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Speaker 1: arms dot com. My name is Claye Nukeleman. I'm the
Speaker 1: host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be
Speaker 1: your host into the world of hunting the icon of
Speaker 1: the American Wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We
Speaker 1: will also bring you into some of the wildest country
Speaker 1: on the planet chasing barn. We're up in northeast Montana
Speaker 1: this week and we're at elk camp. We've been chasing
Speaker 1: out our legs are tired. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the week, we sat down with Ben O'Brien from Meat
Speaker 1: Eaters Hunting Collective and Joe Ferronado from Peterson's Hunting and
Speaker 1: our new friend Ryce Sue Hey and Bear John Nukam
Speaker 1: my son and Kobe the bar Tech Morehead and we
Speaker 1: have a really fun conversation about our week of elk
Speaker 1: hunting in the Missouri breaks. We talked about some of
Speaker 1: the tactics we used and but also just kind of
Speaker 1: the general some general commentary on elk hunting and I
Speaker 1: am yet to deter rman if I like elk hunting
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Speaker 1: in my right hand, Broken Dreams. I've got a you'd
Speaker 1: all this whale tale of an elk corn? Is that right?
Speaker 1: YEA well described that, Joe. It is the beautiful top
Speaker 1: point of what I would assume is a six point
Speaker 1: bull with the six point and then that main beam
Speaker 1: just tails out. Now is that the main beam or
Speaker 1: is that the main beam? You know, I was holding
Speaker 1: it earlier trying to determine which one. I would guess
Speaker 1: that this is the main beam just because of the
Speaker 1: waving nous of it, and it kind of hooks looks
Speaker 1: back in and then this is your point coming off.
Speaker 1: So this is the this is the back section of
Speaker 1: an elk? Canitler and Bear and uh and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get to the introductions of who is all here, But
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to be confused about what's happened
Speaker 1: the last seven days. Broken dreams boys, Now Bear and
Speaker 1: I found this. This was where some elk we're presumably fighting,
Speaker 1: broke off. This is fresh and Superho brought this home
Speaker 1: just the other day. But now we're in Montana. We're
Speaker 1: in the Missouri Breaks of Montana, and uh, hey, it
Speaker 1: is awesome to have all you guys. I've got Ben O'Brien, um, Ben,
Speaker 1: We've we've known each other for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: I guess, but this is first time we've really spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time together. And uh, it's been we've well,
Speaker 1: we've been in camp now for for I guess you've
Speaker 1: been here for four or five days. We've we've been
Speaker 1: here for seven seven days. Yeah. So Ben O'Brien and
Speaker 1: a lot of everybody would know Ben from the Hunting Collective,
Speaker 1: Um Colby, the bar Tech more head, he's always back there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know his name. The nickname was the bear Tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the people named him that. I was thinking Bear Greaser,
Speaker 1: but bear tech Tech. And then we've got Bryce name
Speaker 1: so Bryce. Uh, I should introduce Joe before I interest you,
Speaker 1: because I know you because of Joe. But now Bryce Sue, Hey,
Speaker 1: we we gotta start off with this joke. So well,
Speaker 1: hold on you, we're coming to last. I got Joe
Speaker 1: Ferronado here to my right. Joe, this is Joe's camp.
Speaker 1: Joe is the one that hooked it, told us all
Speaker 1: kind of where to put in the hold us up
Speaker 1: in the Missouri breaks. No. Um, So Joe, you worked
Speaker 1: for Peterson's Hunting. That's a new job for you. This
Speaker 1: is a new job. Used to work with old Ben
Speaker 1: on Brian. Yeah, we're now foes. We were friends. That's
Speaker 1: why we're sitting across from you. Yeah, so you're the
Speaker 1: what do you do for Peterson's from the associate editor
Speaker 1: Associe that Peterson's Honey magazine. Awesome, we may come back
Speaker 1: to that the it's a good thing to come. So
Speaker 1: I we're still an introductions here. So I knew Bryce.
Speaker 1: Because of that, these guys couldn't come right away, so
Speaker 1: Ben and Joe couldn't come. Joe just said, Hey, my
Speaker 1: buddy Bryce is coming. He's gonna be there Tuesday. Here's
Speaker 1: the last name, just my buddy Bryce. And then so
Speaker 1: he he gives you my phone number. I think I
Speaker 1: get a message from just random phone number and it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: when you coming into camp. And so we just start
Speaker 1: communicating like we're just like like we've known each other forever.
Speaker 1: Then we meet up at camp like way out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, and for like two full days
Speaker 1: we're just buddying around and uh, and Bryce is a
Speaker 1: way more experienced el hunter than me and Colby and Bear,
Speaker 1: and he's a good elk hunter and uh, I mean
Speaker 1: he's he's got a game plan, he's tell us what
Speaker 1: he thinks we should do. All very much appreciated stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, at one point we were moving Camp on
Speaker 1: Bryce's suggestion, and Colby said, Clay, we don't even know
Speaker 1: Bryce's name. We're doing everything he says, which turned out
Speaker 1: to be great. Bryce. So Bryce sue Hey say hey,
Speaker 1: say hi Bryce. Now you're a you're a physicians assistant
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, Montema. I am working at the Urgent Karen Town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah awesome and the houndsman, I am yep, yeah, newer
Speaker 1: into that, but it's been a lot of fun, uh,
Speaker 1: chasing cats and running down dogs right on, right on? Well,
Speaker 1: Ben uh described wait wait, wait, don't forget sorry Buddy
Speaker 1: Bear John Newcomb say hello, Hello, Bear is my fourteen
Speaker 1: year old son. He uh he got to skip week
Speaker 1: and a half of school to uh to come down here.
Speaker 1: We Uh. He had to guarantee me that he was
Speaker 1: gonna be very diligent in his studies to get caught
Speaker 1: up in stuff. So he guaranteed me he could do that,
Speaker 1: so we let him come. He's kind of been the
Speaker 1: camp assistant. He's a good hand on mules. He's good
Speaker 1: at just doing what you tell him. It doesn't cause
Speaker 1: much trouble. So, yeah, this is your first time on
Speaker 1: the podcast, though, No, we Turkey Camp Turkey camp in
Speaker 1: last year. Okay, yeah, you've been on here a bunch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. He made his own knife, he said, with
Speaker 1: the grandfather showed it to me. Yeah, he's a handy boy.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of thirty year old men that
Speaker 1: have made a knife in their lives. Yeah. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got a cool We've got a cool grandpa too. He's
Speaker 1: a knife maker. Very cool. But um, Ben, we mean
Speaker 1: you've been hunting together some the last couple of days. Uh.
Speaker 1: You did the same thing to me earlier today, described
Speaker 1: kind of the Missouri breaks and kind of the hunting
Speaker 1: because what I didn't know was like, is this a
Speaker 1: good area? Is this an average area? Is this a yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrible, this particular area no one should ever come.
Speaker 1: But the breaks, actually that's true. They only seven by
Speaker 1: seven s. Yeah, apparently there's only I haven't seen a raghorn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only the giant elk. But now it's like like
Speaker 1: you set on my podcast a little bit ago that
Speaker 1: we recorded, it's broken country. You know, we were used
Speaker 1: to big headwalls and canyons and um big timber and
Speaker 1: where we're we're at Bozeman there in southeast Montana and
Speaker 1: this is this country is broken. It has seems it
Speaker 1: has like islands of good elk country. I mean, look
Speaker 1: into this landscape and there'll be a sagebrush sea and
Speaker 1: then a little creek bottom and then you'll have some
Speaker 1: ridges that look that have fingers. You know, we said earlier,
Speaker 1: if you hold your hand out, just hold your hand down,
Speaker 1: point it south. If you if you spread your fingers out,
Speaker 1: you can kind of picture a lot of what you're
Speaker 1: doing here. Your if your arm is the ridge, you
Speaker 1: walk across the ridge, then each one of your fingers
Speaker 1: is a little finger ridge that goes down into a drainage.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of the country that you are
Speaker 1: hunting here. And um, while it's a good elk country,
Speaker 1: it just seems to have pockets or little areas that
Speaker 1: seem to be a good elk country in what can
Speaker 1: be huge canyon walls and we've seen some if it's
Speaker 1: real open, but then there's a lot of these, uh
Speaker 1: there there'll be small pockets of timber. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: the timber is what the tracks and the cover the
Speaker 1: you know, their edge animals like toy or anything else,
Speaker 1: that's what attracts them for betting and for just general uh,
Speaker 1: living quarters and and and that's what this is. And
Speaker 1: you're you're oftentimes up on a high point glass and
Speaker 1: and or probably more often just walking these spine of
Speaker 1: these ridges, top of these ridges and walking down the
Speaker 1: fingers and trying to locate elk, sometimes down in the drainages,
Speaker 1: sometimes off across. But today's September twenty, which would Joe,
Speaker 1: would that be like classic elk rut bugle time? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean it changes everywhere you go, right, like different
Speaker 1: elk and different parts of the world are gonna or
Speaker 1: country we'll we'll run at different times. But according to
Speaker 1: what I've heard out here, this is super late for
Speaker 1: this year, Like for them not to be reading this
Speaker 1: would be kind of like the tail end of of
Speaker 1: the peak rut right now. Um, you know last week
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the time type of thing, but
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been, hasn't been, hasn't been at all.
