Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukeleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: All right, boys, we've got a lot of ground covered today,
Speaker 1: and this is the main ground we have to cover.
Speaker 1: Is Clay Hayes is here with us, Josh. Clay Hayes
Speaker 1: is is the man on the internet for bow building,
Speaker 1: quite a bit of bushcraft stuff, making flint locks. You
Speaker 1: live in Idaho, and we're going to get into this,
Speaker 1: but like this, this will be the conversation that we
Speaker 1: have that kind of like finalized the podcast. But Clay
Speaker 1: was the winner of a loan the show alone.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, twenty two.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty is when it was when we were out there,
Speaker 3: we were right, oh really, right in the middle of COVID. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Has it been that long?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So twenty twenty Yeah, so that's like the meat on
Speaker 1: the bone. But before before we get there, no, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming man. We've got a Josh Spilmaker with us here,
Speaker 1: Barr John newkeom here. So the there's two things I
Speaker 1: want to talk about. I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: recent social media your posts that I made about water
Speaker 1: witching using witching sticks.
Speaker 2: Hey, would you cr I got some opinions on that.
Speaker 1: Great listen. I am gonna just I'm very humbly gonna
Speaker 1: just give my full appeal for what it is, how
Speaker 1: I've used it, and what I have seen with my
Speaker 1: own eyes for decades. And if anybody has a problem
Speaker 1: with that, then I don't know what to tell them.
Speaker 1: But so we're going to talk about that.
Speaker 3: It's okay to disagree. We don't have to not be friends.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I just don't know what to
Speaker 1: tell you. It's just like, okay, So we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that. And then we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: film that Baron and I were on. I've been under
Speaker 1: this under the microscope this week really from the from
Speaker 1: the water Witching post and then on the YouTube the
Speaker 1: YouTube video, everybody was talking about how like the climax
Speaker 1: of the film is when this bear pops out, and
Speaker 1: and maybe that's what we should talk about right now,
Speaker 1: there's like three hundred comments on the most recent Montana
Speaker 1: black bear video, and it's it's it's it was such
Speaker 1: a great hunt. We ended up killing a big bear.
Speaker 1: But there's this moment when bear John sees a bear
Speaker 1: and we both go up the bears coming around the
Speaker 1: road and we're trying to get bear the shot and
Speaker 1: bear puller back up. Nope, nope, nope, no up like
Speaker 1: this yeah like that, Yes, deals about to pop off.
Speaker 1: There you go, rookies, rookies. And basically the bear is
Speaker 1: like at forty yards and bears using a three hundred
Speaker 1: wind mag and I am pleading with him to shoot
Speaker 1: the bear after we wait to see that it's not
Speaker 1: a sound, doesn't have cubs or could have been a sout,
Speaker 1: just it didn't have cubs. And and basically the bear
Speaker 1: turns and as it's turning, I'm saying shoot, shoot, shoot,
Speaker 1: And when the bear fully turns and it's running away,
Speaker 1: I'm it's like I'm still in the momentum of a
Speaker 1: father just going shoot, shoot shoot. So I actually do
Speaker 1: say shoot one hundred percent while the bear is like
Speaker 1: running down the road, and so like half of the
Speaker 1: comments are just like Lear, I used to respect Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm serious And then they're like, but Bear nuke? What
Speaker 1: what a pillar of a man? Which is true? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's true. I mean Bear massively made the right
Speaker 1: decision and did the right thing even with the pressure
Speaker 1: of a dad Clay, you know, I would know how
Speaker 1: you know, the feeling. Do you have kids?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's hard to you know, get an accurate
Speaker 3: understanding of what was going on in that moment unless you're.
Speaker 1: There, right, yeah, yeah, what we could see and what
Speaker 1: the camera saw. But anyway, Bear, what what would you
Speaker 1: what do you say about it all? Yeah? I mean
Speaker 1: I feel like it was I feel like I did
Speaker 1: have a shot really like, I don't think the camera
Speaker 1: quite captured everything because at one point the bear was
Speaker 1: sticking its head up, and I mean I just had
Speaker 1: a perfect shot just like right at the kind of
Speaker 1: upper part of its chest and that was when I
Speaker 1: should have shot it. But there was They were just like,
Speaker 1: did you hesitate? Well, it was like a combination of
Speaker 1: a lot of factors. I think. I think it was
Speaker 1: like my first time to ever like be in front
Speaker 1: of the cameras, which was just like in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind there was brush in front of it,
Speaker 1: which was no big issue except like I really don't
Speaker 1: holt with a gun all that much, and I was
Speaker 1: just like in my mind that was just like you
Speaker 1: don't shoot through the brush. And then it was like
Speaker 1: we just like just seen this bear, and I was
Speaker 1: like there was like the smallest little thought in the
Speaker 1: back of my head like there's still a part of
Speaker 1: that hillslope you couldn't see that, like there could still
Speaker 1: be cubs or something, which I mean there weren't, like
Speaker 1: we kind of knew it, but it was like in
Speaker 1: that like split second that was like part of the
Speaker 1: my thinking process and I think, and then I pretty
Speaker 1: much just kind of like froze, like with all those
Speaker 1: like thoughts kind of like colliding. I just like totally froze,
Speaker 1: And so you know, that's why I didn't shoot it turning.
Speaker 1: So I did have a shot, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like if I were to do it again, I would
Speaker 1: probably just take that next shot. But well, I mean,
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do when you're in the heat
Speaker 1: of the moment and lots of stuff is coming in
Speaker 1: and there there's any negative variable, like you're supposed to wait, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like you made.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I was watching A Choice, I had that
Speaker 2: same thought. I was, like, Bear made the right move.
Speaker 1: Yeah you could have.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could have made the other the other
Speaker 2: decision and probably got the bear. But man, in those cases,
Speaker 2: better safe than sorry, especially under the scrutiny of a camera.
Speaker 1: You know, that would have been bad to have like
Speaker 1: made a bad shot off or something. Yeah. Well it
Speaker 1: it was in the moment, it felt a lot more
Speaker 1: existential than it was. I mean, like we'd been it
Speaker 1: was the sixth day. Yeah, I think that was the
Speaker 1: other part of it that the camera couldn't quite capture,
Speaker 1: was like the desperation to kill a bear. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, and it's not it's it's funny. It's
Speaker 1: not that we were I mean, it's just such a
Speaker 1: massive expedition to go up there, like yeah, thirty hours
Speaker 1: with your mules, like ends up being a ten day trip.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean you're going up there to
Speaker 1: kill a bear. And I felt like this was our
Speaker 1: one opportunity, you know, And and so anyway, but Bear
Speaker 1: was the hero though of the in the comments, I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody was taking this.
Speaker 2: Thanks for Salvage and the film.
Speaker 1: It's a good job, bear, A good job. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: any anything else you want to say about that? Oh oh,
Speaker 1: I know what tell about how we split up because
Speaker 1: you saw the bear from the long ways away? Yeah,
Speaker 1: basically we split up like after that opportunity. We split
Speaker 1: up with different ways and I saw like the bear
Speaker 1: you ended up killing. I spotted it, like it was
Speaker 1: three quarters of a mile from where I was that
Speaker 1: and so we like booked it around the rim of
Speaker 1: this mountain to get over to it. And it was
Speaker 1: about a mile and a half like a horseshoe to
Speaker 1: where it was. And we kind of like came to
Speaker 1: where we last saw it and started like sneaking down
Speaker 1: the road just thinking that any minute we were just
Speaker 1: going to like see it around the corner. I mean
Speaker 1: like literally the whole time once we got there, like
Speaker 1: I just knew we were just about to see it.
Speaker 1: My heart was pounding. And then the road forked and
Speaker 1: the bear like literally there was a fresh pile of scat,
Speaker 1: like right at the fork. I was like, if there
Speaker 1: was a children's book about bear hunting, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be in it. Yeah, yeah, following bear scat? Oh no,
Speaker 1: which way did he go? And it? You know, so
Speaker 1: I started out going right and on the right fork,
Speaker 1: it just like went over the top of this mountain
Speaker 1: and just turned into just like a whole nother area,
Speaker 1: Like it just opened up into and it was snow.
Speaker 1: There was snow on the ground up there, and no
Speaker 1: no vegetation. Yeah, but it well there wasn't snow on
Speaker 1: the ground, but there was no vegetation. There was a
Speaker 1: bank of snow. It's in the film. Oh maybe there was.
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but I remember going up that right
Speaker 1: and getting up to the top of that and it
Speaker 1: just like opened up into just like a ocean of
Speaker 1: just new territory that if he went down there, like
Speaker 1: he was just gone. And then I went to the
Speaker 1: left and it like immediately dead ended, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, well, maybe he went down the lower road,
Speaker 1: went down to the lower road, which was only like
Speaker 1: one hundred yards from the other road that we were
Speaker 1: just on, and didn't see him. So I was just like,
Speaker 1: whenever I was thinking about it, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the bear had to have just gone on that right
Speaker 1: fork and just disappeared into right like the whole world.
Speaker 1: So when we met back up together, yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way we're going to kill that bear. He's gone.
Speaker 1: And they didn't get that part on camera, but we
Speaker 1: met and you were telling me I need to go
Speaker 1: back in there during prime time. So it's like it's
Speaker 1: like two hours left of daylight and he's seen this
Speaker 1: bear like an hour before, and he was telling me
Speaker 1: he was gonna go like a totally different direction, and
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I was gonna go try to
Speaker 1: find it. And I was like, man, you got to
Speaker 1: go back in where you saw that bear. I mean,
Speaker 1: that bear is in there, and I'll let you finish
Speaker 1: the story. Yeah, And so pretty much I was just
Speaker 1: certain that the bear was like gone lost to the
Speaker 1: wind and that I could maybe go get back on
Speaker 1: either that other bear right or finding finding bear. And
Speaker 1: so I went that way. And so what did I say, Josh,
Speaker 1: is he is he left on his own free will,
Speaker 1: and by me begging him to go back in there,
Speaker 1: as I said, well, I'm going back in there, yep.
Speaker 1: And then I went back in there and killed the bear,
Speaker 1: like right where he was. That bear had to have
Speaker 1: been just like bedded down. I mean, yeah, he had
Speaker 1: to have been close because where you shot him, there's
Speaker 1: actually a clip Yeah, in the film walking down this
Speaker 1: little and it was exactly where you shot him. Well,
Speaker 1: what's funny about the film? And again this is me
Speaker 1: saying I've been under the scrutiny of the of the
Speaker 1: of the world this week is I had I had
Speaker 1: a friend that say he was watching the whole the
Speaker 1: film with his family, and he said, me and Bear
Speaker 1: split up, and Bear goes back the other way, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the way they edited it, it's
Speaker 1: it's bear walking. He's going to look for bear by
Speaker 1: you know, like day six was getting dark that though.
Speaker 1: And then it shifts to me and it's just like
Speaker 1: over the shoulder, there's a bear and you just see
Speaker 1: a person's arm and camouflage and a gun and shoot
Speaker 1: the bear. You see the bear go down, and then
Speaker 1: the camera turns and it's me, not Bear. And he
Speaker 1: said his whole family went what And he said his kids,
Speaker 1: his little kids were like and they were they were
Speaker 1: upset with me for shooting bears. And then so but
Speaker 1: the but we didn't get on the film of like
Speaker 1: you know, you know, he me trying to get him
Speaker 1: to go back right, but no, So so I'm glad
Speaker 1: we got that taken care of. And uh no, okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. The term water witching is probably
Speaker 1: not the best descriptor. I've heard it called dowsing, water witching,
Speaker 1: or divining rods. I was taught, Now this is bizarre,
Speaker 1: but I was taught that divining rods and dowsing were
Speaker 1: actually like purposeful engagement with the spirit realm to get
Speaker 1: information about like what you were doing. And so my
Speaker 1: dad was always.
Speaker 2: Like, so the one word that didn't associate with that
Speaker 2: was witching.
Speaker 1: Exactly. But as a kid, I remember my dad being like, now,
Speaker 1: thousand and divining rods, now that's witchcraft, but waterwitching is.
Speaker 2: Okay, Clay, have you ever have you ever done water witching?
Speaker 3: I I don't recall if I've ever messed with him before,
Speaker 3: but I've seen folks do it, but they probably had
Speaker 3: no idea what they were doing either. I mean with
Speaker 3: coat hangers.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, what implement do you use?
Speaker 1: Oh, coat hangers?
Speaker 2: I've done it. Like we had a friend who had
Speaker 2: a water leak at his house and we could not
Speaker 2: find it, and uh, my friend's expense, you know, he said, well,
Speaker 2: let's let's witch it. And I was like, what are
Speaker 2: you talking about? And uh he he gets coat hangers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we start we know the general location of where
Speaker 2: the water line is, right, and so we start crossing it.
Speaker 2: And I swear to you the where he divined it
Speaker 2: was exactly where the water leak was. And I didn't
Speaker 2: believe it. So I tried it and they move, they move.
Speaker 2: I can't. It's unexplainable. Is the science here?
Speaker 1: Listen? Listen, Okay, here's the deal. There are three hundred
Speaker 1: comments on the posts that I made. I would say
Speaker 1: eighty percent of them are people with stories like that
Speaker 1: that's just like, I don't understand it, but it works.
