from like a standard contemporary Western scientific based principle
Speaker 1: of of of game allocation and wildlife counts, who do
Speaker 1: you think is doing a better job to determine that
Speaker 1: they're wrong? No, well, I would go absolutely, I would go.
Speaker 1: I think that if a person were trying to be
Speaker 1: super responsible and look at both sides of it, I
Speaker 1: mean I would want to say where where is where
Speaker 1: is the the indigenous nation getting its information biological information?
Speaker 1: And say why are your studies different than their's like,
Speaker 1: where is the credential for this? You know what, why
Speaker 1: do you feel that that? How did it all sun
Speaker 1: be that we have three miles till in Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: three miles to go. That's according to the computer in
Speaker 1: the car. We're probably that according to Steve, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I'm just saying it would be interesting to
Speaker 1: see why these people are saying this, like what is that?
Speaker 1: Because why would they want to deal with more people
Speaker 1: in the area? Right right, yeah, I mean we we
Speaker 1: can assume that if there's a legal play, that there's
Speaker 1: a legal play that they're gonna make. I'd make making
Speaker 1: the courts. I wouldn't make it with this like don't
Speaker 1: make it with this request to people and like ruin
Speaker 1: their time. And I'm and I'd be very very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea of I'd be very uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: idea of sorting out in a sort of uh like
Speaker 1: like bring in some kind of like historical context into
Speaker 1: sort of who gets and doesn't get to go hunting
Speaker 1: the area, and that you're supposed to not only go
Speaker 1: to your game management agency, but also go and check
Speaker 1: and make sure it's cool with everybody else before you
Speaker 1: go hunting. You know what I beg there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people in Canada they wish you didn't hunt at all.
Speaker 1: Should you listen to them? If you heard it? Call
Speaker 1: animal rights people have asked hunters to not go hunting.
Speaker 1: Would you be like, oh, I better not go right?
Speaker 1: Of course not. Of course someone doesn't want you to go.
Speaker 1: At the Fox Roadhouse convenience story where gas is available
Speaker 1: before Delta junction. Yeah, we're back in the mentalis and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: eight dollars of gallons. Alright, we're back full tank of gas.
Speaker 1: That was a hell of a gas station. That was
Speaker 1: a hell of a gas station. Yeah. So the first
Speaker 1: thing I knew, the first thing I'll tell you the
Speaker 1: first thing I liked about it is we walked in
Speaker 1: and I saw that there was a guy putting on
Speaker 1: a for youngsters, putting on a trapping seminar like you
Speaker 1: saw a brochure for brochure. It was for area youngsters
Speaker 1: who wanted to earn a little extra jingle um. And
Speaker 1: he was gonna talk about Martin Links and Wolverine. And
Speaker 1: then we got to talking with the woman who ran
Speaker 1: the place, and they had a lot of furs for sale.
Speaker 1: They had some interesting tax basically, basically it was it
Speaker 1: was a nice little gas station and they had a
Speaker 1: very strong display of what I would call p DT
Speaker 1: public display of tax germy. And so on the Barriers
Speaker 1: podcast we did a whole podcast road trip dedicated to
Speaker 1: p DT. We went around looking for gas stations that
Speaker 1: still had taxidermy displayed in the But this place had
Speaker 1: a had a brown bear, a full body musk ox,
Speaker 1: a full body bison, full body bear, full body wolverine,
Speaker 1: had doll sheep, had lots of furs for sale. It
Speaker 1: was a great store, great store, but hit a little
Speaker 1: detail near here they are there used to be, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a military presence here, but it was it was
Speaker 1: heated up for quite a while. Uh. And prior to that,
Speaker 1: they had introduced bison that actually came out of Montana.
Speaker 1: They put them on a train in Montana, took them
Speaker 1: by rail. I can't here how this went like, took
Speaker 1: him by rail to Seattle, then put them on a
Speaker 1: ship and sent them by a ship to Whittier. And
Speaker 1: from Whittier they went on a train. Eventually went on
Speaker 1: a truck and they turned them loose around Delta Junction,
Speaker 1: which is a hundred miles away, by the way, and
Speaker 1: I know they had a lot of pictures in there.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of pictures in there from the
Speaker 1: Delta hunts. You know, you can still draw a tag
Speaker 1: to hunt those bison in Delta Junction. Now, when I
Speaker 1: did the Copper River buffalo hunt, what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: heard once the military started establishing a stronger presence, they
Speaker 1: had too many buffalo and they're trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of something. So they just dumped some here and there.
Speaker 1: They put some in this Farewell area, and they one
Speaker 1: day put them on a truck and drove a bunch
Speaker 1: of them out to a place called the Salanta Road
Speaker 1: at the Slant of Mine and turned some twenty of
Speaker 1: them out. I can't remember now how may many they
Speaker 1: turned out. And they just did what's called a hot release.
Speaker 1: So if you're doing a wildlife releases, you're here cold
Speaker 1: and hot. A cold release is where you take animals
Speaker 1: and bring them to a release site. Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: you're trying to establish them in some mountain range. You know,
Speaker 1: you bring them out there and put them in and
Speaker 1: enclosure on site mm hmm, and feed him there and
Speaker 1: get them used to the area. Okay. And then one
Speaker 1: day you leave the door open, okay, and they they
Speaker 1: kind of one day, Oh they can wander out, but
Speaker 1: they're already sort of they feel safe, they've been around there.
Speaker 1: They're more inclined to stay local. A hot release is
Speaker 1: you just bring something in and you're like, just drop
Speaker 1: the tailgate, drop the tailgate. They did a release near
Speaker 1: the slant of mine, and then they lost track of
Speaker 1: those animals for a decade. People thought they uh died,
Speaker 1: got eaten by wolves, whatever. And eventually they turn up
Speaker 1: hundred miles away. And that's that Copper hunt that I
Speaker 1: wrote about in my Buffalo book, and that um, the
Speaker 1: Copper River hunt. And then you still apply for those
Speaker 1: permits today. And that's all out of this. So in
Speaker 1: that gas station, all those that whole lot of room,
Speaker 1: that whole room full of dead buffalo land and the snow,
Speaker 1: that's all Alaska hunts. That's neat uh hell of a
Speaker 1: gas station. Clay, Why don't you wan, don't you take
Speaker 1: over from the back of the van and uh tell
Speaker 1: people a little about what we've been up to and
Speaker 1: some of your impressions of it. Yeah, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you know you need be going into like
Speaker 1: harrowing detail, but just yeah, what what what do you
Speaker 1: think about? So we've so we have been in Alaska
Speaker 1: on a ten day Alaska Yukon moose hunt. The road
Speaker 1: Kyle calf unit, Oh, that would be bad coming through
Speaker 1: that one shield. Wow. We got a cow and a calf.
Speaker 1: We got a guy stopped in the road for us,
Speaker 1: big running across the Wow. So we've we've been in
Speaker 1: Alaska for ten days. We just no longer. Well, we've
Speaker 1: been in Alaska for let me bring that bowl out
Speaker 1: twelve days. And uh, yeah, we've been listening to that
Speaker 1: for twelve days. It's a good call. That's not the man.
Speaker 1: They'll bring them out. So this was this was a
Speaker 1: true wilderness hunt. We not wilderness with the capital W,
Speaker 1: wilderness with a lowercase W. We flew back in and uh,
Speaker 1: we're dropped in an area that is known to have moose.
Speaker 1: Is not a guided hunt, so as to do it
Speaker 1: yourself hunt. Steve Ranella and I both had tags in
Speaker 1: our pockets. Um and I have Actually you're seeing deltas
Speaker 1: a hunter miles, Well, the hell you're talking abouts I have.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that I've not moose hunted though I
Speaker 1: have had an Alaska moose tag before. Once while I
Speaker 1: was on a brown bear hunt, I had a moose tag.
Speaker 1: But but so we were dropped camp, dropped out, we
Speaker 1: backcountry camp for ten days. We would wake up every day,
Speaker 1: walk out to different calling points on the mountain. This
Speaker 1: you hunt these moose during the moose rut, and so
Speaker 1: you're trying to sound like a cow moose called these
Speaker 1: moose in Steve is an experienced moose hunter, has been
Speaker 1: on lots of I mean you've you've been on lots
Speaker 1: of hunts. I've been on like I've been on a
Speaker 1: number of moose kills over the year, been on moose hunts.
Speaker 1: But I have a lot to learn. So basically, you're
Speaker 1: you're put into an area and that the challenges that
Speaker 1: you're running into when you're moose hunting is that you
Speaker 1: cannot realistically transport that moose much more than a mile
Speaker 1: from your camp and that could be broken. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of variables, but in general, most people you're
Speaker 1: trying because you've got to haul this potentially pound animal
Speaker 1: back to your camp, back to the how whatever your
Speaker 1: transport is. So, whether you're hunting on a river, we
Speaker 1: were hunting in a flying area, so we would had
Speaker 1: to get all this moose meat back to an air strip.
Speaker 1: Can I cut him in from him? Yeah? I didn't
Speaker 1: need to ask. Really, Le'll just do it. I just
Speaker 1: want to I quickly want to touch on this this
Speaker 1: moose pack in situation. That's because you got you got
Speaker 1: a bunch of camera guys willing to carry meat. They're
Speaker 1: not willing. You gotta gotta cajole them into it. I like,
Speaker 1: you guys are don't know about three miles. You haven't
Speaker 1: heard what I'm gonna say. Do I need to stop
Speaker 1: this van? Stop this van to come back there? Hey
Speaker 1: stop the man. Let me tell you something. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you. The most I've moved one is
Speaker 1: we moved to bowl three miles. But that was five
Speaker 1: people and it was downhill. Oh okay, that's report detail.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like bad downhill. It was like nice,
Speaker 1: not like degree in client, which would be misery. It's
Speaker 1: like a you know, downta And it's so it really
Speaker 1: matters in terms of walking conditions. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times moose are in really boggy areas or you're on
Speaker 1: you're out on tussocks like tussocky tundra, and oh it
Speaker 1: can be horrible walking on And so I would say though,
Speaker 1: I would say that in general, in general moose hunting circles,
Speaker 1: if you went out and found a hundred good moose
Speaker 1: seasoned moose hunters, I would say that, uh, you would
Speaker 1: probably find a general consensus of people that are they're
Speaker 1: willing to move them maybe about a mile or so,
Speaker 1: but no one's gonna like it. I have a friend
Speaker 1: that used to guide moose and sheep. He is hard
Speaker 1: to think of how hard hunting doll sheep is. The
Speaker 1: miles you gotta put on, you're walking ten miles, fifteen
Speaker 1: miles a day. It's like it's it's brutal. He quit
Speaker 1: moose hunting. M hmm because he said, and I'll quote him,
Speaker 1: he said, I am never gonna move one of those
Speaker 1: swamp donkeys again. And he said to me, every hunter
Speaker 1: you book, it is all about how he's gonna help
Speaker 1: you pack that moose. He goes every single time they
Speaker 1: make a half trip, and you take six and a
Speaker 1: half loads. Was that buck? But so I just want
Speaker 1: to give a little that's just put an electro meat
Speaker 1: on the bone. In terms of moose packing. That's a
Speaker 1: real consideration when you're that was new to me in
Speaker 1: the in the when you're hunting an animal, this big
Speaker 1: the first thing you said when you beheld one as
Speaker 1: you said, that is bigger than my mule. Hey for real?
