Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bog bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor
Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. All right, folks, we're
Speaker 1: here in Southern Colorado? Are you entroing the show? Yohnnie?
Speaker 1: I just messing around starting I could though. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say about it. Southern Colorado. Yeah, that's enough. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what I was thinking about recently, uh, that
Speaker 1: I wanted to I think I kind of told you
Speaker 1: about it already, but I thought you'd like it. As
Speaker 1: I saw a dude he had a shirt. You know,
Speaker 1: people will go to a um like the Super Bowl whatever,
Speaker 1: or someone will win the Super Bowl, yes, and people
Speaker 1: have a shirt they'll say, like the Bears, yeah, super
Speaker 1: Bowl champions. I saw a guy recently that had a
Speaker 1: shirt commemorating the fact that he watched that big Solary clips.
Speaker 1: It was like Solary Clips two eighteen or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd appreciate you like that. I like it well,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like it. I didn't give a shift.
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like it. Oh you didn't your ship.
Speaker 1: I mean I liked it, but like it as much
Speaker 1: as I thought you'd like it. Yeah, we should make
Speaker 1: something that just say, like Elk Season twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 1: would be a good idea. Um, Remember we're talking about
Speaker 1: me saying that you'll appreciate this seth the flip flop flasher,
Speaker 1: me saying that I gave up on flip flops because
Speaker 1: of someone saying, like, how are you going to rescue
Speaker 1: your family? Yeah, or defend your wife? Or defend your
Speaker 1: wife if you're wearing flip flops. I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: get your take on this, Rock Denver, I have mixed feelings.
Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate both sides of it. I lived in
Speaker 1: Hawaii for about a year before I joined the Navy,
Speaker 1: and flip flops is like general attire. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's what you wear, whether it's a formal event or
Speaker 1: you're on the beach or head of the beach, and
Speaker 1: your feet become like belt radial. So I'd say, because
Speaker 1: you get so much barefoot time over there as well,
Speaker 1: So if you had to rescue your family over there,
Speaker 1: They're probably prepped to go barefoot if need be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I felt like at a time I probably had
Speaker 1: that capacity for work, but now I live somewhere in between.
Speaker 1: I do like having the kit if things go wrong,
Speaker 1: I'm off the races, grabbing one kid, my brides grabbing
Speaker 1: the other kid, and we're surviving the zombie apocalypse. But
Speaker 1: I like a flip flop man, still flip flop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm real torn on it. Man. Like I said, I
Speaker 1: quit for a while, but I'm thinking about getting back
Speaker 1: into it now because it's a wintertime now. Well, getting
Speaker 1: back into it weather improves. But I took a little
Speaker 1: break because my buddy Dave, um, my buddy Dave was
Speaker 1: telling I think I told the story right. My buddy
Speaker 1: Dave was telling a story where he was in He's
Speaker 1: from Montana, but he was in New York and he
Speaker 1: comes into a comedy club with his wife and he's
Speaker 1: got his flip flops on, and the comedian on stage
Speaker 1: brates him. It's like, where the hell are you from
Speaker 1: because he was like surprised to see a guy wearing
Speaker 1: flip flops in in the city. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: don't think you should wear flip flops in New York
Speaker 1: City because you're not prepared. We're not prepared. It's also dirty. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't like it, and that made my buddy Dave's
Speaker 1: really questioned. And then I showed up and flip flops
Speaker 1: and Dave was like, you are the last guy that
Speaker 1: planet I thought would wear flip flops. What is going on?
Speaker 1: Then I quit. So after talking about his flipop thing,
Speaker 1: we got two pieces of feedback from people UM, one
Speaker 1: pro flip flop and one UH con flip flopper against
Speaker 1: flip flop against flip flop guys talking about how last
Speaker 1: December he UH comes home on his lunch break and
Speaker 1: sees that there's a car park in his driveway and
Speaker 1: his side gates open and the French doors in the
Speaker 1: back of his house are open. And he credits his
Speaker 1: leather boots with the fact that he had was emboldened
Speaker 1: to run into his house and confront the intruder. And
Speaker 1: he says that if he'd been wearing his flip flops,
Speaker 1: he would have been stuck out front calling nine on one.
Speaker 1: But he goes in. He's sure someone's in his house
Speaker 1: robbing his house. He barrels into the house yelling, who's
Speaker 1: at my house? And has met there by a dude
Speaker 1: who burglar who is brandishing the guy's own seven like
Speaker 1: the burglar ran in found his three fifty seven and
Speaker 1: is holding his three seven. They get into a scuffle
Speaker 1: and he knocks the glasses off of the guy and
Speaker 1: then Hall's ass out of his house and runs away,
Speaker 1: leaving the burglar in the house with the pistol. Later,
Speaker 1: when the cops come over, they find that that the
Speaker 1: glasses that the I knocked off during the scuffle, and
Speaker 1: they're able to pull a DNA sample off the glasses
Speaker 1: and catch a career burglar, and he credits his having
Speaker 1: not had his flip flops on. But another guy is
Speaker 1: talking about he takes his wife. This guy's in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: He takes his wife to some fancy resort and his
Speaker 1: wife goes into the bathroom and he's sitting there eating
Speaker 1: and sees that there's this rat scurring around and she's
Speaker 1: not happy about the rat. He tells the waitress about
Speaker 1: the situation. Eventually, the rat comes by and comes within
Speaker 1: seven feet and he's got those big you know, those
Speaker 1: big keen flip flops, like super heavy duty flip flops.
Speaker 1: He says he took that flip flop and Joe Joe
Speaker 1: killed the rat hucking a flip flop at it. So
Speaker 1: he said, in that case, it was his flip flops
Speaker 1: that enabled him to defend his wife from the rat
Speaker 1: from the big scary and they gave him a hunter
Speaker 1: daughter credit. Oh there you go at the resort. So
Speaker 1: you think he's gonna go back to that rat field resort.
Speaker 1: So point being it's inconclusive weather. Flip flops, Um, you
Speaker 1: know our appropriate attire. If we're making arguments on the
Speaker 1: toughness of flip flops, I will say when stationed on
Speaker 1: both coasts in the seal teams, the west coast of
Speaker 1: the seal teams in mass wears flip flops at a high,
Speaker 1: high level. So if you're just trying to like evaluate
Speaker 1: the the raw toughness of those people that wear flip flops,
Speaker 1: there's at least one subgroup that will live a large
Speaker 1: portion of their life in flip flops whose toughness is
Speaker 1: probably unquestioned, who are probably capable of defending their wives. Uh,
Speaker 1: you read that book black Hawk Down, you might be
Speaker 1: able to get some perspective on this. I know people
Speaker 1: that were there. Yeah. I read the book Black Hawk Down,
Speaker 1: and in it, the author Mark bowden Um talks about
Speaker 1: some developing tensions within the ranks of people in Somalia,
Speaker 1: and one point of contention was that certain guys on
Speaker 1: this base were allowed to wear flip flops while on
Speaker 1: guard duty military that they would maybe not allowed, but
Speaker 1: they were taking the liberty to stand there with a
Speaker 1: flak vest. What do you call a flag vest? Yeah, flat,
Speaker 1: flat jacket. I mean that's old altar body arm. They
Speaker 1: would have shorts, flip flops, a flak jacket while standing guard,
Speaker 1: and other people from other units weren't allowed to do this,
Speaker 1: and it was creating some tension. There would be some
Speaker 1: aesthetic of seeing somebody in that gear that would appeal
Speaker 1: to me, and I would probably be equally piste that
Speaker 1: they were in that outfit standing. So you'd look at
Speaker 1: it and be like, yeah, yeah, like I like what
Speaker 1: this guy believes in, and I would probably holler at
Speaker 1: him to go put some combat books. That's some pants
Speaker 1: um on the on the subject, on on the ongoing
Speaker 1: subject of what to do with your dead body when
Speaker 1: you die. This guy, he this guy writes in he
Speaker 1: was talking about this with his wife, and his wife
Speaker 1: proposed to him that she could take his ashes and
Speaker 1: integrate him into a salt mineral lick and then put
Speaker 1: like stir him into a mineral lick and put it
Speaker 1: out so that that, uh, that's how his ashes could
Speaker 1: go consumed by dear so that he could give something
Speaker 1: back after all that they had given to him. That
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, I like that too. Uh. Notthing
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about is, yeah, like I was
Speaker 1: observing the air day an emerging trend. And this might
Speaker 1: not even resonate with people who don't live in sort
Speaker 1: of like posh mountain towns, But in posh mountain towns
Speaker 1: there's an emerging mom being one of yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean catch them. Like all the posh mountain towns. There's
Speaker 1: an emerging trend of of having your pickup truck and
Speaker 1: and and instead of keeping your ship in your truck,
Speaker 1: you strap it to the outside of your truck. And
Speaker 1: I was observing this to you, and it seemed to
Speaker 1: agitate your honest that I even had the audacity to
Speaker 1: make the observation. You got pretty hot. You got pretty hot,
Speaker 1: just like and just that's that's the part that got
Speaker 1: me is that I couldn't believe that over such a thing,
Speaker 1: that you were affected so much personally on the inside,
Speaker 1: Like I don't really care if you like it or
Speaker 1: don't like it, but the fact that it sort of
Speaker 1: affected you and that you were like really worked up,
Speaker 1: that these people choose to do this, whether it's fashion
Speaker 1: or for whatever reason. Fashion, yeah, it's fashion, but it's
Speaker 1: just interesting to me to find that you like it
Speaker 1: affects you so much. Yeah, you like, there's no way that,
Speaker 1: Like where I grew up, where everybody, like you know,
Speaker 1: all the people hunt for ride up drive pickup trucks,
Speaker 1: there's no way that what you do if you like
Speaker 1: to hunt fish, you get a truck and you put
Speaker 1: a top around it and then you put your your
Speaker 1: stuff in there. But wasn't there a subset of that
Speaker 1: group that would have some ksey lights even though they
Speaker 1: really never really needed them, but they had freaking lights
Speaker 1: on their truck with some lights would not be out
Speaker 1: of the question, even though they really cruised around in
Speaker 1: fashion doing whatever you do with and we would weld up, uh,
Speaker 1: we would weld up uh bumper guards that were excessive,
Speaker 1: Like you'd start with aid inch sea channel and weld
Speaker 1: that to the frame, not like you start with aid
Speaker 1: inch sea channel, raft around and then just build from
Speaker 1: there and looking and at the time I didn't recognize
Speaker 1: it as such, but to be totally honest, looking back
Speaker 1: on it, there was a fashion element to who could
Speaker 1: have the craziest brush guard? Yeah, now it's just that
Speaker 1: who couldn't have the most overlake? What is it? It's
Speaker 1: it called overland. I don't know. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think it seems like yeah, yeah. The ear day, I
Speaker 1: was sitting there and the guy pulls up. I was
Speaker 1: looking out our office wind when the guy pulls up
Speaker 1: and he's yeah. He looked like you're Samity sam Um,
Speaker 1: like all this ship, gas cans, water cans, shovels, pick axes,
Speaker 1: but Jack all hooked it out and then like, what's
Speaker 1: the inside the truck? I don't know, room for the
Speaker 1: kayak or the stand up paddle. I just feel like
Speaker 1: at my like like, I don't know, man, at forty
Speaker 1: five years of age, I'm just hitting the age where
Speaker 1: I look at stuff and I don't like it. But
Speaker 1: I just look at the age where I just get
Speaker 1: like like things will catch my eye and irritate me
Speaker 1: a little bit that they shouldn't. And you're not there
Speaker 1: yet because you're less, you're younger. Yeah, Seth was saying
Speaker 1: for his rig. You know he's got a n f J,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit. It is all your ship
Speaker 1: strapped to the outside of your truck. No, nobody wants
Speaker 1: you wish. I wish some ship was strapped to the
Speaker 1: outside though. How old are you look? Sweet? We had
Speaker 1: this conversation the other day in the car um and
Speaker 1: there was two things that I would put on the outside,
Speaker 1: one being fuel canisters because it smells. It smells, and
Speaker 1: the FJ has such a small tank that I'm always hauling,
Speaker 1: Like if I go hunting, I throw my hitch carrier
Speaker 1: in with a tank of gas on who makes that?
Speaker 1: Who makes the your I know your rig? But what
Speaker 1: what kind of rig is that? It's a Toyota f
Speaker 1: Jake cruiser. You think it's a hunting rig? Oh it is.
Speaker 1: It's just a little small That's why I need ships
Speaker 1: trapped on the outside. And you think it looks sweet?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's a badass, a
Speaker 1: little rake. No, I mean you think it'd be sweeter
Speaker 1: if you had like pots and pans and ship hanging
Speaker 1: off it. No, no, I don't need that ship. But
Speaker 1: it's older, what what years? It's two seven, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like the old. It's not the old. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I could use fuel canisters and I wouldn't I wouldn't
Speaker 1: mind having a pooie tent. Oh really, dude, tell me
Speaker 1: about the tent. Why do you Why do you want it?
Speaker 1: Because because he thinks it looks sweet. No, it's like
Speaker 1: you get one of those like, oh my god, No,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna head down now. I'm already to go down
Speaker 1: to the brew pub. No, dude. Most most of the
Speaker 1: time when I'm going hunting on the weekends, like I'll
Speaker 1: I like to hunt out in eastern Montana, bunch, So
Speaker 1: we go out there. We'll roll up at like you know,
Speaker 1: ten eleven o'clock at night. You sleep under your vehicle.
Speaker 1: When I was your age, we slept under our trucks.
Speaker 1: Now we do that sometimes or in them. But it
Speaker 1: would be nice for you if you slouch in the
Speaker 1: front seat and sleep. It would be nice. When you
Speaker 1: show up you're tired, You last thing you want to
Speaker 1: do is put up a tent. You just pop up
Speaker 1: the tapui and go to bed. You get under the
Speaker 1: vehicle and sleep down there. You know, we're coming from
Speaker 1: coming from a guy that's been looking at buying a
Speaker 1: camper young children. Okay, well camper though, scamp I'm signed
Speaker 1: yet maybe you look at had put it on from
Speaker 1: in the middle of this crazy But I have young
Speaker 1: children too, but I haven't gotten so soft as to
Speaker 1: consider the idea of a camper yet, taking putting it
Speaker 1: out there that, like, you know, there's just sort of
Speaker 1: different levels. You can't say just because you have kids
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, now it's like okay to have
Speaker 1: a camper. And because he's eight and wants a tapui
Speaker 1: tent makes him soft? Didn't sleep under his Okay, here's okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put it the breath. Now I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: the rest. But here's the thing say about it's like this,
Speaker 1: Why and I bring this up. I brought us up
Speaker 1: a number of time, so we get some things. Why
Speaker 1: is it that that that, uh, left wing people tend
Speaker 1: to have more food allergies than right wing people, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, gluten intolerance is a left wing ailment? Okay?
Speaker 1: Why do old people not like to puoi tense to
Speaker 1: tense appeal to people to to They appeal to people
Speaker 1: of a certain age bracket who live in a certain
Speaker 1: kind of town. Yeah, but I think I'm gonna argue
Speaker 1: that because because a guy that owns part of our
Speaker 1: where our office is, is an overlander and is at
Speaker 1: least ten years our senior, maybe fifteen, and he rocks
Speaker 1: it to Pouie. I mean, but you gotta have money
Speaker 1: to have one of these, and like that is that
Speaker 1: that's your hobby. You gotta have money, man, and you that, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can do it on the chief. Also,
Speaker 1: I think it's like the Instagram sort of thing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, And that's where the young people's
Speaker 1: element of it comes in. It's like it's an Instagram thing. Dude.
Speaker 1: I'm an instagram man too. I love Instagram at Steve Ronella,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Yeah, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 1: Let's see, yeah we saw. Yeah. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: my wife she doesn't let me talking to waitresses and
Speaker 1: stuff anymore because I'm just too old, you know, to
Speaker 1: like have any kind of chit chat. She's like, at
Speaker 1: your age, if there's an attractive waitress, just shut up,
Speaker 1: just like, just order what you need, Just order what
Speaker 1: you need. You can't banter anymore. You're too old to
Speaker 1: banter with waitresses. And I think I just need to
Speaker 1: stop talking about this kind of stuff. But real quick, um,
Speaker 1: uh you wanna do you wanna try to sell your thing?
Speaker 1: Your car? Right now? Oh? Yeah, I got a I
Speaker 1: got a two thousand eighteen out back, sixteen thousand miles
Speaker 1: on it. It's got a topper. It's got a two
Speaker 1: leete upper. It's in Los Angeles. They're not called toppers.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you call it? Cargo toppers?