Speaker 1: I mean we've definitely heard some bugles, definitely seen some
Speaker 1: bulls running around, but it hasn't seemed like there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of hot cows and there haven't been you know,
Speaker 1: all those bulls running around crazy like there you know,
Speaker 1: the other day from our camp. Before we left, we
Speaker 1: heard a lot of elk bugles. If you had told
Speaker 1: me that, if you had said, Clay, from your camp,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to hear elk bugle, I would
Speaker 1: have just been like, give us a couple of days,
Speaker 1: and well, I haven't killed and I've never killed an
Speaker 1: elk before, so that's pretty bold of me to think that.
Speaker 1: But that's what I would have thought. I just would
Speaker 1: have thought, if they're if we're hearing the bugle and
Speaker 1: they're that close to us, this is something that we
Speaker 1: can attain. But why haven't we been able to kill one?
Speaker 1: Because because we don't have any of those dumb rag
Speaker 1: corns are only big seven by seven that they're super smart,
Speaker 1: and I'm good at missing those big seven, but you
Speaker 1: did miss one the second day, second day just under him,
Speaker 1: biggest bull I've ever seen. Uh. But it just has
Speaker 1: to do with the country we're hunting, the way everything
Speaker 1: so broken, and this timber you're never going to see
Speaker 1: them bedded in it because they go to these these
Speaker 1: timbered up areas that are super dark, have great thermal cover.
Speaker 1: It's really comfortable for them, and you know you're never
Speaker 1: gonna see them when they're betted, So you have really,
Speaker 1: um like a narrow window of opportunity when they're moving
Speaker 1: from water to betting areas to feeding areas, things like that.
Speaker 1: And since there aren't these bulls just Roman hills going
Speaker 1: crazy looking for cows right now, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: harder to get on them now. So that's what you
Speaker 1: would be taking advantage of, because i mean, where you
Speaker 1: are from ben it's like almost timber m a right
Speaker 1: or is it pretty there's meadow when you're up on
Speaker 1: the when you're up in the high country, it's it's
Speaker 1: mostly timber. You know, it's the same game elk moving
Speaker 1: from water to feed and you're trying to capitalize on
Speaker 1: the elk ra where these elk or yeah, this is
Speaker 1: no different. It is very much activity. It's very much
Speaker 1: no different than white tails, I mean, and it's in
Speaker 1: the description of kind of how it sets up because
Speaker 1: they're corepuscular, right, they move at dawn and dusk. With
Speaker 1: white tails in the early season, you're you're hunting them
Speaker 1: bed to feed, feed to bed, bed defeat, right, you're
Speaker 1: cutting them off. You're trying to be in a place
Speaker 1: where they want to be, right by the food or
Speaker 1: by the bedding, generally by the food. And then when
Speaker 1: the rut comes in, you just need to be in
Speaker 1: the woods and being a travel corridor generally worked those
Speaker 1: are going to hang out or something like that. It's
Speaker 1: not so dissimilar here, although elk you know, really treat
Speaker 1: these mountain a lot differently than a white tail treat
Speaker 1: you know, somebody's farm in the Midwest, but you are
Speaker 1: hunting them in the early season. Bed feed, feed to
Speaker 1: bed and you're trying to get to a wallow. You're
Speaker 1: trying to understand where they're moving. And early you know,
Speaker 1: this is what three weeks into the season and the
Speaker 1: early season they're not as receptive to calling, but you
Speaker 1: still call anyway to locate him to fare Ou where
Speaker 1: the r and see if you can get one to play.
Speaker 1: And that's where the raghorns come in. You just need
Speaker 1: one silly raghorn, just like one fired up Tom if
Speaker 1: your turkey hunt. Same same idea. But then when the
Speaker 1: ruck comes in, you've got to be out here, and
Speaker 1: you gotta be vocal, and you gotta be on the
Speaker 1: mountain putting boots is many places you possibly can What
Speaker 1: do you what do you think about these guys that
Speaker 1: tell us that you can't call elk out here, like
Speaker 1: I've heard that, Moll, I've heard that from half of them.
Speaker 1: They say that everywhere though, No, no, that's I mean
Speaker 1: they say that in Colorado, where there's a hunter on
Speaker 1: every ridge. Literally, Joe's first day out, he called in
Speaker 1: a six by six to the yards. Just had a
Speaker 1: tree in the way, and that bowl was no had
Speaker 1: no cows with it by itself. He came in pretty hot.
Speaker 1: Yeah the way, how far did he come from? We
Speaker 1: just heard crashing from the bottom of I'm guessing he
Speaker 1: was bedded in that north face and timber, and he
Speaker 1: came in. We were we were going after seven by
Speaker 1: seven with six house who had just crossed that ridge.
Speaker 1: We didn't know we crossed the ridge yet we still
Speaker 1: thought he was in the bottom. And then Joe bugled
Speaker 1: and he we heard crashing in the timber. Assuming it
Speaker 1: was that that seven with cows, and it was a
Speaker 1: loan six who was probably bigger than that seven. He
Speaker 1: was really big. But like the whole thought process there
Speaker 1: with with calling, I think you'll you'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: of people say you can't call elk concertain places I
Speaker 1: think it's a lot to do with not knowing proper
Speaker 1: calling techniques and stuff, because if you get the right
Speaker 1: calls and you talk like you're in Elk, like you're
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to call him pretty much wherever
Speaker 1: you are. People say calling is less effective out here,
Speaker 1: um because lots of the places you're hunting in the brakes,
Speaker 1: I would presume, are more open, and the visual cues
Speaker 1: of elk, like you're never gonna call a big bowl
Speaker 1: across an open meadow just because he can't see the
Speaker 1: cow making the noise of the bull making the noise,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna be like, oh that's weird and walk
Speaker 1: the other way. Um. But like out here, when we
Speaker 1: when we were pursuing seven by seven, like we ran
Speaker 1: up the ridge. We went up as fast as we could.
Speaker 1: We were trying to bulldog him and get in his
Speaker 1: grill with his cows, scream at him like I'm a
Speaker 1: big young your bowl. It's gonna steal his cows and
Speaker 1: he's gonna come into face off. And what happened there
Speaker 1: is like we we already missed him, Like he already
Speaker 1: got over the ridge, but I still called, assuming he
Speaker 1: was below us. And then that other big six by
Speaker 1: six was like, you know, right in there, and we
Speaker 1: got pretty lucky in that circumstance. But he came crashing
Speaker 1: right into that call, and if the wind had in
Speaker 1: the switch, that bowl would have been dead. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing out here is, you know, we say there's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of finger ridges, but every ridge has
Speaker 1: so many different pockets and in different terrain, and so
Speaker 1: on the same ridge, you might have wind work in
Speaker 1: five different directions and it's not that it's swirling, but
Speaker 1: ten yards down the ridge has its own thermal pattern
Speaker 1: because the ridge switches directions learning the thermal patterns and
Speaker 1: here stuff. I don't as much as you look at
Speaker 1: the typographical map and be like it's gonna go there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just think you could get lucky. As our friend
Speaker 1: Chase Dirt and said, you just gotta charge through the
Speaker 1: bad wind into the good wind. And that's not a
Speaker 1: not a bad strategy here. I mean, it just it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's got its own idiosyncrasies in the way
Speaker 1: that you would haunt a place like this. I think
Speaker 1: people are right. It is a visual These elk might
Speaker 1: be more visual creatures because they can see more because
Speaker 1: they have that ability, and they hang out and it's
Speaker 1: more sparse sparsely timbered an open country. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: I mean, that doesn't that doesn't eliminate calling. It just
Speaker 1: makes it a little bit of a different dynamic. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, I don't think, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people hunt the breaks. We
Speaker 1: haven't seen that many hunters in the last three days.
Speaker 1: But elk in accessible places like the one we're in
Speaker 1: get hunted a lot anyway. No matter where they are
Speaker 1: in the state of Montana or any state Colorado, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get hunted in accessible places. So I get
Speaker 1: what folks are saying that these elk just are a
Speaker 1: little bit different, and they do seem to be different
Speaker 1: than other but I've encountering the way that they move
Speaker 1: and act. But you know, calling is a that's a
Speaker 1: hunter hunter versus elk thing. Always, if the elks receptive,
Speaker 1: the hunters good a calling make it work. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people might be saying you can't call
Speaker 1: out here too, saying like leave the hootie mom at home,
Speaker 1: that you can't come out and blow on on any
Speaker 1: sort of calling. They just come running, like in some
Speaker 1: places where elk are just conditioned. That's where I want
Speaker 1: to go. You know, I haven't found it, but I've
Speaker 1: seen it on TV. Joe is, uh, what's your favorite
Speaker 1: bow hunt? I mean, are you is elk cutting your
Speaker 1: favorite thing? It's definitely one of my favorites. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would take all of September off if I could
Speaker 1: every year. Um, what's your favorite? Huh? My favorite favorite hunt?
Speaker 1: It's so hard. My favorite species, if I've already specs
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life, would be big more cheap.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had a big horn cheap? I haven't,
Speaker 1: but I want to. Okay, but that is definitely not
Speaker 1: a favorite. I'm just kidding. I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would like it. The allure of hunting big
Speaker 1: horn sheep just is Yeah, we saw two gry bighorn rams.
Speaker 1: This is worth everything just to seem like I would
Speaker 1: down here a thousand times. Yeah, I said, Man, I've
Speaker 1: been in camp where sheep hunting occurred, and I've been
Speaker 1: around when other people are sheep hunting, and it just
Speaker 1: seemed it doesn't get me that way. It seems boring
Speaker 1: to me. Sheep seemed compared to a giant forest horse
Speaker 1: that's run around bugle and trying to knock stuff over.
