Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Dirk Durham, and today my guest is a longtime
Speaker 1: sportsman and a sportsman advocate and outdoor writer, lifelong hunter
Speaker 1: and if anyone wants to know anything about elk hunting,
Speaker 1: I feel this is the guy. Do you want to
Speaker 1: get inside his brain and pick it a little bit?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. I have George Betis here today.
Speaker 1: Welcome George.
Speaker 2: Thank you Derek. It's great to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1: I've been following George for several years on social media
Speaker 1: and I've seen a lot of stuff he's written over
Speaker 1: the years, and I've always thought he was a pretty
Speaker 1: neat and fascinating guy, and I thought, you know who
Speaker 1: better to get on the podcast and kind of talk
Speaker 1: about the good old days of elk hunting in Idaho
Speaker 1: and in particular Idaho's Clearwater region. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: magical place, and I think it's probably arguably one of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful places to hunt elk there is as
Speaker 1: far as picturesque quality, and at one time it was
Speaker 1: a really neat place to go elk hunting just because
Speaker 1: of the whole experience. But I thought I'd bring George
Speaker 1: on and kind of talk about those good old days
Speaker 1: and what they look like back then it may be
Speaker 1: contrast to what it looks like today hunting there. And
Speaker 1: if any of our listeners, if you guys don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with George, I'm going to take a
Speaker 1: minute and let George talk about himself. And it's it's
Speaker 1: sometimes hard to brag on himself, but if you were
Speaker 1: to look at his Facebook profile, it's pretty pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: He served in a lot of different important roles advocating
Speaker 1: for sportsmen, among other things, through his lifetime of being
Speaker 1: a hunter and a sportsman. So, George, could you give
Speaker 1: us a little bit of your background.
Speaker 2: I'll give you the executive summary. If you want to
Speaker 2: know more, yeah, go to Google or Facebook. But well,
Speaker 2: I grew up on a small farm in central Washington.
Speaker 2: We never had elk there. I remember seeing the very
Speaker 2: first elk way back when I was in probably a
Speaker 2: sophomore in college in about nineteen fifty nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: It was a big bowl lying up in the timber.
Speaker 2: But we just didn't have elk there. We had a
Speaker 2: lot of mule deer, and so you know, elk was
Speaker 2: a really kind of interesting thing to see on the farm. Well, anyway,
Speaker 2: after high school, I went on to Washington State University graduated.
Speaker 2: I was in the last required class of ROTC, the
Speaker 2: Return Reserve Officers Training program. And of course after you
Speaker 2: finished school, you've got you have to go in the army.
Speaker 2: So I served in the Army in the late sixties
Speaker 2: and in their Interference Artillery program or actually branch, and
Speaker 2: after that eventually returned to Pullman, Washington, where I started
Speaker 2: work on my doctorate degree in higher education, and I
Speaker 2: was there until I retired in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: I served in the whole series of positions Director of
Speaker 2: Housing and Diana Students, and ultimately the vice president of
Speaker 2: student Affairs. But anyway, my interest in conservation goes back
Speaker 2: to my just growing up on the farm. I was
Speaker 2: always interested in birds and you know, and identifying birds
Speaker 2: and in animals, and I you know, we had deer
Speaker 2: and elk deer on the farm and we could see
Speaker 2: out down in other areas, and so I was always
Speaker 2: interested in wildlife. And then after I used to say
Speaker 2: I spent my whole life either in school or in
Speaker 2: the army, and it was true until after I got
Speaker 2: back from back to WSU to work on my doctorate.
Speaker 2: I started really thinking about hunting and other things I
Speaker 2: could do. In nineteen eighty four, the Elk Foundation had
Speaker 2: their very first convention in Spokane, and I had an
Speaker 2: interesting I was hunting elk in Montana at the time,
Speaker 2: up around Superior, and it was a bugle magazine and
Speaker 2: I saw it and the guy. I said, the guy says,
Speaker 2: where'd you get this? He says, that's the last one.
Speaker 2: I said, well, you have me more. He said no,
Speaker 2: he said, you can have that one for twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: That's what I about it. Anyway, So I got involved
Speaker 2: with the Elk Foundation just as a member, then as
Speaker 2: a as a life member and habitat partner, and ultimately
Speaker 2: was on the board. It was elected to the board,
Speaker 2: served as a board chair during some tumultuous times kind
Speaker 2: of in the with the Elk Foundation, changing CEOs and stuff. Anyway,
Speaker 2: But parallel to that, uh, I got a call one
Speaker 2: day from Emmitt Burrows in California and he asked me.
Speaker 2: He says, hey, here, you like to hunt mule there?
Speaker 2: Would you? I'm putting putting together a new Found mule
Speaker 2: Deer Foundation. I said, really, he said, would you help
Speaker 2: us organize it and develop the you know, the documents.
Speaker 2: He said, I've got of six other guys coming to Redding,
Speaker 2: And so I went down there and I was one
Speaker 2: of the founders of the Mulder Foundation and then ultimately
Speaker 2: served as president. But at the same time, uh in
Speaker 2: eighty nine, I was invited to become a regular member
Speaker 2: of the Boone and Crockett Club, and I couldn't do both,
Speaker 2: so I passed the gabble with the with the Mule
Speaker 2: Deer Foundation on and and of course at the Universe
Speaker 2: you had a job in doing. I spent time working,
Speaker 2: you know, with Boone and Crockett. I've been in a
Speaker 2: Boone Crockett member for thirty four years, served in i guess,
Speaker 2: all levels of responsibility except president, and that's been a
Speaker 2: great ride. And that connected to me a lot of
Speaker 2: different opportunities for you know, conservation work the Elk Foundation.
Speaker 2: When I was on the board, you know, the lands program,
Speaker 2: I was really involved with that. I was involved with
Speaker 2: all aspects of it, and I learned all about you know,
Speaker 2: I was involved in a lot of those major major
Speaker 2: Elk Foundation land programs as a as a board member
Speaker 2: and as an individual. And then after I left Boone
Speaker 2: and Crockett, actually I left the university. I retired at
Speaker 2: university in two thousand and one and was hired as
Speaker 2: a as the executive director of the Boone and Crockett Club.
Speaker 2: Moved to Missoula. I've been here last twenty years and
Speaker 2: that gave me other opportunities to reach out and and
Speaker 2: work with conservation organizations, help foundation on their land projects.
Speaker 2: Was was was one of them. After I retired from
Speaker 2: puding Crockett, I was hired by the Montana Fish, Wallefe
Speaker 2: and Parks Foundation and was there an executive director and
Speaker 2: manager of a trust they manage and that in that
Speaker 2: in that role, we were able to fund millions of
Speaker 2: dollars of different public access in the churches program. So
Speaker 2: my flunk retirement four times, and you know, so that
Speaker 2: pretty much got and all along. When I was at
Speaker 2: the university, I basically had time to go hunting deer
Speaker 2: for like a week and elk for a week. And
Speaker 2: so then that's when I discovered the clear water. And
Speaker 2: that's I can tell that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's quite a quite an impressive
Speaker 1: list of roles of of that that would consume a
Speaker 1: lot of time and responsibility, definitely, especially working full time
Speaker 1: when you're at w s U and you were soon
Speaker 1: serving those other roles. That's that's an incredible that's an
Speaker 1: incredible achievement really that I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people can can do that. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would be able to be capable
Speaker 1: of having that much heaped on my plate on it
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. So that's that's cool.