Speaker 1: Like bad car talk called topper. I used to call
Speaker 1: it a pot. It's I got the pod pot on top. Dude,
Speaker 1: you got a cargo carrier? Cargo carrier? Whatever is rocket box? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a rocket box. Uh yeah, it's in What do
Speaker 1: you need for it? It's in Los Angeles. Lazy jumpers,
Speaker 1: Chris gil Ridge Pounder. I'm trying to get twenty two
Speaker 1: for it. How the context is your Instagram? Do you
Speaker 1: have a lot of pictures of you adventuring, no overlanding.
Speaker 1: It's got stock tired and no overlanding. So how do
Speaker 1: they find you? They want to buy your rig at
Speaker 1: Christopher gil on Instagram. Send me a message, M Yeah,
Speaker 1: what else we got? Honest? I got one more? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta get to No, no, I got one more,
Speaker 1: one more. I like to now and that like to
Speaker 1: catch up on feedback stuff. A guy wrote in this
Speaker 1: is good because this is a segue. Honnie. A guy
Speaker 1: wrote in he works, he's security. He's like a security
Speaker 1: guy Yelso National Park. And he gets uh complaint, He
Speaker 1: gets a complaint just he says, like just last night,
Speaker 1: I had to respond to a noise complaint from a guest.
Speaker 1: And the noise complaint was, can you please do something
Speaker 1: about that elk bugling near my hotel room? It's driving
Speaker 1: me crazy? Uh, And I thought that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1: And also at one point, as someone asked the guy,
Speaker 1: at what elevation do elk turn into moose um? But
Speaker 1: there's this thing. I think there's this thing that keeps
Speaker 1: happening to Yellowstone. Where it's a little bit confusing is
Speaker 1: where people there's been a lot in the news of
Speaker 1: people getting too close, like this year, like some guy
Speaker 1: got his little girl like super close to a bison
Speaker 1: in it threw up in the air and it keeps happening,
Speaker 1: and people keep and it seems like when it happens,
Speaker 1: there's sort of this thing where people are very quick
Speaker 1: to condemn the individual and how stupid the individual is
Speaker 1: for doing something so dangerous. Right, it's like the same story,
Speaker 1: like this guy in BC has got arrested or got
Speaker 1: a bunch of trouble because he got out I was
Speaker 1: trying to have it. He was trying to box with
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear. He's trying to taunt a grizzly into
Speaker 1: a fight, you know, and he got in trouble, and
Speaker 1: so in like Backpacker magazine is the big thing about
Speaker 1: what an idiot this guy is and how horrible it is, right,
Speaker 1: how dangerous it is. But then like when I think
Speaker 1: about this, and you'll talk about people being dangerous around animals,
Speaker 1: how can there be that? Like there's a movie about
Speaker 1: a guy that free solos l cap. It's exceedingly dangerous,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous thing you could do, right, But then
Speaker 1: he's like celebrated for being dangerous. Why is it that
Speaker 1: you can do that and be celebrated and they're going
Speaker 1: to give you an oscar and like you're the coolest
Speaker 1: thing on the planet and you can do all the
Speaker 1: talk shows, but if you want to box a grizzly,
Speaker 1: you're like any of the people. I think because the
Speaker 1: dude that climbed that mountain prepared over a lifetime to
Speaker 1: develop a skill set to then go do said exceptionally
Speaker 1: dangerous thing. Do you know that the guy that wanted
Speaker 1: the box the grizzly didn't I don't guess it wasn't
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson. Yeah, It's just like the thing that keeps happening.
Speaker 1: I think. I think, like, I'm like, is danger cool
Speaker 1: or not cool? Because if you want to if you
Speaker 1: want to go pet a buffalo, oh my fine, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm for dangerous. It's not like you're wanting to stab it.
Speaker 1: If you want to just go up and see how
Speaker 1: close and see if it will gore you. I feel like, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, not with a kid that that that was egregious. No,
Speaker 1: that was like a bad call. And I don't know
Speaker 1: about the kid's parents, but I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: like that bad. If you if some person, like an
Speaker 1: adult makes a con just a decision to go and
Speaker 1: taunt an animal and then the animal gores him, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Man, I look at it, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think people just set because you're fucking with an animal,
Speaker 1: you're not you don't pose any danger to it. Well
Speaker 1: I know, but it's like I think there's when you
Speaker 1: compare it to something like Alex Hanold, who's like that's
Speaker 1: like his he's like an athlete, that's like his thing,
Speaker 1: and there's like that acceptance of risk that he takes,
Speaker 1: you know, and the people that typically do that. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: maybe the guy was preparing for his whole life to
Speaker 1: box at grizzly bear. But will you ever watch the
Speaker 1: movie Grizzly Project. No, but the guy that gets uh
Speaker 1: in a skirmish with the grizzly and then designs a
Speaker 1: suit that yeah wear and so that guy, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then he couldn't get a barried to attack him when
Speaker 1: he had a suit on. That's a great movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his buddy runs him over to pick up just to
Speaker 1: test this. Yeah, yeah, I see that guy. But go on,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I think that. I think people
Speaker 1: just when they see people messing with animals, like taunting
Speaker 1: them to get attacked or something, or getting too close,
Speaker 1: I think they get more defensive for the animal and
Speaker 1: get angry at the person for being for like just
Speaker 1: leave it alone. You know this the best they could
Speaker 1: come up with in this article condemning the guy from
Speaker 1: wanting to box the grizzly bear. The best they could
Speaker 1: come up with it was that it was bad because
Speaker 1: the grizzly bear then might expect to box other individuals
Speaker 1: who weren't willing participants in the boxing. That's the best
Speaker 1: they could come up with, and why it's bad to
Speaker 1: go and like do they just mean mall yeah, but
Speaker 1: then I'm sure that he's not gonna box. It's just
Speaker 1: like you know, I you know, and I used to
Speaker 1: do it too, Like when someone would get injured by
Speaker 1: an animal, I'd be like, Oh, that idiot. But then
Speaker 1: I start thinking like, I don't know, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's safe to I don't think it's safe to feel
Speaker 1: that way anymore, you know, like if you get up
Speaker 1: close to if you want to go get up close
Speaker 1: to a moose and see what happens and the moose
Speaker 1: beats your ass, I think it should just be like,
Speaker 1: you know, I just feel like I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's a decision he came to. It's your decision, man,
Speaker 1: it's like bull riders. Yeah exactly. Yeah, they hop on
Speaker 1: a I don't know how two thousand pound bull that
Speaker 1: wants to kick their ass every time. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: sorted it out in my head, but it just occurred
Speaker 1: to me only yesterday when we were walking around. It
Speaker 1: occurred to me only yesterday. Why does it bother me
Speaker 1: when I hear about someone doing something stupid in a park?
Speaker 1: And I started questioning myself. But I don't think bull right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that example. But yeah, bull riders aren't.
Speaker 1: Um I think people could. I think there's a large
Speaker 1: group of people that can that make the argument that
Speaker 1: no offense any bull riders listening, that bull riders have
Speaker 1: a they're not, you know, playing with a whole. I
Speaker 1: don't say it's don't don't say this. I don't say this.
Speaker 1: I have like a lot of respect and admiration from advocate.
Speaker 1: I'm just playing Devil's advocate. I don't have any problem
Speaker 1: with bull riders. Yeah, I think that's like that is
Speaker 1: like what I would have liked to have done with
Speaker 1: my life. Man, about taunting of animals, yes, I mean
Speaker 1: that's some serious taunting. But I'm totally fine and I'm
Speaker 1: fine with going up if you want to go petal
Speaker 1: Buffalo and gets smashed like I just I'm done acting like,
Speaker 1: oh those stupid people, because I get caught in that trap.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, there's like this thing going on
Speaker 1: where a single hour people like oh and yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and Yellowstone or whatever, and National parks. They're like people
Speaker 1: think they're like theme parks. They don't realize that the
Speaker 1: animals are wild animals. But the but the same people
Speaker 1: who are most likely to point that out, in the
Speaker 1: same institutions that create that thing, are actually fostering and
Speaker 1: developing that sense that wildlife is somehow a theme park,
Speaker 1: you know, coming from the same thing. It's like you're
Speaker 1: creating this thing and then condemning people for sort of
Speaker 1: going along with what it is. Like you create an
Speaker 1: environment wildlife it's totally habituated, but then you get mad
Speaker 1: at people who think that it's habituated. Mm hmm. It's
Speaker 1: a good point. Yeah, it's a hard it's a hard
Speaker 1: thing to um saws out man. We used to chase moose.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. That's not smart. No, we were younger.
Speaker 1: We would chase him. Yeah, if you saw him you
Speaker 1: chase them. See how close you get to him. Well,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know they were danging, I mean no,
Speaker 1: I knew, moose don't seem dangerous. We knew a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know that. It was just like we'd
Speaker 1: it was like bull riding. It was like bull riding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he kick us off more. We're supposed to
Speaker 1: talk about sometimes the bull chases you, though, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Steve mhm um Colorado Conlo threw over one cut, threw
Speaker 1: out one more. Listener feedback on last one last, This
Speaker 1: is a good one. I was talking about my brother
Speaker 1: in law hitting the blue gill when he was barefoot skiing.
Speaker 1: A guy rolled in. He was at a ski tournament
Speaker 1: and um, he had a bad fall and broke a
Speaker 1: couple of vertebra and he doesn't ski anymore. But he
Speaker 1: was at a tournament on Pearl River in Louisiana one
Speaker 1: time and there was a guy doing some warm up
Speaker 1: runs and he ran over an alligator and it removed
Speaker 1: the right heel of his foot. Forty hit alligator, peeled
Speaker 1: his heel off. That's the last bit of listener for people. Man.
Speaker 1: I have to add that one of the greatest like
Speaker 1: seeds of fear that I feel like it was ever
Speaker 1: planning to me as a kid as I grew up
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, California, and Tahoe's you know, up
Speaker 1: the hill in this SI areas. We go up there
Speaker 1: skiing and trout fishing and stuff like that. My dad
Speaker 1: shared a story with me. I don't know why it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be true, but that you know, the rattlesnakes up there,
Speaker 1: and the winner will find a den, you know, den
Speaker 1: up hundred whatever, couple hundred rattlesnakes in the den they
Speaker 1: stay warm through the winter. And that's somehow on Donner Lake.
Speaker 1: But they're cold blooded. Huh do rattlesnakes? But no, I
Speaker 1: know they Yeah, I might not, I might not have
Speaker 1: the right reason for them doing that, but they're done up.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's seen it. But I've heard enough about
Speaker 1: it that it's like they like to ball up, ball up,
Speaker 1: and that apparently Donner Lake, which is right you know,
Speaker 1: before you get to Taho Lake on the way up
Speaker 1: into the Sierras, some manner of the snowfall and runoff
Speaker 1: brought one of these balls of rattlesnakes into Donner Lake,
Speaker 1: and that maybe this is one of my dad that
Speaker 1: told me this. Now as I'm saying it, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like this is on my dad was saying, but
Speaker 1: that a water skier fell into that water skiing and
Speaker 1: the like fell into that and the snakes just started
Speaker 1: like lightening them up. The snakes have gone into the lake.
Speaker 1: It's definitely not my dad as I hear myself telling
Speaker 1: this story. But as a kid stuck in your mind,
Speaker 1: Oh my, I mean, I never, never when I think
Speaker 1: the rest of my life be up on a pair
Speaker 1: of water skis or up doing something on a lake
Speaker 1: where I have not at least committed a moment's thought
Speaker 1: to the idea of a ball of rattlesnakes floating out there. Horrible.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about time Matt trying to catch a
Speaker 1: snake out of a hole. No, he my brother was
Speaker 1: hunting and a snake. He sees a rattlesnake going into
Speaker 1: a hole, and he's never eating a rattlesnake. Always want
Speaker 1: to eat a rawls snakes. So he grabbed the back
Speaker 1: end of the rattlesnake and tries to get it back
Speaker 1: out of the hole, but the snake breaks and outcomes
Speaker 1: a couple of baby rattlesnakes. They attack him, Yeah, he says.
Speaker 1: They come out of there and instantly are coming at him,
Speaker 1: trying to out of the snake that broke in half. Yes,
Speaker 1: whoa trying to bite him? Wait, the snakes came out
Speaker 1: of the other snake. Yeah, he was trying to jack
Speaker 1: the snake up out of a hole. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: it out of the hole. Broke the snake out. Aime,
Speaker 1: some snakes who are then coming at him, and then
Speaker 1: he had the tail of the one he had the
Speaker 1: you know, and then it goes on from there, some
Speaker 1: nightmare stuff. I don't remember. He was he was reminiscent
Speaker 1: about this the other day. Yeah, I was. He was
Speaker 1: telling me that story the other day. Am I getting
Speaker 1: it right? Yeah, you're saying top out and they're ready
Speaker 1: to attack. Yes, that is some total recall. And if
Speaker 1: I'm um not mistake, I believe they say those are
Speaker 1: the ones you gotta watch out for, right because they
Speaker 1: can't control their their venom. I've heard that might be
Speaker 1: a misnomer, that that is well, that maybe they can't
Speaker 1: control the venom, but that is it is genuinely just
Speaker 1: builds up to the bigger the snake, the more venom
Speaker 1: is coming at it is being produced inside the body,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense to me. But I've
Speaker 1: heard that many many times. Okay, introl the show. Intro
Speaker 1: the show. I'm here with Stephen Ronnella, No as, I'm
Speaker 1: dealon card. Just we like to do here Danny Schmidt's
Speaker 1: honest first ever meat Eater Shoot Cameraman, cameraman, give give
Speaker 1: us a quick run, give us quick career synatis oh man, Well,
Speaker 1: do a lot of wildlife work. I do a lot
Speaker 1: of wildlife work. I do a lot of science work,
Speaker 1: s coom sort of science communication stuff, although science comedy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's all funny. It's kind of like rom coms,
Speaker 1: s coom, SIcom, science communications, science communication. I went to
Speaker 1: school for documentary film first Scientists, so you have a
Speaker 1: lot of background in communicating about science and working outside
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, First Meat Eater went pretty well. You
Speaker 1: like thrashers Instagram page? Yeah? Could you like to look
Speaker 1: at cool skate videos? I watched skate videos pretty much
Speaker 1: all day. Um, I haven't worked in skateboarding film yet,
Speaker 1: but I think it'd be sweet. You know what. It
Speaker 1: didn't get a sense from as you've You've had a
Speaker 1: lot of through your work, You've had a lot of
Speaker 1: intersections with wildlife politics and whatnot. But then I haven't
Speaker 1: gotten a sense over the last few days of you
Speaker 1: being like outwardly opinionated about wildlife politics. Have you just
Speaker 1: been biting your tongue as we're always spouting off about
Speaker 1: how everything I ought to be with animals? No, I mean,
Speaker 1: have I said anything those deeply offensive? No? I haven't
Speaker 1: been offended yet. Uh. Well, I mean it's not black
Speaker 1: and white. I think we've talked a lot about elk
Speaker 1: and the feed grounds in Wyoming, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a super gray situation. And you worked on a project
Speaker 1: down here about wolf ree introduction. I did. I can't
Speaker 1: talk a whole lot about it. Sorry, Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't like that. It doesn't matter what I think. Go ahead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I worked on a project about wolf free introduction to
Speaker 1: the thought of wolf fore introduction in Colorado. Did you
Speaker 1: get into the pros and cons? Oh for sure? God, yeah.
Speaker 1: You do some feed out, some stuff about feeding out
Speaker 1: during the winter. Did a bit. My second year project
Speaker 1: in film school was about the elk feed grounds in Jackson,
Speaker 1: and I went into that like I think I had
Speaker 1: five thousand bucks to make this film. Totally like went in.
