Speaker 1: Welcome back, guys to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: I got my good buddy, Josh Boyd in the house.
Speaker 1: We're at the Western Hunting Expo here in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: Beautiful Salt Lake City. Josh and I kind of go
Speaker 1: way back. We've known each other for I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably since ten, twenty ten eleven, somewhere in there. Through
Speaker 1: love and passion for elk hunting. First became acquainted with
Speaker 1: Josh and seen some articles he wrote, some web articles
Speaker 1: on elk hunting, and I immediately loved the information he
Speaker 1: was given out.
Speaker 2: But I also loved the voice.
Speaker 1: Different writers have kind of a different voice in their writings,
Speaker 1: and I always loved Josh's voice of his writing. So
Speaker 1: I became an instant fan. And then as I get
Speaker 1: to know Josh over the years, I like to kind
Speaker 1: of refer to him as the Elk Master. You know,
Speaker 1: some people know about the movie Beast Master. This guy
Speaker 1: is the Elk Master. He's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: humble people you're ever gonna meet, and he would never
Speaker 1: tell you about his body.
Speaker 2: Count on elk.
Speaker 1: But let's just say it's up there, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to share it because some people don't like to share,
Speaker 1: you know, with everyone, but let's just say very accomplished
Speaker 1: elk hunter and I have the most respect for this man,
Speaker 1: and I'm just happy to sit down and have an
Speaker 1: official conversation on a podcast about elk hunting. I mean,
Speaker 1: him and I can get on the phone or sit
Speaker 1: there and bs each other at this trade show and
Speaker 1: ours will tick by talking about elk and it's probably
Speaker 1: one of the best elk conversational people I enjoyed to
Speaker 1: talk to.
Speaker 2: So welcome Josh. Thanks Derk. Yeah, no, we could. It's
Speaker 2: an enjoyable top and like you said, I can talk
Speaker 2: about it for hours and any day, anytime. And I
Speaker 2: do know my body count, and I've told a few people.
Speaker 2: But the only reason I know it is because I
Speaker 2: keep a spreadsheet of where and when and how and
Speaker 2: how far I shoot HLK and it goes way back,
Speaker 2: you know, into the eighties, and it's it's nice to
Speaker 2: be able to go back and look at the drainage,
Speaker 2: how far I shot, what it was like. It just
Speaker 2: sparks memories, but it just just gives me an idea
Speaker 2: of how things have changed and kind of where I've
Speaker 2: kind of kind of progressed as an elk hunter, So
Speaker 2: I do know my body count, and a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, I had a number that I was kind
Speaker 2: of momentous for me, and it was a bowl that
Speaker 2: was like it took everything in my quiver to get
Speaker 2: this thing killed and it was perfect. It was perfect,
Speaker 2: and it was a little rag it was, but it
Speaker 2: was a perfect hunt. So anyway, that's what I love
Speaker 2: about you.
Speaker 1: You love big bulls as much or more than anybody,
Speaker 1: but you also love rag bulls. You love elk hunting
Speaker 1: just for the pure love of the game. Not it's
Speaker 1: not about inches, it's not about anything other than this
Speaker 1: is awesome.
Speaker 2: You look up one day it's like, hey.
Speaker 1: I'm approaching a monumental number. That's cool. This is going
Speaker 1: to be really cool. And then to be happy with
Speaker 1: with what you came home with, that's you know, not.
Speaker 2: Everybody has that attitude. So that's I appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to me, I mean success is packing elk meat. I love.
Speaker 2: I love to carry elk meat out of the mountains.
Speaker 2: So anytime I can do that, man, it's success. It
Speaker 2: is a successful hunt.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were just talking yesterday about what makes
Speaker 1: good elk hunting partners. You know, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: that's a good conversation. People have a lot and I
Speaker 1: have a lot with my friends and people who like
Speaker 1: to talk about elk hunting. And we focused on some
Speaker 1: key the biggest key takeaway for me there was and
Speaker 1: we're getting a little off track of what we kind
Speaker 1: of talked initially talked about. This podcast is going to
Speaker 1: be about this. It's elk cutting related, right, but the
Speaker 1: fact that having an elk cutting partner that looks forward
Speaker 1: to your success more so if not the same level
Speaker 1: of his own is imperative for a good elk cutting relationship.
Speaker 1: And I know, personally I want my elk cutting partner.
Speaker 1: I almost want them to get an elk more than myself.
Speaker 1: And I always feel like that there's no better, greater
Speaker 1: gift that you can give someone is to call in
Speaker 1: an elk for him and see the happiness and the joy,
Speaker 1: you know, successful elk cutting brings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And some of the most tense situations for me,
Speaker 2: most nerve wracking, or when I'm a caller and there's
Speaker 2: a bull coming in for a partner and you're just
Speaker 2: you can't see what's going on, can hear it? And
Speaker 2: you know it's getting close and you're just like, is
Speaker 2: this going to work for him? You're just on pins
Speaker 2: and needles the whole time, just like nail biting. Is
Speaker 2: this happening? Oh yeah, how can you make this happen?
Speaker 2: How can you work this bull? How can you get
Speaker 2: him in his lap? And yeah, to me, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: that is one of the most exciting, nerve wracking things
Speaker 2: for el cutting. When I'm the shooter usually, I mean,
Speaker 2: I get excited, I have to take some deep breasts
Speaker 2: tell myself to calm down. Yeah, but it's it's way
Speaker 2: more exciting when there's someone else, like with the bull
Speaker 2: coming in and you're trying to get it into their lap,
Speaker 2: and yeah, just seeing their success is great. But yeah,
Speaker 2: having a good partner is key.
Speaker 1: I sometimes feel like I try even harder if I'm
Speaker 1: trying to call it out for somebody else, and like
Speaker 1: I might like if I'm just doing it for myself,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, this bull seems like he's
Speaker 1: not cooperating.
Speaker 2: Eh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: If we want to put that much effort into it.
Speaker 1: But if my friend, I'm like trying as hard as
Speaker 1: I can, like I want we got to get this
Speaker 1: elk in for him, Like this would be awesome. I
Speaker 1: remember back to taking my son out elk hunting when
Speaker 1: he was thirteen, his first year bow hunting, he'd o't
Speaker 1: he'd rifle hunted the year before bow hunting, thirteen and
Speaker 1: calling in this bowl and as we're as we're moving
Speaker 1: in on this bowl, the bulb wasn't getting real hot.
Speaker 1: He would just kind of chuckle and rake and chuckle
Speaker 1: and rake. And if I we messed with this bowl
Speaker 1: the day before, and if I did a full bugle
Speaker 1: and got a little bit aggressive, he'd move off. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, we got to like play this like super reserve.
Speaker 1: So he would chuckle and rake, and I would chuckle
Speaker 1: and rake. But every time he'd rake, we'd move up
Speaker 1: ten yards and move up ten yards, and pretty soon
Speaker 1: I can see that his antler tips and we're kind
Speaker 1: of coming up this steep hill, this old, this old
Speaker 1: loggin skid trail, and he he would rake, chuckle, and
Speaker 1: then he'd stare down the hill at us. Then I
Speaker 1: had this big stick and I would just beat the
Speaker 1: crap out of this tree and I'd grab the tree
Speaker 1: and i'd shake it and i'd let him see the
Speaker 1: stick even moving, and then and then he would see
Speaker 1: that and then he would just go tear it right
Speaker 1: back into that tree again and chuckle. And then I
Speaker 1: tell my son, I'm like, okay, now now he's raking.
Speaker 1: Now move up. And he's like, Dad, why are you
Speaker 1: talking so weird? I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He's like, you're talking really weird. I've never heard you
Speaker 1: talk like that before.
Speaker 2: Evidently I was excited, Like I got there, he's got
Speaker 2: his hand down, sneak up. I was talking funny, you know,
Speaker 2: to him.
Speaker 1: But that's that's what you know, trying to get someone
Speaker 1: else in ELK is all about. I get so excited
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, Like it's like there's so much anticipation
Speaker 1: you can hardly stand it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, and it's and it's nice to have
Speaker 2: a partner that feels that way for you, Yes, you know, yes, good,
Speaker 2: it's good to have that that mix. Yeah. Yeah you reciprocation,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, to have that get Yeah, you gotta you
Speaker 2: better be able to give in also receive. So it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it is a it's a good relationship, and they're hard
Speaker 2: to come by. Yeah, I've I've developed some pretty good
Speaker 2: friendships in the little you know, in my community, and
Speaker 2: there's a couple of guys that I can just rely
Speaker 2: upon to like drop everything and just like, yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2: I'm ready, let's go hunt. You want to do this
Speaker 2: hunt over the top of the mountain range and come
Speaker 2: out the other side like a car to car hunt. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm in. Without blinking an eye, Yeah sounds great, sounds
Speaker 2: really fun. Oh yeah, I might say you're crazy, man,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a suffer fest. But and I know
Speaker 2: where you hunt kinda and when you when you would
Speaker 2: offer that up. I don't think there's very many people
Speaker 2: would take that. There's not there's yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 2: few guys, but there's not many. Yeah. I mean some
Speaker 2: people think it would be fun until they start into it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it just becomes it is miss It can be miserable, Yeah,
Speaker 2: throwing some rain mixed with the brush. It's mixed with
Speaker 2: bulls that are not cooperative, don't want to talk, yeah,
Speaker 2: and grizzly bears and grizzly bears to boot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to get a taker on on those
Speaker 1: kind of trips, and it all sounds good on paper
Speaker 1: and until it becomes a suckfest.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: But that's what makes when you finally do find success.