Speaker 1: So well, we we're cutting to the chase. No no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no, we could have found one. Okay, well
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that. I'll come back
Speaker 1: to that. But so so, basically, for for for ten days,
Speaker 1: Steve and I hunted. We would sometimes hunt together, sometimes
Speaker 1: we split up. I went to different calling points, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to hit the moose rut when the moose
Speaker 1: responsive to cow calls into raking. Essentially, there's two types
Speaker 1: of calls that you're doing. You're raking with basically to
Speaker 1: sound like a like a bull raking his horns. You're right.
Speaker 1: I have seen people rake with canoe paddles. I've seen
Speaker 1: people rake with a fiberglass bullhorn. I've seen people rake
Speaker 1: with a caribou antler. I've seen people rake with a
Speaker 1: dried moose scapula mm hm. But never have I raked
Speaker 1: with something I like as much as an empty one
Speaker 1: court motor oil plastic motor oil can with the bottom
Speaker 1: cut off. I don't know how I feel about it first,
Speaker 1: So so what what Steve did was and he was
Speaker 1: shown this by a gentleman that we met, um Well,
Speaker 1: a bush pilot who doesn't look heavy stuff in his plane.
Speaker 1: I was walking around the hunk apply when he's like,
Speaker 1: tell you do with that? He didn't want that thing
Speaker 1: in his plane. Took a pocket knife and cut the
Speaker 1: bottom off of a like a valveoline oil can or
Speaker 1: not canned oil bottle, and then Steve stuck about an
Speaker 1: eight inch sapling into the nozzle and basically had an
Speaker 1: oil an oil bottle with a handle, and you would
Speaker 1: use that to rake. And it sat that that oil
Speaker 1: bottle sounds like the horns of a of a moose
Speaker 1: raking against the trees. And what we learned over the
Speaker 1: oh yeah, if we had windows in the back of
Speaker 1: this van. We don't have windows back here about it.
Speaker 1: But so you're calling your your your female moose calling
Speaker 1: and you're raking. And basically that's what we did for
Speaker 1: for ten days. And we had very little response to
Speaker 1: our calling for much of our time. And it's been
Speaker 1: told us. And what we saw was that the rut
Speaker 1: was an odd display in terms of timing of when
Speaker 1: things really started kicking off. And uh, we were seeing
Speaker 1: plenty of bulls. We were seeing some good bulls. They
Speaker 1: weren't responding to our calls, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: would say, we why didn't you just go to them? Steve,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk to him about why you
Speaker 1: wouldn't just go to a bull that would be in
Speaker 1: a place that we would see. Because when I message
Speaker 1: and reached a few people back home, I said, man,
Speaker 1: we've been watching a bull a mile away, and their
Speaker 1: first response was get him, go get him. Of course
Speaker 1: that's what I tell him. I be like, what are
Speaker 1: you guys lazy? Yeah, but why couldn't we do that?
Speaker 1: You're dealing in um if you're not familiar with with
Speaker 1: hunting in Alaska. Uh, well, I'll let me starting that's
Speaker 1: all by saying I'll put it this way. Um, My
Speaker 1: brother Danny lives in Alaska, and whenever he comes down
Speaker 1: to hang around in Montana, he's always just blown away
Speaker 1: by walking around in dry grasslands and he'll threaten to
Speaker 1: move down to Montana or Wyoming now and then, as
Speaker 1: he puts it, to just get a break from the
Speaker 1: wet ass. Bro. Yeah, you're dealing in There's there's a
Speaker 1: very low and interior Alaska. This is not an area
Speaker 1: where I'm an expert, but I've just been around quite
Speaker 1: a bit. For someone who doesn't live here, I've been around,
Speaker 1: like I've had a great fortune to experience a lot
Speaker 1: of parts of the state. In the interior, there's a
Speaker 1: very low biodiversity. I was explaining to this I think
Speaker 1: this morning or yesterday or something where you can learn
Speaker 1: like six trees and shrubs and seem like a vegetation
Speaker 1: master because you got there are many species of willow,
Speaker 1: but you got willow, you got dwarf birch, you got aspen, right,
Speaker 1: you got older okay um, and you got you know,
Speaker 1: like a you got like high bush and low bush, blueberry, cranberry.
Speaker 1: But you have a lot of shrub and then you
Speaker 1: got spruce stands. But the shrubs that are here, the willow,
Speaker 1: the dwarf birch, the young aspen, particular stuff that comes
Speaker 1: in after a burn. It's just thick and you'll always
Speaker 1: look at it. If you're flying over the country, you
Speaker 1: guys like, oh, I'm gonna run over there and run
Speaker 1: down there and go through that until you get in it.
Speaker 1: A lot of times from the area, you're like, what
Speaker 1: it must be like way steep. You're thinking it's probably wasteep.
Speaker 1: It's not man, you it's it's it's eight ft high,
Speaker 1: it's ten feet high, it's twelve feet high. And for
Speaker 1: a lot of it you're walking through it, imparting it
Speaker 1: with your hands. Yeah, you're making it. You're you're You're
Speaker 1: just you're walking. It's like you're doing the breaststroke. You're
Speaker 1: going like your hands are out, you spread, you walk through.
Speaker 1: Your hands are spread, you walk through. But there's there's
Speaker 1: topography here where we're at. It's it's not steep. There's
Speaker 1: some steep parts, but there's topography. There's hills, and there
Speaker 1: are little open pockets in the brush here and narrow okay,
Speaker 1: Like maybe is a little area that's predominantly blueberry and
Speaker 1: it is neat and it is knee high. But this
Speaker 1: is like a little half acre opening, you know, And
Speaker 1: there's a hill. So you're on one side of a
Speaker 1: valley looking across the valley and there and some little
Speaker 1: gap in the vegetation like oh there's one okay, And
Speaker 1: then you'll sit and look back on that spot for
Speaker 1: the next three days and never ever find that thing again.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, you're gonna go over there, But
Speaker 1: the thing is you can't. Like you quite literally, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just get lost in it. And we'll have a
Speaker 1: story to back up how bad it is from from Yes,
Speaker 1: that was a good story. Uh, you just get lost
Speaker 1: in it too, because the probability of success and not everywhere.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of places you can hunt moose up
Speaker 1: in the alpine where it's it's mostly knee high, mostly
Speaker 1: wayside vegetation, and you can actually make a play on animals.
Speaker 1: But in this area it's just with the brush you can't.
Speaker 1: And here's their thing. Doing a stock on one or
Speaker 1: an approach on one, you have a pretty low probability
Speaker 1: of success because it's so hard to navigate and hard
Speaker 1: to find anything. And even if you do get up
Speaker 1: on it, you're in eight foot tall stuff. So you
Speaker 1: can let okay, let's say it all works out and
Speaker 1: he and you call you get too into his area,
Speaker 1: you get two yards away, you call him in, he
Speaker 1: comes into thirty yards. You know what, You've never seen him.
Speaker 1: You've never seen him. Um, And so it's like, oh, great, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you call the bowling and never even saw it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so low probability success. But you go in there and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be spooking moose. You didn't know we're there,
Speaker 1: because all the time you're like, oh, there was a moose,
Speaker 1: and then you never see it again. All day you
Speaker 1: stay right in that same spot, can't find them. They're
Speaker 1: just in there and you don't know they're there. So
Speaker 1: you go in, you're gonna spook a bunch of moose.
Speaker 1: You're gonna leave sent all over. And what your strategy is,
Speaker 1: you're operating out of an area where you're up high
Speaker 1: and you're in lower like you're you're hunting purposefully in
Speaker 1: a low in a low vegetation area, because your long
Speaker 1: term plan is you're gonna call him out of all
Speaker 1: that fixed ship up where you can see him up
Speaker 1: into your opening. If you go down there, rummage and
Speaker 1: around all the time, you're spooking them and you're leaving
Speaker 1: scent everywhere, and you're doing things that aren't gonna work out,
Speaker 1: And then by doing things that don't work out, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna be pushing more moose away and making the
Speaker 1: thing that you're actually trying to do, which is called
Speaker 1: a bull up out of the stuff. You're making it harder.
Speaker 1: It's this is the rule everybody gives you. Everybody you
Speaker 1: ask who hunts this way and these kind of areas
Speaker 1: like here's my tip. Don't move, don't walk around. I
Speaker 1: got a friend that he could they their spot. They
Speaker 1: called it prison ridge because his friends are like, he
Speaker 1: won't let us even move. We gotta sit. I guess
Speaker 1: the same tree for ten days and so they and
Speaker 1: they told us, they said us the process, process and
Speaker 1: the processes. You call you rake. And the way I
Speaker 1: described it, Steve, was when you call a white tail deer,
Speaker 1: you call a duck, or you call an elk, you're
Speaker 1: looking to get, for the most part, an immediate response.
Speaker 1: And you you see that animal, do you hear a
Speaker 1: vocal response from that animal, and you get a read
Speaker 1: on it. Moose hunting, sometimes you're making calls that maybe
Speaker 1: responded to two or three days from now. I mean
Speaker 1: that's because a moose could hear you and be so
Speaker 1: far away. They have such incredible hearing, and we heard.