Speaker 1: Sheep seemed like a docile, bedded creature that are stuck
Speaker 1: up high in the mountains. It can't get down here.
Speaker 1: You're you're leaning into what I'm trying to get to,
Speaker 1: which is I haven't decided if I like elk cutting
Speaker 1: or not. I'm it's frustrated. It's it's you know, there's
Speaker 1: some hunts that if you if you play your game right,
Speaker 1: which is a whole lot of work you you have.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you do these things, you will be successful.
Speaker 1: And now those things might be really really hard. Elk
Speaker 1: cutting has that same thing. If you do these things,
Speaker 1: you'll be successful. But those things are are so variable
Speaker 1: and are so difficult if you don't live in elk country.
Speaker 1: And Ben and I've been talking about kind of the
Speaker 1: transient hunter, like it's really hard to go somewhere for
Speaker 1: seven days and killing elk or really to kill anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta do a whole lot of things right,
Speaker 1: and and that's the fun part of it, that's the
Speaker 1: challenging part of it, but it's also the hard part
Speaker 1: of it. And you know, like back in Arkansas, anything
Speaker 1: that I hunt locally, you know, I've kind of got
Speaker 1: it dialed in and I can go certain days and
Speaker 1: not go another day, or take off three days here
Speaker 1: and go. And that's such an advantage to doing what
Speaker 1: we did, well, what all of us did on this hunt,
Speaker 1: which is just bomb out somewhere for seven days and
Speaker 1: uh and then you know, if they aren't, if the
Speaker 1: elk aren't bugling, or if these certain factors aren't there,
Speaker 1: then it's just it's I'm I'm being sarcastic, and are
Speaker 1: are hyperbolic, I'm exaggerated, and to make a point that
Speaker 1: is just tough. What's your favorite thing to hunt? Ben?
Speaker 1: And and I'm gonna end up with you all trying
Speaker 1: to convince me to be an alk hunter because I've
Speaker 1: haunted two years and it's done this to me. I'm
Speaker 1: holding up the broken the broken point, broken dreams, broken spirit.
Speaker 1: This this antler is basically Clay Nukem's spirit. It looks
Speaker 1: like a middle it looks like a middle finger. H
Speaker 1: you know, I I'm I'm Turkey's is the answer. And
Speaker 1: that's not close. But Elk are like moving towards the top,
Speaker 1: you know, are definitely number two, but they've got some similarities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there really other than bigger game turkey hunting. What's that now,
Speaker 1: you're like you said, you're like sheep more than elk.
Speaker 1: They don't even do anything. Have you ever been in
Speaker 1: the mountains and heard rams butt heads? Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: is amazing. They do that once every they're they're just
Speaker 1: stuck up there and they can really Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: people because they live in cool country, but they can't
Speaker 1: get down. They're stuck up there. They're lazy. They barely
Speaker 1: even move, like most of them blind in one eye,
Speaker 1: like they can't. Hey, I like where you're A sheep
Speaker 1: hunt would be a slower paced hunt. It would be
Speaker 1: more like strategy and trying to find as opposed to
Speaker 1: just like run and gun. If you could distill it
Speaker 1: down to that something that's simple and honestly, that's what
Speaker 1: I like about spring bear hunting is it's like you
Speaker 1: may only see one bear the whole week, but and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be chasing bear every day. But actually
Speaker 1: that's what I enjoy about it. So like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would describe sheephunny. I thought, I'm not that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go if you guys offered me a trip. I would
Speaker 1: definitely go, but I just think he's like, here's she hunting.
Speaker 1: In my experience with other folks doing it, climb, climb, climb,
Speaker 1: this is it's amazing country. It's hard to get there.
Speaker 1: We finally crashed the summit. We look around, we find
Speaker 1: a sheep we can actually kill, and then we walk
Speaker 1: over there and shoot it while it's munching some grass.
Speaker 1: Like the actual hunting of the animal is only difficult
Speaker 1: because of the country that lives in, and of course
Speaker 1: they have great vision since it's selling all that. Like
Speaker 1: everything else, it is kind of a do or die
Speaker 1: um hunt. And I'm talking about hunt I've never done.
Speaker 1: So you take that for both of you guys who
Speaker 1: are talking about hunts you've never done. Yeah, we but
Speaker 1: it's like hunts we've dreamed of, and there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of there's a lot of Like an elk hunt
Speaker 1: is kind of like pizza m okay, Like, think about
Speaker 1: the attitude you'd be in if you were, like, you
Speaker 1: know what, tonight, we're getting pizza. You would kind of
Speaker 1: be like kind of like exciting um variety in like
Speaker 1: a big horn sheep hunt would be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're going out to help me, Chris, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're both of them are great, all dressed up for
Speaker 1: a lesser experience. Rice, what's your favorite thing hunt? Oh man,
Speaker 1: I think if you were to tell me right now
Speaker 1: there's a hug and bull over the ridge or a
Speaker 1: fresh cat track, I think i'd be uh dumping dogs
Speaker 1: on that cat track? Yeah good? Yeah, but um outside
Speaker 1: that mule deer. I love watching mule here in the
Speaker 1: rut um. To me, that's one of the one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things too, to get after and watch. I
Speaker 1: think it's more a little bit more of an exciting
Speaker 1: um hunter outher than just you know, your first light
Speaker 1: and last light, umka, because you're the animals during the
Speaker 1: day when they're bedded, because you can see them and
Speaker 1: find them. Yeah, just a little bit more patternable and uh,
Speaker 1: I think you'd see a lot more animals. But yeah,
Speaker 1: probably probably meal deer or chasing cats. Nice nice fair
Speaker 1: favorite species? Um I would say turkeys if we had
Speaker 1: more of them, but I've only been on like one
Speaker 1: turkey for real, But I think probably squirrel hunting right here, buddy, Ye,
Speaker 1: you've raised this trial correctly. I'm kind of teeing you
Speaker 1: up for this with dogs or without dogs? With dogs? Question?
Speaker 1: See that see that full elkhorn. We also have a
Speaker 1: full set of sheds. That elkhorn represents your spirit right now,
Speaker 1: while you're talking about squirrel hunting full this is broken
Speaker 1: because of elkinna favorite species. I don't know, I mean
Speaker 1: for me, it's all like it changes with seasons. I know,
Speaker 1: growing up it was like hog hunting or duck hunting. Uh,
Speaker 1: coble came from East Texas, so they were white tail
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, I'm really enjoying bear hunting, especially like
Speaker 1: the stuff with mules in Montana like that was that
Speaker 1: was a really fun hunt a spring bear, not like
Speaker 1: hasn't been as happy with fall bear. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: when we go back to Arkansas, we're coming up on
Speaker 1: like the pinnacle of our year, which is the opening
Speaker 1: of the Arkansas bear season. Um. And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: guys a little story or a little scenario that's been
Speaker 1: happening while we're here. So my buddy James Lawrence, he's
Speaker 1: seventy two. James is seventy two, and me and him
Speaker 1: are like we're like best buddies bear hunting buddies. He
Speaker 1: lives in some really good country and um he uh,
Speaker 1: he lives in good bear country. He knew that I
Speaker 1: was gonna be on this hunt, so he's been baiting
Speaker 1: bears for me, and he actually rented a cabin down
Speaker 1: where we hunt for my whole family to come stay
Speaker 1: this upcoming weekend to bear hunt. And while we were gone,
Speaker 1: my daughter drove my daughter and other son on their
Speaker 1: own accord drove two hours down to where we hunt
Speaker 1: to go bait bears with James. So I thought that
Speaker 1: was pretty cool that my seventeen year old daughter. She
Speaker 1: worked hard for it too. She her mom. There was
Speaker 1: some child logistical challenges and so but she ended up
Speaker 1: driving all the way down there and spent the whole
Speaker 1: day with James baton bears along with my younger son.
Speaker 1: So we're getting pumped for this weekend for bear Camp
Speaker 1: fall bear Camp, and it's it's fun man. We uh,
Speaker 1: we have some we have some good bears too. But
Speaker 1: if I were to pick my favorite species, um, you know,
Speaker 1: bear would have to be up there at the top.
Speaker 1: But white tail, I mean I grew up whitetail hunting
Speaker 1: and um that was I mean, that was all we did.
Speaker 1: White tails and you know small game and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, you know lk cutting is so it's
Speaker 1: so um. It's such a glamorous animal. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no denying, like and that's why I'm here. It's a
Speaker 1: spectacular beast, man. I mean this, you know, like Ben's
Speaker 1: called the forest horse, you know. But they the vocalizations,
Speaker 1: they make, the places they live, the antler structure, I mean,
Speaker 1: how good the meat is. I mean, it's an incredible beast,
Speaker 1: no doubt. And the media has glamorized elk hunting so
Speaker 1: much that US poor Southern boys come up here and
Speaker 1: try to kill elk and it's tough. They didn't tell me, Joe.
