Speaker 1: This is Me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You Can't
Speaker 1: Predict Anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the
Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor where
Speaker 1: you stand with on X. Okay, we'll get the introductions
Speaker 1: in a minute, but I want to I guess I
Speaker 1: want to ask you guys one thing first, because this
Speaker 1: is the thing I always try to explain to people, Um,
Speaker 1: what are the things as outfitters, as guides and you
Speaker 1: guide mountain hunts? What things prevent people from realizing their dreams?
Speaker 1: I'm talking about clients of the things that prevent clients
Speaker 1: from realizing their dreams when they go on a guided
Speaker 1: mountain hunt. Is it ger or like r Is it
Speaker 1: that their boots don't fit right? You know? I I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it there. We've taken a lot
Speaker 1: of people really don't know how to hunt. Uh. I'll
Speaker 1: be I'll say, well, let's go over here, and I
Speaker 1: can hear them. They're they're talking loud there, They're they're
Speaker 1: heavy with their feet on the ground. They don't sometimes
Speaker 1: realize or sense the fact that that mere thudding through
Speaker 1: the timber is something that animals pick up on very quickly.
Speaker 1: And uh, in fact, I've I've done some experiment and
Speaker 1: when I've trying been trying to make a stick or
Speaker 1: a snake, I've taken sticks, and uh, with my walking,
Speaker 1: I'll change up my rhythm of my walk so that
Speaker 1: I'm not known as a man walk through the timber.
Speaker 1: And I think it's it's been advantageous. But those are
Speaker 1: things that I've observed from people that they don't know
Speaker 1: how to hunt an animal, how to sneak on an animal,
Speaker 1: and they just take for granted that maybe the outfit
Speaker 1: is gonna just magically be able to beam one over
Speaker 1: on the hill and they're gonna be able to shoot it.
Speaker 1: And so there is it's a it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a learned you know, I've had to tell hunters, you
Speaker 1: guys have got a step more quiet, watch what you're
Speaker 1: stepping on. Um, because if they if they're merely there
Speaker 1: just to let you be their eyes, the whole experience
Speaker 1: is really not a realize full hunting experience. I want
Speaker 1: to get okay, go ahead, they land, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna do our intros. I just want to lead in
Speaker 1: with the sizz Well. I was gonna say from my
Speaker 1: my standpoint, one of the biggest challenges is a physical
Speaker 1: capacity of the hunter. UM. Obviously at the elevation that
Speaker 1: we hunt at, UM, guys coming from two thousand foot
Speaker 1: of elevation, if they're in poor shape, poor condition, they struggle.
Speaker 1: Obviously we hunt with horses, but to get them from
Speaker 1: the horse to where we need to get the shop made,
Speaker 1: sometimes that window closes before they can get in position.
Speaker 1: They're huffing and puffing and out of breath because the hike,
Speaker 1: you know that fifty ye hards away from the horse
Speaker 1: just blew their doors off, and they struggle to get
Speaker 1: their guns steady enough to be able to make a
Speaker 1: good shot. So physical fitness, physical fitness, very important. Is shooting.
Speaker 1: Is shooting ability up high on the list most definitely,
Speaker 1: and knowing where your gun shoots, UM, and knowing obviously
Speaker 1: the range that we shoot, you know, not we don't
Speaker 1: like anything much over four fifty, you know, but we
Speaker 1: want guys to feel comfortable with those longer ranges. UM.
Speaker 1: And if they're coming from you know, the eastern side
Speaker 1: of the state, sometimes those shots that they take aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily they're not used to that long range shot and
Speaker 1: so spending time behind the scope learning the timing of
Speaker 1: the cross hairs, I'm getting that down is a key
Speaker 1: part to being able to make a good shot. Uh.
Speaker 1: My last comment before we do to our intros is, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to well Landing and Stuart. Uh. My favorite
Speaker 1: quote from the week was when Stewart was telling a
Speaker 1: story about the second nicest bark he'd ever laid eyes on,
Speaker 1: and the client took a shot and as he expressed it,
Speaker 1: he said, and he didn't even spook it. Yes, hold on,
Speaker 1: I'd like to find I'd like to find out since
Speaker 1: you have to ask where shooting ability falls in in
Speaker 1: the ranking, I'd like to know where a positive mental
Speaker 1: attitude falls in in the the ranking, to you know, to
Speaker 1: help someone's success, Like, is that high very important? Well,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt it's important because I think and I've
Speaker 1: hunted in a few other areas and uh, one of
Speaker 1: the things is can be very discouraging to two people
Speaker 1: are thinking we're spotting four hundred yards away across the
Speaker 1: canyon or five. I don't know if I've got that
Speaker 1: kind of ability, and so there's there is a mindset
Speaker 1: that because a lot of our clients have been, like
Speaker 1: Landing alluded to that they're shooting maybe a hundred yards
Speaker 1: because that's what their terrain and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the scrubbery and trees allow anything more than that, then
Speaker 1: they don't see the animal. And so when they come
Speaker 1: out here, they're kind of at awe at the fact
Speaker 1: that they can see an animal for such a distance
Speaker 1: and trying to close that gap mentally to think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a chance. And that's quite honestly, I believe that's
Speaker 1: where some of the experience, you know, Landon's have been
Speaker 1: dragging him up there since he was a four year
Speaker 1: old boy. Um, I've been up there a little over
Speaker 1: thirty years now, and it makes a difference when you
Speaker 1: know the terrain, when you watch the behavior of animals
Speaker 1: when they're under pressure, where they go, what they do, Um,
Speaker 1: that's what that can That can help if if they
Speaker 1: have confidence in the outfit ors from that perspective as well.
Speaker 1: But the pausitive attitude, I mean, I've had guys that
Speaker 1: when I got out there, they just thought this is
Speaker 1: way too tough, it's way too physical. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got the horse to deal with. You know, there's too
Speaker 1: much Uh. How how long does it take for that
Speaker 1: to creep in on someone? I think it depends on
Speaker 1: a lot of the circumstances they come in contact with.
Speaker 1: You know, if if they have a bad experience right
Speaker 1: at the front of the hunt, you know, where a
Speaker 1: horse spook him or has a tendency to intimidate them
Speaker 1: because of us situation. I think we've seen guys it
Speaker 1: impacts them to the point that they're nervous to get
Speaker 1: on the horse. And there's been some guys that just
Speaker 1: to throw the talent and said, hey, well we're done,
Speaker 1: We're not hunting anymore, you know, we've got too much
Speaker 1: to lose or whatever. Um and So I think there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of things that can happen depending on
Speaker 1: how strong they are when they come mentally, um, how
Speaker 1: where their confidence level is and their ability physically um
Speaker 1: and uh. And then you know that first day, what
Speaker 1: they see, the excitement that's generated from the animals, and
Speaker 1: there's a combination of things. I think they play into that.
