Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening Hunt podcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators
Speaker 1: are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download
Speaker 1: the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store.
Speaker 1: Nor where you stand with on X. What you're about
Speaker 1: to hear is a visit me the Latvian Eagle Spencer
Speaker 1: new hirest the flip flop Flasher, our beloved producer Cringe
Speaker 1: Schneider visiting a man and three forks, Montana, known as
Speaker 1: the Antler Man. He has a collection of sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: antlers arranged in a barn with an artist's i for
Speaker 1: symmetry and design combined with a genius sense for what's
Speaker 1: weird in arresting the guy has never bought an antler.
Speaker 1: He found most of the stuff in the collection himself,
Speaker 1: or traded antlers that he found for peculiar oddities that
Speaker 1: others had that he just had to have for his own.
Speaker 1: Walking into the door literally changed my life. It changed
Speaker 1: how I think about art, obsession, big box, wildlife, and compulsion.
Speaker 1: So come along with us. Walking to Jim's hornhouse in
Speaker 1: three Forks, Montana. Get your life changed? Who runs this
Speaker 1: whole garden program? Here? I do the weeding and watering
Speaker 1: and and told not to wind. That's a raspberry patcher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that he's not gonna fence. You don't have beer. Come
Speaker 1: in here and head of at it. We tried to
Speaker 1: share seriously in the garden. I try to raise enough
Speaker 1: for the rabbits that are come in. And if the
Speaker 1: deer come in, they and they really don't if they
Speaker 1: can select, they don't bother them much. Jim, do you
Speaker 1: have a hunting background? Yeah, I mean I was born
Speaker 1: and raised because that's how you got interested in antlers?
Speaker 1: Is hunting right? I mean most people that I got
Speaker 1: interested in antlers out of boredom. I'm Colin. Were you
Speaker 1: shed hunting this year? Are you retired from shed this year?
Speaker 1: I had some problems with my feet and I didn't
Speaker 1: get out near as much as I wanted to. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm as out, but I'm the last guy out. I
Speaker 1: don't go in the snow and I don't go on
Speaker 1: the cold because because I don't like the snow and
Speaker 1: I don't like the gold, and I'm afraid if there's
Speaker 1: snow on the ground. I'm gonna miss something. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I realized, you're not out. They're chasing elk around with
Speaker 1: one antler trying to give him a knock the other
Speaker 1: one off. But I heard about that. I don't go
Speaker 1: to the game ranges. That's not what it is for me.
Speaker 1: And when I was in high school, I had a
Speaker 1: friend in him and I would do a little bit together.
Speaker 1: And then my brother and I went one time and
Speaker 1: we had to go to Colorado because he didn't want
Speaker 1: to show me where his person more in Montana, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to show him where my spots were.
Speaker 1: So he went to Colorado and ship hunted for a week.
Speaker 1: He collected antlers for he made a living out of
Speaker 1: it three years. But if he found anything odd or
Speaker 1: you keep it to the side. And then for my
Speaker 1: birthday or Christmas, he'd give me a odd antler that
Speaker 1: he picked up. And then I sold the ones to
Speaker 1: helped put my daughters through college. I was reading about
Speaker 1: that you sold two thou antlers to put your kids
Speaker 1: through college. Deer and probably around seven fresh ships to
Speaker 1: help him. How old you know seven? I'll be seventy
Speaker 1: two in July. Looking good for seventy two. Man, not
Speaker 1: as good as I'd like to. Really, what line of
Speaker 1: work were you in? You know? I was as a professional.
Speaker 1: I was a planned control operator. I set in front
Speaker 1: of all years ago. I setted from the huge panel
Speaker 1: that had all the directions of where the chalk was
Speaker 1: ground in the last time, and then the last twenty
Speaker 1: years I spent sitting in front of the screen and
Speaker 1: did the same thing. So no, I didn't do anything
Speaker 1: to physical built up a lot of energy sitting there. Well.
Speaker 1: Not only that I worked shifted, which which was wonderful.
Speaker 1: I worked straight graveyard for two years. And then then
Speaker 1: I'd get off at eight o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 1: I drive out an the hills and the shed. Right,
Speaker 1: let's continue our tour. We can go in the horn shed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: back this way, Yeah, called the and Jed, I can
Speaker 1: explain that I had my brother in law, my wife's brother. Ah.
Speaker 1: It was an alcoholic and he finally died of alcoholism.
Speaker 1: But he made me a sign to hang on the
Speaker 1: door of the shed and you'll see when you go
Speaker 1: in this said horn ship. And personally I think the
Speaker 1: signs Tackie that I think the name is Jack. I
Speaker 1: don't think my brother in law made it for me.
Speaker 1: So it's up what did he drink hard? Hard? Look,
Speaker 1: I don't prect she never had never smoke, never d
Speaker 1: I remember when those photos were in Eagle magazine. It's
Speaker 1: really something, you know, I mean for a photographer, but
Speaker 1: they both fell off. We're looking at for there's a photo.
Speaker 1: It's like it's three photos, a sequence of photos. And
Speaker 1: there's the one photos two bull out across and from
Speaker 1: right to left, what are they like like mature bulls?
Speaker 1: And then one of the bulls there's an image of
Speaker 1: photograph right, yeah, because I remember, yeah, yeah, anyway, there's
Speaker 1: a photograph where it's antlers fall off simultaneously and both
Speaker 1: of them are caught mid air falling off of his head.
Speaker 1: One that they're so close together that one's like passing
Speaker 1: past his right eye and one's passing past his left jaw.
Speaker 1: And then the final photo is the antler and bull
Speaker 1: standing there next to these two sheds laying underground. If
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, didn't I think the photographer said that
Speaker 1: the bull actually spun at three sixty to shake him off.
Speaker 1: Oh really, because he didn' kind of a weird position
Speaker 1: like like he's, you know, wanting to do it. I've
Speaker 1: seen a white dale pick up a hind leg and
Speaker 1: kicking are off. That's the only time I've ever and
Speaker 1: another one didn't. He didn't seem to worry about the
Speaker 1: other one. Have you ever found ah in your yard? Here?
Speaker 1: From one of the golf course here, I've got a
Speaker 1: picture of the buck with his horns, And I got
Speaker 1: a picture of the buck after he ship, and then
Speaker 1: it dawned on me they might be out in my
Speaker 1: yard by the pond, because he was just a little
Speaker 1: bit a three point one side, a weird one on
Speaker 1: the other. Did you keep in a special place? I've
Speaker 1: got those enough doesn't even go into the Antler house. No,
Speaker 1: So do you have do you have hours? Like? Do
Speaker 1: people just come off the street to come here? Since
Speaker 1: it's been on the internet, I get a lot from
Speaker 1: Antless Obscurity, a great big story and they'll call ahead
Speaker 1: of time. I mean, I've got people telling me you've
Speaker 1: got to come in August. I said, She's kind of
Speaker 1: give me a note three or four days and i'll
Speaker 1: see if I'm gonna be all on. But of course,
Speaker 1: this year, I'm sure I'm not going to get us
Speaker 1: any bit. So you don't have a signed it says
Speaker 1: come on, come on christ now, and then when people come,
Speaker 1: it's not like an admission charge. No, I've never The
Speaker 1: only thing I promote is my books, a collection and
Speaker 1: short storage walking the trail system. Here, I walked it
Speaker 1: six miles this morning. All profits go to the Headwaters
Speaker 1: Trail System. But I did was right, short stories about
Speaker 1: walking the trail. And there's everything in here, from a
Speaker 1: serial killer there was our landlord, to the big sky
Speaker 1: with the mountain men, with quake that we were almost
Speaker 1: in and but just there's a lot of stories. You
Speaker 1: wrote this, published it and sell these to raise money
Speaker 1: for this trail, the trail. And I've almost got enough
Speaker 1: for a third book. We mean almost got enough not chilling, materious, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for a third book. You might find yourself in one
Speaker 1: of those stories. Al right, So can we go into
Speaker 1: the hornhouse. Do what you gotta do is push on it.
Speaker 1: The lights are on? Oh my, oh yeah, really wow,
Speaker 1: that is incredible. Wow. I mean, like you've seen the pictures.
Speaker 1: You're not to prepare whatever. That is unbelievable. I actually
Speaker 1: thought I would take more space to house sixteen thousand. Look,
Speaker 1: how densely panty scenes are. This is you know what
Speaker 1: I didn't expect. It's like the smell is like a
Speaker 1: really satisfying antler smell. Seriously, no, I think so is unbelievable. Hey,
Speaker 1: Phill the engineer here. You have to see this room
Speaker 1: for yourselves. Go to Jim's own gallery on his website
Speaker 1: at antlerman dot com, the Meat Eater Instagram account, Steve's
Speaker 1: Instagram account where he posted a walkthrough video, and the
Speaker 1: meat Eater Facebook page. I'm at help me out, I'm
Speaker 1: at loss. We just plented. We walked into a barn.
Speaker 1: What's it? What are the dimensions of this place? It's
Speaker 1: thirty by sixty ft long. Okay, so there's a center
Speaker 1: island runs the length of the barn and it is
Speaker 1: encased How long is the center island? Forty feet long? Uh,
Speaker 1: encased in antlers, and then the whole periphery around it
Speaker 1: is like a bench runs around. The whole room, also
Speaker 1: encased in antlers, with a lot of like nice specimens
Speaker 1: put out for display, and then the walls, ceilings, beams.
Speaker 1: But it's not like randomly thrown in. It's it's uh
Speaker 1: like with a tremendous sense of balance in design, in style,
Speaker 1: and and just a sort of real native sense of
Speaker 1: aesthetic alignment. And there's anything like this. You got a
Speaker 1: sprinkler system in here and stuff. No, I don't have
Speaker 1: an insured or any of that crap. We tore down
Speaker 1: an old gray straw uptown, and then we tore down
Speaker 1: an old hotel at Trident. But this is the flooring
Speaker 1: out of the buildings. The walls, this wood is out
Speaker 1: of those buildings, and they're all sixteen foot long, and
Speaker 1: the walls double thick besides the two before us on
Speaker 1: the other side or a foot apart, and way I
Speaker 1: could put antlers anywhere I wanted to. And you built
Speaker 1: the shed for this purpose. Yeah, that's a long story
Speaker 1: to My wife started out wanting to remodel of the
Speaker 1: kitchen and I got a garage, and she wanted to
Speaker 1: do the windows in the house over again, and I said,
Speaker 1: I've never had a nice horn shed, and so I
Speaker 1: started out from remote in the kitchen. So many did
Speaker 1: you have when you built it? Like? How many do
Speaker 1: you have now? Oh? When I built it, I probably
Speaker 1: had thirteen fourteen? What year did you build this thing?