Speaker 1: When it all comes together, it's it's pretty special. Well listen,
Speaker 1: you just said, I'm I'm monologue in here. But that's
Speaker 1: what's messed up about this whole deal. Elk hunting stinks
Speaker 1: for such a long period of time that when you
Speaker 1: kill one, it's really great. I I can foresee that,
Speaker 1: Like if I killed that would be like I love
Speaker 1: elkhonney more than anything, but it's only great because of
Speaker 1: how bad it was. Tell me how that works, Joe,
Speaker 1: I mean, for real, I think it was if it
Speaker 1: was easy then, so, but so something is great because
Speaker 1: of how Yeah, because it's the it's the suffering. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like going on a a nasty trip saying
Speaker 1: like like climbing Mount Everest. You know, it's not fun
Speaker 1: while you're doing it, but you look back and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that was amazing. And I always kind of
Speaker 1: model my life when I'm doing stuff like that. It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go climbing out, might as well go climb Everest.
Speaker 1: So I come and do something easy, Go give yourself
Speaker 1: that challenge. It will be a more memorable experience. How
Speaker 1: much respect would you have for Elk if you drove
Speaker 1: all the way out here from Arkansas, get to camp,
Speaker 1: get out of your pickup, grab your bow and shooting out,
Speaker 1: then you'd be like, man, these animals are the are
Speaker 1: the easiest things ever to speak? Gross shot? Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I know. It's it's that way with every hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: the amount of work you put into it, it's what
Speaker 1: gives it value. And I understand that. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: even though we haven't you know, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: this has been a great hunt. We've had bowls every day. Okay,
Speaker 1: y'all tell me why it's been a great hunt man.
Speaker 1: Me and Joe were on bulls and bowls, buglin. Every
Speaker 1: day big bulls run around. I've never been to a
Speaker 1: place where I've seen so many big bulls, Like I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of big bulls in my past few
Speaker 1: ELK seasons, but never all at the same time in
Speaker 1: the same place. Like I might see one, you know,
Speaker 1: really big three fifty bowl once a season, You're like, wow,
Speaker 1: that was a big bowl. But I mean every bowl
Speaker 1: we've seen out here, besides one that I can think of,
Speaker 1: win over three fifty. Like, there's no doubt in my
Speaker 1: mind that every single bowl that I have laid eyes on,
Speaker 1: besides the one that we jumped at five yards that
Speaker 1: you should have shot the head through my head. I
Speaker 1: should have shot through it. We're gonna have to get
Speaker 1: to our Bryce is ums later. He should never should
Speaker 1: never take my health and safety before. But I mean, like,
Speaker 1: every bowl besides that one have just been absolutely huge.
Speaker 1: I mean the first morning I got here, we run out,
Speaker 1: send you guys after a bugle. Bryce and I take
Speaker 1: off chasing another bugle, which is already like that's a
Speaker 1: great day right there. You know you got two different
Speaker 1: bulls bugle and you're choosing what bugles you're gonna run after?
Speaker 1: What it's not even when it's not even shooting ight yet.
Speaker 1: Right out of camp, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: So that was great, And I mean we take off,
Speaker 1: we run over ridges, literally run over ridges, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like we jumped two spikes in the bottom,
Speaker 1: so we slowed down for a minute and we're like, man,
Speaker 1: it wasn't those spikes beugly? There's no way, And we
Speaker 1: see one of the spikes let out a bugle, like
Speaker 1: just as the whimpy little bugle, and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't them trying to And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we hear this big bugle and Brice and I both
Speaker 1: look at each other like it wasn't spike. And coming
Speaker 1: over the ridge, it's just there's this little funnel of
Speaker 1: five cows and this screaming behind him, just just letting
Speaker 1: it all out, and I just see antlers coming over Raginal.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, it's a big bull. It's a really
Speaker 1: big bull. And then the whole hunt just like was
Speaker 1: modeled after that. Every time I laid eyes on bulls
Speaker 1: like they were just huge. Well that was a joke
Speaker 1: before you guys got here that, you know. The first
Speaker 1: day we were in a different area, I moved spots
Speaker 1: to see if we couldn't get on more elk, and man,
Speaker 1: right away, I'm on one of the biggest bulls I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. Miss him. But the next morning, get up,
Speaker 1: um bulls bugling everywhere, Get on. It was a little
Speaker 1: bit behind another seven by seven and his cows, and
Speaker 1: kind of just crept and followed them all the way
Speaker 1: up the mountain. Next thing you know, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: eighty yards from them, and my wind had been good
Speaker 1: the whole time, and snuck in to make my kind
Speaker 1: of my final approach, and they blew out pretty hard
Speaker 1: because when switched in their little thermal pattern. But then
Speaker 1: the next bull after that I saw, I was another
Speaker 1: seven by seven, And the first four bowls I've I've
Speaker 1: seen were all seven's. And that was kind of the joke,
Speaker 1: was that seven by seven? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's one
Speaker 1: thing we were saying, Look, what kind of elk hunting
Speaker 1: is this? I said, it's hard. It's it's you know,
Speaker 1: harder maybe than others, easier than some you know, However,
Speaker 1: I haven't put in all the elk in all of places,
Speaker 1: but this definitely the reward would be bigger here than
Speaker 1: most places, Like you have the opportunity to kill a
Speaker 1: giant elk here where we are sitting right now, which
Speaker 1: no one will ever know about. But um, it's it's
Speaker 1: tough hunting, but you know, if you can figure them
Speaker 1: out and get lucky, we'll see here. And you guys
Speaker 1: say this is it's calibrating me because you know this
Speaker 1: is my second, my second hunt. Baron. I went to
Speaker 1: Colorado last year, just three weeks before season, decided we
Speaker 1: were gonna be elk hunters. Never blown an out call,
Speaker 1: picked up a bugle call from a bugle tube from Phelps,
Speaker 1: and some diaphragm calls. And I was a pretty good
Speaker 1: turkey collar, so the diaphragm worked pretty good for me.
Speaker 1: We bombed out to a guy just said go here,
Speaker 1: a pretty good elk hunter just said general area. He
Speaker 1: just said go to this spot and you ought to
Speaker 1: find out. Said okay. We went out there, Oh kind of.
Speaker 1: We were only there four and a half days, but
Speaker 1: we we ended up finding some elk. Had one encounter
Speaker 1: with with with two Raghorn Bulls called them in ended
Speaker 1: up passing them. Everybody's heard this story. We ended up
Speaker 1: passing them because we thought they weren't legal. Turns out
Speaker 1: they were legal. So I had the and I missed opportunity.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I've had very This is only
Speaker 1: my second time Elk County, so it helps me to
Speaker 1: hear you guys talk about really how great this is.
Speaker 1: And obviously I'm I'm joking about, you know, not liking
Speaker 1: elk hunting. But the one thing that is, and this
Speaker 1: is probably something that like new hunters would experience and
Speaker 1: I would be new into this world, is after you've
Speaker 1: done something and been successful multiple times in multiple places
Speaker 1: over multiple years, you begin to have this like equation
Speaker 1: inside of you that this much work will usually equate
Speaker 1: to success and you can bank on that. So in
Speaker 1: all that work, I mean, that's the way it is
Speaker 1: with my white tail honey, with my bear hunting, with
Speaker 1: my squirrel hunting, with my training coon dogs, It's like,
Speaker 1: if I just put this time in, it's gonna end
Speaker 1: up fruitful. I don't know that equation yet with Elk.
Speaker 1: I've got one piece from last year when Baron I
Speaker 1: hunted I've got a new piece that I hoped would
Speaker 1: be the piece that would put some elk in my freezer.
Speaker 1: And we've still got a day left, so it may
Speaker 1: yet um. But it turns out this puzzle might be
Speaker 1: bigger than I thought, voice might made more pieces. What
Speaker 1: do you think it might be a thousand piece puzzle, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't have a thousand
Speaker 1: elk hunts man. Well, here's what happens is sometimes you
Speaker 1: you're looking at trying to put this puzzle together, and
Speaker 1: you walk out in the woods, you make a sound,
Speaker 1: elk comes running and you shoot it, and it seems
Speaker 1: like the easiest thing in the world. Now, everybody who's
Speaker 1: listening to this, who's ever turkey hunt it will understand
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Because if you get some swamp god,
Speaker 1: whether it's stuck back in some swamp in Louisiana or
Speaker 1: you know, probably in Arkansas or in a place where
Speaker 1: he just doesn't he is not going to do what
Speaker 1: you wanted to do. You have to have the next
Speaker 1: level of you know, experience to know what to do
Speaker 1: when you're presented with, you know, an animal that's wary
Speaker 1: of your stuff, that's gonna help me with the next
Speaker 1: puzzle piece. Absolutely, And like I said, I've had I
Speaker 1: had a friend, you know, co worker this year who
Speaker 1: just walked out on the ridge and went and elk
Speaker 1: granted and it shot it and then it was over.
