Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
Speaker 1: predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
Speaker 1: or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to
Speaker 1: support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at
Speaker 1: first Light dot com, f I R S T L
Speaker 1: I t E dot com, machines On machines on. Joined
Speaker 1: today by Josh Smith Montana Knife Company, very special guests.
Speaker 1: The doors open for a reason. You know why that
Speaker 1: door is open, Max, exactly. Max is quick. Max isn't
Speaker 1: even He's just wandering by and trying to help us out.
Speaker 2: It's all.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Come back here, Max, so I
Speaker 1: can explain something to you. I had a plan for
Speaker 1: a year now to cook. So I recently discovered boodant
Speaker 1: was changed my life. I don't know how it didn't
Speaker 1: spread into the north everything else did. Oh uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know it had been hidden from me. I heard
Speaker 1: about it. I hadn't had it. It's changed my life.
Speaker 1: And a guy heard me talking about it, who owns
Speaker 1: a boo dant place. Billy's Boudan sounds great. Well, he
Speaker 1: sent me a box of his bootan the kindness of
Speaker 1: his heart. Do you want me to watch it? Well,
Speaker 1: Chess was watching. If you want to watch it, go
Speaker 1: ahead and watch it. Low and slow.
Speaker 2: It's as low as it can go.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a boot aan cooking trick the Cajun's
Speaker 1: told me about. You wrap it in wet paper towel
Speaker 1: and nuke it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he can do hot dogs like that and.
Speaker 1: Then finish it in the pan hot doctor m h.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have it with hot sauce. I got an
Speaker 1: idea where I was gonna put a vat of hot sauce.
Speaker 1: If I live down there, I'd put a vat of
Speaker 1: hot sauce on top of my car with a tube
Speaker 1: that came down the road. There's a little squeeze valve
Speaker 1: that hangs right at my steering wheel, because I like
Speaker 1: to give a little doll up a hot sauce on
Speaker 1: each bite of boot an.
Speaker 4: You could put that sauce where people normally put their
Speaker 4: big snorkel, you know, exhaust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And the cage is called boot an.
Speaker 3: If you hit a deer you'd be pre hot sauce.
Speaker 3: It'd be already.
Speaker 1: Exactly deer, he's already marinated. Also joined, Uh Seth is here,
Speaker 1: Doctor Randall Krin, who wouldn't pick up the phone?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: Phil? Who made it? Phil? Who made it? That? We're
Speaker 1: not cooking the boot an in the studio?
Speaker 5: Salty Phil.
Speaker 3: Every good podcast begins with an airing of grievances.
Speaker 6: Between the furs on the wall and the carpet. It
Speaker 6: would have been we would have been smelling boodhan for it,
Speaker 6: who knows how long. Yeah, which is not necessarily a
Speaker 6: bad thing.
Speaker 1: I was frying fish in the house one time, and
Speaker 1: I remember a couple of days later, my wife's like,
Speaker 1: even the bathtowel smell like that fish.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the boot an smell would be slow to
Speaker 1: go away now that I'm down on it.
Speaker 7: But in this ten by twelve foot room that we're
Speaker 7: sitting in, Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Billy's boot an, we're gonna cook. Thank you, Billy, Chester
Speaker 1: and Brody pork Liver and Rice.
Speaker 7: You stopped at Phil. We also have Chester.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I have an organizational problem. Krim wants to
Speaker 1: remind everybody once again that if you like to watch
Speaker 1: the network shows on YouTube. It's all moved to Meet
Speaker 1: Eater podcast network. It's his own channel on YouTube. I'm
Speaker 1: not clear on why, but that's something that happened. I'm
Speaker 1: not here to litigate it. It's all moved the mediat
Speaker 1: podcast network. So all podcast materials on independent YouTube channel, right.
Speaker 8: I mean that's because we have the Meat Eater TV channel.
Speaker 8: It's going on, it's coming out all the time, and
Speaker 8: this is the one going shop for all of our podcasts,
Speaker 8: podcast videos, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of in the history of other
Speaker 1: channels that have split. I can't think of it.
Speaker 4: There's HBO and there's Max.
Speaker 1: There you go. It's like that. It's like when that happened.
Speaker 1: We have an intern, Nate, who came up and introduced
Speaker 1: himself to me by way of saying this.
Speaker 8: Oh he really he did this. You don't know about this,
Speaker 8: No I don't, but I'm just looking at your note.
Speaker 1: I many times I fell in love with the idea
Speaker 1: of a compliment sandwich, and we've joked about it times,
Speaker 1: where it's a way to offer criticism to someone where
Speaker 1: you compliment them, then you criticize them, then you comment them.
Speaker 8: And he did that with you.
Speaker 1: No, oh okay.
Speaker 4: Often though you compliment sandwiches only have one.
Speaker 1: Slice of bread.
Speaker 4: You compliment them and then you create a sound.
Speaker 1: So the example I would use is like, Krinn, you
Speaker 1: look great today. Uh sure, wish you to answer your
Speaker 1: phone on a podcast day. I like your shirt. That's
Speaker 1: a comment. Stand So you leave your feeling good.
Speaker 4: I understand what it is yours. Often, lax, that's the
Speaker 4: second compon.
Speaker 1: You come in soft, right, you hit them with, You
Speaker 1: hit him with what you're there for, build them up
Speaker 1: and break them, and then you leave them with a
Speaker 1: good feeling about you. But he pointed out the intern
Speaker 1: came out to me and said, it's not a compliment sandwich.
Speaker 1: He goes, what does a ham sandwich.
Speaker 3: Hams in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, He's like, it's an insult sandwich. Like you got
Speaker 1: bread ham bread? Do you call it a bread sandwich? Nope,
Speaker 1: it's a ham sandwich.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, yeah it does.
Speaker 1: It's it's the name is what's in the middle of
Speaker 1: that summit? It's an insult sandwich.
Speaker 5: Wow, I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 8: And then you liked him a lot after that.
Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, I did. So I'm not gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that anymore. But real quick this, you know, can
Speaker 1: you play the read the drop Phil? Oh?
Speaker 7: Yeah, sure, let's see we got it right here.
Speaker 1: It's time for Steve Reid's books, so you ain't.
Speaker 4: Got to.
Speaker 1: This one is so rich. I'm just doing it in installments,
Speaker 1: and I know that I go on, but here that
Speaker 1: has got to heat with the couple from here. This
Speaker 1: is fun. This is the best book.
Speaker 6: Have we gotten feedback from this segment yet, Karin? Has
Speaker 6: it been happening long enough?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 8: No, we just dropped it without this.
Speaker 1: The introk Alaska tracks life stories from hunters, fishermen, and
Speaker 1: trappers of Alaska by Randy Zarnkey. It's oral histories. I
Speaker 1: told you the other day we did this one. I talked,
Speaker 1: I did one out of here. I hunted eagles for
Speaker 1: bounty years ago. If you tell people that now, they
Speaker 1: think you're a really bad person. We got two bucks
Speaker 1: apiece for eagles. The biggest day I had was doing
Speaker 1: a herring run. The eagles were eating the herring, and
Speaker 1: I killed thirty three eagles. The only reason I didn't
Speaker 1: get more was I run out of bullets.
Speaker 3: Dang, did you already read that one?
Speaker 1: No, I'm just reminding people. Oh yeah, listen to this.
Speaker 1: This is a different guy. Listen carefully. We finished up
Speaker 1: the air base on a net island in record time.
Speaker 1: One day. This is during World War two. One day
Speaker 1: a patrol came back and one of the planes was
Speaker 1: doing victory roles over the field. When he landed, he
Speaker 1: said he got a submarine. He told his commanding officer
Speaker 1: where it was. They sent a patrol boat out and
Speaker 1: came back with about three hundred pounds of whale blubber.
Speaker 1: So they immediately had a whale recognition class. That's the
Speaker 1: illusion theater in World War two. Oh you got done?
Speaker 5: Two bands done?
Speaker 2: They kind of that stove doesn't go too good.
Speaker 1: Job one second, Well, can you cut him up and
Speaker 1: pass him around? Listen to this one. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do anything. A couple of licks.
Speaker 9: I'm on board, Josh, I'm still I'm still hung up
Speaker 9: on the image of that torpedo going into Are you
Speaker 9: ready for this?
Speaker 1: Dad dug a great big pit with a manure scoop
Speaker 1: and a team of horses. It was twenty feet wide,
Speaker 1: forty feet long, and ten feet deep. On winter weekends,
Speaker 1: he'd pile it full of snow and all us kids
Speaker 1: put snow shoes on and we'd tamp it down. We
Speaker 1: kept that up until it was mounded six or seven
Speaker 1: feet high above the pit. Then he'd cover it with
Speaker 1: about a foot of moss. That was our refrigeration. Dad
Speaker 1: dug a stairway down into the ice and carved holes
Speaker 1: in the sidewalls. That's where he'd stick his quarters of beef.
Speaker 1: In late summer, it would be solid ice in there.
Speaker 1: That's cool, huh, I like it. I gonna do one
Speaker 1: or two more. This book's so rich, can't get to
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 3: We got a lot of podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to do one more.
Speaker 8: We should do an entire podcast that is just ready
Speaker 8: for this one.
Speaker 1: Just before World War II broke out, a trapper had
Speaker 1: a pilot fly him over near Farewell to trap The
Speaker 1: pilot was supposed to come back and get him in January,
Speaker 1: but never showed up. The war broke out and the
Speaker 1: FEDS had grounded all the airplanes. The trapper didn't have
Speaker 1: a radio, so he didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 1: It was March before the authorities would let the pilot
Speaker 1: fly again. When the pilot flew back over there to
Speaker 1: pick him up. The trapper was standing under a spruce
Speaker 1: tree smoking a cigarette. The trapper said, where the hell
Speaker 1: you been?
Speaker 3: He must have cigarettes?
Speaker 4: Pretty well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm telling you. It's a great book, man,
Speaker 1: It's my favorite book. Josh, Can you share with us
Speaker 1: what you have, what you brought there?
Speaker 5: Real quick?
Speaker 1: Josh can doing everything too? Is Josh gonna show everybody,
Speaker 1: absolutely once and for all, how to shark for a knife,
Speaker 1: which he did for me in Uh in it it
Speaker 1: had more of an impact on my life than Budan.
Speaker 1: Give your credentials, Josh.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, Well, as you're distracted by the boot, yeah,
Speaker 3: it looks pretty good. I was just getting ready to eat.
Speaker 3: As soon as they put food in front of me.
Speaker 3: You asked me a question.
Speaker 1: Oh, I can talk about something else.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I mean I I guess how you got
Speaker 3: into it. My background? Yeah, my little league baseball coach
Speaker 3: and I grew up in Lincoln, Montana, home of the Unibomber, you.
Speaker 1: Know his retirement.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, my little league baseball coach started teaching me
Speaker 3: to make knives.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: He would bring his He was a guide and a
Speaker 3: big hunter, and he'd bring his honey knives to practice
Speaker 3: and show the parents, and being a kid, I was
Speaker 3: super interested in it. So he my parents bought me
Speaker 3: one of his knives for Christmas that year, and he
Speaker 3: invited me up to make a knife and I made
Speaker 3: one or two, probably two or three in the shop.
Speaker 3: And then I think his way of getting rid of
Speaker 3: me was to tell me, if you want to be
Speaker 3: a knife maker, you have to have your own knife shop.
Speaker 3: And so I had almoin business. I worked at my parents'
Speaker 3: excavation business as kind of a entrepreneur kid anyway, so
Speaker 3: I had a little bit of money. I bought a
Speaker 3: belt grinder and started making knives in my dad's shop,
Speaker 3: and out.
Speaker 1: Of what metal at first, like leaf springs.
Speaker 3: And job yeah, yeah, leaf springs, or like flat bar
Speaker 3: stock like ten ninety five, just carbon steel. And in
Speaker 3: the beginning it was grinding blades. It wasn't forging. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was probably not strong enough to forge a blade
Speaker 3: at that point. But that's a good way to start,
Speaker 3: because you when you forge a blade, you basically when
Speaker 3: you're not good at it, you create a bunch of
Speaker 3: problems you have to fix. So, you know, to learn
Speaker 3: to become a knife maker, it's probably best to start
Speaker 3: with a grinder and just get good at grinding and
Speaker 3: heat treating and finish work handles all that. But I
Speaker 3: mean I really took after it. I kind of set
Speaker 3: a goal to become the youngest journeyman and master blade
Speaker 3: smith in the world. And I saw did I became
Speaker 3: a journeyman smith at the age of fifteen years old
Speaker 3: and a master blade smith at nineteen. Yeah, So I was,
Speaker 3: where's you have to go to do that? That test?
Speaker 3: You have to become a member of the American Blade
Speaker 3: Smith Society first, and you have to be an apprentice
Speaker 3: for then it was two years, now it's three. And
Speaker 3: then you have to test. It's a two part test
Speaker 3: and you have to do it in front of a
Speaker 3: master smith in his shop at least the first part.
Speaker 3: The first part is is a performance test. You know,
Speaker 3: if it's nice to make a really pretty knife, but
Speaker 3: it has it's a tool, it has to function.
Speaker 5: So you have to.
Speaker 3: Forge a ten inch blade no longer than ten inch,
Speaker 3: and it has to chop a one inch rope in
Speaker 3: half and one chop, which that just shows sharpness. Uh,
Speaker 3: And then it has to chop two two by fours
Speaker 3: and a half and when you're without resharpening. And when
Speaker 3: you're done with that with the was the rope and
Speaker 3: the two two by fours, it still has to shave.
Speaker 3: And then you have to be whacking away at it
Speaker 3: like it's a hatchet. Yep, many chops as you want.
Speaker 3: And then when you're all done chopping those boards, it
Speaker 3: still has to shave hair. And then after that you
Speaker 3: put the blade in the vice and you have to
Speaker 3: bend it ninety degrees without breaking it.
Speaker 1: Dang, So you just show up with some dude's place
Speaker 1: and you got to whip all this out.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I actually did it out in Oregon in front
Speaker 3: of an old legend knife maker, Wayne Goddard. I did
Speaker 3: it in his shop in front of probably thirty people
Speaker 3: when I was actually fourteen when I did that, and
Speaker 3: then I turned had a birthday, and I did the
Speaker 3: second phase in June that year when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: But you couldn't take one of your knives now and
Speaker 1: bend it into ninety could you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a video on our YouTube of us doing
Speaker 3: it with a bear tooth knife that we make with
Speaker 3: fre mkse bend it in a vice and grab it
Speaker 3: and pry it over and it bends to ninety in
Speaker 3: the video, and it comes back to about I don't know,
Speaker 3: twenty degrees.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, I would never do that.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't picture that. I would just not picture that.
Speaker 1: You that it would ever put up with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like this little blade here, one of
Speaker 3: our small knives. I mean you need some you need
Speaker 3: some length, right, you know, so that that bear tooth
Speaker 3: knife of ours is about I think eight and a
Speaker 3: half inches and it's thin. So a thicker blade, shorter blade,
Speaker 3: it's going to be harder to do. But the point is,
Speaker 3: and the point of that test is to show that
Speaker 3: you have really good control over your heat treatment. So
Speaker 3: you know, a knife needs to be able to cut
Speaker 3: for a long time, but it also needs to be tough, right,
Speaker 3: So if you get it in a bind, if you
Speaker 3: hit bone, if you're chopping, you're hitting knots, that edge
Speaker 3: can actually flex a little without without chipping out. So
Speaker 3: an edge will either bend deflect, which means the steels
Speaker 3: too soft, it can chip out if it's too hard,
Speaker 3: or if you have it just right, it kind of
Speaker 3: gives a little. And it depends on the use case.
Speaker 3: I mean we heat treat our knives, even our MKC
Speaker 3: knives a little different depending on you know, a chef's
Speaker 3: knife isn't expected to chop two by fours in half.
Speaker 3: It can be a little harder than like a camp
Speaker 3: kniff that you maybe are doing a lot of chopping
Speaker 3: and prying and stuff like that with. And so demonstrating
Speaker 3: control over your heat treatment process is really important. And
Speaker 3: so did that as a kid. And then and then
Speaker 3: when you're done with that, you have to present five
Speaker 3: knives to a panel of judges at the Atlanta Blade
Speaker 3: Show and they judge your fit and finish, So like,
Speaker 3: how how well did you put that knife together? Does
Speaker 3: the handle material fit well? Is it symmetrical, you know,
Speaker 3: edged geometry, good bunch of different things they judge you on.
Speaker 1: And so so like a big old line of dudes
Speaker 1: waiting to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean when I passed my mastersmith test back
Speaker 3: in two thousand, I was probably right around number eighty
Speaker 3: eighty one in the world. Now there's probably one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten. Oh, I think like six or seven guys
Speaker 3: went for the master this year in one passed. It's
Speaker 3: a it's a.
Speaker 1: Difficult did you fail multiple times before you.
Speaker 3: Pass No, I passed, Yeah, I passed the first time.