Speaker 1: And then there are multiple comments of guys that are
Speaker 1: you know, come across as intelligent and informed and go,
Speaker 1: there's no academic research on this. This is a pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: It's not real, I'll tell you. And so this goes
Speaker 1: back to the naming mechanism that Gary Nukem was comfortable with.
Speaker 1: Was the reason that witching sticks were okay and had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with like the dark realm giving you
Speaker 1: information about the Earth was because they work like gravity.
Speaker 1: I mean like they just work. I could do it
Speaker 1: right now, and I could. I could you take two?
Speaker 1: You take a coat hanger, a metal coat hanger, and
Speaker 1: straighten it out and take the last six inches and
Speaker 1: bend it into a ninety tep and you hold it
Speaker 1: and you walk loosely.
Speaker 2: You hold it real loosely.
Speaker 1: Very loosely, and it will find all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: The only way that I can describe it is that
Speaker 1: it finds anomalies in the ground. That's like the That's
Speaker 1: not nobody ever said that to me. That's just what
Speaker 1: it does. Like if you walk over your dog, it
Speaker 1: does like this. If I walked if I walked over you,
Speaker 1: it would do that. If you walk over a water line,
Speaker 1: a gas line, uh, it'll do that.
Speaker 2: I've only ever done it for water.
Speaker 1: So and and and the reason it works over a
Speaker 1: grave is because there's metal, there's a coffin, there's hollow space,
Speaker 1: there's something in the ground. I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: why it works over this man. It's a it's oh,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 2: I mean, it predates coat hangers, by the way.
Speaker 1: Predates coat hangers. Well, so, but I would like to
Speaker 1: I would like to here. Here's my thing about it
Speaker 1: is that, uh, somebody told me. They said it's subconscious
Speaker 1: and you're moving the rods without knowing it with your hands.
Speaker 2: Did it with my eyes closed?
Speaker 1: And every person that did that, I asked them, I said,
Speaker 1: have you ever done it before? Because that is absolutely
Speaker 1: not I like, I completely reject that, because like you're
Speaker 1: not moving them with your hands, that they are moving
Speaker 1: on their own. I had a guy say, Clay, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing as the Oigi board, which I don't
Speaker 1: even say the name Ogi board. That's like, that's like
Speaker 1: stuff I don't want to mess with exactly. But as
Speaker 1: I understand Oigi board, you actually consciously like engage with
Speaker 1: with with the spirit realm or something. The only spirit
Speaker 1: realm I'm engaging with is God and Jesus. That's all.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm That's all the guys I'm talking to.
Speaker 1: And this guy was like, it's no different than a
Speaker 1: Wigi board, and I'm like, I reject that too, because
Speaker 1: I I don't think darkness cares about where my gas
Speaker 1: line is, or my or my dog or all. And
Speaker 1: so all I'm saying humbly is I have I do
Speaker 1: not understand it, but I know that that it works.
Speaker 1: And it's not an exact science. I mean, like, if
Speaker 1: you put me studies. There there have been, uh, but
Speaker 1: this was the most interesting thing. If you would go
Speaker 1: back and read all all those comments, there's a there
Speaker 1: is a lot of.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: Guy says, Okay, his name is Brandon. He says, I
Speaker 1: just saw your witch and stick video. I'm in Southeast
Speaker 1: Texas and used to work in oil and gas. We
Speaker 1: use them to find lines as last resort when nothing
Speaker 1: else would work. From what I was told, the rods
Speaker 1: will close towards each other when there's a break in
Speaker 1: the Earth's natural magnetic field. I've used them a lot,
Speaker 1: and there's a company that actually makes them for line locating.
Speaker 1: It's a plastic handle with a collapsible rod that goes
Speaker 1: inside of it. I've got one in my work truck
Speaker 1: and I'll send you pictures of it. And he did.
Speaker 1: He sent me pictures of his commercial witching sticks that
Speaker 1: his oil and gas company provided provides for him.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean so again, when I when I made the video,
Speaker 1: I was like, I knew that it would stir up
Speaker 1: some Yeah. So I had a guy like met private
Speaker 1: message me that was just like Clay, I really respect
Speaker 1: you and has a friend I want to just tell you. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was like, you're an idiot, he said, this is
Speaker 1: this is a pseudo site, like he couldn't believe that
Speaker 1: I and I just wrote back and I said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I hear you. I understand, I said, but it just
Speaker 1: works so dang good. And I just kind of fist
Speaker 1: bumped him, you know, just like I don't know what
Speaker 1: to say. It works, it does.
Speaker 3: And I'm trying to find a video here. I saw
Speaker 3: a post probably on Instagram a little while back. I
Speaker 3: think I've got it here. It's a YouTube clip of
Speaker 3: Oprah way back in the day. And she's holding this
Speaker 3: she's holding this string. She's got a u some sort
Speaker 3: of psychologist or something that she's holding this string and
Speaker 3: dangling from the strings little nut or something piece of metal,
Speaker 3: and she's holding it as still as she can. It's
Speaker 3: it's still, and the and the guy tells her this, Uh,
Speaker 3: imagine this nut swinging in a circle, and it starts
Speaker 3: swinging in a circle, and she's holding it as still
Speaker 3: as she can, and so subconsciously she's introducing minute movements
Speaker 3: into this which is causing this. And he can tell her,
Speaker 3: imagine it moving back and forth, and it does all
Speaker 3: of these things.
Speaker 2: And so you think it's that you think it's pseudoscience.
Speaker 3: I think I.
Speaker 1: Mean, well, I think finding water is pseudoscience. That's my others.
Speaker 1: So it's just I can't. I cannot go find water.
Speaker 1: Like there are lots of people in the Ozarks and
Speaker 1: all over the country that they would back in especially
Speaker 1: back in the day, would hire a water someone that
Speaker 1: would water. Which'll well, so if you had a big
Speaker 1: piece of property, like where is there the shallowest water,
Speaker 1: you would go get this person and they would find
Speaker 1: you water. I I don't call me when you need
Speaker 1: your well drilled, call me when you need to find
Speaker 1: your waterline, period period. So but tell me what what
Speaker 1: do you think though? Like what what what do you
Speaker 1: get from that?
Speaker 3: I mean it, I don't have any experience with it.
Speaker 3: So I'm talking from just you know, the outside looking in.
Speaker 3: But it sure seems to me like the same things
Speaker 3: happening with what was happening with Oprah Winfrey when she
Speaker 3: was when this thing was moving over so she was
Speaker 3: they even though you even though you say you know
Speaker 3: you're you can't like I am not moving these rods,
Speaker 3: Well she wasn't moving that that string.
Speaker 1: But she was interesting. Well, when we get done with this.
Speaker 1: We we should make it so and and I'll see
Speaker 1: if you can find my sewer line over there. All right, fine,
Speaker 1: sat tanks because he doesn't know where anything is.
Speaker 3: Make a believer out of me and you just we'll see.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I I don't want to argue with anybody. I just
Speaker 1: am like this is this has been. This has worked
Speaker 1: for me. So now we got that out of the way.
Speaker 1: That's a real relief. So clay has been here. What
Speaker 1: is this clay? That's a gator hide that you tanned? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you tan that?
Speaker 3: Well, there's a little bit of a process to it.
Speaker 3: Like like most hides, you gotta uh dehare them. If
Speaker 3: you're gonna make leather. Well, you've got to de scale those.
Speaker 3: They have they have a Oh.
Speaker 2: They do have a actual scale that comes up.
Speaker 3: It's not like a fish scale. It's like, uh, well
Speaker 3: they are kind of like fish scales, I guess. But
Speaker 3: there's definitely an outer layer to those, to those.
Speaker 1: Hides, like a snake kind of has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of like that. But you you would soak
Speaker 3: that h you flesh it first, and I fleshed that
Speaker 3: with a with a pressure washer. Okay, that's the easiest
Speaker 3: way to do. Gator fleshed it and then soaked it
Speaker 3: in a five gallon bucket with lime and just polarized limestone.
Speaker 3: And that's a that's an alkaline thing that makes the
Speaker 3: hide swell up and it loosens. If you did if
Speaker 3: you did a piece, if you did a deer hide,
Speaker 3: it caused the hair to loosen. You just wipe it
Speaker 3: off with your hand nice and with that it causes
Speaker 3: the scales loosen. You can just again just wipe them off.
Speaker 3: That right there, that's his belly, yep. I didn't I
Speaker 3: And that's the way that you know most unless you're
Speaker 3: gonna do it for a mount or something, you do
Speaker 3: what they call I think hornback or something like that,
Speaker 3: and you'd have that that those plates on the back.
Speaker 3: But if you're gonna make leather, that's what you do.
Speaker 2: Did you harvest that gator?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Those came from Louisiana, got those several years ago.
Speaker 3: I've got a friend down there and it's got some
Speaker 3: property down south. Uh normal ones. But then that's just
Speaker 3: done with nothing but oak bark. And take a bunch
Speaker 3: of oak bark, yep, and steep it in hot water
Speaker 3: and it's it draws those tannins out. Throw that thing
Speaker 3: right in there, and it soaked the hide, soaks up
Speaker 3: the tannins. And you have to go through several changes
Speaker 3: of water, you know, changes of that solution, but eventually
Speaker 3: it soaks up as much.
Speaker 2: As it's each time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the way I do it is, I've got
Speaker 3: a I've got a keg, like a stainless steel keg.
Speaker 3: Cut the top out of it and it makes a
Speaker 3: you know, big nice bruepot or a you know, fill
Speaker 3: it up with with bark, fill it up with water,
Speaker 3: and heat it up until it's simmering. And then just
Speaker 3: cut the cut the heat and just let it let
Speaker 3: it simmer or let it sit there and steep and
Speaker 3: basically making tea.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 3: And uh. Put that into a non reactive container they're
Speaker 3: plastic or stainless or something like that, and soak your
Speaker 3: hide in it, and and uh it takes for something
Speaker 3: that thick, it'll take, you know, a month, six weeks,
Speaker 3: but you're you're having to, like, it'll soak up all
Speaker 3: the tannins and the color the liquid changes. It'll be
Speaker 3: like a dart red tea color, like a nice pretty
Speaker 3: color to start with. And then as that soaks it up,
Speaker 3: it just kind of turns like a pale, like a
Speaker 3: yellow color, and then toss that out put more more
Speaker 3: liquid in there.
Speaker 2: So having that in there for six weeks doesn't break
Speaker 2: that that leather down.
Speaker 3: No, it's the tannins are preservative. Uh. And that's that's
Speaker 3: one of the reasons, like when they that's why they
Speaker 3: started putting hops and beer, is my understanding, is because
Speaker 3: tops are a they have tannins in them, and that's
Speaker 3: that bitterness, and that's it was. It was a preservative
Speaker 3: back before, you know, when they're just putting in wooden kegs.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Interesting. So is that tan is good as a
Speaker 1: commercial tan like you might get from a Yeah, is
Speaker 1: it really?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it'll lasts a lifetime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You could take that hide right there, dig a
Speaker 3: hole in your yard and bury it, come back three
Speaker 3: years later and it'd still be there.
Speaker 2: Really, that is cool. That make a nice pair of boots.
Speaker 1: Have you ever backed a bow with gator skin?
Speaker 3: I haven't, but I've I've thought about it. I've thought
Speaker 3: about I think the the sides of the tail, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're on a small gator, like if you had
Speaker 3: a if he had a tail that was maybe two
Speaker 3: feet long or something like that. I think that'd be cool.
Speaker 1: Bear show us your bow. So this is what I've
Speaker 1: been working on. I'm gonna use it as a bow
Speaker 1: fishing bow, but it's been turning out pretty good so far,
Speaker 1: so I'll probably also use it as a hunting bow.
Speaker 1: But I've got sturgeon skins on the back of this one.
Speaker 1: That is cool. Man. Yeah, I got him from a
Speaker 1: guy in North Carolina who I guess he lives next
Speaker 1: to like a sturgeon farm. These are like farm sturgeon,
Speaker 1: like wild sturgeon. But uh, yeah, it's pretty that the
Speaker 1: finish is that the way it's gonna be. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's finished. You put something on it. I've got to
Speaker 1: put something on it and then kind of just do
Speaker 1: some finish work sandpaper when you run your hand down that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to.
Speaker 2: It is It is such an a weird did you
Speaker 2: feel that? It's like a weird texture to it. It's
Speaker 2: like a cat's tongue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why did you ever touch a cat's tongue?
Speaker 2: Well, you know cat's tongue has barbs on it.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't know that, Josh.
Speaker 2: How many cats have you killed? Killed a ton of cats.
Speaker 2: Well what mountain wion, mountain bobcats?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not house cats. Let's just classify it. Didn't
Speaker 1: stick my finger in their mouth either. That's weirder than
Speaker 1: witch and sticks. True. That's a cool bow. I like it.
Speaker 1: So that's gonna be your bowfish and bow. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'll probably also the way I want to design. I've
Speaker 1: kind of got an idea in mind right now where
Speaker 1: I can just like basically bolt on like a bow
Speaker 1: fishing reel and then just take it off and it'll
Speaker 1: be a hunting bow.