Speaker 1: I mean, I keep a record. This building is probably
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, maybe seventeen years old, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: probably won't have had about twelve. And you don't. You
Speaker 1: don't buy antlers. That's the difference between my collection and
Speaker 1: anybody else's, and that's what makes it unique. And that's
Speaker 1: why I've been married for fifty two years. That's why
Speaker 1: you've been married. Yeah, because I've never spending money on horns,
Speaker 1: or I probably wouldn't be with you. But I've never
Speaker 1: bought a horn. I've trade, I've sold handlers, and I've
Speaker 1: traded antler pound for pound to get some of the
Speaker 1: weird stuff. But I've never bought an handler. Anybody can
Speaker 1: have a shed full of horns, all he needs enough money.
Speaker 1: And I've been to the auction in Jackson Hole and
Speaker 1: there's people that have that kind of money and they
Speaker 1: bought their shed full of and they bought they buy
Speaker 1: their handlers. But I've never bought an handler. I usually
Speaker 1: started people out over here. Wait, well, real quick, what
Speaker 1: happened to this guy? I have no idea. Well, it
Speaker 1: grew around her. Yeah, this bowl, I know what happened
Speaker 1: to him, Just a regular six point but it hung itself.
Speaker 1: He was feeding around the edge of the cliff and
Speaker 1: there must have been a little bit of green grass
Speaker 1: coming up and he was feeding on that and he
Speaker 1: got he slipped, and when he slipped, his front legs
Speaker 1: caught in a crevice like this, and his hind legs
Speaker 1: were about that far from reaching the ground, and the
Speaker 1: kayo sat him from the bottom up. And that's how
Speaker 1: I find. Of course I didn't have a cell phone
Speaker 1: or anything like that, so I didn't. You weren't able
Speaker 1: to document it. How many these animals were killed by
Speaker 1: hunters and how many were you know? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know the sheds are sheds, but I mean the ones
Speaker 1: that are the complete skulls and stuff. Is it mostly
Speaker 1: stuff you found dead? No? Uh. Back in the seventies
Speaker 1: and early eighties, we had a dump ground route during
Speaker 1: uton season, a dump ground route. Yeah. We go to
Speaker 1: uh Whitehall, so star shardan alter over the hilled In
Speaker 1: is down to Harrison over the Pony and back to
Speaker 1: three forks and people just throw the antlers away and
Speaker 1: that's where I pick up that just go to community dumps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: besides find them up in the hills. And like I said,
Speaker 1: some of them I've traded four over the years. I
Speaker 1: want to ask them bad questions, like the kind of
Speaker 1: questions that every person who comes here and asks you
Speaker 1: they've probably heard, like what's your favorite, what's your biggest,
Speaker 1: and what's your smallest. Here's my favorite. I carry it
Speaker 1: with it's in your pocket. That's a shed antler. Huh.
Speaker 1: So that answers two questions. Small favorite? Why do you
Speaker 1: like that one the most? Because it's small and I
Speaker 1: can put it on my keychain? Okay, and it's a
Speaker 1: shed and if you're peeing in the bushes, you can
Speaker 1: find one of them. That's what you found that one.
Speaker 1: It's been more in smooth by time man. But yeah,
Speaker 1: just being in my pocket. So it's not the biggest story.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got huge ailcorns here. This is a
Speaker 1: she had said. I was reading the article where you
Speaker 1: were saying that you can't appreciate how big some of
Speaker 1: the antlers are because they're on a giant wall full
Speaker 1: of a bunch of antlers. Yeah, I mean you don't
Speaker 1: realize how big then you got. You gotta actually look
Speaker 1: at them. Some of these mule deer sets are and
Speaker 1: I've only got one in the whole place. That makes
Speaker 1: a boon and Crockett and I don't measure anything, but
Speaker 1: that happened to measure that one, because that's the biggest
Speaker 1: night talking about it's down the line. There's one like
Speaker 1: up there. It's got the bullet hole, but it's probably
Speaker 1: still in it. This one I rescued guy out of
Speaker 1: town here calling me up and he says, I got
Speaker 1: a big set of alcorns out there, and if you
Speaker 1: want him, you can have him much better, come and
Speaker 1: get him because my kids are cutting the points off
Speaker 1: for knife hands. They cut the one off the back
Speaker 1: there and cut the top off that one, and they
Speaker 1: had almost cut through this one, and they beat on
Speaker 1: the skull with an axe. I did rescue it. This one.
Speaker 1: I found this, and I found in the same area
Speaker 1: a week later. Have you ever found a velvet shed
Speaker 1: down the line? Hold? And so you did? You didn't
Speaker 1: do the biggest. What's the biggest? We're getting the favorite
Speaker 1: and smallest are of the key chain. These are all giant.
Speaker 1: You your ships, you just gotta like, look, you can't
Speaker 1: really help, but you gotta like pick one up to
Speaker 1: look at it, or also just gets lost in the crowd.
Speaker 1: I guess touching and picking them up is okay. Here, boy,
Speaker 1: hell yes, Now, what do you know would be satisfied
Speaker 1: with that? It's a fairly decent four point buck. Okay,
Speaker 1: you put it next to something like this, then you
Speaker 1: can appreciate how big these and these are all big
Speaker 1: giants or have lots of points. Do you know roughly
Speaker 1: what percentage my species is broken down in here? I
Speaker 1: know exactly how many white tail I have that are
Speaker 1: three points with the brawl point and not many or
Speaker 1: four points. I know exactly how many mule deer I have,
Speaker 1: But same way, and whether they're big or freak or what?
Speaker 1: Do most these? Do you remember them? Look at that?
Speaker 1: Do you find that? Yeah? That and this is his other?
Speaker 1: This is his? Oh it's a match? No? Oh, no,
Speaker 1: one year, that's the same year. But I do have
Speaker 1: his shed sets over here. What's the most consecutive years
Speaker 1: you've picked up the same box handlers? It's down the
Speaker 1: line here, so you just the same here they were
Speaker 1: find within a hundred yards one another. I bet you
Speaker 1: everybody tells you this. I was gonna tell you that
Speaker 1: you like, not for the show or anything. I think
Speaker 1: you were making a huge mistake to not have a
Speaker 1: sprinkler system in an alarm system and ship. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing. People ask me, what's gonna happen to all
Speaker 1: this when you die? And I'm giving ship be dead. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I hope you change your mind. Man, don't worry my
Speaker 1: The only thing I've told my daughters I hope they
Speaker 1: don't turn in and chandeliers and dog choosing salt shakers.
Speaker 1: This is a cool fine here. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: the devile time. So he'd been laying for a long time,
Speaker 1: laying in my freaking brothers flower bed. So I talked
Speaker 1: to him out of it for about ten years. He said,
Speaker 1: a friend, give me that, and I told him I
Speaker 1: wouldn't give it away. Finally give it to me. Besides
Speaker 1: going to the right spot, Okay, is there a thing
Speaker 1: that you think makes a good antler hunter besides the area?
Speaker 1: Like are you seeing the ground in a way that
Speaker 1: do you feel that you're seeing things that all the
Speaker 1: people are walking past? Okay? I looked you up a
Speaker 1: little bit. You've got this. Yeah, Okay, I'm a twenty.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about on her to look for sheds. No,
Speaker 1: that's not me, that's Mark Kenyon. But ye okay, And
Speaker 1: the thing is that the sheds you found on of
Speaker 1: the earth. I understand how that works. I was telling
Speaker 1: the podcast. Oh yeah, he's talking to that microphone, all right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Mark Kenyon, who likes the ship, he likes
Speaker 1: the shed I'm an incidental shed hunt. I picked them
Speaker 1: up and I'm doing other stuff. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: during hunt seasoned, I usually don't get to shoot anything
Speaker 1: because I'm packing too many freaking horns. But let let's
Speaker 1: say you had three things. You had the sort of
Speaker 1: meta area, right like the region like such and such valley. Okay,
Speaker 1: the meta area. Then you had the sort of micro area,
Speaker 1: meaning that hillside or that brush patch. But once you're
Speaker 1: in the micro area, the like the specific search area,
Speaker 1: do you feel that there's something that sets you apart
Speaker 1: with how you look at the ground, Like do you
Speaker 1: see things that do you feel like a hundred people
Speaker 1: have looked at but they didn't notice. Two years ago,
Speaker 1: I was walking into our area that I like for
Speaker 1: sheds on and I'm walking in on the trail and
Speaker 1: hunters go in there, back and forth. I've been through
Speaker 1: it the year before. Coming out this time, I happened
Speaker 1: to go up a little bit above the trail, like
Speaker 1: from here across that and I'm walking on and I
Speaker 1: looked down and then there's this huge six point alcorn
Speaker 1: from last year. It's laying times down in the sage brush.
Speaker 1: All these people had walked within ten ft of it
Speaker 1: and never saw it because it looked like a sage
Speaker 1: brush log. It looked like a like a branch of
Speaker 1: a sage brush in the turn white. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a huge six point el corn just happened to
Speaker 1: be laying. Uh. I had another incident not too many
Speaker 1: years ago. I'm walking another game trail and I'm walking
Speaker 1: along and I see these two little shed two points.
Speaker 1: And I've been into on this trail probably over thirty
Speaker 1: times over the years, and this little bucket shed this
Speaker 1: horns and I thought, well, that's cool, so I reached
Speaker 1: down to pick him up. Here's this huge seven point
Speaker 1: deer horn that had probably been laying there for forty
Speaker 1: years times up in that stage brush that I'd walked
Speaker 1: from me to you buy and never seen. I mean.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is I wouldn't have some of
Speaker 1: the freaks and some of the sets I do. But
Speaker 1: I've went into areas and I know, hell, there's been
Speaker 1: four or five guys enemy, but I'll crawl down into
Speaker 1: a hole or a brush patch, or down into a canyon,
Speaker 1: and I might find an old bucker and old bull.
Speaker 1: It's it's done. I'll go over and hunt the north
Speaker 1: sides on certain time winners, because if it's a light
Speaker 1: snowfall and uh they shed late, they're gonna be on
Speaker 1: that side to stay cool. I mean to me, it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of difference in the weather. So, like
Speaker 1: I said, by the time I go all the south
Speaker 1: slopes and tops of ridges has been covered. It's talking
Speaker 1: about like seeing things you've looked at a hunter times.