Speaker 1: It makes that berry so much sweeter. It's not a
Speaker 1: bitter bury at all. It's like, man, that was so
Speaker 1: great and it's a raghorn and I just won the lottery.
Speaker 1: I'm a I feel like a millionaire right now because
Speaker 1: because of how hard we work for that.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, yeah, there is that sense of well, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of times there's a sense of oh what
Speaker 2: did I just do? Oh no, I'm in trouble. And
Speaker 2: there's a lot of times I'm by myself too, and
Speaker 2: that when I when I do that, I pull the
Speaker 2: trigger or you know, trip the release, and you hear
Speaker 2: and you know, you hear the bull tip over or whatever,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, no, okay, I guess this just
Speaker 2: got real. Yeah, yeah, it got real. And then you
Speaker 2: rely upon those same people to come help. I've got
Speaker 2: you know, two or three guys that they will drop
Speaker 2: their whatever they're doing at work, Like, yep, I'll tell
Speaker 2: my boss, I'll take a day of vacation come help
Speaker 2: you pack meat, which is I mean, that's worth more
Speaker 2: than gold. Yeah, you have people like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't pay for that kind of a friendship
Speaker 1: like you could offer people, I'll give you five hundred
Speaker 1: bucks to come pack meat and.
Speaker 2: Be like, I'm not doing that. That's crazy. I know
Speaker 2: where that is. It rains, Yeah, it's raining right now.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I've done the same. This
Speaker 2: past year was one of those years where I had
Speaker 2: some a couple of bulls. I killed two bulls last fall,
Speaker 2: one in Montana, one in Idaho, and I needed help
Speaker 2: with both of them, and I had some buddies that
Speaker 2: I mean, it was weekdays. It was rent one day,
Speaker 2: the one in Idaho was raining really hard, wind was blowing.
Speaker 2: We had to pack this thing uphill up this ridge
Speaker 2: through brush. There happened to be a grizzly bear right
Speaker 2: there in the area that came in that night. Like
Speaker 2: when we went back in the morning, there was fresh
Speaker 2: tracks like probably within seventy five yards of the meat pole. Wow,
Speaker 2: and we all kind of got our spidy senses tingling
Speaker 2: when we saw that. But the bear didn't get on
Speaker 2: the meat for some reason. I don't know if the
Speaker 2: wind was not blowing over to the trail the bear
Speaker 2: came up, but I mean I could see that from
Speaker 2: the track. I could see my meat hanging right there. Wow.
Speaker 2: So anyway, it was a difficult pack, and these guys
Speaker 2: pulled through. They were laughing and giggling the whole time.
Speaker 2: I have a picture of them sitting on the hillside
Speaker 2: taking a break and they're all just smiling, making jokes.
Speaker 2: And I asked Ford, like a month, I got a
Speaker 2: text message from I just settled into my hunting camp.
Speaker 2: I drove a camp up on top of this mountain.
Speaker 2: It was super cold, like ten fifteen degrees out, snowing,
Speaker 2: early November I think, and I was going mule deer
Speaker 2: hunting and I was playing on a hiking way out
Speaker 2: on this ridge in the dark, and so I had
Speaker 2: a fire going in my TP. I was hanging out
Speaker 2: and I turned my inReach on and I get a
Speaker 2: message from my buddy Tyler. He's like, I got we
Speaker 2: got two bowls down over here, you know, ten fifteen
Speaker 2: miles up the river from where I was camped, but
Speaker 2: about a two hour drive. I had to go off
Speaker 2: the mountain and down into the valley. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: I mean, my first instinct was like, oh, I'm settled
Speaker 2: in I'm about to go hunting in the morning. There's
Speaker 2: I want to shoot a big mule here. I know
Speaker 2: there's a buck out here, but I told him. My
Speaker 2: reply was like, yep, what time you want to meet
Speaker 2: in the morning? Yeah, So yeah, I mean, you just
Speaker 2: gotta you gotta reciprocate. You know, if you're asking someone
Speaker 2: to pack for you, you have to be willing to
Speaker 2: do the same for them anywhere they kill one at
Speaker 2: any time. So that's sort of the rule I go by.
Speaker 2: And it all evens, it all evens out. Ye. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: So, Josh, for those who don't know you your personal life,
Speaker 1: what do you do for a living? Tell our tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit more about Josh Boyd behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, beyond the elk hunter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I work for the US four at Service
Speaker 2: in the realm of hydrology. So what I do for
Speaker 2: the forest is I monitor water quality and stream health
Speaker 2: and analyze for any activities that occur on the forest
Speaker 2: that will affect or not affect water waters and streams
Speaker 2: and health of rivers and stuff. And so I do
Speaker 2: a lot of monitoring the streams stream flows in the
Speaker 2: spring and summer. I also measure different like different parameters
Speaker 2: of a stream channel, like to kind of measure the
Speaker 2: health or the status of that river channel and to
Speaker 2: see if it's like functioning properly and looking for disturbances,
Speaker 2: mostly past disturbances that have occurred historically and then try
Speaker 2: to like remedy those through some restoration efforts. Like it's
Speaker 2: like some stream channel restoration work. So some of the
Speaker 2: stuff in the summer, we implement projects where we're rebuilding
Speaker 2: like rivers, like installing like re routing the river in
Speaker 2: places and rebuilding the riffles and the pools and adding
Speaker 2: wood and rock and changing the slopes of everything and
Speaker 2: changing the meander patterns of the river. So that's it's
Speaker 2: real technical work, but it's super just fun to do,
Speaker 2: and when you're done, it's incredibly satisfying to see the
Speaker 2: end results. You know. It's one of those things where
Speaker 2: it's like hands on tangible results, and we of course
Speaker 2: we monitor it over years to see how it's functioning
Speaker 2: over time. Are the fish populations coming back, are our
Speaker 2: you know, slope patterns profiles of the river maintaining. Are
Speaker 2: they staying within this this suite of slopes and dimensions
Speaker 2: that we built it at and just that's super satisfying stuff,
Speaker 2: just to see the health of some river systems become
Speaker 2: improved over time. So and then in the winter, I
Speaker 2: do a lot of planning designing for those projects, but
Speaker 2: I also go out and measure the snowpack for a
Speaker 2: sister agency. We're a cooperator in the snow survey program,
Speaker 2: so we collect snow data and send it off to
Speaker 2: the NRCS. It's like starting in like December through a okay,
Speaker 2: and so that data is used. We use it to
Speaker 2: plan projects, plan runoff and just kind of look at
Speaker 2: like floods potentials. But the NRCS uses it to like
Speaker 2: forecast like reservoir volume operations, irrigations, like how much water
Speaker 2: is going to be available to people later in the summer.
Speaker 1: So is some of that data, uh displayed on snowtel Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what snow survey is.
Speaker 2: So the snowtail data is just automated sites that measure
Speaker 2: the snowpack and give you kind of a real time
Speaker 2: reading sense of what's up there. And a lot of
Speaker 2: those sites are fairly high elevation, so it's giving a
Speaker 2: good information at the upper elevations. But the snow course
Speaker 2: surveys that we do are all manual measurements, and we'll
Speaker 2: go out at the end of every month and physically
Speaker 2: measure it by like stabbing the snow with a snow tube,
Speaker 2: coreing it and weighing that core to see how much
Speaker 2: water is in it. And so we'll measure typically three
Speaker 2: sites in a drainage area and get a high, low,
Speaker 2: and medium elevation range to see what's happening up and
Speaker 2: down you know the mountain. Okay, so you know what's happening,
Speaker 2: like you know, some winters we might get real warm
Speaker 2: storms come in and the snowpack builds up pretty hot,
Speaker 2: pretty decent up high, but in the valleys it's been raining,
Speaker 2: so up high, say, like right now, we might be
Speaker 2: at like where I live, we might be at like
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of normal up high, and that's what
Speaker 2: the snowtels are reading. But when you go out and
Speaker 2: measure the low elevation stuff by hand, they might be
Speaker 2: like at thirty five percent. Oh wow, So it kind
Speaker 2: of gives you an idea like how much snow is
Speaker 2: out there spread across the landscape. So interesting. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that stuff online is just a good way to look
Speaker 2: at the snow pack and see where we're potentially sitting.
Speaker 2: Gives a rough idea. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: If you guys ever get bored or wondering about eh
Speaker 1: my ol cutting spot, look on snowtell and you know,
Speaker 1: for that real time data, it's kind of interesting. And
Speaker 1: there's some places that get some incredible like in the
Speaker 1: better Root mountains get some incredible snow packs and linger
Speaker 1: a long time. It's just you know, different, and you
Speaker 1: look at different states. You know, there's snow doesn't linger
Speaker 1: as long, it doesn't pile up as much, but they
Speaker 1: have really they're known for big winners. It's just it's
Speaker 1: so interesting from one part of the country to another.
Speaker 1: I think if you if you have any kind of
Speaker 1: interest in that, you can really geek out on that stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you can spend hours on it. Yeah that's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You can look at each individual site and it'll display
Speaker 2: a graph of like what the maximum amount was ever
Speaker 2: recorded to that site with the minimum amount, and then
Speaker 2: what the average is. And it's usually you know, like
Speaker 2: this nice green line through the graph, and and then
Speaker 2: it'll plot where you're at for that year as a
Speaker 2: snowpack builds and where you are compared to that that
Speaker 2: average line, and it's always changing until you get to
Speaker 2: that peak point on the snowpack building. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: interesting stuff. It's fun to see where you and it'll
Speaker 2: also show you where it starts to melt out and
Speaker 2: what the average melt out point is. So it's good
Speaker 2: for planning like spring trips. I use it all the
Speaker 2: time for spring bear hunting. I'll look at it and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're definitely on track to melt out two weeks earlier
Speaker 2: than normal. It looks like so, and kind of plan accordingly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. So how did you get into
Speaker 1: bow hunting for elk? Did you have like a mentor
Speaker 1: in the beginning or how that'll go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. So, I mean, ever since
Speaker 2: I was a little kid, I've always wanted to hunt.
