Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined with my good buddy Dirk Durham again, who
Speaker 1: it just happens to be his sixtieth birthday today.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you, od he just called me old. I'm
Speaker 2: not sixty, Phelps, I'm fifth old. I'm fifty.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's like only one number off on the
Speaker 1: first number. And then technically, I don't know if my
Speaker 1: math is good, but it's like only fifteen percent different.
Speaker 1: So it was close.
Speaker 2: I finally reached my golden years.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good. You all the benefits of cheaper
Speaker 1: meals at the restaurants and reduced insurance and LARP.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have my card here soon, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think at some point, when you
Speaker 1: get old enough, your insurance should actually go back up, though, right,
Speaker 1: because you become more of a danger. So you're you're
Speaker 1: probably what ten years away from insurance going back up.
Speaker 1: Slower reaction times.
Speaker 2: And kids will take away my driver's license here in
Speaker 2: one of these days, dang it.
Speaker 1: So today's episode is all listener A, Q and A,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna let Dirk. He's got a new intro
Speaker 1: to our Q and A. We've got a new partner here,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna let Dirk kick this off.
Speaker 2: This portion of the episode was brought to you by
Speaker 2: Pendleton Whiskey letter Buck how excellent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I ever fire you, you're gonna have a job
Speaker 1: like the next day doing that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, voiceovers. I mean I'm gonna start a career.
Speaker 2: I mean, hey, if we have anybody listening that needs
Speaker 2: a voiceover for like the Monster Truck rallies or any
Speaker 2: of that kind of stuff, I'm your guy. I can
Speaker 2: do it all.
Speaker 1: No, we really appreciate Pendleton coming on as a partner
Speaker 1: this year, you know, helping us with the Q and
Speaker 1: as on all of our podcasts and then also helping
Speaker 1: support some of our content this year. They've been an
Speaker 1: awesome partner and we're stoked to continue to get to
Speaker 1: work with them. So once again, if you have any
Speaker 1: questions for me our guests for Dirk, feel free to
Speaker 1: email them to us at CTD at Phelps game Calls
Speaker 1: dot com or send us a message on social media
Speaker 1: and we'll do our best to get them included here.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to jump right into it, so
Speaker 1: ELK Centric today. The first question comes in in areas
Speaker 1: where you don't have a chance to hunt. How do
Speaker 1: you scout for elk and identify high probability areas before
Speaker 1: the season begins? You know, we can We can all
Speaker 1: sit and I think me and you, Dirk have had
Speaker 1: the fortune to like we know what to look for
Speaker 1: at some point, right, So I think with high confidence
Speaker 1: we can say, all right, I can look at a
Speaker 1: map and I'm pretty confident this area has everything we
Speaker 1: think we need. But let's say there are times where
Speaker 1: I get surprised or the elk are actually in spots
Speaker 1: where I don't expect them. But how do you go
Speaker 1: about identifying high probability areas before the season never begins,
Speaker 1: if you don't get to have feet on the ground.
Speaker 2: My hunts, My scouting would start at probably a thirty
Speaker 2: forty thousand feet level on Google Earth slash on x maps,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at typically the areas I hunt. I'm
Speaker 2: looking for the dark green areas first off. A lot
Speaker 2: of times the more lighter colored areas are not really
Speaker 2: where the elkre inhabit, you know, or those lighter color
Speaker 2: areas a lot of times will be ranch land. There'll
Speaker 2: be farmland, private property, so access would be very difficult,
Speaker 2: if impossible. So I'm gonna look for those dark portions,
Speaker 2: which is going to look like National forest maybe State
Speaker 2: endowment lands, and then kind of zoom in from there.
Speaker 2: And what I'm looking for is an area that has
Speaker 2: a few roads so I can get around and access
Speaker 2: some of those areas. If this is a if this
Speaker 2: is not going to be a backpack hunt, I want
Speaker 2: to have enough roads to where I can access each
Speaker 2: portion of the mountain range. But I don't want there
Speaker 2: to just be roads everywhere where certain areas. You know
Speaker 2: that that's the case. You know, some of the more
Speaker 2: front country will have logging roads everywhere in some of
Speaker 2: those places will have gates on those roads which you're
Speaker 2: not supposed to take motor vehicles behind, or there's a
Speaker 2: limitation on size of the motor vehicle, maybe just ATVs
Speaker 2: and dirt bikes or something. But you know, some of
Speaker 2: those places, don't overlook them because they they could be
Speaker 2: non motorized and you could walk in and have a
Speaker 2: fantastic all hunt. You know, because a lot of times
Speaker 2: around logging areas, there's a lot of excellent habitat, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of feed. There's probably some older regrowth somewhere
Speaker 2: the elko want to hold up in, So don't overlook
Speaker 2: those kind of places. But typically I'm kind of looking
Speaker 2: for more of a mountainous maybe that back country type
Speaker 2: looking stuff, and more of the national forest. So I'm
Speaker 2: looking for large drainages that have no roads in them,
Speaker 2: you know, in a large draine, so from top to bottom,
Speaker 2: so from the very start of the drainage where the
Speaker 2: first little creek seeps out of the hillside, and as
Speaker 2: it gets bigger and then it outlets and to make
Speaker 2: let's say a river or or out into the front country,
Speaker 2: you know, ten miles. If it's a ten mile drainage,
Speaker 2: there's a pretty good bet there's some really good elk
Speaker 2: in there, really good bowls in there, mature bowls. It
Speaker 2: seems like some of the smaller drainages, depending on where
Speaker 2: you're at, may not have quite as many or maybe
Speaker 2: the quite a caliber of elk in it. Some of
Speaker 2: the some of that bigger country will. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of the kind of the places I'm going to start looking.
Speaker 2: And within those places, I want to I want to
Speaker 2: see all aspects of habitat. I want to see good
Speaker 2: heavy cover on north faces. I want to see on
Speaker 2: the south face and eastern facing and western facing slopes.
Speaker 2: You know, some good good feed, whether that's grass, whether
Speaker 2: that's brush fields, just depending on on the state, there's
Speaker 2: just got to have everything. There's got to be, you know, creeks,
Speaker 2: there's got to be little places for the elk to
Speaker 2: get food, water, shelter. That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, a lot of mine is very similar.
Speaker 1: I come from western Washington, and I typically don't hunt
Speaker 1: Western Washington as routinely as I used to do, and
Speaker 1: so I'm a lot of these areas, you know, a
Speaker 1: day's drive away, a day's plus drive away, and so
Speaker 1: I rely on my my online scouting, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's Google Earth, whether it's on x maps, you know,
Speaker 1: on ex hunts on my computer one thing, and I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to dive in there, and I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it for the idea that to dive in there,
Speaker 1: but it kind of piggybacks on your idea on like
Speaker 1: roadless drainages, is I do turn on the backcountry feature,
Speaker 1: like the roadless feature within on EX I just want
Speaker 1: to know, like where is the furthest away from the
Speaker 1: road you can get and like I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: jumping right to that spot, but then I will use
Speaker 1: that and start to look like within that area kind
Speaker 1: of work my way back to the road, Like all right,
Speaker 1: where can I get from like two to four to
Speaker 1: five miles? And then within that ribon I come from
Speaker 1: western Washington, where uh it is if you haven't walked
Speaker 1: through our reprod our undergrowth brush, this coastal jungle. Like,
Speaker 1: I honestly look for places without all kinds of brush. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just my personal preference, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: go put myself in the middle of a jungle. I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy hunting, and it just a completely brush stricken area.
Speaker 1: Now you will find yourself in those, you know, I
Speaker 1: try to stay away from like never ending mountain alder patches.
Speaker 1: But similar to Dirk, I'm looking for those those keys.
Speaker 1: I like to have heavy timber on the north face
Speaker 1: if if I deal, but especially you know Washington or
Speaker 1: areas where there's lots of water, they don't always need
Speaker 1: to go to the north face, or if the temperatures
Speaker 1: aren't getting high enough, they'll bet on a south face.
Speaker 1: So I'm I do want that north timber, but it's
Speaker 1: not an absolute requirement. I want to be able to
Speaker 1: zoom in and see that the upper above tree line
Speaker 1: or areas that are avalanche shoots like have some trails
Speaker 1: through them that the elker actively using the area or
Speaker 1: animals of some sort are there, and the food sources there.
Speaker 1: And if I take it to the next level, like
Speaker 1: can I go toggle the date of that picture back
Speaker 1: to September, you know, August? Can I can I start
Speaker 1: to see if animals are using that during our hunting seasons,
Speaker 1: and then I kind of use all of that to balance.
Speaker 1: I want some water sources around, whether it's a creek
Speaker 1: or a river in the bottom or a small pond
Speaker 1: or a lake. I need to have that water. And
Speaker 1: then as you're looking at this, you're you're always remembering
Speaker 1: that time of September at least, or you know, if
Speaker 1: it's November, like elker looking for an area to recoup,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's rifle season. But during September, those
Speaker 1: elk are looking to recreate and stay alive, so they
Speaker 1: need to have some escapement and they need to be
Speaker 1: able to like live with a heard a herd of
Speaker 1: you know, cows or however many cows are with them.