Speaker 3: I have a video on my YouTube channel that shows
Speaker 3: you how to make a bow fishing real little that
Speaker 3: that fits on those bows really nicely. Really his man
Speaker 3: out of a bean can and a hacks All blade.
Speaker 1: I need to check that out.
Speaker 3: It's you can make one in ten minutes and they
Speaker 3: work really good.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: Now, did you you did not make a bow fishing
Speaker 1: rig on the Alone show? You made a fishing reel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was but I'd made one. I'd
Speaker 3: made one of those, or made a couple of them
Speaker 3: actually before I went out there. That was part of
Speaker 3: my I knew I was going to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty incredible he made Do you remember
Speaker 1: that bear when he made the I don't really even
Speaker 1: remember what it was like. But you were able to
Speaker 1: take with you a spool of a spool of fishing line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you carved a reel out of wood, like
Speaker 1: a functional fishing reel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was made like it would it
Speaker 3: would cast like an open face spinning reel. So I
Speaker 3: had two pegs, one sticking straight out front, one sticking
Speaker 3: to the side so that reel. I would stick it
Speaker 3: on there, and I had islets made out of a
Speaker 3: snare wire and I could I mean, it cast just
Speaker 3: like a spinning run. And then I couldn't reel it
Speaker 3: like that, so I'd take it off and stick it
Speaker 3: on that peg on the side and then I could
Speaker 3: reel it. So it was like a they make one.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a no, I can't remember what they're called,
Speaker 3: but there's a I think there's a real that's out
Speaker 3: of Australia or New Zealand that flips like that, and
Speaker 3: I can't remember what they're called.
Speaker 1: Oh, like a commercial reel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're available, Clay.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen the season that you were on yet.
Speaker 2: How long did you stay out? Hold on, sorry, I'm
Speaker 2: way down the road.
Speaker 1: This is like like we need to we need before
Speaker 1: we release that information, which the world knows already how
Speaker 1: long you stayed, But we're gonna that's like the meat
Speaker 1: on the bone. So that the question was like, I'm sorry, Josh,
Speaker 1: we have already acted. We would like to react.
Speaker 3: Question.
Speaker 1: That's like that's like your your your kid reaching up
Speaker 1: and grabbing like the choice piece of meat and like
Speaker 1: trying to chomp into it before they even said the prayer.
Speaker 2: But who likes who doesn't like the choice meat?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You were after the choice meet? Yep, Clay, how
Speaker 1: long were you out there?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, give it? Give a spiel about just like
Speaker 1: what is Alone? I mean, I think everybody would know,
Speaker 1: but maybe some people wouldn't. And it's like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and how did you get involved in it?
Speaker 3: So? Alone is a TV show that I think they're
Speaker 3: on their like thirteenth season or something like that now.
Speaker 3: It's been going on for a pretty good while. In
Speaker 3: the the premise is that there's ten people and you
Speaker 3: get to choose ten items from a list. You can't
Speaker 3: just bring whatever you want. There's a very specific list
Speaker 3: that you get to choose from very basic survival items
Speaker 3: an ax a, saw, a pot, that stuff like that,
Speaker 3: very basic stuff. Aw a bow and arrow counts as
Speaker 3: one item if you want to take that. Uh. And
Speaker 3: they take these ten people and they take them far
Speaker 3: out into the wilderness and drop them off alone in
Speaker 3: ten different places, and basically it's the last person standing wins,
Speaker 3: the last person out there wins. And it's I mean,
Speaker 3: it's having gone through that, like having gone through that
Speaker 3: and having been associated with other television shows in a
Speaker 3: variety of capacities. That's it. Like people ask, you know,
Speaker 3: you always run into skepticism, like they're just whatever, it's legit.
Speaker 3: Like when they drop you off, you're on your own.
Speaker 3: They do not. There's no catered meals.
Speaker 1: There's all self filmed, right, it's all self filmed.
Speaker 3: There's no camera guys out there with you. You are
Speaker 3: literally alone to make a living with whatever ten items
Speaker 3: you brought. They do come back and check on you,
Speaker 3: make sure you're not dead, yeah, or getting you know,
Speaker 3: got your leg chewed off, and you have the ability.
Speaker 3: You have a satellite communicator. So if you ever want
Speaker 3: to leave, you just tell them come and get me
Speaker 3: I'm done, and they'll come and get you. And that's
Speaker 3: how that that's you know, that's how you end up
Speaker 3: with one person. Yeah, people tap out or or so
Speaker 3: they're they're removed because of either malnutrition or there some
Speaker 3: health issue.
Speaker 1: And so you were on it actually took place in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and you were in British Columbia.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Was it like just like National Forest or Crown Land
Speaker 1: in Columbia.
Speaker 3: It's native ground and that's usually I think what they
Speaker 3: do because they can. I don't know all the reasons,
Speaker 3: but I think they they have some leeway with hunting
Speaker 3: and fishing regulations. Okay on those grounds.
Speaker 1: Okay, So are you bound by hunting and fishing regulations?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, So what were the parameters when you were there?
Speaker 1: You could kill a deer, You could kill a black bear,
Speaker 1: no bears, no bears.
Speaker 3: I don't under I still don't understand that you couldn't
Speaker 3: kill a black bear. You got one deer, one deer.
Speaker 3: Get Yeah, you had permission to kill one deer. And
Speaker 3: you think you know, I got comments like when you
Speaker 3: know you kill that deer, you're set. But I guarantee
Speaker 3: any one person in this room could eat an entire
Speaker 3: deer in three weeks, done, all gone, if you're eating
Speaker 3: nothing but that deer, and so you know, that's not
Speaker 3: enough to sustain a grown man for months at a time.
Speaker 3: And so even though I did end up killing a deer,
Speaker 3: but I had to ration it really sparsely, like I
Speaker 3: was eating very very little. I'd like to know how
Speaker 3: many calories I was eating, you know, each day, but
Speaker 3: it was not a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you went into alone. I remember you try.
Speaker 1: You were trying to gain weight. So what did you weigh?
Speaker 1: Going in one hundred and eighty pounds, which was heavy
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 3: That's way heavy.
Speaker 1: You've probably never been there.
Speaker 3: I'd never been. I don't think i'd ever been over
Speaker 3: one sixty five.
Speaker 1: So you packed on twenty pounds. Yeah, and just like
Speaker 1: just eating junk food. Is that I'm putting words in
Speaker 1: your mouth? Is that what you did?
Speaker 3: No? I mean my wife Liz did it all. She
Speaker 3: like I couldn't have done that without her. She was
Speaker 3: cooking like I was. I was eating like a loaded
Speaker 3: baked potato every day and just eating so much that
Speaker 3: I was just constantly I was never not uncomfortably full,
Speaker 3: just like stuffed. I hated it, but that's what I
Speaker 3: had to do.
Speaker 1: How long did you do that? How long did it
Speaker 1: take you to gain that way?
Speaker 3: Probably five months I started.
Speaker 1: That's wild is that like eighty percent of men in
Speaker 1: this country would not have that problem at all. These
Speaker 1: two guys would bear and Clay I could put I
Speaker 1: could put on twenty pounds yep, pretty quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, but I started, like I started
Speaker 3: gaining weight. I knew it was gonna be difficult. I
Speaker 3: started trying to gain weight before I even knew I
Speaker 3: was gonna be on the show.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I mean when it was like a possibility.
Speaker 3: Yeah, from the first contact with the with the casting director,
Speaker 3: I was like, it's pretty get a chance. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be on this thing. So I started trying to gain weight,
Speaker 3: and it was not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2: Is this something that you like applied for?
Speaker 3: You can apply for it, but that I was actually
Speaker 3: recommended by a former participant and they contacted me. But
Speaker 3: there's other folks like Jordan Jonas. He put in and
Speaker 3: he was the winner of season six. I think he
Speaker 3: put in his application along with forty thousand other people
Speaker 3: or however many. I mean, that's a bunch of people
Speaker 3: that apply to be on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they kind of pick and choose probably who
Speaker 1: they think is going to be good at it successful or.
Speaker 3: I think they. I think they based their choices on
Speaker 3: a variety of criteria. One is, one is that you
Speaker 3: could do it still, One is skill. One is h
Speaker 3: who they think is going to be who the audience
Speaker 3: is going to connect with. So there's death, there's there's
Speaker 3: more stuff than just like you know how good you
Speaker 3: are in the woods? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, so you start gain and wait, at
Speaker 1: what point did you know you were going on the show?
Speaker 1: Like a couple of months before I was.
Speaker 3: The kind of a funny thing is I didn't know.
Speaker 3: I didn't know for sure that I was going to
Speaker 3: go out until two days before I went out.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Because I was cast as an alternate really yeah,
Speaker 3: And so I went up there. The only reason I
Speaker 3: got on is because they cast someone from the UK
Speaker 3: and this was right in the middle of COVID and
Speaker 3: he couldn't come because they had all that they had
Speaker 3: to travel, you know, shut down. Yeah, and that's the
Speaker 3: only reason I was able to get on the show.
Speaker 1: Really, So you were you were an alternate. So two
Speaker 1: days before you're in Idaho.
Speaker 3: No no, no, I went to So when they when you,
Speaker 3: they only ten people go out in the field, but
Speaker 3: they actually take twelve to location. And so because this
Speaker 3: was in the middle of COVID, we had a two
Speaker 3: week quarantine and then a ten day at ten or
Speaker 3: twelve day orientation period at the not at location, but
Speaker 3: near nearer there. And that whole time that it was
Speaker 3: me and another we knew one of us was going on,
Speaker 3: but they wouldn't never tell us who it was, and
Speaker 3: they were just waiting to see.
Speaker 1: So they had twelve people there in case like something
Speaker 1: happened to one of the ten.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: But so you're up there thinking you're not even going
Speaker 1: to be on the show.
Speaker 2: Do you knew you were an alternate?
Speaker 3: I knew, Yeah, I was. I knew it was an
Speaker 3: alternate because they told me that before. Like, you know,
Speaker 3: I was talking to the casting director and she's like,
Speaker 3: I can't remember exactly how it went, but uh, she said,
Speaker 3: we've we've got all the ten spots filled, but would
Speaker 3: you accept being an alternate? And I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I was kind of kicking the balls. Yeah, I had to.
Speaker 3: I st them to think about that, and I took
Speaker 3: a day and thought about it. I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: if there's an opera.
Speaker 1: Stakes were high, yeah, like if it worked out, it
Speaker 1: would be really yeah significant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And anyway, I ended up I ended up accepting it.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, I mean, we didn't know at
Speaker 3: this time, Like I didn't know if this guy, I
Speaker 3: didn't even know that was going to be an issue.
Speaker 3: You know that he wouldn't be able to come. So
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, you know, he's coming, and I'm just going
Speaker 3: to be there, And you know, I was like, well,
Speaker 3: at the very least, I'll get to meet some cool people.
Speaker 1: And you would have gone there and just gone home
Speaker 1: when they went out, Yeah, okay, yeah, so you're like
Speaker 1: on deck. Yeah, and then two days before they go
Speaker 1: you're in the show.
Speaker 3: Yep. Wow.
Speaker 1: They take you out to this location. And how much
Speaker 1: do you think the location matters for success? Like, I
Speaker 1: guess how much variation is there in locations they're on
Speaker 1: a single show.
Speaker 3: I think there can be a lot. I never saw
Speaker 3: anyone else's location, but just from looking at the footage
Speaker 3: and talking to people, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 3: variation and.
Speaker 2: How big of a range was everybody in.
Speaker 3: We were on a lake, Chilco Lake, which is I
Speaker 3: think something like fifty miles. I could be mistaken about
Speaker 3: that big. I think we were spread out for fifty
Speaker 3: miles along.
Speaker 2: This so you were probably five to ten miles from
Speaker 2: someone else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and they have you know, you're supposed to
Speaker 3: carry a tracker with the a GPS tracker, and so
Speaker 3: if you they have a boundary, and like when you
Speaker 3: when you're they dropped us off on a boat and
Speaker 3: when you're when you're going up there, you know, getting
Speaker 3: dropped off, they say, you know this ridge top and
Speaker 3: you know, they kind of point out the boundaries, but
Speaker 3: you can't really unless you're in the air, which some
Speaker 3: of them are dropped off in the air. You know,
Speaker 3: it's on other seasons that they have a better I
Speaker 3: would I feel like anyway, they'd have a better idea
Speaker 3: where their boundaries are, which is handy because I didn't
Speaker 3: know exactly where my boundaries were until I hit them
Speaker 3: and then they start beeping. You like, turn around, go back,
Speaker 3: and you're like, well, hell, I just spent the last
Speaker 3: five hours trying to get over here, and now you're
Speaker 3: now I got to go back. Really yeah, they only
Speaker 3: did that to me a couple of times, but there
Speaker 3: was one.
Speaker 1: Time you were pushing the boundaries. Oh yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: that big of an area then it was big.
Speaker 3: But I I mean I walk and I wanted, like
Speaker 3: you have to do well and to be able to
Speaker 3: exploit the resources, you got to know what's on there.
Speaker 3: And the only only reason, the only way to know,
Speaker 3: they don't show you a map. I mean, it's basically
Speaker 3: you just like you're going somewhere you've never been before.