Speaker 1: Now let's go, well, um, I'm landing Peterson. I've been,
Speaker 1: like my dad said, I've been with them going ever
Speaker 1: since I was a four year old boy. UM. I
Speaker 1: loved hunting from a just beginning, and I always I
Speaker 1: would get left at home and I hated that. UM.
Speaker 1: So when I had the opportunity at the age of
Speaker 1: twelve to go on, you'll be able to go up
Speaker 1: there when there weren't clients on your camp. So we
Speaker 1: went up in the summertime, and that's when we would
Speaker 1: do this, the fishing and stuff. But I wasn't allowed.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't get to go up when we
Speaker 1: were doing a hunt because I was too small and
Speaker 1: I didn't have the physical capacity to keep up. And
Speaker 1: so I look forward to that, you know, when I
Speaker 1: got to do that at the age of twelve. So
Speaker 1: I've been up in the hills every year since I
Speaker 1: was twelve years old, hunting up in that area. And
Speaker 1: you're you're born in Coltville, whelming I was born actually
Speaker 1: in Price, Utah and moved here when I was a
Speaker 1: year old. So yep, and tell everyone the name of
Speaker 1: your guys business, Crooked Sky Outfitters is the name of
Speaker 1: our business. UM, and I I bought in with my
Speaker 1: dad as an actual partner. UM bought an uncle out
Speaker 1: who had been a partner with my dad. I bought
Speaker 1: him out, uh six years ago and uh, and it
Speaker 1: was I just was my dream to have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to step into that role. My uncle was getting to
Speaker 1: a point physically where he wasn't able to keep up,
Speaker 1: and so then I was able to step in by
Speaker 1: him out and become an equal partner with my dad
Speaker 1: in the business. Adam Weatherby, Yeah, it was your second
Speaker 1: time on the show. Yeah, kind of old news around here,
Speaker 1: I guess right. Yeah, it was on back in the spring,
Speaker 1: I think with Brenda, my wife, and uh, but I'm
Speaker 1: Adam Weatherby. Uh this should be your job to tell
Speaker 1: everybody what we've just been up to in the mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do it, or can do it so anyways,
Speaker 1: Adam Weatherby weather be seventy four year old firearm's business,
Speaker 1: get to run it. Took it over from my dad,
Speaker 1: who took it over from my grandpa. That's what we do.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what we've been up to, like what
Speaker 1: we've been up to you so well, I gotta call well,
Speaker 1: you're honest. We started talking back earlier this year, and
Speaker 1: I knew that Johannese and Steve had a bunch of
Speaker 1: points for mule deer in Wyoming, and I had moved
Speaker 1: to Wyoming, move my business there. Let me back you
Speaker 1: up for a second. Just sure people are tracking, okay,
Speaker 1: meaning we had applied unsuccessfully for whelming eight years. Well
Speaker 1: it's not quite okay, go ahead putting in for put
Speaker 1: different points. There's some regions in wow I mean it's nonresidents.
Speaker 1: Break it down. Break it down that some regions in
Speaker 1: in Wyoming that are harder to draw than others. And
Speaker 1: get a tag in and Stephen Janice here wanted to
Speaker 1: go shoot a nice buck, and so they put in
Speaker 1: for several years. And if you put in unsuccessfully you
Speaker 1: can obtain a point, or else you can just buy
Speaker 1: a point. Correct. I think I think a lot of
Speaker 1: those years we probably bought the point. How much is
Speaker 1: the point for the mule deer thirty for an animot
Speaker 1: for you put in over three bucks over a period
Speaker 1: of eight years, that's correct, And then you bought the tag,
Speaker 1: puts in the perspective which probably cast another few in boxed. Actually,
Speaker 1: then I want to say the tags were around a
Speaker 1: few six. Yeah, that's about what a non resident ELK
Speaker 1: tag is. But what about a half non Uh it
Speaker 1: was four hundred fifty. I can't remember now what the
Speaker 1: non resin on the deer is. So there we were,
Speaker 1: so there you were. So you guys Janice and Steve
Speaker 1: here had then put together this hunt that really started
Speaker 1: a couple of years back talking to a family member
Speaker 1: of these guys about doing this kind of dream southwestern
Speaker 1: Wyoming high country mule deer hunt. Yeah you guys that
Speaker 1: Uh well you know what law Stewart introduced himself. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: real quick, okay, and I'm Stewart Peterson. I have been
Speaker 1: in this outfitting business with initially with my uncle. Uh
Speaker 1: started back in the mid to late eighties, so right
Speaker 1: at about the thirty year mark, I've been marching around
Speaker 1: up there. I was raised in Cokeville as well. Um
Speaker 1: raised on a ranch, a cattle ranch here, and then
Speaker 1: I went to school for a bit and decided that
Speaker 1: wasn't really quite what I was interested in. But I
Speaker 1: I wanted to come home and ranch, and Dad and
Speaker 1: mom said no, we we think you need to get
Speaker 1: an idea what you want to do better than ranching.
Speaker 1: So I discouraged becoming a cattle rancher. They discouraged me
Speaker 1: from kind of because things worked tough, you know, we
Speaker 1: it was always toun. I grew up with was six,
Speaker 1: There were six siblings in the family, and we lived
Speaker 1: on a little house south of town, south of Cokeville,
Speaker 1: about seven miles and we uh kind of nicknamed that
Speaker 1: place the little House on the Prairie. And that's where
Speaker 1: we grew up with very little were there were six
Speaker 1: kids in a two bedroom home. Um, so very tight
Speaker 1: quarters has grown up and we just didn't seem like
Speaker 1: there was that much money. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: boiled down to for mom and dad and just said, hey,
Speaker 1: you've got to have a better life than that. It
Speaker 1: was a struggle. It was a wrestle, and so we
Speaker 1: that's what we grew up with. And and uh, I
Speaker 1: took a lot of shop classes in high school, would
Speaker 1: working that type of stuff, and and so I was
Speaker 1: pretty intrigued with that. And so I've been doing uh
Speaker 1: custom home rustic furniture cabinetry for a number of years now,
Speaker 1: and that's what's been my main livelihood. The outfitting has
Speaker 1: been my love. That's been what I've wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And and you know, of course in a while, I
Speaker 1: mean the draw has always made it a difficult challenge
Speaker 1: for us. We can book hunters, and we would book
Speaker 1: year after year the same hunters if they could get
Speaker 1: tags year after year. And so what it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: you know, really been a difficult path to try to
Speaker 1: hang on and make sure that we're able to feed
Speaker 1: a string of horses through the winter. And and uh
Speaker 1: we do do the summer pack trips and that helps
Speaker 1: uh to cover some of those costs. But the reality
Speaker 1: of it is is that the the outfitting business is
Speaker 1: something that I've enjoyed doing, um ever since I got
Speaker 1: into it. But it was something that I inspired, had
Speaker 1: aspired to do because my dad was a guide and
Speaker 1: I couldn't wait till when I was Back in our day,
Speaker 1: we had to be fourteen to go hunt, and I
Speaker 1: begged Dad to go up before that. He said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't tell your fourteen. So when I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: it was it was like having Christmas hit the week
Speaker 1: that we could go and it was mostly elk cunning
Speaker 1: at that time because the school led us out for
Speaker 1: a couple of days on the weekend so we could
Speaker 1: go up and and you know, four days we could
Speaker 1: be up in camp and I just ate that up
Speaker 1: you know, and of course I've always loved horses, and
Speaker 1: he had just really seem to meet my need to
Speaker 1: be up in the mountains on a good horse at
Speaker 1: the risk of getting ahead of ourselves. Uh, And Adamburn
Speaker 1: will come back to the whole what we're doing. But
Speaker 1: if you were discouraged by your parents from being a rancher,
Speaker 1: how did it feel when your son, who's sitting here,
Speaker 1: Landing got into ranching. Well, I I I've I've had
Speaker 1: the you know, the frank conversation about you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a good life, but it's a tough life. You know,
Speaker 1: the markets are up there. You know, you never know
Speaker 1: sometimes what your crops will do to you, Um, how
Speaker 1: the calves are gonna come in a way out so
Speaker 1: that you've got you know, what the price will be
Speaker 1: for those calves. So it's it's one of those it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, just about as good as maybe going
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas and and uh playing a chip because
Speaker 1: so he could be doing just as good he Mike
Speaker 1: could just I mean, but but Landing is going about
Speaker 1: it in a way that uh, you know, perhaps being
Speaker 1: a little smaller unit he can do. My dad was
Speaker 1: in the corporation with with two other brothers, and so
Speaker 1: they grew you know, and they built quite a cowherd
Speaker 1: and uh, and that was just how they did things,
Speaker 1: but there was never much that came back to it.