Speaker 3: And I actually this super kind of cool. Really, But
Speaker 3: I so when I did the master Smith test when
Speaker 3: I was nineteen, that's a little different because you have
Speaker 3: to do the same performance blade test with the rope
Speaker 3: and two by fours and whatnot, but with a Damascus
Speaker 3: steel blade of at least three hundred layers. And then
Speaker 3: you have to do your your Mastersmith test and you
Speaker 3: have to actually present as one of your five knives
Speaker 3: a Quillian dagger, and the dagger is hard to make right.
Speaker 3: It's symmetrical, you know. To make all four sides of
Speaker 3: that blade right. You have to also wire flute and
Speaker 3: wire wrap the handle. And I sold that whole set
Speaker 3: when I was nineteen to a collector and he passed away,
Speaker 3: and he told me when he bought him that he
Speaker 3: would they would come back to me someday. Well, he
Speaker 3: passed away, honestly, way too young. They went to his son.
Speaker 3: His son was very supportive of me, bought some knives
Speaker 3: over the years, and unfortunately way too young again. He
Speaker 3: passed away a few weeks ago, and his wife, like
Speaker 3: two days after he passed away called me and said,
Speaker 3: those knives are coming back to you, So I actually
Speaker 3: seriously yeah, like this this is this right here is
Speaker 3: the actual not that it's great for people that aren't
Speaker 3: watching video, but this is the Quillian dagger I made
Speaker 3: with that test when I was nineteen. WHOA yeah game,
Speaker 3: And then I.
Speaker 1: Wish, I wish i'd have brought I should have brought
Speaker 1: a dag or my dad brought back from World War
Speaker 1: two in North Africa to show you.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that'd be cool.
Speaker 1: Are you real familiar with ivory? Yeah, I mean big
Speaker 1: o ivory handle yep, he brought it back from Uh
Speaker 1: this uh it's a big long dagger like this with
Speaker 1: a ivory handle.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This or this knife right here is fossilized walrus ivory.
Speaker 5: You know you.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of guys that have used like
Speaker 3: elephant ivory and stuff. But uh, now the rules have
Speaker 3: changed a lot. Even if it's an ancient piece of ivory,
Speaker 3: if you're not really allowed to change the shape of it,
Speaker 3: like cut it up and use it because they can't
Speaker 3: prove if it's new or old or whatever. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of rules and restrictions compared. And I started
Speaker 3: making knives in the nineties and it was a little
Speaker 3: bit of the wild West with that stuff.
Speaker 1: This thing, this thing too. I should I should brought
Speaker 1: it to show you. That knife in North Africa. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it is the leather, the sheath, the leather
Speaker 1: on this thing. It looks like like human skin. Man,
Speaker 1: It's like like a trans It's like a translucent leather.
Speaker 1: It's so weird. You got to bring it and show
Speaker 1: it to you. Dude, I could just kill Brody with
Speaker 1: this thing, no problem.
Speaker 4: Yes you could, right so, right after you gave me
Speaker 4: a compliment sandwich.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was cool because I only really
Speaker 3: got as good as I got that fast because there
Speaker 3: were you know, there were masters willing to teach me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was a very sharing group of people, and they
Speaker 3: embraced a kid, I'm sure an annoying kid at times,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, there was no YouTube.
Speaker 5: Then.
Speaker 3: You had to go to knife shows. You had to
Speaker 3: go to people's shops, you know. I flew to Columbia,
Speaker 3: South Carolina and spent a week with a knife maker
Speaker 3: that I had never met when I was fifteen, you know,
Speaker 3: but I was pretty I was pretty persistent about becoming
Speaker 3: good and trying to keep They they had.
Speaker 1: To think you were something man to be like that
Speaker 1: obsessed about at that age.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they were annoyed by me because I was
Speaker 3: obviously asking questions. But but I mean it's cool because
Speaker 3: I mean I just had two of those knife makers
Speaker 3: that from here in Montana, Wade Colter and Shane Taylor,
Speaker 3: on my podcast this last week, and they think it's
Speaker 3: really cool what what I've built right with where we
Speaker 3: are today, and they were a huge part of that.
Speaker 3: So it's a it's a cool community. And you know,
Speaker 3: so I made custom knives for you know, I graduated
Speaker 3: high school and duck hunted my way out of college
Speaker 3: here in Bozeman and became a full time knife maker
Speaker 3: and did that for about ten years. But I always
Speaker 3: had the dream of starting Montana Knife Company. I actually
Speaker 3: registered the name Montena Knife Company when I was nineteen.
Speaker 3: Really wow, yeah, oh dang, But I didn't launch it
Speaker 3: until you know, twenty twenty. But I was seen in
Speaker 3: the stores the lack of quality and like in factory
Speaker 3: made knives for hunters, and you could tell a lot
Speaker 3: of these companies didn't actually have hunters designing their knives.
Speaker 3: And I felt like the more we saw stuff being
Speaker 3: outsourced overseas. Actually, the throwaway blade became a big deal
Speaker 3: in the last ten years, and it bothered me because
Speaker 3: for decades, I mean my whole career, I've had people
Speaker 3: come into my shop and say like, Hey, this was
Speaker 3: my dad's knife in Vietnam. What you just said about
Speaker 3: like the dagger right from North Africa, Hey, this was
Speaker 3: my dad's pocket knife. He was a bush pilot in Alaska.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what they did. Men generally have passed
Speaker 3: down knives and guns, and all of a sudden, we
Speaker 3: just started throwing away something that's always been an heirloom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you pass it down right into the dirt. I
Speaker 1: had a brief love affair with those replacement blade knives. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No one's ever going to be like, you know, this
Speaker 2: is my dad's haveilon. Maybe, but no.
Speaker 3: You also can't put a havelo on and advice and
Speaker 3: bend at ninety.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Well, in the idea of the idea of even just
Speaker 3: throwing those blades out in the bushes when you're out
Speaker 3: in the forest, that's.
Speaker 1: What I meant by put them down here, Yeah, because like,
Speaker 1: what do I do with this thing now? Man? I
Speaker 1: always like try to bury it, you know, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: part of me getting turned off on them.
Speaker 3: But yeah, when I when I launched this finally in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, it was it kind of had enough of it.
Speaker 3: And people kept telling me that it wasn't possible to
Speaker 3: make a production knife in America. Build, build a brand,
Speaker 3: build a company. Like they kept saying, you have to
Speaker 3: stay competitive on price, you know that fifty to one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars price range, and you have to have it
Speaker 3: done overseas.
Speaker 10: And based on companies that don't need to be mentioned,
Speaker 10: but like big companies that yeah make forty nine dollars.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and it and it I felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: we as hunters, we we buy you know, your base
Speaker 3: layers and your mid layers and your rain gear and boots,
Speaker 3: and you're put together a long range rifle with all
Speaker 3: these optics and your binos and you know, your spotting
Speaker 3: scope and all this money we spend. And then people
Speaker 3: go as an afterthought by like the cheapest knife possible.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, it's one of the items. If you
Speaker 3: go hunting in a pair of tennis shoes and Levi's
Speaker 3: and you have a bow or a gun and a knife.
Speaker 3: If you take down an animal, you can take care
Speaker 3: of it. But if you don't have that knife, you're
Speaker 3: kind of in a buying and it's as one of
Speaker 3: those like people started expecting less performance out of their knife,
Speaker 3: like I'll just grab another one next to you. And
Speaker 3: that's part of why we we sharpen knives for free,
Speaker 3: for people for life when they buy our knives, because
Speaker 3: I want people to send there. If they can't sharpen it,
Speaker 3: I want them to send it back in and we'll
Speaker 3: sharpen it and send it back to them because I
Speaker 3: want them to go out in the field and have
Speaker 3: a good experience, you know. But part of the reason
Speaker 3: so many people gave up on sharpening I heard all
Speaker 3: the time, like well I can't sharpen. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: then they show me the knife they're trying to sharpen.
Speaker 3: It's like that factory made that knife with the cheapest steel,
Speaker 3: crappy heat treat, thick blade because they don't want you
Speaker 3: to break it. I mean, occasionally on a knife that's
Speaker 3: this thin, I mean it's one hundred thousands thick, it's
Speaker 3: twelve thousands thick at the tip. If you abuse it,
Speaker 3: you can break it. It's like, well, we'll just replace it.
Speaker 3: But for the one in you know, hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 3: that that happens too. The other people are really happy
Speaker 3: because it's easy to re sharpen. It passes through material easy,
Speaker 3: you know. So when I see what people are trying
Speaker 3: to sharpen, like, well, you never really had a chance
Speaker 3: on your sharpening stone, Like the hand it to me
Speaker 3: and I just go straight to a bel grinder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, try to get it right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love that knife right there, this one great one
Speaker 2: there the stone goat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna hit on a couple of things.
Speaker 1: Everyone to come back, Josh, we're gonna talk about some
Speaker 1: products coming out. We're gonna talk about You're gonna show
Speaker 1: you how to sharpen your knife. Yeah, like I like
Speaker 1: that stuff. Man.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah.
Speaker 3: It was a Steve's house for dinner and he like
Speaker 3: walks off into the garage and he sitting sitting at
Speaker 3: his counter and he walks back in and he just
Speaker 3: plops down a knife and a sharpening stone.
Speaker 1: He was like, show me, I yeah, I like to
Speaker 1: see how you like to do it. And he had
Speaker 1: one that was real bad shape, and I told him,
Speaker 1: Seth did that no. Well, I was like, it's not
Speaker 1: my fault.
Speaker 3: You might have actually said something to that effect.
Speaker 1: Accident seth ruined it.
Speaker 11: I sharpened a knife for someone in Texas and got
Speaker 11: a lot of compliments out.
Speaker 1: Well, you got to see this strategy, dude, He's gonna
Speaker 1: do a strategy that people need. Like, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I am gonna tease the strategy. He no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: He'll explain it.
Speaker 3: It's different.
Speaker 1: It's a different strategy, but it's like I've been using it.
Speaker 1: I love it. I want to watch you do it
Speaker 1: one more time. But it's it's a phenomenal strategy. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna We're gonna cover some more stuff, some newsbits,
Speaker 1: though we kind of already touched on this. This is
Speaker 1: a this is a weird one, not weird.
Speaker 3: This is really good.
Speaker 1: The bootan is good. How did like Northern How did
Speaker 1: Yankees not know about bootan when you're ice fishing?
Speaker 5: Oh, chick, come here, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't care.
Speaker 3: It almost reminds me of like scrapple mm hmmmm.
Speaker 5: I love scrap you know.
Speaker 1: My wife eats it. Oh, it's fabulous. She's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's like whatever, it tastes good.
Speaker 8: I like this better than the last.
Speaker 3: Are you saying that it hasn't changed her life?
Speaker 4: No, some Bootans are a little more livery than that.
Speaker 1: You could say to people. It's kind of like liver
Speaker 1: and rice, and people are gonna not want to go
Speaker 1: near you. Know what I'm saying. You wouldn't. Yeah, changed
Speaker 1: my life. I don't know why Yankees haven't gotten into Boodhan.
Speaker 1: They are because when I start my new company, I
Speaker 1: don't want to tell people the names. I want anyone
Speaker 1: to steal it. Or does that help me hold on
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 7: I'm pretty I'm pretty sure you said it already.
Speaker 3: Sky Mood out there.
Speaker 1: It is, yeah that like now I've that'll.
Speaker 8: Be a food truck, or maybe should be a food truck.
Speaker 8: We open up in front of the store and we'd
Speaker 8: have long lines.
Speaker 1: Here's a news item. We've touched on a bunch. It's
Speaker 1: gonna keep changing back and forth. I predict I've said
Speaker 1: it before, I've said it many times. I got the shirt.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want them to build the Ambler
Speaker 1: Road in the Brooks Range, which is like a two
Speaker 1: hundred mile road in the Brooks Range to access a
Speaker 1: mining district that crosses I don't know, some thousand plus
Speaker 1: rivers and streams. I think it's a bad idea. I
Speaker 1: never One thing I never worried about is running out
Speaker 1: of roads. So the BLM officially revoked its permit for
Speaker 1: the proposed Ambler Road. We had reported on the fact
Speaker 1: that they were gonna. They did. Someone's trying to resurrect it.
Speaker 1: So right now it's dead. Someone's trying to resurrect it
Speaker 1: with an amendment that they added to a Senate version
Speaker 1: of the Defense Bill. So the Annual Defense Bill has
Speaker 1: in there to to force the Department of Interior to
Speaker 1: select a route for the Ambler Road. The reason I
Speaker 1: say this will come back up again when Trump's back
Speaker 1: in office, Like his administration did a lot of good
Speaker 1: stuff for hunters and needed a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: it wasn't that this is not that great for hunters.
Speaker 1: This is an area where I'm probably going to really
Speaker 1: disagree with Trump on. My guess is he's gonna the
Speaker 1: Interior Department under Trump is going to be favorable to
Speaker 1: the Ambler Road. It's my guess. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good guess. Well, that's.
Speaker 4: That Supreme recent Supreme Court decision impact this at all.
Speaker 1: Either or could it what decision.
Speaker 4: Where they kind of take away the power of agencies
Speaker 4: to make you didn't see that the chevron.
Speaker 3: The repeal of the show.
Speaker 1: I have, but I haven't come to understand it yet.
Speaker 2: I don't think this one was done not quite right.
Speaker 5: They're they're pre cooked.
Speaker 1: It's it's all pre cook pretty Yeah, you're good, You're
Speaker 1: just cold, just cold hog liver. Yeah, uh no, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of this. I've been trying to understand it.
Speaker 1: But I do think that this is gonna be one
Speaker 1: of those ping pong issues. There are certain issues just
Speaker 1: never go away, Like an administration will do a thing,
Speaker 1: like some of the monument status stuff because one administration
Speaker 1: does it. An administration.
Speaker 4: New pebble mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what will probably happen is like Trump will
Speaker 1: come back on office, his Interior Department will probably move
Speaker 1: toward doing this, but it'll play out so slowly that
Speaker 1: like some other guy will get elected down the road
Speaker 1: and his it'll just be stuck in this like never
Speaker 1: ending limbo.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, but the road's not going to get built while
Speaker 4: that process.
Speaker 1: While that process is going on. But I think that
Speaker 1: you'll be hearing it seemed like up in the air.
Speaker 1: But now that it's so clear how election is going
Speaker 1: to go, you'll like you'll hear more about this this
Speaker 1: ambler roade issue. We recently had on uh Colossal Biosciences,
Speaker 1: and we talked about resurrecting mammoths and all the policy
Speaker 1: and technology to resurrect mammoths. H half a Finger wrote in.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, can I share your letter? And he said,
Speaker 1: he said, go ahead, right, halfle finger, sort of our
Speaker 1: our our resident biologists and and uh and uh world's
Speaker 1: leading dear expert. He would contest that world's leading mule
Speaker 1: deer expert. Your conversation with Matt James was interesting. This
Speaker 1: is this is half a Finger. I like the technology
Speaker 1: that all that research is generating, but the talk of
Speaker 1: bringing mammoth elephant hybrids back and then creating an ecosystem
Speaker 1: for them is not only utter non sense, it is frightening.
Speaker 1: M hmm, what will happen to all the animals that
Speaker 1: currently live in those ecosystems? Those animals have earned their
Speaker 1: place in it by surviving the evolutionary gauntlet. Well, mammos
Speaker 1: are proven losers, Harsh, Harsh.
Speaker 3: Are there any mammoths around to hear that hurt your feelings.
Speaker 3: I mean they make great knife handles. I supported.
Speaker 1: Think about what you gotta grow them and then no,
Speaker 1: because you can use them fresh. You don't have to
Speaker 1: wait for them to be especially if the plethora of them.
Speaker 1: Those guys haven't even thought of the ivory. You should
Speaker 1: you should make an investment into that place. With their
Speaker 1: knife hands.
Speaker 3: Made worse investments.
Speaker 1: He goes on proven losers. I like rooting for the underdog,
Speaker 1: but those things they're under permafrost. See what he did there?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, that's good, very good writer.
Speaker 3: Are they really losers? If potentially an asteroid hit the
Speaker 3: planet and they just got wiped out in a second.
Speaker 1: That's not what happened to them?
Speaker 3: Well people, Yeah, I mean they.
Speaker 1: Were on Wrangle Island until four thousand years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've vanished in Europe, you know, forty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and then and then in some places they vanished thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and Wrangle Island four thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read read his great sentence. I like rooting
Speaker 1: for the underdog, but those things are under permafrost, and
Speaker 1: they lost losers. All the energy and money put into
Speaker 1: bringing back losers and then trying to create an ecosystem
Speaker 1: for them is lunacy. However, the money people are donating
Speaker 1: to bring the mammoth back is generating a lot of
Speaker 1: great genomic research that will have benefits elsewhere. But let's
Speaker 1: not ruin the ecosystem for winners by trying to bring
Speaker 1: back and prop up the losers. Then he closes with
Speaker 1: this full disclosure, it would be cool to see a mammoths.
Speaker 1: He sends a thing they're still trying to puzzle out.
Speaker 1: So Wrangle Island. See this is so fascinating, dude, because
Speaker 1: Wrangle Like even though people argue about the Blitzkreek hypothesis,
Speaker 1: they argue about the idea that humans wiped out mammos.