Speaker 1: I got a friend out Miles City who was a
Speaker 1: cotto hunter. He says, his whole life he's been sitting
Speaker 1: against the same rock wall and this little kind of
Speaker 1: an indent in the rock wall, calling Kyles. He comes in,
Speaker 1: he kind of back sin and sits down, calls Coles
Speaker 1: and leaves. His whole life, he said. One day he
Speaker 1: realized he got too old and he couldn't rise up
Speaker 1: like he normally does, so he had to spin around
Speaker 1: to put his hand to climb up the other way
Speaker 1: and spins around. There's a ice age foalsome point. He said,
Speaker 1: I've been sitting on that thing for forty years and
Speaker 1: I never had to stick my face back in there
Speaker 1: to look those are those are some of the things
Speaker 1: that happened. And what I find now that I'm older,
Speaker 1: as I moved slower, so I see more. You can
Speaker 1: explain that to me and feel him there really light
Speaker 1: huh oh, yeah, I look at that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot lighter than you would think they would. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking he was in the velvet. It never got
Speaker 1: something happened and they just kind of drooped and then
Speaker 1: they hardened up. Yeah, it's like we're holding the antler
Speaker 1: deer antler. It looks like it looks you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a what would have beout a three
Speaker 1: point you know, six point buck Eastern count, but it
Speaker 1: looks like it just kind of one day melted, started
Speaker 1: to melt and then stop melting. And when you pick
Speaker 1: it up, it's really weirdly light, like it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the density. Yeah, it's like the tips melted away. This
Speaker 1: is the same about five years on one side, two
Speaker 1: years on the other. Same buck five years on one side,
Speaker 1: four years on the other. So you found the same
Speaker 1: buck shed five years a row. Look at him? How
Speaker 1: call us were they to each other, they were in
Speaker 1: the same general area. Did you find multiple ones and
Speaker 1: that guy you started you find one one year, find
Speaker 1: one the next year, find one the next year. Much
Speaker 1: just kept going back. Yeah. He surprisingly like didn't growl
Speaker 1: as much as you'd expect for like looking at the
Speaker 1: bucks five. No, you're expecting to grow like just like
Speaker 1: this exponential growth year the year. But this thing is
Speaker 1: very similar. If you look at that one on the
Speaker 1: back that has that little point at the bottom, that's
Speaker 1: four years in row. And he started getting big towards
Speaker 1: end this buck here three years on once, three years
Speaker 1: on both sides. He stayed virtually this is a little bigger,
Speaker 1: but pertually this did not change much. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's incredible that you have like an intimacy with a
Speaker 1: single animals period of time, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: people say, well, how do you know? And I can
Speaker 1: just by look at that. I mean, it's obvious to me.
Speaker 1: And then this is genetics. I found these on a
Speaker 1: ridge two point four point same ridge I found his
Speaker 1: ships from the year before two point four point on
Speaker 1: the same ridge. I found these. Holy cow, these are
Speaker 1: sheared the same year these are that's his offspring two
Speaker 1: point four point really all the same? Rich? What question
Speaker 1: are we up to or to the moves? Steve? Oh, no,
Speaker 1: you still gotta shows the biggest Oh, we haven't got
Speaker 1: to the biggest shot. These are all elective. Broke their
Speaker 1: skulls and broke their antlers and snapping off from fighting.
Speaker 1: How often do you find a drop or find a
Speaker 1: shed get interested in it? What's the most energy you
Speaker 1: ever put into finding the match? Like you just knew
Speaker 1: it had to be somewhere three years and I never
Speaker 1: find another sign three years. It's like you just wanted
Speaker 1: to find the other one. We couldn't find it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I found a shed actually two years on
Speaker 1: a moose shed. When I find a shed, and I
Speaker 1: started making a circle for me to you, and then
Speaker 1: I just keep going out, and I just keep going out,
Speaker 1: and I just keep going out. Sometimes I find more
Speaker 1: ships that way. Well, what was the probably a little
Speaker 1: bit hard to answer. What's the farthest you ever found
Speaker 1: the farthest distance that ever separated a matching satching set
Speaker 1: that I knew we're matching. I would say on Egan Mountain,
Speaker 1: probably all three miles before he dropped his other one.
Speaker 1: He dropped his other one. Wow, that bowl? Are got
Speaker 1: a thumb on this side? It's not broke, it's flat
Speaker 1: on the top, and there's a hole about that big
Speaker 1: around that goes down into a skull. He goes, bull hole. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think that's the way it grew. It's a one big, nice, thick, heavy,
Speaker 1: five point antler and the one thing like one antler
Speaker 1: the size of your thumb with a hole down through it?
Speaker 1: Do I point it out like some more mundane sheds
Speaker 1: or heads? How confident are you that like you would
Speaker 1: know the source of it where you found it or win? Well,
Speaker 1: just between you and me, I can make up anything.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be able to know whether I'm telling
Speaker 1: you the truth or not? How like? How likely do
Speaker 1: you think you'd actually know? Though? Well? I mean in here,
Speaker 1: under here, those are two points as thick as you
Speaker 1: can stack them on both sides, and you can pull
Speaker 1: one of them out. And I haven't got a freaking
Speaker 1: clue where. But anything that's odd or different or that
Speaker 1: I associate with a certain day or something I can
Speaker 1: on this whole stack is like right hand or left hand? Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are all set? How many you're in there? Like
Speaker 1: there's hundreds of them in there. Yeah, those are all
Speaker 1: bound ones down there and the ones that are white here.
Speaker 1: And actually, if you look at this long enough, this
Speaker 1: side mirrors that side. You'll find a bull or a
Speaker 1: buck over there in a similar one on this side.
Speaker 1: And you did all this is setting all this rock
Speaker 1: into the vertical poured concrete. Later on in the years,
Speaker 1: when I find an elk coorn that wasn't any good,
Speaker 1: I'd cut the burl off and that's where all the
Speaker 1: birds came from. Well, so you this whole barn walls
Speaker 1: matched symmetrical. Yeah, Oh, there's a lot of O c
Speaker 1: D in here. Do you feel like you have like
Speaker 1: a serious O c D problem? Where My daughter does,
Speaker 1: and she's a special ed teacher, so she thinks you do.
Speaker 1: How much time do you spend in here now, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'll come in here once or twice a week, and
Speaker 1: that's in the winter when there's nobody around, and then
Speaker 1: I'll have guys that come over and go through it
Speaker 1: just before one season get jacked up. I guess, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Is this like an evolving display? Are you
Speaker 1: moving things around actively or not? That's further down the line. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you a question in your your instinct
Speaker 1: is going to be to give me an answer that
Speaker 1: doesn't satisfy me. Okay, okay, why why? Why? You know
Speaker 1: that's a million dollar questions, is there? Why? Like? What
Speaker 1: is the why have you ever thought about it? No,
Speaker 1: it's a it's in a compulsion, uh an addiction. Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all those things were you at? What age were you
Speaker 1: when the people around you thought I was weird? I
Speaker 1: was in high school. You started being weird in high school?
Speaker 1: Other you know, guys were fixing up their fast cars
Speaker 1: and chasing girls. And I was out of the freaking hills,
Speaker 1: hiking around. And even when I was too young to drive,
Speaker 1: my mother would take me out here on the edge
Speaker 1: of town at these foot hills, right over here where
Speaker 1: the tea is, and drop me off and pick me
Speaker 1: up at the end of the day up the Gallatin.
Speaker 1: After we went moved down and my dad bought some
Speaker 1: property across some castle rock, and I was then I think, Uh,
Speaker 1: they would take me up the canyon and drop me
Speaker 1: off along the highway and I'd be gone for the day.
Speaker 1: And did you have a thing where you where you
Speaker 1: would lay in bed or wherever you think, and we're like,
Speaker 1: make a thing and it'll it'll end up looking like this. No,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you some weird stories about looking
Speaker 1: for run and I hate to tell him because then
Speaker 1: people do think you're weird. I'll be walking through the
Speaker 1: hills and I'll just be walking along, looking around, looking around,
Speaker 1: and I'll stop and I'll think to myself, I'm missing
Speaker 1: something here, there's something I'm not seeing, and I'll pause
Speaker 1: and I'll look around and stuff, and I'll stay there
Speaker 1: and I'll even kind of look around and I'll find
Speaker 1: a ship. You get a premonition, I can tell you
Speaker 1: another one. I'm working great of Yard. I'm gonna work.
Speaker 1: During my break, I kind of doze off. I have
Speaker 1: this dream. I have this dream that there's this big
Speaker 1: power pole and there's these two white, real nice white
Speaker 1: tail sheds buy in this power pool. So I don't
Speaker 1: think anything. I'm not riding my bike back and forth
Speaker 1: to work. It's about a mile. A year later, I
Speaker 1: have the same exact dream. That day. I'm leaving work
Speaker 1: and I look out in the field and there's a
Speaker 1: big power line that goes through the field and there's
Speaker 1: a power pole there and it's in a dip. I
Speaker 1: walk over there and there's two white tails ship. Okay,
Speaker 1: really that story? Yeah, that's no ship. You had the
Speaker 1: dream twice. I had to Drea a year apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can make it weird. Okay, this doesn't look any
Speaker 1: different than any of the rest of them. But one
Speaker 1: more question about that. Does your wife she uh? Is
Speaker 1: she amused by you? Is she is it inspiring to her?
Speaker 1: Is it you know what I mean? Did she pick
Speaker 1: up sheds? When we first got married. She realized that
Speaker 1: I collected ships because even when I was going to
Speaker 1: business college and where we met in Boise, I'd go
Speaker 1: out of Boise and pick up sheds. But once we
Speaker 1: got married, she thought I went a lot. So she's thinking, man,
Speaker 1: he might have a girlfriend or something. So she went
Speaker 1: with me a few times just to see, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just that nuts. He doesn't have a girlfriend. So no,
Speaker 1: she doesn't go this buck here, that's a three inch
Speaker 1: point out. Another buck stuck in the skull? Oh you
Speaker 1: kidnapped off? Look at that? Yeah, so it's a he's
Speaker 1: got a skull? Was that found? Was that killed by
Speaker 1: a hunter? Found? Dad? I was found found in a dump.