Speaker 3: And on top of that, when we went in, there
Speaker 3: was a bunch of wildfires to the south of us
Speaker 3: and all that smoke was blowing up there, so the
Speaker 3: visibility was less than a mile, like you couldn't see anything.
Speaker 3: And so you're basically going out there blindfolded and they're
Speaker 3: dropping you off, say good luck, and so you think about,
Speaker 3: you know, being out on a drop hunt like that
Speaker 3: where you don't you don't get to pick your spot,
Speaker 3: you don't even get to look at any aerial photographs
Speaker 3: or anything before you go out there. You just like
Speaker 3: dropped off and then you have to figure it out,
Speaker 3: well you know where you know, to figure out where
Speaker 3: the critters are, you gotta walk the you gotta walk it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And there was one time where I could see from
Speaker 3: from uh, you know, part of my area. I could
Speaker 3: see that there was up this slope there was like
Speaker 3: a little bench, and I was like, well, that looks
Speaker 3: like a good a place where critters would come across. Well,
Speaker 3: I got three quarters of the way there and they
Speaker 3: and it was up some nasty hillside that was brushed
Speaker 3: in and just nasty walking. I got three quarters away
Speaker 3: there and they ding me.
Speaker 1: That turned around and you take them back. But there's
Speaker 1: a sweet little funnel up there. I probably got some
Speaker 1: elk coming through. What about that mountain? Didn't you see
Speaker 1: a mountain lion?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was uh, I think it was the second
Speaker 3: or third day there. Right at my camp. I was
Speaker 3: just sitting down by a campfire and just kind of
Speaker 3: minding my own business, and this red squirrel ten yards
Speaker 3: behind me shot up a tree started barking. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's weird. And I turned around. There was a mountain
Speaker 3: line and he wasn't I mean, he was less than
Speaker 3: ten yards from me looking at me, and he was
Speaker 3: kind of crouched down in the bush. And I had
Speaker 3: the camera there and I got him on film and everything,
Speaker 3: the cameras rolling, but my bow was twenty yards away
Speaker 3: at my where my uh I had strung up a
Speaker 3: tart for a temporary shelter. And I is one of
Speaker 3: those you know, hindsight things. I what I tried to
Speaker 3: do was I tried to just kind of ease back
Speaker 3: over there. Well, when I took a step away from him,
Speaker 3: he took he turnedtail and faded into the bushes, and
Speaker 3: I ran after him, trying to get him the tree,
Speaker 3: but he was gone. And I, you know, in hindsight,
Speaker 3: what I should have done was right when I saw him,
Speaker 3: I should have just ran at him, and he probably
Speaker 3: would have popped up a tree and I probably could
Speaker 3: have got to my bow.
Speaker 1: But I legally could have killed him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And when they when they told us that,
Speaker 3: it's like it was what we were going to get
Speaker 3: to hunt was in negotiation for a long time and
Speaker 3: we didn't get I didn't know, we didn't know what
Speaker 3: we were going until maybe a week before we went out.
Speaker 3: We didn't even know we were going to get be
Speaker 3: able to have shoot a deer. And so they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, you can, you know you can? You
Speaker 3: can kill a mountain lion and uh, maybe even a links.
Speaker 3: And it was like, well we're out, great, thanks, good luck,
Speaker 3: good luck. Like I've spent my life in the woods,
Speaker 3: I've never seen one. Well they two have one ten
Speaker 3: yards behind me looking at me.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that scene, and I remember you
Speaker 1: discussing with the camera that you should have run at it.
Speaker 1: You know what I thought when when you said that.
Speaker 1: You know, you watch television and you see these survival
Speaker 1: people and most well I don't. I the world knew
Speaker 1: you were legit when you said I should have charged
Speaker 1: that mountain lion, and it would have tried, like I don't.
Speaker 1: You can be in bushcraft and yeah, and but but
Speaker 1: only a hunter would know that that would work. Because
Speaker 1: when he said that, I was like, why, I bet
Speaker 1: he could have you know what I mean? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they you can do that with a bear. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you see a bear come up close on a
Speaker 1: black bear, nobody agrees but run at them. And there
Speaker 1: their flight responses typically to go up a tree, you know.
Speaker 1: But no, no, that was a that was wild. You
Speaker 1: even got him on camera. That's that to me seems
Speaker 1: to be the challenge with with that whole scenarios you're
Speaker 1: filming and like just getting something, getting anything on film
Speaker 1: to show people without just telling them just like hey,
Speaker 1: I just saw a mountain lion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you got one of the things that I mean,
Speaker 3: that's one of the things that they really drilled into
Speaker 3: our heads before when we went out is just let
Speaker 3: the camera roll. It doesn't matter if anything, if there's
Speaker 3: nothing going on, leave the camera on. Let it roll.
Speaker 1: Because they believe you had like stacks and I had, yeah,
Speaker 1: unbelievable amounts of batteries.
Speaker 3: Yeah that they we had a big Pelican case that
Speaker 3: was I mean it was big. It's probably it's probably
Speaker 3: the biggest pelican case they make. And it was like
Speaker 3: that big that or that wide, and you know, maybe
Speaker 3: two feet deep and like fourteen inches deep, and that
Speaker 3: thing was just chock full. We had extra cameras, go
Speaker 3: pros and just you know, pounds and pounds of batteries
Speaker 3: and media cards. And so when they when they came
Speaker 3: out to do their med checks, they would that they
Speaker 3: would swap out they would get our old are filled
Speaker 3: up media cards, give us fresh ones, and then swap
Speaker 3: out batteries. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting so you didn't have any way to charge anything.
Speaker 3: No, they didn't have any way to charge anything. We
Speaker 3: had a battery bank, but the only thing I ever
Speaker 3: used that for was maybe charging like uh, the little
Speaker 3: satellite communicator thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you how did you establish where your home
Speaker 1: base was? It was it just right on the lake.
Speaker 3: It ended up being I I was. I think I
Speaker 3: was the last one to set up a permanent shelter.
Speaker 3: They had to. They were they had to like suggest
Speaker 3: like it's probably time to set up.
Speaker 1: They texted you that.
Speaker 3: No, when they came out to do their med check
Speaker 3: one time. How many days in I don't know, it
Speaker 3: was probably ten days in or something like that.
Speaker 1: And you were just kind of floating around with a tarp.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They they needed I think they needed to know
Speaker 3: where I Was going to be so that they could
Speaker 3: get like a safety plan, like if something happened, you know,
Speaker 3: if I there was grizzly everywhere like there that that's
Speaker 3: one of the highest grizzly densities I think in North
Speaker 3: America up there. Wow. And so they you know, they
Speaker 3: have a safety crew that's ready to respond in case
Speaker 3: somebody calls in and you know, something's something's going on.
Speaker 3: So they're trying to get their plans together, like how
Speaker 3: they're going to respond to something. But I didn't set
Speaker 3: up a permanent shelter because I want I didn't want
Speaker 3: to just set it up where they dropped me off.
Speaker 3: I wanted to check out my area first. I wanted
Speaker 3: to set it up in the best possible spot, and
Speaker 3: so I was just scouting and it turned out that
Speaker 3: where they dropped me was the best spot that I found.
Speaker 3: So I ended up setting it right there, just right
Speaker 3: where they dropped pretty much.
Speaker 1: And that that had to do with proximity to good hunting,
Speaker 1: proximity to water.
Speaker 3: Water hunting, food resources, berry patches, you know, just a
Speaker 3: whole variety of things. But that where they dropped me
Speaker 3: was I was kind of right at the where a
Speaker 3: couple of different habitat types came together, so there was
Speaker 3: edge there, you know, a good place to set snares,
Speaker 3: you know. I didn't want to have to I didn't
Speaker 3: want to have to travel a long way to run
Speaker 3: a trap.
Speaker 1: Line, yeah, or to find you know, I think that
Speaker 1: would probably be the I hadn't really thought about that.
Speaker 1: But if they dropped you off and you had this
Speaker 1: huge area, I mean, I assume your area was many
Speaker 1: square miles.
Speaker 3: I don't really know how big it was. It was
Speaker 3: several it was several square miles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so you know you can't. It's just like,
Speaker 1: where do you camp when you hunt? Like you're always
Speaker 1: that would be a question you'd always answer because you
Speaker 1: don't want to be too far away from where you hunt,
Speaker 1: But you also don't want to be right in the
Speaker 1: middle of where the game is you'll spook them. So
Speaker 1: like finding that balance. And usually in my life I
Speaker 1: end up camping too far away from where I'm hunting,
Speaker 1: and you know, having to walk so far to get
Speaker 1: to the good hunting, you know, But yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be interesting. What question did you have? What time of year?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What what time of year did you start?
Speaker 3: We started mid September and then my season I think
Speaker 3: went to the end of the through the end of November,
Speaker 3: so it was getting pretty it's getting pretty chilly towards it.
Speaker 1: So okay, on the show, what's the longest anybody's ever
Speaker 1: said out?
Speaker 3: They did a they did a season season seven I think,
Speaker 3: where it was one hundred day challenge, so you had
Speaker 3: to make it to one hundred days. I think you
Speaker 3: had to make it to one hundred days to win
Speaker 3: the thing, but it was a million bucks too. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I wish I was wishing that they would have I
Speaker 3: could have stayed out there one hundred days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so one hundred days is the longest anybody on
Speaker 1: a loan as ever stayed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think eighty seven day. I could be wrong
Speaker 3: on that, but something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: With with the it's not I guess it's not apples
Speaker 1: to apples. It's because every location is different. And I
Speaker 1: remember them saying that on your season, the hunting was
Speaker 1: very difficult, like you were the only one that killed
Speaker 1: the deer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was just a it was a
Speaker 3: high elevation, really unproductive habitat. And I was there for
Speaker 3: two and a half months and I saw two.
Speaker 1: Deer and and you killed one of them, and I
Speaker 1: killed one of them. And that's that's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: I find it using thousand rods.
Speaker 2: That falls up the dark spirits we just want to witch.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't gonna tell anybody about that.
Speaker 1: So well, okay, so you yeah, you killed a deer. Man,
Speaker 1: it was on the when we were following along. I
Speaker 1: mean It's like when he killed that deer. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like awesome, you know, because you're just like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, Clay just killed a deer, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the way they build it up, you know, like
Speaker 1: everybody else is struggling, and you know, this person's starving,
Speaker 1: has been eating mushrooms. It's been a couple of years
Speaker 1: since I've actually watched the deal, but we were, we
Speaker 1: were watching it and uh and he kills a deer
Speaker 1: and you just almost can't believe it, you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I know how hard it is. Number One, to
Speaker 1: kill a deer with us traditional bow out here over
Speaker 1: a pile of corn is hard, very hard. And then
Speaker 1: to do it off the ground load density like that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just was meant to be.
Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, I mean, that was I am not.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've killed a lot of animals with self bows, deer, bear, oggs,
Speaker 3: I mean, all sorts of elk, all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 3: and I have never had an emotional reaction to any
Speaker 3: animal like I had when I walked up on that
Speaker 3: deer and saw that deer laying in the in the
Speaker 3: in the grass.
Speaker 2: How far in was it before you killed it? Three weeks, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which was probably perfect.
Speaker 3: It was, yeah, because if you killed.
Speaker 1: It on the first day, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't you know, but three weeks in that's pretty good timing.
Speaker 3: It was good timing because you know, the fishing really
Speaker 3: I had caught a few fish to start with and
Speaker 3: had a very small surplus. Like I was, I was
Speaker 3: really trying to stretch the food that I could get
Speaker 3: as far as I can stretch it. And so I
Speaker 3: would catch a fish, you know, and I might eat
Speaker 3: like i'd catch a say, a twenty inch trout. I'd
Speaker 3: eat like one quarter of one filet, you know, in
Speaker 3: a day, and that's all I would eat, maybe some
Speaker 3: mushrooms and so you're talking, I don't know how many
Speaker 3: calories that.
Speaker 1: Would be, what three hundred calories, four.
Speaker 3: Hundred calories something like that. And so I'd caught a
Speaker 3: few fish and I'd smoked them and trying to you know,
Speaker 3: just trying to preserve the meat.
Speaker 1: But I'd caught you were smoking them.
Speaker 3: Yep, I'd caught all of those. All the fish that
Speaker 3: I caught, I caught within like a two or three
Speaker 3: day period. And then which was like the first week,
Speaker 3: and so by the time I had killed that deer,
Speaker 3: I hadn't caught a fish for like ten twelve days,
Speaker 3: a fish in every single day, for hours a day.
Speaker 3: And so you got this happened.
Speaker 1: Why why couldn't you catch them?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think we. I think we got
Speaker 3: a little cold snap and they I couldn't find them
Speaker 3: in the shallows anymore. I wasn't getting bites or anything.
Speaker 3: I just they just weren't there. And so you got
Speaker 3: this little stash of you know, food, and you know
Speaker 3: that if you don't find more food, you're not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to stay. You know, I don't have enough.