Speaker 1: My personal preference is to break an area down. I
Speaker 1: want a little bit of everything. I don't want like
Speaker 1: a steep slope for three thousand feet down to the creek.
Speaker 1: I don't want it to be completely flat the whole way. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, you can find elk in both
Speaker 1: of those places. But areas that I feel like I've got
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of knowing there's gonna be olk there,
Speaker 1: I want it to be broken up country. I want
Speaker 1: big pockets of timber that have an avalanche shoot through
Speaker 1: it and just uphill like there's some there's some alpine,
Speaker 1: and then if they were to cross that ridge, they're
Speaker 1: gonna get into some north timber. So I'm looking for
Speaker 1: like these these very specific almost like two perfect elk spots.
Speaker 1: But that's just where I found that that I have
Speaker 1: more of a chance of finding elk there at least
Speaker 1: to start, and then I can branch out from there,
Speaker 1: like how far will that sign take me? And that's
Speaker 1: you know, we could probably have an whole episode on
Speaker 1: this jerk, like feet on the ground, like being able
Speaker 1: to read the sign when you get to these spots, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sign here, but there's also a
Speaker 1: lot of sign that goes three miles down the ridge
Speaker 1: into nothing but dark timber. Right now, as an elk hunter,
Speaker 1: I'm more educated. I'm like, what's okay to go down
Speaker 1: in here? We can spend more time down in here. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you pair all of these things I'm looking for make
Speaker 1: it a little bit harder to get to two, three,
Speaker 1: four miles in And for me, that's been a recipe
Speaker 1: that just seems to hold elk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as I'm looking at the landscape, once I
Speaker 2: get there, I can look at the hillside and just
Speaker 2: determine does that look like an elky spot or what?
Speaker 2: And what is that elki spot? So I'm looking at
Speaker 2: let's say there's just a big timbered face. You know,
Speaker 2: there's lots of ridges and lots of timber, and you're
Speaker 2: just not seeing maybe little meadows and stuff. How do
Speaker 2: you know? Where do you start? Where would I even look?
Speaker 2: And as I look at those places, I'm looking at
Speaker 2: places where I've found elk before. So let's say there's
Speaker 2: a really steep ridge and then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: it kind of goes up steep and then it hits
Speaker 2: like a bench. It kind of the ridge itself, benches off,
Speaker 2: and maybe a little a small saddle or makes a knob,
Speaker 2: you know, on those knobs. Elk like to hang out
Speaker 2: on those saddles. They like to hang out and little benches.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking for those kind of features. And let's
Speaker 2: say you did see it like a brushfield or a
Speaker 2: meadow or a high grassy spot and then there's you know,
Speaker 2: some big dark timber and then it kind of drops
Speaker 2: down and then it goes up onto a little ridge
Speaker 2: and you just like picture where or the elk would
Speaker 2: bed and then where they would feed in the area
Speaker 2: in between. And I kind of look at that stuff
Speaker 2: and yep, yeah, and go ahead.
Speaker 1: No, I was gonna say, yeah, the saddle thing like
Speaker 1: one thing. You know a lot of people we talk
Speaker 1: about this multiple times, like eggs in one basket, Like
Speaker 1: you've got to be able to move and be fluid
Speaker 1: on these hunts. But you know, like you had mentioned benches, saddles, knobs, Like,
Speaker 1: I guess we could probably reduce that all to like
Speaker 1: distinct changes in terrain, right if we wanted to. Just so,
Speaker 1: like when I get to an area and I want
Speaker 1: to know if there's elk there, like I will run
Speaker 1: a ridge down if there's a pass or depression in
Speaker 1: the ridge line that's maybe a two or three hundred
Speaker 1: foot drop compared to the normal. You know, you look
Speaker 1: out along the horizon, you got a ridge that looks
Speaker 1: pretty straight, but in the middle you see a depression,
Speaker 1: Like that is a spot I'm gonna go check, like
Speaker 1: if there are elk in the area, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: very confident that they're using that area or that zone,
Speaker 1: that spot to transfer from one ridge to another or
Speaker 1: that bedding area. Like I'm gonna if I'm gonna quickly
Speaker 1: reduce this area to where if there's even elk there,
Speaker 1: like I'm to go hit that bench and check for sign,
Speaker 1: you know, And so very quickly I made a determination
Speaker 1: like I'm pulling the plug or anchor on here, or
Speaker 1: I'm going to invest some more time.
Speaker 2: Right and during your your e scouting, if you will,
Speaker 2: on on X or whatever, you know, you're looking at
Speaker 2: top ole lines too. You're not only just looking at
Speaker 2: satellite imagery. You're looking at top all lines. If you're so,
Speaker 2: you've you've identified an area that you're really interested in,
Speaker 2: so you want to take it a little closer look.
Speaker 2: You want to get granular with it. So you're looking
Speaker 2: at those those top ole lines, and you have to
Speaker 2: be very keyed in, like and if you've been hunting
Speaker 2: for a while, then you start associating your top ole
Speaker 2: lines that you're seeing in the field versus where you're
Speaker 2: standing on the ground. And sometimes there's some little benches there,
Speaker 2: you know, nor more than fifty sixty yards wide. They
Speaker 2: don't show up real well on a topo map, but
Speaker 2: a lot of times those are just really great spots
Speaker 2: where elk want to live the bed or travel through.
Speaker 2: So learning to identify those on your top ball lines
Speaker 2: is critical. I mean, it will really help you a lot.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: But one more thing. I was gonna circle around. We can't.
Speaker 2: We're kind of I feel like we're kind of talking
Speaker 2: about the Mountain States or the Northwest. But if we're
Speaker 2: talking about the Southwest, you know, you're talking about New Mexico,
Speaker 2: what are we going to look for there? We're looking
Speaker 2: at tanks, water tanks, right, These are either man made
Speaker 2: or natural springs or whatever. And like when we go
Speaker 2: to New Mexico, on the unit we're going to hunt,
Speaker 2: I go through and I mark every single tank with
Speaker 2: an icon with a with a place mark on my
Speaker 2: on X. The reason why is it's super easy to
Speaker 2: look at and find and look at tanks really quick.
Speaker 2: If you kind of zoom in and kind of scroll around,
Speaker 2: you can find them if you're just kind of looking
Speaker 2: for them. But if you go pre hunt and you
Speaker 2: mark every single tank, it's very easy to jump from
Speaker 2: tank to tank to tank to tank and connect to
Speaker 2: connect the dots of where elk are going to be
Speaker 2: and down there it's water is key, so you really
Speaker 2: want to key in on where the water is. And
Speaker 2: and so I mark mark all the tanks in one color.
Speaker 2: And then once we get their boots on the ground
Speaker 2: and we find that there's water in them, because sometimes
Speaker 2: they'll be they'll they'll be dry as a bone, and
Speaker 2: sometimes that they'll have water in them. So I will
Speaker 2: mark the ones that have actually have water in them
Speaker 2: and the ones that don't with two different colors. That way,
Speaker 2: I don't waste time looking as I'm looking at my
Speaker 2: map again, like if we get stumped, like oh dangn
Speaker 2: what are we going to do today, I don't see
Speaker 2: this tank over here and think, oh we should go
Speaker 2: check it out. Oh yeah, that's that one that's dead,
Speaker 2: you know, after you look at like, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: different tanks. It's it's it's nice to be able to
Speaker 2: quickly assess and understand where to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And one thing to know is you can
Speaker 1: identify these tanks, but then like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how hunt them can be very different because these elk,
Speaker 1: I don't I hesitate to call them nomadic elk, but
Speaker 1: they will travel what we've seen them four to five
Speaker 1: miles to get water and then that mourning their track
Speaker 1: to their betting is a four or five mile journey.
Speaker 1: So it's not as simple as when we're talking about
Speaker 1: the mountainous States. A lot of times they're going to
Speaker 1: feed in bed within a half mile, you know, max,
Speaker 1: maybe three quarters of a mile, as long as nothing
Speaker 1: disrupts them. These elk in New Mexico Arizona are moving large,
Speaker 1: large distances because what happens is you got sometimes multiple
Speaker 1: herds oftentimes multiple herds come to that water, big rutfest
Speaker 1: at night, and then they all turn and go different
Speaker 1: directions in the morning, and a lot of times those
Speaker 1: treks are like I say, three four five miles.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's good to know that because if you
Speaker 2: don't know that when you first get there, you're like,
Speaker 2: what the heck is going on here? And then you
Speaker 2: kind of figure it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you just you might just assume that they
Speaker 1: hate your calls or they sense your presence or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, now, that's just what they're gonna do.
Speaker 2: They're like vampires, man. As soon as the daylight hits,
Speaker 2: they got to go find some darkness to go lay
Speaker 2: down in, and maybe five miles away, so they may
Speaker 2: leave the tank pretty early, you know, before long before
Speaker 2: first light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I think we beat that that question
Speaker 1: up pretty good. But yeah, scouting. I love the scout
Speaker 1: when we when we get a chance. But a lot
Speaker 1: of times the way our hunts line out, you know,
Speaker 1: and and we we just don't get the chance. So
Speaker 1: we've got to make really good decisions before we get there.