Speaker 2: But my dad didn't bow hunt. He rifle hunted a lot.
Speaker 2: My dad grew up in Wyoming. My dad and his
Speaker 2: brother were always hunting elk. They you know, they hunted
Speaker 2: it up in the window of a range as kids
Speaker 2: and even you know, into young adults. But then they
Speaker 2: both moved to Montana and continue to elk hunt, and
Speaker 2: I would el Count with my dad and my uncle
Speaker 2: and deer hunt and all sorts of hunting. But my
Speaker 2: dad didn't bow hunt. But I really had this fascination
Speaker 2: with archery gear since I was, you know, five years old,
Speaker 2: and my grandpa made me a little long bow out
Speaker 2: of a piece of laminated I don't even know what
Speaker 2: it was. It's almost looked like plywood. But I just
Speaker 2: walked around and shot everything I could with that thing.
Speaker 2: And then I graduated to I traded my buddy down
Speaker 2: the street a fly rod for a bow, like one
Speaker 2: of those old Seers compound bows. Oh yeah, I remember those. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was almost like they're made like they're almost like plastic. Yep.
Speaker 2: It was like a compound bow, but it was like
Speaker 2: fifty pounds and I couldn't draw. I was a little kid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I couldn't draw the dang thing. So I'd like sit
Speaker 2: on my back and I'd draw it with both hands
Speaker 2: and put my feet on the riser. I'd shoot arrows
Speaker 2: out in the field laying on my back. But my
Speaker 2: parents were like, yeah, you can't be doing that. We're
Speaker 2: gonna get you a bow that fits. So they ended
Speaker 2: up buying me a little Martin Bobcat. Oh. When I
Speaker 2: was a little kid, little little compound. It was a cool,
Speaker 2: cute little bows. Yeah. So I and there was my
Speaker 2: best friend down the street. His dad bow hunted and
Speaker 2: his older brother bow hunted, and they were kind of
Speaker 2: known in the community of being like successful elk bow hunters.
Speaker 2: I mean they'd killed a couple elk. This was we're
Speaker 2: talking eighties right, when like killing an elk with a
Speaker 2: bow was unheard of. Nobody was doing it really. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was like if someone got one, they were kind
Speaker 2: of like put on a pedestal and looked at it
Speaker 2: as like this hunting hero, he's good. Yeah. So I
Speaker 2: kind of like my buddy kind of brought me down
Speaker 2: the street and helped me shoot with him and his
Speaker 2: brother and his dad, and they kind of helped me out.
Speaker 2: And there was a point when I could finally draw
Speaker 2: enough poundage where I felt comfortable to go elk hunting
Speaker 2: with a bow. I bow hunted white tails across the
Speaker 2: street when I was twelve, but I don't think I
Speaker 2: went elk bow hunting until I was probably like fifteen, Right,
Speaker 2: I could finally draw enough poundage and I was accurate
Speaker 2: enough that I could probably shoot an elk, you know,
Speaker 2: out to twenty twenty five yards, and so I'd go
Speaker 2: with my friend Dale and his brother Kenny. His brother
Speaker 2: Kenny was like, I don't know, we're fifteen, he's probably
Speaker 2: like twenty okay, Yeah, so he you know, he was
Speaker 2: out of high school and he's kind of living on
Speaker 2: his own, had his pickup and he would take us
Speaker 2: out and he was he was a good caller. But
Speaker 2: I was just kind of tagging along learning the ropes
Speaker 2: from those guys. And Kenny would shoot a bull like
Speaker 2: almost every year, and so he he's a good elk hunter.
Speaker 2: But I just didn't get any like real good opportunities
Speaker 2: at elk when I was with him. But I was
Speaker 2: just learning the ropes, kind of figured it out. So
Speaker 2: it was without those guys kind of taking me into
Speaker 2: their wings, I probably wouldn't have been able to go
Speaker 2: elk cutting. My dad didn't have a lot of time
Speaker 2: in September to take me out. My mom was great.
Speaker 2: She helped me out as much as she could while
Speaker 2: my dad was off. He did some fire a lot
Speaker 2: of fire stuff with the Forest Service. He was a
Speaker 2: for service guy as well, but he did a lot
Speaker 2: of like fires. She's always gone in September, but my
Speaker 2: mom would take me out and like drop me off
Speaker 2: at my tree stand and then come picked me up
Speaker 2: after dark. So I don't white tails when I was younger,
Speaker 2: but for elk cunning, you know, my mom's not going
Speaker 2: to drag me up in the mountains and or just
Speaker 2: dropped me off anywhere, right, So they're super supportive and
Speaker 2: they let me go out, you know, with the neighbor
Speaker 2: down the street, my buddy and his dad and his
Speaker 2: older brother, so those are my mentors of the area.
Speaker 2: But I just remember, like when I was like eleven ten,
Speaker 2: eleven twelve, the neighborhood right behind where I lived. I
Speaker 2: walked back there one time and one of the local
Speaker 2: guys rolled in with the elk in the back of
Speaker 2: his truck, and you know in hole rib cage is
Speaker 2: split open. He had his bow jammed in there. I
Speaker 2: just visically remembering those orange eastern arrows and a quiver
Speaker 2: just sticking out of the rib cave, bear razorheads or
Speaker 2: what people were shooting back then. Everybody's shooting p s
Speaker 2: from the local shop over in the Flathead. So it
Speaker 2: was like when I saw that, I was like, I
Speaker 2: want to hunt elk with a bow. I want to
Speaker 2: get all I want to do, and so I've kind
Speaker 2: of tried to gear my life towards, like my lifestyle
Speaker 2: to be able to hunt as much as I can
Speaker 2: hunt elk. I want to live in places where they're available.
Speaker 2: I can do it every year, and I can do
Speaker 2: it as much as possible. Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 2: I succeeded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, You've done great. You've built a great life
Speaker 1: around that. I feel like you're you're your career. Your
Speaker 1: personal career is a very complimentary field to be in
Speaker 1: to help you achieve those life goals of being an
Speaker 1: elk hunter. And it's out in the mountains a lot.
Speaker 1: You probably see some milk side and you probably make
Speaker 1: a little mental notes and just having the love of
Speaker 1: the mountains and outdoors as that's so complimentary.
Speaker 2: It's just like you live the dream. Yeah. Yeah. Being
Speaker 2: able to spend as much time as I do outside
Speaker 2: is just unbelievable. I mean I get to spend a
Speaker 2: ton at work and then a lot of my free
Speaker 2: time i'm out. I mean I probably spend counting time
Speaker 2: at work and hunting and other activities. You know, it's
Speaker 2: easily two hundred and fifty days a year I'm outside. Wow,
Speaker 2: that's awesome. But yeah, it's fun. It's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your beginning elk story is reminiscent of mine a lot.
Speaker 1: My dad and uncle. You know, they went elk hunting
Speaker 1: all the time, rifle hunting. They're never bow hunting. In fact,
Speaker 1: my dad was always, ah, They'm damn bow hunters. You know,
Speaker 1: he's just you hear all the stories. You know, they'd
Speaker 1: find it. Somebody'd find an elk with an arrow in it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really hard to tell if you find
Speaker 1: an elk with a bullet. Sometimes yes, so it's always
Speaker 1: you know that. At the time, the bow hunters really
Speaker 1: got a lot of blame.
Speaker 2: And I showed interest to it.
Speaker 1: And for as long as I can remember, I wanted
Speaker 1: to hunt elk and deer and anything, you know, the
Speaker 1: big game. But elk and deer were on the menu
Speaker 1: for where I lived in Idaho, and my first encounter
Speaker 1: with elk in September I was I thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna shoot a bear at this pond and I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: and my dad dropped me off like an hour before daylight,
Speaker 1: and I walk over and get it. Sit next to
Speaker 1: this pond, i'd been sitting bear tracks. I'm thinking, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this bear's gonna come in in the morning the first
Speaker 1: light and get some water. I'm gonna get him. And
Speaker 1: I sit there and hear a bunch of brush pop,
Speaker 1: and out pops these these cow elk and a raghorn bowl,
Speaker 1: and they come over and get a drink, and the
Speaker 1: bowl goes out in the pond and splashes around. And
Speaker 1: I'm like twenty yards from these things, leaning up against
Speaker 1: a tree with my rifle, hunting elk or hunting bears,
Speaker 1: and they wander off, and I was about ready to explode,
Speaker 1: like I have got to get to town and buy
Speaker 1: buy some arrows. I had a bow at the time,
Speaker 1: a yard sale bow I'd bought. It was like a
Speaker 1: bear Kodiak Magnum fifty pound. But I didn't even have
Speaker 1: a good arrow to shoot out of it. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know if I could hit the broadside of a barn.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, my dad, come picked me up. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we got to go to town. We got to buy
Speaker 1: some arrows. We gotta get broadheads and an elk tag
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna come back tomorrow. I'm gonna shoot this elk.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're not shooting an elk with a bow.
Speaker 1: You can't kill elk with a bow. I said, yes,
Speaker 1: you can. I know people, there's the same thing. There's
Speaker 1: those guys in the community, like they get an elk
Speaker 1: pretty often with a bow and it can be done.
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, I'm not doing it. I was
Speaker 1: so pissed. I was so deflated. I was so mad.