Speaker 1: I never even knew I had it till I put
Speaker 1: it up here. It's kind of a spindley little buck.
Speaker 1: He's got five five times on one side, four around
Speaker 1: the other. But embedded in his skull is a antler
Speaker 1: time where he got jabbed, poked in, snapped off. Is
Speaker 1: it in the school or just tucked under the hide
Speaker 1: in the skull? Punctured skull but didn't kill him? Speaking
Speaker 1: of getting poked um, why is that purpose? A lot
Speaker 1: of sharp things in here? Have you ever sustained an
Speaker 1: injury from an antler? From me fallen on antlers? I
Speaker 1: was walking one day and I had a white tail
Speaker 1: in my hand with a nice brow point, and I
Speaker 1: slipped and fell and felt like that jammed that browl
Speaker 1: tie through into my hand. And I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of scripts and banged up something, but nothing. If you
Speaker 1: did decide to sell all these two people who want
Speaker 1: to make chandeliers and not since to shoot myself first blood, like,
Speaker 1: have you ever figured what that dollar amount would be?
Speaker 1: I don't care, don't care. You don't have any wild guests.
Speaker 1: I been very no. I've been extremely fortunate that I've
Speaker 1: had a I had a steady job for thirty nine
Speaker 1: years and a good union wage. My wife was controller
Speaker 1: at tried and at the Smith plant for twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Uh and she controlled the money for the plant, and
Speaker 1: so we had a good income. So I except to
Speaker 1: put the Dottars through college, I've never had to depend on.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't you like to know if it's like a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars because you're not
Speaker 1: going to make any difference. And that's one reason it's
Speaker 1: not insured, because I don't know how they would do that,
Speaker 1: how they would try to figure the vaut I mean, Christ,
Speaker 1: they got people who are That's what they do for
Speaker 1: a living is figure out values of was that Lloyd's
Speaker 1: of London, Lloyd's of London, something like that. They come
Speaker 1: out and whatever they do. I'm not saying you dude,
Speaker 1: sure it man. I just feel like you need to
Speaker 1: put a sprinkler system. Now. Why is this little why
Speaker 1: is this little pair of spike antlers sitting next to
Speaker 1: the giant giant box? Just to show people there's a difference.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't get realize there's a difference. There's a ship.
Speaker 1: This one here I found in a dump. If you
Speaker 1: look at it, these are terms actually wrong. And then
Speaker 1: if you look at him here and here, it looks
Speaker 1: like somebody grabbed it there and there and just twisted
Speaker 1: his antler. What do you say you used to do
Speaker 1: that dump loot so you would drive hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: just looking for the specific purpose of looking in dumps
Speaker 1: through the dump. My three daughters can tell you horror
Speaker 1: stories about being parked at they all are dump and
Speaker 1: having a picnic while their dad was down scrounging through
Speaker 1: the dump looking for antlerch What other good stuff would
Speaker 1: you find in the do besides antlers? Antlers? Was I
Speaker 1: found my daughter a pair of shoes one time. She
Speaker 1: know that's where they came from. She doesn't have Studies
Speaker 1: in the yellow Stone show that elk have started holding
Speaker 1: their antlers longer since wolves were introduced. Have you noticed
Speaker 1: around here that like elk shed later because they have
Speaker 1: to use them as weapons against wolves or haven't you
Speaker 1: notice any difference? I, like I said, I just think
Speaker 1: it depends a lot on nutrition in the winter. What
Speaker 1: you're saying, Spencer, because I feel like it takes thousands
Speaker 1: of years to drive that kind of evolutionary change. Man,
Speaker 1: I didn't do this study. I'm telling you what I
Speaker 1: think in Montana state that now he published it on
Speaker 1: his blog. It's a peer reviewed it's pure because he
Speaker 1: had his cousin read it. I guess it's possible. But
Speaker 1: you have noticed, no, because wolves aren't a problem around here.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a few wolves, but people don't realize
Speaker 1: how many freaking deer and now mountainline kill and how
Speaker 1: many mountainines there are. Do you find a lot of
Speaker 1: heads that you did were covered up like mountain lion kills.
Speaker 1: Grizzery bears cover mountain lion hang them up in a
Speaker 1: freaking tree? You found where mountains hung a deer in
Speaker 1: the tree? Huh? Yeah, this is the biggest, the mirror
Speaker 1: heaviest mule deer probably damn some porcupine on on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they've been laying there here when I found. It's
Speaker 1: really something. Are you ever stunned where you find like
Speaker 1: a white tail shed where it shouldn't be, were an
Speaker 1: elk shed where it shouldn't be. Three years ago, I
Speaker 1: was not too far out of town, and I was
Speaker 1: up in some cliffs, and like I said, I'm the
Speaker 1: last guy there, so I'm looking everywhere, and I get
Speaker 1: up in these cliffs, and I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: way the winner was maybe there'll be a big buck
Speaker 1: that she had his horns up in there. So I'm
Speaker 1: crawling around in the cliffs to find this great, big
Speaker 1: fresh moose horn. I'm a long ways from anywhere there
Speaker 1: should be a moose, and I looked for three days
Speaker 1: and I never found the other side. We've had something
Speaker 1: similar hunting sheep, doll sheep to find moose shed antlers.
Speaker 1: So he's up there in the winter, late winter, but
Speaker 1: you're so far up, like you're up on the glaciers.
Speaker 1: There was no even willow around, and you were like
Speaker 1: how in the world, Like what was he doing? You know,
Speaker 1: just up up up. Yeah, it's hard to picture that
Speaker 1: he would even you know, survive. And on whitetail. I
Speaker 1: mean I was in high school there was that was
Speaker 1: never a white tail this area. I never saw a
Speaker 1: white tail. A friend of mine up the Madison shot
Speaker 1: of white tail. I think I was a senior, but
Speaker 1: we never white tail has never come in until seventies
Speaker 1: around here. Have you ever seen another ship like this?
Speaker 1: There's this that's cool, Oh wild, what the hell happened
Speaker 1: to that's off? Yeah, it's like a buck that I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's like a four point described that spencer
Speaker 1: four point buck has another four point buck growing out
Speaker 1: of its main beam after the G three for with
Speaker 1: one of humunculous is it's like a little man that
Speaker 1: lives in your body. It's like he's got I don't
Speaker 1: know how to expand that. You know they have a
Speaker 1: term for it, an elk. When you see that kind
Speaker 1: of like, um, what is it? Someone? It almost looks
Speaker 1: like flames coming off the back of the bulls, like
Speaker 1: a whole series of like it looks like a moose's
Speaker 1: brow tine points. Yeah, just yeah, but these are these
Speaker 1: are not short little bumps about three four in times.
Speaker 1: That seems so rare. There's probably not even a name
Speaker 1: for it. You can just get there. You can just
Speaker 1: coin the term whatever you like. A rib cage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you ever think about doing it now? I don't
Speaker 1: think it's smart. I was gonna give you a design
Speaker 1: tip where you make a separate building. We're just the
Speaker 1: real weird ship in it. So then you come in
Speaker 1: here and you're like whoa, And then you go in
Speaker 1: there and it's all the weird stuff. But that's probably
Speaker 1: would be a very good idea. I ain't can kind
Speaker 1: of ruin it, like to mix them up. Oh, here
Speaker 1: you go, Yeah, I've been there. So here we're looking
Speaker 1: at a bullet. What the hell you get going on?
Speaker 1: You gotta do a fence. It's a telephone wire. He's
Speaker 1: got a phone wire. Oh I see. Then he shed
Speaker 1: his antlers bound together by the phone wire. But if
Speaker 1: you look at it, pick us up. Yeah, look at
Speaker 1: all the places that it's broke. So he got in
Speaker 1: that and wound and wound and wound and finally broke free.
Speaker 1: And then I mean the antlers weren't any good. I
Speaker 1: passed it up a couple of years around. What do
Speaker 1: you mean you pass it up? Old Matt? You saw this?
Speaker 1: It didn't want it? I said, I passed the apple cup,
Speaker 1: And then had dawned on me that you know, that's
Speaker 1: kind of neat. I'll watch him. Do you leave lane? Well,
Speaker 1: if they're all chewed up, I don't. If I'm fairly
Speaker 1: close to the truck, I might drag one back. And
Speaker 1: I why don't you? How would you see that? And
Speaker 1: I think that that was like it took me two
Speaker 1: years to a curty that you liked it? That what
Speaker 1: you need. This is a bullet. Took me two years
Speaker 1: to find the other side. And I actually saw this
Speaker 1: bull and he was pure white, and you found the
Speaker 1: match and this is and I saw him when he
Speaker 1: had his antlers, and then I found one, and then
Speaker 1: a year later I finally found the other side. You
Speaker 1: got to be the single person on this planet has
Speaker 1: such an intimate relationship with hundred kind of square mile area.
Speaker 1: And I tell everybody, probably, oh, I don't know of
Speaker 1: my collection. Come within on her mile radis at three fours.
Speaker 1: I'm being in Colorado. I've been in the eastern part
Speaker 1: of the state, a little bit Idaho, but most of
Speaker 1: them right around here. And we used to have the
Speaker 1: giant herd out of the Yellowstone in the Galloton. I
Speaker 1: never did get over in Town Minor, the Livingston, never
Speaker 1: did get over there. There was too much around here.
Speaker 1: Everybody says, oh, you went to the park. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to go to the park. I've been along the edge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never. I mean, hell, they all come down and
Speaker 1: you want to see the biggest spencer ten points in
Speaker 1: sixteen pounds, So that's a ten point sixteen pound beat up.
Speaker 1: Why don't you call that a double main beam, probably
Speaker 1: way sixteen pound. I mean, I read about these guys
Speaker 1: that are finding these twenty pound antlers, but I've found
Speaker 1: over two thousand elk horns and I don't have a
Speaker 1: one that weighs twenty pounds. Sixteen is the biggest. And
Speaker 1: maybe when it was fresh or something that might have been.
Speaker 1: This is considerably dry. It might have been a pound
Speaker 1: or two more. But just never have look at that,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking a kid had been smart enough looks
Speaker 1: for the other side when you you found out when
Speaker 1: you were young. I was just so excited that I
Speaker 1: ran all the way back to the highway to shoot
Speaker 1: with my dad. When you come to pick me up.
Speaker 1: Do you ever catch a porcupine eating antler? I I've
Speaker 1: got a friend that looks for antlers and shoots every
Speaker 1: freaking porcupine. I've never I talked. I went up in
Speaker 1: the trees. I talked to him. I don't have any Moscity.