Speaker 1: We saw that with our own eyes. We saw their
Speaker 1: hearing with our own eyes. And I'll explain that this
Speaker 1: week so many times because these moose would be I
Speaker 1: mean a mile away, a mile away. They would turn
Speaker 1: and look at us when we called at them. And
Speaker 1: so we have an episode where we called one from
Speaker 1: about three miles away. Incredible. But the thing with these mooses,
Speaker 1: they're they're like these ladies. We watched him coming the
Speaker 1: whole way. I was thinking, ni sr No that took Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just wanted he just showed up one day. When
Speaker 1: a moose isn't fired up, which we saw a lot
Speaker 1: this trip. We'd see him stand up, we'd see him
Speaker 1: feed thirty yards and then they'd lay down and you'd
Speaker 1: watch them all day, and some of them moved ards.
Speaker 1: Well I'm just a moose out here. We had some
Speaker 1: we had some observations. Yeah, we saw some lazy moose.
Speaker 1: We're kind of putting some words to their lives. But no,
Speaker 1: so we'll go ahead. Chester World. Well, I was just
Speaker 1: saying you were talking about how you're expecting to you know,
Speaker 1: they might come in a day later, and I've just
Speaker 1: wanted to point out, like if they're not fired up
Speaker 1: and running like that one that Steve called from three
Speaker 1: miles away, over a whole over a day. They're moving slow,
Speaker 1: and we saw a lot of slow moose. Yeah. Once
Speaker 1: dirt and I saw a moose basically stay in a
Speaker 1: hundred square yard area form for a full ball, like
Speaker 1: from daylight pretty much till dark and here in your
Speaker 1: call look up. But you know, I'm like, like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm very much a moose novice. But I had someone
Speaker 1: who is very much a moose expert, and I was
Speaker 1: talking and I used to guide it is very successful
Speaker 1: at moose hunting. Um still active now. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: putting his like, I don't care about those ones. They
Speaker 1: don't exist to me. He's looking for a hot one.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I'm looking for the right bull
Speaker 1: in the right mood. There's a lot of bulls are
Speaker 1: in the right mood for me. And I don't care
Speaker 1: if he doesn't play the game he lives. It's like
Speaker 1: if I'm watching the moose two miles away and he
Speaker 1: doesn't care, I don't care about him. I'm here for
Speaker 1: the big one. Did wants to play? Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: why I'm here ten days. But it's hard when you
Speaker 1: sit there for nine days. Yeah, So we we set
Speaker 1: for nine days and could not find a moose that
Speaker 1: really wanted to play. A couple of times we made
Speaker 1: some stocks on moose where they were kind of playing
Speaker 1: a little bit. They would they would come to a
Speaker 1: hundred yards and you'd have to go to them a
Speaker 1: thousand yards fired up bull will they walk and they
Speaker 1: have like a very plodding, like deliberate walk, but they'll
Speaker 1: start swinging their head and they kind of swing it
Speaker 1: to the rhythm of how their feet strikes. So as
Speaker 1: his right front goes forward, his head swings right and
Speaker 1: he's just doing his big heads sway they could display
Speaker 1: and he'll be going m m m hmm. We one time,
Speaker 1: it wasn't all yesterday that we got one to sway
Speaker 1: his head maybe twice, Yeah yeah, and walked direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he doesn't he's swaying his head and walks off.
Speaker 1: And after that the whole group morale was just fresh
Speaker 1: in the process for the first what five days? Process?
Speaker 1: But how did it like the first love it a
Speaker 1: little bit? Sure? I trust in the process. I put
Speaker 1: immense faith in the process. Keep telling the story, Clay, Well,
Speaker 1: we it's it's a challenging hunt because you feel like
Speaker 1: you need to be doing something like if you're l hunting,
Speaker 1: you're pounding the mountains, calling, you're moving, you're doing stuff,
Speaker 1: you're bringing, trying to go to new areas. Um, when
Speaker 1: you're moose hunting, you're locked, like this guy said, you're
Speaker 1: locked in a prison and you're trying to call these
Speaker 1: bills to you. And we what we learned is that
Speaker 1: it's kind of a combination. Uh that we found success
Speaker 1: in was you gotta go to him a little bit,
Speaker 1: but you still got to call him into you. Well,
Speaker 1: there's peculiar I want to point out just there's peculiarities
Speaker 1: of of a fly and drop off hunt. If you're
Speaker 1: doing a river trip for moose, you can call a
Speaker 1: new place every day, so you're kind of like trying
Speaker 1: new stuff. Right, it doesn't make sense to go call
Speaker 1: for a half hour, but you let's spend six Let's
Speaker 1: do a six hour set and and then next day,
Speaker 1: next day, next day. If you're hunting out of our
Speaker 1: goals or a t V s right, let's try here,
Speaker 1: we'll try there, We'll try there, We'll spend a day
Speaker 1: call on here. You know whatever. If you just get
Speaker 1: dropped on an isolated airstrip somewhere and you have no
Speaker 1: way to move. You can't move from a simple factor.
Speaker 1: You can't go have a spike camp three miles away
Speaker 1: because how you can get that moose back to the airstrip.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of that kind of few the processes
Speaker 1: like you're you're your by sort of fact constrained and
Speaker 1: have to deal with that, and said, so how best
Speaker 1: do you play that situation? You play it by being
Speaker 1: very gentle on your spot, because you got a spot
Speaker 1: right and you you you call over long periods of
Speaker 1: time and long story short the ninth the tenth day day,
Speaker 1: we'll start with the first story from that morning. Steve
Speaker 1: is that we had split up. That morning, I went
Speaker 1: to a spot, saw the team with me. We spotted
Speaker 1: a bull and spotted two bulls. Steve came over and
Speaker 1: we got Steve brought him over and we watched these
Speaker 1: two bulls with two cows. Called to a bull, he
Speaker 1: looked at us, turned and went the other way. We
Speaker 1: watched his head and the promising looks promising. We watched
Speaker 1: a bull bullets. Okay, So the other constraints in all
Speaker 1: the regulations for legal bulls would be different in different places,
Speaker 1: but we were hunting in an area that for a
Speaker 1: non residents of Alaska. We had to shoot a bull
Speaker 1: that met one of two requirements, which would be either
Speaker 1: fifty inches wide, which would be the widest point of
Speaker 1: that rack, or have four brow times, which you'd have
Speaker 1: to look up what the time one on one side.
Speaker 1: Uh And so you'd have to look up what a
Speaker 1: brow time of a bull is. But it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: So he had to be fifty inches wide or have
Speaker 1: four brow tins on one side, which we found was
Speaker 1: a pretty tall order because we saw a lot of
Speaker 1: immature bulls. Into someone who didn't know moose hunting man,
Speaker 1: you'd see a forty five inch bull out there, he
Speaker 1: looked like a giant he uh. And not all fifty
Speaker 1: inch bulls have four brow times, and not all four
Speaker 1: brow times bulls are fifty inches. But in all honesty,
Speaker 1: there's like a there's a loose correlation. You know, if
Speaker 1: someone tells you they killed like a sixty inch bull
Speaker 1: and you look at a picture, it's gonna if four
Speaker 1: or five six. But then some guy will kill a
Speaker 1: sixty inch bull with two brow times. But generally like
Speaker 1: the bigger they get, the more brow times they throw,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very difficult to judge a moose based
Speaker 1: upon its spread, and it's a serious game violation. If
Speaker 1: if we had shot a moose that was forty nine
Speaker 1: inches wide, that's like a major violation. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're getting your animal confiscated, you're getting citations. So
Speaker 1: they take that stuff real serious. And so Steve and
Speaker 1: Steve coach me on on on spread. But pretty much
Speaker 1: we decided we were only gonna shoot bulls based off
Speaker 1: of four brow times because that is very easily easy
Speaker 1: to distinguish unless the bulls just ridiculous and yep, unless
Speaker 1: and and there's certain ways that the antlers, some moose antlers,
Speaker 1: the paddles go up and are really vertical. Some moose
Speaker 1: antlers the paddles lay flat. Guys, uh, you know there's
Speaker 1: a thing that eyeball to eyeball their ten inches. So
Speaker 1: you can look and be okay, I got ten inches.
Speaker 1: Then you gotta imagine that on the outside of that,
Speaker 1: you got that spread twice more on each side, and
Speaker 1: be like, okay, you might do that. And then people
Speaker 1: got all kinds of stuff like if he turns his head,
Speaker 1: how does his antler tip pass over his hump? What
Speaker 1: else were saying like thirty ears when the erect ears
Speaker 1: of a bull that's facing you. His full grown moose
Speaker 1: has ears that are thirty inches and his ears are
Speaker 1: nine nine inches long, and said, hope, nine to ten
Speaker 1: inches long. All kinds of little things. But as my
Speaker 1: brother Danny put it to me, when doing these things,
Speaker 1: leave some wiggle room, meaning it's got to be just ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a ridiculous bull, like or for sure for yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very shoot him off brown times is real
Speaker 1: comfortable shoot him off with you know, Uh, Steve, I
Speaker 1: read an article in bow Hunter magazine one time, um
Speaker 1: where the editor of bow Hunter misjudged a bull. I
Speaker 1: mean he wrote this article. It was it was a
Speaker 1: good article where he misjudged the bull and it was
Speaker 1: like forty nine inches and he had to turn himself in.
Speaker 1: This was a this was a good standard. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he wrote about it. It sounded hard, It sounded really bad, man.
Speaker 1: And they all look big, man, they do they do.
Speaker 1: So we split we that moose shook his head. This
Speaker 1: is the last day. I got all excited. It started
Speaker 1: yelling at everybody, whisper yelling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: maybe I think it was at that point, or maybe
Speaker 1: it was a little earlier that day or the night before.
Speaker 1: I said, Steve, there's got to be a point when
Speaker 1: we just got to kind of say it's too late
Speaker 1: to shoot a moose, because how are we going to
Speaker 1: get him out? And he because I'm sorry, and he said, uh,
Speaker 1: I will figure it out. That's what people are saying
Speaker 1: annoying stuff to me. I will figure it out. But
Speaker 1: to my defense, I I've never done this before, and
Speaker 1: now they have doing it, I would would have a
Speaker 1: little bit different opinions. Well, because what happens is on
Speaker 1: these hunts you have to schedule when you leave, and
Speaker 1: so we knew we had to leave on Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: and so on Friday after, like Friday light morning, we
Speaker 1: see this bull bed. We see we spook one from
Speaker 1: our calling. We see one bed. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what happened. Well, he was, that's before two things. There's
Speaker 1: two bulls together. We kind of lost track of one,
Speaker 1: took one's temperature with some calling. He shook his head
Speaker 1: too or three times and then fed his way away
Speaker 1: from us. We're like, did we play it too hot?