Speaker 1: And you've heard us both say it multiple times. Be
Speaker 1: willing to go to plan B or C if A
Speaker 1: just isn't isn't what you thought it was, you cannot
Speaker 1: stay invested in a bad decision, all right, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna jump in. It's about that time everybody should be
Speaker 1: shooting their bows. Not that I'm the I'm the most
Speaker 1: diligent at getting everything set up. But uh, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people, you know, a
Speaker 1: white tail set up versus a you know, a small
Speaker 1: game set up versus all right, we're what I consider
Speaker 1: we're stepping up to big game, like true big game,
Speaker 1: big bones, aero stopping power. Walk through your bow and
Speaker 1: arrow set up kind of how you determine what you're
Speaker 1: gonna shoot. Is there a speed you're you know, searching for,
Speaker 1: is there a weight you're searching for? And kind of
Speaker 1: then what your broadhead's gonna be. Just just that whole
Speaker 1: decision tree before you head out on an el cut.
Speaker 2: Uh, first and foremost on my bow as far as
Speaker 2: draw poundage. Back in the day, when I very first
Speaker 2: started bow hunting, it was super trendy to have an
Speaker 2: eighty pound bow and have that baby maxed out. You
Speaker 2: want them arrows flinging like it light speed. You know,
Speaker 2: I shot an overdraw on the bow. The arrows were
Speaker 2: twenty six inches long aluminums, and man, those things were
Speaker 2: just zipping. But as time is progressed, you know, so
Speaker 2: do archers and thought processes. And the problem about super
Speaker 2: fast arrows is they're really hard to tune, and you
Speaker 2: really want your optimum. You know, you want that arrow
Speaker 2: to be flying perfectly straight. You don't want it to
Speaker 2: be fish tailing, you don't want to be purposing. You
Speaker 2: want it to be super straight. So I want my
Speaker 2: bow these days to be about sixty sixty five pounds.
Speaker 2: And why I want it to be that much is
Speaker 2: I want to be able to pull back and hole
Speaker 2: on a bowl that locks up. Let's say he's coming
Speaker 2: in and then hesitates and I have to hold that
Speaker 2: bow for two minutes. Well, I can draw and shoot
Speaker 2: a seventy pound bow just fine. And there's I think
Speaker 2: it's kind of gotten a trendy again to have an
Speaker 2: eighty pound bow. There's a lot of guys with big
Speaker 2: muscles these days that like to pull an eighty pound bow.
Speaker 2: But I'm here to tell you I'm more concerned about
Speaker 2: being able to hold my bow back and then still
Speaker 2: still make a great shot. So now over to the
Speaker 2: speed thing again I've found And then a lot of
Speaker 2: other people will kind of say, if you're shooting your
Speaker 2: your arrows faster than that two hundred and eighty two
Speaker 2: hundred ninety feet per second, they get really hard to
Speaker 2: tune in your bow, especially fixed heads, so I'm not
Speaker 2: really trying to shoot, you know, like a vaporizer fast
Speaker 2: type of bow. I want to be able to shoot comfortably,
Speaker 2: hold my bow a long time, and still maintain that
Speaker 2: that feet per second. Now I'm blessed with a longer
Speaker 2: draw length than then maybe let's say a guy with
Speaker 2: a twenty six inch draw link. Now, those guys are
Speaker 2: probably gonna have to hit those higher poundage draws and
Speaker 2: really work on you know, their stamina holding a long time.
Speaker 2: But that's what's important to me on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even I'm gonna I'm gonna touch that and
Speaker 1: then kind of go back through your points there. But
Speaker 1: it's I would almost argue that a male pulling a
Speaker 1: twenty six twenty seven inch draw is, even at seventy pounds,
Speaker 1: is still probably going to be fine to kill an elk.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I've got to help with Kelly Smith, you know, pulling
Speaker 1: fifty two pounds and like full pass through, and so
Speaker 1: I think there's just this like big macho bravada thing
Speaker 1: that like you got to pull these monster. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you trust me, I would say, whatever you're comfortable with,
Speaker 1: like give yourself that extra conservative edge. You know, if
Speaker 1: I do hit a bone, I hope that you know,
Speaker 1: my setup is big enough. But as long as we
Speaker 1: control the shot and hit things right and avoid the
Speaker 1: big bones, we should be fine. You know, with with
Speaker 1: the day's equipment and efficiency of the bows and the
Speaker 1: design of most of these fixed blade broadheads, it's like,
Speaker 1: I feel like you're gonna be fine. Like I've been
Speaker 1: very impressed that some of the arrows that you know,
Speaker 1: some ladies have zipped through bowls, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: fifty two pounds and a four hundred and some odd
Speaker 1: grain arrow can do that, Like why do I need
Speaker 1: to be you know, faster and heavier and all these
Speaker 1: other things right?
Speaker 2: Right? The only drawback to me that I can see
Speaker 2: to shooting the lower poundage with a short drawlling is
Speaker 2: your pen gap. Let's say you know you could just
Speaker 2: have when Why ist pin gap important is because let's
Speaker 2: say a bowl is thirty yard thirty five yards and
Speaker 2: you're like, okay, I think he's thirty didn't have a
Speaker 2: chance to range it, and you shoot him for thirty
Speaker 2: With a large pen gap, you may miss, you may
Speaker 2: miss the elk, or you may hit really low and
Speaker 2: not get a vital hit or hit high depend on
Speaker 2: how you judge yardage. So it's just so I recognize that.
Speaker 2: And and there again we want to talk about arrows
Speaker 2: and arrow weight. You know, there's it's kind of trendy
Speaker 2: in some groups to shoot a you know, six hundred,
Speaker 2: seven hundred grant arrow right now, you know, the one
Speaker 2: that's going to shoot through a tree and still kill
Speaker 2: the elk. But whenever you have an arrow that that heavy,
Speaker 2: your pin gap for Western hunting is going to be
Speaker 2: enormous unless you want to dial, and then you're gonna
Speaker 2: run out of you know, room to dial on your
Speaker 2: on your moveable site, you know, rather quickly compared to
Speaker 2: like a standard let's say four hundred and fifty to
Speaker 2: five hundred grain arrow. So I go with about a
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty grand arrow. I've shot down to
Speaker 2: four hundred grades. Back before I even knew to weigh
Speaker 2: my arrows, you know, it wasn't super trendy to measure
Speaker 2: your foc front of center weight and or the overall all. Wait,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is a good one
Speaker 2: hundred grain broadhead. I got a good sturdy arrow, and
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go ahead and shoot this thing. And
Speaker 2: I shot a ton of elk with it that passed
Speaker 2: throughs No real issues, major issues unless I hit like
Speaker 2: a scapular or something. Now I'm shooting fifty grains heavier.
Speaker 2: Still no problems. But and what I like about that
Speaker 2: is I still have a pretty good pin gap. It's
Speaker 2: not super tight to where you get in a pickle
Speaker 2: and in a rush situation it's like, oh dangn my
Speaker 2: pins are so close together, what do I do? Or
Speaker 2: it's hard to focus on one pin. But they're far
Speaker 2: enough apart to where they're easy to focus on. And
Speaker 2: if you misjudge artist by five yards, it's going to
Speaker 2: be a five to six inch inch shot high or
Speaker 2: shot low versus a miss or a bad hit.
Speaker 1: Yep, Yeah, I'm very similar. I designed my arrows backwards
Speaker 1: off of my bow speeds, so I'm trying to hit
Speaker 1: that two eighty five and if I come somewhere between
Speaker 1: like two eighty three and twenty seven, like that's that's
Speaker 1: my ideal setup. And so we just we designed all right,
Speaker 1: the end weight of this arrow needs to be X.
Speaker 1: You know, lately for me shooting bows, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got a very fortunate to have a thirty two inch
Speaker 1: draw length. You know, I shoot a seventy pound bow
Speaker 1: maxed out, so it's somewhere between seventy to seventy two pounds.
Speaker 1: You know, most of my arrows end up being very
Speaker 1: heavy in that five forty to five sixty range. But
Speaker 1: I really just I don't care where it lands as
Speaker 1: long as my bow ends up shooting at that too
Speaker 1: eighty five. And then you know, I'm gonna agree with Dirk,
Speaker 1: like draw time will kill way more elk than the
Speaker 1: extra five pounds will or the extra ten pounds It
Speaker 1: always hasn't always will. And I think, you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds cool when you're when you're telling somebody you shoot
Speaker 1: an eighty three pound bow or that you you know,
Speaker 1: you got this monster set up, And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that will not kill you any additional elk. Then
Speaker 1: sixty five or sixty pound bow for most males, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to draw drawwights and everything else considered like
Speaker 1: that doesn't kill the elk for you, But me being
Speaker 1: able to hold that bow more comfortably for another twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty seconds will kill me some elk. So I'm
Speaker 1: in that same boat, Like you know, I was there
Speaker 1: one day when I was young and dumb, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting eighty six pound bows, trying to get these five
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty grand arrows going, you know, three fifteen
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was just doing dumb stuff and that
Speaker 1: bow shot great and I finally did get it tuned.