Speaker 1: There's enough fan or about there. Do you use binoculars
Speaker 1: when you're shed hunting? No, I do have us, and
Speaker 1: my brother he's one of these guys who gets them
Speaker 1: on a knob and he's just glass and everything. And
Speaker 1: I don't I have a spotting scope, a little binocular.
Speaker 1: If I see something, I'll look at it and see
Speaker 1: if that's what it is. But I don't glass. I
Speaker 1: zig zag, zig zag, zigzag. I'll tight your zig from
Speaker 1: your egg. It depends on what i'm finding. That can
Speaker 1: be three ft apart or can be tin. So if
Speaker 1: you're looking through like a thicket or sage brush or something,
Speaker 1: you're doing very tight. Yep yep um. This is probably
Speaker 1: the most points I have, And this is the one
Speaker 1: I spent three years looking for the other side. You
Speaker 1: never found it. You never found it. Okay, how many
Speaker 1: points is that? I think there's thirteen or something. I guess,
Speaker 1: and I when I count points, I don't count the
Speaker 1: broad times. Yeah, but if you just count up the points,
Speaker 1: I mean why not. I mean, at a point, it's
Speaker 1: just a I mean at a point, it's a point.
Speaker 1: I mean all this other stuff is a point. That's
Speaker 1: the point. So you counted that up and didn't count back.
Speaker 1: That's right. What I would say, that's the thirteen And
Speaker 1: what I write is with if it has a broad time,
Speaker 1: I put it with. But I don't count the point.
Speaker 1: Do you have you realize that they like that is
Speaker 1: longer than some of these. Yes, you said you write
Speaker 1: it down. Do you have like this documented somewhere like
Speaker 1: every handler you have, you do. I've been showing you
Speaker 1: that you keep a log, but oh yeah, I keep
Speaker 1: it journal ever since nineteen sixty nine of everywhere I've
Speaker 1: been what I found that day, but I saw that day.
Speaker 1: I keep a strict record of like that bunk, in
Speaker 1: this bunk. These are all shed sets and vocal biologists
Speaker 1: like ever shown interest in your stealth. No, you don't
Speaker 1: into a book. Well, then everybody would know where I go.
Speaker 1: You mentioned to Fear that that you would be that
Speaker 1: that someone would come look at your collection and their
Speaker 1: takeaway would be You're The takeaway wouldn't be like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that someone took the time to find
Speaker 1: this stuff and put it on display and allow people
Speaker 1: to come look at it. But instead their takeaway would
Speaker 1: be like this is a weird dude. And as and
Speaker 1: you were explaining to me that you're a lot of
Speaker 1: other things too that are weird. Well, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: thought you when you did it, I thought you'd do
Speaker 1: the old I'm a husband and the father, but you
Speaker 1: did No, I'm a tell us. I have a four
Speaker 1: ton four hunderd ton rock collection. I've planned that you
Speaker 1: hauled in your pickup that I've hauled in my pickup
Speaker 1: and load of the stone at the time. I walked
Speaker 1: the Headwaters trail system. Here, I've walked getting close to
Speaker 1: twenty one thousand miles. My goal is to walk miles
Speaker 1: and that will take me around the Earth. I've ridden
Speaker 1: an exercise bike and never left my uh bedroom, and
Speaker 1: I wrote it around the world twice fifty miles. Do
Speaker 1: you keep tracking the miles that you put in um
Speaker 1: picking up shed antlers? It's in my journal just I
Speaker 1: keep track of the hour, Well, not really the miles.
Speaker 1: I keep track of the hours that I've spent roughly
Speaker 1: how many need to have you logged? I have never
Speaker 1: added him up. You don't have any guests thousands? I'm sure?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, not really? What uh? I get the sense
Speaker 1: from you talking to you like because you know, well,
Speaker 1: let me see this first. How many people come in
Speaker 1: and say the things I was saying about fire systems
Speaker 1: and insurance and alarms. I've had people ask about the alarms.
Speaker 1: You're the first one on the fire system, but I've
Speaker 1: had others on insurance. But I've had people come in
Speaker 1: and look around and say, oh my god, all those
Speaker 1: dead animals. Did you kill all these animals? And I
Speaker 1: say no, And then I explained about finding them and
Speaker 1: everything dies, and I said, the wonderful thing about shed
Speaker 1: hunting is you can be aunt i hunting. You can
Speaker 1: be vegetarian and you can still be a hunter, be
Speaker 1: a shed hunter. What percentage of people show up here
Speaker 1: that have no background in hunting or deer or elk, like,
Speaker 1: don't know anything about these animals, I would say, Or
Speaker 1: so you get a lot of Germans in here. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just seems like a place that German tourists would
Speaker 1: show up at. They got a whole thing about the
Speaker 1: West and like Americana. Weirdly you like Germans. Nah, probably
Speaker 1: not anymore. I had a Chinese guy come down from
Speaker 1: Canada and he had been he works in Canada, but
Speaker 1: he was from China, come down, brought me a big
Speaker 1: bouquet flowers. Huh. I've had a lady come and she
Speaker 1: might know she was from the coast, brought me U
Speaker 1: brought me a chunk of salmon. Uh. I've had things
Speaker 1: like that over the years. When I was gonna get
Speaker 1: out about the insurance thing and the fire thing. After
Speaker 1: spending a couple of hours with you, I feel as though,
Speaker 1: if let's just say it did like it was just
Speaker 1: you woke up one day and it was gone. I
Speaker 1: feel like you wouldn't even like I don't. I feel
Speaker 1: like you just would go about your business. Why would
Speaker 1: I'd be sad? And to tell you the truth, about
Speaker 1: twice a year or three times a year, I have
Speaker 1: a dream that I go out there and part of
Speaker 1: the antlers are gone. Somebody stripped the walls and hauled
Speaker 1: them off. And I've had antlers stole from me before
Speaker 1: I had I had a shed over here where I
Speaker 1: had that. That's before I had built this shed. And
Speaker 1: I had uh elks. That's two of more Boone and
Speaker 1: Crockett that were stole. They should pass a special law
Speaker 1: that if anyone ever messes with any of this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's automatic capital punishment. Well, it was interesting, like a
Speaker 1: special applicable to this property. The odd thing about the
Speaker 1: when they stole the antlers, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: it going on because that's when the prices first, so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of it going on. So the
Speaker 1: cops come to him and they said, would you donate
Speaker 1: some antlers for a sting operation, and I said, no problem.
Speaker 1: And this went on for a couple of months and uh,
Speaker 1: nobody ever. They put him somewhere I don't know anyway.
Speaker 1: They finally brought him back to me, but they never
Speaker 1: found a guy that stole the people have stole mine.
Speaker 1: So my brother was in California. My brother comes back
Speaker 1: from California and he he knows that these antlers have
Speaker 1: been stolen, and he says, I'll find out. He went
Speaker 1: uptown to the bar and three hours later he come
Speaker 1: back and told me the three guys that stole them
Speaker 1: get him back. No, but we paid him a visit,
Speaker 1: but they were gone already. They sold him. Oh they'd
Speaker 1: been gone there. They had already made it to Korea.
Speaker 1: Really sold him to a buyer and gardner. My brother, okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Uh, my brother, this doesn't rival your collection.
Speaker 1: But he had a spruce tree in his yard that
Speaker 1: he was he'd liked to wrap antlers around. And one
Speaker 1: day he comes home they're just gone, you know. And
Speaker 1: another body had a moose head moose antlers school hanging
Speaker 1: above his garage door. The same time period of yeah, jim, um,
Speaker 1: you're seventy two. Now you told us earlier. Was there
Speaker 1: a timing you're Antler collecting um life and career when
Speaker 1: the collection was more valuable to you, to you personally,
Speaker 1: like where you would have been and had more sorrow
Speaker 1: had to be stolen or burned up or anything. No,
Speaker 1: because I don't work that way. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: live in fear. It's not like I'm brave or anything.
Speaker 1: But I just don't look at things that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got enough else. I mean, I've been so fortunate
Speaker 1: in my life with my three daughters, uh with the
Speaker 1: worthless son in laws, with the grandkids. I mean I
Speaker 1: really have and uh so No, I just I don't
Speaker 1: look at life that way. But do you look at
Speaker 1: him just like their material things? Maybe you shouldn't really
Speaker 1: just place that much value on material things in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's offered to steal the rocks. I haven't any problems,
Speaker 1: not one. When we were in the shed, you mentioned
Speaker 1: that hunting Antler hunting saved your life. Yes, what is
Speaker 1: that story? Okay? I was, I knew I had a
Speaker 1: heart murmur and actually it kept. I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: you about that. You got a big scar running down
Speaker 1: your chest there. Yeah. Uh, member of the Zipper Club.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what they call it. Anyway, I was,
Speaker 1: I knew I had a heart murmur. In fact, it
Speaker 1: kept me out of the Vietnam or I flunked I
Speaker 1: draft and uh, but I played football in high school
Speaker 1: and things like that. But anyway, I was actually in
Speaker 1: the hills just north of town here, and I was
Speaker 1: down in the bottom of the canyon. I was looking
Speaker 1: for sheds. And I had a good day. And I
Speaker 1: started up out of that canyon, and and I knew
Speaker 1: my wife, and this before I didn't have a cell phone.
Speaker 1: I knew I she'd be worried because it was late. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to man. I just I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I'd go for ways and I just dropped and I
Speaker 1: kept Finally I made it to the truck and I
Speaker 1: got home and pulled into the garage there and and
Speaker 1: opened the door and literally fell out of the truck.
Speaker 1: I mean, I and she came out running out there,
Speaker 1: and I said, I can't do this anymore. I just
Speaker 1: I have got no energy. Well, my brother and I
Speaker 1: had a shed hunting expedition plan to go back to Colorado.
Speaker 1: The two of us and it was about a week away.
Speaker 1: So I thought, and I'm gonna go into I think
Speaker 1: I got some kind of an ammonia, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go and get a physical. So I went into the
Speaker 1: doctor and got a physical and and she says, I
Speaker 1: want to take an X ray of your heart. It's fine.
Speaker 1: So I went in there and uh, she come out
Speaker 1: a few minutes later and she says, that's the biggest
Speaker 1: heart I've ever seen. You're like, oh, thank you, and so,
Speaker 1: being the smartass, I said, I'm a big hearted guy.