Speaker 1: Now they've been since been able to move some of
Speaker 1: the land that they had acquired and had paid off
Speaker 1: and and it's made their lives comfortable. For Heaven's sakes, sir, my,
Speaker 1: my folks are eighty two, so it came late in
Speaker 1: life for them to really enjoy some of the benefits
Speaker 1: that could have been earlier. And I think that's really
Speaker 1: why they steered me away. And I wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: they I think they're proud of what Landing is doing,
Speaker 1: as I am, um, but I think they've probably you know,
Speaker 1: crossed their fingers at markets will stay good and that
Speaker 1: the uh you know, hay prices won't be you know,
Speaker 1: so costly. So all of that comes into play. But
Speaker 1: it's I'm I've been excited for him to be able
Speaker 1: to have mostly that his home back home. We have,
Speaker 1: you know, they're cute little family there on a regular
Speaker 1: basis in our home and we just enjoy we enjoy
Speaker 1: the family scene. So for us, maybe as much as anything.
Speaker 1: I've been glad that that was one way to getting
Speaker 1: back home because there's not a lot of opportunities. But
Speaker 1: his entrepreneurial spirit has uh has compelled him to be
Speaker 1: able to to move in the direction of trying to
Speaker 1: build a cowherd. And h seems to be finding some
Speaker 1: success at some of the things he's been, you know,
Speaker 1: consistently researching, and so he's done. He's done a lot
Speaker 1: of homework, and uh, I think it's paying off. And
Speaker 1: we're excited his his mother and I are very excited
Speaker 1: to have him be in the neighborhood again. Okay, adn't
Speaker 1: get back to it now. So there we were, me
Speaker 1: and An. He waited eight years patiently, and we finally drew.
Speaker 1: Finally drew uh unit region in southwestern Wyoming known for
Speaker 1: having mature, really nice bucks. So I moved weather be
Speaker 1: our gun business from California and Wyoming, and I've been
Speaker 1: here a little over twelve months, which means that I
Speaker 1: can gain residency in Wyoming. So then I'm different than
Speaker 1: you guys. So at that point I'm special. Just go
Speaker 1: where everyone whenever you want, so I could go in
Speaker 1: for like forty bucks or whatever it is and just
Speaker 1: say I want to go hunt with Janice and Steve
Speaker 1: and then just go do it that day. And so
Speaker 1: that was put kind of how this thing how I
Speaker 1: hopped on board here was really jumping in with you
Speaker 1: guys is something that's really been a dream of yours. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm passionate about, you know, the high country, mule deer,
Speaker 1: back country horses, everything you guys were doing. And so
Speaker 1: at the slightest little conversation, I jumped in to team
Speaker 1: up with you guys and then Crooked Sky to head
Speaker 1: in for a week long pack trip to some pretty
Speaker 1: high elevation area with the high concentration of alchy mule
Speaker 1: dere but with the whole specific purpose of rifle hunting
Speaker 1: mule there. And that's what we did. It was a
Speaker 1: great job. Yeah, that was good. And I learned from
Speaker 1: Steve talked about talking about the story about how he
Speaker 1: met up with Crooked Sky, about the relative of these guys.
Speaker 1: Perry what's his last name? He wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: make you guys blush. I wish I had it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if I could full it up real quick. We
Speaker 1: had a lot of letters, but it caught our attention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. Perry emailed me today see how that was? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just uh we must have been talking about it
Speaker 1: on the podcast Talk Our Aspiration to draw a region
Speaker 1: g tags yeah yeah, and then he and then he
Speaker 1: emailed and said, if you do just so happens that
Speaker 1: my family has been running an outfit in business up
Speaker 1: there for how many years? Well, my uncle had started
Speaker 1: back in the real early sixties, so I you know,
Speaker 1: from about sixty on that TU was outfitting You guys
Speaker 1: are coming up on sixty years with yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't been on this planet. Well I happened just about
Speaker 1: on this planet that long. So uh, but that's kind
Speaker 1: of when he started. But he was it used to
Speaker 1: be S. R. Dayton Sharon read Dayton was his name
Speaker 1: with outfitters. When when when he brought me in, uh
Speaker 1: we obviously I was looking for a you know, opportunity
Speaker 1: to put a spin my spin on it, and we
Speaker 1: I said to me, maybe we can think up a
Speaker 1: name when we became partners and it went to Magic
Speaker 1: Mountain Outfitters. And then when Lanta came in, he says, dead,
Speaker 1: I think would be good if we could, you know,
Speaker 1: move in the direction of something where he's being involved,
Speaker 1: and that's when Crooked Skuy Outfitters evolved. And what was
Speaker 1: wrong with Magic Mountain sounds a little Spacey's in California
Speaker 1: in many in many ways, when you ride a horse
Speaker 1: up there in the mountains, it's like a theme park,
Speaker 1: right because it could get pretty wild, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's there's there's something magic about the hills and and
Speaker 1: uh and continues to be. But perhaps with Landing's uh
Speaker 1: you know, entrance into it, that kind of gave and
Speaker 1: up gave way for an opportunity to maybe elevate to
Speaker 1: something that was a little more updated to what people
Speaker 1: might see and envision in a So where did Crooked
Speaker 1: Sky how did how did that come about? A good question? Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's kind of a combination of things there. Um.