Speaker 1: That's about the only thing good going I had going.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't have anything fun to do. I
Speaker 1: lived in a town of eight hundred people in North Idaho.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to do. We didn't have video games. We
Speaker 1: didn't have I mean, you might get to watch Gilligan's
Speaker 1: Island at three o'clock in the afternoon. That was about
Speaker 1: the highlight of your day, right. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I was so crushed. I'm like, well, I told him myself, well,
Speaker 1: next year, I'm working all summer, I'm making my own
Speaker 1: money and I'm gonna buy my own bow and everything.
Speaker 2: He's like, okay or whatever.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I got I worked hard, bought my bow,
Speaker 1: bought a brand new compound bow, bought all the arrows,
Speaker 1: bought my Easton Orange arrows, XEX seventy five. I had
Speaker 1: a high Country Trophy hunter bow built in Lowist in Idaho.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, that was a big local brand for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Bought some camo and my dad's like, wow, you're
Speaker 1: really serious about this. I didn't squander a penny on
Speaker 1: anything other than hunting stuff. Bought some diaphragms and bugle
Speaker 1: tube and he's like, I'll tell you what if you
Speaker 1: kill an elk, you kill a bull elk, I'll pay
Speaker 1: it back for all everything you spent. I'd spend it,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five hundred bucks, which was a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of butt money for you know, a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old kid had been.
Speaker 2: Bucking hay bales all summer, sweating like a dog, you know.
Speaker 1: And fast forward like third day a season. I bugle
Speaker 1: in this bowl and shoot it, kill it, and my
Speaker 1: mom took me out, you know, she's she We had
Speaker 1: elk close to town, though, so I didn't have to
Speaker 1: hunt the mountains man. We were down the low country
Speaker 1: and my mom she was sitting and pick up waiting
Speaker 1: for me, and she could.
Speaker 2: Hear the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Me get this bowl, bugle, and she heard all the
Speaker 1: exchange and then everything went quiet, and then I come
Speaker 1: back to the truck.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I got it, So.
Speaker 1: I sent awesome, Yeah, I sent her back to town
Speaker 1: to get my dad. And she's like, well, get your
Speaker 1: come along and you're five hundred bucks. They're just shot
Speaker 1: a bull elk And he's like, no, he didn't, he did,
Speaker 1: so he grat We had this old beater truck we
Speaker 1: used to haul firewood in, so we wood truck, wood truck,
Speaker 1: so four wheel drive.
Speaker 2: He brought that.
Speaker 1: He had this big change driven come along, you know,
Speaker 1: and we went. We found the bowl, We recovered the bowl,
Speaker 1: gut it out. We were able to pull the truck
Speaker 1: right up to it, load that sucker hole, you know,
Speaker 1: with the color loaded a hole. And uh, I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever ever seen my dad so proud, you know. Ever,
Speaker 1: he was so pumped. He paid. He made it good
Speaker 1: on the deal, paid me and but local, you know
Speaker 1: I talk about mentors. You know, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of mentors. There were some of those guys in
Speaker 1: the community. One of my high school teacher I had,
Speaker 1: uh mister powers. He was.
Speaker 2: He taught physical.
Speaker 1: Science and math and calculus and all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't one of the smart kids. I didn't take
Speaker 1: any calculus I had, like I think I had like
Speaker 1: general math and physical science. So but he was just
Speaker 1: a dick at school, Like he was just he he
Speaker 1: kind of talked funny, and he talked fast, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to understand and and the kids kind
Speaker 1: of gave him a hard time and he man, he
Speaker 1: would get mad and just kind of he's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a dick. But one day, it was like
Speaker 1: right after Labor Day weekend, he brought a big.
Speaker 2: L crack in.
Speaker 1: He's like, I got this bowl, shot this bowl with
Speaker 1: my bow. And I was like, mister Powers is cool.
Speaker 1: I think he might be cool. So I went over
Speaker 1: his house after school one day. I'm like, hey, can
Speaker 1: I can I shoot your target out here? And he
Speaker 1: had a target out in his yard. So that that
Speaker 1: was the year before I started bow hunting. So then
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, you can shoot my target.
Speaker 2: So I practiced.
Speaker 1: I'd go shoot his target, and he'd tell me elk
Speaker 1: hunting stories about you know, calling in bulls, and and
Speaker 1: he'd get to he'd get to telling the story and
Speaker 1: he just started cussing like a sailor, like this mother effort,
Speaker 1: this yeah, he was dropping like like he had the
Speaker 1: horrendous language, right, And I was like.
Speaker 2: Oh goll, this guy's so cool.
Speaker 1: And I and for years, you know, for decades after that,
Speaker 1: I'd go I'd just go visit him and his wife
Speaker 1: sitting in their house and visit and so he would
Speaker 1: I would call him a mentor. And another guy I
Speaker 1: had of this friend growing up, my agent, his dad.
Speaker 1: Him and his dad we were into archery big time.
Speaker 1: And his dad, it's a very accomplished tournament, had shot
Speaker 1: a lot of elk with a bow. And this is
Speaker 1: in the eighties in Idaho, the heyday, right. I thought,
Speaker 1: this guy is like pretty much god a elk hunting yep.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, Rick, you got to tell me how
Speaker 1: help me out here? I got to I'm trying to
Speaker 1: learn how to call elk and how do you do it?
Speaker 1: And he's like he's like, I bugle a lot different
Speaker 1: than everybody else. I'm like, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: this is gonna be great. My brother in law, Randy,
Speaker 1: who was my best friend at that time when we
Speaker 1: were growing up in high school, he was there with
Speaker 1: me and we're just all ears are just like just
Speaker 1: hanging on his every word and he's like he's like, well,
Speaker 1: most people they take their tube and they when they bugle,
Speaker 1: they kind of go to the left.
Speaker 2: I go to the right with my tube. And he
Speaker 2: was just like dead ass serious.
Speaker 1: And I'm like okay, and I'm waiting for the rest
Speaker 1: of it. And that was it. And I looked at Randy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, we've been had this guy don't know shit
Speaker 1: about calling ELK. So okay, cool man'll see you later.
Speaker 1: So we got we had our tubes and her calls
Speaker 1: and just would blow them constantly, NonStop. My dad and
Speaker 1: now were cutting firewood. One time I was blowing blowing
Speaker 1: my oak tube and pretent a whole bunch of ravens
Speaker 1: came in, like like ten ravens just came flocking in
Speaker 1: and like ah, like in the tree and they they
Speaker 1: stopped and pushed in the trees and were looking down.
Speaker 1: I'm just ripping bugles and I'm like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: I'm calling it ravens something. I think something's dying over here.
Speaker 2: Oh that's too funny. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. It was
Speaker 2: like learning to call was one of those things that
Speaker 2: like you just some guy, well, well, When I started,
Speaker 2: people were voice bugling a lot, Yes, carrying PVC plants.
Speaker 2: They spray painting them. Some of them had special little
Speaker 2: bit'd heat them up with the torch and put a
Speaker 2: little bend in, oh to get the sound waves that
Speaker 2: travel differently or something to a lot of voice bugling.
Speaker 2: And then the diaphragm came along, and then we know
Speaker 2: how that turned out. Yeah, it's changed, change, change the
Speaker 2: sport for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My brothers had a friend named Harley and he was
Speaker 1: he was a big bowhunter too, and he was telling
Speaker 1: me about he was one of those voice buglers with
Speaker 1: the PBC.
Speaker 2: Pipe and he's telling me about bugle. This buls along
Speaker 2: my throat bread. You know.
Speaker 1: He was one of the guys that would inhale, you
Speaker 1: know bugle. Yes, it almost sounds like he was calling hogs.
Speaker 1: That's the way I had the voice bugle. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do I couldn't do it blowing out. I had to
Speaker 1: like suck in and it.
Speaker 2: I could do it. So she as a teenage boy,
Speaker 2: it was a lot easier, but as an adult, No, no,
Speaker 2: it hurts my throat. I do it. I try to
Speaker 2: do it every now and then.
Speaker 1: And if you like even if you grab your your
Speaker 1: trachea and constrict it a little bit, it'll help the sound.
Speaker 1: But I ended up like coughing a little bit, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like I'm trying to squeal like a hog
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: Right. It just sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: But so tell me, are you are you a do
Speaker 1: you rely on calling a lot or are you more
Speaker 1: of a spot in stock do you kind of do
Speaker 1: a hybrid? What's your go to? That's a little different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean where I the local herds that
Speaker 2: I haunt. I'm a caller. It's thick, it's brushy, heavy,
Speaker 2: deep timber, and if they're not talking, it's really hard
Speaker 2: to kill an elk. So I rely on calling when
Speaker 2: I'm hunting local, local elk. I've haunted elk in a
Speaker 2: bunch of places, and I find that the more open
Speaker 2: ground there is, the less I call, and the more
Speaker 2: I rely on just dogging, just kind of shadowing a
Speaker 2: herd or shadowing bugles, working in close. Some of the
Speaker 2: bigger bulls I've killed my bow have been in more
Speaker 2: open country, like you know, east side of mont Towna
Speaker 2: or central part of Montira southwest, a lot less timbers,
Speaker 2: timber just more patchy. They spend more time in the open,
Speaker 2: so you can get visuals on them. You can see
Speaker 2: where they're going to bed, you can you can hear
Speaker 2: them in their beds, or you can hear them when
Speaker 2: they get up from their beds. So I tend to
Speaker 2: do a lot of like just strategic dogging, placement of
Speaker 2: myself between them and where they want to go, or
Speaker 2: just you know, creeping in next to the herd and
Speaker 2: hoping the activity of the chase will will bring them in.