Speaker 2: A lot of the roles I had at w SU,
Speaker 2: you know, involve students and student behavior in the residence
Speaker 2: halls and fra garnities and sororities. And you know, I
Speaker 2: was on call twenty four to seven, and so I could,
Speaker 2: you know, typically an elk hunt in Idaho, after I've
Speaker 2: we figured out, you know that where to go into
Speaker 2: clear Water, I have a staff meeting Monday morning and
Speaker 2: meet my buddy in Lewiston with the horses and way
Speaker 2: we'd go and I'd come back Sunday and be right
Speaker 2: back at it. Two weeks later the there's season opened
Speaker 2: and I'd be a week for deer. That was it
Speaker 2: until maybe Thanksgiving and then but yeah, but you know
Speaker 2: I always tell young people to just follow their passion.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't fish. I hunt. Yeah, And I figured,
Speaker 2: if you're going to do something, well, you got to
Speaker 2: keep your eye on the football. And for me, it
Speaker 2: was hunting. It was deer hunting and elk hunting. Of course,
Speaker 2: the brown bears in Alaska, YadA, YadA, and all those
Speaker 2: other things I've done, But it was all about hunting.
Speaker 2: Learning your rifles and studying the ballistics and learning to reload,
Speaker 2: you know, all of that. And so anyway, that's kind
Speaker 2: of an executive summary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love it. So when did you get
Speaker 1: first get into hunting with horses in the back country?
Speaker 2: Well, and the clear waters? What got me into the doors?
Speaker 1: Okay, I what year was.
Speaker 2: That I went in there? The first backpacked in for
Speaker 2: elk in nineteen seventy six. Wow. But I started going
Speaker 2: up into the Cellway bear hunting in the spring, and
Speaker 2: you know, the guys up in those days, they drove up,
Speaker 2: the drove up the highway and the cell you know,
Speaker 2: up to towards the Montana line, and you could you
Speaker 2: could see bears any morning, anytime, right from the road.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of adventures. I didn't like the River.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to have to go across the river
Speaker 2: to get a bear. So I heard about the clear Water,
Speaker 2: went up to clear clear Water and up to Kelly
Speaker 2: Creek and killed a giant bear the first year. And
Speaker 2: that was in about seventy seventy four maybe. But when
Speaker 2: I was up there in the spring, we'd see and
Speaker 2: we'd backpack in near Bearning. We see all these help
Speaker 2: I mean, hundreds of elk everywhere we went, just big,
Speaker 2: I mean elk We're everywhere. I mean I can tell
Speaker 2: you every place I went, they were just elk everywhere.
Speaker 2: And so I started looking at that, and I there
Speaker 2: was a guy named of Dell Robie. He used to
Speaker 2: do outdoor films and yeah, and I remember going to
Speaker 2: one down in Lewiston at the Lewis Clark Sports Club
Speaker 2: and they had one of these PVC bugles and they
Speaker 2: called in a big six point and it was up
Speaker 2: in Max Walker's guide area and Kelly and they'l come
Speaker 2: walking in. A guy shout and I said, WHOA, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: They were seeing that before. Well anyway, so I started
Speaker 2: focusing on the Clare later and so my my buddy
Speaker 2: and I we backpacked way back into the middle of
Speaker 2: Paradise Meadows and you know, bear hunting, and he had
Speaker 2: we had to hike over the snow and all that
Speaker 2: to get in there. But Dirk, it was it was
Speaker 2: one of the most memorable experiences I ever ever had
Speaker 2: because we bush whacked because it's the snow, and we
Speaker 2: popped into this big basin, you know, three miles by
Speaker 2: two miles. It was large, it was green, and there
Speaker 2: must have been three hundred at least cow elk in
Speaker 2: the meadows with their calves calling back and forth. Wow.
Speaker 2: And we didn't know it at the time, but these
Speaker 2: but these big bears were coming in to prey on
Speaker 2: the elk calves. So we both shot two big bears
Speaker 2: and skinned them out and then had to use our
Speaker 2: map and compass to get back to the highway. But
Speaker 2: when I saw those elk, I said, whoa, I've got
Speaker 2: to get in here. It's like nine ten miles in there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: going to do it. And so I had to put
Speaker 2: together a group of guys and guys I knew, and
Speaker 2: guys that were good oukhunters and guys that I trusted in. Uh.
Speaker 2: There was a there was an orthbetic surgeon from up
Speaker 2: in Bellingham, Washington, and a friend of mine from Seattle
Speaker 2: at hunted elk together in Oregon and they camp on
Speaker 2: the Washington Oregon line. Oregon would open, they'd shoot a
Speaker 2: spike there. Then they'd come back on the Washington side
Speaker 2: in the Broom Mountains and shoot a spike. So I
Speaker 2: called Andy and Bob. I said, hey, guys, I says,
Speaker 2: you want to come to Idaho. We need some horses
Speaker 2: to get where I want to go. And they said
Speaker 2: sure and so and then one of my former well
Speaker 2: my my secretary's husband was a VEST student and ended
Speaker 2: up ultimately in Palmeroy, Washington. And so he had a horse,
Speaker 2: and so I bought an old apples a rat tail
Speaker 2: Apple USA from one of the athletes. And so anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, actually the fall of seventy seven we went
Speaker 2: in with horses and tip. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 2: anything about it, much about it, you know, now, I
Speaker 2: say we used to pack like sheepherders, because we we
Speaker 2: had deckers and stuff and we die stuff on and
Speaker 2: it'd fall off and then not companies. Anyway, it was
Speaker 2: no those four guys we hunted that for twelve years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And during that time we never hunted more than three days.
Speaker 2: It was rifle. We'd pack in on Monday, when we
Speaker 2: drive up the trailer head on Monday, pack in Tuesday,
Speaker 2: set up camp, and the season open on Wednesday. In
Speaker 2: those days, like last week of September, and the bulls
Speaker 2: were just really vocal. I mean at night, you could
Speaker 2: just hear bulls bugling all around you. We were and
Speaker 2: you know, the first the first three, the first two
Speaker 2: days we got we got four nice bulls, and uh,
Speaker 2: we had too much gear. We ended up boning them
Speaker 2: out because we didn't have enough horses to do everything.