Speaker 1: I had just been that rich three hours prior, doing
Speaker 1: the same noise and the same exact way he was.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that he killed that he should
Speaker 1: split that up. Yeah, because he I pretty much called
Speaker 1: it half of the way in and then he brought
Speaker 1: it the rest of the way, you know. So I
Speaker 1: told him, I said, that is just you being there
Speaker 1: and that elk being there and at the right time.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had hunted that spot for five
Speaker 1: days and he came in for one day. That's what
Speaker 1: I felt like. I mean, I know I'm not a
Speaker 1: good elk hunter. Um, I'm proficient at getting around the
Speaker 1: back country and understanding stuff people tell me and trying
Speaker 1: to execute it in the field. But I was still
Speaker 1: banking on that if I just worked really hard for
Speaker 1: seven days, I'd get lucky if nothing else, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I mean, because every time you pop
Speaker 1: over one of these little ridges, you know, at about
Speaker 1: thirty minutes before dark, You're like, this is the time
Speaker 1: we're about to get lucky. Slap Bear on the shoulder
Speaker 1: and say get be ready, buddy, and you pop over
Speaker 1: the ridge and like, why isn't there you know, a
Speaker 1: raghorn bull feeding down there with a cow ats, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty yards It just didn't happen. Well, the frustrating part is,
Speaker 1: you know, some somebody else might come up here tomorrow
Speaker 1: while you're here, or the next day, or Thursday or
Speaker 1: Friday or Saturday, and to to walk on the exact
Speaker 1: same riginal where you were today, do the exact same
Speaker 1: thing that you did in exact same proficiency and kill
Speaker 1: an elk. And that's where the randomness and the luck
Speaker 1: and all those other factors come into play. And that's
Speaker 1: where just endurance and persistence ultimately end up winning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I told you earlier today. In
Speaker 1: all my hunting where I have been successful, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that I was good. It's just that I lasted
Speaker 1: longer then. Yeah, some of my some of other people
Speaker 1: and they might say, man Clay was a good hunter,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, well, I just lasted a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. What do you guys think you're the editor
Speaker 1: Peterson's hunting, you need to have the answers. What what
Speaker 1: do you think? I totally agree is it's time. It's
Speaker 1: time in the field if you are able, like I
Speaker 1: would love to stay here for five more days in
Speaker 1: granting this out until there's a bowl on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, And do do I know that there'd be
Speaker 1: a bowl on the ground in five days? No? But
Speaker 1: do I know that I would walk twenty miles every
Speaker 1: day and work really hard at it. Yeah. And as
Speaker 1: long as you're in the field, you're learning these animals,
Speaker 1: you're understanding their behaviors and like the terrain that you're
Speaker 1: working with and the funky win that we keep getting.
Speaker 1: When you're in the field and you're working with it
Speaker 1: and you're learning it and you spend the time necessary,
Speaker 1: that's when you find that success because it's all about
Speaker 1: spending the time that you need to be out there.
Speaker 1: And I mean, for us, we're lucky because we can
Speaker 1: go back to Bosman and come back out here next
Speaker 1: weekend if we wanted to, which gives us the opportunity
Speaker 1: to learn it instants throughout the throughout the season instead
Speaker 1: of we have to come here and sit here for
Speaker 1: fifteen days and learn it all at once. Just imagine
Speaker 1: if you came out here every year and you knew
Speaker 1: by the elk core and you walked over there and
Speaker 1: killed one every time. That would be a completely different experience.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't It wouldn't need near as enjoyable as it
Speaker 1: is having to grind it out. I just wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: I'd say it's also pretty tough if you're saying I mean,
Speaker 1: if you say, hey, you only have seven days to
Speaker 1: hunt elk, and that is how your season is going
Speaker 1: to go. I've killed elk, but I've also spent a
Speaker 1: heck of a lot more than I hunted. I only
Speaker 1: usually only work like three days a week, and I
Speaker 1: probably hunted almost every day off from September to November
Speaker 1: and ended up killing a big bowl last week a
Speaker 1: season with my rifle. Didn't you say it was like
Speaker 1: fifty something days. I don't know about fifty, but it
Speaker 1: was a lot of days I put in. I put
Speaker 1: in a lot of work for that for that bowl,
Speaker 1: and I had a lot of opportunities, messed up on
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities, but I put in a lot
Speaker 1: more than seven days been the season to get that
Speaker 1: bowl on the ground. Yeah, so I think they only
Speaker 1: have seven days. It doesn't make it any easier only
Speaker 1: and doesn't make it any less frustrating. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you something that I observed about
Speaker 1: all of you guys that it did not surprise me,
Speaker 1: but um kind of learning, Um, how generous all you
Speaker 1: guys were, all of you with uh you know, kind
Speaker 1: of this elk camp philosophy. Like Bryce came in and
Speaker 1: he didn't know us either, and I mean he was
Speaker 1: sharing his spots, and you did a great job of articulating, um,
Speaker 1: you know, just what you thought the elk we're doing
Speaker 1: and you just kinda I appreciated that and just sharing
Speaker 1: spots and not that I've I mean, when i'm hunting somebody,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not withholding information from I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: But when you're elk hunting, I don't know, it's different
Speaker 1: than whitetail. Honey. If this was a white tail camp
Speaker 1: back you know, and wherever in the Midwest, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you almost have to do it solo, like if your
Speaker 1: tree stand in and it's like this guy's going here,
Speaker 1: this guy's going here. But with Al County a lot
Speaker 1: of times, it's better to be in teams, uh, for
Speaker 1: calling purposes. For honestly, I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: is for mental purposes. I think having a buddy there
Speaker 1: that you can enjoy the experience with helps you grind
Speaker 1: a little bit harder. I mean, I've been analyzing this.
Speaker 1: It's like, why do they why are they going together?
Speaker 1: Why don't they split up? I think you go together
Speaker 1: because you like it, because you enjoy being together, you
Speaker 1: enjoy hunting together, and uh and and probably you can
Speaker 1: do better as a team. And I realized the calling
Speaker 1: aspects of a team. You know, you can put somebody
Speaker 1: up front and somebody further back. But uh, but now,
Speaker 1: just like with I mean all you guys, like y'all
Speaker 1: were putting me out front a lot of times. Um,
Speaker 1: you drove a lot further than we didn't. Well, and
Speaker 1: that's I appreciate that, I truly do. But I like
Speaker 1: that aspect of it. So much of the hunting that
Speaker 1: I do, it's kind of solo, you know. Um, and
Speaker 1: even like bear hunting, like on a spring bear hunt,
Speaker 1: Like if we this were a spring bear camp, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be hunting together. I mean it'd be like you
Speaker 1: go to that drainage. You go to that drainage, and
Speaker 1: but l hunting kind of has a neat thing about it,
Speaker 1: which maybe is so normal to you guys. But and
Speaker 1: Ben is just you know, the last couple of days,
Speaker 1: he's just been like, Clay, you to come with me,
Speaker 1: and so I'll go and and it's been good. I've
Speaker 1: been learning a ton from Ben. So I like hunting
Speaker 1: with Pete. I'm not a solo hunter. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are that like to be by themselves.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go out. Um, I'm just not. And
Speaker 1: I can explain it in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 1: I just like, you know, I like being with other
Speaker 1: people and sharing that knowledge. And I just that's that
Speaker 1: gets me out of bed more than going up by
Speaker 1: myself and being alone and catching the solitude. I just
Speaker 1: that's not something I need. For something that is I
Speaker 1: would And I was trying to describe this or earlier.
Speaker 1: I love people. I love being around people. I enjoy
Speaker 1: people's other people's success, Like I think that's a big
Speaker 1: part of being a good human is doing that. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to hunting, I usually I am find
Speaker 1: myself like gravitating towards isolation and actual hunting. Like, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I'm not sharing spots. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I don't think it translates necessarily to being stingy or something,
Speaker 1: but like it's like, you go that way, I'll go
Speaker 1: this way. I appreciated I could tell that Ben that,
Speaker 1: like you didn't want me to go with you to
Speaker 1: help you because I didn't have anything to offer, and
Speaker 1: I knew you wanted to kill an elk, and I
Speaker 1: knew that if I went with you, there was probably
Speaker 1: a fair chance that I'd be the one shooting. So
Speaker 1: I didn't want to push that on you. But our
Speaker 1: time together was valuable. I learned a ton from you.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have hunted with you guys a
Speaker 1: little bit more or or at all. I mean I
Speaker 1: heard your stories and heard your commentary on your hunts,
Speaker 1: which is really valuable to me. But uh, anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think for sure, when you think about
Speaker 1: elk hunting tactically, it's better to be have someone else
Speaker 1: there so you can have a call, or you have
Speaker 1: somebody to be stopping around the background where you can
Speaker 1: trees doing anything it takes to get that elk all
Speaker 1: the way in there. I mean that is absolutely tactically
Speaker 1: uh an advantage that you would want. And so you know,
Speaker 1: those two things combined, you like, you might as well
Speaker 1: just do it um and and certainly being able to
Speaker 1: if you want to get to know somebody and you
Speaker 1: value them, go in the woods with them. And if
Speaker 1: you start arguing over stuff and you start not one
Speaker 1: person wants to drive the conversation. The other person doesn't
Speaker 1: want to listen or vice a versus somebody who's just
Speaker 1: gonna find somebody's a follower, somebody's a leader. If you
Speaker 1: really want to get to know somebody and whether you
Speaker 1: could be friends with them or you want to spend
Speaker 1: time around them, take them out in the woods, take
Speaker 1: them out elk Hunton. Because one person is going to
Speaker 1: going to go up the ridge, one person is want
Speaker 1: to go down. One person might want to be cautious,
Speaker 1: one person might want to run in. That's it's a
Speaker 1: good way to to really, you know said how much
Speaker 1: you can stand each other for sure, that's the capacities
Speaker 1: of your relationship. Really it is, yeah, man, And that's
Speaker 1: not the reason you do it, but that's something you
Speaker 1: find out about yourself. You know, how can you communicate
Speaker 1: with another person in these oft intense situations. And also,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm being giving by bringing someone
Speaker 1: along that's probably gonna shoot the elk and I'm probably not.