Speaker 1: One is is the train that we hunt is very jagged.
Speaker 1: As you stand in the bottom, there's big elevation, you know,
Speaker 1: climbs that you look up, you know, to the horizon
Speaker 1: and you see the jaggedness of the mountains. But the
Speaker 1: other part of it that we felt like would be
Speaker 1: beneficial it's because of my dad's experience, you know, former
Speaker 1: in his life, um where he was able to play
Speaker 1: some roles in some different movies, one of those being
Speaker 1: Against the Crooked Sky UM. And so that was part
Speaker 1: of the where the name came from as well. That
Speaker 1: we thought maybe it would give us the ability for
Speaker 1: people to make that connection UM and want to come
Speaker 1: and hunt with with a guy that you know that
Speaker 1: maybe they had grown up watching UM as a young man. UM.
Speaker 1: And and so that was kind of there was a
Speaker 1: couple of different reasons that we decided to go that direction. Stewart,
Speaker 1: you didn't include that in your he doesn't like talking
Speaker 1: about we had the pride out of him. We uh,
Speaker 1: you know when when we were talking about the name change,
Speaker 1: we we listed we had probably oh names of just
Speaker 1: you know, off the brainstorm and uh time that we
Speaker 1: did that we wrote down and we just let it
Speaker 1: sit and stew for a bit. And then we actually
Speaker 1: had family kind of uh say, weigh in on it.
Speaker 1: Atlanta's got to five other siblings and and we kind
Speaker 1: of talked about let them give some input. And when
Speaker 1: it boiled down to its we just thought, well, maybe
Speaker 1: this is it's the time is is okay? I'm I'm
Speaker 1: far enough past the the window went my age to
Speaker 1: to have maybe lost some of the um recognition, but
Speaker 1: yet I was, and I guess I was kind I've
Speaker 1: always been a little bit apprehensive about using the film
Speaker 1: uh status as a way to promote my success. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to try to do it in a way
Speaker 1: that I felt like I wasn't cheating anyway, because people,
Speaker 1: I wanted people to do it when they when they
Speaker 1: met me personally, that they would feel good about and
Speaker 1: not feel like, well, you know, this is kind of
Speaker 1: a make believe character. You know that he was in
Speaker 1: these other films, and is that how he is today
Speaker 1: or so? I guess I've always been a little apprehensive
Speaker 1: about it because I saw how people would treat me
Speaker 1: differently because if they knew who I was, and I
Speaker 1: I always had a little bit of a guard up,
Speaker 1: you know, with protecting myself that way, saying do they
Speaker 1: like me because of that or because of who I am?
Speaker 1: That was? That was probably one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I've drugged my feet and drugged my feet about ever
Speaker 1: using the film status. Well, I think also, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're kind of you're like an inherently modest person and
Speaker 1: you're not boisterous, so it probably makes it feel it's
Speaker 1: probably awkward. There's a lot of people would never let
Speaker 1: you forget that. Well, let's you know, I'll never forget
Speaker 1: the day somebody asked for my autograph and I thought,
Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding. I mean, I'm thirteen, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what's what's a What's a piece of paper and a
Speaker 1: name written scratched on there with my name on it?
Speaker 1: What what's it really worth? It didn't have any value
Speaker 1: or I couldn't see any uh you know. I in fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've to this day, I've ever
Speaker 1: asked for even the people that I worked with, I
Speaker 1: had him sign a book, but to to to go
Speaker 1: up and ask for any of them for their autograph,
Speaker 1: I just never did it. I just wasn't something that
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you guys have had to do a
Speaker 1: few of those, but for me, I was just it
Speaker 1: was an awkward I just felt awkward as could be.
Speaker 1: Um so in in uh you know, in that history
Speaker 1: early history as a young boy, um who wanted to
Speaker 1: be so normal in so many ways, and yet I
Speaker 1: was I wanted to excel in sports, and that's what
Speaker 1: I focused on in high school and and uh you know,
Speaker 1: but I but I've met the same resistance. It was
Speaker 1: almost like I was a wrestler in high school. And uh,
Speaker 1: I remember a tournament once we were at one of
Speaker 1: the other teams that was there a guy that was
Speaker 1: in my weight to send a little one of his
Speaker 1: younger buddies in the lighter weights come over to let
Speaker 1: me know that I would be counting the lights pretty
Speaker 1: quick if I was going to wrestle him. And uh,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, you gotta be kidding me. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy didn't even know who I was, but yet
Speaker 1: because I was a movie star, you know, he was
Speaker 1: gonna whoop me and it was gonna be some feather. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was the same way in football I have.
Speaker 1: You know, you had to tell us the resolution of
Speaker 1: that match. Well, we met in the championship and I
Speaker 1: went and made him count lights. So it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was for me that it kind of fueled the fire.
Speaker 1: I was competitive by nature, and when I got told
Speaker 1: that that was gonna happen, I thought, well, you, you
Speaker 1: dirty bugger, I'm gonna show you something different. So, you know,
Speaker 1: it was and it was a relief because it was
Speaker 1: it was a tournament here in town. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: I thought, I can't. I can't let this happen in
Speaker 1: my hometown. So you know, those are those are things
Speaker 1: that that all evolved with the film business. I guess
Speaker 1: at this point I was ready to say okay for
Speaker 1: the sake of helping my son in this business, for
Speaker 1: if he's gonna be able to carry it on, we've
Speaker 1: got to build it and and the name is going
Speaker 1: to have to do it. But I also want to
Speaker 1: make sure and recognize that when we're involved in this thing,
Speaker 1: we have a responsibility to what happens in the outdoors
Speaker 1: up there. I have a tremendous amount of respect for it.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very very spiritual place for me
Speaker 1: to be, uh, pondering who I am? How do I
Speaker 1: treat people? Am I am? I truly becoming a better person.
Speaker 1: And consequently our goal is is we hope that when
Speaker 1: we rubbed shoulders with good people up there, they improve
Speaker 1: us and we improved them. Yeah, you don't have any
Speaker 1: reason to be bashful about Uh. I don't think that
Speaker 1: that's you know that you got tangled up and doing
Speaker 1: movies when you were a kid. Um, because in the mountains, uh,
Speaker 1: and out running your business, you work incredibly hard and
Speaker 1: are very focused and extremely knowledgeable and very professional. And
Speaker 1: it's not I wouldn't even get I wouldn't even worry
Speaker 1: about having people be like, oh I didn't get you
Speaker 1: know what I thought I was gonna get. And it's
Speaker 1: just some Hollywood I mean, come on, that's that's all.
Speaker 1: It's just not But but it's an interesting it's an
Speaker 1: interesting talking point. It is. I mean, it happened to
Speaker 1: you when you were very young, and you deliberately walked
Speaker 1: away from it. Um, it just wasn't in my genetic
Speaker 1: makeup to want to be knowledge because of the film business. Now,
Speaker 1: if I debated knowledge, you know, in all of my
Speaker 1: accolades and in sports, that would have been fine. And
Speaker 1: it did happen, and it was much more pleasurable. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, I just was caught up in that. Uh.