Speaker 1: I didn't know a whole lot about it except that
Speaker 1: they're these feed grounds existed. There's twenty five thousand elk
Speaker 1: being fed every year in Wyoming, and obviously that's going
Speaker 1: to present a lot of problems. But man, once I
Speaker 1: dug into it, it was there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: it than just stopping feeding elka. So well, it started
Speaker 1: out as as I'm sure you're well aware, tell us
Speaker 1: why it started out. Well, it started out because the
Speaker 1: city of Jackson Hole, the town of Jacksonal was trying
Speaker 1: to form. It was in the early nineteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: it was kind of one of the last places where
Speaker 1: wildlife could live bison and elk, and they it was
Speaker 1: the era of Teddy Roosevelt, and they wanted to keep
Speaker 1: these animals around. There was a conservation ethic that was developing,
Speaker 1: and uh, but they these farmers and ranchers also needed
Speaker 1: this great winter habitat to raise their cattle, and so
Speaker 1: they decided they could feed the elk over here and
Speaker 1: still maintain these herds and keep the elk out of
Speaker 1: their out of their winter range, and out of their hey,
Speaker 1: in order to decrease tensions. In order to decrease tensions,
Speaker 1: you have to keep them separate. And so a hundred
Speaker 1: years later, that situation still exists and there's less and
Speaker 1: less winter range for these elk ah And in that time,
Speaker 1: the people of Wyoming have gotten used to having a
Speaker 1: huge elk population. But every piece of alfalfa you put
Speaker 1: out there creates is essentially it's like making habitat that
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist, right, So, not to mention, the hunters
Speaker 1: in Wyoming love to have that massive hurt, and so
Speaker 1: to undo this hundred year policy of feeding elk all
Speaker 1: over the state is super super tough. But along the
Speaker 1: way these elk have I mean, they're they're perpetuating a
Speaker 1: lot of disease right, brusualosis and scabies and foot rot,
Speaker 1: and of course the big threat is chronic wasting disease
Speaker 1: makes it to one of these feed grounds, and that's
Speaker 1: like a time bomb. Like nobody knows what that would do,
Speaker 1: what it would look like. Is it going to kill
Speaker 1: all the elk? What's the prevalence rate in a herd
Speaker 1: like that? But wildlife disease experts will tell you, like
Speaker 1: concentrate any animal artificially with huge numbers in a place
Speaker 1: they can't hold them, and you're gonna get diseases are
Speaker 1: gonna pop off. So yeah, I made this film. It's
Speaker 1: on PBS. It's called Feeding the Problem. I got a
Speaker 1: hundred DVDs in a Boxer title man. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you come right out punching with that title. So I
Speaker 1: tried to make a film that was that was pretty balanced.
Speaker 1: Interviewed a bunch of ranchers and outfitters and scientists and
Speaker 1: feed ground managers. But obviously I went into it thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, I come from a science background. I thought,
Speaker 1: this seems like a bad idea, doesn't seem natural. Obviously
Speaker 1: it's a it's entrenched politically, but there's gotta be some
Speaker 1: way to sort of back out of it and find
Speaker 1: some middle ground. So anyway, I made this movie, premiered
Speaker 1: it in Jackson Hall, and that premiere was such a
Speaker 1: trip because I had like the whole anti feed ground
Speaker 1: establishment come to this premiere. It was at the Wildlife
Speaker 1: Art Museum in Jackson and then I didn't know this
Speaker 1: who's gonna happen? But I had like the whole hunting, guiding,
Speaker 1: ranching community also show up there they were picked good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had somebody come up to me. We had a
Speaker 1: reception beforehand. These guys come up to me and they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been talking about stringing you up for
Speaker 1: making this film. I'm like, holy shit. First of all,
Speaker 1: you can make your own film that says whatever you want,
Speaker 1: like everything anybody can make of film. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: throwing anybody under the bus. I gave everybody a chance
Speaker 1: to spout off about whatever they wanted, and uh man,
Speaker 1: it was a good lesson. It was a good like
Speaker 1: my first, my first foray in the documentary about a
Speaker 1: sticky controversial subject, and I think it moved the needle
Speaker 1: forward a little bit. I think it got the conversation going.
Speaker 1: They sell the DVDs in the National Refuge gift shop. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the Elk Refuge gift shop. I mean because I
Speaker 1: interviewed like the Elk Refuge manager and like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a big deal during the
Speaker 1: year that we were filming down there. So when you're
Speaker 1: out filming with us, now, uh, do you feel it's
Speaker 1: just like rinky dink fluff bs. You can't really You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to answer that. Honestly, I'm just
Speaker 1: throwing it out there. No, I don't think so. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in any and everyone's interpretation of of experiencing nature.
Speaker 1: So or it's a burder or an elk hunter, or
Speaker 1: a scientist tagging buffalo or whatever it might be. Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's all interesting and part of the big
Speaker 1: picture of how humans and nature intersect. So, yeah, you
Speaker 1: just had a big argument about Doug Peacock Doug Pica. Right,
Speaker 1: let's not recap it. Yeah, okay, as a little deal
Speaker 1: in poker, Seth Morris, Howdy folks, flip flap flasher, Flash
Speaker 1: flip flop flasher. Seth was just talking about his favorite
Speaker 1: sound is the sound of a hard pulling his head
Speaker 1: out of a feed been music to my ears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's leave that one. If you need to know what,
Speaker 1: you can write him in. That's like dollars coins is
Speaker 1: dropping into if you know, if you know what, if
Speaker 1: you know what, you know it, I'll just I'll just say,
Speaker 1: give people a quick recap. You've been on the show
Speaker 1: before a long time ago. That was a very party
Speaker 1: when you were on, it was a very popular show
Speaker 1: for us. People liked it. I like that life is service.
Speaker 1: Explain your deal. Yeah, man, Uh, I feel like even
Speaker 1: though I'm not on the payroll for you know, family
Speaker 1: member of meat Eater, now I hope I'm on that ledger.
Speaker 1: I met you guys through uh some work you and I,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve and I have been doing with a
Speaker 1: knife company, and then we bumped our way into a
Speaker 1: show hunting bears up up in Alaska, and then have
Speaker 1: just stayed you know, connected and built friendship and relationships
Speaker 1: with the whole crew. And my my last life was
Speaker 1: a commander in the in the seal teams. So I
Speaker 1: spent twenty years thirteen active years, twenty total years with
Speaker 1: my time in the reserves, both running assault teams and
Speaker 1: then kind of running the training for the basic and
Speaker 1: Advanced course of seals and how they how they become
Speaker 1: seals and get to the battlefield and go do the
Speaker 1: nation's work. And I'm a writer, uh thinker savage gentleman
Speaker 1: tell the books. Damn Few is the first book making
Speaker 1: the modern Seal Warrior, which talks a little bit autobio autobiographical,
Speaker 1: but very much unlike well, I shouldn't I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: that I compared to other Seal books very much trying
Speaker 1: to hit the high points of what I learned philosophically
Speaker 1: and what I believed in and what I think seals
Speaker 1: believe in, and why they why they do do do
Speaker 1: what they do, what why we do what we do,
Speaker 1: how we feel about our families, how we feel about
Speaker 1: service the country, um, how we impact the world. So
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about that. And then the second
Speaker 1: book is called Worth Dying for a Navy Seals Called
Speaker 1: to a Nation, and that one is a little bit
Speaker 1: more outward looking as far as you know where the
Speaker 1: country is going and security throughout the world, talk talk
Speaker 1: about my experiences on the battlefield, talk about I have
Speaker 1: a whole chapter on killing, which is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite chapters, just kind of organically came up in the
Speaker 1: writing of it, and UM, I take that pretty seriously. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the those are the reads. And now I
Speaker 1: do a lot of speaking in the kind of corporate
Speaker 1: space and trying to figure out what that next ridge
Speaker 1: line is. I I enjoy that. I'll keep doing that.
Speaker 1: If you if you call I'm coming, uh you know,
Speaker 1: if you're the right the right people to talk to you,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm I feel like I'm at a transitional
Speaker 1: points to what's uh, what's the next adventure? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what do two things too? We talked about it
Speaker 1: before we do it again. Talk about the talk about
Speaker 1: the movie you guys had Do, which is funny, not funny,
Speaker 1: but like it's a funny story. Yeah, how it came
Speaker 1: about and the repercutions of it. And then and then
Speaker 1: talk about your speaking thing because people should know about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Active Valor was the movie two thousand twelve ish. A
Speaker 1: bunch of us were, you know, at the training compound
Speaker 1: running training for the seals. So you're in about as
Speaker 1: close to a nine to five job as you can
Speaker 1: get if you're a seal operator. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: at the team, you're just preparing for war, at war,
Speaker 1: coming back, unpacking your gear, cleaning and getting ready to
Speaker 1: go to war again. When you go to a training compound,
Speaker 1: you're kind of that spot where you're raising up the
Speaker 1: young lins and evaluating them and figuring out who's gonna
Speaker 1: make it through the program and get to uh um,
Speaker 1: get to the assault teams and so. But that job
Speaker 1: is you know, hard pointed there in San Diego, and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna you know, unless we go to war
Speaker 1: with North Korea or something, then probably everybody's going. You're there,
Speaker 1: so you have an opportunity to do other things. I
Speaker 1: guess if if you want to do that in your life.
Speaker 1: And so this film company had come in to do
Speaker 1: just help upgrade a website, you know, the Seals. This
Speaker 1: was all amongst This was pre the bin Lon raid,
Speaker 1: right in and around the time of Captain Phillips and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So I mean, I think the Sealing
Speaker 1: the Seals stock or you know kind of notoriety was
Speaker 1: was becoming more there's more awareness of it, but still
Speaker 1: pretty much in the shadows. And then um, you know,
Speaker 1: the B line rate obviously blew it wide open. But
Speaker 1: our our organization was actually losing more people, are not
Speaker 1: getting enough new folks coming into the training program as
Speaker 1: we're kind of getting older and trailing off. So we
Speaker 1: were having a recruiting problem. We we just and then
Speaker 1: and there really wasn't enough about what Seals do on
Speaker 1: the battlefield or what we do as a community that
Speaker 1: would lend to someone know and know why I want
Speaker 1: to go do that for a living, and hopefully the
Speaker 1: right people are recruiting problem because what's the what's the
Speaker 1: pass rate of people who even enter the elimination about
Speaker 1: make it so about attrition through training over since the
Speaker 1: six you got to generate big numbers. It helps to
Speaker 1: have good numbers, the right numbers is probably the better
Speaker 1: way to put it. Like, can you get the right
Speaker 1: product to the front door, hoping you get more out
Speaker 1: the back door. We haven't figured out a way to
Speaker 1: skin that cat. It's it's kind of one of those
Speaker 1: things where we've we've had scientists and sports physiologists and
Speaker 1: which doctors in that place look at it. What's gonna
Speaker 1: get what's gonna get somebody through training? And nobody's I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody has their own opinion as to what it takes.
Speaker 1: And um, it's hard to kind of quantify because you
Speaker 1: have so many different personalities that come to that place,
Speaker 1: and so many different personalities come through there. There's obvious
Speaker 1: elements that you have to have grit, toughness, focus, no
Speaker 1: quit kind of in your d n A. But I
Speaker 1: mean people come with that from a lot of different places.
Speaker 1: And I came from a very healthy kind of growth
Speaker 1: and environment and parents and family, very very competitive athletically.
Speaker 1: But I mean I have buddies that you know, had
Speaker 1: parents that just beat on them and said you'd never
Speaker 1: be nothing, you'll never amount to nothing. And they're pretty
Speaker 1: too tough to beat in training too. So it's all over.
Speaker 1: I got an acquaintance you made it through and I
Speaker 1: was asking about what he felt that it was and
Speaker 1: he said it was because he liked to surf a lot.
Speaker 1: He said he just didn't mind sitting in cold water
Speaker 1: for a long time, and cold water for a long time,
Speaker 1: that's gonna give you a tremendous leg up that that's
Speaker 1: probably what gets rid of most people. But so anyway,
Speaker 1: this film come when he came in to kind of
Speaker 1: help build a website and a little bit of this
Speaker 1: is who we are, what we do, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to come do it, here's here's here's
Speaker 1: how to call this kind of thing. And then somehow
Speaker 1: that morphed into this idea of doing a bigger film.
Speaker 1: So the film company actually interviewed about thirty of us
Speaker 1: at the basic training compound, just to do background knowledge
Speaker 1: of of what makes seal seals. You know, where you
Speaker 1: came from, what you believe in, how you feel about
Speaker 1: your family, the country, so on and so forth. Not
Speaker 1: very much in the weeds on operational stuff, but it
Speaker 1: it drifted into that very casual like all of us
Speaker 1: went down the beach, you know, sitting in front of
Speaker 1: a camera, just like we did the past couple of days.
Speaker 1: Talked a little bit about but this is all starting.
Speaker 1: You're being asked to do, told to do, told told
Speaker 1: to do, told to do. Yeah, that was that. There
Speaker 1: was not not an invitation to go to go out
Speaker 1: on the beach and do that. But at that point
Speaker 1: it was just this is just it's never gonna be
Speaker 1: used for anything. They're gonna film it so they can
Speaker 1: kind of make sure they get it right when they
Speaker 1: go to make this movie. They were going to finish
Speaker 1: those interviews, go back up to l A and start
Speaker 1: trying to find the right Hollywood person to play us
Speaker 1: or play the guys. And when they got done with
Speaker 1: those interviews, went back to l A. L A did
Speaker 1: all the editing. The two directors like, I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be easier to teach seals to act than actors
Speaker 1: would be seals, if we want to get this right,
Speaker 1: And so then they came and asked us to do it. Everybody,
Speaker 1: to a man said no, every single person that was
Speaker 1: in that film said absolutely not, it's not what we do.
Speaker 1: But then senior leadership put a little more pressure on,
Speaker 1: like it's gonna happen. And so one of my one
Speaker 1: of my teams that was in the movie, he made
Speaker 1: a really good comment. One more and we're getting coffee,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, he said, one of the problems
Speaker 1: I see that is gonna happen is I know who
Speaker 1: you are, sir, Like I know your background, I know
Speaker 1: the way the boys feel about you, I know the
Speaker 1: way I feel about you. I know your combat record,
Speaker 1: and and you know the teams you've been with, which
Speaker 1: you know are are pretty serious teams that have done
Speaker 1: good things on the battlefield. And everybody that they've asked
Speaker 1: are those guys. If we say no, like if if,
Speaker 1: if we don't do it, they're gonna get six seven
Speaker 1: guys to do it. It will be the worst people
Speaker 1: in the community that say yes, Like for sure, it'll
Speaker 1: be the guys that already have the Facebook page and
Speaker 1: an agent and want to go to Hollywood, and we'll
Speaker 1: use that as a launch pat And he's like, and
Speaker 1: that is going to be a train wreck. We'll have
Speaker 1: the worst people in our community representing the community and
Speaker 1: that that actually resonated. I had already gone back to
Speaker 1: grad school. I knew at that point I was kind
Speaker 1: of ready to go make my way. I want to
Speaker 1: be around my bride, my kids, and it was time
Speaker 1: for something new. I've done. I turned over every stone
Speaker 1: I wanted to turn over in my my my seal experience,
Speaker 1: you know, everything beyond that, which is not to say
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have learned a lot more and it would
Speaker 1: have been purposeful, good work. Beyond that, it was just
Speaker 1: time I didn't. I was ready to go, and so
Speaker 1: I didn't really think, oh, this movie will kick over
Speaker 1: tons of kick open tons of doors. I mean, we
Speaker 1: thought they were gonna make that movie and it was
Speaker 1: gonna go straight to like the bottom bin of a
Speaker 1: DVD like two buck you know, Walmart. I mean we're like,
Speaker 1: there's no way this thing. It ends up being the
Speaker 1: number one movie in America, you know, Major theatrical lease
Speaker 1: and whatever. So um so, yeah, we we participate in that.