Speaker 1: There's this weird thing that happens where mammos were wiped
Speaker 1: out in different places at different times contemporaneous with the
Speaker 1: arrival of humans. There's research now on Wrangel Island where
Speaker 1: they lasted until think about this, Till four thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: there were mammos on Wrangle Island. They currently think just
Speaker 1: based on all these examples they've had of all the
Speaker 1: these mammoth remains, and then human remains. It's like they've
Speaker 1: recognized a four hundred year gap between Huh, it's not
Speaker 1: very long. Yeah, a four hundred year gap between the
Speaker 1: last mammoth and the first person. That's bizarre. Whenever someone
Speaker 1: starts throwing around numbers that precise about that long ago,
Speaker 1: you got to be a little suspicious.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that was my first thought. It was like, that's
Speaker 9: not very many human or mammoth lifetime.
Speaker 1: And then you know, and then you got a factor.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't even know. I'm not getting
Speaker 1: into what they're looking at. I don't know what they're
Speaker 1: looking at. But you also got again to did the
Speaker 1: did the first person that arrived in Wrangle Island? Did
Speaker 1: he like leave evidence of himself? Meaning the oldest thing
Speaker 1: you find is not the oldest things, right, So when
Speaker 1: you get in all this stuff about the peopling of
Speaker 1: the Americas, like you have really old sites, but there
Speaker 1: aren't many of them, and what are the chances the
Speaker 1: first person to do anything created a site?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, good point.
Speaker 9: I will say, Ever, since that guy was here for
Speaker 9: the podcast, whenever I have a after my first beer,
Speaker 9: I'll just turn to the nearest person and I'll say,
Speaker 9: did you know that when the last mammoths blinked out,
Speaker 9: the Egyptians were building the pyramids. Because that frame of
Speaker 9: reference blew my mind stuck with me.
Speaker 1: And John mcfee's Pulitzer Prize winning book of geology based
Speaker 1: in Range. No, it's called Annals of the Former World. Uh,
Speaker 1: he says if he was going to i'veset this for
Speaker 1: if he was going to sum this book up in
Speaker 1: one sentence, it would be that the top of Mount
Speaker 1: Everest is marine limestone. He also imagines that if you
Speaker 1: took all of the Earth's history and you imagine it
Speaker 1: as a timeline spanning between Fingertip and Fingertip. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is the Earth's history. You can remove human history
Speaker 1: with one stroke of a nail file.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's a lot of history.
Speaker 1: Mcfee's good. That is good. I think the first sentence
Speaker 1: in that is that the magnetic poles wander like the
Speaker 1: North Pole wanders, and the where were we? Oh, Wrangle Island.
Speaker 1: I threw out there that they should get these mammoths
Speaker 1: going on Wrangle Island.
Speaker 12: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: When they get the new mammoths going. The earliest human
Speaker 1: occurrence on Wrangle Island has been dated to thirty six
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. The last mammoths four thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to those mammoths, they feel was sudden, not uh,
Speaker 1: because they're looking at like you can determine, you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you look us up, there's like some
Speaker 1: like mitochondrial DNA thing. Where can you can you can
Speaker 1: determine how many breeding age females are in a population.
Speaker 1: It was it wasn't like there was like they're saying,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like there was a couple. I still think
Speaker 1: my little personal theory, being not an expert at all,
Speaker 1: is that that they're going to wind up the dude
Speaker 1: showed up there. Seems not unlikely. Dude showed up there
Speaker 1: and killed him.
Speaker 5: On an island.
Speaker 4: That's plausible, right, Yeah, that's gonna go across the entirety
Speaker 4: of the continent. That might not be what got him.
Speaker 3: Where's the how how far from the coastline is that
Speaker 3: boneyard guy that Rogan's had on. It's all those mammos.
Speaker 1: So he's weigh in the interior and fairbanks. So like
Speaker 1: the slight slight, you know, very center, slightly south of center,
Speaker 1: but yeah, south.
Speaker 3: Takes away my theory because that it looks like those
Speaker 3: are all just like piled in one spot, like you
Speaker 3: would imagine even like in a tsunami or something where
Speaker 3: a wave wash everything into.
Speaker 1: Why they're all tangled up. It's like the labretar pits
Speaker 1: in l A. There's just so many of them, a
Speaker 1: great catching spot. Uh. The Musky Guy. What do we
Speaker 1: call that Musky episode?
Speaker 8: Uh? It's not out yet as of the recording of this.
Speaker 1: So can I comment on that?
Speaker 8: Yeah, of course you can. We just don't know what
Speaker 8: it's gonna be called.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we recorded a well, we covered the Musky War,
Speaker 1: which none of us new occurred. The Musky Wars were
Speaker 1: a Musky expert. And you'll hear him and and and
Speaker 1: he Uh. I challenged him on something he ain't like
Speaker 1: getting challenged on it. I'm not going to read what
Speaker 1: he wrote. I'm not going to read the thing he
Speaker 1: sent me. But he uses all caps and the important words.
Speaker 1: It's like a very like a very Trumpian use of
Speaker 1: all caps. He says, Hi Krin, I just ran across
Speaker 1: a muscle lunch study that concurs with my opinion that
Speaker 1: genetics matter and muscle lunge populations uppercase contrary to Steve's
Speaker 1: opinion and disagreement with my comment during our podcast filming.
Speaker 1: I doubt he won't care much, but it does in
Speaker 1: fact counter his deer population growth by just moving them.
Speaker 1: Fish are not mammals. I was pointing out to him
Speaker 1: research by the Montith Lab where things that he here,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about arthe I'm not an expert on, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting stuff. It's like when we look when hunters look,
Speaker 1: and they'll say that the area has good genetics, like
Speaker 1: there's an area that produces big bucks. These deer researchers
Speaker 1: are are doing all these studies that show that, like
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to the picture than good genetics.
Speaker 1: Like genetics matters, but there's so much stuff with nutrition
Speaker 1: and not only that, but the the health of the
Speaker 1: health of female deer, the health of does when they
Speaker 1: get pregnant. So meaning when a buck is born, his
Speaker 1: sort of antler developed, destined antler development, destiny has already
Speaker 1: been set his potential what from from in utero, like
Speaker 1: from in utero development, and you could do all kinds
Speaker 1: of things that animal and you will not overcome what
Speaker 1: it experienced in the womb and the health and condition
Speaker 1: of that mother in the womb. But that's just stress
Speaker 1: she was under.
Speaker 4: That's just the potential for how big. Right, It's not
Speaker 4: like if he lives in an area with shitty food,
Speaker 4: he might never sure.
Speaker 1: He could have a great he could have great prenatal care,
Speaker 1: but land in an area of poor food. But what
Speaker 1: it is they went to areas where they they went
Speaker 1: to these areas that have like bad genetics. People say,
Speaker 1: like those bucks have bad genetics, they don't get big.
Speaker 1: You can take males and females from those areas and
Speaker 1: move them to different areas and keep them isolated so
Speaker 1: they're not getting new genetics. They're just in a new environment.
Speaker 1: You can take those males and females, move them to
Speaker 1: a new area that people think has good genetics, but
Speaker 1: not interbreed them, and they will become representative of the
Speaker 1: good genetics area. Meaning it's nutrition and stress and all
Speaker 1: these other factors. It's not like the genetics of the area.
Speaker 1: It's it's all these things and stress is a big
Speaker 1: They feel that that stress is a big part. Stress
Speaker 1: from predators, stress from overpopulation, stress for food resources, how
Speaker 1: much fat the mother has and she gets pregnant, All
Speaker 1: these things are leading to, like is it gonna be
Speaker 1: a big giant buck? Not just that it has good genetics.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if they've done the reverse, but
Speaker 1: presumably you could go to an area with like great
Speaker 1: like quote great genetics, sure the Kaibab plateau, and take
Speaker 1: some of those mule here and move them to a
Speaker 1: bad genetic area and they might sounds like it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to assume they might come out not great meal deer.
Speaker 1: He sent me this paper, Larry, where they've done just
Speaker 1: that with muskies, and it points to points to me
Speaker 1: being wrong, as he says fish ain't mammals hard to
Speaker 1: argue with that that I can't argue with. A listener
Speaker 1: wrote in, Brody is trying to bring this up with me.
Speaker 1: We're gonna let Brody tell them all about it. Brody,
Speaker 1: then I'll give you my call.
Speaker 4: You want to read it or you want me to.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I love your show and listen to it
Speaker 1: every time I get the chance. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you're keeping up with what is going on in Colorado
Speaker 1: over the last several weeks, was referring to as Colorado
Speaker 1: has announced an end to over the counter non resident
Speaker 1: archery ELK tags. Long time coming on that. But back
Speaker 1: to his letter, but I'd like to hear your input.
Speaker 1: It has to do with the number of tags allotted
Speaker 1: to non residents versus residents on the Colorado Elk Hunter's
Speaker 1: Facebook page and open forum. It has gotten crazy to
Speaker 1: the point where many of the residents posting could rather
Speaker 1: not have, would rather not have non resident hunters at all.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to say there will no longer
Speaker 1: be OTC availability during archery elk season for non res hunters,
Speaker 1: and he wants to know where does that lead. Steve
Speaker 1: always mentioned slippery slopes. What is the slippery slope here?
Speaker 1: He brings up a couple points that warrant discussion. The
Speaker 1: animal numbers are down, but most of us are hunting
Speaker 1: on federal land that our taxes helped pay for. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's an old argument which we'll touch on real quick.
Speaker 1: I don't agree with residents having to draw a tag
Speaker 1: every year to hunt a state they live and pay
Speaker 1: taxes in. But I don't think I should have to
Speaker 1: move to a state with elk to be able to
Speaker 1: hunt elk. And no, no, no, no, no, yeah.
Speaker 4: People are acting like the sky is falling on this one,
Speaker 4: not me, Like this has been in works for years
Speaker 4: and years. I don't necessarily see it as this huge
Speaker 4: anti non resident thing. I just see it as a
Speaker 4: way for them to manage their elkurds better.
Speaker 5: Like people are.
Speaker 4: Gonna have to instead of buying a tag that's good
Speaker 4: for most of the state, You're gonna have to pick
Speaker 4: a unit and draw tag. And I don't think there's
Speaker 4: gonna be this massive decrease in the number of tags available.
Speaker 4: It's just like you're gonna have to pick a spot.
Speaker 4: And sure it might be harder to get a tag
Speaker 4: that way, but I see it as a better way
Speaker 4: to manage Colorado's ELK number one. And it's not like
Speaker 4: Colorado is now some outlier in Western states. No, Like
Speaker 4: you can't go buy over the count non resident over
Speaker 4: the counter archery tags in most Western states. In fact,
Speaker 4: it's very hard. Like you want to bitch about Colorado,
Speaker 4: try getting a tag in New Mexico or Utah or Arizona.
Speaker 1: You know, like, yeah, there you have, Like every state
Speaker 1: has a Like take New Mexico. Okay, New Mexico has
Speaker 1: a set number of ELK tags they're gonna give out.
Speaker 1: Demand does not change that there's a set there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a set number of hunters doing it, right, Yep,
Speaker 1: Colorado now has a set number. You can't at the
Speaker 1: last minute. Like it's like everybody would always put in
Speaker 1: for draws in the West and if they don't draw,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, well, if I don't draw, just buy
Speaker 1: my over the counter thing in Colorado.
Speaker 4: Right, which out point, can't You still can buy over
Speaker 4: the counter bull tags in Colorado for second and third
Speaker 4: rifle season, like the opportunity, Like Colorado is a very
Speaker 4: easy state to get an elk, non resident elk.
Speaker 1: That has the biggest elk by by like yeah, by
Speaker 1: a one hundred grande more than like no one's even
Speaker 1: close elk Colorado has.
Speaker 3: In New Mexico, you can buy the over the counter
Speaker 3: ELK tags on private land, sure, sure, And I don't
Speaker 3: know if you can do that in Colorado or not.
Speaker 3: But they have to do all that private lands just
Speaker 3: to control those herds. But and there's a.
Speaker 4: Lot of units in Colorado where residents have to draw
Speaker 4: an archery tag already, like quality units, you know, where
Speaker 4: there's maybe the numbers don't support over the counter hunt,
Speaker 4: but there's big bulls. So I think there's a lot
Speaker 4: more being made of this than people need to.
Speaker 3: Be worrying when they're making it a draw, right, it's
Speaker 3: not like they're just saying no non residence.
Speaker 1: It's a draw with quotas. You got to pick a unit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: meaning it's like everybody else, Yeah.
Speaker 2: You have Yeah in Montana, you have to now draw
Speaker 2: mule deer tags or out tags as a non resident.
Speaker 2: And holy cow, like where we were hunting last year,
Speaker 2: there's a huge problem, Like it's no like with non residents,
Speaker 2: and that's something to be like talked about, Like.
Speaker 9: There's a but that's a cap, that's a capped number, right, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's already capped.
Speaker 2: But however, like this is just kind of like a
Speaker 2: whole different subject. Like I mean, where Seth and I
Speaker 2: went hunting last year, there were so many non resident hunters.
Speaker 2: It was kind of unbelievable. And a lot of these
Speaker 2: people are not educated on like what you can do
Speaker 2: or what you cannot do on lands.
Speaker 1: And you were saying that the agency was sending people
Speaker 1: because they're trying to lower deer numbers in a certain area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and but it was it was terrible.
Speaker 3: Like there's another side of that too, with the non residents.
Speaker 3: You know, especially in Montana out some of those eastern
Speaker 3: towns and whatnot. It's a huge part of the economy
Speaker 3: too that you can't It's like it's a challenge for residents,
Speaker 3: but it's also I think a lot of those people
Speaker 3: come in tend to spend at times more money.
Speaker 2: But it's like half and half two, Like ranchers are
Speaker 2: now in those areas, like we are fed up with
Speaker 2: what's going on.
Speaker 4: People are, yeah, but like to blanket, like to just
Speaker 4: say like it's all the non residents doing that.
Speaker 5: I don't like.
Speaker 4: I think there's plenty of places where residents are part
Speaker 4: of the problem.
Speaker 9: I think I think the big I mean it sort
Speaker 9: of conflates two issues. One is like distribution of hunters
Speaker 9: across a big state. I mean Idaho has gone through
Speaker 9: that sort of drifting towards a non resident draw. But
Speaker 9: they went from over the counter. You could buy a
Speaker 9: deer tag at that time, you could buy one like
Speaker 9: in June. Once you could you know, this is probably
Speaker 9: five years ago. You could buy an Idaho deer tag
Speaker 9: in June, and then it was you need to pick
Speaker 9: a unit in an attempt to make prevent non residence
Speaker 9: from all crowding.
Speaker 3: Into one U.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and then that heightens the demand and then all
Speaker 9: of a sudden, they're selling out of non resident deer
Speaker 9: tags December first, and there's a huge waiting line, and
Speaker 9: so that's going to go to a draw.
Speaker 1: Set as well.
Speaker 4: Elimiting those numbers is like potentially solve some of the problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the thing about non residents. They're all
Speaker 3: going to go to the best areas because they're already
Speaker 3: traveling where resident tags. A lot of those people they're
Speaker 3: just hunting after work, maybe on a Saturday, right around
Speaker 3: where they live in a poor area, you know, poor numbers,
Speaker 3: like even over where we're at, you know some of
Speaker 3: the numbers and some of the challenges with that. But
Speaker 3: no non resident hunters are like, Okay, where's the best
Speaker 3: spot in Montana?
Speaker 5: Go hunt?
Speaker 3: So they are congregating in the absolute best Honting areas.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I think that they'll eventually I want to return to Colorado,
Speaker 1: but they're gonna eventually address that by needing by. You're
Speaker 1: gonna need to pick your areas because right now, if
Speaker 1: you have it's true that if you have huge general
Speaker 1: areas like you have these large general areas and then
Speaker 1: you have a big number and it's set by the state,
Speaker 1: Like there's a cap, right, there's a cap on how
Speaker 1: many tags are gonna give out. But if those all
Speaker 1: those people that draw non residents draw that big thing,
Speaker 1: there's nothing preventing them from all going to the exact
Speaker 1: same spot because your tag isn't broken out by unit
Speaker 1: by unit wide, and you have a lot of latitude,
Speaker 1: and you also have like long archery season, Like in
Speaker 1: the end, it will be that you probably it'll probably
Speaker 1: wind up being something like you pick your weapon and
Speaker 1: you pick an.
Speaker 4: Area which it are I mean.
Speaker 1: Which would should conform to how most states run the program.
Speaker 4: And like residents have to draw Colorado rifle tags for
Speaker 4: first and fourth rifle, and they have to draw muzzle
Speaker 4: loader to like.
Speaker 1: Colorado, there is no over to count like think about
Speaker 1: mulder no dear tag. There is no over the counter
Speaker 1: Muldier tag in Colorado.
Speaker 3: It's all draw for residents too.
Speaker 1: But no one's saying the sky is falling on that.
Speaker 4: And I got news for the residents in Colorado, like
Speaker 4: they're happy about this non resident draw thing. Pretty soon
Speaker 4: residents are gonna have to draw archery tags too. It's
Speaker 4: just the way it's gonna go.