Speaker 1: And she didn't think that was funny at all, not
Speaker 1: even a little bit. And she said no, she said,
Speaker 1: there's So she sent me to the specialist in Bozeman. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said, you're a order is uh put letting blood
Speaker 1: back into your heart? He said, you're you're a or
Speaker 1: the valve is. He says, your a order is and
Speaker 1: your eyes He said it should be about this. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think three something and he says yours is seven
Speaker 1: and it should it could burst it any minute. So
Speaker 1: I had open heart surgery two weeks later. And Uh,
Speaker 1: in that time between my having the heart surgery, I
Speaker 1: wanted to walk the trail and nobody had let me.
Speaker 1: You take some time off, cut into your mileage count,
Speaker 1: cut into my mile agecount, and within I was in
Speaker 1: the hospital for five days. Two days after I got
Speaker 1: a hop of the hospital, I walked the trail five miles.
Speaker 1: A week later I was back up to six miles.
Speaker 1: What year did you go out and deliberately pick up
Speaker 1: your first antler? How old are you? At what point
Speaker 1: did you say I'm going to collect these antlers. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've said that yet. I mean, really, I
Speaker 1: went out and I found one, and I drug it
Speaker 1: down to the trailer. Uh. The next day I went out.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm ten years old. I mean these are
Speaker 1: elk horns. I found another old white horn not too
Speaker 1: far from the trailer, drug it down to the trailer,
Speaker 1: and my father informed me right then he wasn't packing
Speaker 1: these damn things home. Oh this is like a like
Speaker 1: a camp. You guys had her cabin, so I didn't.
Speaker 1: Do you still have those antlers? I'm sure I traded them.
Speaker 1: I mean I had two huge archroys out here at
Speaker 1: the end of this driveway. I had a huge archray
Speaker 1: at our cabin that was up the gallant and I
Speaker 1: had a huge mound in the backyard where my parents lived.
Speaker 1: And what I've done is traded most of the old
Speaker 1: elk horns for deer horns and sets and some of
Speaker 1: the freaks stuff. Yeah, so the I see what you're
Speaker 1: saying that you never like started a collection because you
Speaker 1: kind of moved them all around. I built things out
Speaker 1: and I built but the sets, and I don't know
Speaker 1: why why, but my dad had an old shed on
Speaker 1: our property. In the sets I kept inside the sheds,
Speaker 1: I built the huge column. I took elkhorn, set the
Speaker 1: birds on the ground, tipped them in, wired them together,
Speaker 1: did that a second time, and I went on top
Speaker 1: of that and did it again, and went on top
Speaker 1: of that and did it again. It was probably fifteen
Speaker 1: ft tall. So how how do you know that you had? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you know that there are that you have
Speaker 1: sixteen thousand antlers? Because I keep track of everyone of them. Well,
Speaker 1: how many don't you have that you could have had
Speaker 1: if you kept them? All? The seven fresh elk that
Speaker 1: I sold and put the help put the daughters through
Speaker 1: college in the fift hundred year, I don't count them
Speaker 1: in my collection because I don't have them. So that's
Speaker 1: another Handlers eighteen thousand, five hundred or something, and you've
Speaker 1: never bought one. You've never like pulled your walls out
Speaker 1: and bought an Never have you ever had antler you
Speaker 1: really wanted. You're talking like there was only one. No,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them that you wanted bad. But
Speaker 1: it broke your principles and to get along with my wife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but after a while it became the fact, especially after
Speaker 1: antlers got worth a lot. Is that right? How he
Speaker 1: said that worth a lot of money? Uh? And I
Speaker 1: saw people buying antlers to form a collection or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's when I really sat in thought, No, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do this. I'm not I'll trade Andler for Andler,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll trade some of my fresh elk for
Speaker 1: a freaky shteer or set or something like that. I
Speaker 1: won't buy them. And I go to the antler auction,
Speaker 1: not this year, and I go to the antler auction
Speaker 1: at Jackson Hole every year, and Uh, I get a
Speaker 1: bid sheet because I want to keep track of all
Speaker 1: the bids and how much antlers are worth. I go
Speaker 1: through the line on the side streets where they're selling
Speaker 1: all our antlers, and those guys know me and they
Speaker 1: know there, I'm just there to fondle our antlers. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna buy anything. You express that like all these antlers, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're just material things? Are you try not to put
Speaker 1: too much value on them. So then, like, how how
Speaker 1: would you react to what would your attitude be towards
Speaker 1: someone asking you for your shed hunting spots if they
Speaker 1: weren't going to go sell them, they just wanted to
Speaker 1: like appreciate them and put them on their wall to
Speaker 1: them take a freaking hike. That's what I tell Peo boys.
Speaker 1: You know. They says, uh, talking about the spots to
Speaker 1: look for sheds. I says, uh, you can go anywhere
Speaker 1: I don't go. You said, you sometimes get somewhere and
Speaker 1: you don't see something, but you feel that you should
Speaker 1: and you wait, and all of a sudden, then you
Speaker 1: see it. I've had that where I've walked into the
Speaker 1: woods or walked into an area and it just hits
Speaker 1: me that there's something here I'm not seeing and I
Speaker 1: don't know if my eyes pick it up in it.
Speaker 1: I'm not a real bright guy, so if it makes
Speaker 1: it to my brain or not, and I pause and
Speaker 1: I take the extra time to look and a lot
Speaker 1: of times I'll find an antlert, but there are times
Speaker 1: that I haven't found where he feels not bright about you. Oh, dyslectic.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is there right? Yeah? I've written two books.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of writing. Can't spell for ship.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would be that. I don't
Speaker 1: think that. I would then say you're not that bright.
Speaker 1: I always had a hard time in school. Uh. I
Speaker 1: barely got out of high school. I had a football
Speaker 1: scholarship offered to me. Hit Boys State. I tell people
Speaker 1: Boys State and they get real excited. But at the
Speaker 1: time it was a two year college. But don't you
Speaker 1: feel rather than brightness, it's probably like um dumbass lucky. No.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably that it's your brain is not
Speaker 1: malleable at all. You don't you don't get with the program,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like my brother and my
Speaker 1: I think my brother and my sister in law they don't.
Speaker 1: They never got with the program because they had a
Speaker 1: where their headed is so like definite, right, it's so
Speaker 1: strong and definite that you can't veer it. But it's
Speaker 1: going somewhere. It's not like your stagnant It's not like
Speaker 1: your brain just sits there and then it can't be pushed.
Speaker 1: So it's just it doesn't go anywhere. But you can't
Speaker 1: channel it either. It's just that it's going and no
Speaker 1: one's gonna bump it to the way it's supposed to go,
Speaker 1: so it just goes. Could be well, and that could
Speaker 1: be the hell else would it be. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's like a there's a brilliance right, but no
Speaker 1: one's gonna move it left or right. And most of
Speaker 1: us get most of us get steered, get the Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get with the program, like whatever the program we're
Speaker 1: supposed to get with this, it's like, oh, I get it.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to have a nice house, got it. We're
Speaker 1: more like sheet You're like, oh, degrees are cool. I'm
Speaker 1: on it direction I'll get a whole shiploaded. Not our
Speaker 1: own trailblazers. And we're not we're not finding the things
Speaker 1: that we want to find. We're kind of following some
Speaker 1: program because it's been yea, please tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people jam it's complicated, but
Speaker 1: I believe he's paying you a compliment. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get that there. No I'm extremely focused. If that's what
Speaker 1: you mean. I mean, when I'm out of all er hunting,
Speaker 1: that's my focus. I don't listen to music. I don't.
Speaker 1: I enjoy my surroundings, I guess, but when I'm doing
Speaker 1: the rock work, that's where my focus is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm and I love that. I mean, you're a creative artist.
Speaker 1: If anyone comes here and sees what you've together and
Speaker 1: designed your writing, I mean, I've heard that, but to me,
Speaker 1: I don't see that. You don't think of yourself as
Speaker 1: an artist. That's probably pretty helpful people that do, like
Speaker 1: when I that's when I when that's the first thing
Speaker 1: I hear out of someone's mouth, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I bet not. I'm sure you'd like to be. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sort of internal compass, like uh, like
Speaker 1: ethos or a life philosophy that you used to check
Speaker 1: your behavior. I'm an introvoter and so like the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what's going on because I've always
Speaker 1: been isolated that way, introvert. Like, how many days could
Speaker 1: you go without talking to anybody beside your wife before
Speaker 1: you felt like something was screwy. I don't think it'd
Speaker 1: be days. I think it'd be months. H I mean
Speaker 1: I've I talked to my dog. Do you get along
Speaker 1: well with your wife? Well, we've been married for fifty
Speaker 1: two years. She had thrown my ass out yet so
Speaker 1: and saying, and I've given reasons. I've been extremely, extremely
Speaker 1: fortunate that way she puts up with with But then
Speaker 1: we do a lot of things together. Uh. I told
Speaker 1: you about the rock work up at the cabin. Uh
Speaker 1: what she does and we do together is on the
Speaker 1: south side, we have nineteen acres and uh we clear sagebrush.
Speaker 1: I mean we'll spend a half of summer clearing all
Speaker 1: the sage brush. On the north side where the timber is.
Speaker 1: We trimmed the trees for what reason? Because we enjoy
Speaker 1: the work. See. I used to apologize because Uh, I
Speaker 1: didn't bowl, I didn't go I did golf for a while.
Speaker 1: There were things like that. I love that. That's an
Speaker 1: upsetting thought that actually you live on a golf course.
Speaker 1: I when I started golfing, I got about a seven handicap.
Speaker 1: I was doing really good. In one year we won
Speaker 1: the club championship. That was fifteen years ago. And I
Speaker 1: haven't golf since because I went out on top Spencer here,
Speaker 1: he likes to swing the old club. What do you guys,
Speaker 1: what kind of euphemism do you guys have for golfing?
Speaker 1: What's your handcaps like tickling the piano. I'm not even
Speaker 1: good enough to know my own handicap, Spencer. I once
Speaker 1: put it to Uh, there's a guy knew. He was like,
Speaker 1: it'd be like hearing a gym golf like, it doesn't fit.
Speaker 1: And this guy was a lion hunter and it just
Speaker 1: didn't fIF that he golf I'm like, how could you
Speaker 1: like golfing? Like, you can't be a lion hunter who golfs.