Speaker 3: I don't have enough body weight to stay out there,
Speaker 3: to just sit there and starve. And so it's very stressful,
Speaker 3: Like I can see my time coming to an end
Speaker 3: because I cannot catch a fish. I'm at this point
Speaker 3: there's no snow cover, so I'm not snaring I'm not
Speaker 3: catching you rabbits, I'm not I've maybe shot a grouse
Speaker 3: or two by that time.
Speaker 1: Now, was that tape of hunting not pretty productive? Like
Speaker 1: trying to shoot a red squirrel or grass squirrels were
Speaker 1: off limits? Oh no, because they're a fur bear in
Speaker 1: Canada and they wouldn't. We couldn't take fur bears.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, So I could snare I could hunt rabbits
Speaker 3: and snare rabbits, but I wasn't seeing any I didn't
Speaker 3: start catching. Still, we got some some snow cover. But
Speaker 3: you know, you think about you think about it. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know it's it's It was stressful for me because
Speaker 3: I knew that my time, like, I wasn't gonna be
Speaker 3: able to stay there. And so when I did kill
Speaker 3: that deer and saw him laying there in the grass,
Speaker 3: it was like all of that pressure is just gone.
Speaker 3: It's just like I've never experienced like a release, a
Speaker 3: pressure release like that. It's like like the weight of
Speaker 3: the world is just like off your shoulders. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that was the deciding factor of
Speaker 2: you being able to stay out longer than everybody else?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have been able. I didn't I wasn't catching
Speaker 3: enough fish, and I wouldn't have been able to do
Speaker 3: it on rabbits and grouse. And I didn't have the
Speaker 3: body condition because by the time I shot that deer
Speaker 3: three weeks in, I was already back. I had already
Speaker 3: lost I'd lost a pound a day. Wow, I was
Speaker 3: already I estimate anyway, they would never let us look
Speaker 3: at the scale, but just bejauging by how I looked
Speaker 3: and you know how my clothes felt like. Yeah, normally
Speaker 3: I was like, I am not right now. I'm probably
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty pounds right now. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I was going to be going into a deficit after that.
Speaker 3: And I continued to decline in my weight, like by
Speaker 3: a lot. But I eventually my body, my body weight
Speaker 3: and muscle mass, we'd reached an equilibrium with what I
Speaker 3: was able to bring in and I stopped losing weight.
Speaker 3: I think I got down to one hundred and forty pounds. Wow.
Speaker 3: So I looked like, you know, my my abs. If
Speaker 3: I were to pinch my skin and the fat, that's
Speaker 3: what it looked like. There was zero fat. Like if
Speaker 3: you take your forearm and just pinch the skin.
Speaker 1: On it, like you're saying on your belly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, if I did that, that's what it looked like.
Speaker 1: There's nothing there.
Speaker 3: There was no fat at all. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, well, him describing killing that deer in the
Speaker 1: sense of relief I've I've thought about. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is kind of an artificial situation today in the modern
Speaker 1: world to send someone out and say survive, kill something
Speaker 1: with primitive weapons or snares or whatever for your survival.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of cool because we can kind of
Speaker 1: artificially make this thing that because there's so much at stake.
Speaker 1: It's actually probably pretty similar to a real kind of
Speaker 1: like paleolithic existence. I mean, other than the saws and
Speaker 1: not some of the tools you had. But I just
Speaker 1: I just think about the people. Their actual survival was
Speaker 1: their act, their their literal survival. Not not excitement because
Speaker 1: we killed a deer because we're we're hunting and we
Speaker 1: want to bring food home to our family so we
Speaker 1: don't have to eat you know, beef, but like literally
Speaker 1: people that would kill a deer and that would make
Speaker 1: them survive through a travel or something, a journey. I
Speaker 1: mean it happened, yeah, period, like people.
Speaker 3: You know, I wish that I wish that everyone could
Speaker 3: experience that that gratefulness for like I mean, just I
Speaker 3: was overjoyed with when I saw that deer, Like I mean,
Speaker 3: I was overcome with emotion. Never I've never experienced anything
Speaker 3: like that before or since.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unbelievable. So you kill this deer on like the
Speaker 1: twenty first.
Speaker 3: Day or so somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: Youah, and you have no sense of what anybody else
Speaker 1: is doing. You don't know anything. You don't know if
Speaker 1: nine eight people have dropped off and you're going against one,
Speaker 1: did you have any sensation or any any inkling, I mean,
Speaker 1: did you think you were going to win? Of course,
Speaker 1: does everybody think they're going to win.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question, and my opinion is that no,
Speaker 3: not everyone thinks they're going to win, and that's why
Speaker 3: people that's why people leave in the first week or
Speaker 3: first couple of days. Yeah, you know, I think that.
Speaker 3: I think that in order to push yourself through the
Speaker 3: discomfort and the not only the physical discomfort discomfort, but
Speaker 3: the emotional anguish of being separated from your family with
Speaker 3: no contact at all, no word at all, in order
Speaker 3: to push yourself through those things, you have to believe
Speaker 3: that you're going to win, because if you don't.
Speaker 2: It's not really worth it.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a thousand there's a thousand and one excuses
Speaker 3: to leave. I mean they are easy too, finn Yeah, like, oh,
Speaker 3: my sight is to variable. You know, so and So's
Speaker 3: got it. He must have a bears or somebody's killed
Speaker 3: a this or that, or I mean you can find
Speaker 3: reasons to leave. Yeah, finding reasons to stay is not
Speaker 3: as easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you halate that that would be just
Speaker 1: the ultimate conflict on a very micro scale. And I
Speaker 1: think everyone here would could identify with this. Imagine being
Speaker 1: on a deer stand at about nine thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: and you go, man, I could sit here till noon,
Speaker 1: or I could get down and go do some work,
Speaker 1: I could get down and have some breakfast. I could
Speaker 1: get home and go see my wife, or I could
Speaker 1: go Yeah, I'm joking, right, but it's like the same,
Speaker 1: Like there's a thousand reasons to get out of the tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are all like very valid. But then you know,
Speaker 1: you make the decision, well, I'm gonna sit till noon
Speaker 1: no matter what. It's nothing like that. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a joke. But the point is I understand what
Speaker 1: you mean. Like I watching you do it do that,
Speaker 1: And that was the first season of the Loan, that
Speaker 1: full season that I ever watched, And you know, I
Speaker 1: guess everyone does it, but you put yourself in that situation,
Speaker 1: and I mean I already thought of fifty reasons why
Speaker 1: I should go home. Yeah, I mean, you know, in
Speaker 1: the way they edit the films, and and also just
Speaker 1: what actually happens is that you start to see these
Speaker 1: characters kind of erode. You know, they do one little
Speaker 1: thing or they say one little thing, and you're like,
Speaker 1: they're gonna in two episodes, they're gonna be gone. Ye,
Speaker 1: you know. And I guess there's there's surprises of people
Speaker 1: that maybe something really fortunate happens when they start to
Speaker 1: go down. We are one of your buddies that you know,
Speaker 1: and I know, yeah, Kup Hoover Keby Harrow stuck in
Speaker 1: his leg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw. I talked to him before he went out. Actually,
Speaker 3: I think on the phone just he had I don't
Speaker 3: I don't remember what the conversation was, but he had
Speaker 3: some questions about he knew he was going on there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Obviously this show is made to be challenging and demanding.
Speaker 2: What would you say was the most difficult part of it?
Speaker 2: Was it the finding food? Was it? The mental game?
Speaker 3: Was it? I think it's the mental emotional game. There
Speaker 3: was I've talked about that, talked about this before another podcasts,
Speaker 3: and I wrote a book about the experience. It's in
Speaker 3: the book, but the probably the most difficult. I had
Speaker 3: a time period when it was probably between day fifty
Speaker 3: and sixty where I just got flat out depressed. And
Speaker 3: that's not like I don't normally. I'm not a I'm
Speaker 3: not prone to slipping into a depression or anything like that.
Speaker 3: So it was it was kind of odd for me.
Speaker 3: But you know, you got all of these things that
Speaker 3: are stacking up. You got you've been away from your family,
Speaker 3: not not only for those fifty days, but for the
Speaker 3: two week quarantine plus the ten or twelve day orientation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a long time to have no word
Speaker 3: at all from your family. So you got that, You've
Speaker 3: got weather that's turning crappy, you got fade like decreasing daylight.
Speaker 3: You got weather that's coming in. And the shelter that
Speaker 3: I made was it was a dark green tarp, and
Speaker 3: you have a snowstorm comes in and that keeps you
Speaker 3: in your shelter for two or three days. You're starving, literally,
Speaker 3: and so you got all these things coming together, and
Speaker 3: it just I mean, I just I got I got depressed,
Speaker 3: and I caught myself one day I was just complaining,
Speaker 3: and again they they they they, they drill into your
Speaker 3: head to film all the time, so the camerage is rolling.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting in my shelter one evening and just complaining
Speaker 3: about the everything just this sucks and the weather and
Speaker 3: blah blah blah whatever. And the next morning I was
Speaker 3: laying there in my in my bunk, and the thought
Speaker 3: occurred to me that my two boys are gonna watch
Speaker 3: this on TV, and they're gonna watch me complain about
Speaker 3: all these things that I have no control over. And
Speaker 3: that one thought switched my entire higher perspective on the
Speaker 3: whole thing. And I'm grateful that this was like day
Speaker 3: sixty or something. I'm grateful that I went through that
Speaker 3: period of depression because without that, without that mental anguish,
Speaker 3: I never would have gotten to that point where I
Speaker 3: was able to look at it from a completely different perspective.
Speaker 3: And from that moment on, I did not suffer anymore.
Speaker 3: And it was only because nothing changed about my situation.
Speaker 3: I didn't have any more to eat, The weather was
Speaker 3: still crap, still living in a dark hole, but it
Speaker 3: was just the way that I was looking at it right.
Speaker 3: I was able to look at it through their eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's something that has stuck with me. And that's
Speaker 3: one of those things that I wish that people just
Speaker 3: in general could get to they could experience something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, just the way that we view our lives is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's all just perspective. You know. We
Speaker 3: can choose to see it as everything's wrong, or we
Speaker 3: can choose to see it as you know, we're gonna
Speaker 3: make do and make we're gonna figure it out. Mm hmmm,
Speaker 3: up until it's perful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Up until that point. How long had
Speaker 2: had you ever spent on your own or away from
Speaker 2: your family.
Speaker 3: It was pretty common for me to go out on
Speaker 3: hunts and be gone for you know, two weeks or
Speaker 3: I think the longest that I'd ever been gone from
Speaker 3: them was probably three weeks something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tough, man.
Speaker 1: It's funny. It's funny that we're so frail when it
Speaker 1: comes to stuff like that. I mean, because you think
Speaker 1: about when it comes to actual survival, like caloric intake
Speaker 1: and keeping warm and having shelter over your head. It's like,
Speaker 1: separation from your family is not a factor that's going
Speaker 1: to kill you, right, but it absolutely is a major factor.
Speaker 2: I mean, we just we're just we're not designed to
Speaker 2: be isolated.
Speaker 1: We really are. I mean it's like it's like these
Speaker 1: mules out here. You pull one of those mules out
Speaker 1: and put it in the trailer, and the other mules
Speaker 1: are just running up and down the fence wanting to go.
Speaker 1: You know. They call it buddy sour, and it's like
Speaker 1: they're just made to stand beside each other. I mean,
Speaker 1: they just they don't even is He doesn't even like
Speaker 1: those other mules. She kicks them, bites them every day,
Speaker 1: but she cannot stand to not be standing right beside them,
Speaker 1: just chemically, you know, biologically. But it's kind of the
Speaker 1: same way because i mean, shoot, man, I'm the small hunts.
Speaker 1: Compared to that that I've been on, I have had
Speaker 1: little micro moments in the back country where I just
Speaker 1: would be like flooded with a sense of this in
Speaker 1: my family that just almost overwhelming for real. It's like
Speaker 1: really private moments of that, even as a grown man,
Speaker 1: just you know, just like I used to. I used
Speaker 1: to get real homesick, we called it when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid in grade school, like cry at school,
Speaker 1: just like just you know, just typical stuff. Right, I'm serious.
Speaker 1: I still have that sensation occasionally, and I kind of
Speaker 1: just have to calm myself down. I can't imagine being
Speaker 1: gone for how long?
Speaker 2: I have a question? How long were you out there?
Speaker 3: So we from the time that they dropped me off
Speaker 3: until they came and got me, it was seventy four days.
Speaker 3: I was gone from home the seventy four plus the
Speaker 3: two week orientation or the two week quarantine, ten day orientation,
Speaker 3: plus I was there on the backside for another probably
Speaker 3: ten days. So how whatever that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Really twenty four months?
Speaker 1: When they came to get you, you still were ten
Speaker 1: days from being home.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Now it did your wife come and meet you? Was
Speaker 1: she able to do that?
Speaker 3: They would not let her come because they had the
Speaker 3: border shut down. She's the only one in all of
Speaker 3: the seasons that wasn't able to go out there. Oh
Speaker 3: wow because of COVID yep, wow, Yes, that's that sucked.
Speaker 3: But got to talk to her via sat phone when
Speaker 3: they came and told me I was the last one.
Speaker 2: So they come, they come and get you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: It's a crazy Have you ever watched the season I've watched.
Speaker 2: I've started several seasons and not gotten to the end.