Speaker 1: The thought is, I I don't want the film business
Speaker 1: to define me as being impressive in somebody's eyes. I
Speaker 1: wanted to do it on my own because I think
Speaker 1: that's what happens with a lot of these guys in
Speaker 1: the film business, is that all of the attention that
Speaker 1: they get makes them think that they have done it,
Speaker 1: you know, they've arrived, and in many cases they their
Speaker 1: lives become destroyed because they cannot they cannot accept living.
Speaker 1: You know what, I don't know. It's hard for me
Speaker 1: to explain it, but what I see is I see
Speaker 1: it too often where these people who rise to the
Speaker 1: status of of star symbol and almost to a worshipful
Speaker 1: symbol in many people's eyes, and then they can't measure up,
Speaker 1: they find themselves not measure up to And I think
Speaker 1: we see a lot of that happening. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: my my instincts were that I never wanted that to
Speaker 1: be the reason why I felt good about me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it just wasn't wasn't the case. Um oh,
Speaker 1: you know what Seth introduced yourself, Seth Morris, you've been
Speaker 1: on a thousand times, a couple a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Seth is kind of replacing Janni, because yes, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be doing uh kind of like doing Yanni's job coming
Speaker 1: up here in South Dakota. That's right. Yeah, Yanni's going
Speaker 1: on a big Colorado adventure. Not the first. It'll be
Speaker 1: the second um Meteor episode that I haven't produced since
Speaker 1: I started producing him. One was I was out for
Speaker 1: a knee surgery. But this is the first time we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it deliberately. That's a good trip to Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you you seth do you you you be honest?
Speaker 1: Do you be honest? Uh? Do you est more like
Speaker 1: a like a mentor or someone you need to knock down?
Speaker 1: No mentor, for sure, You're not like I'm gonna know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to replace bust your other need. You're
Speaker 1: not thinking that I'm still trying to learn from Okay, good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to knock him down. Okay. Um, at
Speaker 1: some point that people does have to walk away from
Speaker 1: the teacher. There is a thing that someone explained to
Speaker 1: me that happens in a mentorship situation is uh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember who. There's some philosopher someone who discussed this
Speaker 1: that in a mentor relationship, there's a part of the
Speaker 1: the mentee, part of the mentees development. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it's a necessary part of the development is to develop
Speaker 1: an animosity towards the mentor. M But I think that
Speaker 1: that has to happen for that person to to move on.
Speaker 1: So Steth give me a heads up. Well, that just
Speaker 1: makes me think. Now I'll be thinking all night we're
Speaker 1: sharing this uh room over here. I'll be thinking, when
Speaker 1: is my mentor Stephen Roella, what am I gonna gain?
Speaker 1: That animal? Just got that big old buck. They explain
Speaker 1: for folks. What explained for folks like how you're guiding
Speaker 1: business works because of the thousand ways people guide. Right,
Speaker 1: you could Lisa ranch and and you know, you could
Speaker 1: own a ranch or Lisa ranch and clients come out
Speaker 1: and they hunt the ranch. You could you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you like, you got like guys that run bear baits.
Speaker 1: And so a client comes and they hire a guide
Speaker 1: and the guide sets them out to watch a bear bait.
Speaker 1: Just kind of talk like real general terms people who
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with Western hunting or guided hunting, sort of
Speaker 1: like what is the what is the package you provide
Speaker 1: or what is the experience you provide. We're referred to
Speaker 1: as what is a full service guide guided hunt, where
Speaker 1: in which we from the time they arrived with us,
Speaker 1: we and get them into camp. We are providing the
Speaker 1: services of their meals and their horses, their attack, everything
Speaker 1: but their personal gear and their license, and we take
Speaker 1: care of that every day during that hunt. And uh
Speaker 1: which means that the hunter we try to make sure
Speaker 1: that their horses uh fit them, their saddles fit them,
Speaker 1: and uh, the saddles are you know in place. We're
Speaker 1: we're aware of those kind of things because we we
Speaker 1: we we've been around the block a little bit now
Speaker 1: we know that if saddles aren't tightened up, that's when
Speaker 1: any experience writers can can get hurt because they're not
Speaker 1: aware of when the saddle starts to slip what they
Speaker 1: need to be doing. And you're comfortable putting a totally
Speaker 1: inexperienced rider on a horse on the ones that we have, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't. We've got some that we know they're just
Speaker 1: not ready for for guys that don't know have don't
Speaker 1: have much horsemanship skill. We just we have to we
Speaker 1: have to know the horses, um, pretty intimately to the
Speaker 1: extent of knowing where they are and where they are,
Speaker 1: where they fit in the pecking order of our horses,
Speaker 1: because that makes a difference. We we need to know
Speaker 1: a little bit about the person well a lot about
Speaker 1: the personality, because quite honestly, people and horses can have
Speaker 1: personalities of clash, and we see that on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Sets horse uh would uh physically assault the horse in
Speaker 1: front of it my horse was it was it was
Speaker 1: an ass buyer for sure. Well, and some of that
Speaker 1: because she's a mayor and uh and and sometimes the
Speaker 1: mayors have those little nippick issues that they like to
Speaker 1: get after another horse because they are a mayor. And
Speaker 1: and that doesn't say anything about womanhood. I'm just saying that.
Speaker 1: That's if you talk to anybody that knows, uh, horses,
Speaker 1: A lot of your people like to use guildings because
Speaker 1: guildings are way more even kill castrated mail. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: your mayor's, especially if they're cycling, they can be kind
Speaker 1: of contentkerous and they have a hard time dealing with
Speaker 1: other horses under those conditions. And some are just have
Speaker 1: that kind of a continued personality like that, and we
Speaker 1: don't know why, but they And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things you have to understand, you know, as you get
Speaker 1: to know horse flesh a little bit, is it, they
Speaker 1: have a personality just as distinct as people do. They think, oh,
Speaker 1: a horse, four legs, they run beautifully, they you know,
Speaker 1: they're athletic and this and that. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of personality that you have to be aware of when
Speaker 1: you're watching a horse in your string and how they
Speaker 1: perform around different people. We ask people, what's your experience? Now?
Speaker 1: If they're honest. Uh, those that are honest, we can say, well,
Speaker 1: we've got one that's gonna fit the bill. But if
Speaker 1: we have if they tell us, well, I've ridden quite
Speaker 1: a few times, and then we put them on a
Speaker 1: horse that has a little more fire under their tail,
Speaker 1: then they then they get they get kind of intimidated
Speaker 1: or thinking, I'm not as good as I thought I was.