Speaker 1: Did he wind us? Because we'd lost track of the
Speaker 1: one bull. Later a while later, we realized the other
Speaker 1: bull is right there. I think that bull had got
Speaker 1: what by that bowl or wasn't getting anywhere those cows.
Speaker 1: And then we asked the moose expert if you spook
Speaker 1: a bowl, and he wins you. Well, he walked away
Speaker 1: feeding on willow. He's like, no, he's just gonna be
Speaker 1: getting out of here. He's not gonna like feed his
Speaker 1: way out of there. I think that that boll came in,
Speaker 1: checked out those cows. The bull was there, there were
Speaker 1: the bull, the bulls giving him no quarter, And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you don't think that, No, no I do, no, No,
Speaker 1: I just meant our Colling pushed him away. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Our Colin pushed him away for whatever. And
Speaker 1: so it's it's late in the morning, the last day
Speaker 1: planes coming tomorrow morning. It's it's eleven o'clock in the day,
Speaker 1: and we all of a sudden regain sight of a
Speaker 1: big bedded bull that is not brow time illegal, but
Speaker 1: we believe have reason to believe he's potentially over fifty.
Speaker 1: And we dive bomb in. Bull was standing and we
Speaker 1: go into the brush, go into thick brush, going to
Speaker 1: try to find this bull, and we know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a tall order because you get inside there and
Speaker 1: you can't you can't see. You're trying to find an
Speaker 1: opening where you could shoot. And we always had elevation
Speaker 1: on these bulls because we're up on a ridge and
Speaker 1: so you can kind of see down into the jungle. Well,
Speaker 1: when you get in the jungle, you can't see very far. Well,
Speaker 1: imagine a tick on your dog's back waiting through the Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to the good part of this story,
Speaker 1: which was we finally we know where the bull was
Speaker 1: when we left. It took us probably thirty minutes to
Speaker 1: get to our new vantage point. And yeah, and these
Speaker 1: moose don't move much, so we we assume that he's
Speaker 1: gonna be right where we left him. We get into
Speaker 1: the dog hair, thick willows and aspen. We can't see,
Speaker 1: can't see moving moving, moving, making noise, winds blowing, and
Speaker 1: we come to what I believe is probably within gun
Speaker 1: range of where the bull was. You know, we're inside
Speaker 1: of four hundred yards and there's a spruce about as
Speaker 1: big as dirt's calf and uh, and I say, like
Speaker 1: the brushes high, I say, hey, I'm gonna climb up
Speaker 1: that spruce and see if I can see down into
Speaker 1: the draw where the bull was, just so we can
Speaker 1: get a bead and see if he's still there. So
Speaker 1: I shimmy up a little spruce about probably eight feet,
Speaker 1: just enough to get me over the top of the willows.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna bend it for it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't the best tree, but it was
Speaker 1: the only tree. And I'm looking down to where the
Speaker 1: bull was, and he's not there. He's gone. And so
Speaker 1: I stay up there for probably a minute or two,
Speaker 1: and and I'm looking looking, and finally I turned to
Speaker 1: the guys and say, I don't see the bull. I
Speaker 1: think he's gone. I think we've spooked him. I think
Speaker 1: he's left. And then I'm looking out four yards. I
Speaker 1: draw my gaze in and all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: see the bull bulldozing through the willows at fifty yards
Speaker 1: probably of us busting all that rush. He heard us
Speaker 1: coming down the mountain, and again going back to the
Speaker 1: idea that that breaking brush is a communication method with
Speaker 1: these these moose. They hear it, they know it, and
Speaker 1: he was coming to fight us. He thought we were
Speaker 1: another moose coming into his territory. Well, there there was.
Speaker 1: So I was watching the us from above. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a cow to that had MOSI in the right
Speaker 1: direction of where you guys were, and he was actually
Speaker 1: on her tail, following her, and I think that brought
Speaker 1: him in close enough where he was like, now he
Speaker 1: can hear what he thinks there's another ball. And that
Speaker 1: actually helped h because he's thrashed. He was thrashing, brushing,
Speaker 1: and so I go, oh, he's right there, he's fifty
Speaker 1: yards fifty yards and I actually was My instinct was
Speaker 1: to stay in the tree. Steve. I was gonna just
Speaker 1: stay in the tree and let you shoot him, because
Speaker 1: I'm scared. I thought he was just gonna walk right up,
Speaker 1: and uh, Steve was like, get out of the tree.
Speaker 1: And so I come down. The moose keeps coming and
Speaker 1: by this time, the wind, I mean this time he's
Speaker 1: probably inside. Was he thirty yards yards because he's but
Speaker 1: you see the trees, trees and in the wind just
Speaker 1: swirled when it was he was that close, and the
Speaker 1: and the moose spooks in the way. You know what
Speaker 1: moose spooks is you never see him again. Things are
Speaker 1: hot he's coming in. You see the brush movement, and
Speaker 1: it is an incredible of all the hunting that I've
Speaker 1: ever done in my life, I would say that watching
Speaker 1: a bull moose way in the willows bobbing his head
Speaker 1: like that, intentionally making noise is one of the most
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I don't know if it's intimidating or exhilarating.
Speaker 1: His head is taller in your head. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like a seventeen hand mule with big antlers coming
Speaker 1: at you. And uh so we spook that bull, but
Speaker 1: he responded to us. We learned a little bit. The
Speaker 1: hunt is over, man, We've been doing this for nine
Speaker 1: and a half days. It's now noon. Steve raised down
Speaker 1: in the middle the willow brush and takes a nap.
Speaker 1: He's so frustrated, like I throw up the orangeling system.
Speaker 1: Back to the people on the hill and literally we're like, man,
Speaker 1: this has been fun, but we have been beat to
Speaker 1: the pulp by these moose. And we go back up
Speaker 1: the hill and I make a pot of percolator coffee.
Speaker 1: We we go back to our camp and I remember
Speaker 1: being in the tent with the guys, the camera crew
Speaker 1: because we filmed this. You'll be able to see this
Speaker 1: on uh can we tell him where it's gonna be?
Speaker 1: Already were paying This will be on Meat Eaters season eleven,
Speaker 1: which you can find on the Meteor dot com. And
Speaker 1: we were in the tent and the guys asked me,
Speaker 1: They said, hey, have you talked to Steve? Do you
Speaker 1: even think we're going out? And I said, I doubt
Speaker 1: we're even going to go out, like I mean, I
Speaker 1: thought we might go for a little walk, but we
Speaker 1: really we didn't have time to kill and pack and
Speaker 1: it was raining. I mean, everything was saying game over, boys, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we've been doing this for so long. Well, at
Speaker 1: four sixteen, after Steve had given Chester quite a bit
Speaker 1: of input about his uh his live show in Atlanta, UH,
Speaker 1: Steve says, hey, I want to go walk up to
Speaker 1: the porcupine, which is the head of a big hollow
Speaker 1: that we that we named the Porcupine and uh, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'll go with you. And so when
Speaker 1: I went, then it instigated. It caused the producer of
Speaker 1: our show to go, well, the camera guys should go too,
Speaker 1: and so Dirt and Lauren pack up their camera gear
Speaker 1: and willing En and Sam and I grab a twenty
Speaker 1: two and go chase Tarmigan. I had just indulged in
Speaker 1: some wonderful beef struggle peak instant meal, thinking this is
Speaker 1: my dinner and this is where this is where the
Speaker 1: story gets good. Can I one little nuanced thing, because
Speaker 1: we all acknowledge we did it. Everyone left there, most
Speaker 1: of their ship in there, most of their stuff in
Speaker 1: their tent. It's like, this is gonna just be a sunset. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did the opposite. I wore my my slippers for
Speaker 1: camp and loaded up the lenses I hadn't used for
Speaker 1: a while, thinking, oh, yeah, we're going to the Porcupine.
Speaker 1: We're gonna sit there. Some macro get some time lapses
Speaker 1: finished this deal out. Yeah. Well, I mean what we're
Speaker 1: talking about is only like a few yards of our camp,
Speaker 1: but it's just a way to call into a valley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we go for a while, because we got like
Speaker 1: two valleys that kind of head up off our off
Speaker 1: our ridge, and we're gonna go call the valley where
Speaker 1: not a lot happens. Yeah, we're the Porcupine is not
Speaker 1: the place you wanted to go. We said that. We
Speaker 1: we looked into that valley for nine days and I've
Speaker 1: only seen a couple of cows, and uh, we went
Speaker 1: there just because we hadn't been there in a few days.
Speaker 1: Can I t t this up for you? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we're walking on a ridge, Sam and I shooting Ptarmigan.
Speaker 1: We're shooting at him and talking loud, and we're walking
Speaker 1: along and we come to a chair, Lauren's glass and chair,
Speaker 1: and no one's sitting there. What happened? So? What happened there?
Speaker 1: So we were sitting there glassing and uh, we were
Speaker 1: actually probably looking for a bear that we had seen
Speaker 1: on the side of this hill a few days before,
Speaker 1: not even a hunted necessarily, just look. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: knew there was a bear on this side of the
Speaker 1: hill eating blueberries. And Lauren all of a sudden says, Okay,
Speaker 1: Garrett had a dirt saw a moose that had to
Speaker 1: have been four miles away cooking, going across an open
Speaker 1: barren tundra, such that when Steve pulled up his binos
Speaker 1: and looked at it, he said, that's an argo. That
Speaker 1: thing is moving so fast. That is an a TV
Speaker 1: or an argo. And it was just buzzing across the landscape.
Speaker 1: And Steve pulls up the spotter and it's a bull
Speaker 1: and he is moving, and Steve said, that bull you
Speaker 1: could call in. That bull's cruising. That's what we've been
Speaker 1: looking for, these bulls just lounging around, not responding to calls.
Speaker 1: We need bulls that are moving, that are that are
Speaker 1: serious about the rut. So we see the what we
Speaker 1: called the Argo bull. Within minutes, Lauren says, there's a bull.
Speaker 1: He says, there's a moose down in the valley below us,
Speaker 1: and it disappears into the willows. He wasn't even sure
Speaker 1: it was a moose moose, thought it was a moose.