Speaker 1: In terms of his his comment about people on a
Speaker 1: Facebook page being riled up, let me let me tell
Speaker 1: you a little something about human psychology. Human side. Most
Speaker 1: people are out for their own best interests, especially on
Speaker 1: like something at hunting right, you're off for your I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that in terms of how you relate to
Speaker 1: your family, but like you're out for your own best
Speaker 1: in you know, you're kind of like looking out for
Speaker 1: your own thing. I don't care what state you go
Speaker 1: to on the planet. If you went around and polled
Speaker 1: welcome non residents, if you went around and polled hunters
Speaker 1: in any state on the planet the resident hunters are,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, hey, do you think non do you
Speaker 1: think we should make it that non residents can't come?
Speaker 1: They're gonna be like, yeah, huh.
Speaker 4: Who.
Speaker 1: But who is that problematic for? It winds up being
Speaker 1: hugely problematic for the Fishing Game Agency just doing management
Speaker 1: because there's all kinds of issues around funding. It's problematic
Speaker 1: for the economy. But like, of course, on a Facebook
Speaker 1: page Colorado Elk Hunter's Facebook page, you're gonna have people
Speaker 1: who are like, I don't think they should be able
Speaker 1: to come here. If you came to me and said
Speaker 1: to me, if you came to me and said, hey,
Speaker 1: Montana just banned non resident hunters and anglers, I would
Speaker 1: secretly be going like sweet. But if you came to
Speaker 1: me and said, hey, Alaska just banned non resident hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers, I'd be saying, damn it. Getting the pitch
Speaker 1: for it, Oh, I'd be yeah, I'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: like most people, like most people, I know, most people
Speaker 1: hang out with you some hunting and fishing in other states.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: My buddy from Pennsylvania like texted me after he got
Speaker 4: into this and he's like, I can't believe Colorado would
Speaker 4: do this.
Speaker 1: To non resident hunters.
Speaker 4: And I was like, dude, Pennsylvania doesn't have over the
Speaker 4: counter statewide dotags, but white tails. It's like you got
Speaker 4: to pick your spik.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's like, and there's what a million white tails or
Speaker 4: some something in Pennsylvania. It's like, it's it's like not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go to Southeast Alaska and go find people that
Speaker 1: aren't guides and don't work in the tackle businesses and stuff,
Speaker 1: and go to Southeast Alaska and say, do you think
Speaker 1: we should get rid of non resident fishermen, right, probably
Speaker 1: like that sounds like a great idea. It's just like
Speaker 1: human nature, dude, Yep, you know so I'd be bummed
Speaker 1: if they did in Alaska. I'd be like if they
Speaker 1: did in Montana and Colorado move into this thing. It
Speaker 1: feels to me not like they're doing something insane. It
Speaker 1: feels to me they're doing something. They're doing a management
Speaker 1: strategy that's already being used all over the place. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to get like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get alarmist here, but Colorado's bringing they're purposefully bringing in
Speaker 1: and trying to They're purposely bringing in and trying to
Speaker 1: establish wolf populations. There is no mystery. This is not debatable.
Speaker 1: There's no mystery to what happens when you do that.
Speaker 4: Some of those elk get eaten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not like like this is just me
Speaker 1: stating like the objective reality, the objective reality, whether you
Speaker 1: love wolves, hate them, whatever. I heard that, like people
Speaker 1: keep going into our store on Main Street to complain
Speaker 1: about uh wolves. I don't know if this is true
Speaker 1: or not to complain about our stance on wolves, which
Speaker 1: is very new on there.
Speaker 8: Should be like a complaint dropbox or something.
Speaker 1: There should be like a sign that says like here's
Speaker 1: here's like the stands on wolves. It's like really complicated.
Speaker 1: Stand here and read it a minute. We'll go. Okay, wolves,
Speaker 1: objective reality, wolves.
Speaker 3: Eat elk and wolves don't make elk.
Speaker 1: Yes, the objective reality is that each of those things
Speaker 1: eats seven pounds of meat a day. Okay, it will
Speaker 1: come to be that Colorado, in areas where wolf pegs
Speaker 1: get established, will have dramatically fewer elk. Go look at
Speaker 1: the Idaho Panhandle. Go look at the greater Yellowstone heard
Speaker 1: in the years, in the decades coming out of ninety
Speaker 1: five and ninety six, you see greater than fifty percent
Speaker 1: reductions in elk. Kurtz, It's just like, this is not
Speaker 1: that's not a pro wolf statement, it's not an anti
Speaker 1: wolf statement. It's just like, that's what will happen in
Speaker 1: areas where wolves get established. People some people will say
Speaker 1: like that's great, that's great news.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Hunters will say that sounds like shitty news. But it's
Speaker 1: just the reality. So that Colorado, and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to draw a parallel here, but that
Speaker 1: Colorado is taking some measure right now in anticipation, like
Speaker 1: they would be smart to take some measure right now
Speaker 1: in anticipation of having a lot fewer elk as wolves
Speaker 1: in some places. I mean, you have the perfect case point.
Speaker 1: You have three states that like, one of which touches
Speaker 1: does it Colorado? No, one of which touches Colorado. It's like,
Speaker 1: look what hapving a wyhoming. Okay, look what happened in
Speaker 1: areas Idaho. Look what happened areas of Montana. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just the reality. And they'll they'll, they'll some people
Speaker 1: will sing songs about it. Remember that it was all debunked,
Speaker 1: but the whole like traffic cascade and you know, beavers
Speaker 1: are singing happy songs and stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, hugging a wolf.
Speaker 1: And then later people are like, well it turns out
Speaker 1: that might not have been actually what happened, but either way,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Colorado, sure you gotta put in now. You
Speaker 1: can't just wait and buy your license in a gas station.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, you can't anywhere, right, And him saying,
Speaker 1: I think that's a hundred here. The other thing, this
Speaker 1: guy says, it's kind of weird. He says, I don't
Speaker 1: want it to be that a hunter can't get an
Speaker 1: ELK tag every year in his own state. Welcome to Arizona, Utah, Nevada,
Speaker 1: New Mexico. Do you see a theme hot, dry places
Speaker 1: without tons of agriculture. That's already the reality. Anything else
Speaker 1: to add? No, Chester your comment about numbers, like those
Speaker 1: numbers are capped like during the Great Antelope Heyday of Montana, Okay,
Speaker 1: which like you go back to two thousand, early two thousands,
Speaker 1: the Great Antelope Heyday of Montana and it was great.
Speaker 1: They were given up thirteen thousand either sex antelope tags
Speaker 1: and handing out with each of those two dough tags.
Speaker 5: Wow, that sounds awesome.
Speaker 1: Every dude, every year you would go into the field
Speaker 1: with a button tag and two dough tags. Thirteen thousand?
Speaker 1: What that number got? What was that number a couple
Speaker 1: years ago?
Speaker 4: Six thousand? But do you get what one? One dough tag?
Speaker 1: But when they were given out those thirteen thousand tags,
Speaker 1: those thirteen thousand tags were getting.
Speaker 3: Used because access was easier too.
Speaker 1: Now then they went to six thousand tags, they're getting used.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it's gonna sit now, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's ever gonna climb that high again.
Speaker 1: But it's like the agent see it. Like in the
Speaker 1: end with with most of these systems, the agency is
Speaker 1: saying how many people are going to be in the field,
Speaker 1: how they distribute themselves is a different question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one thing to my point, like I
Speaker 2: non residents like, that's great seeing them hunt in a different state.
Speaker 2: But when I say, the problem was in how people
Speaker 2: are actually respecting the land, like it was terrible, terrible.
Speaker 1: You said, you kept finding people hunting places.
Speaker 2: We were driving, driving everywhere, off roads, trespassing, people were
Speaker 2: cutting people off on their way too deer. And this
Speaker 2: wasn't just like one time, it was this was like
Speaker 2: everywhere you went. And I guess what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: say is people need to respect the resource that we have,
Speaker 2: especially as a non resident, because it was it was
Speaker 2: just a shit chill.
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's a general roll hunter resident resident problem
Speaker 3: that we have to as hunters self police and fix
Speaker 3: because like my uncle manages a gigantic ranch here in Montana,
Speaker 3: the one he managed for about twenty years over by
Speaker 3: showdo you know, hunters ruined him on it and and
Speaker 3: uh ruined him on wanting to allow them on their
Speaker 3: you know, he would give permission and say hey park here,
Speaker 3: walk in, no driving in two in the morning. They're
Speaker 3: knocking on his door and we got our truck stuck
Speaker 3: two miles back, you know up here whatever, driving out
Speaker 3: in the fields. Like that's just we as hunters, if
Speaker 3: we want to keep that access half to do better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't. I kind of couldn't believe that that
Speaker 2: many people were being so disrespectful, you know, but I
Speaker 2: also Washington Place.
Speaker 9: I mean resident hunters, resident hunters, yea, do the same
Speaker 9: stuffy Yeah.
Speaker 1: What was that, Phil?
Speaker 5: Sorry?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like what say that's a that's a general Yeah,
Speaker 3: in any state.
Speaker 11: We heard from multiple landowners being like, we freaking hate
Speaker 11: this time of year because of hunters just acting like assholes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is not good.
Speaker 3: Even like out in eastern Montana, some of the roads
Speaker 3: you choose to drive, even if you can a little
Speaker 3: two tracks, like if it's wetter than hell today and
Speaker 3: you know it's going to be dry by tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 3: driving that road today just tearing the ship out of
Speaker 3: those roads, and then those ranchers have to drive them.
Speaker 3: They have to until they can get fixed. Yeah, until
Speaker 3: they can fix them.
Speaker 1: Man, it's too bad. I don't want to go on
Speaker 1: and on about this. Well, I'll say that, No, it's
Speaker 1: a good point. And places where I have where people
Speaker 1: let me uh me or my kids or me and
Speaker 1: my kids on private land, Dude, I get like, I
Speaker 1: get paranoid about folowing the rules and do and really
Speaker 1: try really hard to express my gratitude after the fact.
Speaker 3: And where you know we take, we take, like I'll
Speaker 3: take a handful of knives out give them to landowners,
Speaker 3: like I mean, we're you know, most of us can't
Speaker 3: afford to go buy our own ranch. So when you
Speaker 3: get like the block management program, when you get permission
Speaker 3: to hunt a gigantic piece of property, it's a pretty
Speaker 3: cool opportunity that those people give us. So we have
Speaker 3: to treat that with like it's gold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bring a gift basket and get real clear on
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to go and not go. And if
Speaker 1: he says, park at that next fence, park way the
Speaker 1: side of the next vent.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, So we got three new so start starting in August,
Speaker 1: we have three new white tail systems launch and so
Speaker 1: you have to stay tuned for this and go to
Speaker 1: first light dot com and check them out.
Speaker 5: Hey, it's failed.
Speaker 7: Jumping in with a quick update.
Speaker 6: This new white Tail system actually launches off on July thirtieth.
Speaker 7: July thirtieth, back to the.
Speaker 1: Show system set up by sort of system set up
Speaker 1: by early seas, kind of like early season, mid season
Speaker 1: late system, so season systems on like Biden Air Night
Speaker 1: early season.
Speaker 3: But your wife just keeps pushing it in this podcast
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 4: She's like, Oh, I.
Speaker 1: Like you doing that. That's unbuttoned. That's more buttons on
Speaker 1: your shirt. We'll bun button a lot more buttons on
Speaker 1: your shirt because some of that will make you seem
Speaker 1: really young. Early season, mid season, late season being phase
Speaker 1: core thermic similar designs to first like traditional white Tail
Speaker 1: get up, but new tech and integration across all the systems.
Speaker 1: So make sure you checked it out. Get your your
Speaker 1: kit down. Is super sweet stuff from like you know,
Speaker 1: hot Weather early season, the cold weather late season. It's
Speaker 1: like we've been messing with it and I did some
Speaker 1: haunting with it and I think you guys will dig,
Speaker 1: So stay tuned for that as that comes forward. Anything
Speaker 1: else we want to talk about this Supreme Court thing,
Speaker 1: we can bump that. It's interesting, Phil, did you get
Speaker 1: some boot in.
Speaker 7: Uh no, current offered some to me, So thank you, Karin.
Speaker 5: But I'm doing good. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to do one last news item and then
Speaker 1: also then we're done on show. Oh so people already
Speaker 1: been hearing the Kids Show.
Speaker 8: Yep, we got a few more episodes. Last one is
Speaker 8: August fifth.
Speaker 1: So please do us the favor of you. If your
Speaker 1: kids are enjoying the Kids Show, you gotta let us know.
Speaker 1: What's the email.
Speaker 8: Address the Meat Eater podcast.
Speaker 1: Okay, just go to that. Yeah, we've been we lost
Speaker 1: a kids podcast. You've been. It's been dropping on the feed.
Speaker 1: We need to hear do your kids dig it? What
Speaker 1: do they wish it was different? And keep us updated
Speaker 1: on the kids podcast. We want to keep doing it,
Speaker 1: but we just want to kind of check and see
Speaker 1: if people, if people's kids are digging them, and so
Speaker 1: let us know how your family is listening. What you're
Speaker 1: finding out on the kids podcast has been but blast
Speaker 1: to do it. Two last news items. Legislative wins in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Here's one of that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought of this,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a it's a good one. So Michigan
Speaker 1: United Conservation Clubs petition for this for these legs. For
Speaker 1: some of this legislation, they expanded the youth mentor license
Speaker 1: to allow people with developmental disabilities and special needs to
Speaker 1: use the mentor license and perpetuity under direct supervision if
Speaker 1: they cannot pass a typical hunter safety course. So think
Speaker 1: about this as normally, like normal, you can do two
Speaker 1: years of mentor hunting. But let's say you have a child,
Speaker 1: someone in your family that would be incapable of for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, of taking the class and passing hunter safety.
Speaker 1: They're not capped at two years now as long as
Speaker 1: they're you know when they say a company is like
Speaker 1: you with an arms reach of your mentor, so you'd
Speaker 1: be able to continue hunting even if for some developmental
Speaker 1: reason you were not able to go and get certified. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's cool, Yeah, great, that's cool. And they also got
Speaker 1: more funding for Michigan's venison donation program. Those are ones
Speaker 1: like I get it, but I always I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I understand it. So tons of high quality protein donated
Speaker 1: to homeless shelters, food banks, needy families through hunter efforts.
Speaker 1: It had been it hadn't been part of the state budget,
Speaker 1: but they got state funding to help with the Sportsman
Speaker 1: Against Hunger campaign. So comments anyone, did.
Speaker 4: We just recently talk about those programs getting harder because
Speaker 4: of CWD?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like certain there's someone who's
Speaker 9: mentioning that certain butcher shops in the area weren't participating
Speaker 9: in them. So maybe if there's more funding it, there's
Speaker 9: more of an incentive for yeah, well for the program
Speaker 9: to work more efficient.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about, Like, that's why it's a little
Speaker 1: bit tricky on the donation programs because what was it,
Speaker 1: What state was it? Wisconsin?
Speaker 4: I can't remember.
Speaker 1: One of the states said you can't distribute the stuff
Speaker 1: till it comes back negative. So when you kill a deer,
Speaker 1: till it comes back negative on CWD. Even though we'll
Speaker 1: continue to point out until the day I die, no
Speaker 1: person has ever gotten CWD from a deer right from
Speaker 1: consuming it. No cow was ever gotten from a deer. Non, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's no known risk. There's a hype, there's a hypothetical
Speaker 1: risk to the consumption of CWD infected deer meat. You
Speaker 1: shoot a deer and bring it down to a butcher,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I'd like to donate this. The butcher
Speaker 1: has to submit the test. He can't distribute the meat
Speaker 1: till he gets the negative test. So picture Opening Day
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin where deer dies every two seconds Opening Day
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, I mean it really is
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: It could be less everything.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're Joe Blow deer processor, and you
Speaker 1: get this big influx of de deer donations come in
Speaker 1: and somehow you're under the obligation of sort of like
Speaker 1: cold storaging, right, cold storaging all these deer to wait
Speaker 1: on all these test results, and meanwhile you're just getting
Speaker 1: flooded into deer. So guys had to be like, I
Speaker 1: can't do it. I can't accept the I can't accept
Speaker 1: the donation venison and then wait for a test result
Speaker 1: to come in and then be responsible for sorting out
Speaker 1: what deers what, discarding the ones, getting the other ones
Speaker 1: down the line. So it created a whole created a
Speaker 1: whole mess. I don't picture that mess going away, not
Speaker 1: going away all right. Crinton has actually on this. It
Speaker 1: says Boudan mission accomplished.
Speaker 11: I think we had scratch off your album.
Speaker 1: Billy's bud Tea. I like Tea Pops and Billy's Budan man,
Speaker 1: where's Billy's at? I don't know. Can someone look it up?
Speaker 1: Where his billy's at? He sent some that's good.
Speaker 5: That is good.
Speaker 1: I love it ice fishing. I'm surprised that those Southerners
Speaker 1: even like it. They don't ice fish. You cannot think
Speaker 1: of a better ice fishing food than a hot boot
Speaker 1: and with some hot sauce.