Speaker 1: But in the end, it wouldn't have killed an elk
Speaker 1: any better than the current setup I'm shooting. So that's
Speaker 1: how I approach it. I we didn't touch on fixed
Speaker 1: blade versus you know, there are some good expandables. I
Speaker 1: just cannot wrap my head around, like knowing that there
Speaker 1: is a slight percentage or any percentage that something could fail.
Speaker 1: And so in my mind, like that solid broadhead is
Speaker 1: you know, or fixed blade broadhead is going to always
Speaker 1: be what it needs to be. Just a little peace
Speaker 1: of mind, Like I say, I think most mechanicals nowadays
Speaker 1: are you know, got a pretty good success rate on
Speaker 1: opening and doing what they're they're supposed to do. But
Speaker 1: for me, I've still only shot you know, fixed blade
Speaker 1: you know, iron wheels oak the last few years. You know,
Speaker 1: prior to that, I was using some slick trick biper
Speaker 1: tricks that that I had some good success with. I've
Speaker 1: heard stories that maybe some you know, qualities you know,
Speaker 1: went downhill or something since then, But no, I think
Speaker 1: you just need to be confident in your setup and
Speaker 1: have confidence that you're gonna be able to put your arrow.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing we didn't even talk about is
Speaker 1: how accurate we can shoot these bows. Like we always
Speaker 1: joke our good buddy Corey Miller, he's like, all these
Speaker 1: guys want to like buy their way to like better groupings,
Speaker 1: and he's like, you're never gonna out. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna shoot your bow any better because of this
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars rest or this five hundred dollars site
Speaker 1: or these you know, four hundred dollars arrows. He's like,
Speaker 1: it's you need to work on yourself. And so that's
Speaker 1: another thing, like as long as you get good at
Speaker 1: shooting and are confident your setup, like that goes a
Speaker 1: long ways than all these other decisions, you know, arrowweight
Speaker 1: and broadheads. Get good at shooting your bow, and it'll
Speaker 1: it'll fix a lot of these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that and that, and that they're good. It goes
Speaker 2: right back to poundage too. So it's super comfortable to
Speaker 2: be able to shoot a bow. That's easy to draw,
Speaker 2: it's easy to hold your It's just funner to me.
Speaker 2: Like if if you're if you're having to arch your
Speaker 2: back and point in your boat at the sky did
Speaker 2: to draw it, you're doing it wrong. Here's a here's
Speaker 2: an anecdotal story from last fall. It's calling in this
Speaker 2: bowl from some private property over onto the public and
Speaker 2: we're kind of slow playing this thing, and we kind
Speaker 2: of made quiet calls and kind of faded away, like
Speaker 2: we walked off, but we didn't go very far, and
Speaker 2: we kind of set down and it was kind of
Speaker 2: a steep hill side, so I had to kind of
Speaker 2: sit with our back towards where the bowl was kind
Speaker 2: of and we sat there for like forty five minutes,
Speaker 2: and then finally that bull came in. Well, I had
Speaker 2: to I had to draw. I had to get up
Speaker 2: from a sitting position. I had to like slowly stand
Speaker 2: and draw my bow all at the kind of same
Speaker 2: time and then get turned to where I could shoot.
Speaker 2: I will promise you I couldn't have done that with
Speaker 2: a eighty pound bow. I probably would have struggled this
Speaker 2: seventy but beings that I was shooting like a sixty
Speaker 2: five pound bow. I was able to draw. I was
Speaker 2: able to do it in a smooth motion free you know,
Speaker 2: it's not discernible to the bowl, and I got drawn
Speaker 2: on him. Now, my yardage judging was another story.
Speaker 1: But we're just talking about getting a boat. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: just talking about getting the bow drawn.
Speaker 2: Now, we don't need to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But we've also got a story. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many people have seen this, are our buddy Russ Meyer
Speaker 1: or a guy that we know Russ Meyer. I don't
Speaker 1: know if anybody has seen a video that he put out.
Speaker 1: What was it probably ten years ago?
Speaker 2: Now in twenty twelve, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Russ calls a bowling, and when we watch
Speaker 1: the video, I think everybody's first time watching video are like,
Speaker 1: if you know who Russ is, you wouldn't have questioned
Speaker 1: his skill or is his decision making, But you're like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing, you dummy? Like draw your boat?
Speaker 1: You know he got He kind of got caught off guard.
Speaker 1: This elk walks in on the same exact trail that
Speaker 1: he is, right, And I think during the video, when
Speaker 1: you watch it, you're so fixated on the elk you
Speaker 1: don't realize what he's doing until you want at the
Speaker 1: second or third time. But Russ is a pretty strong guy.
Speaker 1: But this also would go over to you're shooting a
Speaker 1: bow that you can do this with. He wouldn't have
Speaker 1: killed this bow bowl if he had to draw his
Speaker 1: bow like you see most people, like ninety percent of
Speaker 1: people draw their bow. You know, they give it a
Speaker 1: big yank Ara goes to this guy. Russ literally like
Speaker 1: draws this bow inch by inch as slow as he
Speaker 1: can pull this bow back, and next thing you know
Speaker 1: that the bull gets shot and you were watching it
Speaker 1: the whole time. He didn't realize that Russ had got
Speaker 1: his bow drawn back because he moved so slowly and
Speaker 1: so methodically that you would have never known that that
Speaker 1: bow was ever drawn.
Speaker 2: And the bullet is in plain view like he was
Speaker 2: in the bull's eyesight the whole way. Like it was incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was that video. It's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I need to be able to draw my bow a
Speaker 1: little more smoothly and not make such a racket with
Speaker 1: arrows bouncing around the cage or whatever. It may be,
Speaker 1: like very smooth and like I say it, it just
Speaker 1: there was another example I probably go overboard on making
Speaker 1: sure everything's perfect, because I always want to be able
Speaker 1: to to capitalize on opportunities. But it was just one
Speaker 1: of those things again, like he had you know, his
Speaker 1: rest didn't make any noise, he was able to draw
Speaker 1: his all these things he had dialed in to give
Speaker 1: him that opportunity on a great bowl there, And it
Speaker 1: just makes you think like you need to need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to all that stuff and maybe not shoot
Speaker 1: an eighty five pound bow if you don't have to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and practice, practice those those skills, right. I feel
Speaker 2: like Russ, I don't know, he's a pretty beefy dude,
Speaker 2: Like he's got some guns he could probably he probably
Speaker 2: don't practice drawing like that. Maybe, But for guys like me,
Speaker 2: I'm I practice when I practice shooting in the yard,
Speaker 2: I'm practicing drawing that bow as slow as I can
Speaker 2: without without any movement, the very little minimum movement. That way,
Speaker 2: come hunting season, it's just part of my routine, right,
Speaker 2: I can just draw my bow back. And there are
Speaker 2: times you want to yank your bull back bow back.
Speaker 2: Let's say bull's kind of running in. You're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to might want to rank, yank at it,
Speaker 2: yank it back at the right time. But most of
Speaker 2: the time you want that thing to be smooth and
Speaker 2: and no movements discernible.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and another thing about is similar to practice
Speaker 1: of drawing slow. I always do it at the end
Speaker 1: of my routine because it doesn't mess the rest of
Speaker 1: my my you know, thirty or forty arrows or whatever
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot is I do the long holds. It's
Speaker 1: a different muscle, like whether you're a gym rat and
Speaker 1: you work out all the time. Like even when I
Speaker 1: was going to the gym all the time, it was
Speaker 1: still something different about holding the bow almost like that
Speaker 1: negative resistance, like you're just trying to hold it back.
Speaker 1: And so I'll do you know, I'll set my my
Speaker 1: time around my watch and try to do a minute
Speaker 1: and a half hold and see if I can still
Speaker 1: make a good shot or whether it would be a
Speaker 1: bad shot. And so season gets closer, you start to
Speaker 1: work on those, you know, endurance type type situations as
Speaker 1: you're out there shooting, just see see what your time is.
Speaker 1: And by working on it, you get better at it.
Speaker 1: You you get more comfortable, you get less shaky, you
Speaker 1: can extend that time, and like I say, those are
Speaker 1: the things that are gonna help you kill more elk
Speaker 1: than than the additional poundage.
Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely, all.
Speaker 1: Right, so we're gonna That was a good segue into
Speaker 1: ethical shot placement. I hesitate to talk about ethical shot
Speaker 1: placement because I think everybody controls their own ethics. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to pose a question then we can we
Speaker 1: can navigate through it. So how do you ensure ethical
Speaker 1: shot placement to make sure that you maximize your chance
Speaker 1: of recovering that bowl? And then if you can go
Speaker 1: into like shot angles, shot distances, and kind of what
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with and what you're looking for before, like
Speaker 1: dirt terms comfortable in this situation, I'm gonna pull the
Speaker 1: trigger here.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of people just need to
Speaker 2: be real with themselves on their capabilities or at their
Speaker 2: the distances they can shoot first and foremost in our
Speaker 2: backyards or at our local range that we shoot comfortably
Speaker 2: every time. It's just like, man, I can drill this
Speaker 2: thing at one hundred yards, so if I got a
Speaker 2: bullet seventy, he's dead, right. But that's that's not the
Speaker 2: same situation that you face when you're hunting. Let's say
Speaker 2: you've been hunting and you haven't had an opportunity to shoot,
Speaker 2: and it's day seven of your hunt. You hydrateed. You
Speaker 2: just hauled ass up this hillside, this steep hill side,
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred and fifty two hundred feet straight
Speaker 2: up vertical, and you you're breathing hard, your heart's pounding,
Speaker 2: you have a pack on your back, and there's the bowl.