Speaker 1: We tried to get you guys, did we talked about sports,
Speaker 1: But I think it's the funniest part of the things
Speaker 1: you didn't is all military pay. Oh yeah, man, we
Speaker 1: got we got military pay and three square meals a day. Man,
Speaker 1: you feel like this big movie, all these theaters, the
Speaker 1: lower place. Oh my god, man, your little not your
Speaker 1: little check. But there's no like, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I think, all well, I shouldn't speak
Speaker 1: for anybody else. I felt good about it because it
Speaker 1: felt like since we were put on orders, it felt
Speaker 1: like any other job that somebody would have adked that
Speaker 1: that they would have asked us to do in the military,
Speaker 1: and being based on you know, my job, like, hey,
Speaker 1: go do that. That's what we get paid to do,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna go do that. It happened to be
Speaker 1: making a movie, made a lot of other people a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and anyway, it was in that movie
Speaker 1: launch an acting career. Um. You know, I got a
Speaker 1: lot of I guess offers afterwards, our opportunity to go
Speaker 1: do it. It just didn't appeal to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't something I like. Um, I mean, I like
Speaker 1: you're doing stuff like this, I like, you know, speaking
Speaker 1: and talking and um, you know, I've done a TV
Speaker 1: show since and if the right project came up, I'd
Speaker 1: do it again, acting like actual just acting as a
Speaker 1: as a UM, you know, character actor had no appeal
Speaker 1: to me whatsoever. I think, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: the bunch of the guys were extras and transformers, movies
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff, operators, not major roles,
Speaker 1: but in that stuff. But I don't think anybody parlayed
Speaker 1: it into an actual um career. I mean a bunch
Speaker 1: of the guys stayed, you know, I mean I stayed
Speaker 1: for I stayed for two years. After that. I thought
Speaker 1: I was gonna get out right away. I actually stayed
Speaker 1: two years longer. The people dog on you for doing
Speaker 1: it it, you know, the thing that was good about
Speaker 1: it is yes, of course, of course. The nice thing
Speaker 1: was in general, after the initial busting of balls and
Speaker 1: giving you a hard time, it kind of came back
Speaker 1: to what that buddy mine who's a mass chief now said,
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, I'll tell you what, man, if
Speaker 1: somebody's gonna do it, I'm glad you were rapping us
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, somebody else. Um. I had
Speaker 1: some other question about that. Now I can't here what
Speaker 1: the hell it was about the fallout, not to fall
Speaker 1: up with just the repercussions of doing it. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're good arguments across the board on
Speaker 1: both you know, doing it not doing it. I mean
Speaker 1: the back end of how many good young Lions now
Speaker 1: came to the program, because that's ask what was it
Speaker 1: regarded as a successful move for recruitment, Like overwhelmingly so
Speaker 1: I got a bunch of people into the door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we had to start at the door. We had
Speaker 1: to start creating. Well, what it allowed us to do
Speaker 1: is instead of having a pool of candidates that we
Speaker 1: didn't really know who they were before once they entered
Speaker 1: the program as best we could evaluate them, we actually
Speaker 1: had to almost establish another program to weed and kind
Speaker 1: of pick the best hundred fifty or some odd guys
Speaker 1: to go to each class. And there's only seven classes
Speaker 1: I go through a year, and so we were able
Speaker 1: to actually select now what we thought would be the
Speaker 1: best candidates, so to try and get better people to
Speaker 1: the front board to get more to the back door.
Speaker 1: It moved the needle a little bit on graduation rates.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it worked. I mean it definitely works.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yea, as the deal in Poker Rich, I'm
Speaker 1: sulposed to introduce myself. Yeah, and you're kind of like
Speaker 1: done working for us now, man, come on, I'm glad
Speaker 1: I got the last one. Chris. Uh, he's got something.
Speaker 1: You can't tell us what he's going to do because
Speaker 1: he's got some endia. That's all right, there's like an
Speaker 1: India and disclosure agreement. Yeah, I can't talk about it,
Speaker 1: kind of like Danny can't talk about his Wolf project.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, signed it get in trouble if I start talking.
Speaker 1: So listeners that have grown accustomed to your presence are
Speaker 1: just gonna be deprived of you know. Yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: gonna have to try to buy my subar. All right,
Speaker 1: kick it off because it's got your project down here, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was my project. We've been trying to get his
Speaker 1: hunt done for a few years at least three right, yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And we messed up because we didn't know. We didn't
Speaker 1: understand the Colorado dross is the well enough um because
Speaker 1: you're a nonresident Rooks, a resident of Colorado, and you
Speaker 1: guys are applying as a group, which what was happening
Speaker 1: in Colorado. There's a preference point system when you try
Speaker 1: to draw a tag that is, um a, uh, what's
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for? Limited? Yeah? Limited? Tag, right, So
Speaker 1: it was just more it's more demand than opportunity. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's preference points. So once you get preference points, if
Speaker 1: you have to and your buddy only has one, you're
Speaker 1: gonna draw it before they do. And so however many
Speaker 1: people put in with the most points, they're gonna get
Speaker 1: all the tags before the lower numbers. Well, when you
Speaker 1: guys put in as a group, um, you guys are
Speaker 1: taking like a double hit because Rourke was being put
Speaker 1: in as a nonresident, because you go sort of go
Speaker 1: to the lowest common denominator, so you were going he
Speaker 1: was getting put in as a nonresident because he was
Speaker 1: thrown in with a non resident and they didn't want
Speaker 1: to elevate. Conversely, you'd have to elevate the non residents
Speaker 1: resident status. Was just gonna piss people off totally. And
Speaker 1: you had like two or three or maybe four more
Speaker 1: points than Rourke to draw the tag. But because you
Speaker 1: guys were getting put in together, you guys are put
Speaker 1: getting put into the lowest amount of points. So whatever
Speaker 1: roor CAD is what you guys were putting the lowest lowest, Yeah, lowest,
Speaker 1: the lowest status and apply the lowest points. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just the same same thing that was happening
Speaker 1: at Um. I didn't realize that, yeah, paralleling this, it
Speaker 1: was happening to me and my buddy Ethan, who now
Speaker 1: I'm going hunting with next month in Colorado, because we
Speaker 1: were doing the same thing, putting in as a group
Speaker 1: and every year, like man, we should be drawing, what
Speaker 1: is the problem. And then as soon as we didn't
Speaker 1: do it as a group, we drew, as did you
Speaker 1: and Rourke, So we weren't in as a team. And
Speaker 1: how many uh, how many? I can't remember how many points?
Speaker 1: I had? Four or five? Man, that's depressive to think about.
Speaker 1: You burned that many points. Man, The thing is in Colorado.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you would have gotten much better.
Speaker 1: There might have been an archery hunt that we could
Speaker 1: have done that would have been limited entry, and that
Speaker 1: would have actually limited people. But I think where I
Speaker 1: messed up and picking out this. I had a lookal
Speaker 1: a buddy that lives here. I wish he could have
Speaker 1: joined us today, but we had to head back to
Speaker 1: denver Um. But he hunts rifle seasons here, right, and
Speaker 1: he's had very good experiences hunting during the first rifle here,
Speaker 1: and so we just very well, heck, muzzleloaders should be
Speaker 1: even better basically to hunt with the rifles during the rut. Well,
Speaker 1: what we didn't factor in at all, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: really speak to it because he hasn't been in the
Speaker 1: woods that much this time of years in Colorado. We
Speaker 1: should point out it's it's not but you can't put
Speaker 1: a scope on your Muzzloder's your muzzleloader has to be
Speaker 1: true to caliber project out, which means you have a
Speaker 1: pretty you know, slower traveling slug and you got these
Speaker 1: open sites. Yeah, so you're not like licking ticks with
Speaker 1: the thing you're You're not um, but compared to the
Speaker 1: average archery hunter, you should be at least doubling your range,
Speaker 1: maybe tripling your range, and you don't need to draw
Speaker 1: your damn ball back is kind of thing standing there
Speaker 1: on high alert. You don't need to do a big
Speaker 1: elaborate movement. You can just get already. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a factor in is the archery pressure, because in Colorado
Speaker 1: it's over the counter archery in most units. I al
Speaker 1: would say that's gotta it's gonna change that. It has
Speaker 1: a change. It already did in some units, um like
Speaker 1: where I used to live up there in Eagle County. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the units, they're like if you I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna draw it, Like this year, if you applied,
Speaker 1: you probably drew it, but you couldn't hunt anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Like once you drew that tag, that like that's where
Speaker 1: it was good for you couldn't hunt the whole state anymore.
Speaker 1: So I think they're gonna start doing that more and more.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, it's gonna have to be limited opportunity.
Speaker 1: I feel like they gotta. Yeah, I think that they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to reckon with um they're curious about like
Speaker 1: hunter satisfaction. Yes, I think they're gonna have to. I
Speaker 1: would imagine if you were to pull people who hunted
Speaker 1: over the last week around this unit about hunter satisfaction,
Speaker 1: I think that you would find um, yeah, when you listen.
Speaker 1: I posted a picture of us and just said said
Speaker 1: that we were hunting in the uh San Juan Mountains
Speaker 1: on Instagram. And while we've been here, I got to
Speaker 1: um emails from friends of ours that were here earlier
Speaker 1: in the season, just archery, l cunning that had the
Speaker 1: exact same experience, just like tons of dudes everywhere and
Speaker 1: guys that were on mules ten miles into the back
Speaker 1: country and we're just like, holy sh it, can't believe
Speaker 1: how many people were running into I've never um, I've
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it. Now we've hunted some high
Speaker 1: pressure stuff. Um and again you know, not having me,
Speaker 1: although we did have some local knowledge, not having personal
Speaker 1: local knowledge of a spot, it's, uh, it's a huge advantage.
Speaker 1: You know, we all know that, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: I hunted heavily pressured Colorado stuff for fifteen years and
Speaker 1: had pretty high success. Yeah, once you get the known
Speaker 1: area is super good. You just make the pressure work
Speaker 1: for you. No. Um, but yeah, this was yeah, because
Speaker 1: I think we should sort of explain the like sort
Speaker 1: of paint the picture of the amount of pressure. But
Speaker 1: we're going to trailheads or not even trail heads, but
Speaker 1: but parking areas, the end of logging roads, four or
Speaker 1: five six vehicles, camps with multiple r VS, tents, um.
Speaker 1: Not only roads too, not like just like a normal
Speaker 1: force service road like rutted out. Yeah, and if it
Speaker 1: was like a better like an improved force service road.
Speaker 1: I mean seriously, we did one Like it was a
Speaker 1: first night that we were out and I mean, it
Speaker 1: was every possible turn off to where you're like, it's
Speaker 1: almost like going down a river where you're like looking,
Speaker 1: you can kind of see the next truck and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that gives me like enough space to jump in the river,
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna be like crowding this guy. That's
Speaker 1: how it was. It was like every half mile there'd
Speaker 1: be another truck, you know. The founder observed that when
Speaker 1: you're in Colorado always feels like you're in someone's backyard. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we've talked about it before. Man, it's ground zero, ground
Speaker 1: zero here for loving it to death. Mm hmmm um.
Speaker 1: And everybody, hopefully all the other Western states are gonna
Speaker 1: be able to see how color handles it and be
Speaker 1: able to you know, adjust and figure things out. It's
Speaker 1: a conunder man, because you got like the funding problem
Speaker 1: where the state they need to like hunters fund Colorado's
Speaker 1: wildlife program. Hunter's fund a lot of like public land stuff,
Speaker 1: habitat provement, disease research, enforcement, like all that stuff comes
Speaker 1: from a hunter funding. And the more hunters got coming
Speaker 1: through the door, the more funny you got, especially non
Speaker 1: resident hunters. And so you need the money and I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's this thing that like, man, we can open
Speaker 1: it up and have it be over the counter and
Speaker 1: have like and hit revenue objectives. Yeah, but at that
Speaker 1: point they can do it here too, because they still
Speaker 1: have you know, twice as many elk as the next state,
Speaker 1: closest state as far as elk population goes, Right, But
Speaker 1: they're good at hiding, yeah, And I think in rifle
Speaker 1: seasons it's worked. I mean, second season would be interesting
Speaker 1: to see this year because I think back in the day,
Speaker 1: like out of the two and sixty tho, I can't
Speaker 1: remember the number now, I think it was that we
Speaker 1: get a quarter million nonresident hunters or hunters in total
Speaker 1: here in Colorado for big game, and like sixty of
Speaker 1: them would all come during second rifle season. It's like
Speaker 1: a major chunk of that whole number all came for
Speaker 1: the same week, right. Really interesting to see this year
Speaker 1: if like that's got spread out a little bit over
Speaker 1: the archery season because we heard anecdotally that neighboring unit
Speaker 1: a guy from a tax jurmy shop or a license
Speaker 1: sales shop. Where was that story they got to this?
Speaker 1: My buddy the other day killed a bear and took
Speaker 1: his bear and to get checked. Yeah, it got the
Speaker 1: yak and with the the guy that checked the warden
Speaker 1: that checked his bear, and the warden told him. But
Speaker 1: I don't know what the point, what the baseline point
Speaker 1: was that the warden told him that archery tag sales
Speaker 1: were up seven X. But I don't know seven x
Speaker 1: from when. I don't. I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1: There's no way they're up like seven x from last year.
Speaker 1: You know what I make, I'd have a hard time
Speaker 1: believe in it. I remember seven times more people from
Speaker 1: a year before. I don't know what that means. Remember
Speaker 1: what happened when Colorado dropped there? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: again just applications, right, but when they dropped the nonresident
Speaker 1: um requirement to send in a two thousand dollar check
Speaker 1: to apply for moose, goat and sheep, they did that
Speaker 1: for one year and it went like it wasn't seven x,
Speaker 1: it was like three hundred X. Do a better job
Speaker 1: explaining that. Do a better job explaining. So y'all needs
Speaker 1: a tag consultant. Not really, I'll do my best, though.
Speaker 1: You're tearing it up. Man, you had that one little
Speaker 1: thing you missed. You couldn't think of remember what could man,
Speaker 1: he's already getting d M s about that super He's like,
Speaker 1: you gotta got um. When I first started applying for
Speaker 1: Moose Sheep and got in Colorado, and and I was
Speaker 1: a resident, but non residents would have to send in
Speaker 1: a check for I think is roughly if you wanted
Speaker 1: to participate in the draw. And most of the time
Speaker 1: you just participating to get a preference point until you
Speaker 1: build up a certain amount of points, and then maybe
Speaker 1: when you send in the check, you're actually hoping that
Speaker 1: how many points you're sitting on right now might draw.
Speaker 1: The two I've kept up with I've got kind of
Speaker 1: quit doing go um the two have kept up with
Speaker 1: Moose and Sheep. I bet you I'm at close to ten.
Speaker 1: We're in there, so there's a chance at least with
Speaker 1: we won't get into that. But so anyways, you used
Speaker 1: to have to send in so if you wanted to
Speaker 1: do so. When I moved away to participate in Moose
Speaker 1: and Sheep, I had to yank out thirty for a
Speaker 1: couple of months, you know, And when that hits the
Speaker 1: bank account, your gals like, hi, what You're like, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's coming back, don't worry about it. But
Speaker 1: it's not like you could just stick it on a
Speaker 1: credit card. They didn't accept credit cards. You had to
Speaker 1: send in the money so that if you drew they
Speaker 1: had your money, they give you the tag because then
Speaker 1: they don't got to be like, hey, you won, and
Speaker 1: then the dudes like, oh, I actually have no possible
Speaker 1: means by which that's hold on. It's like I gotta
Speaker 1: sell my super and then um yeah. So that limited
Speaker 1: a lot of people from applying, especially non residents from
Speaker 1: applying and gaining points. So for whatever reason, I think
Speaker 1: that all probab it felt like they were limiting the
Speaker 1: amount and they wanted more people to be participating, and
Speaker 1: so they know you want to end up actually happening.
Speaker 1: Is that what it was costing Carr Parks and Wildlife
Speaker 1: to do the processing and then mail out all the
Speaker 1: refund checks with such a large sum of money that
Speaker 1: they're like, the system isn't working. There was their conspiracy theory. Rightly.
Speaker 1: It was funny because people would say, like, oh, the
Speaker 1: reason they do that is how much money they make
Speaker 1: an interest where for some two months or whatever, they're
Speaker 1: sitting on all these millions of dollars and then it
Speaker 1: comes out that it costs them an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: money to process all this stuff issue paper checks, like
Speaker 1: there's no money making going on, yeah, just the postage
Speaker 1: to you know, send everything back. So one year they
Speaker 1: drop it to like where it's just wide open. Everybody
Speaker 1: can apply for like and put it on their credit card.
Speaker 1: You saw to uh, you know, put up the money,
Speaker 1: but you can put on a credit card. And I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, the fee was only a few dollars,
Speaker 1: and it went up something like three the amount of
Speaker 1: applicants like it just like everybody just got in were like, sure,
Speaker 1: we can apply now and it won't cost me but
Speaker 1: a couple of bucks and and you know a little
Speaker 1: bit of interest on my credit card for a few months.