Speaker 2: So I kind of rely on a little bit of
Speaker 2: both when I'm hunting that more open country and places
Speaker 2: where there's more elk. You can just you can get
Speaker 2: by with not calling as much. It's not I'll locate
Speaker 2: a lot of times and then I'll sneak in. But
Speaker 2: I love to call elk. I mean, it's one of
Speaker 2: my favorite things to do. And I love calling brush
Speaker 2: brush country bulls like some of that brushy stuff you
Speaker 2: know in western Montana or you know central North or
Speaker 2: North Idaho. All that stuff is, it's thick, it's steep,
Speaker 2: and man, you'll have a bowl fifty yards away and
Speaker 2: you can't see them, you can hear them. You know,
Speaker 2: they're coming and you don't know what it is. And
Speaker 2: I think that's a big part of the draw for
Speaker 2: me is I don't know what it is till it
Speaker 2: shows up, and then it's always a surprise. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll call a bull in or you'll think you're on
Speaker 2: like a small bull because they're being timid and they're squealing,
Speaker 2: and next thing you know, it's just this dinosaur just
Speaker 2: turns this turns his attitude on and spins around. It
Speaker 2: is like I've had enough and we'll just growl on
Speaker 2: your face and push through the brush and it's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this was the bull I was chasing.
Speaker 2: I thought I was just going to try to kill
Speaker 2: this rag horn up here. But yeah, I like to call.
Speaker 2: That's my preferred method. But I try to be well
Speaker 2: rounded as much as I can. Yeah. I like to
Speaker 2: be as good a hunter as I possibly can. And
Speaker 2: if I silo myself into like one particular technique, then
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't so I'm all that well rounded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I like that. I think that's super important
Speaker 1: and for for folks to realize is, yeah, calling will
Speaker 1: take you so far in a certain type of train.
Speaker 1: But like you you mentioned that that open country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you definitely it's great to locate and stuff, but you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna have to do a lot more shadowing, a
Speaker 1: lot more strategic movement without calling. Maybe you call again
Speaker 1: when when the time is right, right, but maybe not.
Speaker 1: It's just being smart hunt smarter, right. I think some
Speaker 1: people kind of don't understand that. They think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I can just I can see those up from you know,
Speaker 1: five hundred yards away across this open country. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonnall call him and call him in. But more of
Speaker 1: times than than not, then they're probably gonna go the
Speaker 1: other way because they can see there's no elk over there, right,
Speaker 1: but he's it's almost like a chess game or or
Speaker 1: some kind of a poker game. I'm like, you got
Speaker 1: to really hold your cards tight until the time's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that, you know, in that open country,
Speaker 2: there's there's just more elk, and there's just those bulls
Speaker 2: don't really they don't care that much about the other bulls.
Speaker 2: They're just more concerned on what that herd's doing. So
Speaker 2: they're not they're just they don't I mean, they're callable
Speaker 2: for sure, but they're just not as concerned with another
Speaker 2: bull coming into the herd to check stuff out, They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that guy's way over there. I'm not worried about him
Speaker 2: at all. Right, the cows are right here in front
Speaker 2: of me. I just got to sneak in there and
Speaker 2: peel one off, right. So yeah, in the in other
Speaker 2: places where it's thicker and there's less elk densities, there's
Speaker 2: just not as many elks, so the bulls are more
Speaker 2: susceptible to, Like, all right, i've got these two cows.
Speaker 2: I'm keeping that bull out of here. I'm going to
Speaker 2: be more susceptible. He's going to be more susceptible to
Speaker 2: going over to a call.
Speaker 1: I feel, yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree with that.
Speaker 1: Do you think how much just elk hunting changed since
Speaker 1: you started, especially archery l hunting? How much has it changed?
Speaker 1: And you think technology, how is it affecting? Is there
Speaker 1: any kind of technology you're concerned about?
Speaker 2: Like, I mean, yeah, I mean there's always that slow
Speaker 2: creep of technology and changing. It's hard to tell how
Speaker 2: it's changing and how quick it's going to come, or
Speaker 2: even to foresee that it's going to change it until
Speaker 2: it actually happens. But I mean it just seems like
Speaker 2: there's like there's been a slow creep of electronics on
Speaker 2: on bows. You know, there's been some state I know
Speaker 2: there's states at outlaw like electronic sites and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: There was one I think Garment made one where it
Speaker 2: had a rangefinder'er built in and it would a pin
Speaker 2: would light up at the range and it just it
Speaker 2: made to me, it's like that's just it's kind of
Speaker 2: taken away the I don't know, some of the art
Speaker 2: of bow hunting. Yeah, and bow hunting to me, is
Speaker 2: supposed to be hard. It's not supposed to be efficient. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I kind of like a little bit of struggle to
Speaker 2: go along with it. Don't get me wrong. I like
Speaker 2: to kill elk and I don't. I want to make
Speaker 2: sure I do it efficiently, but that just means I
Speaker 2: need to shoot effectively, and I limit myself. I don't
Speaker 2: need to shoot at eighty yards. I'm not effective at
Speaker 2: eighty yards. I can do it, but I'm not going
Speaker 2: to kill anything efficiently. So I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: just there's a little bit of I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: stuff in the zeitgeist out there right now that people
Speaker 2: think they need to shoot long distance, and I think
Speaker 2: it would be nice if people would just kind of
Speaker 2: dial that back a little bit. It's great to practice
Speaker 2: at long distance, it's great to be proficient. It makes
Speaker 2: shooting something at thirty yards a slam dunk. And I
Speaker 2: think just so just that slow creep of technology is
Speaker 2: changing things, not saying it's good or bad, but as
Speaker 2: soon as bohunters start to become like more effective at
Speaker 2: killing animals, they're going to the fishing game. Agencies are
Speaker 2: gonna try to dial that back some way. They might
Speaker 2: they might put equipment restrictions in place, or they might
Speaker 2: just start issuing fewer tags. So I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just think that the creep of technology is it's slow
Speaker 2: and steady, and it's hard to hard to tell what
Speaker 2: it's doing until it actually kind of happens and it
Speaker 2: kind of comes into comes into fruition and more focus.
Speaker 2: You know, people start to realize what's going on around them.
Speaker 2: So that's that's changed a lot. I mean, technology in
Speaker 2: archery equipment has changed tremendously since I was a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I started, But so is rifle. Yeah, technology, and
Speaker 2: is it good is it bad? I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: hard to say, it seems like I don't know, it
Speaker 2: seems like the success right for archery hunters hasn't changed
Speaker 2: that much. No, I think the elk have kind of
Speaker 2: adapted to people's techniques, right, I don't know. I know
Speaker 2: they're not as callable as they were right back in
Speaker 2: the day, so they're just more tuned in too, like
Speaker 2: people's hunting styles and the dangers that are out there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I agree with all that.
Speaker 1: I agree, like absolutely, you should practice eighty yards and
Speaker 1: one hundred yards and become super confident and super proficient
Speaker 1: with your gut or your bow that way. You know,
Speaker 1: those thirty yard shots are just they're just a slam dunk.
Speaker 1: Forty yard shots of a slam dunk. But a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of us practice in our backyards on
Speaker 1: a very controlled environment. You know, the distance, it's e
Speaker 1: you're comfortable, there's no pressures.
Speaker 2: You go out.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I'm really feeling like shooting, you know,
Speaker 1: and I feel like shooting long distance today. And man,
Speaker 1: you know, I was shooting my bowl and I can
Speaker 1: hit good at one hundred yards or one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty yards or you know, the sites and the technology
Speaker 1: we have today for these bows. You know, we can
Speaker 1: get the slider sites, we can you know, move them
Speaker 1: and do all this these crazy accurate shots. But I
Speaker 1: will say this, I've been to a lot of these
Speaker 1: elk training camps where we have shooters there, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they're season vets or people who are new, and
Speaker 1: when they sign up, they have to put down what's
Speaker 1: your maximum effective range? And some guys will be like
Speaker 1: fifty yards, some guys will be like seventy yards, some
Speaker 1: guys thirty yards. So day one we say, okay, hey guys.
Speaker 1: You we guys wrote down a number. We're here at
Speaker 1: the archery range. Got your bows?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 1: You call them out. Hey, Josh, you said you could
Speaker 1: you could shoot effectively to eighty yards. We're standing eighty
Speaker 1: yards right now. There's the elk target. I want you
Speaker 1: to draw your bow back and shoot, make a killing
Speaker 1: shot on this elk. And you got thirty other people
Speaker 1: standing there looking at you, judging you, wondering about you.
Speaker 2: The pressure's on.
Speaker 1: Dirk pulls out his cell phone and starts videoing you
Speaker 1: for about six inches away to make you uncomfortable. Okay,
Speaker 1: you said eighty Let's do it at fifty. You know,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna start at fifty. We're gonna help you out.
Speaker 1: We start at fifty. I don't know how many times
Speaker 1: like it the fifty yard mark, but most of the class said,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty yards they're dynamite. Sometimes they don't even
Speaker 1: hit the target, and if they do, it's like in
Speaker 1: the ass or in the neck, or you know, they
Speaker 1: barely hit it. You know, very few are lethal killing shot.
Speaker 1: And the whole point that we're trying to get at
Speaker 1: is what we're trying to like get that like dose
Speaker 1: of reality. You know, you're here in comfortable clothes on
Speaker 1: a flat ground. It is uncomfortable to shoot in front
Speaker 1: of people. It's intimidating. There is a we have We've
Speaker 1: raised your heart rate, You've we've made you uncomfortable. You
Speaker 1: couldn't make the shot. You think you can execute that
Speaker 1: you said you can execute. So let's let's get real
Speaker 1: with ourselves. Let's let's take a closer look at ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I think a great way to do this is
Speaker 1: go to like events like tack. Yes, you know you're one.