Speaker 1: It's like, I want to hear you like the coolest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. It takes so much energy and
Speaker 1: focus and and like intelligence, and he goes, Man, you
Speaker 1: gotta golf all the time just to be shitty. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's true. It's true. What are there some of the
Speaker 1: bigger changes you've seen in the whole horn pick and
Speaker 1: shed hunting activity, world, lifestyle, whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: it over there of course of fifty years. That's a
Speaker 1: good question. Weeds, Huh, that's the weeds in the mountains.
Speaker 1: Weeds in the mountains. There's places I go that. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was never any Canadian sast Oh, there was never
Speaker 1: any mullen. There was never any I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the mullen was a non native well
Speaker 1: in Madison County. It's a noxious weed Galluton County. It isn't.
Speaker 1: I hate it just for its arrogance. That makes sense,
Speaker 1: because it shoots up that big stock. Yeah, kids like
Speaker 1: to throw it like a spear. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that when Yanny was asking that question, what I was
Speaker 1: thinking that that where I thought you would go with
Speaker 1: it is um that when you picked up your first antler,
Speaker 1: people probablyn't picking antlers wasn't probably a thing. Nobody picked
Speaker 1: up antlers, Like said, I'm the weird kid in high
Speaker 1: school that everybody has fast cars and girlfriends, and I
Speaker 1: was up in the freaking hills tromping around looking for antlers.
Speaker 1: You were cool before it was cool. Well, yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't cool. And I do that now when it became
Speaker 1: a thing. As the popularity of antler pick and antler
Speaker 1: hunting has grown, has it made you um like it,
Speaker 1: less like it more, or you're just like you're in
Speaker 1: your own world. It doesn't matter the sort of cachet
Speaker 1: of it doesn't matter. I mean it doesn't matter in
Speaker 1: the in the fact that there's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: about it. I mean that I get hit over the
Speaker 1: head from my wife all the time. It's progress and
Speaker 1: so there's no if I if I could control it,
Speaker 1: I would more than likely like to, but I can't
Speaker 1: control it. So no, I got let it go. You
Speaker 1: gotta let it go. And probably one of my worst experiences,
Speaker 1: that's when I was in the Porcupine area a lot
Speaker 1: and i'd find a lot of sheds. When I went
Speaker 1: in there and I found a camp and that's go.
Speaker 1: Those guys are in there looking for andlers for the money.
Speaker 1: And I found where they had camped and the stuff
Speaker 1: they discarded, and uh, that's when I realized, Man, this
Speaker 1: is all changed because the money is taken over and
Speaker 1: it's not for the joy of finding antlers or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's it's for the money and college kids
Speaker 1: out of bozen hell. I didn't blame him from going
Speaker 1: out looking for handlers. I mean, you could find a
Speaker 1: ten pound elkhorn then it was worth five bucks a pound.
Speaker 1: That's fifty bucks. You know, a lot of those guys
Speaker 1: were out in the hills look for the money. M hm.
Speaker 1: Is that part of your kind of market pride that
Speaker 1: that you won't have spent a dollar on an antler
Speaker 1: for your collection in a way? And the other thing
Speaker 1: is is there's a handle on the inside of that
Speaker 1: big door, and that's the only thing I've ever made
Speaker 1: out of an antler. I don't like to see I
Speaker 1: don't like to see him cut up. Chandeliers are a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing. But you go to famous Daves, you see
Speaker 1: all them fancy and chandeliers, they're all ros and they're
Speaker 1: not yea. So I just made my kids three for Easter.
Speaker 1: I made him three custom uh meal deer antler marshmallow sticks.
Speaker 1: Good for you? You wouldn't you wouldn't like you would
Speaker 1: like something like that. No, you just depressed him and
Speaker 1: my birthdays in a month, and they'll thank you. I went,
Speaker 1: I went down to the hardword storm Boston Rod drilled
Speaker 1: him out a pox them in there. I'm sure, yes
Speaker 1: they are. I mean I've seen some beautiful especially when
Speaker 1: they take the moose sheds and do those inchers designs.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen some beautiful stuff. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: have an antler l corn buckle now for your your
Speaker 1: belt and I just don't see him. Don't see him.
Speaker 1: Cut up. UM. Give some antler hunting tips, like a
Speaker 1: hot tip, patients, and perseverance. You can go anywhere in
Speaker 1: the state of Montana where it's legal and find an antler.
Speaker 1: Might be a white tail, it might be a mule deer,
Speaker 1: might be an ant might be a elk. But literally,
Speaker 1: if you're looking, and I always look I when I walk,
Speaker 1: I I memorize the distance in front of me for
Speaker 1: about ten ft. I memorize that as I walk as
Speaker 1: I look ahead. And then I'm always looking to the
Speaker 1: side because you got your foot placements sort of subconsciously
Speaker 1: picked out. And I'll do that going across the city park,
Speaker 1: and I'll do that going across the football field because
Speaker 1: years ago and I started. I remember I was going
Speaker 1: up through a big open meadow when I was looking
Speaker 1: for antlers everywhere and fell flat on my face and
Speaker 1: tripped over a brush head five point alcorn. So now
Speaker 1: I study the ground and then I memorize it, and
Speaker 1: then I looked to the side as I go. I'm
Speaker 1: always torn um as a person interested in antlers and
Speaker 1: artifacts and old bones and whatnot, but also interesting spot
Speaker 1: and game. I'm always torn because it's like two kinds
Speaker 1: of people, three kinds of people that don't see anything,
Speaker 1: and then there's like your far lookers and clothes lookers.
Speaker 1: And I'm very torn between being a far looker and
Speaker 1: a close looker. You know, see a hunting, I love
Speaker 1: to a mule deer hunt, but I don't even know
Speaker 1: if I shoot one anymore. I never liked elk hunt,
Speaker 1: but we lived on elk, so I always hunted him.
Speaker 1: But the animal, I guess, is not that important to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, like anybody, I like to see a huge
Speaker 1: bowl or a huge bucker, whatever, and I love to
Speaker 1: see the animals in the yard and all that, But
Speaker 1: I guess my reverence is for the antler and not
Speaker 1: for the animal. M what does it represent for you,
Speaker 1: I guess on the antler, especially like on elk horns,
Speaker 1: the energy that it takes to grow it, to me
Speaker 1: is I mean, I don't think anybody can even appreciate
Speaker 1: when they see a sixteen pound elkhorn and he's got
Speaker 1: a sixteen pound one on the other side, and he
Speaker 1: grew that in five and a half months after coming
Speaker 1: out of a winner that he freaking near started to
Speaker 1: death in after coming out of a rut that he
Speaker 1: was exhausted doing. I mean, to me, it's just utterly amazing.
Speaker 1: I can understand why in old elks nine years old
Speaker 1: and dead tax in life, Yeah, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: just got to be a rat race all the time.
Speaker 1: I mean just and then too. I can't imagine the
Speaker 1: amount of nutrition or energy to grow. I mean, to
Speaker 1: be like you and me growing two legs in five
Speaker 1: and a half months every year. It's just it's amazing.
Speaker 1: The thing you said earlier that that I thought was interested,
Speaker 1: I asked you why, like the big why, right, Like,
Speaker 1: why in the hell would you? I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: we're focused on. We're focused on in our conversation, we're
Speaker 1: focused on finding them. But to me, the energy put
Speaker 1: into the display you've built, which is which is like
Speaker 1: I would regard it as um this is gonna sound
Speaker 1: hYP hyperbolic, but I don't think it is. I would
Speaker 1: regard it as sort of like one of the most
Speaker 1: like kind of staggering, um like pieces of art I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. I'm not joking, no, but what's funny about that?
Speaker 1: And I think I have one of the guy's books,
Speaker 1: But There was a guy from Bozeman that wrote a
Speaker 1: book about all the oddities in Montana. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't even remember something, but they are all kinds of oddities.
Speaker 1: That he went around the state and wrote a book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not comfortable. But then he wrote a second
Speaker 1: book and went around the state. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not needing them. It's not an oddity like I think
Speaker 1: a oddity. It's got a lot of oddities in it,
Speaker 1: but I think as its thing as this thing, anybody
Speaker 1: anybody with with sort of UM, any art historian or
Speaker 1: anyone UM, people who are interested in sculpture or whatever,
Speaker 1: anyone would come in and be like, I get it.
Speaker 1: It's got all these constituent parts as a whole. It
Speaker 1: is a a man's lifelong o a creative piece. It
Speaker 1: is a piece of art that was produced over a
Speaker 1: long period of time. There's a piece of installation art.
Speaker 1: And I've had a few people that's recognized. So when
Speaker 1: I asked you, like the big why, it's funny that
Speaker 1: you um are self aware enough for whatever where you
Speaker 1: said it's a compulsion, and then you don't dress up
Speaker 1: the compulsion as something else that you just recognize it
Speaker 1: like you have a compulsion. I like stuff to be
Speaker 1: neat in my house, and I've only recently begun to
Speaker 1: say organized, you know, I've recently been saying like, yes,
Speaker 1: I recognize it as a problem, but it's not what
Speaker 1: I care to fix, and I would like the people
Speaker 1: around me to conform to it. Well, that's why my
Speaker 1: wife and I get along so well. Is the only
Speaker 1: antlers you'll find in this house are those? And I
Speaker 1: had to build this room on for that. There there
Speaker 1: are no antlers and that part of the house. Do
Speaker 1: you look at other people with extreme collections and find
Speaker 1: them weird? Like if somebody collected sports cards or shot
Speaker 1: glasses or vinyl records, like, would you get it or
Speaker 1: would you belin that's strange? No? I would? I would.
Speaker 1: I mean I look at as everybody collects something. I mean,
Speaker 1: my wife collects Daniel Steel books. Uh. We have a
Speaker 1: bulldog uh collection that we've put together ourselves. But everybody
Speaker 1: collects something. So are you, um would you go out
Speaker 1: of your way to go see um shot glass collection? Mhm?
Speaker 1: So you don't like collections for the sake of collections.
Speaker 1: I had an aunt and that's where I get my collecting.
Speaker 1: From who collected rocks, she collected clean xboxes, she collected
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. She had them. I've in fact,
Speaker 1: I've got it. She's got a matchbooks collection that I've
Speaker 1: put in a fifty gallon drum and filled it. So
Speaker 1: she but she never took care of her collections. She
Speaker 1: had an elephant, she never enshrined them. No, I guess
Speaker 1: she had an elephant collection. Uh probably had five hundred
Speaker 1: different kinds of elephants. Uh, figurines and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Most of them were broken. And I guess that's where
Speaker 1: I make sure I take care of my collection. But
Speaker 1: I think there's something to be said for walking tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of miles on trails and just being out
Speaker 1: in the correct. You there, I don't go any freaking trail.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I'm separating the trail into the woods. Yea.