Speaker 1: And so I just fluttered him. So then the next
Speaker 1: year then they changed it again. And so I can't
Speaker 1: remember because now it's only been a year or two
Speaker 1: with the new system. But now I think that as
Speaker 1: a non resident, I'm paying I think maybe a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars per species, per year per to get a point
Speaker 1: to participate. And so they you know, they try to
Speaker 1: find a middle ground, like they're still getting money coming
Speaker 1: in but now as hope not as many people swamping
Speaker 1: the system. Like I said, I'm doing my best here.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there's some dude a car Parks and Wildlife,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know what I think people in Colorado
Speaker 1: Parks and Wildlife are thinking when they listen to this
Speaker 1: and and a bunch of them do. I think they're
Speaker 1: thinking like, yeah, man, it's like there's like something that
Speaker 1: needs to be sorted out. Yeah, yeah, yeah there's and
Speaker 1: there's and again it's just the amount of people and
Speaker 1: it's a great place to hunt, and you know, people
Speaker 1: want to come hunt here, but there's a whole thing
Speaker 1: that's called preference point creep here in the state where
Speaker 1: like and that's why we by saving too many points
Speaker 1: if you're starting out now in Colorado, doesn't do you
Speaker 1: much good because again, the amount of demand that's that's
Speaker 1: that's there every single year. If this unit this year
Speaker 1: was five points, let's just say for the muzzleloader hunt,
Speaker 1: next year it might jump up to six point minimum
Speaker 1: and then seven point minimum. So if you have three
Speaker 1: this year and next year you have four, but the
Speaker 1: cap is at seven, it just moves along ahead of
Speaker 1: you and you're never gonna catch up. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of units in Colorado that that's happening in and
Speaker 1: it pushes people to the open units. Well sure, but
Speaker 1: they're just people are just like they're upset and they're
Speaker 1: frustrated because they're like, man, I have you know, some
Speaker 1: people have twenty years of applying and money put into it,
Speaker 1: and they're seeing the point creep happening, and they're like,
Speaker 1: there's no end in sight, and I'm never gonna draw
Speaker 1: a tag because there's and you can look at all
Speaker 1: the numbers and you have twenty one points. You can
Speaker 1: see that in whatever fancy unit you're applying for, how
Speaker 1: many people applied with more points ahead of you, and
Speaker 1: how many people how big that pool is. So there
Speaker 1: might have been five thousand people that apply with twenty
Speaker 1: three points. If those five thousand people keep applying for
Speaker 1: that same unit and there's only ten tags issue the year,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of years until that that pool
Speaker 1: falls out, and you know, people are gonna die with
Speaker 1: thirty points in Colorado. You know, what do you think
Speaker 1: about that rich pounder you ever put in for a
Speaker 1: tag in your life? No, but you know what I
Speaker 1: do think about it? It sounds a lot like airline
Speaker 1: status and playing that game, man, and I play that
Speaker 1: game hard. Yeah, Like when you get like I could
Speaker 1: go into the Delta, the most crowded place in the
Speaker 1: Air Force. Delta allows dude, it's like, how's everybody? Everybody? Well,
Speaker 1: I got some fancy lounge now to through am X though,
Speaker 1: but Steve not always flying a priority pass or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like, what are we gonna do, like landing
Speaker 1: the airport and he's gonna go to the delta a
Speaker 1: lounge and go to a different one. Usually if one
Speaker 1: of you has access to allounge and let you have
Speaker 1: a buddy, tyne bucks. What the delta. So if you're
Speaker 1: gonna go in there, if you know you're gonna go
Speaker 1: in there and have a meal and have a couple, wait,
Speaker 1: Delta charges you twenty nine bucks to bring a buddy,
Speaker 1: to bring your partner or your wife or your kids. Dude,
Speaker 1: I'm sticking like an alien. Probably it's ridiculous. That's a
Speaker 1: little off topic. So, yeah, a lot of pressure here,
Speaker 1: and uh that I was not expecting it. Man, we
Speaker 1: thought we were going to be into some because man,
Speaker 1: we thought we're gonna be in some rip roaring bugle
Speaker 1: fest man. Yeah, with muzzleloaders in hand. Nonetheless, um burned
Speaker 1: all my points. How many bugles? What's that? Yeah? Watched
Speaker 1: the bowl silently bugle. Yeah, that's cool to see. I
Speaker 1: think that that happens. It's been I mean, first time
Speaker 1: I saw it was probably close to twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Do everything but make the noise. Yeah, And then we
Speaker 1: were the way I could tell because I couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out what I was looking at. And it was the
Speaker 1: night before season. I was just out with the client
Speaker 1: or two for just a walk, and we decided to
Speaker 1: sit in this place called the the Cafe. Everybody used
Speaker 1: to meet there for lunch midday, that's how it got
Speaker 1: that name. And uh, we're sitting there and of course,
Speaker 1: night before season, just the whole herd pops in the winds,
Speaker 1: swirl in every direction and they're like, yeah, we don't care,
Speaker 1: you know, just out in the middle for like an hour,
Speaker 1: and the temperature dropped just enough to where when he
Speaker 1: would make that posture, you could see the steam coming
Speaker 1: out of his mouth like he should be bugling that.
Speaker 1: You can see his pushing air out of his mouth,
Speaker 1: yet there was no sound. I think eventually He did
Speaker 1: that three or four, maybe a half dozen times, and
Speaker 1: eventually I could just hear like, yeah, there was some
Speaker 1: sound coming out. Because again, they have to bugle at
Speaker 1: those cows right as they're trying to accord them here
Speaker 1: him whatever they're doing, you know, push them around, trying
Speaker 1: to breed them. I think that if there's a certain
Speaker 1: without trying to anthropomorphize too much, but there's trying to
Speaker 1: show some respect to keep them around, to not run
Speaker 1: them off, you know. But really, yeah, but if you
Speaker 1: bugle real loud every other bull in the zone, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got a bunch of ladies down there. I'll come
Speaker 1: check that out and try to steal them and mess
Speaker 1: with you. And you know, yeah, like if you're like
Speaker 1: a you know, if you're a young single guy and
Speaker 1: you go, like you just stumble into the bar at
Speaker 1: night and it's you and like twenty women, right, you
Speaker 1: could have then called your buddies and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, guess what's happening. If it was one, I
Speaker 1: might call one or two my best friends, but you'd
Speaker 1: be like, turn my phone off. Uh. Two interesting things
Speaker 1: about sand. Uh. We we can speak generally about the
Speaker 1: sand Juan's two good stories about the sand. Juan's um
Speaker 1: one is the and the grizzly bear story down here
Speaker 1: where um you know, grizzlies once upon a time, hundred
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, uh could be found all the way
Speaker 1: down into Sonora, Mexico. Right. They ran from northern Mexico
Speaker 1: all the way up through the western the Western States
Speaker 1: basically from the hundredth meridian and on the Great Plains
Speaker 1: around from the hundredth meridian west all the way to
Speaker 1: the Pacific coast up through the western Canadian provinces, all
Speaker 1: of Alaska. UM. And then they kind of got gradually
Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight whittled away to just a
Speaker 1: couple of little enclaves and and uh Idaho, Montana, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: Colorado had him until you know, they had him into
Speaker 1: the forties. And then starting in the fifties like wanted
Speaker 1: pop up now and then like like out of nowhere
Speaker 1: of grizzly to kill a sheep, and some old trapper
Speaker 1: go out and kill the grizzly. And it got to
Speaker 1: be nineteen fifty was it fifty three? I think in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three the state declared grizzlies extinct, gone and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen seventy nine does the dude by the
Speaker 1: last name of Wiseman oh bow hunting in the San
Speaker 1: Juans with a recurve. I think he had a recurve. Uh,
Speaker 1: some bitch doesn't. He gets most dudes probably gets mauled
Speaker 1: by a grizzly. There's always been rumors of some around
Speaker 1: gets mauled by a grizzly. Uh. There's some controversy around
Speaker 1: what exactly happened. But the bear winds up dead. His
Speaker 1: story is that he kind of accidentally cornered it on
Speaker 1: a ridgeline somehow, and it was a sow and she
Speaker 1: starts mauling him on the leg and then starts mauling
Speaker 1: him on the shoulder, and he sees his quiver laying
Speaker 1: there and like his arrows spilled out of his quiver,
Speaker 1: And according to his story, he takes an arrow and
Speaker 1: starts jabbing her with it, and she eventually stops mauling
Speaker 1: and walks off a few yards and lays down, bleeds
Speaker 1: out and dies. They don't keep the body. Somehow, like
Speaker 1: winds up that they skin it. Biologists were able to
Speaker 1: look and not only is like here's his female grizzly
Speaker 1: that suppose he's been like the species supposed been extinct
Speaker 1: from the state for twenty six years. But here she is,
Speaker 1: and she had like the color of her, the color
Speaker 1: of her that that she had like stretched out teats,
Speaker 1: and the coloration on him suggests that she had reproduced
Speaker 1: in her life. And that brought on this big search
Speaker 1: that ran all the way into the early nineties of
Speaker 1: people coming down. Um, the writer and uh, the writer
Speaker 1: and environmentalist David Peterson was involved with it. The writer
Speaker 1: Rick somehow it became like a literary thing. I guess
Speaker 1: the writer Rick Bass got involved with it. The contrarian
Speaker 1: Doug Peacock got involved with it, coming down and trying
Speaker 1: to establish the presence of grizzlies here, and kept added
Speaker 1: till the nineties. And I think now there are still
Speaker 1: a lot of believers that there are grizzlies in Colorado. Um,
Speaker 1: I know some of them personally, but they're new grizzlies,
Speaker 1: different grizzlies. Yeah, because that's the new resting point out
Speaker 1: because this is the Southern We're in the south of
Speaker 1: the States, so people are trying to establish this idea
Speaker 1: that there had always been something. Now there's a new
Speaker 1: idea that some and it's not unreasonable at all, and
Speaker 1: it will happen that some are gonna drift down from
Speaker 1: Wyoming and absolutely like in twenty years, if I had
Speaker 1: to make you know in twenty years there, I'll just come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll just say in twenty years, if if trends continue,
Speaker 1: you will have grizzlies in Colorado in twenty years, wolves
Speaker 1: are shown up. It's just gonna happen. But the idea
Speaker 1: that they've been here and surviving this mountain range now
Speaker 1: despite some people that still believe because then some kid
Speaker 1: claims that have had one come out and falls charge
Speaker 1: him and basically like a dance around him and stomped
Speaker 1: the ground around him, and he got this whole elaborate
Speaker 1: story that happened to him in the san juans Um
Speaker 1: and so but it's kind of like a thing that
Speaker 1: people like to believe it. But back to this Wiseman
Speaker 1: dude story is that a lot of people felt that
Speaker 1: a more reasonable explanation would be the he stumbles upon
Speaker 1: the bear, sinks an arrow into it and then gets mauled,
Speaker 1: and then it mauls him and then dies from the wound.
Speaker 1: But the dude took a polygraph right, took a polygraph
Speaker 1: and passed the polygraph that he got mauled first, then
Speaker 1: jabbed it was an arrow and killed it. There was
Speaker 1: only one jab mark. I don't know how. No. I
Speaker 1: think he jabbed it a handful of times around its
Speaker 1: neck got you. I could see if there was one hole,
Speaker 1: it would be like, oh, maybe he did shoot it.
Speaker 1: I man again, like if someone said, uh, someone said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you a question. If you get the
Speaker 1: answer right, you live. If you get the answer wrong,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot you and kill you right, And he
Speaker 1: said did he shoot it and then get mauled or
Speaker 1: mauled it then get then stabbed it. If I had
Speaker 1: to like do that, I would probably go with I
Speaker 1: think he shot it then got mold mm hmm. I've
Speaker 1: never met the guy. It's a tough story to believe. Man. Well,
Speaker 1: the book talks about out they did an autopsy on
Speaker 1: this bear and one of the wounds they think the
Speaker 1: wound that probably did the most damage. The it showed
Speaker 1: the entry of an arrow is like creating a really
Speaker 1: round hole and puncture mark in the body was opposed
Speaker 1: to some jagged stabbing motion. Interesting, like it's just the
Speaker 1: last grizzly in Colorado happens too. But what does he
Speaker 1: think he's gonna do if he should? Like, I think
Speaker 1: he's creeping along with the woods. I mean again, someone's
Speaker 1: got a gun to my head. I gotta get right
Speaker 1: or else I die. Have he steaks right? I got children? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's creeping along and alvious. It's like
Speaker 1: holy shit, but his first inclination is to shoot it
Speaker 1: and then have to deal with the maybe thals a
Speaker 1: black bear? Like maybe? Yeah? What season? Was he hunting? Beart?
Speaker 1: Was he like walking around? Is that also black bear? Probably?
Speaker 1: I'm sure interesting? Well, if he felt it was a
Speaker 1: black bear, why wouldn't he just be like, I don't
Speaker 1: know a black bear? That's why? Because that because there
Speaker 1: haven't been any grizzlies in your state. For there haven't
Speaker 1: been any. They were declared extinct six years ago. It's
Speaker 1: not even on your mind. Look, if I knew some
Speaker 1: guy in Michigan that had a bear tag and he
Speaker 1: stumbled through the up no not, let's say not say
Speaker 1: mission because historically didn't have a guy in South Dakota. Okay,
Speaker 1: do they get a lot of black beards and help me,
Speaker 1: help me with a good state, Johnny, help me with bears.
Speaker 1: And there's a guy still creeping through the woods in California, California,
Speaker 1: creeping through the woods of California, got a bear tag,
Speaker 1: burn a hole in his pocket, and lo and behold
Speaker 1: there through the brushes a bear? Yeah? Is he is
Speaker 1: his responsibility to be Like, I wonder if somehow there's
Speaker 1: a remnant, surviving population of these bears that no one's
Speaker 1: known about for twenty six years, and maybe I better
Speaker 1: investigate quickly before loosing my arrow. Or is he gonna
Speaker 1: be like, holy shit, a bear. Shoot? No, he's gonna shoot.
Speaker 1: I think what I'm saying. I don't think that could
Speaker 1: be the story, because if that was the case, he
Speaker 1: would be like I thought, yeah, because you're so low,
Speaker 1: you're like that Jonah Hills. I can't see your cowboy
Speaker 1: I can't see your cowboy boots and your and your
Speaker 1: armpits around the resting on the table. But go ahead,
Speaker 1: well yeah, just the current situation here around the table. Um. No,
Speaker 1: I think if that was the case, he would just
Speaker 1: be like, I thought it was a black bear. I
Speaker 1: shot it and it mauled me. It turns out it
Speaker 1: was a grizzly unless he was trying to just sound
Speaker 1: like a badass, you know, and he wanted to have
Speaker 1: this story about you know, I don't. I don't know, dude.
Speaker 1: I know we're rehashed. We're rehashing someone that's been hashed.
Speaker 1: What's pretty wild about the story is the story of um,
Speaker 1: the surviving of like his night out. It's pretty wild.
Speaker 1: He was hunting with his guide, hunting with the client. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the guide. His sends his client out of
Speaker 1: the woods to go get help. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: as he retold the story, he's just thinking, like, well,
Speaker 1: if they go like they'll probably be back by like ten.
Speaker 1: Well ten pm comes the guy. The guide had collected
Speaker 1: a bunch of firewood for him, you know, and started
Speaker 1: the fire client the client. Yeah, wait, not to interrupt this,
Speaker 1: but to go back if there's another witness there. No,
Speaker 1: they were split up. Okay, what year was this? The
Speaker 1: dudes still life? Maybe it could be a good podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope, I mean, I love to m on. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh, you know, we're just talking about a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff we have no idea about. That's to
Speaker 1: remind listeners that we have we're just I know, would
Speaker 1: be good to talk to the dude. Yeah, But anyways,
Speaker 1: he survives all night fire wood runs out, but he's
Speaker 1: incapacitated to the point where he can't go collect more wood,
Speaker 1: and so he basically shivers and bleeds, you know, and
Speaker 1: makes it to daylight until they get the ascue crew
Speaker 1: in there to get him out. Very easily could have
Speaker 1: just slipped off and that was the last Grizzly. You
Speaker 1: know what's crazy is this happened on September. Yeah, septem
Speaker 1: are kidding me forty years ago today. If you didn't
Speaker 1: believe in like ghosts and whatnot, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that tells you. I can't find anything that says he's
Speaker 1: still alive, that he's live in two Down fourteen. Oh
Speaker 1: it was Um. What was the other interesting thing about
Speaker 1: san Juan's. Oh, there's another thing I want to talk
Speaker 1: about about san Juan's. It kind of pertains to some things.
Speaker 1: But and some of the same characters are involved, because
Speaker 1: again the hunter and environmentalist David Peterson, Is you alive?
Speaker 1: When was that article today? Yeah's eighty six years old, dude,
Speaker 1: cal him ups kicking still in this photo of him,
Speaker 1: his hands are bigger than his head. We'll put kour
Speaker 1: In on it, you know. Yeah, I mean he's at
Speaker 1: that age you kind of you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you really need to. I mean, it's up to him. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear we'd love to hear that story.
Speaker 1: And again, me talking about this whole thing about what happened,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what happened. I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: there's different perspectives on it. And if just looking at
Speaker 1: it from outside purely like outside looking in things there
Speaker 1: are I'm not the only guy to bring up like
Speaker 1: what what now? Uh. The interest thing this is also
Speaker 1: involves David Peterson because he's he's he's promoted this idea
Speaker 1: is that one of the things we're seeing here is
Speaker 1: that one of the things that of like that there's uh,
Speaker 1: this Elkert here's declining. And there's a lot of contention
Speaker 1: about why this Elkert is declining. The thing that they're
Speaker 1: finding is um one of these guys that was involved,
Speaker 1: it was very involved and wrote a lot about and
Speaker 1: commented about this search for the last grizzle in the
Speaker 1: San Juan's feels that Um. I think he makes the
Speaker 1: argument that increased hunting pressure in the San Juans is
Speaker 1: interrupting the rut and it's making that bulls don't bugle
Speaker 1: and cows aren't getting bread, and that there's also this
Speaker 1: edition of muzzle loader hunters in here, and that that
Speaker 1: is what's causing a decline in the elk kirts. Biologists
Speaker 1: don't on on whole biology don't agree with this assessment
Speaker 1: because pregnancy rates are not down and calving rates aren't down.