Speaker 1: You're like such true life type shots. And there's some
Speaker 1: shots that stretch out like hey, there mister, mister accuracy guy,
Speaker 1: we got eighty yards straight downhill thirty degrees or whatever
Speaker 1: through the loge pole, through lodge powle.
Speaker 2: Go ahead and take that shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's astounding of how tough those shots are.
Speaker 1: And there's some people that can make they're they're still great,
Speaker 1: but still that's a foam target. The factor in this
Speaker 1: is day seven of a hunt. You're dehydra You just
Speaker 1: you just sprinted three hundred feet straight up this hill
Speaker 1: to a bugling bowl. You're out of breath, your heart
Speaker 1: rates pounding, you have a pack on your back, and
Speaker 1: here comes the biggest bull you've ever seen.
Speaker 2: In your life.
Speaker 1: And if your wife told you, if you come home
Speaker 1: without it, without any elk meat, you're a dead man.
Speaker 1: You can't tell me there's any more pressure than that, right,
Speaker 1: how about that eighty yard shot?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I feel like you have to like police ourselves.
Speaker 1: And look internally and be like, we can only take
Speaker 1: the most ethical shots that we know that we're gonna
Speaker 1: put that that elk down quickly and humanly.
Speaker 2: And even on.
Speaker 1: Good shots, they throw thirty yard shots, twenty yard shots,
Speaker 1: they can go awrye Yes, easy chip shots can go
Speaker 1: awry through no fault of the shooter. But things happen.
Speaker 1: Elk move, They're a living animal. They can't whurl, they
Speaker 1: can move, they can they can do something different than
Speaker 1: you anticipated and make an easy good shot into a
Speaker 1: bad one. And now we have a tough tracking job.
Speaker 1: And if you're eighty yards, all that stuff just amplifies.
Speaker 1: So I think everybody just needs to really be honest
Speaker 1: and and and really look eternally, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to have a good experience at this I want
Speaker 1: to have I want to have a best hunt ever,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to taint it with taking bad shots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I hear you. I try to be conservative
Speaker 2: with my shots. I mean that being said, I've made
Speaker 2: bad shots, but you know what the ones I have
Speaker 2: made have been like kind of like get that stretched
Speaker 2: out distance. Yeah where? And when I say bad shots,
Speaker 2: I'm talking like a shoulder right, you know, seems pretty superficial.
Speaker 2: You know, at the end of it, I'll always follow
Speaker 2: up regardless, you never know, but you know it, usually
Speaker 2: those shoulder shots end up in being a bull walking away,
Speaker 2: probably sore, maybe a little tender in that front shoulder,
Speaker 2: but never it's never fatal. I've never seen them be fatal,
Speaker 2: and it's like you just have to like step back
Speaker 2: and reevaluate, like, Okay, what went wrong? Why did I like,
Speaker 2: why did I feel I could take that shot? And
Speaker 2: what am I going to do different next time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So back to your mentorship and people who got you
Speaker 1: into hunting, and did you have someone who instilled ethics
Speaker 1: and etiquette into your hunting persona. Did you have somebody
Speaker 1: that like your was it your dad, your uncle or grandpa,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're one of your mentor friends down the
Speaker 1: street that said, hey, this kind of behavior is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: We only do this kind of hunting etiquette to other hunters,
Speaker 1: we only take these ethical shots.
Speaker 2: Or this is what ethics are all about.
Speaker 1: Did you have somebody mentoring you with that or did
Speaker 1: you kind of have that internal thing where just maybe
Speaker 1: the way you were raised as a kid that they
Speaker 1: kind of set that bar for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think it was a little both.
Speaker 2: I mean the way I was raised by my parents
Speaker 2: is well, I mean they're very ethical people, but you know,
Speaker 2: as a kid, you kind of always are a little
Speaker 2: bit rebellious and you kind of want to, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of push away from your your parents' thoughts and
Speaker 2: ideas and whatnot. But peer pressure is a big one.
Speaker 2: I mean that drives ethics. For sure, you kind of
Speaker 2: behave like your peers, especially when you're a teenager. Sure,
Speaker 2: but like some of the ethics I learned from, like
Speaker 2: my best friend down the street and his older brother
Speaker 2: and his dad. One of the biggest things was like
Speaker 2: hunting spots are sacred. Yes, well, we're going to take
Speaker 2: you here and we're going to enjoy hunting with you,
Speaker 2: and you, you know, have as much fun as you want,
Speaker 2: but don't bring anybody else here, and don't tell anybody
Speaker 2: else that you're hunting here. And if you do want
Speaker 2: to come back, ask yeah. I mean it's public land.
Speaker 2: Everybody has the right to go hunt there, but not
Speaker 2: everybody knows where to go hunt. So just don't don't
Speaker 2: spread the word. If you want to go back there,
Speaker 2: hunt ask us, and you know we'll say yay or nay.
Speaker 2: But I've kind of lived, I've taken that to like
Speaker 2: the next step. It's like I never try to invite
Speaker 2: myself on a hunt with anybody, and I try not to, like, uh,
Speaker 2: go back if I get taken to a spot, even
Speaker 2: to this day. Man. That's like I was brought there
Speaker 2: as a guest, and I'm going to treat it as that.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go back and trump do that
Speaker 2: area without that person like saying yeay or nay. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I've done. I've been back to places that I've been
Speaker 2: shown by other people, but I'll call them up say hey, man,
Speaker 2: do you mind if I go in there back? And right,
Speaker 2: you know, we're I know we're hunting in there together
Speaker 2: in archery season, but I was thinking of going in
Speaker 2: there for rifle. Are you okay with that? Yeah? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: go for it. So I yeah, it's sort of that.
Speaker 2: That's the big ethic in my area is like if
Speaker 2: you're shown a spot that's not your spot, you're a guest,
Speaker 2: You're more than welcome to Gohna, but please just you know,
Speaker 2: ask And even like some of my best friends were
Speaker 2: that way still yeah, so and yeah, I kind of
Speaker 2: learned that from the folks down the street and my
Speaker 2: you know, my best friend Dale, and you know, there's
Speaker 2: been some stuff that like you see stuff in the
Speaker 2: community of people doing sketchy stuff, and you hear people
Speaker 2: doing sketchy stuff and I don't know, I you just
Speaker 2: tend to develop, like ethics. As you age too, you
Speaker 2: kind of realize that, you know the repercussions of your
Speaker 2: actions and how they affect everything, and they really affect your, uh,
Speaker 2: your reputation. Like as I got older and it became
Speaker 2: more successful as a hunter, you know, I started thinking,
Speaker 2: it's like, man, I can't I can't make a mistake,
Speaker 2: Like like I if if I if I got busted
Speaker 2: for like shooting something after hours or you name it,
Speaker 2: shooting something out of the truck of my you know,
Speaker 2: my truck, which is illegal, it would like people would
Speaker 2: be like that, dude, everything that you've done up to
Speaker 2: that point is now suspect, Like your whole record is
Speaker 2: now suspect. Like oh, yeah, I knew that guy was
Speaker 2: shady he shoots out of his truck, or yeah, he
Speaker 2: trespasses and everything he kills is on private kind of
Speaker 2: you know, So you just yeah, I just I just
Speaker 2: kind of came to that conclusion, like your reputation is everything,
Speaker 2: and once it's soiled, it's hard to get it back.
Speaker 2: So don't soil it and just try to be as
Speaker 2: ethical as possible. Make mistakes happen, honest mistakes happen. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: There's some people that do stuff nefariously, like and they're
Speaker 2: doing it on purpose and trying to break the laws,
Speaker 2: trying to trying to weasel their way into success, and
Speaker 2: it's just I don't know, I just don't want to
Speaker 2: like have this animal tainted by any of that. Like
Speaker 2: one of these animals I kill, I just don't want
Speaker 2: them tainted by cutting corners right to speak. So, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I've just developed that as I've aged, for sure.
Speaker 2: It's just been one of those changes in my mindset, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: your reputation is super important at least mine is. I
Speaker 2: feel like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have a lot of Yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: so I have a lot of self respect for myself
Speaker 1: to where I don't want to do stuff to make
Speaker 1: I want to be able to hold my head high
Speaker 1: and people to.
Speaker 2: Be like, hey, there's there's Dirk. Hey he's a good guy.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be like, oh, hey there's.
Speaker 1: That asshole it yeah poached, right, he did all this
Speaker 1: crazy stuff, he did all you know, all these things
Speaker 1: it's like people would look down on I don't want
Speaker 1: to be known for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I I know, like you know, I've
Speaker 2: been fairly successful hunting, you know, elk and deer and
Speaker 2: black bears and whatnot. And I've heard rumors in the
Speaker 2: community about myself, which I find quite funny. But I've heard, oh,
Speaker 2: he shot that white tail over bait, or he totally
Speaker 2: shot that in the spot. I mean, it's like, dude,
Speaker 2: it's when you do stuff legit, the rumors still calm, right,
Speaker 2: And if you got caught doing something illegal, it's only
Speaker 2: gonna like be magnified. Everybody's told you so yeah, I
Speaker 2: told you, I knew it. I knew it. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: So the guys that I hunt with, I you know,
Speaker 2: they're all super ethical, they're all very restrained on how
Speaker 2: they operate in the in the mountains. And yeah, we
Speaker 2: just try to do the same. We try to act
Speaker 2: the same and and feed off of one another.
Speaker 1: I've I feel like right now, every year there gets
Speaker 1: to be there's growing more and more division in the
Speaker 1: hunting community, and I think a lot of it is
Speaker 1: around ethics and etiquette, and I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: some of it, maybe all a lot of it is.
Speaker 2: To blame to a lot of these the new.