Speaker 8: The couple of locations.
Speaker 11: It's kind of not something that crave when you're getting
Speaker 11: on the boat in the morning in Louisiana and it's
Speaker 11: ninety degrees and you.
Speaker 1: Got to go free diving and you're gonna be seasick.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. It's good for ice fishing. Is
Speaker 1: the ice hold still?
Speaker 4: Yeah, chase that down.
Speaker 2: Chase that down with a bush light.
Speaker 5: No one gets ice sick.
Speaker 1: No, you don't get seasick on ice. So it's a
Speaker 1: great place for boot an. But you don't want to
Speaker 1: be puking up boot am on the high seas. Oh
Speaker 1: all right, Josh, you ready to dig in. That's not
Speaker 1: the stone you described to me that you had, And
Speaker 1: then you sent me a really nice stone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sent you one. Uh, this one's a little finer.
Speaker 3: I sent you one that's a little more coarse, that
Speaker 3: has a courser side, so you can actually sharpen stuff
Speaker 3: that's in worse shape. Got it, Like if somebody handed
Speaker 3: me a knife that was in really bad shape, really thick.
Speaker 3: That same stone I sent you I have at home
Speaker 3: that I would use to like remove a serious amount
Speaker 3: of material.
Speaker 1: But can you find tune on it too?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's a six hundred grit. Uh, it's a it's a
Speaker 3: I think it was a three twenty or two twenty
Speaker 3: on one side and six hundred on the other. This
Speaker 3: one finishes at one thousand on the top, uh, instead
Speaker 3: of six hundred. Just a little difference.
Speaker 1: And you use so when you're like, when you go
Speaker 1: to sharpen your own knives, you use an oilstone.
Speaker 3: Yes, either that oil stone or this one. I mean
Speaker 3: either way, because you like that one.
Speaker 1: He's got in front of him a work sharp with
Speaker 1: the it's a work sharp bench stone. So this is
Speaker 1: a water stone. It's a six inch stone, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And this is there's water and there's oil stones,
Speaker 3: and that just provides some lubrication for the stone. It
Speaker 3: actually if you run these dry, you'll break off the
Speaker 3: little you know the little grit points on the stone
Speaker 3: that water actually provides support for the grit next to it,
Speaker 3: and it provides Yeah. Yeah, the owners of a or
Speaker 3: the guys that work at d MT were explaining kind
Speaker 3: of why the lubrication and so like this one. When
Speaker 3: I just put it in here, I had to put
Speaker 3: quite a bit of water in here because it'll soak
Speaker 3: it up like a sponge. The first two times of
Speaker 3: port water and it took.
Speaker 1: It all up. Yeah, I've noticed that. It's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can actually dunk it there and you'll see bubbles
Speaker 1: come up yep, and then the bubbles will stop coming
Speaker 1: and you know it said, Yeah, like.
Speaker 3: At home, I've got a bucket next to my grinder.
Speaker 3: I'll just throw this folk stone in the grinder and
Speaker 3: just soak it instead of doing the water bottle thing.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so.
Speaker 3: You know there's these stone. This is when people ask
Speaker 3: me about stones for their home. To me, you have
Speaker 3: two setups. You have your bench stone in your garage.
Speaker 3: I think that stone I sent you as a Norton
Speaker 3: Stone North's oil stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I didn't have it. I have that exact
Speaker 1: wet stone yep, but I didn't have an oilstone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no, man, I have my old man's oilstone, but
Speaker 1: I keep it more like a.
Speaker 3: Piece of uh what do you call memorabilia.
Speaker 1: And the dude, it's got like it looks like a valley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like dished out. Like you wouldn't believe.
Speaker 3: People didn't sit around and look at Instagram back then.
Speaker 3: They sat around and sharpen their knives, you know, by
Speaker 3: the fire. Yeah, and that's why none of my knives
Speaker 3: can cut shit. That stone at yours. It's nice because
Speaker 3: if you've got you've got a coarser stone like that one,
Speaker 3: you've got a finer stone, like if you were sharpening
Speaker 3: your chef's knives on a stone, I would tell you
Speaker 3: to use this one, not the one I sent you,
Speaker 3: because this one flips over and I think it's six
Speaker 3: thousand grid on the other side, which is really fine.
Speaker 3: But so there's that set up. There's on your bench,
Speaker 3: and then there's what you take in your hunting pack,
Speaker 3: you know, and if you leave the house with a
Speaker 3: smoke and sharp knife, there shouldn't be much need you
Speaker 3: need to do in the field.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Even a little blade like this three and a half
Speaker 3: inch blade, you can do a whole elk or tell
Speaker 3: me what you're holding up there. This is our stone
Speaker 3: goat knife we have. We have our speed Goat, which
Speaker 3: is a pair of cord knife ye named after antelope
Speaker 3: here and Montana, light and fast. I then made a heavier,
Speaker 3: fixed blade, thicker skinny knife called our stone Wall after
Speaker 3: stone Wall Mountain and Lincoln. And then people like that
Speaker 3: profile so much that I made a kind of a
Speaker 3: speed goat style. But we kind of combine those two
Speaker 3: knives that this blade looks a lot like our stone Wall,
Speaker 3: so that those two had a baby called the stone Goat.
Speaker 4: You mentioned doing a whole elk, Like, what's like, what's
Speaker 4: a realistic expectation like in the field for someone to
Speaker 4: get like an animal, Like how much you can get
Speaker 4: through with one night one sharp knife, like cutting through
Speaker 4: heavy hide like an elk, bumping up against bone, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should be able to do a whole out now,
Speaker 3: you know. I guess it depends on how critical you
Speaker 3: are on a knife. I like a really sharp knife,
Speaker 3: So I might in the middle, just taking a break,
Speaker 3: stretch your back, I might hit it on the stone,
Speaker 3: like a quick pass back and forth, just to touch
Speaker 3: it and then go back to work.
Speaker 1: But that's what I like to do, is I like
Speaker 1: to do the periodic touch up rather than wait until
Speaker 1: you like tip off the cliff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you get to a point where you're like
Speaker 4: struggling to cut through.
Speaker 3: High and that's when you're gonna jab yourself, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's the other part of that is is you know,
Speaker 3: I I have people that come up to me at
Speaker 3: events and they're there they you know, I did three
Speaker 3: oak with that knife and two deer and before I
Speaker 3: had to sharpen. It's like out of sharpen. That's some
Speaker 3: bitch long time ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like that's cool,
Speaker 3: that's great. But uh, you know, every knife you buy
Speaker 3: is gonna get dull and and so it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of when and how long. The question really a
Speaker 3: lot of times to me is how easy can you
Speaker 3: re sharpen it? So people will get knives made out
Speaker 3: of some crazy ass steel and they're like, well it
Speaker 3: lasts forever. Well one that some of those really long
Speaker 3: lasting steals are quite brittle. It's an inverse scale when
Speaker 3: you heat treat, So the harder the steel, the lower
Speaker 3: the toughness. Right, So as you start to lower hardness
Speaker 3: toughness comes up, and they you do that by temporary.
Speaker 1: I can't pretend to understand. I'm trying to stop doing
Speaker 1: that in my life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the heat treating process, So you'll heat this
Speaker 3: blade right here up to fifteen hundred degrees. It's called
Speaker 3: the critical temperature. This blade will become non magnetic at
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred degrees. So when I was a kid, I
Speaker 3: didn't have a fancy heat treat oven. I had my dad's.
Speaker 1: Fifteen hundred degrees. A magnet won't grab it?
Speaker 7: YEA, what chemic.
Speaker 5: It?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's wild. But they called it were
Speaker 3: like the steel goes into solution and it changes, like
Speaker 3: the structure of the steel kind of changes. And so
Speaker 3: even when it cools down a magnet stone, Nope, it'll
Speaker 3: go back as soon as it drops below it's fourteen
Speaker 3: seventy five.
Speaker 1: Fifteen hundred degrees. Could you still cut something with it?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. It'd be kind of hot to hold.
Speaker 1: You follow me, right, I mean what would it What
Speaker 1: would it be like?
Speaker 3: It would be soft, it would be it just feels soft. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you could.
Speaker 1: You could press it on it. You could press it
Speaker 1: on a like you could take a nail and mark it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like if you well, I mean not really, I
Speaker 3: mean it at that point, you're reaching forging temperatures. I
Speaker 3: mean you would dent that steel because like if you
Speaker 3: took this blade that's hard right now, and you heat
Speaker 3: it up to fifteen hundred degrees and let it cool,
Speaker 3: you've ruined the temperature temper like it's soft at that
Speaker 3: point you could probably bend it with your hands.
Speaker 1: So we were having big I remember one time I
Speaker 1: had a digital you know those like laser thermometers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a big fire going yep, and just aiming
Speaker 1: at laser around me.
Speaker 3: Two that's what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that surprised me if but I wouldn't picture that
Speaker 1: if you threw a knife in there that you would.
Speaker 3: You could harden it, Okay, yep. So the way that
Speaker 3: works is you heat this. So, like I said, when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, I didn't have fancy stuff, right,
Speaker 3: I had my dad's acceleing torch. So I would stand
Speaker 3: out in front of my dad's shop and I would
Speaker 3: heat that blade and I'd have a magnet there and
Speaker 3: I just keep touching the blade to the magnet and
Speaker 3: you'll feel it getting light like at first, it's like
Speaker 3: snaps right to it, right, dude, I had never heard this,
Speaker 3: and it'll it'll start to get light to the touch,
Speaker 3: and pretty soon it's not touching, but it's not sticking.
Speaker 3: It might not stick here, and you get back here
Speaker 3: and it's sticking here. This part of the blade back
Speaker 3: here is thicker, right, So when you're heating you have
Speaker 3: to be careful to not overheat the tip. I mean
Speaker 3: this tip's twelve fifteen thousands. This is one hundred. You
Speaker 3: have to put more heat back here, right, especially a bigger,
Speaker 3: heavier knife, you know, like this booie knife. And so
Speaker 3: I would heat with a torch. And then when when
Speaker 3: that whole thing's not sticking, then you quench it an
Speaker 3: oil And depending on the kind of steel, it could
Speaker 3: be like an automatic transmission fluid, mineral oil, you know,
Speaker 3: hydraulic oil. You know, you don't want to use motor oil.
Speaker 3: Some oils have a different lower flash temperature. But when
Speaker 3: you put in you'll catch on fire. There's a few
Speaker 3: times a damn near burn my dad's shop down. But
Speaker 3: when you quench that blade, it drops the temperature. You
Speaker 3: have to drop below nine hundred degrees in a certain rate.
Speaker 3: Of time. It's like one and a half seconds or something.
Speaker 3: So by doing it fast, when you drop from fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred down below that temperature, the steel hardens. Okay, now
Speaker 3: that's why when if you ever watch like that show
Speaker 3: Forge and Fire, if they if you take this blade,
Speaker 3: you heat up and you quention water, that water's too fast,
Speaker 3: it'll it'll, it'll, it'll drop that temperature so fast that
Speaker 3: you you stand a chance to crack it or break it.
Speaker 1: Huh So I didn't know that either. Now there's water
Speaker 1: hardening Randall. Did you know what he's saying about the magnet?
Speaker 1: Be honest, no, first time?
Speaker 3: And uh, you know there's water hardening steels like the Japanese, uh,
Speaker 3: Samurai swords and stuff back in the day W one,
Speaker 3: W two, stuff like that. You actually quention water, So
Speaker 3: steels have their different oils. That that it's the speed
Speaker 3: at the rate at which that God comes down. So
Speaker 3: people use the wrong terminology all the time to say, well,
Speaker 3: how do you temper your blades? And it's like, well,
Speaker 3: the tempering is a part of the heat treatment process.
Speaker 3: So by by heating that blade up and then quenching it,
Speaker 3: you've now hardened it. But now this thing is brittle.
Speaker 3: If I drop it on a concrete floor, it's gonna shatter.
Speaker 3: It's it's like piece of glass.
Speaker 1: Can't do the ninety degree bend.
Speaker 3: Nope, it snapped right off.
Speaker 5: So at that point, how would it sharpen.
Speaker 3: It would sharpen up, super super sharp, fine edge, but
Speaker 3: it would't hold it. But but yeah, if you if you,
Speaker 3: you know, bumped it against this micro frone stand, it
Speaker 3: would chip it, you know if it was thin.
Speaker 5: Gotcha?
Speaker 3: And so now becomes what we got into this on
Speaker 3: is that that scale right that blade is like sixty
Speaker 3: seven sixty eight rock Well, that's the that's the hardness
Speaker 3: of the blade.
Speaker 1: So what the hell does that scale mean?
Speaker 3: The way we test that is we have a Rockwell tester.
Speaker 3: He set that blade here, and it's got a little
Speaker 3: diamond point that comes down. It touches the steel and
Speaker 3: then you get it zeroed out, and then you pull
Speaker 3: this handle and it applies pressure down on the blade
Speaker 3: and then lets up. And however deep that that point
Speaker 3: penetrated the steel or or not deep determines how hard
Speaker 3: your blade is.
Speaker 1: That's the score.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, and it and it cackle. I didn't know
Speaker 3: how it was measured.
Speaker 1: I knew the rock Well score to you. I know
Speaker 1: the man.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like if that point burries way down into that blade,
Speaker 3: it's soft, right, and it'll kick back one of those
Speaker 3: yeah a tester.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is it the thing you You don't make it,
Speaker 1: obviously you buy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you buy it. It's a Yeah. It's a big
Speaker 3: heavy thing that sits there with a dial on it
Speaker 3: and candle. So and we we randomly test these blades
Speaker 3: every so often, just making sure that like, hey, nothing's
Speaker 3: going on with our heat treat so weird gremlin. So
Speaker 3: let's say that blade has hardened as like sixty eight
Speaker 3: rock Well, hold.
Speaker 1: The audio very hard. You pull it audio oil and
Speaker 1: it's hard.
Speaker 3: It's brittle. So now you put that blade in an oven.
Speaker 3: So when I was a kid, I would always put
Speaker 3: them in my mom's kitchen oven and they said it
Speaker 3: still had oil on them and it would stink up
Speaker 3: my mom's dad's holes on fire. Yeah, it's a ship
Speaker 3: shot studio film.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 3: But you heat that blade up to say four hundred
Speaker 3: degrees for an hour, and you take it back out
Speaker 3: and you test that rock Well might be down to
Speaker 3: six D four. You heat that blade up for another
Speaker 3: hour at four hundred degrees.
Speaker 5: Let it cool.
Speaker 3: Now you're down around sixty two. And now, depending on
Speaker 3: the type of knife, where do you want to stop?
Speaker 5: Right? But as.
Speaker 3: Your hardness level comes down, now your toughness is coming up.
Speaker 3: So let's take it all the way the other way.
Speaker 3: Let's take that hardness all the way down to like
Speaker 3: fifty five. Now it's not very hard, but it'll you
Speaker 3: can flex it, you can bend it right, and you
Speaker 3: take it all the way to just dead soft. You
Speaker 3: can bend that thing right around, wrap it around steel,
Speaker 3: you know something three times because it's totally soft.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 3: So again, you're trying to choose that that balance, achieve
Speaker 3: that balance depending on the type of blade you want
Speaker 3: to make. And that's the thing with like a lot
Speaker 3: of these factory knives, they're going for mass scale, hit
Speaker 3: the middle of the road where it's like you want
Speaker 3: as a custom knife maker, you're trying to curtail that
Speaker 3: heat treating towards what the customer is going to do
Speaker 3: with that knife. That's what we're doing with like our
Speaker 3: in case E stuff.
Speaker 1: Can you real quick explain just in Layman's term, when
Speaker 1: someone says it's a carbon steel knife. Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a it's a there's stainless steel and
Speaker 3: there's carbon steel.
Speaker 1: So so then that's the two options.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and stain But then there's hundreds of options
Speaker 3: within those options, right, and you know this.
Speaker 1: Gets that's a high level division it carbon path stainless path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's really it's it's a variance of how
Speaker 3: what kind of a what's the chemical makeup of that steel?
Speaker 3: How much chromium is in it, how much vanadium is it,
Speaker 3: how much manganese is in it, how much carbon is
Speaker 3: in it. And and there's a certain scale at which,
Speaker 3: you like, there's stainless steels, which stainless doesn't mean stain free,
Speaker 3: it means stains less. So at a certain point, you know,
Speaker 3: you you step down that stainless scale to where all
Speaker 3: of a sudden you start getting more rust than you want.
Speaker 3: There's a certain scale right there where it becomes now
Speaker 3: officially a carbon steel. And there's there's steels out there
Speaker 3: that are, you know, more stain resistant, but maybe some
Speaker 3: of their properties don't properties don't lend to being a
Speaker 3: great knife steal, but they're great for like something used
Speaker 3: in industry, you know, surgical tools or whatever. Right like
Speaker 3: this steel right here, this is a carbon steel blade.
Speaker 3: This industry is actually it's called fifty two one hundred,
Speaker 3: which means it has zer point one percent carbon. This
Speaker 3: is ball bearing steel. So in in industry for however
Speaker 3: many one hundred years now or more, they've been making
Speaker 3: ball bearings to go in your car and tools and whatever.