Speaker 1: But what's down is calf survivability, meaning calves are hitting
Speaker 1: the ground, but they're not reaching maturity. And some people
Speaker 1: look and say, you know what that means is that
Speaker 1: we have a predation problem, which flies in the face
Speaker 1: of people, which flies in the face of an individual
Speaker 1: like David Peterson, who would argue that we have been
Speaker 1: waging this hundreds year long war on predators and to
Speaker 1: now blame predators on declining elk numbers is to once
Speaker 1: again look away from the reality of our own impacts
Speaker 1: on the landscape. Well, just coincidentally this happens to I
Speaker 1: say that wrong. It just happens to coincide with the
Speaker 1: fact that Colorado's um fish and Wildlife has realized that
Speaker 1: they think that their bear population, that their numbers were
Speaker 1: off by it possibly as much as like, like they
Speaker 1: think it might be as twice as big as they
Speaker 1: as they thought it was just five years ago. But
Speaker 1: the exploding population of five bears to the point where
Speaker 1: there they've actually this year they dropped the non resident
Speaker 1: bear tag price from three fifty to a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: because they really want people out there hunting black bears
Speaker 1: and reducing the population for all sorts of sin. I mean,
Speaker 1: this being one of them that possibly might be affecting
Speaker 1: you know, elk heard size, but uh, you know, there's
Speaker 1: just black bears. I mean, you guys were last night
Speaker 1: in a small rural town here and and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: tell them about that. Yeah, we just we rolled into
Speaker 1: a town to fuel up, and we went to the
Speaker 1: gas station, fueled up, and we're coming back and like
Speaker 1: you couldn't be anymore downtown and there was a black
Speaker 1: bear stand there on the sidewalk downtown, crippled, crippled his
Speaker 1: his front right, Paul was he was like holding it.
Speaker 1: Got hit by a car or something, probably trying to
Speaker 1: get into a dumpster. Yep. It's one of those funny
Speaker 1: situations when you look at these these kind of like
Speaker 1: guys that have been talking about hunting for so long
Speaker 1: and talking about wildlife for so long. Um, like you know,
Speaker 1: people we keep mentioning, like David Peterson and Doug Peacock
Speaker 1: and everything. It's like you get into people get into
Speaker 1: this thing where you you have this set of ideas
Speaker 1: that you you become very invested in, you know, and
Speaker 1: then time marches on and your sets of ideas don't
Speaker 1: evolve with the new reality and you wind up um
Speaker 1: having like these like somewhat antiquated notions. But it's also
Speaker 1: this really interesting case study and how people's agenda can
Speaker 1: inform people's personal agenda or personal biases can inform an
Speaker 1: interpretation of science, which you which which we all would
Speaker 1: hope that science sits in this objective position where we
Speaker 1: can talk about like fact and not fact. But you
Speaker 1: could be like I've been hunting bow I've been bow
Speaker 1: hunting the San Juan Mountains my entire life. I used
Speaker 1: to have the place to myself. Elk hunting is going
Speaker 1: to ship. I love bears. What could be causing the problem.
Speaker 1: It's got to be other hunters and someone else who
Speaker 1: might be like invested in hunter participation or a guide
Speaker 1: or whatever. His things like, oh, that can't be it.
Speaker 1: I make my living off hunters. It's got to be
Speaker 1: the damn bears, you know. And and what we all
Speaker 1: like go out and run out and push whatever version
Speaker 1: sort of reinforces our reality. I share this seeing by
Speaker 1: brother dot long ago. I was talking about why, um
Speaker 1: did we talk about this, like why big scientific advancements
Speaker 1: have you are typically made by young people? Yeah? But
Speaker 1: Cameron FROMS on the podcast, so yeah, you definitely mentioned
Speaker 1: how better science is usually done by younger science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just I was reading this book by the
Speaker 1: he's coming on the podcast. But this guy, Justin Schmidt,
Speaker 1: who's an entomologist, and he came up with this thing
Speaker 1: called the Schmidt pain Index, by which you can um
Speaker 1: index out how the severity of insect bites. And he
Speaker 1: just put like it's like one two, three, four four
Speaker 1: plus and he's been bit by everything. Every insight that
Speaker 1: constingua um and and ranks him and he studies toxins
Speaker 1: and insects, and as sort of an aside in his book,
Speaker 1: he's like talking about why young people make its scientific advancements,
Speaker 1: Like they make scientific advancements because they haven't yet entered
Speaker 1: that stage of their career where they're defending old ideas,
Speaker 1: where it's like, you put forth an idea and it's novel,
Speaker 1: and it gets a lot of attention, and then people
Speaker 1: start focusing on we'll look at this person's idea, and
Speaker 1: they start adding to it and questioning it and questioning
Speaker 1: its assumptions and challenging it. And then you either like,
Speaker 1: you know what, damn it, you're right, I need to
Speaker 1: evolve my feeling, or you become entrenched and you spend
Speaker 1: your career, you know, being like, yeah, but it sure
Speaker 1: was a good idea, you know, you spend your career
Speaker 1: like loving it. It's hard for a person in this
Speaker 1: position to be like, oh, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: stop this war on predators two then later be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, man, we gradually sort of did stop
Speaker 1: the war on predators, and now we've got a shipload
Speaker 1: of them. You're kind of right. It's tough. Well, Johnny Man,
Speaker 1: I was trying to come up with a good segue
Speaker 1: because I think one of the things that dominated our
Speaker 1: conversations for at least for the last couple of days was, um,
Speaker 1: we did some hunting on the continental Divide Trailer off
Speaker 1: the Continental Divide Trail that runs through the San Juan's
Speaker 1: And uh, it wasn't until like the third day up
Speaker 1: there that we ran into our first through Hiker. This
Speaker 1: is the world I didn't know existed exactly, which we've
Speaker 1: had we've had a lot of fun chatting about it.
Speaker 1: And we ran into another through Hiker, um Denali and
Speaker 1: Soda where their two trail names which I knew about
Speaker 1: trailingas I didn't know where they how they came about.
Speaker 1: We still don't know how they come about. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have understand Yeah we got we gotta grasp you
Speaker 1: guys some research. Yeah really, Yeah, you're with like a
Speaker 1: group of people on the trail and they just like
Speaker 1: give you the name. But in the caveat remember the
Speaker 1: thing that the little blurb but I found on Google
Speaker 1: was like if you respond to it only one time,
Speaker 1: you're stuck with it forever. Oh yeah, So if somebody
Speaker 1: calls you something and you and you like ignore it,
Speaker 1: If you ignore it, it doesn't count. You just keep
Speaker 1: saying no, my name is Steve. Oh so that's how
Speaker 1: you don't get stuck with the trail and you ignore
Speaker 1: it because one dude We met this trail named Soda
Speaker 1: because he likes to drinking pop how to call them pop?
Speaker 1: And then another trail name yet Donal. We don't know
Speaker 1: how she got it. Should ask a through hikers, someone
Speaker 1: who will uh do the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail,
Speaker 1: the Conte Divida Trail, and they do it top to bottom,
Speaker 1: Canada to Mexico and they're the elite trail hiker. Or
Speaker 1: Mexico to Canada. You don't have to take either way,
Speaker 1: or you can just nickel and diamond over time. We
Speaker 1: met a guy yesterday who's just nickeling and diamond. You
Speaker 1: know what, Actually it's funny to dude. Nickelin and Diamond
Speaker 1: had a health flat for to say then the dudes
Speaker 1: they were just doing it. Certainly the dude, the dude
Speaker 1: I spent time with doing the through hike, was the
Speaker 1: least bragging, most unassuming. He's like, yeah, held, he told
Speaker 1: us he was he was being lazy because he didn't
Speaker 1: have a fishing rod. I'm like, dude, you're walking the
Speaker 1: entire north to south of the whole United States and
Speaker 1: you're saying you're being lazy. A dude from a dude
Speaker 1: from London, the pair of Solomon sneakers, thirteen pounds of
Speaker 1: gear that was packed waiting with no food and waters.
Speaker 1: Thirteen pounds might have been less than that man. That
Speaker 1: thing was light. Yeah. He had like a Sawyer water
Speaker 1: purifying bottle, a bottle of Doctor, a half bottle of
Speaker 1: the like, a couple of licks of Dr Pepper, a
Speaker 1: zero degree bag, some kind of tent which I can't
Speaker 1: imagine fitting that pack, a booney hat, a pair of
Speaker 1: sneakers and pants, and some track and pulling. That some
Speaker 1: bitch was walking from Canada to Mexico. And it acted
Speaker 1: like he was if you'd run into him. His demeanor
Speaker 1: was as though he was walking down to get a beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it was just no fanfare whatsoever. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was like, I was expecting a bigger answer because you
Speaker 1: questioned his motive and he just and and and I
Speaker 1: liked his answer. He's from London and he's basically like,
Speaker 1: you guys have unbelievable wildlife and scenery and mountains here
Speaker 1: and I don't have anything like that where I came from,
Speaker 1: and it's just great to walk through it. And that
Speaker 1: was like kind of the that was it. And that's
Speaker 1: why I'm walking to Canada. Man. Yeah, and you kind
Speaker 1: of expect like, well, I got divorced and I'm down
Speaker 1: and out. I needed to clear my head to do
Speaker 1: something big, and here I am, you know, finding myself.
Speaker 1: But I just want to see the cool ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just want to go see big mountains. He had.
Speaker 1: No he was like one of those dudes. There's dudes
Speaker 1: who are bad ass. You to know about it. Well,
Speaker 1: those dudes that aren't bad want you to to think this badass.
Speaker 1: There's badasses that want you to know they're badasses. Then
Speaker 1: there's like badasses that that no, o, they're badasses, but
Speaker 1: they intentionally underplay it as sort of a move. And
Speaker 1: then there's a dude who's a badass. He doesn't even
Speaker 1: know he's a badass. He fell in the It hasn't
Speaker 1: even occurred to him that he's a badass. Dude, I
Speaker 1: wish we had that kind of podcast. Man walking some
Speaker 1: of bit. He said. Some days he walks thirty miles,
Speaker 1: just plops down wherever he is, wakes up, keeps walking.
Speaker 1: The only parts he doesn't like was when there's no water,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, he had some nasty stories drinking out
Speaker 1: of stockponds, drinking out of stockponds and wyoming. How sick
Speaker 1: you get that manure flavored water. Yeah, he said, it's
Speaker 1: not fun when you have to force yourself to drink
Speaker 1: the water because it tastes so bad. It's all so bad.
Speaker 1: And he talked about interesting kind of hunger as he says,
Speaker 1: you get hungry to a point where hunger wakes you
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting kind of hunger. Yeah, I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: ever I don't think I've never woke up with the
Speaker 1: woke up and having to be like the thing that
Speaker 1: woke me up was hunger. And he was packing ramen,
Speaker 1: noodles and rice. He says freeze drives too expensive days.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been out of food long enough? You know?
Speaker 1: When I finished field train, they sent me to ranger
Speaker 1: school and Range Army Ranger schools kind of system for
Speaker 1: making you crazy uncomfortable is doing a lot of packing
Speaker 1: and humping through mountains and things like that, but it
Speaker 1: is starvation. They give you one m r E a
Speaker 1: day when you're operating at a very very high intensity level.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I woke up from hunger. We thought
Speaker 1: about food constantly the entire time you're in the field. There,
Speaker 1: you're probably thinking more about food than like the combat
Speaker 1: scenario that they're running. How many calories in an m
Speaker 1: R E. They're pretty calorie dens. I mean they're they're
Speaker 1: they're made to be, you know, rations for troops in
Speaker 1: the field. I I don't know what the numbers, but
Speaker 1: I mean one is not enough to what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And if you're on a patrol. You could be on
Speaker 1: a patrol at night, you'd have fifty people in your company,
Speaker 1: so spread out, you know, six yards apart. Somebody drops
Speaker 1: like a skittle that they'd squirreled away from their m
Speaker 1: R Like you could smell it from smell it, Like
Speaker 1: somebody is eating a skittle and somebody might have dropped
Speaker 1: skin and I and everybody knows. Everybody knows what's in
Speaker 1: the m R E. I got pneumonia during the course,
Speaker 1: and so they pulled me from from the block of
Speaker 1: trainers and they sent me the hospital. If I don't
Speaker 1: finish this course straight through, I won't start with my
Speaker 1: Advanced Seal Tactical Training Team to earn my tried and
Speaker 1: to like actually become a seal until like six months later. Like,
Speaker 1: if I got back from Rangers, go on time, I
Speaker 1: get to start with that class and become a Seal,
Speaker 1: Like real deal with the team. If I get bumped
Speaker 1: or rolled in this Ranger class and delayed that extra
Speaker 1: whatever three weeks, I would have to wait six My
Speaker 1: seal dream was now six eight months further away. So
Speaker 1: there's no way I wasn't making through this course. They
Speaker 1: take me this hospital, doctors checking, a bunch of troops
Speaker 1: coming to me. He's like, yeah, pneumonia, gotta pull you.
Speaker 1: I was like, sir, please, what's the worst that happens
Speaker 1: if you don't pull me. He's like, you know, you'll
Speaker 1: pass out. You'd be in big trouble. I was like,
Speaker 1: can we make that deal. I'll come back. You see
Speaker 1: me again. I'm willing to run the ridge. Like now
Speaker 1: I gotta pull. He walks out of the room. Nurse
Speaker 1: comes in and was like, well, the docks I set
Speaker 1: up good to go. She's like yeah. I was like yep.
Speaker 1: So she takes me out to the waiting room where
Speaker 1: the Ranger you know whatever folks would bring you back
Speaker 1: to the class. The whole time, I'm just praying I
Speaker 1: don't get made. She sits me in a little lounge area,
Speaker 1: and there were some bags of candy, like just little
Speaker 1: bags of candy, and there were peanut m and m's,
Speaker 1: which do not come in m R. E's, So I
Speaker 1: pocket one of those things. Dan takes me back to
Speaker 1: my company. I get back out and that night I'm
Speaker 1: back with my team and uh my squad, like my
Speaker 1: four little dudes in this gun nest in this patrol
Speaker 1: base of this triangle patrol base where you'd set up
Speaker 1: like it's old school tactics, where you'd set up three
Speaker 1: you know, the apex of the triangle. You'd have a
Speaker 1: big machine gun nests and everybody spread out in a
Speaker 1: triangle around it with defensive positions, leaderships in the middle,
Speaker 1: like making plans or whatever. I break out those peanut
Speaker 1: m and m's, you know, pass seven eight of them
Speaker 1: to each guy, and like the two dudes that weren't
Speaker 1: in our gun nests, they're like sitting there, can like
Speaker 1: smell the peanut m and ms. They're like looking up
Speaker 1: and they know for sure peanut m and ms don't
Speaker 1: come in an m R. E. And I'm looking over
Speaker 1: doing this to them, like if you say something to
Speaker 1: an instructor that like I brought these peanut and m m,
Speaker 1: it gets over for you. So if we're don't wrap
Speaker 1: me out, because like if you got if you got
Speaker 1: caught with something you were supposed to have, you get
Speaker 1: kicked out the program. But I made it through and
Speaker 1: got back to my team. But I was hungry, man.
Speaker 1: And the thing you want, the thing you want when
Speaker 1: you're that hungry as sugar. Sugar is the thing you
Speaker 1: want more, you know, you know what I what I
Speaker 1: want when I get super hungry is the ship that
Speaker 1: uh you're only going like a big gas station off
Speaker 1: the highway. You got those glass cases full of like
Speaker 1: all that brown food. When I get like hungry, I
Speaker 1: think about going in and smashing going over to the
Speaker 1: side of my truck where I keep my pick axe
Speaker 1: mounted to the outside of my truck, and coming in
Speaker 1: and smashing that glass case open and eating all that
Speaker 1: brown food out of the inside of that thing. Why
Speaker 1: don't you just open the door to the case. It's
Speaker 1: gotta be just I'm just that hungry. The drama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have time. I don't want shattered glass all
Speaker 1: over all over the food. Yeah, to get into one
Speaker 1: of them brown food cases, because sometimes they take those things.