Speaker 1: I want to see an elk die. I've never called
Speaker 1: in an elk for another person. I've called an elk
Speaker 1: and never gotten shot, but I've never called in an elk.
Speaker 1: That's someone that has running and been shot by someone else.
Speaker 1: I would value that as much as I would have
Speaker 1: dead bull by my arrow. It's the same as if
Speaker 1: if Joe would have shot shot a bull next to me,
Speaker 1: I would have been just as excited for him, and
Speaker 1: I would be a filer shot it. And I know
Speaker 1: that Joe woul feel the same way. And that's why
Speaker 1: it's fun to hunt. Man that that right there is
Speaker 1: the is the qualifying factor for people that you want
Speaker 1: to hunt with. I don't want to hunt with someone
Speaker 1: that if I shoot something, they're piste off and run
Speaker 1: the other direction and say that should have been mine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you always find that with duck hunting. When
Speaker 1: you're in a there's four people in a blind and
Speaker 1: the bunch of ducks come in and you shoot two
Speaker 1: and then it's always like I got that, when I
Speaker 1: got that, and I'm like, we got up some ducks. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter who got the ducks. It matters that
Speaker 1: the ducks are on the ground. Let's shoot. Our alignment
Speaker 1: will divide them up. Um. That's how it often happens
Speaker 1: in that situation. There's no way to know who shot
Speaker 1: what in some of those volleys. But it's same here.
Speaker 1: You there's a you know, five of us or four
Speaker 1: of us with tags here in this tent. One of
Speaker 1: us shooting a bull. To me would have been I
Speaker 1: would have probably told the story like it was me
Speaker 1: clip there was Clay and he was I would have
Speaker 1: told it like it was me and been. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been like, oh yeah, buddy, and camp got one.
Speaker 1: I would have told the story as if our camp
Speaker 1: got our camp got our team got one, our camp
Speaker 1: got one, because that's what matters. Broken. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: our team got a broken had our spirits broken it.
Speaker 1: This whole experience has been super valuable. Whe there any
Speaker 1: of us killed, elk or not. I think we all
Speaker 1: came in here with expectations that we would do better
Speaker 1: than we did. Probably you think you always do right.
Speaker 1: You got to Hey, you have to come in thinking
Speaker 1: that you're gonna find the successor what's the point in
Speaker 1: going if you know you're not going to kill something.
Speaker 1: We had our I mean, I couldn't ask for anymore.
Speaker 1: I had a shot. I was the only one that
Speaker 1: that had that. But I had a shot, and it
Speaker 1: was this could have killed a cow. Yeah, could have
Speaker 1: killed like ten cows and a couple of elve spikes. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll see now. I had probably the best shot of
Speaker 1: the trip, Like I could have killed that three twenty bowl.
Speaker 1: You know, I had him dead to right, except Bryce's
Speaker 1: head was in the way. Okay, yeah, that's right. He
Speaker 1: was wondering why I wasn't shooting, and I had a
Speaker 1: narrow knocked but wasn't it full draw? Because he was
Speaker 1: just blow this little bluff. And I knew he was
Speaker 1: somewhere around there, but I couldn't see him. And Joe
Speaker 1: was about ten yards behind me higher up. So from
Speaker 1: his perspective, if I have this six by six bull
Speaker 1: probably about three um at fifteen yards, standing perfectly broadside
Speaker 1: and I'm not drawing my bow, I mean, he stood
Speaker 1: there for it seemed like forever. It was probably forty
Speaker 1: five seconds, but it was long enough. So like when
Speaker 1: we first when he first got bumped, like I saw
Speaker 1: the antlers, Cow called to him, he stopped perfectly and
Speaker 1: like he didn't get our wind or anything like, he
Speaker 1: just stopped, looked back and like he he stopped in
Speaker 1: the perfect spot where his view was kind of hidden
Speaker 1: by a tree. So he stayed longer. And Uh, I
Speaker 1: had time enough to pull my range finder out of
Speaker 1: its pouch, range him twenty five, put it back in,
Speaker 1: knock an arrow for myself and look back at Bryce
Speaker 1: and go, why isn't he shooting? And the whole time
Speaker 1: I'm wondering why he Joe wasn't shooting because I know
Speaker 1: I can't see him, and I don't want to move
Speaker 1: out and bump him because I figured Joe as a shot,
Speaker 1: but Joe was being he was taking safety. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would have my pin like head maybe like a couple
Speaker 1: of inches off to the left, So I figured that wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, a good shot to take. But when you
Speaker 1: start talking about all the chances that we had, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I had one fair opportunity at at Cow's
Speaker 1: and some spikes, uh, and I didn't push it I
Speaker 1: felt like I could have got within bow range of them,
Speaker 1: you know, is that more? And I stalked down and
Speaker 1: I think the closest I got was a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight yards, but we were intentionally standing back because
Speaker 1: we felt like there was a bull gonna be coming
Speaker 1: any second if had I targeted that elk, which I
Speaker 1: would today like today, if I see a cow elk,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like going after it like it's a
Speaker 1: boot and carget bowl. Um. You know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I could have got within bow range of those elks.
Speaker 1: So boy, it's not been for for lack of seeing animals. Um,
Speaker 1: lots of opportunity and lots of effort. So I mean,
Speaker 1: what more can you ask of a hunting camp than that?
Speaker 1: Lots of opportunity and lots of effort. Yeah, the opportunity
Speaker 1: thing is important because I've been in places where, you know,
Speaker 1: even traveling talk about like transient hunting, like going to
Speaker 1: an outfitter or I went one time, went to Newfoundland
Speaker 1: and the outfiter said, he said, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do after you kill your moose? Said, well, don't
Speaker 1: talk to me like that. How dare you because are
Speaker 1: you guaranteeing me, I kill a moose. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: would we normally get a good bull in the first
Speaker 1: two or three days? And you're gonna want to do
Speaker 1: you want a canoe in the lake or fish? Just
Speaker 1: try and thinking about kind of the things you want
Speaker 1: to do with your free time. On't you kill your moose?
Speaker 1: I thought, Wow, this is the worst thing in outfitters
Speaker 1: ever said to me ever, because he said that actualation.
Speaker 1: It's foolish, you know, it's just foolish. You want to say,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hunt really hard. There's a lot of moose around,
Speaker 1: we know where they are. We'll do our best. The
Speaker 1: rest are up to you and the moose. He didn't
Speaker 1: say that, And I went. I hunted for seven or
Speaker 1: I think eight days, totally hunted and didn't see a moose,
Speaker 1: lock eyes on, any single hair on a moose. And
Speaker 1: you know, you realize at that moment like those were
Speaker 1: false expectations. The expectations should be get out there, hunt hard,
Speaker 1: have a good opportunity. We had opportunities that we could
Speaker 1: figure these elk out, and you had time and you
Speaker 1: got or or luck on your side, you could you
Speaker 1: could kill a giant elk here and not one that
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't see in many other places in the
Speaker 1: state of Montana that you can draw fairly frequently, you know,
Speaker 1: So it's I mean that alone is enough to draw
Speaker 1: you here and keep you here for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're definitely not going to kill a small
Speaker 1: one because they're just not here there. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a small velvet spikes to like three, there's a velvet spike.
Speaker 1: And when when when Bryson Joe didn't get that one,
Speaker 1: didn't Bryce say well, that's the smallest one. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: thought he didn't want to shoot it when he was
Speaker 1: just standing there. I was kind of like that that
Speaker 1: there's no way he's passing on this bowl price. That's
Speaker 1: what I did, guys. I just you know, I had
Speaker 1: it there and it I only wanted to shoot a
Speaker 1: seven bus. He's like, I already missed the seven by seven.
Speaker 1: There we've been so we can't we can't talk about
Speaker 1: we can't have Bryce on here without I've been giving
Speaker 1: Bryce a hard time this whole week. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know your name until your your last
Speaker 1: name until yesterday. So we went six days and I
Speaker 1: didn't know your last name purpose. We just I liked
Speaker 1: that we were friends and we were joining together in
Speaker 1: this pursuit of big game solely because we just were
Speaker 1: Elk cunters. We're elk cutters. I don't need to know
Speaker 1: your last name. Um. Bryce was such a good dude though,
Speaker 1: that anytime anything bad would happen, we would blame it
Speaker 1: on him because clearly it wasn't his fault. And so
Speaker 1: every time when we when he sent me and one day,
Speaker 1: well Joe did too, but being jod isn't is didn't
Speaker 1: roll off the tongue as good as being Bryce. Ye
Speaker 1: were one. They had spot this big bull and seen
Speaker 1: where he betted, and they were like, hey, why don't Ben,
Speaker 1: why don't you and Clay going there this afternoon? And
Speaker 1: we were like, really, you're gonna send us in on
Speaker 1: that bull and they were like, yeah, we just want
Speaker 1: to go somewhere else. So we went in there. We
Speaker 1: never saw the bull, we never saw an elk And
Speaker 1: on the way out, I was like, we've been briced.
Speaker 1: We've been actually on the next bridge over, we just
Speaker 1: snuck around that. I was like, they spooked on the
Speaker 1: gut here. They're like you should go over there because
Speaker 1: we were a little bit surprised that they would send
Speaker 1: us into the spot where they had just been on
Speaker 1: these big bulls. Well, so every every time this week
Speaker 1: anything hasn't gone right, We've been like, we've been briced,
Speaker 1: We've been Brice, I'll be the scapegoat. Uh that's funny,
Speaker 1: somebody else and uh we uh we were bug going
Speaker 1: over here. The people wouldn't be able to wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to see Bryce is pretty pretty fit elk hunter.