Speaker 1: And I'm not I don't watch a lot of television,
Speaker 1: but the way they do it is pretty cool because
Speaker 1: they go do this random health check and the audience
Speaker 1: doesn't know it either. Correct.
Speaker 3: I think the audience does know that they're so there
Speaker 3: there the audience is kind of in on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay. The scene is they just show up at
Speaker 1: Clay's camp to do a health check, just like they
Speaker 1: have every week probably for this whole time. And so
Speaker 1: they come up and they don't talk to them or
Speaker 1: you know, they don't chit chat with them. They're just like,
Speaker 1: step on the scale, how do you feel? What have
Speaker 1: you eaten? They do all this stuff, and you know,
Speaker 1: Clay's like one hundred and forty pounds and dirty and
Speaker 1: just like, you know, just kind of been out there
Speaker 1: for seventy four days. And then they're like, what did
Speaker 1: they say to you? Actually, because they said something like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to I think you said like I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to catch a rabbit tomorrow or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they asked, uh that. So one of the things
Speaker 3: that they do when they come out and do their
Speaker 3: health check is the field producer, I'll do a short
Speaker 3: interview with you just to kind of so they have
Speaker 3: an idea of what's been going on for the from
Speaker 3: that time to the previous when they came out there
Speaker 3: the previous time. It helps them to you know, find
Speaker 3: footage to make and do their ends and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And so they asked like, so, how long do you
Speaker 3: think you can make it out here? And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: it depends on how many rabbit grouse I could catch,
Speaker 3: because I was catching rat I was catching rabbits pretty
Speaker 3: much every day, and I was shooting and snaring grouse.
Speaker 3: I actually left there with two grouse tied to my
Speaker 3: backpack if you look at it. If you look, if
Speaker 3: you watch that final scene where I'm walking to the helicopter,
Speaker 3: you can see them on my back.
Speaker 1: Oh you were you were living off the fat of
Speaker 1: the land.
Speaker 3: But uh, And I said, well, I don't. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've still I still had a bunch of deer meat
Speaker 3: and I had I was catching grouse and stuff like, well,
Speaker 3: I know I can make it to ninety days because
Speaker 3: I had my deer meat ration to ninety days, and
Speaker 3: I you know, I.
Speaker 1: Could keeping track of days.
Speaker 3: I was not. I had no idea I did it
Speaker 3: didn't matter to me. It didn't matter to me how
Speaker 3: how many days I was going to be out there.
Speaker 2: So you didn't go out, Did you go out with
Speaker 2: a goal or like, I'm gonna for sure make it
Speaker 2: the X number of days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my goal is to be the last one. I
Speaker 3: like it. It didn't matter to me how many days
Speaker 3: it went. I was either gonna you know, I went
Speaker 3: in there with the with the I had made up
Speaker 3: my mind that I was not tapping out. They were
Speaker 3: gonna have to pull me out. I just got lucky
Speaker 3: and killed deer and didn't have to do that, or
Speaker 3: they didn't have to do that. But they said something
Speaker 3: along the lines, well it's, uh, well it turns out
Speaker 3: you're not gonna have to do that, because they said
Speaker 3: something along the lines of you're not you're you're you're
Speaker 3: the last one or something like that, and it didn't.
Speaker 3: If you watch the footage, you can see my face
Speaker 3: and I'm like, like, what are you even talking? Bow?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that you were. It took you
Speaker 1: a minute to understand what they were telling you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because they're they're communication was not telling you like
Speaker 1: you would typically if if you know so much of
Speaker 1: our communication is external, Like if if I was telling
Speaker 1: you you won, it'd be.
Speaker 3: Like you won.
Speaker 1: And they were like, well, you won't have to stay
Speaker 1: here anymore because you're the last one, and and he
Speaker 1: was like, well there's what.
Speaker 3: There's a good there's a very good reason for that
Speaker 3: confusion on my part. And it has to do with
Speaker 3: there's a season I think it was season six where
Speaker 3: a fella is convinced that he's the last one. He's
Speaker 3: got it in his mind like I am the last one.
Speaker 3: They're on this med check, they're coming. My wife's gonna come.
Speaker 3: She's gonna sneak up behind me, and she's gonna tell
Speaker 3: me I'm the last one, and I'm I one. Well
Speaker 3: come out and do the med check all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And then they leave and he is not the last one,
Speaker 3: and it destroyed him. And so in my mind I
Speaker 3: had built like this mental block, like there was they
Speaker 3: were not coming to tell me anything. They were coming.
Speaker 2: It wasn't off schedule, no.
Speaker 3: Because they they weren't on a schedule. I mean they
Speaker 3: came out whenever they came out. I think the longest
Speaker 3: and I you know, I think the longest I ever
Speaker 3: went without seeing anybody is probably three weeks. And I
Speaker 3: might be.
Speaker 1: Off on that, but really so those three weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they there was sometimes it was ten days, sometimes
Speaker 3: it was a week. Sometimes you know what it was.
Speaker 3: It was random. They would just call us. I didn't
Speaker 3: know when they were coming. They would just you know,
Speaker 3: text me on the thing and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: tomorrow at eleven o'clock or whatever, we're gonna be, you
Speaker 3: need to be at your shelter. Yeah, And so in
Speaker 3: my mind and like there's no possibility that I'm leaving,
Speaker 3: like I'm I'm here for the duration. And it was
Speaker 3: such a like a I don't know what that is
Speaker 3: that you can do to yourself and your mind to
Speaker 3: make you believe something like that, but I believed it.
Speaker 3: And so that's why that was. It was like I did,
Speaker 3: I didn't even under I couldn't comprehend what they're going
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 1: Venim of your state of mind was rolling so hard
Speaker 1: towards they're not coming. Tell me, I won I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm staying here forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When they said it, it's like it didn't it.
Speaker 3: Did not even make sense what they were saying. And
Speaker 3: he said and then the next thing he was saying
Speaker 3: is like I don't remember exactly what it was, but
Speaker 3: then it was like, oh, oh I am the laugh
Speaker 3: holy yeah, And it was again one of those like
Speaker 3: just a one of the most emotional things that I've
Speaker 3: ever experienced in my life.
Speaker 2: How long had you been married at that point?
Speaker 3: M Liz, don't listen to this.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to do back math if you say, how
Speaker 1: long have.
Speaker 3: You seventeen fifteen years?
Speaker 2: Was your wife like all in from the very beginning?
Speaker 3: Yeah, she well.
Speaker 1: She with the marriage. No, she was for the.
Speaker 2: First years with alone, with alone. Did she have any hesitation?
Speaker 3: You know, she didn't. If it had been up to her,
Speaker 3: she wouldn't have I wouldn't have gone, you know. The
Speaker 3: last thing she wanted me to go, to be gone
Speaker 3: for four months and starve to death and to starve
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. But she was never She knew
Speaker 3: that it was important to me, and it was actually
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how I didn't realize how important her
Speaker 3: h supporting me. I didn't realize how important that was
Speaker 3: to her until I came out and there was a development.
Speaker 3: While I was out there, I had no idea what
Speaker 3: was going on. She when when you when you go
Speaker 3: out there, you have to sign a paper that says
Speaker 3: if there's an emergency at home, that they either come
Speaker 3: and tell you or they don't. If you can, you
Speaker 3: can say that if there, if someone contacts you and
Speaker 3: they're dying, I do not want to be informed. And
Speaker 3: so I of course put on there. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: if if, if, if my wife determines that it's an emergency,
Speaker 3: I want to know about it, go and tell me. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 3: she had gone, she had a doctor's appointment. This was
Speaker 3: the day that I launched Day one. She goes to
Speaker 3: the doctor and gets just like a routine scan, and
Speaker 3: they found a growth on one of her ovaries. And she
Speaker 3: used to she was she was a X ray attach
Speaker 3: at this hospital, and so she's knew everybody in the
Speaker 3: radiology department, and somehow she got her hands on the
Speaker 3: piece of paper from the person that read and interpreted
Speaker 3: this scan and it said this is likely ovarian cancer. Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna start crying. So she's standing there with a
Speaker 3: basically a death sentence in her hand, and she does
Speaker 3: not call. She deals with this on her own.
Speaker 1: M hmm.
Speaker 3: Goes and and and it's seven days before she can
Speaker 3: go back in. And she was never supposed to get
Speaker 3: that paper. You know, she was never supposed to see
Speaker 3: that paper without a doctor there to explain things to her.
Speaker 3: But she was able to get back in. They they
Speaker 3: did a biopsy. They went in and removed that Ovary
Speaker 3: had major surgery, abdominal surgery. Yeah. I never knew about it.
Speaker 3: She never told me, Wow, because she didn't want to
Speaker 3: take that opportunity away from me. You know, had it
Speaker 3: had it been cancer, I don't know what she would
Speaker 3: have done. I don't know if she would have told
Speaker 3: me or not. I hope that she would have, but
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, but she, you know, she thought
Speaker 3: it was and that she made the decision to deal
Speaker 3: with it on her own. Yeah was I mean I
Speaker 3: just that just I didn't know.
Speaker 1: That's part of the story that you don't see on
Speaker 1: the Yeah, on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't even know how to. I mean, she
Speaker 3: told me that when I came a couple of days
Speaker 3: after I came out, and I was just like, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Can't imagine what it would have done to you had
Speaker 2: you been out there. Yeah, I mean, if you decided
Speaker 2: to stay, it would have been you would have just
Speaker 2: been a wreck. Yeah, I would have been yeah, and
Speaker 2: then or would you have just decided to go home?
Speaker 3: You know, had I had she called and told me
Speaker 3: that I would have gone home. Yeah, I mean, no
Speaker 3: question about it, right, I wouldn't have hesitated. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: she I mean, she knew that it was important to me,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know, you know, I didn't know that
Speaker 3: she put that much stock in it, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and she was that strong to handle that on her own.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, and uh, honest answers
Speaker 1: would be acceptable.
Speaker 3: Let's caveat not expected but acceptable.
Speaker 1: Well why did you do it? And let me give
Speaker 1: you a multiple choice, Like my question is is why
Speaker 1: why did you outlast everybody?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Like the internal motivation, and an acceptable answer would be
Speaker 1: the money was a major factor, the what it would
Speaker 1: do for I mean, Clay makes outdoor media, like there
Speaker 1: would be no mistaking that him winning alone would be
Speaker 1: could be significant for just his career, which to me,
Speaker 1: career is connected to family and connected to taking care
Speaker 1: of your family. So it's not like career doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be just like personal ambition to be something great,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it is connected to success that go
Speaker 1: you know, rolls over to your family and and I
Speaker 1: obviously don't think it's one of those. Or it could
Speaker 1: also be like this, like personal challenge or or maybe
Speaker 1: just winning. I mean sometimes there's things that a person
Speaker 1: just feels like they need to win and like the
Speaker 1: money isn't that big a deal, like you know, like
Speaker 1: what if the pot had been like five hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: you know, would Clay Hayes still have gone out there
Speaker 1: and won? So the question is on the table many
Speaker 1: ways to answer. Is that a fair Would you like
Speaker 1: to add to the question? Bear, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think you were that pretty good, okay, Josh.
Speaker 2: No lies and truth acceptable.
Speaker 3: So for I think everybody that goes out there has
Speaker 3: different reasons and different motivations. For for me, the money
Speaker 3: was not I never thought about the money when I
Speaker 3: was out there. Was not a motivation for me. And
Speaker 3: if there had been no money, I still would have
Speaker 3: done what I did. I still would have pushed myself
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: I think that's all. I think he's being honest.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. Now, I like you were talking about with
Speaker 3: the exposure and the and the media and the career
Speaker 3: and all that stuff, Like I knew that this was
Speaker 3: huge for me and what I do for a living, right,
Speaker 3: I didn't see. I never thought about that when I
Speaker 3: was out there. It's not why I stayed out there,
Speaker 3: but I but before going out there, I had a plan.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, I had a year from the time
Speaker 3: I came out or from the time I went out
Speaker 3: there till it was it went on History Channel. And
Speaker 3: during that year, man, I did a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: You had to keep it secret for a full year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kylie, wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually talked to Clay during that year, Okay, and
Speaker 1: I knew he was on it, and I knew that
Speaker 1: he couldn't tell how it had gone down, and he
Speaker 1: was like total poker face, even though I'll I had
Speaker 1: a sneaking suspicion that you want not because of anything
Speaker 1: you did, but just because I was like, Clay Hayes
Speaker 1: would win. Yeah, I'm being honest. I think I went
Speaker 1: home and told people. I was like, I probably my
Speaker 1: I don't know who I told, but like I didn't
Speaker 1: like put it on the Instagram or something, but I
Speaker 1: was like, I bet he won.
Speaker 3: But as far as like the real reason, the reason
Speaker 3: that I one of the big, one of the big
Speaker 3: reasons I went out there is is because it was
Speaker 3: a test of myself and what I It was one
Speaker 3: of those things that I always just am I good enough?