Speaker 2: I figure, let's say I normally want to shoot at
Speaker 2: fifty yards. That's maybe that's kind of where I draw
Speaker 2: the line personally, But at that point right there, I
Speaker 2: may cut that to thirty or forty yards, because you know,
Speaker 2: you pull your bow back, man, you're you're on a
Speaker 2: steep hill side. Everything is not easy. Your bow form
Speaker 2: is probably not the best, just because the angle that
Speaker 2: the elk is above you or below your, whatever the
Speaker 2: case might be. Everything is not perfect, and that you
Speaker 2: have to kind of be real about it, be like, well,
Speaker 2: if this is my backyard, I drill that sucker. But
Speaker 2: now that it's not, I'm going to wait for the
Speaker 2: for the for the best opportunity that and then that
Speaker 2: kind of goes with that training. You were talking about
Speaker 2: holding your bow for a long time. You might even
Speaker 2: do some like wind sprints back and forth to your
Speaker 2: target and get out of breath. Then do your bolt
Speaker 2: bow hoold, but make sure you have your pack on
Speaker 2: and stuff. And this is on flat ground in your backyard.
Speaker 2: You know, raise your raise your your heart rate, get
Speaker 2: out of breath, shoot in a from a precarious uh situation,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna You're gonna see it's gonna cut your
Speaker 2: your your lethal distance down quite a bit. So acknowledging
Speaker 2: that and understanding that is how you can perform ethical shots.
Speaker 2: Like everybody has their own ethics, right, but I think
Speaker 2: it's I think everyone can agree that we want to
Speaker 2: take a shot that that's gonna end with a uh,
Speaker 2: mortally wounded animal that's gonna die quickly and humanely. So
Speaker 2: understanding your capabilities, like truly understanding them is important.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I've always thought that like walking out
Speaker 1: in my my loafers or my my street shoes, no
Speaker 1: pack on, you know, shorts, T shirt, I'm cool, I'm comfortable.
Speaker 1: Is it was practicing until you get out there, you
Speaker 1: have your pack on, you have a chest harness on.
Speaker 1: You realize that your pack squeaks when you go to
Speaker 1: dry your you know, all these things that you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be. It may not be a
Speaker 1: squeak or that something like binds you up, or your
Speaker 1: harness is really close to catching your string, you know,
Speaker 1: if your form's off. You know, all of these things
Speaker 1: like you need to test that out and and confirm
Speaker 1: that it's going to be okay. You know. One thing
Speaker 1: that I used to have an issue with is when
Speaker 1: I used to use a wrist rocket, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the day, is I would anchor under my ear. Well,
Speaker 1: if it was an early morning hunt, I would forget
Speaker 1: that I had a hood on and I couldn't get
Speaker 1: my anchor like up in my ear, and it would
Speaker 1: frozzle me right because I needed to get to that spot.
Speaker 1: And so just all of these things like as goofy
Speaker 1: as it may seem. You know, my wife laughs at
Speaker 1: me because I'm out there and my you know, I've
Speaker 1: got my chest harness on my backpack on the middle
Speaker 1: of the you know, late late one evening, I'm like shs,
Speaker 1: like what are you doing. I'm like, well, I'm making
Speaker 1: sure all this stuff works together, you know. Now. Fortunately
Speaker 1: I've switched to a thumb release. I'm more comfortable with
Speaker 1: hoods on. But like all of those things pop up,
Speaker 1: and I'm just one of those guys that I want
Speaker 1: to make sure this is I reduce all of these
Speaker 1: little grimlins that are gonna pop up in your hunt,
Speaker 1: Like I I just want to take care of that
Speaker 1: at home, not out in the field, like you said
Speaker 1: on day seven, eight or nine. Like, if that's what
Speaker 1: costs me, I'm gonna never forgive myself or be real
Speaker 1: frustrated with myself that that was the little detail that
Speaker 1: that didn't you know that that cost me a bowl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it hardly happens. Hardly ever happens on day one
Speaker 2: on a nice flat place where you're you're like well
Speaker 2: rested and feel good and you know you're you're not
Speaker 2: like excited, and so it hardly ever happens that way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you should definitely prepare. One thing I always noticed,
Speaker 2: especially when I throw my pack on, especially you know,
Speaker 2: not just my pack, but with it weighted down with
Speaker 2: the normal amount of gear I have it, whether that's
Speaker 2: a bivvy hunt or even a day hunt, is when
Speaker 2: I drop back, so my right shoulder, the one that
Speaker 2: supports my bow, I have to like really like focus
Speaker 2: and like kind of give my shoulder a little bit
Speaker 2: of a boost to hold it up right, because it's
Speaker 2: that pack is drawing down on it, completely different than
Speaker 2: when I don't have a pack on. So you have
Speaker 2: to identify this stuff long before season. That way, when
Speaker 2: you do get the opportunity to dry, your buddy're like,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with my shoulders not working right? So that
Speaker 2: way you make the best shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pass my
Speaker 1: ethics on to anybody, but I'll I'm gonna give an
Speaker 1: example of like what I how I determine my my
Speaker 1: ethical shot distance. So I use a matrix target. For
Speaker 1: those of you that haven't seen them, it's basically, I
Speaker 1: believe it's seven hexes that are all put together to
Speaker 1: make one big hex. It's so yeah, it's it's geometry,
Speaker 1: but you gotta you gotta read a book. So I
Speaker 1: have one hex in the middle that is basically about
Speaker 1: an eight by eight hex you know what the what
Speaker 1: the corners cut off, and then I've got the eight
Speaker 1: hexes around. And so when I'm getting everything tuned, I
Speaker 1: won't do this right off the bat when I'm getting
Speaker 1: broad heads already, but at some point I will start
Speaker 1: to like walk back with five arrow groups and at
Speaker 1: the point where I can no longer keep all five
Speaker 1: inside of this six to eight inch circle, Like all right,
Speaker 1: that is my range, or like what I'm comfortable for
Speaker 1: the year. Like it's not four out of five. You know,
Speaker 1: there may be an occasional flyer or something that I
Speaker 1: know that I screwed up on, like I dropped my
Speaker 1: bow or I didn't you know, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: But like I want to know that five out of
Speaker 1: five times I'm going to be able to hit that
Speaker 1: eight inch circle at any distance. Now, let's say it's
Speaker 1: a good shooting year for me, and I've had a
Speaker 1: few of them where like, all right, I'm able to
Speaker 1: do that at seventy yards keep it inside the eight
Speaker 1: inch circle, or but then I subtract back. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I really don't even want to shoot that
Speaker 1: far because of movement or things that are out of
Speaker 1: my control. Let's bring that back. And for me, we
Speaker 1: talk about sliding sites and all this stuff. I shoot
Speaker 1: a four pin and a lot of people are like, go,
Speaker 1: I don't know why you waste your time on a twenty. Well,
Speaker 1: because for me, like if I can just anchor a pin,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to drop a
Speaker 1: thirty pin lower than it needs to be. I just
Speaker 1: want to be able to aim. But anyways, I have
Speaker 1: a fourpence sit twenty thirty, forty to fifty. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie like I do not. I consider the dial
Speaker 1: on my bow is like a backup, backup, a follow
Speaker 1: up shot. Yeah, I'm gonna shoot my olk at twenty
Speaker 1: to fifty. Now, there was a time in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: there was a bullet fifty five and I just kind
Speaker 1: of stack pins and went up. I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: roll it, and so I was confident that year that
Speaker 1: I could make that shot. But uh, that's how I
Speaker 1: established like my own comfortable shot distance. So to be honest,
Speaker 1: most of the time, I'm shooting good enough that it
Speaker 1: just defaults to fifty, Like I'm not shooting a bowl
Speaker 1: if it's not within fifty yards. And I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: that I've been able to like hold up to my
Speaker 1: end of the deal, minus the one at fifty five
Speaker 1: yards in Oregon there in nineteen. But now we may
Speaker 1: get into we haven't really even touched on the ideal
Speaker 1: shot angles and shot distances. Anybody that's listened to my
Speaker 1: stuff before watching my hunt knows that I'm a big
Speaker 1: I always got to go into this a little bit squirmy, gingerly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of frontels. They're very, very effective,
Speaker 1: and they will kill elk faster than any broadside shot
Speaker 1: I've ever taken. But with that, here's the big asterisk,
Speaker 1: the precursor, the whatever. Like I need to now hit
Speaker 1: the two inch white circle inside of my hex before
Speaker 1: like that's my distance. I'm comfortable, like I need to
Speaker 1: have a blade strike that because I'm now just limited
Speaker 1: my kill zone to maybe a three to a four
Speaker 1: inch wide by about a ten inch tall, and I
Speaker 1: can't I can't afford to go left or right, and
Speaker 1: I even put more pressure on myself. I've really got
Speaker 1: to hit about a three by six area, you know,
Speaker 1: above the strendom, above that collar, that bone structure up
Speaker 1: into the neck, and I really need to be shooting
Speaker 1: good and a lot of times that means I'm limiting
Speaker 1: myself to twenty five ish, maybe thirty on a real
Speaker 1: good year. Because a frontal shot gone left or right
Speaker 1: or low or even high can can turn bad really quick.