Speaker 1: Adult onset hunters who haven't had that mentor to guide,
Speaker 1: to guide them, you know, to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't do this. That's not cool, to treat another
Speaker 1: hunter this way, or to take these kind of shots,
Speaker 1: that's that's not acceptable. You know. They don't have grandpa
Speaker 1: or the guy down the street that's telling them, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the right way to do it. You don't
Speaker 1: do it that way. Maybe they didn't have the an
Speaker 1: upbreaming where mom and dad you know, taught them right
Speaker 1: from wrong right, but now they found interest in hunting
Speaker 1: as an adult. And lately I dwell and I think
Speaker 1: of I think on this a lot, like the turmoil
Speaker 1: and the division and hunting, and I feel like people
Speaker 1: need to really think about instead of like tearing each
Speaker 1: other down and beating each other other up, especially on
Speaker 1: public on social media, instead of doing that like what
Speaker 1: what can we do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: What I can do? What you can do? And I
Speaker 1: think it's like, hey, be that mentor that you always
Speaker 1: had or that you maybe wish you had but you
Speaker 1: kind of had to learn the hard way. Be that
Speaker 1: mentor to some new hunters. Maybe there maybe it's a
Speaker 1: forty year old person, fifty year old person is just
Speaker 1: getting in the hunt, but they don't have that point
Speaker 1: of reference and understand those ethics and etiquette, help them
Speaker 1: out right teach them, tell them, yeah, i'll take you hunting,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a sacred spot. If I catch you
Speaker 1: in my spot, it I'll kill you. You bring somebody
Speaker 1: up here, it's going to be bad. Whatever. However you
Speaker 1: how are you going to explain it to them? But
Speaker 1: let them know that's unacceptable and that's that's that's what's
Speaker 1: accepted among the whole hunting hunting crowd. And I think
Speaker 1: if we can help help each other mentoring out if
Speaker 1: you're in a position to mentor do it. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we're really guarded, I think as hunters because we don't
Speaker 1: want to share any of our secrets. But maybe sharing
Speaker 1: the right secrets and sharing some some things with people
Speaker 1: in a positive light on how to act and how
Speaker 1: to behave in the woods would go a long ways.
Speaker 1: And I think I want I really want to kind
Speaker 1: of like really almost start a movement. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want to. I don't want to start the movement,
Speaker 1: but I really want to open that conversation and people
Speaker 1: that listen to this, I really want them to like
Speaker 1: think about that and kind of think you know, I
Speaker 1: could probably do better helping people out, being better, I think.
Speaker 1: I think I think we all just need to start
Speaker 1: treating each other better. Yeah, because anti hunters looking at us,
Speaker 1: they're like, look at these jokers, we can take them
Speaker 1: down so easy. They're two so busy bickering with themselves
Speaker 1: about stupid shit that they're an easy target.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really are. I mean competitive, I mean hunting
Speaker 2: is competitive if by nature, especially when you start throwing
Speaker 2: multiple people out into the same area going, you know,
Speaker 2: chasing a limited resource. And I think if people people
Speaker 2: just need to be more polite to one another. I
Speaker 2: mean that's what it all comes down to, just being
Speaker 2: polite and just more just, I guess, more aware of
Speaker 2: like what other people are thinking, feeling, doing, and uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, just kinda just take a step back
Speaker 2: and and think about how you would want to be
Speaker 2: treated in that situation. Yeah, I mean, because it is
Speaker 2: getting competitive out there, and people do some kind of
Speaker 2: crazy stuff. Some people lose their mind over I mean elk, especially,
Speaker 2: people really lose their mind over ELK. They'll do some dumb,
Speaker 2: dumb stuff to get an ELK. I mean, they're hard
Speaker 2: to kill, they're hard to they're hard to come by,
Speaker 2: and some guys only get an opportunity once every so
Speaker 2: many years, and they will just they will push their
Speaker 2: grand kid out of the way to shoot a bull,
Speaker 2: you know, get white kid up shooting. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's almost like a fever takes over. They lose their mind.
Speaker 2: I've seen it. I've seen guys do it. But I
Speaker 2: think if you just people become a little more just
Speaker 2: self aware and aware of other people, I think it
Speaker 2: would go a long way. I mean it's a good
Speaker 2: starting point. Maybe. Yeah, But man, I see some stuff online,
Speaker 2: some bickering going on and just some shots low blows
Speaker 2: back and forth, name calling. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. People
Speaker 2: get so heated. Yeah. Yeah, well we're all passionate about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, like let's say you had to have something to
Speaker 1: say online and push pause for a minute, think about it,
Speaker 1: put your phone down for a little bit, think about it,
Speaker 1: and be like, how can I tell this other person
Speaker 1: they're an idiot without telling them they're an idiot and
Speaker 1: have give them something.
Speaker 2: To take away of value.
Speaker 1: If I call you an idiot and you're to your
Speaker 1: face or just on social all you're gonna do is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk away.
Speaker 2: You're gonna walk away mad.
Speaker 1: Escalate it, yeah, or escalate it, or if I try
Speaker 1: to have that conversation like hey, you know, I understand
Speaker 1: maybe where you're coming from, but did you think of
Speaker 1: this or that? And just try to maybe maybe put
Speaker 1: your opinion out there in in a polite way to
Speaker 1: where it's non confrontational, but for them to to think
Speaker 1: about that. I think I feel like you are really
Speaker 1: good at like those kind of conversations. Me and you
Speaker 1: hear at the show have had some conversations I kind
Speaker 1: of get off the track a little bit and like
Speaker 1: I start like getting pretty opinion. I start from an opinion,
Speaker 1: and you're like, yeah, oh yeah, and what did you
Speaker 1: you know there's another thing to think about this and
Speaker 1: that we're talking about wolves and habits and help dying
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and and it's so easy to
Speaker 1: get really ingrained into this this my set, and it's
Speaker 1: so good and refreshing to have someone point out another
Speaker 1: point of view in a thought process in a constructive
Speaker 1: way that someone starts thinking about it like you know what,
Speaker 1: he ain't wrong, And pretty soon I think it caused
Speaker 1: you to think deeper. You know, if you're the opinionated
Speaker 1: guy that's kind of trying to, you know, get a
Speaker 1: little bit puffed up. So if if you want to
Speaker 1: correct someone and help them out, maybe don't call him
Speaker 1: an idiot or a jackass.
Speaker 2: It'd be better to like give them, give them another way.
Speaker 1: To think about something in a polite way, maybe like
Speaker 1: your grandpa might have done, or maybe your favorite person
Speaker 1: would give you a different way of think to think
Speaker 1: about something. That's how real change happens. That's how real
Speaker 1: that's how relationships build. Yeah, yeah, I mean putting people
Speaker 1: on the fan.
Speaker 2: I mean when you start just attacking somebody, immediately put
Speaker 2: them on the fence, and you're not going to change
Speaker 2: their mind, right, I get that way. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just it's how things get delivered to me, makes me
Speaker 2: if I if I if it's livered a certain way,
Speaker 2: I can stop and think about it. And I always
Speaker 2: I try to be very open minded with different thoughts
Speaker 2: and ideas. Yeah, I'll try to think about it as
Speaker 2: much as possible. But yeah, attacking somebody, it never works. No,
Speaker 2: it's like trying to It's like trying to convince your
Speaker 2: grandpa that he's wrong. Yeah, you know, when people get
Speaker 2: so like conditioned in their mindset. It's just like, well,
Speaker 2: hear him out, think about what they said, and maybe
Speaker 2: just throw out something that they might not have ever
Speaker 2: thought about. Try to throw it out in a way
Speaker 2: that they'll they have to chew on it for a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and I'm for all all transparency. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to try to set up on a pulpit here
Speaker 1: and say I've never been that other guy at the
Speaker 1: hot head. I'm all hot headed, you know, and I've
Speaker 1: probably said some things online before that It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: that was that was kind of kind of an asshole.
Speaker 1: I probablyhouldn't have said that, But I'm trying to have
Speaker 1: more self awareness. And if I can't, if I can't
Speaker 1: change me, how can I change anyone else? So I
Speaker 1: think all of us can take that look in how
Speaker 1: do we change things for the better in ourself and
Speaker 1: our fellow sportsmen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I agree, I think we need to
Speaker 2: be more unified, because you know, we're not the antis
Speaker 2: are going to be antis. They're going to attack, and
Speaker 2: they've got their their techniques on how they're going to
Speaker 2: go about change. But the way they're starting to change
Speaker 2: things is they're bringing stuff in front of the voters,
Speaker 2: and you have to realize the majority of the voters
Speaker 2: are not anti hunters, they're not pro hunters, they're neutral,
Speaker 2: and we need to we need to figure out how
Speaker 2: to convince them to vote against the anti's agendas that
Speaker 2: they're pushing through. Super important. I mean, the majority of
Speaker 2: people kind of have a favorable look at hunting until
Speaker 2: it looks unfavorable or until it's in a spotlight that
Speaker 2: looks nasty, gross, tantacky. There's some stuff here at the
Speaker 2: show that I walk around and look at, like, dude,
Speaker 2: if some neutral media that we're just kind of like,
Speaker 2: I want to see what this is all about and
Speaker 2: put it online or put it on the local news network.