Speaker 3: Am I good enough to do this? And it's like
Speaker 3: the ultimate test for that because it is it is real. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like there's no like I was talking, this is what
Speaker 3: you do. It is, but it's it's like the ultimate
Speaker 3: challenge of being a human, you know, of what a
Speaker 3: human is. And so that was the big reason like
Speaker 3: that I that I wanted to do it in the
Speaker 3: first place. I always wanted to do something like that,
Speaker 3: and it just turned out that alone was the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do it. The reason that I stayed was because
Speaker 3: I had made a promise to my family that like
Speaker 3: my boys when I when I when I left, you know,
Speaker 3: I I was like, I need I need your help.
Speaker 3: I need you to help your mom while I'm gone.
Speaker 3: I need y'all to try to behave even like, don't
Speaker 3: make it harder on And you know they did, They
Speaker 3: did amazing And I wasn't you know, I wasn't gonna
Speaker 3: I wasn't gonna quit because I was uncomfortable, or because
Speaker 3: I was hungry, or because of any you know, I
Speaker 3: can't think of anything short of a you know, like
Speaker 3: a broken leg with a bone sticking out of my leg,
Speaker 3: that would have made me hit that button. I was
Speaker 3: just not it was not an option for me. I
Speaker 3: never thought about the button. It was not on my
Speaker 3: mind because for me, it wasn't an option like that
Speaker 3: bud didn't exists.
Speaker 1: That's a good answer. That's a good answer and maybe
Speaker 1: not surprising, but it feels like it would be hard
Speaker 1: not to be motivated by the money. I mean, even
Speaker 1: even with somebody. If somebody wasn't, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are.
Speaker 3: But for me, it wasn't. Uh, it wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 3: Not because I mean the money has helped us pay
Speaker 3: off our house, you know, it's it's we've started a
Speaker 3: couple of college funds for the kids. You know, we've invested.
Speaker 3: I mean, it helped us be more secure. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: had there been no money, I still would have done
Speaker 3: it because of the personal challenge and the benefits that
Speaker 3: came out of the thing. I mean, I came out
Speaker 3: of that. I was I'm a different person than I
Speaker 3: was before I went out there, and that to me,
Speaker 3: is more valuable than any prize money. I mean, I'm uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we go through our lives and we take
Speaker 3: it we we we take for granted so many things,
Speaker 3: and oftentimes those things that we take for granted, or
Speaker 3: our family because you know, especially I think about my
Speaker 3: wife's like we've been together since we were seventeen years old,
Speaker 3: and so we've just always she's always been there, you know,
Speaker 3: and when someone is or someone or something is a
Speaker 3: constant in your life, it's just like, you know, you
Speaker 3: kind of lose that perspective and being out there and
Speaker 3: having all of that stuff stripped away from you gives
Speaker 3: you an opportunity to look back on your life like
Speaker 3: that's a that's a thing that people don't get today
Speaker 3: really as an opportunity that we're so busy, we're distracted
Speaker 3: every single day where where, you know, trying to make
Speaker 3: a living with social media or whatever, the little computers
Speaker 3: in our pockets, Like we never have a chance to
Speaker 3: step away from our lives and and look at our
Speaker 3: life and like, well, why do I do things the
Speaker 3: way I do them? You know? Why do I go
Speaker 3: to this job every day? Why do I you know,
Speaker 3: why do I do anything? And that gave me the
Speaker 3: opportunity to do that because I was pulled out of
Speaker 3: my like my normal life, and that's a that's a
Speaker 3: tremendously valuable thing there was to me anyway.
Speaker 1: You know, it's such a rare It really is rare.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the opportunity and I you know, I
Speaker 1: mean any one of us could make decisions that would
Speaker 1: lead us to go on a trip of isolation in
Speaker 1: the wilderness. I mean, there's nothing stopping you, Josh from
Speaker 1: doing that. But there there's a thousand things that are
Speaker 1: really so I mean, like the opportunity to get to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, I guess that that really is so
Speaker 1: rare because yeah, you just wouldn't do it on your own.
Speaker 1: It's it's like there had there would have to be
Speaker 1: a reason, a justification, you know, the show, the prize package,
Speaker 1: the you know, there's all these things that like make
Speaker 1: it this like kind of once in a lifetime opportunity.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I mean do you want to go
Speaker 1: do it again? I mean, maybe not be on the
Speaker 1: show alone, but do you is there something in you
Speaker 1: that's like craving to go out there or did it
Speaker 1: extinguish all that desire because you know you can do it,
Speaker 1: you did it.
Speaker 3: I don't have any desire to go out and starve
Speaker 3: again and go through all of that. But when I
Speaker 3: when I, when I in the days following me coming
Speaker 3: out of there, I thought to myself, I will never
Speaker 3: ever do that again. It was just it was you know,
Speaker 3: it was a lot to endure, you know, but time
Speaker 3: has a way of kind of you remember the the
Speaker 3: good that came out of it, and you kind of
Speaker 3: forget some of the anguish and the suffering.
Speaker 2: It was like type two point eight fun.
Speaker 1: I think that's it was five fun ti you know.
Speaker 3: People asked me that was it fun.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, it was not.
Speaker 3: It wasn't fun. I mean, it definitely had its moments,
Speaker 3: like I have. I had life changing experiences out there
Speaker 3: and and and experiences that I never would have had before.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful for it was it was not fun, but
Speaker 3: I'm grateful that I did it and went through it.
Speaker 3: You know. But if they if they offered me a
Speaker 3: chance to do it again, I would consider it. I
Speaker 3: don't know that I would, but I mean I would
Speaker 3: probably knowing myself, I probably would not be able to
Speaker 3: turn it down because it's a huge adventure.
Speaker 1: Well, isn't it. What's the catnus? What what movie?
Speaker 2: Am I talking about Hunger Games.
Speaker 1: Didn't In the Hunger Games they bring all the champions
Speaker 1: all stars.
Speaker 3: Yeah that I don't think that's ever gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I mean that, I mean, surely the alone people have
Speaker 1: thought of that bring all the champions together and have
Speaker 1: like a huge prize.
Speaker 3: Fool they've thought about it. I don't know that they've
Speaker 3: got the budget for it, and I don't know that
Speaker 3: that people would even do it again. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 3: you know, you got You've got guys now that are
Speaker 3: doing really well, like on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And as every do. Most people that win alone go
Speaker 1: on to have a career that's attached to that winning.
Speaker 3: No, not, I mean some do. Certainly, I was doing
Speaker 3: YouTube stuff before I ever got on a long I
Speaker 3: think I started doing YouTube stuff full time in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: It wasn't on the show until twenty twenty. It picked
Speaker 3: up a lot after after it went on Netflix. But
Speaker 3: like Jordan is the only one out of the other winners,
Speaker 3: he's the only one that I really have spent time
Speaker 3: with and know, and he he does some YouTube stuff,
Speaker 3: but it's not I don't think anyway. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's a major part of what he does. He's he
Speaker 3: runs an outfitting business now out of he outfits into
Speaker 3: Idaho from the Montana side, I think. But he does
Speaker 3: survival classes. Like he'll bring people in and pack them
Speaker 3: into the wilderness and spend you know, five or seven
Speaker 3: days or whatever back in there teaching him how to
Speaker 3: make friction fires and shoot bows and arrows and pitch
Speaker 3: tents and do all that type of stuff. I think
Speaker 3: that's his big that's his big deal.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, it's it's a great story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. And what what's cool?
Speaker 1: And I would have been a skeptic of well, I
Speaker 1: had never seen I had never watched Alone when I
Speaker 1: learned that Clay was going to be on it in
Speaker 1: that lag year, and uh. And in that first conversation,
Speaker 1: I feel like I asked you, is it is it real?
Speaker 3: Like is it is it?
Speaker 1: Just because I didn't have a frame of reference for it,
Speaker 1: and you were like, oh, it's very real, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh cool. And then you know, started watching
Speaker 1: it and maybe even watched another season before or something.
Speaker 1: But that's the coolest part of Alone, that makes it
Speaker 1: different than Yeah, at least anything I've seen, is that
Speaker 1: it's like it's like people are. It's it's legit. So wow, man,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. We we didn't even get to talk about
Speaker 1: Clovis and fulsome today and we don't have time to.
Speaker 1: We could talk about it remain it remains in no
Speaker 1: I mean we could talk about it for like five
Speaker 1: minutes here.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Typically on the render we talk about the bear grease
Speaker 1: that just came out, and uh, it really would have
Speaker 1: been fitting to have Clay here to talk about Clovis.
Speaker 1: We can, I mean, we can talk about it a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I love these episodes about early human
Speaker 1: history and archaeology. Metting Aaron and doctor David Meltzer are
Speaker 1: like heroes. They're great. Taylor Keene was great, I mean,
Speaker 1: like an all star lineup on the podcast. And uh,
Speaker 1: this is a Clovis point that Meting Aaron made for me.
Speaker 1: He he is a just like a very very very
Speaker 1: good maker of fulsome points. Excuse me, Clovise points close points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this would this classify as a as a Clovis.
Speaker 1: That's a Clovis, Yeah, and it's it's just it's just
Speaker 1: the hafting, you know, like.
Speaker 3: The clothes us has the flutes that go all the
Speaker 3: way down folsom, the false fulsome, that's a fulsome that's okay.
Speaker 1: So so this this is a cast of a real
Speaker 1: fulsome point right which the fulsom has a full slabe
Speaker 1: off of it. And that's like the radical newer version
Speaker 1: of a Clovis. Yeah, so that's a cast of one's
Speaker 1: that's a cast of a real Clovis. Look how thin
Speaker 1: it is. I know it's a real folesome. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: And now this is a fulsome that was made for
Speaker 1: me by Tony Sores. So I mean that's a real one.
Speaker 3: That is just think that is a master yeah at
Speaker 3: work right there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wonder how many they total before they
Speaker 2: got that well, I mean the fulsome points.
Speaker 1: They say they had a forty to like fifty percent
Speaker 1: failure rate, and that's.
Speaker 3: Probably someone that really knew what they were doing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, get you get a sorry, go ahead, I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna comment that to get to this point of
Speaker 3: being able to make something like this like this is
Speaker 3: years and years of busting rock. So how many crappy
Speaker 3: points did this guy make before he made he started
Speaker 3: making this stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they must have felt like that, like that
Speaker 2: it was worth it, you know, what I mean, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean more effective or was it like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is my maker stamp that I can do this?
Speaker 3: You know? But I look at something this like this,
Speaker 3: and I see artwork like we like to we like
Speaker 3: a beautiful hunting knife. Does that make it cut any
Speaker 3: better than a than a one that's not beautiful?
Speaker 1: But that's so hard to especially the fault now we're
Speaker 1: talking about folsom but it's like so hard to make though.
Speaker 1: It just seems like it's if you were out on
Speaker 1: a loan, you wouldn't be showing out. Maybe you would
Speaker 1: because you didn't you didn't have anything else to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see what I'm saying, Like that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like trying to do something extra special just
Speaker 1: for the sake of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, It's like I think of cave
Speaker 3: paintings when I look at this, It's like, what's what's
Speaker 3: the function other than artistic expression? You know. It's like
Speaker 3: the guy that makes this takes pride in what he's
Speaker 3: able to create, you know, And it's a beautiful thing,
Speaker 3: and I think that has value.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it if we could just set with the maker
Speaker 1: of that. I think we would be as we would
Speaker 1: be astonished no matter what. It's possible that we could
Speaker 1: be astonished at the flippancy with which he would hold this,
Speaker 1: Like he might just be like yeah, like like us
Speaker 1: holding like a fork, Yeah, like that we pulled out
Speaker 1: of the drawer, you know what I mean, like, or
Speaker 1: we might be astonished that when he held that, he said, Son,
Speaker 1: this isle our future. This is the pinnacle of human existence,
Speaker 1: to make that point, And I mean he might have
Speaker 1: had philosophy, you know.
Speaker 3: I think it's probably more on that spectrum. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's that's.
Speaker 1: Complete speculation though, you know, I mean, we just don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's fascinating, Josh, what stood out to you?
Speaker 1: You weren't involved as much in the actual content of
Speaker 1: this one like melt Oh you.
Speaker 2: Were with those with David Meltzer. But man met in
Speaker 2: there and that guy is sharp. Yeah. I really enjoyed
Speaker 2: listen to that. I think I think just it up
Speaker 2: until this, it hadn't been something that I'd spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time thinking about, and so to put it
Speaker 2: out there of you know, when when David Meltzer talked
Speaker 2: about the Ice Free Corridor, it was fascinating to me
Speaker 2: the advancements using DNA technology that way and finding that
Speaker 2: there was no organic matter, so the ice free corridor
Speaker 2: would not have been a route that early humans would
Speaker 2: have traveled. And I can't tell you how many times
Speaker 2: in the last week I've said the Laurentide ice shelf
Speaker 2: in the cordillaria. You know, I've sounded like I really
Speaker 2: know what I'm talking about. But just just to think
Speaker 2: about early man coming across and going down, how they
Speaker 2: would have lived, what would have been their motivation, what
Speaker 2: would have been their deciding factors on doing things, is
Speaker 2: just it was new and kind of exciting to think about,
Speaker 2: you know, and the technology of the time and how
Speaker 2: long that technology was effective to keep survival of humans.