Speaker 1: Did you know, did you realize that one of our
Speaker 1: camera guys, Mike, Uh, I feel like he hadn't hadn't
Speaker 1: he had never first time he did? He tell you
Speaker 1: that was the up front about that, about that. And
Speaker 1: then I've ridden a handful of Uh, maybe I get like,
Speaker 1: maybe I get on a horse. I probably don't get
Speaker 1: on a horse every year even right, but I've had
Speaker 1: occasion to ride here and there. Um, I would say, though,
Speaker 1: and you know better than me, I would say that
Speaker 1: the topography uh, and and the trails and lack of
Speaker 1: trails where you guys ride would have to be that
Speaker 1: like if you're gonna put like riding on a you know,
Speaker 1: like a one to ten and severity, you're like up
Speaker 1: there there, you'd agree, right, I mean, you're you're in
Speaker 1: the nine. I felt like we were ten every day. Well,
Speaker 1: Seth has a horse allergy. So Seth has a horse allergy,
Speaker 1: and his horse fell, so he was like from he
Speaker 1: was out from and I have no experience and no experience. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that we run into
Speaker 1: is each time we get with new clients, you try
Speaker 1: to associate and get a feel for what number one,
Speaker 1: what their confidence level is, number two, what their experience
Speaker 1: level is. And then also the physical makeup of the
Speaker 1: individual is another component that we look at, what you mean,
Speaker 1: as far as their size, UM, and we try to
Speaker 1: you know, kind of pair them up with a horror.
Speaker 1: We feel like we'll work with them, like my dad mentioned,
Speaker 1: personality wise, but also in their ability and their stature
Speaker 1: to be able to carry a person um because a
Speaker 1: lot of times the horses are more than capable of
Speaker 1: carrying them, you know, and following the horse in front,
Speaker 1: which is typically your guide. UM. And so we try
Speaker 1: not to put people in a situation where they feel
Speaker 1: like their life is in danger um because of their inexperience. UM.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, obviously there's there is that confidence level.
Speaker 1: We do have certain horses that, based on the way
Speaker 1: they move and the way they travel, they just have
Speaker 1: the capacity to help settle or um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: bring a little bit of peace to the people that
Speaker 1: are riding them. I like it that Janice took you
Speaker 1: guys aside and said, the get hurt all over the
Speaker 1: slowest I got, the slowest in the world. She's a
Speaker 1: nonreact her. She she really does. She doesn't get excited
Speaker 1: about much unless she's in the lead. When I used
Speaker 1: to ride her, I wrote her for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and uh, she she was really spooky when she
Speaker 1: was the lead. Because your lead horse is your alarm.
Speaker 1: Watched and you told me that taken off and I
Speaker 1: and I thought about it watching Blues ears because Blue
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to be out front. Today you said,
Speaker 1: the lead horse will do its ears different than the
Speaker 1: horses behind. They turn them and angle them forward. That
Speaker 1: was weird to see that she she does that and that,
Speaker 1: and and they are you know, and every horse behind
Speaker 1: the lead horse is somewhat in a cat more casual,
Speaker 1: relaxed feel because they know that if there's something that's
Speaker 1: gonna bugger the front horse they're a little safer. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like that old adage about if you're being
Speaker 1: chased by a bear with your buddy, it's who's the fastest,
Speaker 1: you know it's gonna happen. And they kind of get
Speaker 1: relaxed in that second position knowing that the first one
Speaker 1: is is the one that's going to take the hip
Speaker 1: if something ever happens. Yeah, Seth was saying his horse
Speaker 1: doesn't like to be first or last. No, High Heels
Speaker 1: was when when when she would be in the back,
Speaker 1: she would constantly like her head would constantly be off
Speaker 1: to the side behind looking behind it. And that's and
Speaker 1: that's typical of of the hind horse as well. They
Speaker 1: are somewhat the watchdog on the back and so they're
Speaker 1: they're a little more antsy about what's gonna come up
Speaker 1: and bite them on the butt. Yeah, she didn't like
Speaker 1: that at all. And uh, they that's just but the
Speaker 1: horses in the middle they're kind of cool, you know.
Speaker 1: They think, well, the front, the back, they've got us covered.
Speaker 1: Old Hi Heels love the middle. Yeah, she's the middle horse. Interesting, Blondie,
Speaker 1: the horse I was riding, she didn't like to be
Speaker 1: out front too much. She liked to be the second horse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's uh and some of that by nature and some
Speaker 1: of us by habits. You know, you ride a horse
Speaker 1: enough in the front, they get used to liking to
Speaker 1: be in the front. Um. But then there's those and
Speaker 1: and people are the same way. You know. I I
Speaker 1: make a lot of being raised on a ranch, I
Speaker 1: make a lot of comparisons between cattle and people. And
Speaker 1: my wife doesn't always appreciate that. But that's something I
Speaker 1: observed and I thought, yeah, that's just like so and sober,
Speaker 1: that's just like that person. And that's just because you
Speaker 1: you see, they're not just something that stands out in
Speaker 1: the field and is dumb. They they have a personality,
Speaker 1: they have a mind, um, and so you you do
Speaker 1: recognize that. And those are those are really those those
Speaker 1: are important issues in the field to try to help
Speaker 1: you understand how to be safe. We when we're shopping
Speaker 1: for horses to replace uh, some of our older stock,
Speaker 1: we're pretty uh cognizant of what we see in their eye. First,
Speaker 1: because there's something in the eye of a horse when
Speaker 1: you look at him, and without them really looking at you,
Speaker 1: but just watching their behavior, you get a sense or
Speaker 1: feel are they one that trust people trust you or
Speaker 1: they always watching you. Uh. The ones that are always
Speaker 1: watching you sometimes are the ones that can really uh
Speaker 1: get messed up in a in a string. Uh. Growing up,
Speaker 1: my dad always said, you know, horse talking about the
Speaker 1: difference between horses and mules. And you know, maybe people
Speaker 1: in the mule businesses have a way different experience, but
Speaker 1: Dad said, you know, a horse will let you actually
Speaker 1: hurt him into a position of being hurt um, whereas
Speaker 1: a mule. And we had a few meals through the
Speaker 1: years and they just wouldn't they flat out if they
Speaker 1: thought they were gonna get hurt, were in a predicament
Speaker 1: that they weren't gonna let you do it. And that's
Speaker 1: why they'd say stubborn as a mule, they'd lock up.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get them to do what you thought, and
Speaker 1: you'd get get on a horse and you can make
Speaker 1: them do that. And uh. And so we see that
Speaker 1: a lot, uh with our animals. There's a trust factor.
Speaker 1: So we look at we look at their you know,
Speaker 1: not only their physical stature and their their athleticism. But
Speaker 1: Landing alluded the fact that not every horse that your
Speaker 1: ride that's really good on flat land is going to
Speaker 1: be good up in in the hills. It's it's a
Speaker 1: different style of balance and between rider and slope. Um.