Speaker 1: So it's Joe, Um, Bryce, you got a reputation of
Speaker 1: this camp. But being able to you know, charge, charge
Speaker 1: the bugle, get after him, pound the dirt. We were
Speaker 1: bugling a few days ago, just kind of practicing. Ben
Speaker 1: and I just mid day and we were like, what
Speaker 1: if Bryce just came running across I said he might.
Speaker 1: He would probably jump across the drainage. We envisioned Rice
Speaker 1: like running and jumping across the whole drainage and then
Speaker 1: realizing realizing that that bugle was us. He's gonna be
Speaker 1: mad at us. Yeah, Barrett, what do you think you
Speaker 1: think we should come back here or should we go
Speaker 1: back to Colorado? We should definitely come back here because
Speaker 1: we only saw two elk in Colorado to Okay, we're
Speaker 1: you know, filming some of this hunt and stuff and
Speaker 1: I had to bring to cameraman. So they've been alternating.
Speaker 1: Colby and Barra been alternating and uh so I'll wear
Speaker 1: one out in the morning and then wear one out
Speaker 1: and even then we've been flipping back and forth. Do
Speaker 1: you all think we need to bring three people next year?
Speaker 1: We're all good, We're good. I'm gonna I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a tag next year. Yeah, okay, yeah for real? Yeah, Beart,
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna ask Bear and then Kolbe what just
Speaker 1: your full commentary on this hunt? Like Beart, you've kind
Speaker 1: of been like camp sidekick. Uh was it worth it?
Speaker 1: You're ready to go home? Oh? I think that we
Speaker 1: got to kill an elk before we go home, because
Speaker 1: I mean, we drove twenty one hours up here, and
Speaker 1: it's a lot better elk hunting than what we did
Speaker 1: in Colorado, because in Colorado we went we rode forty
Speaker 1: miles in a week and didn't hear single bugle and
Speaker 1: saw two elk and we didn't even have a dream horn. Again,
Speaker 1: this is our Montana broken dream, which we actually have
Speaker 1: something in hand every September. You guys hold that together here.
Speaker 1: It's a wishbone if you ever break it. But that's
Speaker 1: that's the best attitude of an elk hunter right there.
Speaker 1: We're staying here untill we can say just now, you
Speaker 1: got everybody's leaving except for us. And I told I
Speaker 1: told bar, I said, hey, how about we just leave
Speaker 1: this afternoon with these guys. And he looked at me
Speaker 1: and he said, I thought we were gonna kill an elk,
Speaker 1: he said, he said, we need to we need to
Speaker 1: keep hunting. So he's he meant that. He was like,
Speaker 1: we need to stay. And I said, so you're not
Speaker 1: ready to go home and he's like, no, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna stay. We're gonna tonight tomorrow morning. Yeah. You guys
Speaker 1: got more water, more food. Yeah, y'all. Y'all charged us up.
Speaker 1: We took water, we took Ben's bread, we took your
Speaker 1: keen wah whatever, breed Man, those were good burritos. Bro,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cook some of that. Joe. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: gave us something that we don't know about. He gave
Speaker 1: me some ground meat, okay, you did I know you did?
Speaker 1: You gave us some buffalo archery killed Buffalo, it's valuable
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, Colby thoughts, Yeah, no, this has been great.
Speaker 1: What do you think about these guys? Uh, it's been great.
Speaker 1: I mean just at camp and you know when you
Speaker 1: can just come in and give each other a hard
Speaker 1: time and instantly it's like it's up, bro, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's just there's a camaraderie that just comes with
Speaker 1: with being in the outdoors and knowing that everybody's willing
Speaker 1: to grind and do whatever, and whether you have a
Speaker 1: tag or not. And uh, I mean I know for
Speaker 1: me embarrass like whoever goes or whoever stays is you know,
Speaker 1: we'll have a good time. It'll be good. And then
Speaker 1: you're looking forward to people coming in and like even
Speaker 1: just being willing to contribute, like Bear cooked one night,
Speaker 1: I cooked one night. You know, just filling in whatever
Speaker 1: needs to be whatever needs to be done, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not just something everybody's done some sort of
Speaker 1: support thing for everyone else at one time or another.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's really like the valuable experiences,
Speaker 1: the relationships you get inside of inside of these these places.
Speaker 1: It's where you start to see people's true character. And
Speaker 1: I mean ultimate defeat and still like ready to go.
Speaker 1: I mean Bryce called me whenever he missed his bull,
Speaker 1: and he was like real frustrated, but it was like
Speaker 1: he was ready a charge forward to the next one,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I was telling you guys, you
Speaker 1: need to move Camfee over here. He's like, I just
Speaker 1: got defeated, but you guys should totally come here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was like, get over here, man. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I said when Kobe said that, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize how many elk were were over here, but I
Speaker 1: was like, man, we're not going to go over there
Speaker 1: and hunt Bryce's elk. I mean, I got figured there
Speaker 1: was like one drainage with ELK, but I just it
Speaker 1: was generous of you, and I mean we would have
Speaker 1: done the same thing for you, but it was it
Speaker 1: was it was generous. And that's when Colby said, we
Speaker 1: don't even know this guy's last we're going We're going
Speaker 1: where he says, yeah, like two days in. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know his last name. And if he
Speaker 1: told me Claike clean up camp and then go up
Speaker 1: and water the horses, you didn't even I just would
Speaker 1: have done it. You didn't even know if it was
Speaker 1: the right price. That was the time when we thought
Speaker 1: Bryce was at the wrong camp. Bryce actually didn't even
Speaker 1: know Joe here. What do they call it, the guys
Speaker 1: that went crasher? You're an elk camp crasher. You just
Speaker 1: gotta go down the road to some other guys and
Speaker 1: just pull up and just be like, oh, you guys,
Speaker 1: what's for good? Should you giving you guys more bad advice?
Speaker 1: You're like, hey, I know you, Like he knows Joe. Yeah, like, yeah, Joe, sure,
Speaker 1: I know Joe. Yeah, yeah, he usually go with Joe
Speaker 1: or Tommy. Yeah, Joe was doing that with the locals
Speaker 1: the other day, you know, the Bell family. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of weird that many people in Montana
Speaker 1: town Montana still exists world. Well, um no, it's been
Speaker 1: a pleasure to hunt with you guys. Thank you Joe
Speaker 1: for hooking man. Joe, of all people, has been super jitten.
Speaker 1: When I met Joe a year ago, he was like, come,
Speaker 1: elk hunting man, I'll take yell hunting and I can
Speaker 1: tell him minute. A lot of people say that, but
Speaker 1: I can tell him minute. And so I did what
Speaker 1: he said. He said, put in for this tag. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh, here we are so really, Joe appreciate it, man,
Speaker 1: of course, Sorry, I have to take off today. I
Speaker 1: should have driven myself. Ah Um, I'm glad you made
Speaker 1: it up. Go back to Arkansas with him? I should
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. I've always wanted to go to Arkansas. Come
Speaker 1: on down, you got opener season exactly, get down the
Speaker 1: camp with me and James Lawrence. But no, I'm really
Speaker 1: glad you guys made it up. I'm glad we got
Speaker 1: into Elk and have that experience because I mean, it's
Speaker 1: never guaranteed that you're gonna take one home, but being
Speaker 1: able to be in them and have an experience where
Speaker 1: you're running around with these amazing creatures, it's always worth it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in my book. Yeah, I'm anxious to get back to
Speaker 1: Uh see, really how strong my legs got this last week.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been running. I've been you know, I
Speaker 1: have to work pretty hard to stay fit at my
Speaker 1: old age, and uh so I kind of knew my
Speaker 1: fitness level and uh, I'm we hadn't probably walked as
Speaker 1: much as you guys, but we walked a lot. I
Speaker 1: mean I've been every day, I've been walking to the
Speaker 1: bottom and back up and about three of these bumps over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it grinds on you. We did a little good Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a little hustling today after that bowl. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, it's it's yeah, grinds on it.
Speaker 1: And getting up in the morning. Yeah, I'm sure other
Speaker 1: folks have gotten up in the morning and you just
Speaker 1: kind of opened your I was like, nah, come on,
Speaker 1: this ain't gonna work. Just go right to se just
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. It's a it's easy. The first
Speaker 1: like two days, yeah, six that that first coal, that
Speaker 1: that bugldmen Bryson, I left you that first morning and
Speaker 1: we take off after it. I got to the top
Speaker 1: of the ridge and looked depressing. I was like breathing,
Speaker 1: kind of heavy. I was like, man, I forgot to
Speaker 1: I forgot what it was like to hunt with somebody
Speaker 1: who who runs up the mountain. Yeah. It was like
Speaker 1: huffing and puffing. But sure it's fun. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: really want to go back to civilization, do either. You know,
Speaker 1: we were talking today, Ben brought up kind of the
Speaker 1: sea quints of how this feels to be in a camp.