Speaker 1: It's like that you make like a breedo and fill
Speaker 1: it full of a real low grade barbecue meat and
Speaker 1: then deep fry that thing and then put it in
Speaker 1: that case under that red glue lamp for a few days.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, those things look good. Maybe this is
Speaker 1: just for a personal deal with me, but I feel
Speaker 1: like it for me, it was much worse when I
Speaker 1: was younger, Like we went and did our honeymoon in
Speaker 1: New Zealand and backpacked around for like five or six weeks,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that's all I could think about
Speaker 1: as soon as I get on the trail, and we'd
Speaker 1: be out there just long enough to be away from,
Speaker 1: you know, restaurant food. I just be like, next meal,
Speaker 1: next meal, what's in the pack? I can't wait to
Speaker 1: eat that, this, that and the other. Now I feel
Speaker 1: like I haven't had those thoughts on the trail for
Speaker 1: I don't get on the trail. I get as soon
Speaker 1: as I stop hiking, you start thinking about food, smashing
Speaker 1: the gas station glass case and raiding the brown fisture. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying in general, when you're out in the woods,
Speaker 1: like I just don't And maybe I'm just better at
Speaker 1: feeding myself. I don't know. The sugar thing is interesting
Speaker 1: because we got done with a pretty big hike the
Speaker 1: other morning. When we were sitting there, when we met
Speaker 1: Soda Pop and I think his name was Soda. Referred
Speaker 1: to him to his face has has old, but his
Speaker 1: real name was Soda Trail. His trail name Soda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we met Soda. We had a giant bag of gummy
Speaker 1: bears and we bought when we went grocery shopping like
Speaker 1: we do before all these trips and those went fast. Man,
Speaker 1: like you notice this sort of uh you hand He
Speaker 1: tried to hand him a handful of pro bars and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't take him. Yeah, he didn't. He refused. I
Speaker 1: just saw offered him any just a snack because the
Speaker 1: restaurants were sitting around eating and I figured this guy
Speaker 1: hes been felt like he wanted it, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: take it. He was wasn't he going into town? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he felt like he wanted he didn't take it. He
Speaker 1: was fixing to have a good meal in town. Dude,
Speaker 1: all we had to offer bars man for four months.
Speaker 1: I don't think he wants to look at another bar
Speaker 1: when he knows that there's want a bowl rice? Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've been dogging on that. There's there's expectations. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's almost your day with this ecological principle. My brother
Speaker 1: just introduced me to um opt the optimal niche did.
Speaker 1: They teach about this in forestry optimal optimal niche and
Speaker 1: realized niche. As some people might say, where do you
Speaker 1: go with rour? You're good at Yeah, you're very good.
Speaker 1: One of the things. You're very very good at pronunciation
Speaker 1: and annunciation. I like that stuff is important to me.
Speaker 1: But I have a little bit of a like. I
Speaker 1: don't like when people use it's like the one word
Speaker 1: out of character that they use that whatever the standard
Speaker 1: variant of, they pick the one that's a little bit cooler,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, what's a good example our last president
Speaker 1: being like Pakistan. You know what you'd say it like,
Speaker 1: it's Pakistan man. We all say Pakistan. I know they
Speaker 1: might say it, that's not the way we say it.
Speaker 1: I got you, So for me, I say niche. My
Speaker 1: wife is leaning on me very heavily to stop saying Iran.
Speaker 1: She has a friend from there. She's like, please, it's
Speaker 1: not Iran. I'm like, I just think it is. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce it? You're wrong, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: You can't say chile. Yeah exactly, I feel the same chili. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. I don't walk around saying you guys should
Speaker 1: all call it a latvia. Uh. This has not to
Speaker 1: do with anybody. I think it's a really interesting idea.
Speaker 1: Is Um, we're hiking up elk Hunton back home, and
Speaker 1: we're looking at there's a lot of just shiploads of raspberries,
Speaker 1: and it just so happens that I've been clearing a
Speaker 1: place in my yard to start my own raspberry patch,
Speaker 1: and there's all these wild raspberries. And I was saying
Speaker 1: to my brother, who deals in plants, he's an a cologist. Um,
Speaker 1: I was saying, Hey, what do you think if I
Speaker 1: took this little ship in raspberries and brought them home?
Speaker 1: Would they be like, this is the greatest place on
Speaker 1: earth and grow into the giant raspberries that you grow
Speaker 1: in your yard where they always be little ship in
Speaker 1: mountain raspberries. And he said, I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that. I could see it going both ways. And
Speaker 1: he said, but there's this thing, there's uh optimal niche
Speaker 1: I think the optimal niche and realize niche, meaning there
Speaker 1: are probably many plant species that would like to be
Speaker 1: in a certain place, like ideally they would occupy this niche.
Speaker 1: But because it's suitable for a lot of plant species
Speaker 1: and it's very perfect for plants, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure there, and plants have varying degrees of being able
Speaker 1: to deal with stress, and they have varying degrees of
Speaker 1: being able to combat other plants through the production of
Speaker 1: toxins and aggressive rhizome structures, and they don't do well
Speaker 1: in battles, so they wind up grow owing not where
Speaker 1: they should grow, but they grow where they can grow.
Speaker 1: And he was saying it maybe that this plant's stature
Speaker 1: is the result of it's not where it really I
Speaker 1: would love to be, it's just where it can be.
Speaker 1: It's a low pressure, low stress environment for to be.
Speaker 1: And if you had some little plot of ground and
Speaker 1: you plucked every freaking weed out of there and made
Speaker 1: it perfect and put him there, he might then realize
Speaker 1: his full potential of what he, like quote should look like,
Speaker 1: which is a thought was an interesting idea. Um I
Speaker 1: bring it up because we had come into this with
Speaker 1: high expectations you'll see that this is a horrible segment
Speaker 1: because its not the same ship, but it has to
Speaker 1: do with like the realized thing and you had observation
Speaker 1: last night. We're like, once I got over the of
Speaker 1: being in this unit L County, once I got over
Speaker 1: the disappointment of it not being what I realized what
Speaker 1: I wanted and aligned my expectations that wanted being okay,
Speaker 1: Like I want to be in an okay place to
Speaker 1: run run around. It just took five days to get
Speaker 1: over the man. Yeah, another truck, another guy. In the end,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, it's pretty fun and I gotta be
Speaker 1: totally honest. Man. On day one, on day one of
Speaker 1: the hunt, we heard a bugle. Um wrote it off
Speaker 1: as being a mug. Kind of wrote it off as
Speaker 1: being a mug. Had to be a person got in there. Well,
Speaker 1: we might have heard the person. Oh it could be
Speaker 1: because we only heard one. The rest of the crew
Speaker 1: was listening to was sounding like a bugle. Battle. Day one,
Speaker 1: we do get into three young bulls and they were
Speaker 1: half spoot and so we're calling at three young bulls
Speaker 1: and then kind of see this other bull which want
Speaker 1: to be in one of the three young bulls. But anyways,
Speaker 1: moved and then bumped an elk that was like under
Speaker 1: our feet, and that could have been the high likelihood
Speaker 1: that was another bull. For sure there was coming up
Speaker 1: to check out, because we'd be year old and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Could have been in our bowl. He has never made
Speaker 1: any noise, and it could have been that we would
Speaker 1: have not moved up to see and he popped out,
Speaker 1: and it could have been right, we're in with a bowl.
Speaker 1: Then there was kind of a very like there's a
Speaker 1: sort of peculiarity of this place that these elk were,
Speaker 1: and it kind of made sense of like it was
Speaker 1: like like a little hidy hole. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure blow him. It was sort of like a
Speaker 1: spot where you could picture they kind of found a
Speaker 1: little solace and watch this, watch this, uh full circle,
Speaker 1: not in they're optimal, not in their optimal niche, but
Speaker 1: they found some solace and they realized niche that was
Speaker 1: freaking cliff face now where he wanted to be. If
Speaker 1: it was out to him, he'd be laying out in
Speaker 1: the biggest, grassiest metal down in the valley bottom, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't because of pressure. He had to go to
Speaker 1: his realized niche, which was like a cliff face. Um,
Speaker 1: we went back in there and found a bowl and
Speaker 1: had like six days of hunting. This is this is
Speaker 1: in defense of this area. Six days of hunting. And
Speaker 1: if you said to someone you're gonna hunt out for
Speaker 1: six days and you're gonna have one like unbelievable encounter,
Speaker 1: what would most people say? I feel that they would
Speaker 1: say a deal, six days for one unbelievable encounter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then sprinkled other encounters, sprinkle, but one
Speaker 1: like Yes, the average hunter would say, deal, Yep, you're
Speaker 1: gonna hu You're gonna work your ass over six days.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have some days you don't see ship. You
Speaker 1: can have some days where you have like a half encounter,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna present you with one like great encounter.
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of guys be like, yeah, that's reasonable,
Speaker 1: I'll take it, and we have I mean, everybody knows that,
Speaker 1: you know, I think six sex rates with a gun.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the difference between rifle muzzleloader, but
Speaker 1: I want to say in Colorado hovers around, and so
Speaker 1: being that we had two hunters in camp and that
Speaker 1: you just almost killed one, you know, we almost beat
Speaker 1: the the yearly average, you know. Yeah, we went up
Speaker 1: with our baby stuff, our camp out stuff, and when
Speaker 1: up to um this little ridge stop that sits at
Speaker 1: the ridge stops eleven thousand, four feet mm hmye. And
Speaker 1: got there at four o'clock in the afternoon. Man, look
Speaker 1: down into this kind of like the same kind of
Speaker 1: there's a couple of miles away from where we ran
Speaker 1: into those three bulls, like the same feature, the same
Speaker 1: landscape feature, and same basic setup, and went down in
Speaker 1: there four o'clock in the afternoon. Here's a bull playing
Speaker 1: grab at or following a cow and a calf, and
Speaker 1: he might even put kicked up out of her bed,
Speaker 1: but he's following her along. So we gradually gradually get
Speaker 1: down in the zone and try calling here, and try
Speaker 1: calling there, and then we get to where we know,
Speaker 1: like the meadal we know they were in and start
Speaker 1: calling and right away a kyle pops up at eighty yards, looks,
Speaker 1: watches for a long time where the sounds coming from,
Speaker 1: goes back into the woods and comes up in parallels
Speaker 1: us very close, goes out of whatever happens to her.
Speaker 1: Then also there's a bull down there and he comes
Speaker 1: out the same gay happened, has to look around, and
Speaker 1: then pretty soon a bunch of appreciate another little ship
Speaker 1: and bull comes in alongside and sneaks in to get
Speaker 1: a look. Probably not legal. And then all these cows
Speaker 1: come out and a bull comes out, and we're calling
Speaker 1: at the bull. He's had a hundred I had said
Speaker 1: to myself, like we always talk, oh, like a hundred
Speaker 1: yards for a muzzleloader, which is far for open sites.
Speaker 1: He's hanging around a hundred twenty yards. We start bugling
Speaker 1: at him, and he's like raking mud up, raking hunks
Speaker 1: the grass up. Finally he comes over to chase a
Speaker 1: cow and comes into eight yards and I get my
Speaker 1: shot opportunity, and I pull off what everyone warned me,
Speaker 1: not what everyone multiple highly credentialed individuals warned me about
Speaker 1: with shooting muzzleloaders, meaning you honest Brody and Remy Warren
Speaker 1: all said, you have to hit that thing just right
Speaker 1: with a muzzleloader. Um, don't shoot him in the shoulders
Speaker 1: because if you hit them, you think Remy made a joke.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they go down to hard and get up
Speaker 1: and they're gone. And this thing came like I said
Speaker 1: it came to eight yards, turned broadside. I drew a
Speaker 1: beat on it, but it's not a percent. Like with
Speaker 1: open sites. I know the guys that shooting their whole
Speaker 1: life are very good with them, like they're great with them.
Speaker 1: But I didn't do In hindsight, I didn't do the
Speaker 1: practice I should have done. I mean, I grew up
Speaker 1: shooting open sites two open site twenty two is that
Speaker 1: squirrels and stuff. But as a long time ago, I've
Speaker 1: been like a scope dude forever. But you can't use
Speaker 1: the scope in Colorado. And I should have done way
Speaker 1: more practice. I leveled off. I felt good, pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: He goes down like like even down like insert favorite
Speaker 1: like hit by lightning, hit by a truck, hit by
Speaker 1: a train, sacrimotatus and back up and gone. And we
Speaker 1: like found some blood that night, a little bit of
Speaker 1: blood that night. Ran it down to like just a
Speaker 1: pin drop. And we'd only moved the trail. I mean,
Speaker 1: when we'd moved the trail hundred yards if not even
Speaker 1: a freaking drop. Came back early in the morning, early morning,
Speaker 1: came back at daybreak, after daybreak. Uh. I got down
Speaker 1: there seven thirty eight am maybe eight am. Come later
Speaker 1: I don't tell it was it's cold, got down there,
Speaker 1: started trailing again, and it was a cold night. So
Speaker 1: I was feeling like, if we could find this thing
Speaker 1: with the meats, gonna be fine because it's a chilly night.
Speaker 1: Um pick up from that last pinprick of blood and
Speaker 1: never find another pinprick of blood until probably a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty yards later, just by following every possible elk trail,
Speaker 1: every possible elk track, I finally find a pine branch,
Speaker 1: a bust it off pine branch sitting at shoulder height
Speaker 1: high shoulder height. They had a little blood wiped on it.
Speaker 1: And then we followed from there every elk track, every
Speaker 1: possible trail, back and forth, in and out, never no
Speaker 1: drop of blood. It's rough, man, It sounds like you
Speaker 1: hit the void. Yeah, it's crazy too, because like you
Speaker 1: like how hard he fell and hit the ground. It's
Speaker 1: like you think game over. Yeah, but Noah, if Rourke
Speaker 1: cocked back and punched me in the face, how hard
Speaker 1: do I hit the ground just like that? But would
Speaker 1: I be dead? It depends on depends on what kind
Speaker 1: of day lurks have, and I imagine it probably the
Speaker 1: depends on the angle that he hits yet. Do you know?
Speaker 1: Uh Rourke told me the story one time about you
Speaker 1: guys are doing something kind of raid and he sees
Speaker 1: a dude running out of the he catches a guy
Speaker 1: run and tell that story, my guy. I let my
Speaker 1: my junior officers run that raid. So myself and my
Speaker 1: my boss my task. You matter, good, buddy of mine.
Speaker 1: We're sitting outside the compound but inside the security blanket
Speaker 1: of our gun trucks were in a pretty good spot,
Speaker 1: but night vision on still in the tackle environment, and
Speaker 1: we had a squirter, which means a guy that got
Speaker 1: over the fence and was running. But he was on
Speaker 1: the target and he jumped over this fence and I
Speaker 1: was on night vision wash him unarmed. He didn't have
Speaker 1: a weapon on him, but he could have gone right,
Speaker 1: which would have served him well, because I do not
Speaker 1: believe with all my battle gear on, I would have
Speaker 1: ever caught him. But he hung a left and was
Speaker 1: not a jog running straight at me, and I stood up.
Speaker 1: He didn't hear me stand up, and took about a
Speaker 1: five to eight step Linebacker Lawrence Taylor esk run and
Speaker 1: put my shoulder into that dude to just knock him down.
Speaker 1: And his body exploded. Oh my god, I thought I
Speaker 1: killed him. I thought I killed him. I actually felt back.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, uh you know, I didn't know. He
Speaker 1: might might might have just been like the teenage son
Speaker 1: of the guy we're going after whatever. But I mean
Speaker 1: he I've never hit any by heart than any sport game.
Speaker 1: But I we know we picked him up and grabbed him,
Speaker 1: got him, got him off all right. But I don't
Speaker 1: think he'll ever forget that hit. But uh yeah, like again,
Speaker 1: man to go back to this thing, like someone's got
Speaker 1: a gun in your head and you had to get
Speaker 1: an answer, right and they said, is that that elk
Speaker 1: alive right now or dead right now? I would go along.
Speaker 1: I would probably like in that situation, I would I would.
Speaker 1: I think I said this the third day, I would
Speaker 1: say alive, but I would half expect to hear the
Speaker 1: gun go off. I just don't know. Um it was.
Speaker 1: It was confused enough. Where's the thing I like, I
Speaker 1: feel like I should start doing haven't typically done in
Speaker 1: the past by kind of like I'm interested in. The
Speaker 1: idea is if you get a wound, if you wound
Speaker 1: something where there's a good likelihood that you killed it,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the idea and this there's some units
Speaker 1: where this is how it works. There's BlackBerry units in Alaska.