Speaker 3: They make it out of this steel because this steel
Speaker 3: is very rare resistant. Now, this brand new steal that
Speaker 3: we've been using in the last couple of years called
Speaker 3: Magna Cut is stainless steel. And LARRYN. Thomas I actually
Speaker 3: shared my first my first diver knife show and I
Speaker 3: was I turned fourteen at Eugene, Oregon show. I shared
Speaker 3: a table with a really cool knife maker. His name
Speaker 3: was Devin Thomas. His not yet born son is now
Speaker 3: a PhD metal er just and he invented magne cut steel.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 3: That's cool, and we were literally probably the first company
Speaker 3: to use it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: That steel is a super steel because it's most stainless
Speaker 3: steels over the years have had some really good edge
Speaker 3: holding ability but had really low toughness. You couldn't make
Speaker 3: knives thin or they would snap break. Yeah, That's why
Speaker 3: he developed Magna cut, was to not only have the
Speaker 3: cutting ability which frankly will outcut this blade in duration,
Speaker 3: but still holds a high level of toughness. Still not
Speaker 3: the toughness of this blade, but tough enough for anything
Speaker 3: I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: That. That's one of the things that that you're not.
Speaker 1: What makes your knives special is that, like you said,
Speaker 1: they're like more of a user's knife because they they're thin.
Speaker 3: Yep, you think some years.
Speaker 1: Ago and a lot of guys got into making their
Speaker 1: own knives. It felt to me like a lot more
Speaker 1: people got into that for a while. Yeah, especially with
Speaker 1: forest and fire, but like big old thick bastards yep,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thick and heavy. That's the thing. It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 3: mean quality. I mean, if you want a splitting mall
Speaker 3: to chop fur, chunks of fur, firewood and half, yeah
Speaker 3: you want thick and heavy. But when you're cutting through elk, hide,
Speaker 3: moose hide, meat, you know whatever, you want that material
Speaker 3: to pass by this edge with as little resistance as possible.
Speaker 3: The more meat you have behind the edge. And this
Speaker 3: is what people don't talk enough about is edge geometry.
Speaker 3: How thick is it behind this edge, and the more
Speaker 3: weight you have back there, the more resistance you have,
Speaker 3: the more pressures getting put on the edge. Then when
Speaker 3: you do go to a sharpening stone, when you're sharpening
Speaker 3: a knife, you're removing steel. The more weight and steel
Speaker 3: you have behind that edge, the more difficult that's going
Speaker 3: to be to sharpen. And so I want a blade
Speaker 3: to be as as thin as possible and still get
Speaker 3: the job done without me being worried about breaking it.
Speaker 3: And if you break this knife, you're kind of trying.
Speaker 3: Even though it's thin, this is skeletonized. It's still super
Speaker 3: super tough.
Speaker 1: So let's say someone breaks it, yea, and they send
Speaker 1: it to you, we can you'd be like, I know
Speaker 1: because I made it, ye that if you broke it herb,
Speaker 1: isn't it like you weren't cutting up? You weren't yeah,
Speaker 1: cutting loins up?
Speaker 3: We still send him a new knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's Do you send a little note, yeah, sometimes.
Speaker 3: Like come on a screwdriver his letter when his letters like,
Speaker 3: I was just skinning my deer and the blades is broken.
Speaker 5: Half I am here. You can settle a dispute for me.
Speaker 11: I had one of your blade knives in Alaska, and
Speaker 11: I played a bunch of sam with it. No problems
Speaker 11: my my buddy Ben Oh. I let him use it
Speaker 11: for two seconds, the blades in half. Yeah, and he
Speaker 11: said he was doing nothing with it, just flame fish
Speaker 11: playing along.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would find that very shocking because we've got several
Speaker 3: thousand of those out there, and I've seen one maybe
Speaker 3: or two. Maybe.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll show you a third one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well we'll send him a new one.
Speaker 5: Well it's my knife.
Speaker 11: Yeah, well it's still in Alaska.
Speaker 5: I'll bring it back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, it's I just did.
Speaker 1: I just did. I just did a sting rain along
Speaker 1: those gar with your knife. I love that. That's a
Speaker 1: rough that's a rough lay job. Yeah for the fish spectrum.
Speaker 3: Well, I and you know what, every now and then,
Speaker 3: ship's gonna happen. People are gonna break something. I I
Speaker 3: would rather stand behind our stuff kind of no questions asked,
Speaker 3: because when you do replace that knife, people are like
Speaker 3: they know what they were doing or not doing, but
Speaker 3: they really that you that you stand behind it, and
Speaker 3: who knows, ship could happen. I mean, you know something
Speaker 3: could happen, but you want to know.
Speaker 1: You want to know that you're no fool though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can say, like, while I know you're lying,
Speaker 1: you could have replaced you put a little business.
Speaker 3: Card in there with a picture of you winking at him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well our little secret. What's even better is when I get,
Speaker 3: you know, a DM on Instagram occasionally and somebody would
Speaker 3: be like, dude, I was I was doing what I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have been doing, like one hundred percent, I screwed
Speaker 3: it up. I know you're out of stock. Can I
Speaker 3: buy another one? Like they're all heartbroke, but they're just
Speaker 3: like telling you, like I I completely did something I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have been and we I still just send him
Speaker 3: a new knife free charge. And again that makes the
Speaker 3: customers for life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they sent you a note and it started
Speaker 1: out with you know that little ball joint on the back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh dear, well you know where that's going.
Speaker 3: Or like, you know, so I was trying to pry
Speaker 3: up my elk ivories, you know, and the tip on
Speaker 3: your speed goat, you know, the last eighth of an
Speaker 3: inch is gone, and it's like, yeah, yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: a screwdriver, but now you have a flat Actually actually, uh,
Speaker 3: the funny you know, the Ruana knives out of Bonner. Oh,
Speaker 3: they're they're famous in this area because old Rudy Ruana
Speaker 3: was a legend in this area.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 3: He was an old man when I got into making knives,
Speaker 3: but he was His knives are worth a lot of
Speaker 3: money if you can find him. Well, my banker when
Speaker 3: I was about fifteen, was telling me when he was
Speaker 3: in high school, he tried Priyan elk Ivory's out of
Speaker 3: an elk and he broke the tip off and he
Speaker 3: took it back to Rudy's shop.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think you did mention this guy to Yeah,
Speaker 1: he walked.
Speaker 2: In years old, that's what.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyways, continue but he he he walked in. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: tip broke off your knife, you know. And Rudy's like, well,
Speaker 3: what were you doing with it? And you know, Mark
Speaker 3: tells him and uh, Rudy goes, well, I didn't make
Speaker 3: you a goddamn screwdriver, you know. So he fixed the
Speaker 3: tip on it, and he said that, he said, Rudy
Speaker 3: just chewed his ass up one side and down the other.
Speaker 3: And he's like, I never ever the rest of my
Speaker 3: life did that again. Yeah, but like, if you down
Speaker 3: along the side of the teeth and use the back
Speaker 3: of your knife and pop them out or a stick
Speaker 3: or rock or something like that. And you know your
Speaker 3: knife's not a screwdriver. Yeah, you can turn it into
Speaker 3: us a nice little flat blating screwdriver.
Speaker 1: But you can't make it into a phillips.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, walk through uh, walk through your moves there.
Speaker 3: All right, this will be riveting for people that aren't watching,
Speaker 3: but they'll have to go.
Speaker 1: They can go watch, but I'll provide commentary because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tee it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just so this has been sitting in the water.
Speaker 3: I just flipped this over to get a little water
Speaker 3: on top of the stone. So I'm on the six
Speaker 3: hundred grit or this is a thousand grit side. So
Speaker 3: this knife, uh, you guys kind of test to it
Speaker 3: being being dull.
Speaker 5: I'm shait.
Speaker 3: We watched him run. He ran it vertically down the
Speaker 3: stone before the show. It's good and dull.
Speaker 1: It's dull. It's dull. Tip's dull. It's dull. It's dull knife.
Speaker 5: Dull knife.
Speaker 1: So I provide a quick little bit of color. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you go ahead, go ahead. So now I am gonna
Speaker 1: most people go meaning left side right, like.
Speaker 3: Cut, cutting, cutting into the stone.
Speaker 1: Most people you're slicing and you do like laugh right left, right, laugh, right.
Speaker 1: So actually, let's talk about let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about what the edge of your knife actually is.
Speaker 3: It's really a micro saw. There there are teeth on
Speaker 3: your edge. When you look under a microscope, there are
Speaker 3: little saw teeth all along your edge. So when your
Speaker 3: edge is really nice and sharp, especially and again I'm
Speaker 3: gonna I'm talking about a hunting knife here, a chef's
Speaker 3: knife or like a razor blade is gonna be a
Speaker 3: little bit different. There's little microcerations. So when you're cutting
Speaker 3: a uh, let's say, into a moose, really thick bristly
Speaker 3: hair or a hog or something like that. But even
Speaker 3: with like the hide, the leather, you know, or meat,
Speaker 3: you want those teeth ripping and tearing and biting at
Speaker 3: what it's what it's trying to cut. So when you're
Speaker 3: cutting and don't I don't generally say you should be
Speaker 3: cutting a cross hair, but if you ever do, and
Speaker 3: you're cutting a cross hair, you will actually see those
Speaker 3: hair pop, I mean almost jump off of the hide
Speaker 3: because those teeth are catching that that hair and when
Speaker 3: they pass through it. That hair is popping apart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: And so as a knife doles those teeth. If you
Speaker 3: imagine a nice new hacksaw from the store or a
Speaker 3: wood saw, you get it from the store, and those
Speaker 3: teeth are just super super sharp. Well, as that saw
Speaker 3: starts to get dull, those teeth are just becoming rounded. Right,
Speaker 3: you can still saw through your piece of wood or
Speaker 3: that piece of steel, but it's gonna take longer, it's
Speaker 3: gonna take more effort. Well, it's the same way the
Speaker 3: knife blade. Your little microceration teeth are starting to wear down.
Speaker 3: They're starting to round out, and at a certain point
Speaker 3: where like they are here, this is flat. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you looked under a microscope, there would be a
Speaker 3: microscopic flat across this edge because you guys saw me
Speaker 3: go right right across the stone. So what I need
Speaker 3: to do is I need to re establish my teeth
Speaker 3: my burr on this blade, because that's what's actually gonna
Speaker 3: do the cutting for me down the road, and that's
Speaker 3: what's gonna give me this long duration. You know, I
Speaker 3: did two elk and it was still cutting. It's because
Speaker 3: I actually delivered that blade to you with those micro
Speaker 3: teeth on it, so it didn't just go flat doll
Speaker 3: right away. If I was to strap this edge down
Speaker 3: or buff this edge down to like a razor blade,
Speaker 3: as soon as you start cutting hide or some wood
Speaker 3: or something like that, it's going to immediately create a
Speaker 3: flat spot as soon as it wears off. And there's
Speaker 3: no teeth there, So it's gonna go from feeling smoking
Speaker 3: sharp when you get it hm to like flat doll.
Speaker 1: Fast man often feels better and at first couple seconds,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Yeah, oh, you just
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 3: But you gotta last longer than just a few seconds.
Speaker 3: This is uh so anyway, I'm gonna create that burst.
Speaker 3: So what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna start
Speaker 3: And a lot of people worry about the angle so
Speaker 3: much and they think the angle is wrong. But generally
Speaker 3: a knife blade is between fifteen and twenty degrees of angle,
Speaker 3: So fifteen is a you know, that lower degree like
Speaker 3: a like a chef's knife or a thin blade like this,
Speaker 3: And then as you get thicker blade, you gotta steep
Speaker 3: in that angle up right all the way up to
Speaker 3: like a splitting mall that's more like a wedge. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: and so if it's a if it's a chopping knife
Speaker 3: for chopping through wood, you want that weight behind the edge.
Speaker 3: That weight is striking or that edge is striking whatever
Speaker 3: it's striking, and that that steel right behind the edge
Speaker 3: is providing support for that edge and also driving that
Speaker 3: wood apart.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So this is then I've got fifteen degree angle. With
Speaker 3: these works sharps. You can actually check your angle right
Speaker 3: on the end of.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, he's got a work sharp sharpener that has
Speaker 1: the angle guide and you can put different angle guides
Speaker 1: on those.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 3: So I actually am just going to start on one
Speaker 3: side and I'm going to just kind of create a burr.
Speaker 3: So I'm actually starting at the tip. Yeah, and what
Speaker 3: I see a lot of people do. Where's the camera
Speaker 3: in this one? The people will round off when they
Speaker 3: when they go this way.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: You'll hear if you listen, you'll hear this like this
Speaker 3: little at the end, like a flick. Yeah, that little flick. Well,
Speaker 3: this tip is like ten fifteen thousands. Stick this back
Speaker 3: here is maybe thicker, and you're removing more steel off
Speaker 3: that tip, and people round their tip off. You'll see, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can you do it?
Speaker 1: And then you feel it, and you like, you start
Speaker 1: at the back, you're like loving it, loving it, loving it.
Speaker 1: You get up there and you're like.
Speaker 2: Damn it.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and it's like and and and they'll like
Speaker 3: bull knows their little tip. So if you start here,
Speaker 3: you can start right up on the tip if you
Speaker 3: need to, or you can actually start right behind that
Speaker 3: tip and remove material maybe down a sixteenth from the
Speaker 3: tip or less, uh, and just to keep that tip
Speaker 3: nice and sharp. And you can actually rehabb your tip
Speaker 3: and put a tip back on your knife, because this
Speaker 3: tip is for like caping duties, you know, in around
Speaker 3: that tight hair on the horns and you know the
Speaker 3: tear ducks in those areas.
Speaker 1: Dude, that little movie got there, man. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you've been doing it your whole life, but that
Speaker 1: little move right there is the move.
Speaker 3: So what I'm doing is I'm putting a lot of
Speaker 3: pressure right here, and he's giving Brody the bird pushing hard.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just using like one finger here to just
Speaker 3: put more pressure on that blade. And I am just
Speaker 3: going in one direction, starting at the tip and pushing
Speaker 3: back to the ricasso or the plunge grind of this
Speaker 3: blade and then I'm going to feel on the opposite side,
Speaker 3: So the side facing me, I'm going to feel with
Speaker 3: these fingers, and I'm gonna feel for a burr. I'm
Speaker 3: looking for a berth because as I go across this edge,
Speaker 3: it's gonna curl a burr up on the other side.
Speaker 3: So instead of looking at this or trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna wait till my fingers tell me like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's a burr all the way down. I'm starting to
Speaker 3: develop a little bird here, but I don't have anything
Speaker 3: up here by the tip and nothing back here.
Speaker 1: You might have worked at one side, so.
Speaker 3: I might even work this tip, like I might just
Speaker 3: work this spot for a second, or I could work
Speaker 3: back here, like right in this spot, or then I
Speaker 3: can go back and even this thing out. And I'm
Speaker 3: just going fast and putting a lot of pressure.
Speaker 11: And you're not keeping track of how many strokes on
Speaker 11: the other side.
Speaker 3: No, it's not, it's not algebra what.
Speaker 5: My whole life?
Speaker 8: But what about the like how how are you using
Speaker 8: the angle guide or how.
Speaker 3: So you can check you memori head? Yeah, like I
Speaker 3: can feel it, but you can if you want to
Speaker 3: go slow, you can be like on this angle and
Speaker 3: then you can just take whoops and transfer that right
Speaker 3: to your stove, you know, and you.
Speaker 1: Can always asking. I asked him a bunch about that,
Speaker 1: but it's just like he just got in his head
Speaker 1: and he does it the same way every damn time.
Speaker 1: But the angle guide slows you down. But it's good
Speaker 1: for starter, it is.
Speaker 3: It's good to kind of like come across and then
Speaker 3: check like, ye, I'm pretty good right the other okay,
Speaker 3: And so now okay.
Speaker 1: He still has his only world. He's still his only
Speaker 1: work the starboard side of that. No, he's only worked
Speaker 1: the port side of that knife port side left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, four letters.
Speaker 4: Do you get think of people telling you're doing it
Speaker 4: all wrong?
Speaker 1: Yeah? If I just came by and saw you doing
Speaker 1: it more, he's supposed to do one side then the other.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna pass this around. I just kind of went
Speaker 3: went fast on this. But you're gonna feel there's no
Speaker 3: burr on the USA made side, and there's a burr
Speaker 3: on the mk C logo side. Uh, And we're just
Speaker 3: feeling straight across that and you'll feel it.
Speaker 2: And this is great. I love it already.
Speaker 1: No, listen, man, you gotta bring back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't wait to try that.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: And so if if that blade was a lot thicker
Speaker 3: and saying a lot worse condition, I would have a
Speaker 3: stone with more grit, like the like the stone that
Speaker 3: I gave you is like two twenty grid or something
Speaker 3: on that other side. If you don't have a belt
Speaker 3: grinder or something aggressive to go to, you can just
Speaker 3: move material there and re establish your flat and your
Speaker 3: angle that you need and then flip to the other side.