Speaker 2: You know, it is pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: I will never get tied ever when I see fulsome
Speaker 1: points in close points of saying that those people the
Speaker 1: only thing, the only print that is left on the
Speaker 1: face of this earth that represents those people is these
Speaker 1: stone points. I mean, because everything else they interacted with
Speaker 1: was organic matter. Their bones, their flesh, the adlettle spears,
Speaker 1: their clothing, their food. They're like, they didn't have plastic
Speaker 1: or metal or they didn't have anything. The only thing
Speaker 1: that survived is that and that's not entirely true, because
Speaker 1: we do have in North America. And this will get
Speaker 1: into this more in a later episode, but they have
Speaker 1: found a couple of human remains that they believe are
Speaker 1: from the Plaistocene, and one of them is that Anzac child,
Speaker 1: which we just briefly talk about, the Anzik child found
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, which was a toddler that was
Speaker 1: found while some dude was like digging a footing for
Speaker 1: his barn or something in Montana and like digs up
Speaker 1: this human skull and they're like, holy smokes. And then
Speaker 1: they they they realize it's old, and an archaeologist or
Speaker 1: somebody comes and takes it, and then it's not until
Speaker 1: they can do DNA testing on it. Even in like
Speaker 1: the last fifteen years that they DNA tests the bone
Speaker 1: and it's still in good enough shape that they're able
Speaker 1: to determine what the mother ate. The mother of that child.
Speaker 1: There's a whole academic paper the mother of the Anzik Child. Now,
Speaker 1: Meltzer tells me that the sciences slightly is questionable, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's like on like a major academic journal. Well,
Speaker 1: it's the one that it's so complicated. I hope y'all
Speaker 1: all were paying attention. It's the one that Met and
Speaker 1: Aaron talked about how they used it as a political
Speaker 1: tool to talk about climate change and to say that
Speaker 1: the humans were the ones that killed the mammoths out
Speaker 1: because they analyzed this child and were able to tell
Speaker 1: that the mother had a diet heavy heavy in animal
Speaker 1: matter that essentially was equivalent to a scimitar cat period.
Speaker 3: They weren't eating any potatoes.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and so.
Speaker 1: Or coked zeros. So but I bet those suckers could
Speaker 1: water witch. No, I'll never get tired of just like
Speaker 1: when I look at that, what I see is mystery,
Speaker 1: and in a time period of human existence, when it's
Speaker 1: like the mystery has been taken from us, you know,
Speaker 1: because of all that we know and all we have
Speaker 1: access to and the little computers in our pockets, and
Speaker 1: it's like we live in such a rare time. I mean,
Speaker 1: like these people would be looking at us, be going,
Speaker 1: holy cow, what you know. We take it for granted
Speaker 1: where we live as just an anomaly in human existence.
Speaker 1: We have no idea what the results of this kind
Speaker 1: of life are really and I mean it kind of
Speaker 1: even ties back into you with your alone stuff, Like
Speaker 1: having this kind of artificial simulated like existence in the
Speaker 1: wild for this period of time, that's like life changing
Speaker 1: to you. You come back into the real world and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I've seen the light. Like everybody needs
Speaker 1: to do this. I wish everybody could experience what I've experienced.
Speaker 1: I mean it all kind of it all kind of
Speaker 1: connects in a way, but fascinating. What stood out to you?
Speaker 1: You listened to the podcast, didn't you?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 1: Would you have known about quite a bit of that stuff?
Speaker 3: I mean, not not the depth that you guys got
Speaker 3: into it, but I mean the thing that I kept
Speaker 3: thinking was what I was just talking about, Like there,
Speaker 3: I think there's reason for making those points beyond just functionality.
Speaker 3: I think there's an aesthetic and a and a and
Speaker 3: a craftsmanship angle there. I think it was a pinnacle
Speaker 3: of that cultures. I think the people that were that
Speaker 3: were making those were could have been highly revered. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're able to produce a point like that, it
Speaker 3: would be like a like a you know, a fine
Speaker 3: rifle maker or something like somebody that's making something that's
Speaker 3: functional that's in.
Speaker 1: A pinnacle of their existence of their society. Yes, this
Speaker 1: wasn't a hobby that they were hunting. This was the
Speaker 1: life way, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so that that, you know, I feel like
Speaker 3: there's a there was a there was a pride there
Speaker 3: in someone's craftsmanship and an artistic side of it. And
Speaker 3: you know that when they could have you know, there
Speaker 3: could have been people that that's what they did. That's
Speaker 3: all they did was make that. They they they were
Speaker 3: the artisans and that's what they did. They made points.
Speaker 3: They were good at it, and so people would come
Speaker 3: and trade. They didn't have to go hunting. I mean
Speaker 3: they had. They were taken care of because they were
Speaker 3: good at making that type of stuff. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: think that. I don't think your average guy really back
Speaker 3: in the day was able to create that, even though.
Speaker 1: They would have been setting around and that would have
Speaker 1: been like a a it would have been equivalent to
Speaker 1: like being able to hook into the internet.
Speaker 3: No, but it wasn't. It wasn't because look at look
Speaker 3: at look at people today. Look at guys today. How
Speaker 3: many guys out of one hundred guys, how many guys
Speaker 3: could go out there and cut down a tree and
Speaker 3: make a bench.
Speaker 4: But right, well, I see what you're saying, but they
Speaker 4: have they don't have to. They couldn't do it if
Speaker 4: they had to. Even they don't have the they don't have.
Speaker 2: It's not critical to their survival, is what you're saying.
Speaker 1: No, you're saying they don't even have that, don't have
Speaker 1: the aptitude.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, gotcha.
Speaker 1: I mean I see what you saying there. There would
Speaker 1: be a gradient of just raw natural ability to do
Speaker 1: something like that physical and that tactical tactile.
Speaker 3: Some people, some guys just don't have the mechanical ability
Speaker 3: to to build things or to make things, and some
Speaker 3: people do. That's an artist. The guys that made that point,
Speaker 3: he is an artist, and that that's only a certain
Speaker 3: number of the.
Speaker 1: Po It's interesting here, And you said that because yesterday
Speaker 1: we had a brief conversation. I told Clay, like we're
Speaker 1: totally breaking the rules by talking about this before the podcast.
Speaker 1: But Clay makes bows, and he has a style of
Speaker 1: self bow that like he would recognize just out of
Speaker 1: a lineup, like that's a bowt And and you're saying that,
Speaker 1: like when you see a folsom point, you see craftsmanship,
Speaker 1: specific craftsmanship and pride.
Speaker 3: And that originated probably in with just one guy that
Speaker 3: started doing it, and then they started catching on and
Speaker 3: he was teaching people and it just kind of dispersed
Speaker 3: from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I could see that, Like it's
Speaker 1: easy to kind of just like look at the stone
Speaker 1: points and it's kind of like generalize like all these
Speaker 1: ancient people just by like you know, they all can
Speaker 1: make stone points of that quality just because that's all
Speaker 1: we see. But that's kind of just like a generalization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there would be some people who would be like
Speaker 1: a lot more skilled at it because like you know,
Speaker 1: you look at those points up there and some of
Speaker 1: those are like janky. You could make points better than
Speaker 1: some of those, Yeah, and makes you wonder was it
Speaker 1: was it a kid? Was it right? Or some like
Speaker 1: you fit to that point when they made that, they
Speaker 1: were just like dude, you need to haul firewood.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me to think about a stone point
Speaker 2: like that that's really beautiful and then you see stone
Speaker 2: points from an era of a thousand years ago and
Speaker 2: how the technology changed. But I don't know that it
Speaker 2: was more effective, like what caused it? What costs that
Speaker 2: to die out?
Speaker 1: That's great, A great question, because it did like they
Speaker 1: got fluting points all together after basically and.
Speaker 2: More effective than that's on point.
Speaker 3: I think that any and I'm not I'm not a historian.
Speaker 3: I could be way off base here, but it seems
Speaker 3: to me that you see art emerge in a culture
Speaker 3: when you have a state, you have a certain amount
Speaker 3: of stability, right, And so that makes me think that
Speaker 3: that's a that's a high level. That's like the highest
Speaker 3: level of stone point that we've ever seen in this
Speaker 3: country and maybe in the world. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: I think that that has to emerge out of a
Speaker 3: fairly stable, a stable culture. A culture. Yeah, uh, you
Speaker 3: have to you know, you can't be you can't be
Speaker 3: worried about whether or not you're going to be alive
Speaker 3: tomorrow or be able to find enough food tomorrow to
Speaker 3: support your family and put enough time into developing the
Speaker 3: skill to make that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You have to have the time to deve up to
Speaker 3: do that. And that's that's not somebody that's living day
Speaker 3: to day or day by day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a good point. It really is.
Speaker 2: Interesting, fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's this is also I think when you see the
Speaker 1: you know, there there's charts met and Aaron had some
Speaker 1: of these charts that like showed the the technology shifts
Speaker 1: from year to year. And I mean like, so where's
Speaker 1: that Clovis point? I mean essentially this Clovis point, this
Speaker 1: is a would be older than a fulsome point. But
Speaker 1: what makes it Clovis to Clovis is that the half
Speaker 1: there's a small flute like right there you can just
Speaker 1: barely feel it, yep. And they make that by making
Speaker 1: a little a little a little shelf like there'll be
Speaker 1: a little nipple right there that they that they chip out,
Speaker 1: make a little and then they hit that little that
Speaker 1: little platform and it flakes off. Well, this turn into
Speaker 1: this so it's like a kid his dad taught him
Speaker 1: how to do this, and he was like, he may
Speaker 1: have done it by accident the first time, but he
Speaker 1: was like, man, if you build that platform just a
Speaker 1: little bit bigger and hit it just a little bit harder,
Speaker 1: it'll flake the whole side off, and it flakes off,
Speaker 1: and then they start making these for a thousand years.
Speaker 1: A dad taught his son. Yeah, it literally has to
Speaker 1: be the product of like knowledge pass from generation generation.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't come up with that that's not
Speaker 1: like there's a thing called convergent evolution, Like in two places,
Speaker 1: the same thing happens. I think that's what it's called.
Speaker 1: Like that doesn't happen because of that. A falsom point
Speaker 1: happens because it started one place people taught and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it just completely disappears.
Speaker 3: But you got to ask yourself, like if that if
Speaker 3: my theory is correct, and that that developed out of
Speaker 3: a stable you know, food base or whatever that was
Speaker 3: able that was uh enabled these guys to put that
Speaker 3: amount of time in it, Like did something change? And
Speaker 3: now it's like we can't we can't afford to sit
Speaker 3: around and paint on the cave walls, like we got
Speaker 3: to get out there, and you know, we got to
Speaker 3: put meat on the pole. Yeah, and and and you know,
Speaker 3: a normal stone point that doesn't have that level of
Speaker 3: detail in it, it's gonna kill a buffalo just as
Speaker 3: dead as that one. You know that I broke half
Speaker 3: of them trying to make these beautiful flutes in Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well and and and you also wonder how much human
Speaker 1: uh nature was involved in this technology because I purposefully
Speaker 1: did stuff different than Gary Nucomb did Bar Newcombe purposely
Speaker 1: does stuff a little different than me, just in different areas.
Speaker 1: Just like God may have a bear. Maya woke up
Speaker 1: one day after his oppressive father who tried to get
Speaker 1: into shoot bears, and so in the rear, maybe one
Speaker 1: day a baron Nucan wakes up and goes, I ain't
Speaker 1: fluting anymore points.
Speaker 2: That means, you know, maybe maybe when they were a
Speaker 2: ground built, maybe they were grounded, like go flute points.
Speaker 2: I'm not going if I leave.
Speaker 1: I've never fluted another point. I mean that happened.
Speaker 3: I know it did.
Speaker 1: I mean like people just going, man, you don't have
Speaker 1: to flut. I mean they're like secretly talking around their
Speaker 1: little kid fire, like you don't have to flout them
Speaker 1: to kill stuff. I killed an hard bark yesterday with
Speaker 1: just a regular point, and Grandpa's like, what you said,
Speaker 1: any animal you killed better be killed with a fluted point.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that they were people just like us.
Speaker 1: You know that's somewhere heard the analogy that you know,
Speaker 1: these paleolithic people and these ancient people, if they would
Speaker 1: have been born today, they could have learned to fly
Speaker 1: an airplane, they could have learned multiple languages. I mean
Speaker 1: they were just like us, and so they had they
Speaker 1: had they had social structure, They they loved each other,
Speaker 1: they grieved when people died, they they got mad at people,
Speaker 1: they got you know. I mean it's like, so this
Speaker 1: is all these like the same dynamics that you have
Speaker 1: with your boys, some paleolithic guy had with his Like
Speaker 1: I can't believe that kid, you know, did this or
Speaker 1: did that. It's just fascinating. But well, I guess we
Speaker 1: did have time to have this cons I guess we
Speaker 1: make the rules around here for real. It's because we
Speaker 1: had such an interesting guest, but we also had an
Speaker 1: interesting topic podcast. And I really had to get the
Speaker 1: water witch and stuff, you know, out on the table
Speaker 1: out to the people. Yeah, you know, clear the air
Speaker 1: a little bit, clear the air a little bit. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thanks Clay. It was really it was great man.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to be here, yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, yeah yeah. Well keep the wild places wild. That's
Speaker 1: where the berries g