Speaker 2: And we backpacked what we could and we and we
Speaker 2: went out that way, and then we added some horses and
Speaker 2: added some horses. I got a couple of horses and
Speaker 2: ended up that we had we had like twelve horses
Speaker 2: to go in there, you know, all walk to pack
Speaker 2: out and four guys in your gear. And that was
Speaker 2: before lightweight gear. You know. I got a meanium of
Speaker 2: my blue jeans and my my yellow plastic raincoat, soaking
Speaker 2: wet yell those but but therek you you know, you
Speaker 2: were in that country. You hunted that country. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and of course I went back and I
Speaker 2: I want to know the history. So I went back.
Speaker 2: I read all everything I could find about the wildfires,
Speaker 2: you know, and how the red stem Ceanothus was a
Speaker 2: really important winter food. And I mean there were so
Speaker 2: many elk in there in those days that and if
Speaker 2: you've been in there, hiked up over Cook Mountain back
Speaker 2: in that country, the elk trails were two feet wide
Speaker 2: and a foot deep. Wow, those trails are still there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've been in there a couple of years ago and
Speaker 2: then a couple of years before that. The brush is
Speaker 2: ten twelve feet tall, and I knew where, I knew
Speaker 2: where the trails were, and I'd be going in there
Speaker 2: with my horse and pretty soon he'd stumble and he'd
Speaker 2: fall down into the elk trail. But I mean it
Speaker 2: was on real We hunted it for twelve years, wow,
Speaker 2: and you know, we hunted hard. I'd go in there
Speaker 2: in the summer. It's funny because my my, my hunting
Speaker 2: partner from Palmeroy, he was in the Nazarene church, and
Speaker 2: he'd he could always find a couple of young boys,
Speaker 2: maybe boys with just you know, a single parent that
Speaker 2: would want to go with us, and so we'd take
Speaker 2: them in there and Uh, you know, there were no
Speaker 2: there's no timber in there, and.
Speaker 3: We we uh followed elk trails and we took out
Speaker 3: and you know, we dug out some downfall and maybe
Speaker 3: cut a limb or two off of the brush so.
Speaker 2: We could navigate in the morning before day and get
Speaker 2: out away from camp. Because every year the circle got wider.
Speaker 2: And finally we were killing elk clear over on Cook
Speaker 2: Mountain and coming back two in the morning. But anyway, Uh,
Speaker 2: like I say, we all hunted hard. Uh, it was
Speaker 2: like a military camp. Then the night before, oh, we
Speaker 2: get all the top of maps and we talk about this,
Speaker 2: and we talk about where one guy was going and
Speaker 2: where everybody went. And then as soon as one guy
Speaker 2: got it, got his elk, he'd come back. You know,
Speaker 2: we'd get his he'd get his elk out, or or
Speaker 2: one of us and go with him and get it out,
Speaker 2: and then he'd take care of the horses and cook.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was that was kind of the drill.
Speaker 2: But the habitat was lesh. As you said, it's probably
Speaker 2: one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And now now you know, later and later on we
Speaker 2: can talk about what's changed.
Speaker 1: But you guys were in there in September and that
Speaker 1: was rifle hunting back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: Did they even have archery seasons during that time?
Speaker 2: They did, and uh, we sell them ever saw a
Speaker 2: boat hunter, okay, And what happened was after about eight
Speaker 2: years and Max Walker was an old time outfitter. He
Speaker 2: was a great guy. And then Gordon Stimmel was back
Speaker 2: in there, and I knew both knew Gordon, never knew Max.
Speaker 2: They were gentlemen and there weren't many people that ever
Speaker 2: go in there. There were a few people going in
Speaker 2: with horses, but not many. And the outfitter camp in
Speaker 2: there in Paradise Meadow was just it was just all
Speaker 2: trump down and it was really it wasn't really very active,
Speaker 2: and we never saw an outfitter. But then a new
Speaker 2: guy came in and bought the outfit and he didn't
Speaker 2: like the fact that we were going in there and
Speaker 2: packing out elk So anyway, we ended up moving elver
Speaker 2: On on the other side in unk Cook Mountain, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we still hunting the same areas, but uh,
Speaker 2: and then I always remember, right, we have to ride
Speaker 2: out through the lodge poles and in the dark and
Speaker 2: it's real. It was real flat up there, and if
Speaker 2: you didn't know your way, you get lost. And my
Speaker 2: horse knew his way to where we'd ride out and
Speaker 2: tie off. And then one day we're riding out there
Speaker 2: and I shine my flashlight on a tree and there's
Speaker 2: something shining. It's like a it's like a thumbtack with
Speaker 2: with fluorescent pain on it. And what's that, you know?
Speaker 2: And then pretty soon I could see another one. Well,
Speaker 2: bow hunters had showed up and they were putting on
Speaker 2: those thumbtacks, yeah, to get on the ridge. And then
Speaker 2: it was we killed an olk almost every year after
Speaker 2: that with a with a broad hand in the shoulder
Speaker 2: almost here. Wow, that's when they showed up. It was probably, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, eighty two eighty three, and we never
Speaker 2: saw them. They would come in off the top on
Speaker 2: to the south where.
Speaker 1: We were over towards out of the weedst there, across
Speaker 1: the weedst there and come up that side.
Speaker 2: Of Cook Mountain the Weast bridge, and then the outfit
Speaker 2: or he he loaded up. He had seventy two hunters
Speaker 2: in there one year, and he probably he had probably
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five bowl hunters. I'd looked up this, you know,
Speaker 2: his information on for service records, and yeah, he had
Speaker 2: like twenty or more boat hunters. And in those days
Speaker 2: those help were a lot of elk. They didn't know
Speaker 2: much about mules anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great way to kind of frame up
Speaker 1: what kind of country that was and how many elk
Speaker 1: were living there. My dad when he got out of
Speaker 1: the Marines in World War Two, then he moved to
Speaker 1: wee Ipe and made friends with some of the locals
Speaker 1: and they started to go up and going up into
Speaker 1: Kelly Creek in the late forties and they would take
Speaker 1: go in there with the horses, and what he described
Speaker 1: to like the elk trails were just as you described,
Speaker 1: you know, two feet wide, a foot deep, and there
Speaker 1: were elk everywhere. And they never shot bulls for the
Speaker 1: most part. It was they were they were there for
Speaker 1: the cows. They would shoot, you know, just the meat.