Speaker 3: And you're just at that point you're just hogging away
Speaker 3: material and you're trying to establish you know, because people
Speaker 3: will use like ceramics and a lot of these really
Speaker 3: find stones, and over time they're not removing any steel,
Speaker 3: and that edge is just coming down in further. It's
Speaker 3: more round and pretty soon you've got like nothing left.
Speaker 4: What's your opinion on the electric.
Speaker 3: They're fine, like like workshop has. I think that ken
Speaker 3: Onion edition like belt zander kind of addition that's essentially
Speaker 3: the poor version of like the grinder I'm using, like
Speaker 3: a heavy duty grinder. The problem I have with them
Speaker 3: on like a new knife of our knives is our
Speaker 3: knives are so thin, like this blade, you're gonna you're
Speaker 3: gonna take off ten sharpenings or more worth of steel
Speaker 3: that I'm gonna take off in one Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ground the tip off kind of like rounded the tip
Speaker 2: on one of those.
Speaker 3: Did you I was gonna say, you can make a
Speaker 3: mistake all of my knives.
Speaker 9: Hmm, I said, we're describing all of my knives.
Speaker 1: There's there, they've come flat.
Speaker 3: Do you feel it?
Speaker 1: Hey? What's your general take on diamond owners versus stone?
Speaker 3: I don't really have any I mean to me, they're
Speaker 3: all I can make whatever work.
Speaker 1: So you don't hate diamond.
Speaker 3: I don't hate diamond. I I I tend to like
Speaker 3: the feel of the stone better. But maybe that's because
Speaker 3: that's what I've used since I was twelve.
Speaker 1: Got it so feeling it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if diamond diamond also is it's kind of
Speaker 3: nice where you don't have oil and water and all
Speaker 3: the mess.
Speaker 1: But you don't use water on diamond.
Speaker 3: No, most of those are dry, but you do take
Speaker 3: water and like scrub them up and clean them up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: And like with this you can see on here there's
Speaker 3: like grit, so these these stones will load up. It's
Speaker 3: it's it's carving away steel and you're leaving that steel
Speaker 3: on your stone. So in the middle, I'll pour a
Speaker 3: little water on here and just kind of clean it
Speaker 3: off because now I've got I mean, it's like putting
Speaker 3: a new piece of fresh sandpaper on the sand.
Speaker 1: And that you want to come over here, cop a
Speaker 1: feel phil that.
Speaker 4: Materials just filling in the gaps. All that like steel
Speaker 4: is just in there filling the gas it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it loads up. It's like if people sand on
Speaker 3: a on a project at home with sandpaper and your
Speaker 3: sandpaper starts getting full of stuff. Yeah, if your sandpaper
Speaker 3: is not necessarily totally dull yet, it's just loaded up.
Speaker 3: So if you clean it, you'll bring some life back.
Speaker 3: So now I've done that side, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 3: the opposite side and just do the same thing. A
Speaker 3: weird city and I always do the standing.
Speaker 1: Now Here's what Here's even though I've been mimicking the
Speaker 1: style you taught me, here's where I got a little bit.
Speaker 1: Here's where I needed a refresher. Is how do you
Speaker 1: know when you haven't just rolled it over the other way?
Speaker 3: Well, that's I mean, you haven't. You're not going to
Speaker 3: roll it over. I mean, because like right here, I
Speaker 3: can feel a really heavy burr out here, but I
Speaker 3: don't have anything back here. Okay, so you're not You're
Speaker 3: not just gonna roll it over.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, if you, let's say you did
Speaker 1: that for a day, aren't you gonna have.
Speaker 3: It be well, you would end up you would if
Speaker 3: you did it for a full day, you would just
Speaker 3: end up with like a wedge.
Speaker 11: Isn't that the purpose of like a leather It's a
Speaker 11: line that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get to because like right now, I have
Speaker 3: a really good bur out here. There's no sense in
Speaker 3: me taking more life out of my knife here. So
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna work this inch and a half right.
Speaker 1: Here, and you don't run the risk of going one
Speaker 1: or two drokes too many and just rolling at the
Speaker 1: other direction.
Speaker 3: No, no, because the next step that we do is
Speaker 3: gonna account for that.
Speaker 1: The why why you ignoring the why ignoring the tip now?
Speaker 3: Because I already have a burr and you're monitoring where
Speaker 3: you're at. Yeah, So, like I already established a really
Speaker 3: nice burr in my first like ten passes here, but
Speaker 3: back here I didn't have it. So there's no sense
Speaker 3: in just just taking steel away here for the sake
Speaker 3: of taking it away. I have what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: I'm going to hear and now I've got it after
Speaker 3: I just did those passes there. So now to your
Speaker 3: guys's point, I'll kind of balance it out right, So
Speaker 3: I'm going to do a full pass, kind of hard
Speaker 3: like I just did it, and I'm gonna flip it over.
Speaker 1: No, he's doing the left a full pass.
Speaker 3: And now I'm left and right. Every time, I'm still
Speaker 3: pushing hard, Okay, pushing hard, and then what I'll start
Speaker 3: to do is I'm going to start to lighten my pressure.
Speaker 3: I'm still pushing, but it's it's getting lighter and with
Speaker 3: each pass, I'll do a pass on each side and
Speaker 3: then I'm now I'm lightning even more and you can
Speaker 3: hear it in the stone right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were putting some ass into it early.
Speaker 3: I was, and now its basically as hard as you
Speaker 3: can push early.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Is this something that you developed over time or is
Speaker 3: this like a known tech? I learned this from Tim Hancock,
Speaker 3: a legendary knife maker that passed away from from MS
Speaker 3: but Parkinson's I'm sorry, but he taught this twenty years
Speaker 3: ago to knife Show and it was like it resonated
Speaker 3: with a bunch of us. So I'm I'm like the
Speaker 3: weight of the blade right now, M so like basically no,
Speaker 3: no weight. So now that last pass was right here,
Speaker 3: I can guarantee you even with that last super light pass,
Speaker 3: I've got a burr on this edge but not over here.
Speaker 3: So what's going on on that last pass? I am
Speaker 3: even though it's the way of the blade, I'm chasing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that burr left and right and right now. I just
Speaker 3: did a pass here, so I have a burr to
Speaker 3: this m case side of the of the edge. So
Speaker 3: that's where this leather strap. If you'll hold that in.
Speaker 1: Let me see that thing. Let's hold it up for everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have these that Francesca Teton Leather down in
Speaker 3: Idaho makes these for us. They're on our website. But
Speaker 3: I have an ancient one hanging on my nail in
Speaker 3: my shop that I think was my grandfather's.
Speaker 1: But no reason your belt, a leather belt wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: No, I take my leather belt. I think I did
Speaker 3: it in your house. Yep, I use my leather belt.
Speaker 3: So I have this burr here and I'm going to
Speaker 3: actually demonstrate you can be the evidence of this. If
Speaker 3: I go this way, I leave like no tracks. Yep,
Speaker 3: see that I come this way. Oh yeah, look at
Speaker 3: the scratches yep. Can you guys see the scratch line
Speaker 3: kind of there? So that's telling you that that little light,
Speaker 3: my microscopic burr is just laid over to the left,
Speaker 3: and that's where a lot of times retouching your knife
Speaker 3: up in the middle, you might just be unloading that
Speaker 3: burr like think of loaded up sandpaper. A quick pass
Speaker 3: on your stone one side and back the other, and
Speaker 3: you pull some of that fat and crap out of
Speaker 3: your of your burr, and you realign that burr right
Speaker 3: down the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never thought of that. That you're kind of
Speaker 1: cleaning those you're cleaning those teeth.
Speaker 3: You can see those, they're still there, right yep. I'm
Speaker 3: pushing kind of heart on this side, and then I'll
Speaker 3: just go to this side. And now I've got I
Speaker 3: can feel it dragging us a little. I have it
Speaker 3: on both sides and I'll just kind of balance it.
Speaker 3: I don't want to take too much of this off,
Speaker 3: because that burr is what I want for uh, for hunting.
Speaker 7: You guys want to come up a couple of inches
Speaker 7: the mike arm is in the way there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've we've just come back and forth
Speaker 3: across this strap and I'm done with it now, so
Speaker 3: I'm gonna feel it. Yeah, I mean that's smoking sharp.
Speaker 3: So an evidence of that. If you guys want.
Speaker 4: Impressing.
Speaker 2: Damn, I'm surprised you haven't. Hair.
Speaker 1: I know, he'd like have denude to all the real
Speaker 1: estate man, so.
Speaker 9: He'd had to be like, he probably doesn't use me
Speaker 9: do my bell, doesn't he doesn't do this for every podcast.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, kind of considered hair Farmers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: You can and you can test like back here that
Speaker 3: is amazing here versus like like right at the belly
Speaker 3: versus like out at the tip and it's still you
Speaker 3: can see the hairs popping.
Speaker 1: And again listen that Okay, that was dull. It was dull.
Speaker 1: I checked it, everybody checked it. It was dull. And this
Speaker 1: is a this is a work sharp bench stone.
Speaker 3: It's called at It's just a wet stone, a.
Speaker 1: Wet stone, but it's it's it's nohow man, It's not
Speaker 1: like it doesn't it's no how. You can try to
Speaker 1: buy your way into it with contraptions and stuff, but
Speaker 1: you cannot beat that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you had done that beat without us
Speaker 4: bugging you, it would have taken you a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could just real quick.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: So think about it, you said, I think it was
Speaker 3: your grandfather or something with his stone.
Speaker 1: That's all dished out, my dad's stone. Ill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no YouTube, no Instagram, know whatever. And you sit
Speaker 3: around at night every night you come home, sit down
Speaker 3: your chair, Well, let me.
Speaker 1: Share something with you. But it has knife weren't half
Speaker 1: as sharp as that. Now, I what I was serviceable,
Speaker 1: but they weren't like that.
Speaker 3: What I want you guys to feel. When I feel
Speaker 3: an edge, I don't feel straight across. I mean that
Speaker 3: that doesn't tell me anything. I'm actually when I'm feeling
Speaker 3: this edge, I'm across, but I'm also almost I'm sliding
Speaker 3: my finger just a tiny bit, and you will feel
Speaker 3: that little birr wanting to bite. So that's the burr.
Speaker 3: As a hunter, you want something when you pass it
Speaker 3: across that hide or hair or meat, it is biting in,
Speaker 3: it is digging in.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing people would naturally think of. If
Speaker 1: you picture a really sharp knife, you'd imagine it being
Speaker 1: just like under microscope that it's smooth.
Speaker 4: Sliced, but it's like a microscopic serirated steak.
Speaker 3: Correct, it's a saw and that's what's gonna give you
Speaker 3: the longevity and the feel of like got I use
Speaker 3: I've been using this thing and it hasn't been going
Speaker 3: dull or I'm still using it after so long. It's
Speaker 3: because those teeth are wearing down. But you still have
Speaker 3: some life. And you know, like there's cutting competitions and
Speaker 3: stuff out there, and you see guys like put a
Speaker 3: silk piece of silk up and they'll chop a piece
Speaker 3: of silk in half. Well, that's that's not a honety
Speaker 3: knife edge.
Speaker 1: I'm you're talking about like a piece just.
Speaker 3: Like a silk scarf. Right, it's hanging there, just dangling
Speaker 3: in the air. There's no tension cut through. Yeah, when
Speaker 3: you like chop through it, I mean it has to
Speaker 3: be an absolute razor to get through that. But you
Speaker 3: put that on moose hair, it's gonna suck. Uh. You
Speaker 3: take a razor blade, take a razor blade from home,
Speaker 3: depot new out of the package, and run it just
Speaker 3: straight across moose hair. It's not gonna cut it now,
Speaker 3: it'll cut the crap out of your skin, his skin soft,
Speaker 3: but that you want those microcerations biting that. So if
Speaker 3: you feel this edge and you feel along it, it's
Speaker 3: gonna feel toothy and bity like it wants to get you.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Know, I'm gonna go home. I know sharp some knife.
Speaker 3: Gonna go home and ruin all of our kitchen knives.
Speaker 1: No, you're not Randall. Come on, you're gonna you're gonna Well.
Speaker 3: I need a I need practice. I'm gonna get out.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get all the knives from the camper and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna sharpen the camper knives. No, it's not complicated,
Speaker 3: and it's a it's what I want, people, I want.
Speaker 3: The whole idea of passing your stuff down is like,
Speaker 3: how cool would it be if do you have kids?
Speaker 3: How old are they young?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Two years old? You use the you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of knives for the next twenty years, and you personally
Speaker 3: sharpen them, and you wear that thing down to where
Speaker 3: it's a half inch shorter than it is now, and
Speaker 3: it's maybe you send it back to us now and
Speaker 3: then we reset it. But you pass that thing down,
Speaker 3: it tells a story like when you pass down a gun.
Speaker 3: I have a black powder gun sitting on my shelf
Speaker 3: that my grandma gave me that we don't know where
Speaker 3: it came from, but it was clearly used in like
Speaker 3: Civil War era. It's all beat up and the stocks
Speaker 3: beat up and chunked out like it was old and
Speaker 3: she got it. Yeah, and you just wonder, like, God,
Speaker 3: what's this thing been through? What's it seene?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, And that's the thing like when people bring
Speaker 3: me stuff and they're like, you can tell where their
Speaker 3: grandpa fixed the handle on it, and you know, sharpened
Speaker 3: it forever and wore it out.
Speaker 2: I recently cleaned out my garage and sold a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff at a garage sale. The things I did
Speaker 2: not sell were my knives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, keep thom knives and guns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's great, man.
Speaker 4: Would you do? What would you do differently? Sharpening like
Speaker 4: good kitchen knives, same.
Speaker 3: Process, basically the same thing. But what I would do
Speaker 3: at the end is I would flip over on the
Speaker 3: stone and I would probably take a few passes on
Speaker 3: that six thousand grit side side and it would just
Speaker 3: make it finer. Sometimes cutting some of the veggies and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. That nice fine edge tomato skin and stuff.
Speaker 3: But this edge would work just fine in your kitchen,
Speaker 3: but you'd probably like for like a push cut. You know,
Speaker 3: this is like a pole and a slice cut where
Speaker 3: those teeth are. You're putting those teeth to work like
Speaker 3: a saw versus a polished edge where you're just pushing
Speaker 3: through veggies stuff like that at least amount of resistance.
Speaker 1: So Josh and I worked on We worked on it.
Speaker 1: We've worked on a couple, but two are available. We
Speaker 1: worked on one. We worked on a Knifehi was the
Speaker 1: first time I've ever gone through this process on a
Speaker 1: Honting knife. Yeah, we worked on a honey knife, which
Speaker 1: we came up with the term of the stub horn,
Speaker 1: which is an old term for buffalo. But walk through
Speaker 1: like how you approached the collaboration process because I don't
Speaker 1: know the first thing about metallurgy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we talked a.
Speaker 1: Lot about what I'm after. Blade thickness, well, not so
Speaker 1: much thickness, blade shape, handle shape, blade length.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but use case. I mean that that kind of
Speaker 3: lends to thickness, right, Like you know a blade that
Speaker 3: you can use, you know, a hard working knife, right
Speaker 3: like if you're going to break down a buffalo. You know,
Speaker 3: you're probably going to use a blade that's a little
Speaker 3: larger in size, a little thicker in dimension if you're
Speaker 3: working through joints and some of that stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we we started talking, and you know, I've always been
Speaker 3: a fan of the show and a fan of your
Speaker 3: of yours, and for us to be able to work
Speaker 3: with you on this was very, very exciting, and we
Speaker 3: talked through I I really wanted your input. I don't
Speaker 3: want to just make a knife and have you put
Speaker 3: your signature on something. So it's why it took over
Speaker 3: a year. Frankly, probably was here a year and a
Speaker 3: half ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you sent we sent back a bunch of
Speaker 1: what do you call it when you make the blanks?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did like three D prints.
Speaker 1: So because I was hung up on one of the
Speaker 1: things I'm hung up on about it is is I
Speaker 1: like them to have I like a pretty fine point
Speaker 1: yep for making opening cuts YEP, Like I don't like
Speaker 1: a really exaggerated version, be like the beaver skinning knives,
Speaker 1: which have that that it's almost like a half like
Speaker 1: a like a quarter.
Speaker 3: Circle, almost bullnosed like. Well, the other thing you were
Speaker 3: you were talking about was like the ergonomics of the handle,
Speaker 3: Like your handle's much different looking than most of our knives. Uh,
Speaker 3: the other unintended.
Speaker 1: I'm not holding it like you picture like a boat,
Speaker 1: like you picture a boy knife. Pick it up. You're
Speaker 1: gonna try to kill somebody with it, right, I'm not
Speaker 1: most of the time. I'm not holding my skinning knife.
Speaker 1: I'm not like gripping it like how you imagine if
Speaker 1: you were going to stab somebody with a knife.
Speaker 3: You're more pinch gripping it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in all different it's upside down, it's right
Speaker 1: side up and sideways. I'm holding it this way, I'm
Speaker 1: holding it that way, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: It's more like a.
Speaker 1: You're not I'm never grabbing it and doing a whole
Speaker 1: job like that. I'm using it in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different positions, right, you know, it's like it's rolling around
Speaker 1: in your hand or this or this or that whatever.