Speaker 1: I had the conversation with Adam a little bit about
Speaker 1: you know sometimes why some horses feel like they slip
Speaker 1: a little bit. Well, some of that's due to the rider,
Speaker 1: because of the way the rider balances himself, you know,
Speaker 1: is he working against the horse on a side hill
Speaker 1: for instance. We've talked about that early on. I I
Speaker 1: tell my hunters all the time, don't lean into the mountain.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're just taking a folks on point and
Speaker 1: it's it's like you're almost as getting and leaning. They
Speaker 1: get they get nervous because they're on a side hill. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We walked one night after dark. We walk next to
Speaker 1: a cliff that would have been absolute death. It would
Speaker 1: be like if you went off the cliff, you die,
Speaker 1: You and the horse would die. And and uh and
Speaker 1: I sat there more like what does the horses sort
Speaker 1: of awareness of the fact that it would die if
Speaker 1: it fell off that cliff? And you could definitely feel
Speaker 1: your body wind lean like lean the horse into a
Speaker 1: safe a motorcycle. Yeah, And I remember what you were
Speaker 1: saying is like let the horse balance itself. Don't the
Speaker 1: same thing happened when when because Bandy, my horse slipped
Speaker 1: on some shale one day and slipped on some ice
Speaker 1: going up a hill. And I've ridden uh a decent
Speaker 1: amountain had horses when I was young, and yet I
Speaker 1: found myself timid going up the ice. It was pretty
Speaker 1: steep and it was pretty icy, and she was slipping.
Speaker 1: She felt me being timid, and I was kind of
Speaker 1: pulling her back, like whoa, okay, let's go one step
Speaker 1: at a time, he said. One of the horse's best friends,
Speaker 1: or momentum in that case. So I was holding her
Speaker 1: back from her natural instinct. She's like, dude, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: power or this Adam, it's no big deal. It's just
Speaker 1: a little icy slope. Let me go. I didn't. She slipped.
Speaker 1: My fault, and from the rest of the trip, when
Speaker 1: he gave me that momentum motivational speech, like we'd get
Speaker 1: to something that I'm like, that's pretty shaley, uh, pretty icy,
Speaker 1: pretty snow, and just go, you know, and just start
Speaker 1: kicking and we can just truck up this thing. And
Speaker 1: she had no problem with it. And that's a big
Speaker 1: thing I think too, is that whole trust factor at
Speaker 1: night without our head lamps on, it's that same thing
Speaker 1: right when we're on the side of the cliffs. It's like,
Speaker 1: this horse can do it. Let it do it, and
Speaker 1: don't hold it back. Explain to people a little bit
Speaker 1: like what happens on a trip where in terms of
Speaker 1: sort of to get out to your camp, like the
Speaker 1: length of ride and then and then what you arrive at. Well,
Speaker 1: basically from Cokeville, what we do is we drive two
Speaker 1: hours by truck. Um. From that point, we trail head
Speaker 1: out and and we ride from the trailhead another seven
Speaker 1: miles on horseback through a variety of up and downs
Speaker 1: and and and some some steeper country um. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it's definitely one of those things when we're hunting,
Speaker 1: you're staying on the mountain tail dark, and you're typically
Speaker 1: leaving in the dark from camp, and so you spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time and can't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on the horse in the dark, and and so
Speaker 1: people can get intimidated by that, wondering if their horse
Speaker 1: can actually even see, if they're going to be able
Speaker 1: to follow the trail, And so the tendency for a
Speaker 1: lot of people is to put their head light on,
Speaker 1: which it actually impedes the ability the horse to see. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a I know that, that's true. That
Speaker 1: was a difficult thing for me too. That was that
Speaker 1: would do it at times, but at times I had
Speaker 1: to turn my light. Well, it was a it's a
Speaker 1: trust issue, and that's what I guess. We were in
Speaker 1: that trail so many times and times and some of
Speaker 1: those darker timber patches. It really is. It's it is
Speaker 1: no different then when you're in a roller coaster and
Speaker 1: it goes through the dark tunnel and you can't see
Speaker 1: your hand. They might not have a tree branch at
Speaker 1: I level. On the trail. There could be tree branches
Speaker 1: at I level. Like Walt Disney doesn't like hold a
Speaker 1: spruce bow like out, Yeah, as you're going through the tunnel,
Speaker 1: slap you in the face of the thing. If I
Speaker 1: had multiple people in front of me and they weren't
Speaker 1: going out, I'm like, cool man, I'll turn my light off.
Speaker 1: But when I'm out. When I happened to be in
Speaker 1: front for a little bit, I couldn't let my I
Speaker 1: I theoretically I understood I was like the horse stay
Speaker 1: on the trail, but I couldn't bring myself to do
Speaker 1: it well. So I needed to know if I was
Speaker 1: gonna get smacked in the face when I rolled out
Speaker 1: the other night, Saturday night, when I left the trail
Speaker 1: or left camp about ten thirty at night, UM, I
Speaker 1: would periodically turn my light on to look back and
Speaker 1: check the pack horse. So I was leading out to
Speaker 1: make sure the packs were square. Every time I turned
Speaker 1: my light on to look back, they would stop because
Speaker 1: they couldn't see anymore. Um. And so at that point,
Speaker 1: like I just knew that I needed to shut my
Speaker 1: light off and and just periodically check. Which there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, but it shows the fact that it
Speaker 1: does impede their ability to continue to see. Yeah, your Stewart,
Speaker 1: you kind of I don't even want to call it
Speaker 1: passive aggressive. I was out front one at one moment,
Speaker 1: I want to in front for a minute, and I
Speaker 1: had my lamp on, and uh, you said to me,
Speaker 1: isn't it amazing how they can find their way in
Speaker 1: the dark too? Me turn your head later. Uh you
Speaker 1: guys camp, so you're camp something that you have a
Speaker 1: camp in the National Force? Yep, it's all public um,
Speaker 1: and so you know really the thing that sets spart
Speaker 1: is to be able to get back in that back
Speaker 1: country and and and get away from the public because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that don't want to go
Speaker 1: to the effort of getting back there, um, and so
Speaker 1: we rely on the horses to do that because it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of trying, I mean another transporting gear,
Speaker 1: but transporting games. Yeah, you knock something down seven miles.