Speaker 1: Or if you if you wound an animal, you're not
Speaker 1: your tag. Um. So with that, I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, man, I'm done. I'm done. Um. I have
Speaker 1: never done that in the past when I had something
Speaker 1: to get away. Uh, never done that past, But I'm
Speaker 1: and I don't know that I'll always do in the future.
Speaker 1: But in that moment, I was coming man because Rourke
Speaker 1: still had a tag. It was like, I'd rather put
Speaker 1: energy into having Roorke having equal opportunity rather than racking
Speaker 1: up to opportunite. Know what I mean. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's like a rule for me,
Speaker 1: but that I just felt like, maybe some black bear
Speaker 1: is going to go into hibernation and extremely good shape
Speaker 1: because of that bear, because of that Elk carcass. I
Speaker 1: don't know. The thing I talked about too when we
Speaker 1: were making the show and I talked about this was
Speaker 1: I got a body. I don't wanted to say where
Speaker 1: it works, but I got a buddy that works for
Speaker 1: a big grocery store chain. One day sends me a
Speaker 1: picture you know those dumpsters, what do you call those
Speaker 1: dumpsters that you carry on a flatbed semi trailer? Like
Speaker 1: I don't know what a huge freaking dumpsters, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like it's like a semi trailer, but
Speaker 1: it's a dumpster full of package pork because someone has
Speaker 1: screwed up taking a refrigerator truck and put it like
Speaker 1: in the wrong spot so it didn't get off loaded.
Speaker 1: And he was like they wouldn't even let him take
Speaker 1: it home, and it took all all this package pork
Speaker 1: was in this giant freaking dumpster going to a landfill,
Speaker 1: and you're like, what a waste of animal life? You know,
Speaker 1: Like what a waste of life to go to a
Speaker 1: landfill wrapped in plastic. And then this thing I always
Speaker 1: come to do, like if you hit something and lose
Speaker 1: it out in the environment, you know. My brother pointed
Speaker 1: out one time, it's like if you think it's wasteful,
Speaker 1: then you really don't believe in nutrient recycling because it's
Speaker 1: like they're in its place. It's sort of like eventually
Speaker 1: the animal is gonna die. Eventually that animal will die
Speaker 1: and will become food for other things. Um, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's what happened there and it died and it becomes
Speaker 1: food for other things. I'm not saying that this excuses it.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying like it's one of the many complicated
Speaker 1: things that rolls through your head where you're like, you
Speaker 1: feel like like one, you screwed up. You didn't aim carefully,
Speaker 1: you didn't prepare, you got excited, you did all this
Speaker 1: stupid stuff. Now you've caused this thing like pain, and
Speaker 1: there's no sort of human gain, like you know, you
Speaker 1: don't gain the resource like you screwed up. And then
Speaker 1: you go like, yeah, but maybe I'll feel better when
Speaker 1: I roll these ideas, this collection of ideas through my
Speaker 1: head about right, some bear is loving or not, or
Speaker 1: some elk or some elk is having a very very
Speaker 1: bad winter. Yeah, yeah, it sucks to think about the
Speaker 1: suffering they may or may not go through. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty big hole most likely because it went through I'm
Speaker 1: betting both sides, you know, through the top of the
Speaker 1: right I don't know. Yeah, how do you if it
Speaker 1: was a big hole? How there was like no blood, man,
Speaker 1: Because it's that's the void, man, that's the spot between
Speaker 1: the spine and the top of the bongs and it's
Speaker 1: just there. If I was able to just probably to
Speaker 1: take a knife, I think, and puncture your ribs, but
Speaker 1: not go into anything farther, you know, But like you're
Speaker 1: your ribs and your meat right there, you know, and
Speaker 1: unless you go inside and catch something internal, but just
Speaker 1: you're just your chunk or ribs. Because even made the
Speaker 1: comment of like you, I guess your your hand has
Speaker 1: a lot been a lot more blood if someone cut
Speaker 1: their fingers, but your hands are Yeah, you got a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on. Did my brother cut his
Speaker 1: finger in there day? We couldn't get it stop leaping.
Speaker 1: He's blood over damn. Imagine too, it's shaped, you know,
Speaker 1: barrel like and if it's up high, you know that
Speaker 1: blood has a chance to like one has to be
Speaker 1: pumped up and out of that all and then as
Speaker 1: it's coming down, you know, it's drying, coagulating. What happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you just didn't hit anything vital. I don't
Speaker 1: know anybody's ever quit hunting over it. But it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're gonna go out in the woods,
Speaker 1: I guess you just gotta there's gotta be a certain
Speaker 1: amount of thing if you're gonna go out in the
Speaker 1: woods and shoot projectiles and stuff with the intent of
Speaker 1: killing it. You better you better be like real frank
Speaker 1: with yourself about the pallatability of that not working out.
Speaker 1: It's not binary. I was listening to this Galaza and
Speaker 1: a Day about his antelope punch she's been on. She
Speaker 1: talked about how she like, she's like, quote missed nine
Speaker 1: and then got one. I'm like, I I have to
Speaker 1: think that it wasn't binary that a couple of them
Speaker 1: got hit. I mean, do you really go nine misses
Speaker 1: but then all of a sudden you kill one? Yea?
Speaker 1: Or is there some gray in there? It's gotta be
Speaker 1: some gray. It's not binary. That's the thing. The first
Speaker 1: time I took my wife on, she never factored in.
Speaker 1: She thought I took her squirrel, and she thought either
Speaker 1: killed it or hit it. And she hit one in
Speaker 1: the ear m hmm, and it ran up a tree
Speaker 1: and kind of like mess with its ear for a minute,
Speaker 1: and it had like it looked like when a deer
Speaker 1: gets caught on barbed war. You can see it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're in my mom's yard, I should point out, but
Speaker 1: you can see him up there and he's like totally fine.
Speaker 1: But she's like, it never occurred to me there would
Speaker 1: be anything other than one or the other. I thought.
Speaker 1: I was like, on off, I didn't know there's a
Speaker 1: middle switch. But what about like this is probably a
Speaker 1: little controversial, but please, well when you get into like
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk evential bid absolutely not hit me with
Speaker 1: the controversy. I don't know. After the after the couple
Speaker 1: of bow hunts we went on, which which would nothing
Speaker 1: bad happened, but just the hitting the elk and then
Speaker 1: finding it the next day. That was my first experience
Speaker 1: of that because every other meter I've done was rifle,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you're a good shot. So you hit it,
Speaker 1: the fucking animal drops and that's it and we go
Speaker 1: and clean it up and we start eating it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a whole. It's that's the binary thing. It's
Speaker 1: like that happened and now we're enjoying it, and now
Speaker 1: with muzzle loaders to like it happens where we shoot
Speaker 1: one and it goes away. So like I'm having a
Speaker 1: struggle accepting those as viable means of hunting, like ethically,
Speaker 1: like I know people can miss and you can do
Speaker 1: it with a rifle, but in my experience. Based on
Speaker 1: what I've seen, it's like if you are if you
Speaker 1: practice with the rife and you're a good shot, you
Speaker 1: like the animal is done and quick, and it just
Speaker 1: seems very clean and ethical and like how it should be.
Speaker 1: And when you introduced these like traditional things, it just
Speaker 1: seems more of like an ego thing that people are after, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can get it with a stick. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: well that's great for you, man, But now you just
Speaker 1: interrupted this thing, and you know, because well you know what,
Speaker 1: you know what helps it helps answer it? What the
Speaker 1: only there's more in the equation than animal suffering. There's
Speaker 1: efficacy because again, you're dealing with a finite resource, and
Speaker 1: the way to enable the way to enable a larger
Speaker 1: pool of people to have an opportunity to extract from
Speaker 1: a finite resource is to regulate efficacy. There was a
Speaker 1: movement some years ago, Yeahni probably, I'll remember when when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, guys were discovering the efficacy of
Speaker 1: using fifty cal bmg ease is that the right word
Speaker 1: for it? And there was like YouTube channels, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I qualified as a whole movement.
Speaker 1: There's like a thing, there's can can I say? Stirrings?
Speaker 1: There were some stirrings of guys realizing the incredible efficacy
Speaker 1: of the fifty cow round the elk um rigged up
Speaker 1: with big heavy, big heavy tag drivers with fifty cows
Speaker 1: and the fact that you could bowl an elk over
Speaker 1: nine yards or whatever. Right, so um, and some states
Speaker 1: came out and said, you can't do that. You can't
Speaker 1: use Uh, if a twelve gauge is effective on waterfall,
Speaker 1: imagine how effective a ten gage would be, or how
Speaker 1: effective an eight gauge. But you can't use eight gauges.
Speaker 1: You can't buy damn a gauge barely. So um, if
Speaker 1: it was just if if game management came down to
Speaker 1: what kills animals the cleanest, I think that we would
Speaker 1: welcome any in all technologies into the game. But the
Speaker 1: minute you enter any in all technologies into the game,
Speaker 1: efficacy goes up and participation will have to go down.
Speaker 1: If you have a population of let's say you got
Speaker 1: a population you got a hundred panda bears and someone's like, uh, no,
Speaker 1: koala bears. There's a hunter quala bears, And they're like,
Speaker 1: we can kill ten koala bears, and and then next
Speaker 1: year we'll have a hundred again because they'll reproduce, and
Speaker 1: you're only gonna really have a hunter because there's only
Speaker 1: so many eucalyptus trees. So we know that hunter koala
Speaker 1: bears is a great number. Every year we kill ten,
Speaker 1: next year magic we got a hundred. If we didn't
Speaker 1: kill any, we still have a hundred because that's just
Speaker 1: the carrying capacity of the landscape. And and if you
Speaker 1: had a way that a guy has a certainty of
Speaker 1: killing a koala bear, how many dudes get the hunt
Speaker 1: quali bears? One dude? No? Ten? Okay. Let's say let's
Speaker 1: say you say you can only use red riders and
Speaker 1: we find people shooting red riders only have about a
Speaker 1: ten percent success rate on koalas because they can soak
Speaker 1: up babies. Okay, how many dudes now get to go
Speaker 1: koala hunting? How many do you need? Is so that
Speaker 1: it's it's one right, one, They all get to go.
Speaker 1: But they're all out shooting red riders at koalas, and
Speaker 1: they're absorbing those babies and they're taking they're sucking up babies.
Speaker 1: That's wildlife management. That's a good point. That's a good
Speaker 1: note to end on. Yeah, that's good. I started doing
Speaker 1: everything as koala bears. I think that's what really worked
Speaker 1: was the koalas. Yeah you were um now you still lost, Chris.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about my concluding thought. In that case,
Speaker 1: please have you gotten through it? Yeah? In that case, please,
Speaker 1: Rich I would love to hear more than anything in
Speaker 1: the world, I would like to hear your concluding thought.
Speaker 1: It's not that deep, man, but I just liked I
Speaker 1: can't push your super again. No, No, that's that will
Speaker 1: get sold. I just like watching that out being out man.
Speaker 1: That was cool. There's a lot of people I know
Speaker 1: and hang out with it never ever get to see that.
Speaker 1: And that was cool see that thing getting all the yeah,
Speaker 1: kicking around, responding to the call, interacting. It was just
Speaker 1: really cool. Screwing it up will forever taint that. I
Speaker 1: almost wishing, you know now, like in hindsight, obviously, I
Speaker 1: wish you would just stayed at a hundred yards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going about his business, caught our wind. I wish you
Speaker 1: had caught our wind. But the wind was in our face. Man, dude,
Speaker 1: it was a good wind day that whole We're going
Speaker 1: to run out of daylight. But yeah, Art, what's up.
Speaker 1: You have to come back. No, no, I have no,
Speaker 1: I have a I have a something to do before
Speaker 1: a concluder and then give you my thoughts on a concluderk.
Speaker 1: You a quick question, please? Why did your shirt say
Speaker 1: orange on it? I was a Syracuse orangeman. Huh tell
Speaker 1: you like the oranges? I do um first, thanks as
Speaker 1: always to uh take me out and get to run
Speaker 1: them up with you guys, I would say not to
Speaker 1: go into like my personal life. I have struggled a
Speaker 1: little bit post being in this league of extraordinary gentleman
Speaker 1: that was the military, to find folks not in the
Speaker 1: military and kind of beyond that part of my life
Speaker 1: that I really liked being around. And the media crew
Speaker 1: is that crew. You y'a need the rest of the
Speaker 1: rest of the gents here and everybody doing it. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate that greatly. Yeah. I even saw you get
Speaker 1: Ridge Pounder's phone number. Yeah, man, even though he's leaving correct, correct,
Speaker 1: So I appreciate that. The thing were the thing that
Speaker 1: I meant to get into, but we didn't. But we
Speaker 1: talked about it before and well, next time you come out,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about we're out of time now, is that? Uh,
Speaker 1: you're knowing the way you knew yourself and knowing that
Speaker 1: there would be a void. Yeah, being having like the
Speaker 1: self awareness to know that there would be less kind
Speaker 1: of void that was gonna get filled with something when
Speaker 1: you left the military, and that you sort of consciously,
Speaker 1: you know, and you grow outdoors and grow fishing, skiing, hiking,
Speaker 1: but you knew that. You're like, there's gonna be a void,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna consciously fill that void with something that
Speaker 1: taps into some of that same stuff because I don't
Speaker 1: want it to be filled in the way that isn't
Speaker 1: under my control. And there's a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: filling voids with the wrong stuff from from our line
Speaker 1: of work. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, So it's good. So that's
Speaker 1: that's first. So thanks on concluders. There's almost nothing. Since
Speaker 1: I love literature probably more than anything. When it comes
Speaker 1: to stories, I love storytelling. Nothing makes me happier than
Speaker 1: a story well concluded, and almost nothing bothers me more
Speaker 1: than one that doesn't end well. You should meet our
Speaker 1: friend dirt myth. So it occurred to me when I've
Speaker 1: listened to your podcast, they get the concluders whenever next,
Speaker 1: I was gonna be hon it. This would be my answer,
Speaker 1: not like I prepped this and he made the way,
Speaker 1: but was that. I'm not going to give a concluder
Speaker 1: because I feel like this story is about these relationships,
Speaker 1: and I hope that story goes on for perpetuity. So
Speaker 1: I'm not going to close, even though I know that's
Speaker 1: a little esoteric, but I'm not. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give a concluder because I don't want this story in.
Speaker 1: What makes a great concluder, is it it's well thought? Yeah, Seth,
Speaker 1: I love the sound of a pig ink in its head.
Speaker 1: That takes me back. It was. It was just cool
Speaker 1: hanging out with York hearing your stories. Man, that's awesome stories,
Speaker 1: good story the bummers, a lot of them. Can't leave
Speaker 1: the can't leave the woods. But I wish we had
Speaker 1: another week. Yep, that was fun. Yeah, this is Danny.
Speaker 1: I had a thoroughly entertaining, interesting week. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for bringing me onto this. If your footage turns
Speaker 1: out to be good, I hope you come back with us. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, it's an interesting experience for sure.
Speaker 1: If the footage is no good, you'll never hear from
Speaker 1: us again. Sounds good. Second closer, I think it's more
Speaker 1: of a pro tip. The first half of my week,
Speaker 1: I would say it was fairly miserable because I came
Speaker 1: out here with the wrong foot wear. And every camera
Speaker 1: guy has like ten pairs of shoes that he travels
Speaker 1: with because you never know what, never need rubber boots
Speaker 1: or hiking boots, and so I brought a lot for it.
Speaker 1: And so the first one I tried for the first
Speaker 1: three days, put thirty miles on these things. Man, I
Speaker 1: thought my foot was gonna fall off, and it was
Speaker 1: a blister to look like a gunshot, really saying thing
Speaker 1: about it, because it didn't matter. I had to keep
Speaker 1: on walking. That earn you a lot of credit because
Speaker 1: not having never heard that the problem existed, and then
Speaker 1: seeing the problem and I was like the fact that
Speaker 1: he hasn't brought that up, Yeah, yeah, and pushed on
Speaker 1: my big tone ail one night when we were spiked
Speaker 1: out in a bunch of yellow pus came out of it.
Speaker 1: And then and that was aside from the blister on
Speaker 1: the back of my foot, the gun show, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess to kind of book in it from the
Speaker 1: beginning of the conversation. I would have traded anything for
Speaker 1: a pair of flip flops that I was done the
Speaker 1: rest of the shooting flip flops, but I had a
Speaker 1: backup hair. So pro tip, don't go on to one
Speaker 1: of these things with a pair of boots so you
Speaker 1: haven't thoroughly walked in and bring your flips. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been playing to catch, so thank you for listening very much,
Speaker 1: and uh, we'll catch you next week.