Speaker 1: When I go out in the woods, I don't follow
Speaker 1: any trickers. You just bush whag. I just I cover
Speaker 1: an area. I don't. I might get on a deer
Speaker 1: trail or something a little bit, but I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't do trails. But there's something to be said for
Speaker 1: going into the woods and being out in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere and collecting, working to collect your to a
Speaker 1: master collection. And that The other thing that I'm thankful
Speaker 1: and away for my wife is receptive to is I've
Speaker 1: always gone alone. And that was long before there were
Speaker 1: cell phones or anything like that. I mean, and do
Speaker 1: you still now travel and look for sheds in in
Speaker 1: grizz country alone? Yeah? And I've had a couple of
Speaker 1: grizz encounters so that we're extremely scary, but I was
Speaker 1: never I guess I can tell you one of them.
Speaker 1: I was. And this was up in the galloon and again,
Speaker 1: I've got a really nice, huge pack of al corns.
Speaker 1: I probably got fifteen or twenty on my back. But
Speaker 1: and I'm coming out, but that's not enough. There's one
Speaker 1: little spot in there where I wanted to go up,
Speaker 1: and there was kind of a pocket back in there,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to go in and check it out
Speaker 1: see if there was anything there. So I got this
Speaker 1: big old pack on my back and I'm going through
Speaker 1: these trees and I get back into this spot and
Speaker 1: there's a spot pren as big as this room that
Speaker 1: looks like somebody raked it with a garden rake, and
Speaker 1: right in the center as a cow l kid and
Speaker 1: I think to myself, that's a grizzly cash. So I
Speaker 1: took off and I headed down out and I had
Speaker 1: to go across the creek, and the creek was high
Speaker 1: and really flowing, but there was the three logs. So
Speaker 1: I get up on the logs and the water is
Speaker 1: kind of splashing up on the bottom one. I get
Speaker 1: up on the logs and I hear the grizzly roar.
Speaker 1: So I turned around to look, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: walking backwards and I slip and I fall backwards with
Speaker 1: the pack on my back between the two logs, and
Speaker 1: I'm pinned there. I mean, I can't the straps are,
Speaker 1: I can't move, and I hear him roar again, and
Speaker 1: he's closer. He's coming, He's following me. And I lay
Speaker 1: there and this is a God's honors truth. I cried
Speaker 1: because I knew he was coming up on and I
Speaker 1: was I was dead. There was nothing I could do,
Speaker 1: and I was laying there, and I laid there and
Speaker 1: I lay there and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and
Speaker 1: finally I noticed that I had my hunting knife on
Speaker 1: my in a scabbard and I could get it with
Speaker 1: the two fingers, and I could. When I got it out,
Speaker 1: I could cut that one strap. So then I freed
Speaker 1: myself and I got and I still never heard the bear.
Speaker 1: So then a normal person would have just headed out
Speaker 1: of the country, not me. I packed the horns on
Speaker 1: across the creek, fixed the strap, put the pack back on,
Speaker 1: and headed out. Wow, I don't think I've heard the
Speaker 1: roar of a grizzly Oh Lord, and you could tell that.
Speaker 1: Do the noise. I can't do the noise. Do an
Speaker 1: approximation of the noise. I'll tell you what scarier than
Speaker 1: that is, mountain lion. And I've had them follow me
Speaker 1: and heard them. I was. This was when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I was up Dry Crack out of Townsend,
Speaker 1: and I was fishing, and I was so concentrated on
Speaker 1: my fishing I didn't even know it got dark in
Speaker 1: the moon come up. My parents they were just going nuts.
Speaker 1: They were driving up and down the road a holler
Speaker 1: and and I could hear this one mountain lyon on
Speaker 1: one side screaming, and a mountain Lyon on the other
Speaker 1: side screaming above me. My mother was screaming. And then
Speaker 1: I've had mountain lion where I'm known there tracking me
Speaker 1: where they're following me, but they've never I've only ever
Speaker 1: seen two or three in my lifetimes. You can go
Speaker 1: a long time between seeing them and that it's usually
Speaker 1: just a flash. Any other follow up questions I got
Speaker 1: mine answered kind of concluding by backtracking, but it kind
Speaker 1: of there's like there's a magic in that room that
Speaker 1: pictures just don't They just don't do it justice and
Speaker 1: you can call it art O C d. And I
Speaker 1: think it's art by way of O C d UM.
Speaker 1: But going back, Steve always like to say that there's
Speaker 1: two types of people, or three types of people. I'd
Speaker 1: send a picture to my wife. There's the there's people
Speaker 1: who think you can put everybody into two exactly. I
Speaker 1: sent a picture of the room to my wife and uh,
Speaker 1: she said, that's crazy. Is that even ensurable? So that
Speaker 1: person and uh, I think you're one type of person
Speaker 1: and she's the other. I Uh, it's I think it's
Speaker 1: it's impressive and it's it's it's magical. Yeah, do you imagine, um,
Speaker 1: at this point, you're seventy two, do you imagine, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll be I gotta make it there yet it's almost
Speaker 1: are you um? Do you imagine now like you've kind
Speaker 1: of you're you're wrapped it up. Okay, no, because I
Speaker 1: still enjoy doing it. Like I said, I'm a little
Speaker 1: slower now, I'm gonna try to be in a lot
Speaker 1: better shape and i'll go with some in the fall.
Speaker 1: I'll be in a lot better shape next spring and
Speaker 1: get out and try to cover more countries. So you
Speaker 1: think there's horn to be picked out there right now? Oh? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: just waiting for the fall. Yes, when the green grass,
Speaker 1: when the first frost comes and knocks the grass down,
Speaker 1: and the rattlesnakes to go off and do their business
Speaker 1: and leave me alone, then I'll go out and pick
Speaker 1: it all up, or I'll at least go around and
Speaker 1: look for some. Rattlesnakes are probably my biggest concern, more
Speaker 1: so than grizzly bears or why them? Because they bite?
Speaker 1: But are you running into that many of them? Do
Speaker 1: you know? Why? Do you know why you're running new
Speaker 1: a lot? Because you probably got good eyes for seeing stuff,
Speaker 1: and you see them where other people don't see them.
Speaker 1: And I'm in the and I don't bother him, I
Speaker 1: don't kill him. The other day I had my daughter,
Speaker 1: my my seven year old in my five year old.
Speaker 1: He might not have been five now they're seven five.
Speaker 1: And I was messing around and they're messing around, and
Speaker 1: they come running up about a little snake. They found
Speaker 1: a little snake and a little hole in the rocks.
Speaker 1: And this thing was like a rattlesnake, dead size of
Speaker 1: your wrist, curled up in there. This I was a
Speaker 1: little black and white one, and I was nothing, little, nothing,
Speaker 1: black and white. My oldest daughter tells the story that
Speaker 1: I was fishing down on the Missouri and my and
Speaker 1: the kids were a little and my wife had him
Speaker 1: all spread out on a blanket, and I was fishing
Speaker 1: along the bank and I scared this rattlesnake up and
Speaker 1: he come up over the blanket and she grabbed a
Speaker 1: kid in each hand and took off. Well, there was
Speaker 1: still one on the blanket because we had three kids,
Speaker 1: says Mom left me this. Uh, this is like in
Speaker 1: my house. I put my coolest things, my coolest fossils, antlers,
Speaker 1: piece of petrified wood, like on my fireplace mantle, and
Speaker 1: my bookshelf and office desk uff like that. This has
Speaker 1: made me feel wildly inadequate, like there are thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of things here, like literally thousands that would trump
Speaker 1: the coolest things that I have. So this is just
Speaker 1: like a wildly special place. I did find myself fake
Speaker 1: feeling a little masculated about my pile of cool things,
Speaker 1: like I look now, I'm like, what's the point. See,
Speaker 1: that's the object of the shed is And that's why
Speaker 1: things are displayed because I had seen so many piles
Speaker 1: in a in a grub corner of a garage or
Speaker 1: somebody's yard or whatever, so I wanted to make the
Speaker 1: effort to display them. And it's not just the overwhelming
Speaker 1: amount of antlers in there, which in of itself is powerful,
Speaker 1: but it's the Yeah, it's the way that you have,
Speaker 1: the the symmetry that doesn't even really reveal itself. You
Speaker 1: can kind of okay, there's a lot of foms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Spencer're not keep for going to tell you. Um. Doug
Speaker 1: Durn was listening to a previous episode and he was
Speaker 1: half listening and he heard about rock picking and he
Speaker 1: thought we were talking about going out into a farm
Speaker 1: field and gathering up the rocks, and he was very
Speaker 1: supportive of the conversation. It was happy to hear that
Speaker 1: that was your background of rock picking, and that was
Speaker 1: dismayed to learn that you're doing recreational rock hounding. And
Speaker 1: he was like, never ever ever confused rock picking were
Speaker 1: rock hounded. It's another another cut corn situation. All right, well, Jim,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for your time. Man, this has
Speaker 1: been a great tour. Yeah, thanks for having us. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed your company. And that's the idea of the horn
Speaker 1: chead House, whatever you want to call it, is people
Speaker 1: to come and enjoy it. And when we're home, if
Speaker 1: we're not up at our cabinet stuff, when we're here
Speaker 1: and people get in touch with me, then I'm more
Speaker 1: than them happy to take them to the collection. And
Speaker 1: how do you want to tell people now over the air,
Speaker 1: how did you get in touch with you? Should they
Speaker 1: just google you? They can google me. You might get
Speaker 1: a few. He's got a website. What's your website address?
Speaker 1: Antler Man dot com. Okay, just go to antler Man
Speaker 1: dot com and uh get ahold of me email from there.
Speaker 1: You know what my new life goal is, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find some kind of antler and I'm gonna bring it
Speaker 1: over here and you're gonna beg me for it, and
Speaker 1: then I'll give it to you. Okay, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's gonna be, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: find some thing. It's gonna be something. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: antler like with a grown around a human skull or
Speaker 1: something I like to find. And you're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna try to break your rule to buy it,
Speaker 1: and I'll just be like you just have a jim. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Yes, thank you