Speaker 1: We start looking directly, we see a small, probably two
Speaker 1: year old moose come out, and we were just all
Speaker 1: pretty surprised hadn't seen moose there. We say, oh my,
Speaker 1: there's a moose. Let's call at him. So we called
Speaker 1: the moose, and directly we see a bigger moose a
Speaker 1: mile away, well twelve hundred and forty seven yards away,
Speaker 1: not quite a mile. A couple of days prior, we're
Speaker 1: thinking up until that point, right, say that again, like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that distance, like it maybe an hour prior, we were
Speaker 1: thinking there was no play, right, there's not gonna be
Speaker 1: an opportunity. We've now got two hours of daylight. Oh no, no, no, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm saying we were raring to go. There was no
Speaker 1: doubt about No. No, I'm saying at camp though, at
Speaker 1: camp before we and out, Oh we thought we were
Speaker 1: just done. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I knew game on.
Speaker 1: So we finally see illegal bull because the young bull
Speaker 1: wouldn't be legal, he wouldn't be fifty or have four
Speaker 1: brown times. We see a big, huge paddle sticking out
Speaker 1: seven yards away and we call at it, put a
Speaker 1: spot in skull b on it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: legal bull, And so Steve and I look at each
Speaker 1: other and basically they're like, let's go to lose. We've
Speaker 1: got nothing to lose. Is the last two three hours
Speaker 1: of the season. The season ends today, not just for us,
Speaker 1: but the most season in this zone. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: down shooting. So we barrel off the ridge. We know
Speaker 1: we've got to close the distance. We think if we
Speaker 1: can get inside this bull's bubble, we might respond. But
Speaker 1: we're going into thick willows, so we know that we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose visibility of him. It's gonna be difficult, and
Speaker 1: we probably gained three hundred yards on him. Steve calls,
Speaker 1: but what you forgot to make when we put eyes
Speaker 1: on that bowl as far away as he was, and
Speaker 1: they can hear for miles. As far away as he was,
Speaker 1: you couldn't ignore the fact that he was holding stock
Speaker 1: still with his head point in our direction. Not budget right,
Speaker 1: something he was interested because we had been calling at
Speaker 1: that little bull to see what his response would be,
Speaker 1: and there was reason to believe that he was like, huh,
Speaker 1: what do I hear? Not for sure because plenty of
Speaker 1: there's plenty of moose they're looking at you and it's coincidence,
Speaker 1: but he was looking our way. Yeah. So we dive
Speaker 1: off the mountain and I know what me we were
Speaker 1: all thinking, is that every step we go down this mountain,
Speaker 1: we gotta go back up it. But man, this is
Speaker 1: the last chance we've got, and we get We gained
Speaker 1: probably three yards on the bull. Steve climbs up a
Speaker 1: spruce about probably ten twelve feet to get vantage to
Speaker 1: look down into the willows, and we're expecting if the
Speaker 1: bull has responded to our call, to see him coming
Speaker 1: through the willows because we've got a little bit of
Speaker 1: elevation on him and sometimes and and he's in an
Speaker 1: open creek bottom and you can see their horns on
Speaker 1: a big bull sticking up out of some of the stuff,
Speaker 1: and we see nothing. And Steve's tree climbing days paid
Speaker 1: off because he zipped up that sucker. Right. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: point out that was a dead tree too. That's particularly perilous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was seeing, man, this could go bad before and
Speaker 1: he was breaking and breaking stuff on purpose on the
Speaker 1: way up the tree because we were He was calling
Speaker 1: to that bull while he's going up, breaking limbs, stomping limbs,
Speaker 1: and uh. Basically, after about fifteen minutes, I kind of
Speaker 1: look at Steve and shrugged my shoulders and just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess he's not responding. And then
Speaker 1: Lauren goes, Okay, more to the story. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: about to get credit for something. You'll get your credit, buddy.
Speaker 1: I could see. The one thing I could see real
Speaker 1: clear was out past where he was, and I'm up
Speaker 1: in my tree. Is that moose in the road? Man? Sorry,
Speaker 1: it's right ahead, a little jumpy. So there's there's important
Speaker 1: part here. Yeah, Yeah, he's he's standing by a little
Speaker 1: a little spruce patch an island spruce. Yeah, and oddly
Speaker 1: everything beyond that is was burned off and not growing
Speaker 1: up good. I know that he hasn't gone left, right
Speaker 1: or away from us, because if he did, I would
Speaker 1: see him from the tree. I'm like, I can tell
Speaker 1: you if you divide the world into like into like
Speaker 1: directions coming off that thing, whatever the hell north, south, east,
Speaker 1: west was like, he didn't go south. Let's say we're
Speaker 1: to the north. He didn't go south, he didn't go west,
Speaker 1: he didn't go east, because that's the three places I
Speaker 1: could tell if he went there, and he wasn't any
Speaker 1: of those places. And our direction was thick willows, so
Speaker 1: if he came our direction, potentially wouldn't say. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what happened, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you where he didn't go. He didn't go
Speaker 1: in any of the bad directions. And we got down
Speaker 1: and I started heading downhill trying to find an opening.
Speaker 1: We got to an opening and then he praise says, hey,
Speaker 1: I just heard some brush cracking over to the left,
Speaker 1: kind of to the east, and uh, sure enough, Steve says,
Speaker 1: I thought I heard something too. Now I'm half deaf,
Speaker 1: so I didn't hear it at first, and sure enough
Speaker 1: it we hear a distinct crack again that we know
Speaker 1: is not just a tree falling, and we know there's
Speaker 1: a bull moose coming in. So Steve and I cast
Speaker 1: come halfway up that hill. He's come yards this this,
Speaker 1: this bull has and in a matter of probably fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: all the while you guys have been calling and raking,
Speaker 1: we've been calling, and he was coming to meet us.
Speaker 1: And what we didn't we didn't know it. And so
Speaker 1: Steve and I crouched behind the log, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we see the brush splitting, and we see
Speaker 1: the tree top swaying. And man, I'll go back to
Speaker 1: I've been in a lot, I mean, killing whitetail, deer,
Speaker 1: killing goblin goblin, turkeys, killing bears. Man, there, I don't
Speaker 1: know that much comparison with seeing a big bull moose
Speaker 1: wading through stuff coming to you. Just the top swaying
Speaker 1: like some big coming. He was just knocking huge trees
Speaker 1: and shaking. He's coming for you, and it's like it
Speaker 1: was a guerrilla coming. And then I always think Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: You guys, remember that the raptors coming in, just parting
Speaker 1: all the I'm thinking of dinosaurs coming. Well, we see
Speaker 1: a bull. We we see his shape through the trees,
Speaker 1: and started grunting a little bit, and and Steve and
Speaker 1: I both have a tag and and I know that
Speaker 1: Steve wants to kill a big bull moose and has
Speaker 1: been on many trips. And I will say this of
Speaker 1: Steve Ronella is that he is always letting other people
Speaker 1: shoot stuff that he's on hunts with. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't tell that, Ryan Callahan, well except except for sorry
Speaker 1: cal So, this bull's coming and I say, Steve, shoot
Speaker 1: this bull, and he says, no, you shoot the bull.
Speaker 1: And I said, if it's a big bull, you shoot
Speaker 1: the bull. And then directly a small bull appears twenty
Speaker 1: yards from us. I stepped it off today and it
Speaker 1: was under twenty yards yards nineteen yards and a young,
Speaker 1: immature bull steps out and I go, man, it's a
Speaker 1: it's not legal. I can see it better than Steve,
Speaker 1: just because I'm where I'm at, and uh, and Steve goes,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's that small bull. And so we're
Speaker 1: it's fun that we're twenty yards from a bull that
Speaker 1: came in. Our hearts are racing, but it's a bummer.
Speaker 1: That's a small one. Well, the bull standing still and
Speaker 1: kind of directly behind him. You can still see the
Speaker 1: brush cracking and moving back behind him. And I don't
Speaker 1: know who, if it was Lauren or Dirt or who,
Speaker 1: but people said there's there's another bull coming. I like,
Speaker 1: Steve heard it too, and and so we know that
Speaker 1: this one has got to be the big bull that
Speaker 1: we saw. And so we're crouched behind a log and
Speaker 1: I say, Steve, it's a big bull. You shoot it.
Speaker 1: And he says, no, Clay, you shoot the bull. And
Speaker 1: so I say okay, and me and Dirt jump up
Speaker 1: and move about ten ft behind a spruce stump that
Speaker 1: had uprooted, and it was a perfect cover. I laid
Speaker 1: my gun right and the why and man, here comes
Speaker 1: this what to me is a giant bull moose, still
Speaker 1: very dense, like what visibility is like, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: couldn't see very far. And and so now there's a
Speaker 1: thirty inch bull moose and then this giant to what
Speaker 1: to me is a giant bull moose twenty yards from us.
Speaker 1: I've got the gun up. He comes through an opening,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of limbs and I realized that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to shoot through limbs, and he continues
Speaker 1: to move and gets the nineteen yards. I shoot through
Speaker 1: some brush, hit him in the shoulder, Moose goes down
Speaker 1: on his back end. Shoot him again. Moose goes down,
Speaker 1: and we got a big bull moose. On the tenth day,
Speaker 1: six thirty in the evening gets dark about eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: and I heard I heard the two shots from above,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I can I can't believe it. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. Just the whole week. We had
Speaker 1: been trying so hard, and then it finally came together
Speaker 1: on the last day. And I'll say, now this is
Speaker 1: where I'll get back to what Steve said earlier when
Speaker 1: I said this thing is bigger than my mule. That
Speaker 1: moose was was about as big as a seventeen hand
Speaker 1: mule in my assessment. Uh, monstrous animals. I mean just yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't even especially when they fall on the trees
Speaker 1: like that. I mean you can't even kind of move them. No,
Speaker 1: I mean you just gotta start. You skin him up
Speaker 1: the back. It just gets get whatever side happens to
Speaker 1: be facing up skinned off. You're not gonna like roll
Speaker 1: him on his back and got them out and not
Speaker 1: in that kind of cover. So we had airplanes coming
Speaker 1: at seven thirty in the morning and it's six thirty
Speaker 1: and we've got a moose down. But good for us.
Speaker 1: He was only about eight and fifty yards from the
Speaker 1: air strip, but uphill probably a thousand feet of elevation.
Speaker 1: Game and uh so we had a good team with us.
Speaker 1: The camera guy's Chester, Samantha Bates, was with us. So
Speaker 1: there were six how many of the six six of us.