Speaker 1: They were just they worried about meat, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't shoot one of those old stinky bulls. We
Speaker 1: want to We want a cow. You know, if somebody
Speaker 1: shot a ball then they had to they'd give him
Speaker 1: a raft a crap about it. But at what there
Speaker 1: was kind of a turning point. An outfitter started guiding
Speaker 1: up Kelly Creek there and and it sounds like a
Speaker 1: similar operation, like tons and tons of people in camps
Speaker 1: and all over the hillsides. And he said it got
Speaker 1: to be kind of a rat race. And he he
Speaker 1: he was there for the the quiet and the you know,
Speaker 1: getting away and and not seeing a bunch of people
Speaker 1: and then good hunting, and it just got to the
Speaker 1: point he just gave it up. He's like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go back up there anymore. But it's interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 2: We did everything we could to to prevent any interference
Speaker 2: with the outfitter, and we camped at the far end
Speaker 2: of when when one outfitters area, and we basically hunted
Speaker 2: on the on the edge of the other outfitter and
Speaker 2: frank frankly, we never saw the outfitters up there except
Speaker 2: when we're packing meet out and it was it was
Speaker 2: a really we say it out of their way.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Well, to this day, if you get on
Speaker 1: Google Earth and you go to that place that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a salt like there that's about the
Speaker 1: size of my house that's still there. And I don't
Speaker 1: know that there's very many elk hitting that salt lick anymore.
Speaker 1: But they beat it down so bad back in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties that you know, nothing will grow in
Speaker 1: that spot.
Speaker 2: Well, the outfitter used to I'd never seen big, you know,
Speaker 2: big one foot diameter or two foot chunks of rock salt.
Speaker 2: And one day he was coming in with his mules
Speaker 2: and they're all loaded with rock salt, and there big
Speaker 2: licks in there there. But now one of the one
Speaker 2: of the well, one of the two of the biggest
Speaker 2: licks are so overgrown they're they're hardly there. And we
Speaker 2: put some was up two years ago and left him
Speaker 2: there from the middle of August till both seasons, and
Speaker 2: on one camera we had a raghorn bull a cow
Speaker 2: in a yearly and and those you know, the licks
Speaker 2: are still there that some deer come in. But you know,
Speaker 2: you know, if you've seen those licks, they dig right
Speaker 2: down on the ground and they can't they can't salt anymore.
Speaker 2: But there were, you know, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: other I met some good friends. Uh my friend would
Speaker 2: uh the guy hunted with you asked about hunting partners,
Speaker 2: but the guy hunted with uh, you know, I was
Speaker 2: run into these guys from Tilla mcregon way back up
Speaker 2: and you know in the head of the head a
Speaker 2: Cook Creek. Yeah, I'd never seen it. So it was
Speaker 2: the first Elk Foundation meeting and Spokane. I had a
Speaker 2: banquet and I sat down at this table and there's
Speaker 2: four guys sitting there and uh, I introduced myself. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe it. They were Tilla mcorgon. They were the
Speaker 2: guys that were coming in from the lock saw.
Speaker 1: Oh no, kid.
Speaker 2: If you talk about how many of us were hunting, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, one great, two is enough. Three will work.
Speaker 2: And if you know each other and you care about
Speaker 2: each other and and this, and they're not jealous of
Speaker 2: each other. Four is a good team, but never more
Speaker 2: than four. And one of the things we people, well
Speaker 2: you always wanted to know where we're hunting, well, you know,
Speaker 2: and then some people get angry if you don't tell
Speaker 2: them where you're hunting. People followed my you know, they're
Speaker 2: looking at my vehicles and my horse truckness and that.
Speaker 2: But we never took new people into the area just because, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, there's an outfitter in there. We don't want
Speaker 2: to bring other people. And if somebody showed up. They
Speaker 2: showed up. But that was a golden rule for us.
Speaker 2: We never took anybody outside to our camp. And and
Speaker 2: so you know, we hunted with four guys. And after
Speaker 2: I put hunting the clear water and moved over in Salmon,
Speaker 2: I hunumber three guys and you have two other guys.
Speaker 2: But you can get you can get too many people
Speaker 2: in camp, right right. And the other the other little
Speaker 2: thing that comes into a hunting camp is jealousy. Yep,
Speaker 2: if you're good and you're in good shape, and you
Speaker 2: hunt really hard and you're successful, we'll have somebody that
Speaker 2: doesn't take care of themselves and they don't take care
Speaker 2: of their body and they're not in good shape, and
Speaker 2: they won't push it the extra mile, and pretty soon
Speaker 2: that person gets jealousy, you know. So that's that's my
Speaker 2: old man's wisdom. The partner. Yeah, it's like you've got
Speaker 2: to have a good one.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's almost like when you're looking for a mate,
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking for a wife. You have to
Speaker 1: vet that that hunting partner so good and make sure
Speaker 1: that you guys can get along, because I've seen that,
Speaker 1: you know, the back country can bring out the best
Speaker 1: in people, or it can bring out the worst in people.
Speaker 1: You know you can because you know it's not all.
Speaker 1: Every day is not just easy laying around and enjoying
Speaker 1: delicious food and sitting around camp. I mean there's hardships,
Speaker 1: there's inclement weather, there's difficulties, finding game whatever, whatever the
Speaker 1: difficulty is. Those those partners have to kind of weather
Speaker 1: the storm with you. And and the ones that that
Speaker 1: are really great, they're like worth their weight in gold.
Speaker 1: And the ones that that that cause problems, those ones
Speaker 1: don't get to come back next time.
Speaker 2: Well, I talk about the three day rule. A lot
Speaker 2: of people are ready to go home after three days.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And uh, dealing with adversity. If you want to be
Speaker 2: an elk hunter and be successful, you have to be
Speaker 2: able to deal with adversity. It doesn't make any difference
Speaker 2: whether it's a horse that's injured or whether you get
Speaker 2: snow you get snowed in. Uh, you know it's really
Speaker 2: cold at the elk move whatever, and you got to
Speaker 2: you've got to go the extra mile. And and when
Speaker 2: you find you know guys in your party that will
Speaker 2: do that, You've got a perfect team. And it's a
Speaker 2: team effort. And the other thing that I've always said
Speaker 2: is if I can't be just as pleased with the
Speaker 2: success of my hunting partner as I would be for myself,
Speaker 2: I'm not a very good hunting partner, because you know,
Speaker 2: you share the experience and you share the camp and
Speaker 2: that I've always I've almost always had ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the time hunting partners that were that way, and it's
Speaker 2: a key to a really enjoyable hunt. One of the
Speaker 2: questions you had was about mature bulls. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: when I first started hunting in there, there was It
Speaker 2: was a September opener on a Wednesday, and they were
Speaker 2: bulls screaming everywhere everywhere. I mean, and I had the
Speaker 2: first year we went in, I had a guy that
Speaker 2: worked at WSU that had some horses. He was a
Speaker 2: guy from North Dakota. He packed me in and dropped
Speaker 2: me off. He had four horses, dropping me off with
Speaker 2: my gear, and he left me. I put up my
Speaker 2: tent and then he left that same day. That night
Speaker 2: to night, I'll never forget all my life because we
Speaker 2: had inadvertently set our camp right at the crossroads in
Speaker 2: about three major elk trades.
Speaker 1: No, No, I didn't know the night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have my rookies. I'm lying there in the
Speaker 2: tent and it just gets dark, and I hear this
Speaker 2: this water splash, and I hear this bull just scream.