Speaker 1: It can be the greatest shot in the world, but
Speaker 1: if you miss, it's not going to turn out very well.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times that bull is gonna get away.
Speaker 2: Now you all know that Jason Phelps is a nerd, right,
Speaker 2: He's like this engineering nerd. But I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's a movie nerd. And I think I think I
Speaker 2: know the answer to this because he says he don't
Speaker 2: watch movies. But Phelps, you ever watched Empire Strikes Back?
Speaker 1: No, not any of that stuff.
Speaker 2: Of the Star Wars series. So there's this big, huge
Speaker 2: death Star thing that's like a basically a man created planet,
Speaker 2: you know, that's full of like bad guys. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: mission was they had to dry, they had to fly
Speaker 2: down this trench and they had to shoot. They had
Speaker 2: to shoot basically the proverbial frontal shot on a bull elk.
Speaker 2: But they're good on like, I don't know, fifty million
Speaker 2: light years speed and anyway, they have to shoot and
Speaker 2: it has to go down this like ventilation pipe, right,
Speaker 2: and I kind of I always picture the frontal shots
Speaker 2: on elk are the same thing. I'm like, if you
Speaker 2: do it right, I mean, this whole damn thing's gonna explode.
Speaker 2: You know, you're gonna kill that elk, no problem. But
Speaker 2: if you don't do it perfect, it's a bad deal.
Speaker 2: And will the elk die? Maybe? Maybe not, depends on
Speaker 2: where it depends on where your elk or your arrow hits.
Speaker 2: If it's not inside the perfect circle, why is that
Speaker 2: a big deal. Let's say, Well, I don't really care
Speaker 2: if it kill it or not. You know, some people maybe,
Speaker 2: but I think we're all we all want a humane
Speaker 2: death for the elk. But and also you could spend
Speaker 2: you know, the next day or two searching for your
Speaker 2: bowl on your buddy that didn't shoot on his day
Speaker 2: to shoot. You could you could spend a whole day
Speaker 2: on his day to shoot and not. You know, it
Speaker 2: just takes takes you guys out of the game. So
Speaker 2: I feel like, not only you gotta you owe it
Speaker 2: to the elk for a quick, humane kill, also you
Speaker 2: gotta owe it to your buddy to make a to
Speaker 2: take good shots. You start taking risky shots. Pretty soon
Speaker 2: you're just chasing blood trails when you should be just hunting.
Speaker 2: You know. And I've found out now I'm not a
Speaker 2: huge I am not a huge fan of a frontal
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you why, just because I know how
Speaker 2: emotions can run high in people. I know how abilities
Speaker 2: and kind of like what we talked about. You know,
Speaker 2: you get you get winded, you got your pack, you're
Speaker 2: you're you're you're in distress, you're shooting in distress. And
Speaker 2: a lot of times when a let's just let's just
Speaker 2: be honest, a big bull elk walks in frontal, it's
Speaker 2: pretty intimidating. You know, he's a he is a big animal.
Speaker 2: That thing's his his face is about your level. You know,
Speaker 2: he's probably six feet tall at you know, when he's
Speaker 2: standing there at normal stance and that thing's walking in
Speaker 2: it's pretty intimidating. And then to kind of hold your
Speaker 2: crap together and make that perfect shot, it can't be
Speaker 2: remarkable for a lot of shooters. It's it's a tough
Speaker 2: shot to make just that in itself. Then you have
Speaker 2: to consider, Okay, is this elk a pill from me?
Speaker 2: Is he downhill? Like? What are your angles? He is
Speaker 2: he perfectly frontal? Is he not perfectly a frontal? And
Speaker 2: when you're a little excited, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to determine those things. So I
Speaker 2: don't recommend it. I typically won't take it. I will say,
Speaker 2: if if I had my bow drawn this and a
Speaker 2: bull walked in and he it was the right yardage
Speaker 2: and he's on the same plane as me, and everything
Speaker 2: was perfect, and it's close, let's say ten to twenty yards,
Speaker 2: I would probably take the shot. But if it wasn't
Speaker 2: exactly perfect, I would not. You know, I've taken I've
Speaker 2: taken two, I've taken kind of a quarring frontel, and
Speaker 2: I've taken a full frontal, and the full frontal he
Speaker 2: died within forty seconds. He had left a blood trail
Speaker 2: that Stevie Wonder could follow. You know. It was just
Speaker 2: it was amazing the other one, and it was kind
Speaker 2: of a quartering shot, which I watched Jason Felp take
Speaker 2: that same shot and his bolt I like, quick as
Speaker 2: can be that one Idaho, when you and Charlie were
Speaker 2: down in that crap hole. I'm like, oh yeah, this
Speaker 2: this is like the same Sara. So I took that
Speaker 2: shot and I don't know my arrow had didn't hit
Speaker 2: the right spot, it didn't penetrate, and I never did
Speaker 2: find that bowl. He was bugling again two days later.
Speaker 2: But that was a heck of a monkey.
Speaker 1: On my back.
Speaker 2: Man. Once, once I had that, Once you have that happen,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh man, you gotta walk around with that
Speaker 2: monkey on your back, and it makes really hard to
Speaker 2: draw your bow again and not think about that monkey
Speaker 2: and make a good shot on the next time. So
Speaker 2: I try to avoid it myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why we're on frontels. I'm just gonna you have
Speaker 1: We've We've did a lot of these on social media,
Speaker 1: like where would you shoot the bowl? And we show
Speaker 1: a frontel and everybody or the majority ends up aiming
Speaker 1: too low. I don't understand it because then we will
Speaker 1: show the bowl like basically we twist at ninety degrees
Speaker 1: and show you like, well, your arrow literally just went
Speaker 1: through the bottom eight of the elk, like if you
Speaker 1: were to the the vitals, like you still want to imagine.
Speaker 1: So if the bull's walking uphill, you would maybe want
Speaker 1: to hit a little lower, But if the bulls walking downhill,
Speaker 1: like downhill to you, you would want to hit a
Speaker 1: little higher. And if it's on plane, you need to
Speaker 1: be like you need to intersect the center of that.
Speaker 1: You know, we're trying to hit that connection between the
Speaker 1: heart and the lungs, like the mass you know the
Speaker 1: the entire you know, pump of the city, you know,
Speaker 1: everything that's making everything else work. You're and it's a
Speaker 1: it's a pretty small section, but it's it's located about
Speaker 1: halfway up the bull's body. And if you're going low,
Speaker 1: where most people end up wanting to always pick, you're
Speaker 1: gonna like maybe if you can get through the sternum
Speaker 1: and all the heavy bone structure there, you maybe will
Speaker 1: catch the heart. But that bone structure is going to
Speaker 1: protect the majority of the heart at most of your angles,
Speaker 1: Like you got to get up into the soft tissue
Speaker 1: and get up into the heart where the heart connects
Speaker 1: into the lungs. And so that's that's one thing on
Speaker 1: angles that I think a lot of people not understanding
Speaker 1: the a goals and where the vitals are at. Everybody
Speaker 1: seems to aim low on a on a on a frontel,
Speaker 1: which is not going to work out very well for
Speaker 1: you or the oak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to bust a myth right here
Speaker 2: because a lot of people say, oh, you want to
Speaker 2: aim at the at the hair transition where it goes
Speaker 2: from light to dark or whatever, And just the fact
Speaker 2: is every elk is different. Their hair is not going
Speaker 2: to be exactly in the same place. The transition is
Speaker 2: not going to be in the same exact place, and
Speaker 2: as a bolt come walking in on you, it's going
Speaker 2: to be tough to recognize that spot. So you have
Speaker 2: to understand anatomy to hit that thoracic opening, which is
Speaker 2: going to be about halfway if you return the Elk's broadside.
Speaker 2: It's going to be like if you were to cut
Speaker 2: make a line halfway between top and bottom, then that
Speaker 2: that line that would line would go straight out to
Speaker 2: the thoracic opening, and that's that's where the line has
Speaker 2: to be. Above that, you're going to hit him in
Speaker 2: the neck. Now you may kill him, you may not.
Speaker 2: Below it. Like Jason said, there's that all that bone
Speaker 2: mass down there's going to be really tough. Can you
Speaker 2: shoot through it? It has been done, But to shoot
Speaker 2: through it and hit you know, the heart or something vital,
Speaker 2: it's tough. And if you hit high, you know you're
Speaker 2: gonna hit in the neck part of the spinal area,
Speaker 2: and that's some massive bones to try to penetrate through too.