Speaker 1: You know, he said it takes about two days to
Speaker 1: kind of settle in and kind of let the civilized
Speaker 1: world kind of drift from your consciousness. Not that you're
Speaker 1: not conscious of family at all times and communicating with
Speaker 1: family when you can and stuff. But but that seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty good assessment. Ben. Yeah. Now, i
Speaker 1: I've always I thought that since I've done some like
Speaker 1: real back country huns where you're out of service for
Speaker 1: ten days and you get dropped off by a floatplane
Speaker 1: or something. This case, I was watching football in my
Speaker 1: truck taking a nap yesterday. So civilization being what it is,
Speaker 1: but it's still the same thing in terms of the mentality.
Speaker 1: You gotta you gotta like slough off society. You gotta
Speaker 1: you know, there's no couch to sit on, there's no
Speaker 1: TV to watch, there's your responsibilities are different, and you
Speaker 1: have to kind of find the rhythm of the elk
Speaker 1: and the mountain and the place you're in, and you
Speaker 1: have to follow that rhythm. You sleep when nicely, you know,
Speaker 1: you sleep when they sleep, your bed down the afternoon
Speaker 1: when they do, and you're up and moving when they are. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's a rhythm you have to find. And the
Speaker 1: first mountain you climb seems like, wow, this is a
Speaker 1: little harder than I thought the fifth or six. When
Speaker 1: you climb, your mentality is like you now know kind
Speaker 1: of what the rhythm needs to be and how quickly
Speaker 1: you need to move and where you need to end up,
Speaker 1: and and so for me it's always been it takes
Speaker 1: a couple of the first couple of days. You feel
Speaker 1: like you're just kind of working it out, kind of
Speaker 1: physically and mentally, getting yourself to a place where you
Speaker 1: no longer worry about anything other than the elk and
Speaker 1: finding that rhythm. That's a pretty unique experience to hunters
Speaker 1: that other I mean even people that there would be
Speaker 1: some extreme backpackers and hikers and mountaineers and stuff that
Speaker 1: would experience long stints in the wilderness where you really
Speaker 1: truly have time to get disconnected. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: it's it's hunters that are doing that. You know. For
Speaker 1: I'm saying for seven to ten days be out in
Speaker 1: a way, and uh, I mean nobody's taken their tent
Speaker 1: and going out with their family of five and camping
Speaker 1: for ten days on the mountain over there just to
Speaker 1: have fun and waking up an hour before sun, hiking
Speaker 1: four miles and running down mounds. Yeah, I mean my wife.
Speaker 1: The moment I always know that I've done it right
Speaker 1: was when I go home on my wife smells me
Speaker 1: when I walk in the door from like across the
Speaker 1: room in the kitchen. She just go take a shower,
Speaker 1: don't touch me, take a shot of her. She seems
Speaker 1: to be able to smell me well before I even
Speaker 1: maybe walk in the house. I think there's got to
Speaker 1: be something healthy about like not bathing for a week.
Speaker 1: I think I like it. I mean, I I was
Speaker 1: telling you other day, I feel like this is. I
Speaker 1: feel better and more comfortable and more in my element here,
Speaker 1: whether it is do you hear a bugle? There? Joe?
Speaker 1: A mule? Every time I hear the mule, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a bugle something. So many digressions we've decided
Speaker 1: that mules got they did. They got the short end
Speaker 1: of the stick from a horse whinny. They also got
Speaker 1: the short end of the stick from the donkey bray.
Speaker 1: But they actually sound more like an elk because they
Speaker 1: kind of combined the two. I there are things I
Speaker 1: worry about it in my day to day life when
Speaker 1: I'm at work or at home with the kids or
Speaker 1: um with my family that I just forget about here,
Speaker 1: you know, cleanliness being I just like brush my hair
Speaker 1: aside and go on, and man, I wouldn't got to
Speaker 1: say anything, but you look bad. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's what I was hoping to look. Gnarly Bear always
Speaker 1: smells though he's fourteen year old kid like, that's that's
Speaker 1: the smelliest time of a young man's life. I said.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean that's that's something I've always thought
Speaker 1: and it always reaffirms. And there's been times this won't
Speaker 1: be one of them where I've been out for seven
Speaker 1: to ten days and i haven't had service at all.
Speaker 1: You know, you have your in reach and you texted
Speaker 1: people just let them know what's up and give them
Speaker 1: um and give them those updates. And then you did
Speaker 1: the anxiety and the nerves when you know that phone
Speaker 1: is about to come on. When you're you know, like
Speaker 1: the moment of service and you get that fee link
Speaker 1: of the the wave of connectivity and all the things
Speaker 1: that come with it. That's a difficult thing for me
Speaker 1: personally to do a lot of times. And um, even
Speaker 1: here what we have some connectivity and camp, it's more
Speaker 1: just going back to that rhythm and missing this one
Speaker 1: because this one is much more natural to me. Yep. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks ton, guys, really every one of you, thank you
Speaker 1: for your your helping us have a successful hunt. Really
Speaker 1: was a successful hunt. And thank you for your generosity.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your encouragement, wisdom. Really appreciate it. And man,
Speaker 1: I want to do it again. One other thing with you.
Speaker 1: This is started off this podcast again, We're done. What
Speaker 1: would say, I'm frustrated. I don't know how to like
Speaker 1: I'm frustrated and I'm mad about this and I've failed,
Speaker 1: But please come next time. You know, I'm always amazed
Speaker 1: at the resiliency of the human spirit when I there's
Speaker 1: a place I hunt in Arkansas that's pretty tough for
Speaker 1: our world, and it is miserable hunting there, and I
Speaker 1: will be coming down that mountain in the dark after
Speaker 1: not seeing a game animal in three days and being like,
Speaker 1: why don't I drive three hours north into Kansas into
Speaker 1: the best white tail hunting in the world. Why do
Speaker 1: I drive the other way into the worst white tail
Speaker 1: hunting probably in the country. And as soon as I
Speaker 1: get in the truck and the mules and the trailer
Speaker 1: and the heaters on, if it's if it's cold or
Speaker 1: the a CS on if it's hot and I start driving,
Speaker 1: it takes about a mile on pavement for me to
Speaker 1: be planning my trip back up the mountain. Really like,
Speaker 1: at times I have been just shocked by that, and
Speaker 1: it's not me, it's all of us. Go to the
Speaker 1: grind and then you're just like, Kylie, this is the
Speaker 1: stupidest thing I've ever done. I had my favorite analogy
Speaker 1: for this. Joe might have heard it possibly before, but
Speaker 1: I call that sharpened in the life knife, because like,
Speaker 1: you come up here, man, and you like you're solving
Speaker 1: problems every second. The l cutting is one big problem
Speaker 1: solving thing, and it's it's incredibly difficult to do. And
Speaker 1: there's all these elements that you have to have studied
Speaker 1: and practiced and crafted and be good at not only
Speaker 1: you know, shooting a bow, but but butchering an animal
Speaker 1: and and all the things that go with it. And um,
Speaker 1: when you leave here, sitting in traffic seems like a
Speaker 1: smooth and no problem, no problem experience. And that's because
Speaker 1: this place make you know. These places make you sharper,
Speaker 1: make you tougher, they make you make it easier to
Speaker 1: take on the other things in life. That's now seems
Speaker 1: so much more trivial than actually finding a giant buol,
Speaker 1: getting close to it, convincing it to come close to you,
Speaker 1: and then finding a lane to put an arrow through,
Speaker 1: and getting the arrow through the right spot, and then
Speaker 1: finding it when it runs down the mountain, and then
Speaker 1: picking up his giant hunks of meat and carrying it
Speaker 1: back to wherever you came from. Like that, The difficulty
Speaker 1: of that makes too many emails seem like, well, that's
Speaker 1: that's nothing. He's sharpen that old life knife. You feel
Speaker 1: much more dull when you haven't done something like this
Speaker 1: for a long time. That's a good analogy, life knife, bear,
Speaker 1: What are you holding there? Who gave that to you?
Speaker 1: Gave that to me? I told him not to cut
Speaker 1: himself with it. I didn't. That is a sweet knife.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to brand new. Never never sliced the thing.
Speaker 1: I know you said thank you to him? Yeah, beautiful knife.
Speaker 1: Cool alright, guys, closing closing thoughts. I'm just happy we
Speaker 1: were here. I'm already planning my trip back. I was
Speaker 1: just texting somebody like, hey, man, next week. Yeah, I'm thirsty.
Speaker 1: I want to kill an elk. I want to come back.
Speaker 1: I want to do this and keep doing it, and
Speaker 1: whoever wants to come is always welcome. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: raven Us right now for all the experiences and the
Speaker 1: end result. Right on, I'm planning my workouts. Guys, Colby
Speaker 1: worked hard for this. He has for the last year. Um,
Speaker 1: he really has. He's he's worked hard and uh he's
Speaker 1: been following us around. Damn man. I told Colby when
Speaker 1: we're out there, I said, this is hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage of people that could actually
Speaker 1: do this and keep up with you know, us running around.
Speaker 1: But it ain't. It is not an expansive percentage. Is
Speaker 1: a low percentage of people that would come out here
Speaker 1: and immediately be able to get up and down this place.
Speaker 1: I mean it is. It is incredibly difficult, and almost
Speaker 1: every way so, especially being not having a tag. You know,
Speaker 1: having a tag, you're moving a little quicker after that
Speaker 1: bowl up that mountain. Yeah, but it's true, very true,
Speaker 1: and have a little more motivation to keep keep putting
Speaker 1: a foot in front of the other one, keep grinding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for cold. So alright, guys, well keep the wild
Speaker 1: place as well, because that's where they help live h