Speaker 1: I was impressed with how I mean, I was impressed
Speaker 1: with that hunt, but also the reaction to the time,
Speaker 1: sensitiveness of man, we had that sucker. Yeah, owned out
Speaker 1: in a couple of hours. When that kind of stuff happens,
Speaker 1: as much as you know how much work it's gonna be,
Speaker 1: it's very exciting at the same time because you're like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be up till midnight. They had a fire
Speaker 1: going down there. It's just like a cool moment, like
Speaker 1: my favorite moment of the trip. And we're all they're
Speaker 1: boning out the meat and putting it in game bags
Speaker 1: and pack it out and big old fire. I learned
Speaker 1: a new recipe when you bone out of the shoult
Speaker 1: the scapula, stand the scapula up next to the fire
Speaker 1: until the meats all kind of whatever little bits around
Speaker 1: there charred a little bit and then you scrape them
Speaker 1: all off with a knife and eat them. You're saying,
Speaker 1: bring salt, right, Oh, we didn't have salt. Would have
Speaker 1: made it ten times. So the reason you make a fire,
Speaker 1: you make a big fire for it helps for light,
Speaker 1: but also to keep grizzlies away, because when you're in
Speaker 1: Alaska and you kill a moose, you're immediately a grizzly target.
Speaker 1: So we did a lot of whooping and yelling, and
Speaker 1: it's it's comforting too when you're out there in the dark.
Speaker 1: Just it's nice to warm up and have a fire.
Speaker 1: And another thing, so we beg all this meat up
Speaker 1: and the planes fly it out the next day. One
Speaker 1: of the things that before this trip, I'm like, how
Speaker 1: are we going to get all this meat back? Usually
Speaker 1: we throw it in like yetti, you know, soft sided
Speaker 1: YETI coolers and like fly back with it all. But
Speaker 1: you can't really do that with a moose too. We've
Speaker 1: done it. It gets real pricey. Yeah, So we found
Speaker 1: so we found a guy who's got a business that
Speaker 1: revolves around getting people's meat back to the States, and
Speaker 1: he's it's an Alaska Trophy Express and he just picks
Speaker 1: up your meat from whatever locker that there is. It's Tim,
Speaker 1: I think his name is Tim, and he'll pick it
Speaker 1: up and he's gonna drive it down to Arkansas. So
Speaker 1: we got frozen game bags, he's got the skull, he's
Speaker 1: got a sweet shot I found and we'll keep you updated.
Speaker 1: And he's gonna pick it up and bring it down
Speaker 1: in a refrigerated truck. Yeah, Alaska, Alaska, say the Alaska
Speaker 1: Trophy Express. With the guy on how communicative he was
Speaker 1: he talked to me on the phone today. I felt
Speaker 1: very certain that he was gonna take care I was
Speaker 1: very concerned about my antlers. I mean, it's like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're gonna take care of these for me. The whole
Speaker 1: thing get busted, just like not ever seeing him again.
Speaker 1: Very nice guy. Yeah, that's wild. We're talking about getting
Speaker 1: out there. You go from you know, flying from Montana
Speaker 1: and Arkansas to be in out and I don't know
Speaker 1: how many miles into the wild country without any establishment,
Speaker 1: and the transition is so quick you almost can't help
Speaker 1: process where you're at and I was just thinking, it's
Speaker 1: only twenty four hours. Wait, we were skinning a bull moose.
Speaker 1: Twenty four hours ago. We were skinning a bull moose
Speaker 1: next to the fire in the wilds of Inland, Alaska.
Speaker 1: Now we're in a van doing a podcast. Just crossed
Speaker 1: the river. Just crossed the river. Yeah, it's a good trip, man, trip.
Speaker 1: I had come to peace with. I had come to
Speaker 1: peace with not getting one. Yeah, that's Souff bugs me,
Speaker 1: but it never but I mean, you know it bugs me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he tears me up a little bit. But I had
Speaker 1: come to peace, and I was like, man, we had
Speaker 1: to help a trip, you know. And I thought, Chester said,
Speaker 1: you think we did it again, we would have got one,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, because I learned enough where I
Speaker 1: was like, I learned enough where I think if I
Speaker 1: could do this over again, I would we would. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's a lie that it's it's it's a lot
Speaker 1: of work to get up there. It's a big commitment. You're,
Speaker 1: you know, away from family, so it is kind of
Speaker 1: a bummer when you go up there and sit there
Speaker 1: for nine days. But we're there for the entire season.
Speaker 1: It's pretty Yeah, it's it's an interesting hunt. To sum
Speaker 1: it up, it's like, bring some books. Yeah, bring a
Speaker 1: zero degree bag. I learned that in the hardware. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't um you like, no matter what, you're gonna
Speaker 1: underestimate the cold because you're just sitting. Man. We're there
Speaker 1: on some days like humidity, you know, lows in the thirties,
Speaker 1: and you're just sitting, sitting, sitting, sitting, sitting. It wears
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, Lauren, how far are we away from Fairbanks?
Speaker 1: We're getting close now. We're probably another forty miles away.
Speaker 1: Not too bad. Good all right, ladies and gentlemen. It's
Speaker 1: getting dark. Sun is setting, Sun is setting. The whole
Speaker 1: growl thing didn't happen. Still trying to booze, closing in
Speaker 1: on Fairbanks, Alaska. We love you all. Ninety night, Lucy.
Speaker 1: By Vince Merritt. This story came to us from Vince himself.
Speaker 1: He submitted it to us through email, and then we
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting hold of him again. After
Speaker 1: his submission, he wrote back to say, quote, Luckily, my
Speaker 1: lifelong friend and hunting buddy Michael is a bit a
Speaker 1: lot more computer savvy than I. Although I have an
Speaker 1: email account, I just recently set it up and had
Speaker 1: no idea the unbelievable amount of junk emails one can acquire.
Speaker 1: I would much rather talk in person, if that's possible. Unquote.
Speaker 1: You'll see why Vince feels that talking is a strong point,
Speaker 1: because he is a vivid, somewhat immaculate storyteller. His attention
Speaker 1: to detail is pretty astonishing. I also like how he's
Speaker 1: able to talk about shooting himself without any real self
Speaker 1: consciousness or shame. He just takes it as something that's
Speaker 1: a matter of fact. My dad liked to brag that
Speaker 1: he got through World War Two without ever getting scratched
Speaker 1: by a bullet, only to come home and get shot
Speaker 1: in the at hunting rabbits. I've heard countless stories of
Speaker 1: shooting accidents out hunting, but I'd be being dishonest if
Speaker 1: I didn't admit that some of them are just kind
Speaker 1: of funnier, or they're just so weird, and they have
Speaker 1: this tone to him that when you hear him, you
Speaker 1: kind of want to laugh. We all know the story
Speaker 1: where Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face while
Speaker 1: hunting quail, and it should be said that the most
Speaker 1: common hunting injury like gun related hunting injury is that
Speaker 1: you get shot by a shotgun. A lot of people
Speaker 1: feel that big game rifles with the requisite blaze orange
Speaker 1: that that's where the danger lies, but it's not as
Speaker 1: bad as shotguns. I recently heard a story from a
Speaker 1: friend of mine about a very rotund man that he
Speaker 1: knew who was out hunting rabbits. This guy gets down
Speaker 1: on his hands and knees to check under a junk car.
Speaker 1: In any rare hunter will know that rabbits like the
Speaker 1: hide under jumped out cars. For whatever reason, realizes that
Speaker 1: he can't get back up. He doesn't have that kind
Speaker 1: of mobility, so he grabs his pump action four ten
Speaker 1: shotgun by the barrel to use it sort of like
Speaker 1: a cane or walking stick, and with this gun as
Speaker 1: a support, manages to get himself back up on his feet.
Speaker 1: But he gets the muzzle of the shotgun under one
Speaker 1: of his fat rolls and he's kind of lodged on
Speaker 1: it and can't get himself up and off it. So
Speaker 1: what he decides to do is kick the stock of
Speaker 1: the shotgun in order to kick it out from under
Speaker 1: his gut. When he kicks it, it goes off and
Speaker 1: his gut fat absorbs the full force of that four
Speaker 1: ten load, no injury to his internal organs. A couple
Speaker 1: of years ago on the Meat Eater podcast, we got
Speaker 1: kind of wrangled into this discussion about what we call
Speaker 1: accidental discharges. Right, so when your gun goes off and
Speaker 1: you didn't mean it, and the marine wrote in to say,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as an accidental discharge. There are
Speaker 1: only negligent discharges. Where these stories lose their humor is
Speaker 1: when you get into fatalities or permanent injuries. Recently, someone
Speaker 1: recommended to me a book called Dying to Hunt in Montana,
Speaker 1: and a large section of that book is devoted to
Speaker 1: firearm fatalities, many of them self inflicted accidents. I got
Speaker 1: a couple of pages into that book and had to
Speaker 1: put it away and never opened it back up again.
Speaker 1: It was just too upsetting to imagine those things happening
Speaker 1: to my friends, or particularly to my kids. It's not
Speaker 1: all a joke. The story you're about here could have
Speaker 1: easily it almost did, turn into one of those deeply
Speaker 1: sad and tragic stories. But we all know this is
Speaker 1: called close calls, so ultimately it's about triumph. My name
Speaker 1: is Vince Merritt November five. It was of two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. I was duck hunting in uh, a little
Speaker 1: lake up in northern California where I live, ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes away from my house. Me and a couple
Speaker 1: of buddies of mine, we're gonna go out and jump
Speaker 1: this lake and see if we could kill any birds.
Speaker 1: I parked about three quarters of a mile away from
Speaker 1: where I was going to launch my little boat, got
Speaker 1: out of the vehicle and uh, it was cold. We
Speaker 1: had a good storm that weekend, left the dusting of
Speaker 1: snow on the ground, and figured it'd probably pushed some
Speaker 1: birds down. I stopped about a hundred yards short of
Speaker 1: the lake. I was just gonna drift down the creek
Speaker 1: time it so I can hit the lake. Just at
Speaker 1: shooting time, a flock of birds came in and sat
Speaker 1: down right at the mouth of the street. So foolishly
Speaker 1: I loaded my gun up all a five brownie and
Speaker 1: as my dad's gun, who had just passed away a
Speaker 1: couple of years before this, figuring, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: an easy, easy blast. And at this point I was
Speaker 1: still waiting for my buddies to show up. One of
Speaker 1: my buddies was coming over the damn one was coming
Speaker 1: from the boat launch, just covering the exits, because uh
Speaker 1: to these birds do. They'll they'll roost on the lake
Speaker 1: all night and then at first light they take off
Speaker 1: in all different directions going out in the lake. So
Speaker 1: with like two minutes left my buddies, I realized weren't
Speaker 1: gonna make it, or they were running late. They weren't
Speaker 1: gonna be there a shooting time, so I wasn't waiting anymore.