Speaker 2: So you just have to really you really have to
Speaker 2: study this and really understand elk anatomy and also understand
Speaker 2: your shooting ability.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm gonna one more point on the frontal
Speaker 1: animal switch the broadside angles. I'm gonna tell on myself
Speaker 1: a little bit here, and it's not really telling on
Speaker 1: myself that the bull died within thirty seconds. But any
Speaker 1: of those that watched My Hunt with Ranella on Netflix,
Speaker 1: I think it was season ten, episode six or something
Speaker 1: like that, everybody's always like, what happened on the shot,
Speaker 1: like we never showed it? Well, I was so I
Speaker 1: was so locked in on where the vitals were. I
Speaker 1: didn't pay attention to anything else. The bulls walking downhill.
Speaker 1: My position at about a thirty degree slope, so not
Speaker 1: super steep, but pretty good downhill, and the bull as
Speaker 1: he was walking was bouncing his head, but I was
Speaker 1: locked in on where I was, you know, not really
Speaker 1: peeking around the side, but kind of like where is
Speaker 1: everything lining up? Like what are my angles? And I
Speaker 1: paid no attention to anything besides where I had to
Speaker 1: get that arrow and to kill it. And as he's
Speaker 1: doing that, he dropped his head on one of his bounces,
Speaker 1: you know, as he's walking along, and that arrow actually
Speaker 1: went in just below his cheek and it was it
Speaker 1: went in through his neck, but the veins were hanging
Speaker 1: out by his face, and it looked like I had
Speaker 1: shot that bowl in the face, and Steve just elected
Speaker 1: to not. You know, I thank him for it because
Speaker 1: it didn't look good. It wasn't a good visual. But
Speaker 1: that bowl, the arrow went to the exact right spot.
Speaker 1: I've never to this day seen more blood. There's been
Speaker 1: equal bloods on frontals, but that bowl literally twirls, stands
Speaker 1: there for about four or five seconds, walks over and
Speaker 1: we can hear his horns like hitting the rocks. Within
Speaker 1: a minute, he's dead, expired. But it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where if I hadn't been paying full attention
Speaker 1: to angles and vidles, I would have just to avoid
Speaker 1: hitting him in the neck or the face, I would
Speaker 1: have aimed low, which would have been a bigger mistake,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. So I'm just given some examples,
Speaker 1: like real life examples, like the arrow didn't look like
Speaker 1: it went in the right spot. But if you can
Speaker 1: imagine an elk walking down hill, you hit him high
Speaker 1: and that arrow basically goes in horizontal like we hit
Speaker 1: all the right stuff at that angle. So just another
Speaker 1: example of you just really need to identify and understand
Speaker 1: how everything lays up in there and at the angle
Speaker 1: that you're at, the angle that the arrow's traveling, the
Speaker 1: angle that the elk is, and it's really that difference
Speaker 1: in angle of the arrow's path and then the bulls
Speaker 1: bodies path, like how and where you need to intersect vidles.
Speaker 1: So I'll diverge from frontals and we'll maybe go into
Speaker 1: some broadside shots and what you're looking for there and
Speaker 1: what your approach is to avoid bone and all of that.
Speaker 2: A frontal shot. One last thing frontal shot to me
Speaker 2: is basically the difference between a frontal and a broadside
Speaker 2: broad shot. Broadside shots are like shooting for free throws
Speaker 2: in basketball. Frontals are like that buzzer beater at the
Speaker 2: end where you're at the weird into the court and
Speaker 2: you just hail marryot and like hope it goes in
Speaker 2: the hole. That's the same about the same amount of
Speaker 2: odds against you. Maybe, I don't know, maybe not. People
Speaker 2: will probably argue that, but I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: a fan.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the old, the old bread and butter,
Speaker 1: the broadside shot. You know, ideally, sometimes it's tough to
Speaker 1: get the elk to do this when you're calling yourself
Speaker 1: or you don't have anybody else able to kind of
Speaker 1: turn the bowl for you. A lot of times what
Speaker 1: happens is that bull will come into a yard is
Speaker 1: where he expects to see the bull or the cow
Speaker 1: I don't want to say, get nervous, but doesn't see
Speaker 1: what he wants, and then he'll like, you know, he
Speaker 1: does that like I'm leaving dance right where he kind
Speaker 1: of twirls and moves and you know, may do his
Speaker 1: dance or maybe he's traveling through the area on his
Speaker 1: way to the call in. Regardless of what it is,
Speaker 1: you'll end up getting a broadside or a slightly quartering
Speaker 1: to or slightly quartering away shot, Like what's your approach?
Speaker 1: What are you thinking about on all of those? And
Speaker 1: what's your preferred shot there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of times they'll have them come in
Speaker 2: and they'll kind of pause, or if you can tell
Speaker 2: by how their their eyes look or their demeanor, they
Speaker 2: come in, they'll pause, they're looking for that other elk,
Speaker 2: and then if they don't see it, then they'll start.
Speaker 2: They may they may come in front and then they
Speaker 2: turn sideways and I'm waiting for that sideway shot typically
Speaker 2: and where I'm going to aim. You know, if you
Speaker 2: aim right in that crease, right very close to the
Speaker 2: shoulder blades and scalpula, if you there's kind of a
Speaker 2: little v there where the scapula comes up and then
Speaker 2: the leg bone kind of comes down, There's almost makes
Speaker 2: kind of a v there right in that little pocket
Speaker 2: is like the most deadly spot to hit them. But
Speaker 2: if things don't go right, let's say the bowl moves
Speaker 2: at the at the shot. Let's say I'm torquing my bow.
Speaker 2: Let's say I don't execute the shot perfect, it's very
Speaker 2: easy to hit, to hit that shoulder blade. So I
Speaker 2: typically don't aim at that little pocket. I'm going to
Speaker 2: aim away from it a little ways, maybe six inches
Speaker 2: away from that pocket. I don't want I don't want
Speaker 2: there to be any any issues with penetration whatsoever. So
Speaker 2: I will kind of aim a little further back, but
Speaker 2: not too far back. I don't want to try to aim,
Speaker 2: you know, back to where it's like now I'm I'm
Speaker 2: shaking hands with liver and lungs. I want to you know,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a happy media in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Like you know, we
Speaker 1: can argue over all day whether you want to hit
Speaker 1: high lungs, so it dies quick and don't get any blood.
Speaker 1: Low lungs, you know, it lives a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: but you get a blood trail, you know, do you
Speaker 1: go heart? But I'm in that same I go about
Speaker 1: halfway up the body, which is maybe just a little tighter,
Speaker 1: you know, a little higher than that crease, and then
Speaker 1: I come back from it three to six inches. Typically,
Speaker 1: it's like my ideal aiming. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is it gives you the most margin for air. Right,
Speaker 1: I can go three to six inches to my left
Speaker 1: and still not hit that bone. I can go up
Speaker 1: six inches and still catch long. I can go down
Speaker 1: six inches and catch heart or the bottom of the lung,
Speaker 1: and I can go back six inches and still catch
Speaker 1: lung right. And so it really just gives me the largest,
Speaker 1: the biggest margin for any air that may affect, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna be able to kill or to quickly
Speaker 1: kill that bowl. And so that's been always my approach.
Speaker 1: Like you know, slightly below, if you get real you nitpicky,
Speaker 1: slightly below half six inches back from that crease three
Speaker 1: to six inches and that's always on a broadside shot.
Speaker 1: That's that's been a good location. Now you get that.
Speaker 1: I love a quartering away shot as well, But we
Speaker 1: need to start being smart hunters and once again working
Speaker 1: on those angles, Like is that bowl starts to quarter away?
Speaker 1: My arrows going eight inches back from the he's ten
Speaker 1: inches back from the crease, twelve inches back from the crease,
Speaker 1: and what what a good you know rule of thumb
Speaker 1: and you've heard it, you know you're not hearing it
Speaker 1: from me. First is try to imagine where that arrow
Speaker 1: is going to cross through and come out the other side.
Speaker 1: And you're trying to put together once again, you know,
Speaker 1: using all this geometry, like where does that going to
Speaker 1: line everything up? Where you're going to hit like through
Speaker 1: the middle of the lungs, through the heart? And so
Speaker 1: is the more that bowl of quarters, the more that
Speaker 1: arrow's got to come back to a point where you
Speaker 1: no longer want to hit him in the hind quarter, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's it, like that's my limit, Like all right,
Speaker 1: I'm no longer shooting at this bowl because he's turned
Speaker 1: too much. So that's that's kind of how the the
Speaker 1: quartering away and then quartering two. You get a little
Speaker 1: margin of air, but at some point, you know, if
Speaker 1: he gets turned too much towards you ten or fifteen,
Speaker 1: you can't catch him on the frontel, you can't catch him.
Speaker 1: You can't really catch vital because of the leg bones
Speaker 1: behind it, and so you're really just kind of stuck
Speaker 1: waiting for a better shot opportunity at some point on
Speaker 1: a quartering two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the quartering two is tough. You can squeak
Speaker 2: it in in front of the shoulder if you have
Speaker 2: the right angle and you know it'll work great if
Speaker 2: unless it don't, you shoot behind it. You could catch
Speaker 2: one lung and liver. Typically a liver shots pretty deadly.