Speaker 2: He's like ten feet from my tent. Oh man, And
Speaker 2: whole night long, and the elk come down. They'd be
Speaker 2: splashed in the creek. They'd smell me, they'd be beautiy.
Speaker 2: I mean all night long. I ain't sleep all night.
Speaker 2: And but there most all the bulls we shot ninety
Speaker 2: were mature bulls, mostly all sixes. And uh, you know
Speaker 2: we didn't We shot the first really legal bull we
Speaker 2: could get. He didn't turn down you didn't turn down
Speaker 2: a five point because because but there weren't very many
Speaker 2: five points. I mean, you know, there were so many
Speaker 2: mature bulls in there in those days. I've never seen
Speaker 2: anything like it since. Wow.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see you that were just remarkably large,
Speaker 1: like giant? Like wow? That today? You know, people is
Speaker 1: always looking, you know, throw they always throw around big numbers,
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred inches or three hundred and fifty inches.
Speaker 1: Would you ever say you saw anything of that kind
Speaker 1: of caliber back in those days?
Speaker 2: There was one in there that would have probably gone
Speaker 2: three sixty or more. That some guys from Oregon killed.
Speaker 2: The biggest bull I killed in there was just short
Speaker 2: of three forty. My buddy, uh Jerry, he killed one
Speaker 2: the same night, just just short of three forty. But
Speaker 2: that you know, those are the biggest bulls we saw. Yeah,
Speaker 2: most of were three hundred class six points. Okay, maybe
Speaker 2: you know, but you know, I'm a I've been a
Speaker 2: Boonakracks score. So when I spick at a bull and
Speaker 2: I say he's a three hundred, he probably is. I
Speaker 2: keep I'm amused at how Boonakracks scores.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's funny depending on who you talk to. It's like,
Speaker 1: if I'm talking to one person, they said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw a three hundred inch bowl. I usually sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: I'll subtract about twenty or thirty inches and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: So you know, because a lot of people, as soon
Speaker 1: as they see a nice six point, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a three hundred bowl. Well that's and three hundred
Speaker 1: bowl is a really nice bowl. That's a big heavy
Speaker 1: horn bowl, good beams, good porns points. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: nice bull there. They don't they don't grow on every
Speaker 1: tree that's for sure.
Speaker 2: No, but back you know, and the days we were
Speaker 2: hunting in there, you can almost always find a nice
Speaker 2: six point the first or second day. Wow, three days
Speaker 2: and we packed meet the fourth day and when I
Speaker 2: pack went home the next day because I had to
Speaker 2: be at work on Monday. Yeah, you know you asked
Speaker 2: about ask about the the condition of the forage and
Speaker 2: the habitat, Yes, was per it was ideal. You know
Speaker 2: if you go back and read about you know, the
Speaker 2: fires that burned in there and two successes of different
Speaker 2: big fires. Uh, the conifers were really burned, and there
Speaker 2: was there were brush fields, but the brush fields were immature.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, if you could you could find a
Speaker 2: ten foot in this one great big open area where
Speaker 2: all these guys were. There were huge meadows and a
Speaker 2: lot of ferns and would grow in those meadows and stuff,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot of water, but uh uh
Speaker 2: no conifers at all. And then if you've got the
Speaker 2: conifers where there were there were a lot of immature conifers, uh,
Speaker 2: you know for mostly for some him lock in there.
Speaker 2: And uh I remember, uh there was one one really
Speaker 2: steep trail or ridge we had to pack meat on
Speaker 2: and it was hard to you know, to figure out
Speaker 2: where you were. And so uh, I mean once in
Speaker 2: a while we nip the top of a little like
Speaker 2: a three four foot Christmas tree, just cut the top off.
Speaker 2: Yeah about that? And is it because you know you
Speaker 2: could see that and you'd look for that. Now those
Speaker 2: trees are are fifty twenty feet doll and you could
Speaker 2: see you know, they've got triple tops or something. But yeah,
Speaker 2: and there are hillsides we I mean we could shoot across.
Speaker 2: I always hunted with a three forty weather bean. I
Speaker 2: knew the ballistics and we can shoot across from one
Speaker 2: side to the other. Now you couldn't see an elk
Speaker 2: on that hillside across there, and then well, what's what's happening? Well,
Speaker 2: I've gone in there for really religiously just to go
Speaker 2: in there. Sure, and uh and look and see it's
Speaker 2: such a neat place. I took my kids in there,
Speaker 2: my daughters, and we'd go in and camp. And I
Speaker 2: was in there three years ago and we probably rode
Speaker 2: I don't know, seventy miles through there with the horses.
Speaker 2: Found one elk track. Wow, And used to be able
Speaker 2: to ride an ATV from Cayuse Creek, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: clear across to the lock Saw. Yep, and the roads
Speaker 2: were just there were elk trails coming down the cutbank
Speaker 2: and they just trails foot deep with elk are coming
Speaker 2: down the cut bank, crossing the road and going across. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was about seven years ago. I never saw an
Speaker 2: elk track on that road all the way to Cayus
Speaker 2: Meadows from the lock Saw. It's yeah, and the elk
Speaker 2: just aren't there. So what's the you know, what's the deal,
Speaker 2: what's the you know, what's the deal with the wolves
Speaker 2: and what's the remedy. About the time I quld hunting there,
Speaker 2: the elk numbers were down, but there weren't any wolves
Speaker 2: there yet. And uh the black bears. I shot a
Speaker 2: lot of blackberries in the clear water because he could
Speaker 2: shoot two. Now we'd go in early and if I
Speaker 2: got a brown one, then I'd hunt for a black
Speaker 2: one and we shot. We've shot blackberries with you know,
Speaker 2: after just minutes after they killed an elk calf. But
Speaker 2: then Mike Schlegel did the study on the on the
Speaker 2: elk depredy or they very you know, the depredation by bears.
Speaker 2: They're back and I'd see my cup there in the
Speaker 2: cell away and stop and look at his data, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know they had mortality signals on their on their
Speaker 2: on their calves. But at one time the elk mortality
Speaker 2: in there was like seventy eighty percent on my calves.
Speaker 2: And the black bears killed a lot of calves, right,
Speaker 2: and of course then you've got lions. Well, it's a
Speaker 2: habitat issue as well. I mean people want to blame
Speaker 2: the wolves. Yeah, the wolves are in there, but you
Speaker 2: can't just blame the wolf because it's a combination. Jim
Speaker 2: Peak is a wildlacbologist that I have always respected, and
Speaker 2: he'll talk to you about the Batholithic soils and how
Speaker 2: the burn just really burned the soil and the conifers
Speaker 2: and the brush is coming back and that's not good
Speaker 2: elk habitat. So anyway, and then you know we know
Speaker 2: about the wolves. I mean, when they're in there. There
Speaker 2: are a lot of photos on Facebook and stuff of
Speaker 2: the wolves killing slaughtering elk down right on the river.
Speaker 2: But the combination is is the sticker. But now you know,
Speaker 2: I Mike Schlegel is a really good friend of mine.