Speaker 1: I had my black lab Lucy with me, but he
Speaker 1: didn't want to take her in the boat, being this
Speaker 1: small of a boat it was, and she had not
Speaker 1: been in a hunted out of a boat before anyway,
Speaker 1: so I kind of left her on the bank. Got
Speaker 1: in the boat. I was on my knees and I
Speaker 1: had the gun alongside me, with the barrel pointing up
Speaker 1: in the air, leaning up against the seat, I grabbed
Speaker 1: the oar, pushed off the bank with the oar and
Speaker 1: pushed right into a sandbar and it just stopped the
Speaker 1: boat just like I ran into a brick wall. And
Speaker 1: when the boat stopped, just solid like that, the gun
Speaker 1: slid down off the bed. Sheat hit the bottom of
Speaker 1: the boat and went off. Now, I I didn't realize
Speaker 1: at that time that's what happened, because as I remember
Speaker 1: is hearing a shot and thinking, damn it, somebody shot early,
Speaker 1: because all the birds, of course, took off as soon
Speaker 1: as the gun went off. And then I started thinking,
Speaker 1: how could somebody have shot earlier? I I'm the only
Speaker 1: one on the lake. But I looked down and my
Speaker 1: guns laying on the bottom of the boat, and there's
Speaker 1: smoke drifted up out of the barrel. I realized it
Speaker 1: was my gun that it went off, and I remember
Speaker 1: thinking in my head, you dumb s ob. You know
Speaker 1: you're so lucky you just didn't shoot yourself. I had
Speaker 1: a pair of my what I had on was near
Speaker 1: primum hip boots at the time. And then I realized
Speaker 1: right at the bend of my knee, and there was
Speaker 1: a hole in the waiters about as big as a
Speaker 1: beer can. Maybe there's blood trickling out of the waiters.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, you did shoot yourself. But I
Speaker 1: couldn't feel any pain whatsoever. So the first thing I thought,
Speaker 1: of all, it can't be too bad, but I better
Speaker 1: get out of this boat, because I figured I'd blown
Speaker 1: a hole in the boat. So I tried to stand up,
Speaker 1: and as soon as I put weight on on my
Speaker 1: bad leg, I flipped over the edge of the oat.
Speaker 1: My but HiT's the bottom of the of the creek
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm in about chest high deeper water and
Speaker 1: my right leg literally just floated up to the top
Speaker 1: of the creek. I remember and watching my leg kind
Speaker 1: of float back and forth in the current. I realized
Speaker 1: at that time I had screwed up pretty bad. My
Speaker 1: leg was at least busted I do. I remember telling
Speaker 1: my dog Lucy right there, I better make some good
Speaker 1: decisions from here out out, girl, I'm gonna be in trouble.
Speaker 1: I had three quarters of a mile back to my car.
Speaker 1: It was one option where I could go across, get
Speaker 1: back in the boat, attempt to get back in the boat,
Speaker 1: and go across the lake to my buddy's house. He
Speaker 1: was the third one that was supposed to show up
Speaker 1: hunting up order that didn't. Or I could go to uh.
Speaker 1: One side of the lake is a campground and there's
Speaker 1: year round hosts that stay at the campground. And I
Speaker 1: could actually see the big fluorescent light from the campground.
Speaker 1: It was closer than my car was. If I get
Speaker 1: back to the car. There's I didn't even think I
Speaker 1: was gonna be able to get into drive it with
Speaker 1: my right leg being busted up. So I make the
Speaker 1: decision two head to the campground. I start crawling across
Speaker 1: the the creek and it starts getting over my head immediately,
Speaker 1: so I I kind of swam dog paddled with my
Speaker 1: good leg in my arms and my other leg was
Speaker 1: just kind of dragging behind me. Crawl out the other side,
Speaker 1: and I realized I left my shotgun in the boat,
Speaker 1: and I was worried that someone was gonna steal my
Speaker 1: gun if I left it in the boat. So my
Speaker 1: dumbmass crawled back across the creek hold the gun out.
Speaker 1: I remember putting the gun but in the mud and
Speaker 1: helping myself out of the creek with the gun butt.
Speaker 1: That's what it dawned on me, I should probably should
Speaker 1: unload the gun all the way where I was going
Speaker 1: to shoot myself a second time. I jacked a couple
Speaker 1: more times, made sure the gun was empty, drugged myself
Speaker 1: out of the other side of the creek, and there
Speaker 1: I remember looking back at the creek and they're being
Speaker 1: blood on both sides of the creek. Just a trail
Speaker 1: of it heading out to the lake. It was going
Speaker 1: down to the current, and I was thinking, damn you
Speaker 1: other losing quite a bit of blood already. I knew
Speaker 1: I hadn't hit an army or anything bad. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't spurting out, but I could see this little
Speaker 1: hole filling up and draded and filling up and draded
Speaker 1: right underneath the kneecap on the inside of the knee.
Speaker 1: By this time, my dog had swam across the creek
Speaker 1: and was right alongside me. I'm on my butt crawling.
Speaker 1: We're using my good leg to push me backwards. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my leg the whole time and watching it
Speaker 1: fill up and drade, and I thought, tourniquet. I better
Speaker 1: get a tourniquet on it. I had my duck calls
Speaker 1: around my debt. I pulled those off and used the
Speaker 1: landard for my duck calls and tied my leg off.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, I don't know if that's dowd
Speaker 1: any good or not. Start dragging myself again, just pushing
Speaker 1: myself on my butt, going backwards, crawling towards where I
Speaker 1: know this campground is, but the lake kind of loops
Speaker 1: around there, so I had to had to go around
Speaker 1: in the lake. Actually, it's pretty dense timber, gnarly brush
Speaker 1: that you just you can't hardly walk through or crawl through.
Speaker 1: I was probably two d yards away from my boat
Speaker 1: at this time, so it taken me forty five minutes
Speaker 1: or an hour to get that far, pushing myself with
Speaker 1: my good leg on my butt backwards and then picking
Speaker 1: up the gun and moving at five ft in front
Speaker 1: of me and crawling five more ft. I noticed my
Speaker 1: tourniquet it came off, so I took my belt off
Speaker 1: and tied it around my leg. I don't remember see
Speaker 1: it slowed down blood wise, I'm feeling paind some, but
Speaker 1: not like you would expect. So obviously I was in
Speaker 1: shock because my leg was literally just kind of flopping
Speaker 1: and dang wood. I'd hunted all around that lake, so
Speaker 1: I know if I get to that trail, I pretty
Speaker 1: much got a straight shot. I must have found an
Speaker 1: opening through it. I don't remember exactly how it worked,
Speaker 1: but I remember I crawled through the manzanita, up the
Speaker 1: little embanquet to the trail, and probably been an hour
Speaker 1: since I shot myself, and now I'm pretty beat. I
Speaker 1: remember I was gonna, I'm telling myself, I wanted to
Speaker 1: take a nap at that time. I lead up against
Speaker 1: a big pine tree and my dog just starts going nuts.
Speaker 1: She's just barking, going crazy, doing circles around me, and
Speaker 1: I remember yelling at her to shut up because I
Speaker 1: was trying to take a nap, and she just kept
Speaker 1: going nuts. I didn't realize it at the time, but
Speaker 1: she obviously was saving my life. Then as long as
Speaker 1: I'm crawled, she's okay. I stopped a second time, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later. Again I
Speaker 1: was getting pretty tired, and again as soon as I stopped,
Speaker 1: she just starts going nuts and and going crazy. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking that I wasn't gonna make it. On the path.
Speaker 1: There was no tracks through the snow because I remember,
Speaker 1: they're just being a dust in the snow. So the
Speaker 1: campground hosts had not been out there lately. I didn't
Speaker 1: know if they were year around hosts or what. I
Speaker 1: really didn't know for sure if this place had a
Speaker 1: landline or not, but I knew the cabin was there,
Speaker 1: so that was my destination. I started crawling again. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking to my Dad, and I think I even
Speaker 1: said this out loud. It looks like I might be
Speaker 1: coming to join you a little sooner than we thought, Pops.
Speaker 1: I came to a couple of outbuildings at this time,
Speaker 1: and it was a big cook shock. For when they
Speaker 1: had huge campouts they did all the cooking. At this shock.
Speaker 1: They sat through a rock through the window of the
Speaker 1: cook house, and I assume I was trying to make
Speaker 1: an alarm go off or something. I really I don't
Speaker 1: remember a lot about that. It was probably an hour
Speaker 1: and a half after I'd shot myself. At this point,
Speaker 1: I didn't have my gun anymore. The realization came to
Speaker 1: me that I had left my gun somewhere, probably leading
Speaker 1: up against the tree when I was trying to take
Speaker 1: a nap. I wasn't making very good time, and I
Speaker 1: knew that. I knew I was probably pushing it and
Speaker 1: needed to get to this cabin and get some help.
Speaker 1: During the last I don't know, ten or fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: and it dawned on me I should start whistling and
Speaker 1: maybe I could get somebody's attention. So every every couple
Speaker 1: of minutes, I would put my fingers to my mouth
Speaker 1: and and whistle. I could whistle pretty damn loud, and
Speaker 1: I would yell I need help if anybody could hear me,
Speaker 1: I need help. No response, so I I just kept crawling.
Speaker 1: I'd lost my tourniquet. The second tourniquet my belt that
Speaker 1: didn't have enough loops that tightened make it real tight
Speaker 1: all the way down around my leg. And apparently it
Speaker 1: had come off while I was dragging myself, because my
Speaker 1: pants and everything went around my ankles. At this point,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much pushing myself bare butt down this creek.
Speaker 1: That's why I decided to make a crutch see if
Speaker 1: I could make a crutch and hop and that didn't
Speaker 1: work to crutch snapped. I hit the ground pretty hard.