Speaker 2: It's like, do they need to see Iguana's getting shot
Speaker 2: in the head, Monkey's getting shot in the head with
Speaker 2: an air gun on a big screen on the back
Speaker 2: of the of the convention center. That is not a
Speaker 2: good look. Now I has something that you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know the context of what that stuff was filmed in,
Speaker 2: but it just has a bad look, and it's like,
Speaker 2: let's just maybe keep that stuff to ourselves. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying censoring, but we just need to think about our
Speaker 2: image and how it's present to the non hunters, because
Speaker 2: those are the people who are going to decide the
Speaker 2: antis are going to vote, you know, for their ballot
Speaker 2: initiatives every time. Right, It's like, how are we going
Speaker 2: to convince the rest of the general public who are
Speaker 2: non hunters? How how are we going to convince them
Speaker 2: to vote for us? Right and preserve what we have
Speaker 2: because this, I mean is super important we continue this
Speaker 2: North American model wildlife management. It's like what drives this
Speaker 2: whole industry right here that we're sitting at. But it
Speaker 2: also it's more than that. I don't the industry is whatever.
Speaker 2: It's for me. It's like how I maintain my sanity
Speaker 2: in life. Yes, I need to go to the mountains
Speaker 2: and hunt every year. I need to spend this time
Speaker 2: by myself thinking through problems of life and working through
Speaker 2: stuff that's occurred and how I've treated people in the past.
Speaker 2: That all gets worked out in my mind and I
Speaker 2: typically come out with some type of resolution in my
Speaker 2: brain like Okay, now I think I might be a
Speaker 2: better person and I would handle that differently. And when
Speaker 2: you're hiking around doing stuff, you're not just thinking about hunting. No,
Speaker 2: you're thinking about all sorts of stuff, and it's just
Speaker 2: a way to just yeah, it kind of like grounds
Speaker 2: yourself back to like who you really are, what's really important. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So anyway, I need that. And if hunting seasons go
Speaker 2: away or they get reduced, trimmed down to the bare bones,
Speaker 2: maybe you know we can only do it. Say, if
Speaker 2: you could only elcunt once every five years, because the
Speaker 2: permits are cut back so much that you know you
Speaker 2: have to draw for them that. I don't know what
Speaker 2: I'd do. I'd be hurt. I think I would just
Speaker 2: start doing drugs. I might be down here on the
Speaker 2: sidewalk living, you know, in rags. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know. There's there's something to it that keeps
Speaker 2: my sanity.
Speaker 1: And those shocking videos and stuff. For us, people who
Speaker 1: have hunted their whole lives, we've seen animals die, if
Speaker 1: we've seen them dye our own hand, we're not as
Speaker 1: sensitive to those things, right, But for non hunting people
Speaker 1: who have never experienced this lifestyle, it's very shocking. They've
Speaker 1: never seen a wild animal, any kind of animal die
Speaker 1: in real life, and to see one die and and
Speaker 1: maybe a manner that's not super respectful.
Speaker 2: That is that's hard to watch. It's hard to.
Speaker 1: See, and I would I have to think it gives
Speaker 1: people immediately like, like you said, you use the word gross,
Speaker 1: they would say, that's gross, that's that, that's shocking, right,
Speaker 1: that that made me feel something inside And I don't
Speaker 1: ever want to see that again. And I don't agree
Speaker 1: with that. Unfortunately, that all gets slumped in with all
Speaker 1: and all hunting in general. So I think, yeah, you
Speaker 1: just got to be mindful of it.
Speaker 2: Is it legal? Yes? Right? Should everybody see it? It's not.
Speaker 1: It's maybe not for everybody to see, right, Maybe it's
Speaker 1: maybe you want to show people that you got to
Speaker 1: go into a little area that's just not blasted all
Speaker 1: over the whole show, right, or you know.
Speaker 2: Keep it amongst your friends, the ones that be fun
Speaker 2: or cool to see.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the stuff, just keep it tasteful, Yeah, keep
Speaker 1: it tasteful, keep it keep it classy, you know, like
Speaker 1: the like yeah, like the pin up girls of the fifties. Right,
Speaker 1: that's completely different than what's going on with that type
Speaker 1: of material these days.
Speaker 2: Yes, back in the fifties it was a little risk gay.
Speaker 1: It's pretty classy today there's some real nasty stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, thinking of mind, And also, how how would
Speaker 1: you how would you go into you know, like local
Speaker 1: church and are using a bunch of foul language and
Speaker 1: be very insulting and be very revolting to a lot
Speaker 1: of the people in there.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't.
Speaker 1: So if you have that like restraint in a setting,
Speaker 1: then why would you talk like that in another public
Speaker 1: setting or show things in a public setting that could
Speaker 1: be of ex offensive to people who didn't know about hunting.
Speaker 1: So just I just think you should keep it classy. Yep,
Speaker 1: I agree. So if you could tell your twelve year
Speaker 1: old Josh anything about elk hunting, if you could go
Speaker 1: back and say, Josh, here's I'm from the future, here's
Speaker 1: some information, what would you tell yourself?
Speaker 2: Oh man, Well, one, I would tell myself build points
Speaker 2: wherever you can ear. But as far as just like
Speaker 2: general l hunting, I would probably tell myself just be
Speaker 2: prepared to work hard and success is gonna come if
Speaker 2: you do that. And I would I would give myself
Speaker 2: the information of like, all right, stretching yourself out and
Speaker 2: doing hard hunts is mental, so just work on figuring
Speaker 2: out how to like get more mentally comfortable hunting elk,
Speaker 2: like way in the back country, and you're gonna have
Speaker 2: more bulls. You're going to kill more bulls if you
Speaker 2: can do that. So, I mean, those are the things
Speaker 2: that when I first started, like getting away from the
Speaker 2: road and the truck was like, we're way out here.
Speaker 2: This is if we get an elk, what are we
Speaker 2: going to do? I didn't realize. I mean, I hadn't
Speaker 2: killed her many elk when I was you know, I
Speaker 2: killed my first elk when I was like thirteen with
Speaker 2: a rifle and it was a cow, and we mean
Speaker 2: we got elk out hole. My uncle managed a ranch
Speaker 2: down in southwest Montana, so I got to go hunt
Speaker 2: that ranch in rifle season, and I did hunt it
Speaker 2: a couple times in both season after I got like
Speaker 2: a little older. But I mean elk we killed down there,
Speaker 2: we'd go shoot them out in the sage brush, you know,
Speaker 2: as they're coming up out of the meadows in the morning,
Speaker 2: heading up to the timber, and we'd just go pick
Speaker 2: them up in the truck. So everything came out hole
Speaker 2: right to hang them up with the tractor, skin them. Sure,
Speaker 2: they had to walk in cooler we'd hang them in
Speaker 2: there while we were down there. It was awesome. It's awesome, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: But when I started hunting on my own off in
Speaker 2: other places, I just didn't realize like how much work
Speaker 2: it was going to be. And I was scared. I
Speaker 2: knew how much work it would be, but I was
Speaker 2: just scared of putting that much work into it and
Speaker 2: how punishing it could be. And so I think I
Speaker 2: definitely limited myself on where I would go and how
Speaker 2: far I would go. And it wasn't a good elk
Speaker 2: country I would hunt, So I would probably tell myself, Man,
Speaker 2: it's not that hard work at it, and it's gonna
Speaker 2: you're gonna be successful, more successful. Yeah, So that's what
Speaker 2: i'd want for for the young Josh be more successful
Speaker 2: when he's younger. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Man.
Speaker 1: This has been a great conversation. Yeah, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people find you on it on Instagram. You still
Speaker 1: you're still writing.
Speaker 2: So I do gear reviews for Rockslide, So you can
Speaker 2: find me on Rockslide, which is you know, kind of
Speaker 2: gear backcountry centric kind of discussion forums. It's a forum
Speaker 2: with like gear reviews and articles like on the homepage,
Speaker 2: but it's mostly just like a forum. Yeah, so you
Speaker 2: can find me there user names just Josh Boyd. There's
Speaker 2: articles on the main page you can find that I've written,
Speaker 2: you know, shelters, backpacks. I do a lot of gear
Speaker 2: reviews on like backcountry gear, yeah, which I love. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm got gear geek. So you can find me there,
Speaker 2: and you can find me on Instagram. I've reluctantly been
Speaker 2: on social media. I remember years ago, you and I
Speaker 2: were talking at Attack and You're like, are you on Instagram? Like,
Speaker 2: no way, Derek, It's like you should get on it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know. And that might have been
Speaker 2: like the next year Brinker and Ryan Holme for Mystery
Speaker 2: Ranch both kind of talked to me about it's like
Speaker 2: you should get on it, Like okay, so I'm on it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Back then, it was a whole different, different world.
Speaker 1: Instagram was like cool pictures and yeah, the little little
Speaker 1: stories and stuff peopled right and have photography was king
Speaker 1: and that's what I loved about that.
Speaker 2: That's what kind of got me. That's what kind of
Speaker 2: convinced me. It's like, I like looking at cool images
Speaker 2: from people that I you know, respect and have you know,
Speaker 2: they have a lot of talent, and now it's like
Speaker 2: ads and videos and just stupid stuff so shallow. Now
Speaker 2: yeah I hate it. Yeah, but you too.
Speaker 1: It's one of those those uh those things necessary evils,
Speaker 1: yes they call it.
Speaker 2: So yeah. Yeah, what's your what's your your handle on
Speaker 2: Instagram Josh underscore boyd underscored MT. Maybe something like that.
Speaker 2: I could look but a bit. If you looked at
Speaker 2: if you just wrote in Josh Boyd MT as in Montana,
Speaker 2: you'd probably find me.
Speaker 1: There'll probably be a few guys on skateboards in the city,
Speaker 1: though with that same name there might be no just
Speaker 1: could Oh man, thanks so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to join me here. It's been been a great, great
Speaker 1: pleasure catching up and then recording this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been great. I've loved our conversations this whole week.
Speaker 2: So yeah, awesome, this has been a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll travel safe back home. Thanks. Thanks and