Speaker 2: There's not gonna be a lot of blood, and they
Speaker 2: sometimes they die fast, sometimes they don't die fast. It's
Speaker 2: just you never know. And then that quartering way shot
Speaker 2: you have to be super careful. Let's say you execute
Speaker 2: the shot. It's it's really severely quartered away from you
Speaker 2: and you enter the pont your arrow it hinders the
Speaker 2: paunch and it continues and then lodges on the off
Speaker 2: side shoulder. So you're gonna get all the goodies. But
Speaker 2: the problem is is the entry hole you're not gonna
Speaker 2: have an exit wind sometimes, so the entry hole is
Speaker 2: going to be the only hole that thing has, and
Speaker 2: it's gonna the the guts a lot of times, some
Speaker 2: fatty material sometimes just you know, gut material is gonna
Speaker 2: clog that hole up and you're just gonna not gonna
Speaker 2: get a good blood trail. I've I've been involved with
Speaker 2: that before. I had a friend that that shot a
Speaker 2: bull like that and we tracked it and tracked it
Speaker 2: and tracked it, and we didn't find it till it
Speaker 2: was too late. That there was a good, very lethal shot,
Speaker 2: but did not leave enough sign to recover him in time.
Speaker 2: So you just have to be really careful with those
Speaker 2: those quartering angles and maybe air on the side of
Speaker 2: not having it couring too far away to at a
Speaker 2: too steep of an angle, so where you're at your rib,
Speaker 2: your air will enter the rib cage on on your
Speaker 2: side and then lodging that front shoulder or in front
Speaker 2: or exit the cavity in front of the front shoulder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two holes are always better than one for sure,
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's we can we can get into the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty like people that have shot enough bowls have
Speaker 1: seen it, Like high long probably is one of the
Speaker 1: quickest kill shots as far as like the bull, but
Speaker 1: it leaves you no blood. So where I hunt in
Speaker 1: the jungle, like, there have been times where I've hit
Speaker 1: a bowl high and I'm like, gosh, dang it. You know,
Speaker 1: you start to think, like I'm never gonna be able
Speaker 1: to track him now, but thankfully they've died in ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen steps. You know. It's it's that quick at times.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, the bull may live a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: But if I'm hunting and I'm trying to pretend like
Speaker 1: I've got this down to a science where if I'm
Speaker 1: hunting brush area's like, all right, I'm gonna hit the
Speaker 1: bowl low now, and if it's wide open, I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit the bowl high. It's not that I'm not
Speaker 1: that you know, you know, detailed in it, but there
Speaker 1: are times where it's all right, the lower heart, lower
Speaker 1: lung type shot is going to make sure I've got
Speaker 1: good blood. He's still going to die, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be able to find him and make sure that
Speaker 1: you can, you know, bring all the meat back to
Speaker 1: your your cooler, versus like, all right, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: a risk on it and hit him a little bit higher.
Speaker 1: You're playing with that that void you know along the back,
Speaker 1: you're playing with not a lot of blood, albeit it
Speaker 1: will die quick. But if that, if you give that
Speaker 1: bowl you know, one hundred to two hundred yards of
Speaker 1: ability to sprint like it just become really difficult to find.
Speaker 1: So another thing that needs to go through your head is,
Speaker 1: you know, keep your shot low and at times, if
Speaker 1: you're in the right terrain, then a higher shot will
Speaker 1: be just fine. But like I say, I usually aim
Speaker 1: for below the half line, and that guarantees I get
Speaker 1: good blood expires quick and just seems to be the
Speaker 1: best of all options there.
Speaker 2: And without without watching videos back like what, it's been
Speaker 2: really really valuable to film our l hunts over the
Speaker 2: years because what you think happens at the moment of
Speaker 2: truth when you fire the bow, when you release that
Speaker 2: arrow versus reality or a lot of times two different
Speaker 2: things what you see and perceived because everything moves at
Speaker 2: such a fast time and you're so hyper focused. But
Speaker 2: for instance, I shot this bowl in twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 2: injured my shoulder that year and I shot. I had
Speaker 2: to draw my bow with a mouth tab and you
Speaker 2: can look that up on my YouTube channel mouth tab Madness.
Speaker 2: I think it's episode ten where I shoot the bowl.
Speaker 2: But anyhow, I was aiming below the below that center line,
Speaker 2: you know, like we talk about, and this bowl was
Speaker 2: just kind of coming. He was pissed off and he
Speaker 2: was not at least the least bit alert. He wasn't
Speaker 2: looking for danger, and I had I had my pen
Speaker 2: on him and I and I released the arrow and
Speaker 2: it hits him. He runs off and then pauses and
Speaker 2: then he takes off again. But anyway, so I just
Speaker 2: know I just crushed the same like I just I
Speaker 2: know I hit the perfect spot. There's no way I didn't.
Speaker 2: The shot felt good and everything. Well we find the ball.
Speaker 2: He didn't bleed real great. Well, he bled internally because
Speaker 2: the arrow it had hit above that center line. I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: hit really high, like eight inches high, like that's crazy. Well,
Speaker 2: you watch the video back and at the shot that
Speaker 2: bowl that was not really you know, looking for danger.
Speaker 2: He dropped. He dropped about eight inches so that if
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been for that, it would have hit perfect.
Speaker 2: So giving yourself that mark that that room aim just
Speaker 2: you know, a bit below the centern line, not too
Speaker 2: close to that shoulder because anything can happen those, you know,
Speaker 2: and then the next elki you shoot, when the bow
Speaker 2: goes off, nothing happens but the arrow just burying right
Speaker 2: where you aim. So it's it's hard to anticipate exactly,
Speaker 2: but aim to aim to places where even if the
Speaker 2: animal reacts, it's still going to hit good vitals and
Speaker 2: you'll be able to find them.
Speaker 1: Yep, and piggyback on that a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: should you you know, similar to whitetail hunting where people
Speaker 1: like go to the lowest lower edge a lot of
Speaker 1: times of the vitals, right, knowing that that gives a
Speaker 1: more margin above I still, would you ever aim you know,
Speaker 1: low on an elk or we just assume that the
Speaker 1: majority of the time they don't drop, like that was
Speaker 1: a little bit of an anomaly, or you you're just
Speaker 1: going to aim your normal spot and then you know,
Speaker 1: with an elk being as big as they are, we
Speaker 1: still have that you know, that room above it to
Speaker 1: still make a vital hit. But you just like you did,
Speaker 1: ended up with a little less blood right right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to aim my normal spot, but that normal
Speaker 2: spot is just below center line. So yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: want to aim at center line because then if they
Speaker 2: react and drop too far, you may not have enough
Speaker 2: blood to follow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm in agreement there. Well, appreciate having you on. Always,
Speaker 1: nice to chat elk with you and yeah, like we
Speaker 1: like we're talking here a lot. It's it's middle of May.
Speaker 1: It's time to start, you know, shooting your bows, getting
Speaker 1: everything dialed in. For me, I usually get my stuff
Speaker 1: dialed in about this time and then kind of really
Speaker 1: go on cruise control, try to shoot twenty thirty arrows
Speaker 1: three or four times a week and just kind of
Speaker 1: and then I go on real cruise control as it
Speaker 1: gets towards season, like maybe shooting you know, five to
Speaker 1: ten shots and really really concentrating on every SHOT's good,
Speaker 1: But get your setups figured out now so there's not
Speaker 1: a big panic before. Make sure everything's you know, tuned
Speaker 1: for broadheads already. And yeah, that's what we got on
Speaker 1: on the on this episode of Cutting the Distance.
Speaker 2: Yeah sure, thanks for joining, Dirk. Yeah, I was gonna
Speaker 2: tell everybody one more thing. If if you if you're
Speaker 2: if you want to really check out, you know, find
Speaker 2: the the your weaknesses or your chinks and your armor
Speaker 2: go to the Total Archery Challenge here and one of
Speaker 2: the Western events, you know, where it's real steep and
Speaker 2: and excessive distances and and high elevation and stuff. And
Speaker 2: that that is a great warm up for elk season
Speaker 2: to to to identify your strong points and your weaknesses too,
Speaker 2: because we didn't even talk about third access access on
Speaker 2: on your on your your sites and stuff, and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's the place that's gonna that's gonna find it. And uh,
Speaker 2: it's really hard to find that set that third access
Speaker 2: in your backyard. You'll have to go shoot that in
Speaker 2: at a steep angle somewhere out of town if you
Speaker 2: have that opportunity somewhere. But yeah, hit hit up those
Speaker 2: those extreme three D R archery shoots and and that'll
Speaker 2: really help you out for for season this fall.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, it'll frustrate the absolute hell out of
Speaker 1: you when you can't figure out how to deal with
Speaker 1: your third access and get it tuned in. So it'll
Speaker 1: be it's a great learning experience, yeah for sure. And
Speaker 1: it'll it'll really humble you that, like maybe I should
Speaker 1: keep my shots inside of forty or fifty when.
Speaker 2: It gets steep, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Stuff goes hey wire quick. Yeah. So, if you guys
Speaker 1: ever see pictures of me shooting off the tip top
Speaker 1: of my roof down to the target, just know that
Speaker 1: I'm not crazy. I'm just trying to get my third
Speaker 1: access dialed in, all right. Thanks a lot, Derek, I
Speaker 1: have a good one happy birthday, and we'll check in later.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Yep yep,