Speaker 1: I remember camel crawling forward for a little bit at
Speaker 1: that time by my elbows and one knee, just dragging
Speaker 1: myself behind me. But that was just way too hard
Speaker 1: to do. I can see the cabin now actually was
Speaker 1: a house. There's like a three ft tall cyclone fence
Speaker 1: all the way around this house. I crawled down the
Speaker 1: fence towards the walkway going up to the house to
Speaker 1: the gate, and sure enough there's a paddleog. I remember
Speaker 1: that bumming me out in a couple of different ways.
Speaker 1: For one, I realized that meant more than likely there
Speaker 1: was nobody at the house. Secondly, it meant I was
Speaker 1: going to have to go over the fence. I remember
Speaker 1: whistling again right then, praying that there was somebody in
Speaker 1: the house that would hear me, even though I'm staring
Speaker 1: at a paddle lock on this front gate. No response.
Speaker 1: My dog can't jump the fence, so this is where
Speaker 1: I lose Lucy. She's she's on the outside of the
Speaker 1: cyclone fence. I stood on my good leg and went
Speaker 1: over the top of the little the cyclone fence, flopped
Speaker 1: on the ground, and at that point I remember being
Speaker 1: in a lot of pain. I remember hitting the ground
Speaker 1: on the other side and and really hurt, and I
Speaker 1: knew at that point I was really pushing the limits
Speaker 1: of whether I was going to make it out of
Speaker 1: this situation alive. And I remember shaking my head thinking
Speaker 1: how ironic this is gonna be that I'm gonna end
Speaker 1: up dying being being the safety guy I've always been
Speaker 1: with all my buddies, I'm gonna end up end up
Speaker 1: dying over the stupid gunshot. I remember thinking I just
Speaker 1: have too much life to live. I can't. I'm not
Speaker 1: giving up. I crawled up to the front porch and
Speaker 1: I'm still whistling, hoping there was somebody in the house.
Speaker 1: It's I didn't know what time it was, but I
Speaker 1: knew in my mind it was still early enough where
Speaker 1: these people might be sleeping. And I checked the check
Speaker 1: the front door to see if it was unlocked, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Pounded on the door and yelled a couple
Speaker 1: of times, I need help. They've got a big picture
Speaker 1: window into the living room, and I remember looking at
Speaker 1: that thinking I could probably go through that window. But
Speaker 1: the porch extended all the way along the front of
Speaker 1: the house, and there was another window at the other
Speaker 1: end of the porch going into the house, and I
Speaker 1: could see a telephone in the bedroom, and I remember thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: they definitely do have landline here. There was furniture, patio
Speaker 1: furniture on this front porch. I hop over and picked
Speaker 1: up one of the chairs, and on one leg, I
Speaker 1: spun around and put the chair through the window and
Speaker 1: shattered out the bedroom window. The bed in the bedroom
Speaker 1: was was close to the wall right there, and I
Speaker 1: remember flipping in backwards into the house, trying to land
Speaker 1: on the bed. What I did actually is missed the
Speaker 1: bed and fell right down in about a ten or
Speaker 1: twelve intes crack in between the bed and the wall.
Speaker 1: At that point I remember a lot of pain. You
Speaker 1: might say I was old man then, because every little
Speaker 1: bit of it came out of me. I remember screaming.
Speaker 1: At that point, I was in a lot of pain.
Speaker 1: I crawled around the bed, got up on the chair
Speaker 1: that had the wheels on it, rolled over to the telephone,
Speaker 1: picked up the phone and it was dead. No dial toad.
Speaker 1: A lot of people up there have summer homes, so
Speaker 1: they take off and leave for the winter months, shut
Speaker 1: the water off, shut the power off, and shut their
Speaker 1: phones off. And I assume that's what had happened. There
Speaker 1: was a computer on the desk and they say I
Speaker 1: punched in a help me. I had no I never
Speaker 1: used a computer before in my life at that time.
Speaker 1: But they said I used the keypad and punched in help.
Speaker 1: I need help. A few times, I figured I was
Speaker 1: a dead man for sure. At that point. There's no
Speaker 1: dial tone on the telephone. There was a note paper
Speaker 1: on the on the desk there. I was going to
Speaker 1: write a note basically at that point to let my
Speaker 1: mom know what happened. I was real close to my mother. Um.
Speaker 1: I was a baby in the family. I have older
Speaker 1: brother and older sister, and I was quite the moment's boy,
Speaker 1: and I was ever thinking it's just gonna devastate her.
Speaker 1: So I was gonna write out a note and let
Speaker 1: mom know what happened. Earlier in the crawl quite a bit,
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, God, I'm thirsty. I wish I had
Speaker 1: something to drink. So at that point I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna check refrigerator and see what they got to
Speaker 1: think to drink. I said, I've always been a beer drinker,
Speaker 1: and quite frankly, I think I'm gonna go out with
Speaker 1: the beer. See, I'm gonna see if they've got a
Speaker 1: beer and refrigerator. So I didn't write the note yet.
Speaker 1: I'm on the chair with the wheels behind it, so
Speaker 1: I'm able to push myself with my one leg out
Speaker 1: of the bedroom, and I was using the walls to
Speaker 1: push myself out of the hallway, and I remember there
Speaker 1: looked like they were in a bunch of kindygardeners admitted
Speaker 1: their hand painting because there was blood head handprints on
Speaker 1: all their walls from my hands when I was pushing
Speaker 1: myself through. So I pushed myself around the little wall
Speaker 1: into the kitchen, and right next to the refrigerator there's
Speaker 1: another telephone. It's blinking oh one, like there's a message
Speaker 1: on the telephone. And I told myself, don't get your
Speaker 1: hopes up. The other phone is dead. There's there's no
Speaker 1: way there's gonna be a dial tone on this phone.
Speaker 1: So I popped refrigerator open. There was an beers unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but they say I ate a banana and drank a
Speaker 1: V eight, which I don't. I don't remember doing either
Speaker 1: one of those things. And the time I'm staring at
Speaker 1: the phone, going you've You've got to check it. I
Speaker 1: grabbed the phone, put it up to my ear and
Speaker 1: went damn, and hung it up, and I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and I picked it up again, and
Speaker 1: there was a dial tone. I remember even putting my
Speaker 1: finger up and and clicking the button a couple of times,
Speaker 1: just so I wasn't, you know, making stuff up in
Speaker 1: my mind. At this point, there really was a dial tone,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't figure out why there wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: dial tone on one phone, and there would on another one,
Speaker 1: but I thought, you better quit thinking and and make
Speaker 1: a damn call, because at this point there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of blood coming out of my leg, and I
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't good, and obviously it was because I
Speaker 1: had lost most of my blood at that time. I
Speaker 1: remember the emergency operator coming on and she's as the
Speaker 1: regular routine, what is what is your medical emergency or
Speaker 1: whatever she said, and I told her I shot myself.
Speaker 1: I remember unlocking the dead bolt and opening the door,
Speaker 1: and you could see how I could see out the
Speaker 1: front door down the driveway to where they had a
Speaker 1: a big gate out front that was locked up. First
Speaker 1: ambulance pulls in and uh, it stops at the gate,
Speaker 1: and then another ambulance pulls right in behind it, and
Speaker 1: they're both at the gate, and I'm sitting in this
Speaker 1: chair and I'm like, okay, they're they're at the right spot.
Speaker 1: Send them in. One renounced to me at the time,
Speaker 1: anytime there's a gun involved accident, the sheriffs have to
Speaker 1: be the first one on the sea. So you know,
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that at this time, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out why the ambulances weren't coming in.
Speaker 1: It was hard for me to stay conscious at this time.
Speaker 1: I remember not in quite an it just barely being
Speaker 1: able to stay awake. And then I saw the second ambulance.
Speaker 1: The passenger door opens up and I see the passenger
Speaker 1: get out of the second ambulance goes by the first
Speaker 1: ambulance and swings opened the gate and came in and
Speaker 1: shot down the driveway, and I remember thinking, wow, it's
Speaker 1: a bad time for an ambulance to break down. They
Speaker 1: wheeled me out, started getting fluids into me. I hear
Speaker 1: a couple of wor cars pull up outside that and
Speaker 1: the sheriffs had pulled up and out. I remember them
Speaker 1: put me in the back of the ambulance, and I
Speaker 1: remember telling the sheriff, hey, I don't know where my
Speaker 1: dog is right now, but somebody needs to find her
Speaker 1: because that dogs saved my life, There's no doubt. The
Speaker 1: ambulance doors closed. I remember the bigging a banger or
Speaker 1: the back door or something, and one of the sheriff's
Speaker 1: opened up the back door and told me he Dominic's
Speaker 1: here and he's got your dog. When the nine one
Speaker 1: one call went out, another friend of mine over the
Speaker 1: scanner had heard the nine one one call, had heard
Speaker 1: my name and called my house. I told my mom,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on, but Vince was shot.
Speaker 1: My mom knew Dominic was supposed to be hunt with
Speaker 1: me that morning, so she called Dominic. When he answered
Speaker 1: the phone, she said, I don't know what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on, but Vince has been shot. You need
Speaker 1: to get to the lake. The next time I remember
Speaker 1: waking up was in the in the recovery room. My
Speaker 1: son was standing over the top of me. I had
Speaker 1: a sheet pulled up to my waist and he could
Speaker 1: see I had both my feet there, and he says, uh,
Speaker 1: you still want both your legs. He said, yeah. They
Speaker 1: made me sign a waiver awhile back that said they
Speaker 1: can take your leg if they needed to to save
Speaker 1: your life. I remember telling him, boy, you are damn
Speaker 1: lucky they did not take my leg, because I'd have
Speaker 1: been would piste off guy at you. The first X rays,
Speaker 1: I saw that they took um the plastic wad and
Speaker 1: every baby from that shotgun shell was under my kneecap.
Speaker 1: They drilled a hole in my fever and put a
Speaker 1: pin in it and attached my knee to that. Thirteen
Speaker 1: surgeries clean out trying to get pellets and everything out
Speaker 1: of my leg dominic. He came in to see me
Speaker 1: and uh he said, Hey, I already cleared it with
Speaker 1: the nurses. Let's go for a walk. And uh uh
Speaker 1: he had brought Lucy with him, so I got to
Speaker 1: throw a few sticks for I vowed then that I
Speaker 1: would never have another dog not named Lucy, my third
Speaker 1: dog since her, she's named Lucy three, and I will
Speaker 1: not have another dog that's that's not daved after that girl.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt she She definitely saved my life that day.
Speaker 1: M