Speaker 2: He's a wild lacabology. It really is studying that right now.
Speaker 2: And I'm known the fire manager over on the Clearwater,
Speaker 2: he laid out a whole series of burned and in
Speaker 2: the places that really needed to be burned, he dake
Speaker 2: those out. I saw where they were. He you know,
Speaker 2: I saw his maps. Guess why people don't like smoke.
Speaker 2: And you know now they haven't done any of those
Speaker 2: burned simply because of the you know, the the image
Speaker 2: and the social pressure that people put on the Forest
Speaker 2: service because of smoke, and and and he finally left.
Speaker 2: But there's there are all kinds of burn units laid
Speaker 2: out all over that clearwater that haven't been burned and
Speaker 2: should be burned, but probably never would, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's a tragic thing. The other the other issue I
Speaker 2: I've encountered up there is the motorcycle access. Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not an anti ATV motorcycle person, not at all.
Speaker 2: I had eight I've never had a motorcycle. But the
Speaker 2: last time I was in there, we camped clew up
Speaker 2: and the head a Cook Creek and came in from
Speaker 2: the lock saw and the next morning I wanted to
Speaker 2: go ride clear back acrossover and drop into Paradise Meadows
Speaker 2: and go down where camp was, and we're going across
Speaker 2: Windy Ridge early in the morning. And my horses are
Speaker 2: really gentle. They don't you know, they motorcycles and stuff
Speaker 2: don't bother me. And the one horse I had was trailing.
Speaker 2: He kept jumping around every once in a while, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden I figured out there's a motorcycle
Speaker 2: right behind. And the trail had the trail had been
Speaker 2: had been x evated with those mini excavators. It was
Speaker 2: two feet wide. The brush was cleared three feet to
Speaker 2: each side of it. And there must have been a
Speaker 2: dozen guys from Missoula, and not that was a bad place,
Speaker 2: but there a dozen guys, you know, there were in
Speaker 2: all their their plastic protection and they had chainsaws. They
Speaker 2: were riding from Windy saddle on the lock. So over
Speaker 2: all the way over into Cooked Mountain, down onto the
Speaker 2: the road, all the way down to the wheat and
Speaker 2: up the wheatas and back up through uh this cabin,
Speaker 2: and all the way back in one day and the
Speaker 2: four service, I mean, it was a motocross. That was
Speaker 2: a great motocross trail. And to the worst part was
Speaker 2: we left an eight pack of cold smoke and the creek. Oh,
Speaker 2: don't you know it's our favorite Montana beer. But anyway,
Speaker 2: when we walked about fifty yards up the creek from
Speaker 2: what we camped, and we we ditched it down in
Speaker 2: underneath in the water and go back there bowt hunting,
Speaker 2: and these there's a trail crew in there. They're they're
Speaker 2: cutting trail. I mean they're cutting brush out of the trail.
Speaker 2: And the nerdy buggers drink are cold soak.
Speaker 1: Oh no, but now it's you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: a bike and you like to ride the back country trails,
Speaker 1: it's it's the epitome.
Speaker 2: I mean it's the best there is. Yeah. And then uh,
Speaker 2: the next day we're clear out and Cook Mountains. Some
Speaker 2: guys from polatch Idahope. I could hear him coming, and
Speaker 2: my horse isn't you know, he's not spooked. But this
Speaker 2: guy come ripping around the corner and laid his bike
Speaker 2: down right in the trail so he didn't run into me.
Speaker 2: And the guy said to me, he says, wow, he says,
Speaker 2: you're the first guys I've ever seen up here on
Speaker 2: the horses since uh since pre wolf. Anyway, you know,
Speaker 2: the clear water is uh it's an absolutely special place.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've got a few friends that are
Speaker 2: still getting some really nice bulls out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I know kind of where they are and
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, they don't say much. They just
Speaker 2: go in there and and hunt.
Speaker 1: H it's a it's a daunting place if you've never
Speaker 1: been there or never hunted country like that.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some some people who live there close by
Speaker 1: or or have spent a lot of years up in
Speaker 1: that country hunting that that they'll find success. A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of folks who hunt from out of
Speaker 1: state will come up and never been there, and they
Speaker 1: will they might spend ten days without even seeing an elk,
Speaker 1: just just because it seems like it's kind of the
Speaker 1: population elk is a little bit pockety. Like you may
Speaker 1: go miles and miles without seeing anything and then one
Speaker 1: little pocket that they either the elk feel really safe.
Speaker 2: Or.
Speaker 1: Maybe the wolves don't bother them there, or people don't
Speaker 1: bother them there, whatever reason, they'll have a little spot
Speaker 1: they like to be and you'll find some milk. And
Speaker 1: it's like winning the lotter and finding one of those spots.
Speaker 2: And as far as wolves, there used to be a
Speaker 2: lot of wolves in there. You could hear wolves solid
Speaker 2: every day, and now, yeah, you don't hear them very often.
Speaker 2: Sell them I think back where.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they follow the food, you know. And
Speaker 1: as as the elk numbers decline and they keep moving
Speaker 1: to try to find find food, they probably move closer
Speaker 1: to town, for sure.
Speaker 2: I'll chase one. I'll chase one side rabbit, and then
Speaker 2: we'll talk about my book, if you'd like. But I
Speaker 2: used to run into some guys from Pennsylvania clear out
Speaker 2: on the backside over there, and they had a gun
Speaker 2: that looked like it was it was a six point
Speaker 2: five weather or yeah, six point five whether it be
Speaker 2: w W H now it's in the oldies. It was
Speaker 2: the Weather be right Hoyer long range rifle and had
Speaker 2: a bench ress set up in front of their tent
Speaker 2: and they had a basically walton and a bench dress
Speaker 2: spotting soap and they were shooting elk eight or nine
Speaker 2: hundred yards across the canyon. Yeah, And I asked him
Speaker 2: how many they lost. And this is the problem is
Speaker 2: we get over there and the brush is thick, we
Speaker 2: can't find some of them. Anyway, I mentioned it, and
Speaker 2: I was talking to Mike Schlegel about it. Now, there's
Speaker 2: a limit on the way to the gun. You can
Speaker 2: use a rifle, you can use. But so with my book,
Speaker 2: I'll just be fairly short. It's called The Hunting Horseman.
Speaker 2: It's available at Western Hunter on the website. On the
Speaker 2: Western Hunter website, you can just google it and find it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the title of your book.
Speaker 2: It's called The Hunting Horseman. Okay.
Speaker 4: And so after I, after I had left Moon and
Speaker 4: crock and stuff, Ryan Hatfield is a guy hired.
Speaker 2: From Council, Idaho as assistant director of a big game.