Speaker 1: The cool thing is going to be shape where it's not.
Speaker 1: The shape isn't that you're totally committed on a certain grip.
Speaker 3: Up is up and down is down, and you can't
Speaker 3: exactly it's.
Speaker 1: Something that you're rolling around that you're rolling around in
Speaker 1: your hand that's comfortable in a bunch of positions and
Speaker 1: has some ass to it. Yep, fine, a fine working point.
Speaker 3: The shape of the shape of that handle. You The
Speaker 3: unintended thing that kind of happened that I noticed as
Speaker 3: it came together was, uh, very few handles, you know,
Speaker 3: I guess most of the most of the knife that
Speaker 3: I see out there, certain sized hands fit a knife
Speaker 3: really well. But then like guys with big hands, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Or maybe a guy with a smaller hand is like, well,
Speaker 3: it works, but it could be smaller. The shape of
Speaker 3: that handle kind of works with all people's hand sizes
Speaker 3: the way because there's no like point that comes down
Speaker 3: on the handle. That handle allows even a guy with
Speaker 3: a really I handed it the other day to a
Speaker 3: guy with a freaking huge hand and he was like, us,
Speaker 3: is really nice. It's actually comfortable because usually like the
Speaker 3: you know, the point of the bird beak of the
Speaker 3: handle is like stuck in his palm because of the
Speaker 3: size of his hand, and he gets wear spots, you know,
Speaker 3: like blisters.
Speaker 1: The other thing we did was we fluted. I use
Speaker 1: the term flute because it looks like a close point
Speaker 1: fluted the part of the handle that comes up to
Speaker 1: the blade, what do.
Speaker 3: You Yeah, it's more of like a what do you
Speaker 3: call it, like a like a thumb ramp scallop. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which again that's in that pinch grip. I don't know
Speaker 3: why we don't have one sitting here, but a good
Speaker 3: that would have been a really good marketing idea.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for the big yeah you.
Speaker 5: Real quick.
Speaker 3: Uh. That's why I have a business part of it
Speaker 3: as a marketing and I'm not in charge of it.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like if your thumb is right here, if
Speaker 3: you're in a pinch gript situation, and we'll show it
Speaker 3: when he brings it in. But like a lot of times,
Speaker 3: you want more control over that blade. You have your
Speaker 3: finger on the top, you know, and you're getting in
Speaker 3: doing fine work again, that caping work and some of that,
Speaker 3: but you're pinching that side of that handle with your thumb.
Speaker 3: The other cool thing is is like I asked you
Speaker 3: and you were a little back and forth one way
Speaker 3: or the other. Didn't seem to matter either way. But
Speaker 3: the whole lanyard, whole idea. You know, some people it's
Speaker 3: really really important to people, and others it's not. And
Speaker 3: so we we We did put that as an option
Speaker 3: in there because we do have a lot of people
Speaker 3: they get worried about losing them, which they really don't
Speaker 3: need to with our sheaths, but some people want to
Speaker 3: tie it off to their gear or they'll tie a
Speaker 3: lanyard around it and have it on their wrist when
Speaker 3: they're using it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys, all your sheaths come with with a
Speaker 1: I guess like a belt, like a belt clip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a Kaidek sheath that that blade really snaps
Speaker 3: into position. Those are those are molded to that knife. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 3: we do that right in our shop. We take a
Speaker 3: lot of care and really getting those right. And they
Speaker 3: have an adjustable screw on them retention wise, so you
Speaker 3: if that over time it starts to loosen a little,
Speaker 3: you can tighten that screw down and get it tighter again.
Speaker 3: But it's got a belt loop clip on it that
Speaker 3: we make that you can actually put that knife on
Speaker 3: your belt and take it off without undoing your belt
Speaker 3: or or like over your pack strap.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The way there's sheaths work, I don't recommend you
Speaker 1: do this the way there's actually I got it right here.
Speaker 1: You could take the way the knives here I'll show it. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to tell it too, But the way the
Speaker 1: knives go into the sheath, I don't recommend you do this.
Speaker 1: You can throw this off a cliff, yeah, and go
Speaker 1: down there and find it. It's gonna be in the sheath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna it doesn't pop out. So here to
Speaker 1: listen to the satisfying noise. Yeah, you can tighten it,
Speaker 1: loosen it.
Speaker 3: That's the noise I like. I mean that snaps so here.
Speaker 1: Here we are again, hell and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that now that that's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it's in that thing.
Speaker 3: And the reason that we you know, it bothered me
Speaker 3: over the years. I'd go in a store and you know,
Speaker 3: you look at a knife, you might think it's kind
Speaker 3: of nice, and then you're and then you're like, well,
Speaker 3: let me see the sheath, and they hand you this
Speaker 3: afterthought piece of shit. The people designing the knife did
Speaker 3: not think about the guy carrying it. Is he going
Speaker 3: to be in brush and Canada or Alaska or Montana.
Speaker 3: You know, I want you to carry your knife available
Speaker 3: for use. I don't want it stuffed in the bottom
Speaker 3: of their pack. You know you can. None of us
Speaker 3: really want to have to fight a mountain lion or
Speaker 3: a bear with a knife. But at least if it's
Speaker 3: it's available on you, you have it, not to mention just
Speaker 3: being handy for use. If it's buried in your pack,
Speaker 3: you also maybe get out there and you shoot a deer,
Speaker 3: you unload your pack and realize, oh, I left that
Speaker 3: knife in my truck. If it's if it's clipped on
Speaker 3: your pack and somewhere out on the exterior, you're gonna
Speaker 3: see that that got especially that knife with this color. Uh,
Speaker 3: this is the first time we've done that blaze orange.
Speaker 3: I mean, because that was the other thing you were like,
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't always.
Speaker 1: I need to have a visual reminder to pick it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the orange, like to pick it up. And
Speaker 1: I like the big the it's got like a fat
Speaker 1: ball on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the and and it's got a guard on it.
Speaker 3: That's the other thing as far as like keeping you
Speaker 3: from slipping your hand up on that edge.
Speaker 1: Another thing I was commenting on when we were designing
Speaker 1: it is you know that deep notch sometimes that's got
Speaker 1: a name. You told me the name I forgot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that plunge grind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't like that to be too exaggerated because
Speaker 1: it hangs up on stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're actually talking about like the sharpening choil
Speaker 3: right there, and what that gives you is a little
Speaker 3: spot uh to start like, actually this knife does not
Speaker 3: have it, And as you sharpen a blade down you start,
Speaker 3: the edge starts to get below this little point here,
Speaker 3: and it can be hard to get the corner of
Speaker 3: your stone in there and start. That gives you a
Speaker 3: lot of years of sharpening that blade before that notch
Speaker 3: is completely gone. But like Steve said, it gets too
Speaker 3: aggressive and it's hanging up on hide and you know,
Speaker 3: some of the sinew and some of the stuff and
Speaker 3: meat can be a challenge in there. Those grips are
Speaker 3: g ten, so it's a synthetic material fiberglass and epoxy
Speaker 3: resin and those are titanium screws so that that thing
Speaker 3: is absolutely bulletproof, you know. You know, I love like
Speaker 3: we were talking when we started the podcast about like
Speaker 3: hardwoods right for bow building or whatever. There's nothing cooler
Speaker 3: than a beautiful piece of hardwood on a knife. It's
Speaker 3: the unfortunate reality is you know, cold heat, blood water
Speaker 3: over the years.
Speaker 2: Take care of them expand contracts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this G ten is I mean, it's going
Speaker 3: to last to the end of the earth.
Speaker 2: It's hard on equipment though.
Speaker 3: What's that G ten? Oh yeah, yeah, it's tough. It's tough.
Speaker 1: It's hard to shape it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like bansaw blades things like that.
Speaker 3: Is that fiberglass?
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I love this thing though.
Speaker 3: Man, good, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yea, this is the stub horn.
Speaker 3: Well then we got this.
Speaker 1: This is my hunter for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And then we we worked out of smaller you know,
Speaker 1: people call them birden trout knives, but like a like
Speaker 1: a caping knife, like a detail work.
Speaker 3: Knife, yeah, or like even trapping like small.
Speaker 1: Animal Hence the name of the flat tail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a cool name. You came up with that one.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's a cool ass name after a beaver.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so this flat tail again that like you say,
Speaker 3: that detail work being able to really choke up even
Speaker 3: with that as we talked about, it's got the same
Speaker 3: feature as the stub horn, with this kind of thumb
Speaker 3: ramp here where it really thins down so you're your
Speaker 3: thumb can be really right against the side of that blade.
Speaker 3: Pinch in here and you can really get in tight
Speaker 3: and do like that really fine detail work, and you'll
Speaker 3: find I guarantee a lot of people that break down
Speaker 3: whole el can deer with this thing. You know, some
Speaker 3: people like more of a tip. That knife has a
Speaker 3: little more belly, but it still has enough of a
Speaker 3: tip to be functional. And uh there again a bit
Speaker 3: of a guard on it. It's it's this is a
Speaker 3: cool little knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The stove horns got some ass to it in
Speaker 1: the flat does like your delicate knife?
Speaker 5: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: I mean this pair together, this pair together, if you
Speaker 3: had this for doing your detail caping or what kind
Speaker 3: of detail work, and then that knife for just hard use,
Speaker 3: I mean ripping through the sternum of a deer or whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean, that knife's going to do it.
Speaker 1: That's one thing about your knives that that people talk
Speaker 1: about but actually works, is you Yeah, amount of deer
Speaker 1: it's like, holy shit, man, Yeah, it's it's it's wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's almost alarming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no need to carry out.
Speaker 5: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That you can actually because you know you actually do
Speaker 1: that just like very effortlessly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just rip right up through a white tail
Speaker 3: right up to the well to the throat and then
Speaker 3: it doesn't ruin it. No, you know, I cut a
Speaker 3: hole my daughter's elk last year. I cut the whole
Speaker 3: elk in half with my speed goat, which is basically
Speaker 3: the same size blade as this, you know, through the
Speaker 3: spine there again, I'm not chopping through vertebrae. You're finding
Speaker 3: those soft areas. You're finding that connective tissue in the joints,
Speaker 3: just like at the you know, the legs and whatnot.
Speaker 3: When you're taking the bottom of the legs off. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't need a saw. You can break down a
Speaker 3: whole animal with that stub horn or this flat tail
Speaker 3: without a saw. Oh yeah, easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So those the the flat tails are going to
Speaker 1: be available on mkc's website.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 3: I think depending on when this drops, it may be
Speaker 3: even the weak of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Rin. Yeah, so you can go to Montana Knife Company
Speaker 1: website find all their stuff, check out the flat tail
Speaker 1: knife were talking about. And you guys usually have you'll
Speaker 1: have a lot of different hand four different handle.
Speaker 3: Collers, well actually have.
Speaker 1: Seven, seven handle calls.
Speaker 3: Yep, So this one and then our six and yeah,
Speaker 3: you know they're gonna end up for sale as well
Speaker 3: as on the meat Eater site.
Speaker 1: We'll have some of these on the medater site. Eventually
Speaker 1: you're gonna have some of these horns on ours.
Speaker 3: The thing with us, you know, it's been a it's
Speaker 3: been cool, but it's been sometimes I think frustrating for customers.
Speaker 3: I saw a comment on YouTube the other day is like, oh, great,
Speaker 3: you did a knife with Ranella. No, we're never going
Speaker 3: to be able to get one because our stuff has
Speaker 3: been selling so fast up to now. You know, it's
Speaker 3: this is the challenge of growing a business. And I
Speaker 3: started this in twenty twenty is in my garage and
Speaker 3: it was me doing everything and then my kids, like
Speaker 3: my fourteen year old daughter at the time she's eighteen now,
Speaker 3: was helping me grind handles and I was doing these
Speaker 3: high end knives. I knew nothing about production, but I
Speaker 3: built this company with my business partner, Brand and the
Speaker 3: two of us bootstrapped it entirely. Didn't borrow any money,
Speaker 3: We didn't take on any outside conglomerate money. But what
Speaker 3: that meant was we could only afford to do so
Speaker 3: much at a time, which it kind of took off
Speaker 3: so so much that like by the time we would
Speaker 3: drop knives, they would sell super fast. So you know,
Speaker 3: hopefully as we continue to grow, you know, we expand
Speaker 3: our production more. I mean we've hired. We now have
Speaker 3: sixty five employees. Oh ok, yeah, so it's not that
Speaker 3: we're not hiring, not growing. We just bought land to
Speaker 3: build a new manufacturing facility. We're going to start building
Speaker 3: that this fall. We're still making knives in my backyard
Speaker 3: at my property, which is I think it's really cool
Speaker 3: because it shows the American dream is still live and real,
Speaker 3: Like you can start as a hobby. I was a
Speaker 3: full time lineman for Northwestern Energy and I was making
Speaker 3: m case knives at night, and here we are today.
Speaker 3: So the point is is over this next year, we're
Speaker 3: going to have more and more of these knives available
Speaker 3: through our site and through yours. But in the beginning
Speaker 3: here for the next little while, you better be Jonny
Speaker 3: on the spot when they see, like, if they see
Speaker 3: an announcement that you guys are dropping them or that
Speaker 3: we are, they're gonna probably go quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's always struck me as funny that you guys
Speaker 1: have the aspiration of someday having it be that your
Speaker 1: knives are always in stock.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well we we we kind of learned that
Speaker 3: it's a challenge when when you're dropping them once a
Speaker 3: week and then it's it's a Monday, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: your kid's birthday a few days later, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I need a knife, and they go to our website
Speaker 3: and there's nothing there to buy. So getting in stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll take some of your most favorite designs and make
Speaker 1: them available all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we've been working on that. We we have
Speaker 3: knives in stock today of a couple of a couple models,
Speaker 3: but they kind of come and go. But honestly, it's
Speaker 3: been cool just because the support of the outdoor industry,
Speaker 3: the hunting industry, you know, like we grew up through
Speaker 3: the Total Archery challenge, the support of the American worker
Speaker 3: because they literally followed me from the day January first
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty one. I shot a video and put
Speaker 3: up on my Instagram like I just quit my job.
Speaker 3: I'm chasing him case full time, and then Brandon I
Speaker 3: didn't take a paycheck for six months after that. That
Speaker 3: was in twenty twenty one. Now we're in the middle
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty four and here we are and what
Speaker 3: we got going. So it's it's really really cool, and
Speaker 3: I hope people take what we're doing and chase it
Speaker 3: and do it within their own passions around the country.
Speaker 3: Like it's it's hard, it's a lot of work, but
Speaker 3: it's possible.
Speaker 1: American elbow grease man, yep.
Speaker 3: But so the support of you guys is awesome. And
Speaker 3: we have some more stuff coming out later. I think
Speaker 3: that we'll chat about later, but for sure we got
Speaker 3: to get you over and let you heat up a
Speaker 3: blade and put a magnet to it.
Speaker 1: I still think it's a lie. That's true, it's a lie.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for the knife sharpening lesson man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys that are just listening, go on YouTube
Speaker 1: and watch and it'll change your sharpening game if you
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, you know, the feeling you buy a knife.
Speaker 3: In that first cut, it's all downhill and like you
Speaker 3: might think, you.
Speaker 1: Know in your head you're like gonna get it back,
Speaker 1: but you're kind of like, but I just know that
Speaker 1: was the sharpest cut that one's ever gonna make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like buying a boat.
Speaker 11: Yeah, day once and nicest it'll ever be yeah downhill
Speaker 11: from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. You're like, there was the sharpest cut that
Speaker 1: knife will ever make, and imagine getting where you thought. Nope,
Speaker 1: that knife's got sharper cuts in its future.
Speaker 3: I'm still just staring at that shiny bald patch on
Speaker 3: your arm. I mean you you.
Speaker 1: Can go get a tattoo for that hair.
Speaker 2: Is that why your beards all nice trimmed?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, carr a little cosmetic mirror with him so you
Speaker 1: can do it.
Speaker 5: Is funny.
Speaker 3: It's always my left arm because I don't dare try
Speaker 3: with my left hand.
Speaker 1: All right, man? Once again, Uh Josh Smith from Montana
Speaker 1: Knife Company, Thanks for coming on. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.
Speaker 14: Up before the fog sucks, boods gear.
Speaker 5: Read for the slog through the midst of.
Speaker 14: Outside. We're wincing glass and on through all things stead
Speaker 14: of steps hes. It brings all the way soul take wings.
Speaker 13: Chandelier three hundred under arm, midday sun bright light, seal East.
Speaker 14: Calm, Busy is a quiet cloud.
Speaker 1: Chandelier three hundred under.
Speaker 12: The arm undone steps out of the road, Trophy head quality, behold.
Speaker 14: Still breath measured flice more a beauty years bold stead
Speaker 14: a step piece.
Speaker 4: It brings.
Speaker 5: All away.
Speaker 12: The soul.
Speaker 3: It sings.
Speaker 14: Chandelier three hundred under arms. Kneel beside the fallen soul
Speaker 14: to feed first respect which present cold carry the air
Speaker 14: colds home