Speaker 2: And he left and he went to work for Eastman's
Speaker 2: and such, and he ended up with Western Hunter and
Speaker 2: they wanted to start a new Elk Hunter magazine. So
Speaker 2: he called me and asked me if I would be
Speaker 2: willing to write an article every month or whatever. I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: But he said, I want to write about horses. I said, well, Ryan,
Speaker 2: I said, you know, there's a lot of stuff out
Speaker 2: there about saddles and how to pack horses and smoke.
Speaker 2: Elser's got books out, and you know, Joe Back wrote
Speaker 2: the original one and all that stuff. So really about
Speaker 2: horse packing, the techniques that's uh, that's pretty well covered.
Speaker 2: But I so I said, you know, if you want
Speaker 2: me to write something, I'll write about using stock in
Speaker 2: the backcountry for hunting. Period. Yeah, and so I started
Speaker 2: writing some articles twelve years or eleven years ago, and
Speaker 2: so I wrote all that I was writing these articles
Speaker 2: and they were published, and then kind of in the
Speaker 2: middle of that, I wrote an article that was entitled
Speaker 2: packed like a Hunter. Okay, well, if you're going to
Speaker 2: go into your hunting camp every year, only there's certain
Speaker 2: things you take every year. There's certain things you can
Speaker 2: weigh up ahead of time. You don't need to be
Speaker 2: manning everything up and having all these fancy nots, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ways to do it. Anyway, that
Speaker 2: was a really interesting article. But anyway, so I got
Speaker 2: my health changed dramatically one year ago February Valentine's Day,
Speaker 2: and we didn't know what how much time I had,
Speaker 2: and so presenting publisher of Western Hunter called me. So
Speaker 2: Georgie says, what do you think about putting all your
Speaker 2: articles in a book? Said, yeah, that'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 2: And so we spent some time last February and March
Speaker 2: and they compiled all of the articles I'd written for
Speaker 2: the Western actually start out Elk Hunter, then it went
Speaker 2: to Western Hunter. H yeah, and uh so they put
Speaker 2: it all together and uh it turned out really not
Speaker 2: really well, it's it's uh, it's got it's just full color,
Speaker 2: the whole thing it. It has some some tribute friends
Speaker 2: have written The Hunted with me, but uh, you won't
Speaker 2: find another book like it. It's it's gotten stuff and
Speaker 2: things in there about access and and it's got things
Speaker 2: in there about new conservation issues and stuff, but most
Speaker 2: of it's about hunting and uh, everything from how you
Speaker 2: put up a wal tant with polls, you know, where
Speaker 2: you where you sit, you camp. But it's uh three
Speaker 2: hundred pages.
Speaker 5: It's good reading and uh and uh, anyway it turned out,
Speaker 5: I'm wondering, are those guys going to have uh those
Speaker 5: available at the Western Hunter Expo or Western Hi Expo
Speaker 5: in Salt Lake City next week.
Speaker 2: Well, Chris just got back from sci and I'll suggest
Speaker 2: that you have some available. Yeah, it was limited production
Speaker 2: of like a thousand, but I'm going to talk with
Speaker 2: you about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have to go by their booth. And I
Speaker 1: always like to try to track those guys. Chris and
Speaker 1: Nate and those guys from Western hundred count anyway, and
Speaker 1: give them a ras them a little bit, and and
Speaker 1: I hope they got the book. I've been wanting to
Speaker 1: pick it up. So maybe I'll be able to pick
Speaker 1: one up there. If not, I'll just order on the website.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a book you'll you'll keep or you'll
Speaker 2: pass on to your relatives their children. I like to
Speaker 2: hunt because it's a basic boy scout manuel but not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, so any last comments on the
Speaker 1: Clearwater country And you know, you know there's been some
Speaker 1: wild fires in the last decade there, but maybe they're
Speaker 1: not I haven't been strategic to where it would would
Speaker 1: still help the elk population rebound. What needs to happen
Speaker 1: to get that elk population rebound in the clear the
Speaker 1: Clearwater region, What do you think it's going to look
Speaker 1: like in five ten years from now, because I know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that timber that's maturing, and if
Speaker 1: you spend time up there, you'll see a lot of
Speaker 1: deadfall between from Beetlekill or and then there's some of
Speaker 1: the wildfire as well. But what do you what do
Speaker 1: you think the future holds for the clear water.
Speaker 2: It really depends on the Forest Service. It really depends
Speaker 2: on the Horrort Service because there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things they could do up there that are you know,
Speaker 2: good good forest practices. But UH, in order to create
Speaker 2: elk habitat, you have to have open areas. You have
Speaker 2: to have you know, feeding areas in betting areas and
Speaker 2: treat canopies. But there has to be grass that they
Speaker 2: eat and when it is all brush and so you've
Speaker 2: got to burn that brush. The brush has to be burned.
Speaker 2: And they know how to do it, but the social
Speaker 2: pressure UH and the current leadership in the Forest Service
Speaker 2: has not seen they have not seen fit to do it.
Speaker 2: But they have a plan and it's all been mapped
Speaker 2: out and it's a habitat issue number one. Fishing games,
Speaker 2: dealing with the wolves. You know they've gone in there
Speaker 2: with the trapper and taken some out with with you know,
Speaker 2: the other cop outfit. But it's a big time thing,
Speaker 2: is the habitat, and somehow we've got to figure out
Speaker 2: figure that out. But we know what to do. You know.
Speaker 2: The sad thing is we know what to do. Mike
Speaker 2: Schlegl and I've talked about this forever and he's made
Speaker 2: charts about how important that elk resource was to the
Speaker 2: economy of Idaho and all that he's charted the you know,
Speaker 2: the decline and the herds. But any biologist that knows
Speaker 2: that country, we'll just tell you it's a habitat issue
Speaker 2: and we've got to we've got to burn some of
Speaker 2: that stuff. You know, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just fix one thing and expect everything to
Speaker 1: be be to work. You got to multiple things. You
Speaker 1: got to fix, whether predation, habitat, access, all of it.
Speaker 1: Fix everything, and then you know those animals are gonna
Speaker 1: flourish again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know the two bear limit or you know
Speaker 2: the opportunity from hunter two bears and a reduced tag.
Speaker 2: That's really important for fishing game. It's very important because
Speaker 2: there are a lot of bears in the career. And
Speaker 2: you know, in the old days, the sky Ralph Flowers
Speaker 2: used to used to be a bear hunter for Warehouser
Speaker 2: on these on the westcat to Washington, and you know,
Speaker 2: bears will strip bark off of a young.
Speaker 4: You know, ah.
Speaker 2: Two foot diameter tree and they stripped the bark off
Speaker 2: to get to the canbyan and that's why you know
Speaker 2: Flowers was hired to kill bears in the warehouse or
Speaker 2: forest because they're stripping cambyon or stripping the bark. You
Speaker 2: can go up there you're been talking about, and the
Speaker 2: trees are all stripped. I mean they're stripped everywhere, and
Speaker 2: you know, tell it, you can see it, and if
Speaker 2: you want to go rounding, it's it's a good spot. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2: And then I don't know conservation organizations, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know what the Elk Foundation could do to fund
Speaker 2: some stuff in there, but but they've got to work
Speaker 2: hand in hand with the Forest Service. The Forest Server
Speaker 2: doesn't give the go ahead, you know, it can't, it
Speaker 2: won't happen.
Speaker 1: Do you think we could get enough rally enough Sportsman
Speaker 1: two put pressure on the fish or not the fishing game,
Speaker 1: but the Forest Service to maybe take a look at
Speaker 1: some of those kind of things. You know, I feel
Speaker 1: like it seems like the people that don't want you
Speaker 1: to burn they have a they have a bigger voice
Speaker 1: than the people the other side. You know, I feel
Speaker 1: like just getting organized and getting enough people involved would
Speaker 1: would maybe help turn the tide a little bit.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Well, hunters just don't speak up, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, we just don't speak up. We don't write letters,
Speaker 2: we just don't speak up. And you can look at
Speaker 2: any of these issues, like with the wolves right now
Speaker 2: in Montana, you've got thousands of letters being sent to
Speaker 2: a fishing game to reduce the wolf. Howres well hunters.
Speaker 2: We'll go to public meetings, we complain, but we're not
Speaker 2: very aggressive. And I guess you know, the the young
Speaker 2: hunters that are coming on, if there's anything that they
Speaker 2: can take away from this podcast is get involved. Get
Speaker 2: involved with your local sports organization and get involved. And
Speaker 2: you know, the Oak Foundation is a great organization. You
Speaker 2: get involved with that, But don't just go to a banquet.
Speaker 2: You don't talk to these people and you get a
Speaker 2: hold of their lands people and and like in the
Speaker 2: clear Water. You know, I was one of the guys
Speaker 2: that put together the lists in banquet years ago. It's
Speaker 2: the fifth banquet they ever had and a fifth place,
Speaker 2: and I have a thousand people in Lewiston. But you
Speaker 2: get those people rallied up about the clear water, you know,
Speaker 2: and you've got to You've got to it's about numbers.
Speaker 2: And you don't go there and holler at a public meeting,
Speaker 2: you go to the people that can make it happen.
Speaker 2: But you know, this whole future of that, you know,
Speaker 2: is in the hands of our young people, especially our
Speaker 2: young hundred conservations. You know, it's one thing to go
Speaker 2: hunting all the time, but it's another thing to spend
Speaker 2: some time helping raise money for you know, while life
Speaker 2: and conservation issues too. You can do both. I did. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to have a side hustle for conservation along
Speaker 2: with your job.
Speaker 1: There you go, yeah, I like that. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: people don't they think, oh, I don't have time to
Speaker 1: you know, write letters or reach out or call call
Speaker 1: your representatives or your legislators in your state or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't take any time. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: pick up the phone and start calling and spend thirty
Speaker 1: minutes on one particular day, or you could take you know,
Speaker 1: you could type out a a professional sound and email
Speaker 1: within within an hour or maybe two. And and there's
Speaker 1: so much you know, if maybe you don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're you're not a great letter writer today, there's there's
Speaker 1: all this AI, you know, for all of us young people.
Speaker 1: There's all this AI technology that will you know, that
Speaker 1: will like chat GPT that will help you write of
Speaker 1: the best sounded letter anyone could write. And then you know,
Speaker 1: send those letters to these organizations and let them know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. Because if the opposition is just crushing
Speaker 1: us with their letters, man, folks on our side of
Speaker 1: the table gotta got to stand up and do some
Speaker 1: stuff too. So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the future really is. You know, our young
Speaker 2: hunters are very enthusiastic about going farther into the back
Speaker 2: country and hunting the way back off the grid, and
Speaker 2: they've got the latest, you know, like weeight gear and
Speaker 2: camel and sleeping in hammocks and sleeping in in hot
Speaker 2: tents and all that. The thing that makes me makes
Speaker 2: me smile is I see them nicular back ten miles
Speaker 2: off the grid over an eight thousand foot summit and
Speaker 2: they don't have a clue how they're going to get
Speaker 2: their elk. Kind of that's a.
Speaker 1: Whole that's a huge undertaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But anyway, Derek, this has been been really a
Speaker 2: nice visit with you. And yeah, call me and if
Speaker 2: you want to share my you know, my Facebook stuff.
Speaker 2: People can get a hold of math. People call me
Speaker 2: all the time, about you know, hunting and different things,
Speaker 2: and sure you know your rifles or whatever. And I
Speaker 2: always help. I'm always willing to help. Uh.
Speaker 1: So people can look you up on Facebook and it's
Speaker 1: George Battis. How do you say your last name?
Speaker 2: Beat us? Beat uses? Okay, okay, enough, okay?
Speaker 1: And do you have Instagram?
Speaker 2: I do? Yeah, I think it should beat us Instagram?
Speaker 1: Okay, right, well that's great man. I've really enjoyed, uh
Speaker 1: this conversation. And and as you described that country back
Speaker 1: in the old days, my man, my head was just
Speaker 1: spinning thinking about you know those bulls b you going
Speaker 1: all night long and you know the meadows full of
Speaker 1: elk And if you've seen that country, it just it
Speaker 1: would it makes makes your makes your head spin. And
Speaker 1: to see what it is today, it's it's a very
Speaker 1: stark contrast. Like you could probably give people a map
Speaker 1: and say, oh yeah, go ouhunt elk up there, because
Speaker 1: you're not really giving anything away at this point. They're
Speaker 1: just not not much for elk up there.
Speaker 2: But uh, it's I still like to go back and
Speaker 2: visit those old spots and go to where old Gordon
Speaker 2: stim while you to camp and different places and you know,
Speaker 2: where I used to camp and then go ride a
Speaker 2: loop down down towards the wheats and that. Uh, it's
Speaker 2: just there's some there's special places on this earth where
Speaker 2: you've been me usually hunting, and there's a special feeling
Speaker 2: you get there. There's the smell, you know. We used
Speaker 2: to have grass two feet tall at our camp, right
Speaker 2: and after after you know, you just turn the horses
Speaker 2: out with the hobbles this there need eat grass. They
Speaker 2: already walk under the yards tent. Now, well, the same
Speaker 2: place you go. It is so dry on these rich stops,
Speaker 2: and the cows of eating out the rapid areas. You
Speaker 2: got to pack your own feed. And that was it
Speaker 2: was so neat about that camp. It was and pressure
Speaker 2: hunting pressure. You know. There were a few guys that
Speaker 2: would hike in with most guys would use the road system.
Speaker 2: And I mean I never saw anybody else other than
Speaker 2: a few guys I knew that had versus there in
Speaker 2: all those years. Twelve years.
Speaker 1: Wow, Well it's an amazing place for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you involving me, and I
Speaker 2: can do anything else for you or any of your listeners.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks so much for coming on here.
Speaker 1: It's been a pleasure for sure.
Speaker 2: Thank you much, thank you