Speaker 1: Who wants to pack an elkout and have to make
Speaker 1: four trips It's not gonna be and just going down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just a downhill. You got up and down
Speaker 1: and you're climbing in elevation of probably two thousand feet
Speaker 1: at any given point. So and then you so it's
Speaker 1: on National forest, but you guys have um, you have
Speaker 1: an arrangement with the National Forest. We have a special
Speaker 1: use permit that that we have you know, the rights
Speaker 1: to for a period of time and then we can
Speaker 1: renew that. For instance, we just renewed ours this year,
Speaker 1: which will be good for another eight years um. And
Speaker 1: then they periodically you know, go over things. They want
Speaker 1: to make sure you're abiding by the rules that are
Speaker 1: set out by the Forest Service to uh be able
Speaker 1: to run a camp uh and do it right. We're
Speaker 1: governed kind of by two bodies that where we're hunting
Speaker 1: on the Forest Service ground and we have some we
Speaker 1: hunt on on some other uh government grounds. But uh
Speaker 1: speaking of the Forest Service, UM, we we fill a
Speaker 1: report out to them every year at the year's end
Speaker 1: saying what we had for clients, how many days they
Speaker 1: were on the forest and uh and we pay a
Speaker 1: fee and and uh so that's where the fee comes
Speaker 1: to place and how much you're using it. We we
Speaker 1: we pay a flat rate fee for the camp so
Speaker 1: and then and then we pay a percentage of the
Speaker 1: gross income at the end of the year. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then we're governed also certain as far as the outfitter
Speaker 1: license which I hold uh for Cricket Sky Outfitters. Um,
Speaker 1: they kind of govern us as well, making sure that
Speaker 1: we're abiding by the laws, the game and fish laws
Speaker 1: and as well as the Forest Service. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: responsibilities that we have there. And what you have. The
Speaker 1: infrastructure you have is pretty lights. You have a small
Speaker 1: corral which is large as composed of brush and log YEP.
Speaker 1: I gathered that one time it was the site to behold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one time, the you know, the snows get pretty deep
Speaker 1: up there and and break down your fences. That we
Speaker 1: had a bucking pull crail fence all the way around,
Speaker 1: but the snows of since dilapidated that and sometimes we've
Speaker 1: never had the time to go up because it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of energy to try to drag dead lodge
Speaker 1: pull pine from off the mountain there, you know, two
Speaker 1: ft or two hundred yards or three hundred yards up
Speaker 1: that drag it down. And uh, it's been probably twenty
Speaker 1: years since we did the crail initially like that, so
Speaker 1: it's lasts a long time, but it's as as you
Speaker 1: can see. You know, the weathers has warrant. The horses
Speaker 1: crib on it, and you see poles break after that.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's that's one of the things. And
Speaker 1: we've appreciated at least the Forest Service Department that we
Speaker 1: work without a camera. They've been good people who work
Speaker 1: with and and have been been very helpful. And um,
Speaker 1: we've been great that we've had that fortunate first of
Speaker 1: all that Uncle Sharon was able to get that camp
Speaker 1: back in the early sixties. Uh, even when he didn't
Speaker 1: use it that much back then, and it wasn' until
Speaker 1: I came in that we started to really use that
Speaker 1: upper camp because we have a we have a lower
Speaker 1: base camp and that was accessible by and still as
Speaker 1: accessible by vehicle. Um so, but I've always been in
Speaker 1: the upper camp and so I've always enjoyed the aspect
Speaker 1: of what we have there. It's a lot more work
Speaker 1: because we have to pack all our feed in by
Speaker 1: by horses. We have to you know, make sure that
Speaker 1: we've uh got that feed in because it's a long
Speaker 1: ways to go back and get feed. If you don't
Speaker 1: have quite enough m yeah, you don't. You don't graze
Speaker 1: your horses out, you don't pass your horse, don't pass
Speaker 1: it on the forest land. We don't have to bring
Speaker 1: in your food. We bring the food in and uh
Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's just it's a pretty labor
Speaker 1: intensive you know. We often say it's a labor of love. Well,
Speaker 1: we do, and it truly is because we all know
Speaker 1: that when when you really love something that you do
Speaker 1: as hard as it is and physically demands it is,
Speaker 1: it's not something you despise because it's work. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: something that you just say, I love what Every job
Speaker 1: has its uh, I call it grunt work jobs You know,
Speaker 1: stuff that you just don't like to do, uh, but
Speaker 1: we like doing just about everything, even though it's physical,
Speaker 1: it's it's demanding them. Yeah, and you have a you
Speaker 1: have a crowd, you have a cash you guys built
Speaker 1: out a beetle kill pine where you can put some
Speaker 1: stuff over year, and then you have a tarp structure
Speaker 1: for your tag yep. Then you have a couple of
Speaker 1: tent platforms we did. We set up wall tents on
Speaker 1: those tent platforms and put woodstoves there. We used to
Speaker 1: have the wood floors with with a large pull pine
Speaker 1: frames that we can just pull our tents over, and
Speaker 1: then we'd put the tents away and then then you know,
Speaker 1: the frames would stay up, but those frames would uh
Speaker 1: would often be caved in the next spring when we'd
Speaker 1: write in and we'd have to rebuild. And so it's
Speaker 1: been probably what ten or so years ago, close to
Speaker 1: ten years eight to ten years ago that we uh
Speaker 1: I decided to see if I couldn't get approval from
Speaker 1: the Forest Service to redo the floors, you know, like
Speaker 1: they were only uh, make them structured a little a
Speaker 1: little more sound. And then because I noticed today that
Speaker 1: you guys had uh they're put on sonitudes. Well we
Speaker 1: you know, we were packed in uh cement and report
Speaker 1: uh the concrete columns. Um, we couldn't put any rebar
Speaker 1: because that was an agreement that you know, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: do put it rebar. And I was looking at those.
Speaker 1: I was looking at those I was called pilings, what
Speaker 1: do you call them? The other columns, the cement columns.
Speaker 1: So that made it possible for us to to you know,
Speaker 1: build the floor a little more stable because they do
Speaker 1: have a footing. You know, we we enlarged the footing
Speaker 1: with the son below the sontitude. Um, I'm sorry, I'm dense.
Speaker 1: What is the word you're saying? Sauna tube is a
Speaker 1: cardboard form? Sauna sa I'm picturing like a room with woods,
Speaker 1: a lot of Yeah, it's probably like calling a tissue
Speaker 1: of kleenex, right, it's it's so, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: kind of a cardboard type were familiar with has never
Speaker 1: heard that term sato tube, and and so that's what
Speaker 1: we were. They were willing to let us, uh to
Speaker 1: do that, you know, improve the look and the camp site.
Speaker 1: But then I asked him if we could if we
Speaker 1: put a metal frame in there. So I got some
Speaker 1: and they proved that, and we got you could have
Speaker 1: the whole thing down in an hour, right yep. And
Speaker 1: and so we we've got the metal can do it
Speaker 1: frames that allows us to be able to pull those
Speaker 1: tints on there. And it just makes a comfortable camp
Speaker 1: site and a bigger stainless sink, stainless stink and woodstoves.
Speaker 1: The stainless stink came in on a horse, right, five
Speaker 1: big mule, five ft stay was sink. It's it's actually
Speaker 1: eight foot long, three bays three three sink bays in it,
Speaker 1: and then a drying rack on the end. And you're saying,
Speaker 1: the mule that carried it in couldn't lift his head
Speaker 1: up all the way because he had that thing on him.
Speaker 1: It had it had that on the on the we'd
Speaker 1: raise it up on the we're packing in some cots,
Speaker 1: and we put those in some hard paniards and we
Speaker 1: were able to elevate it off the top of her head. There.
Speaker 1: She couldn't raise it up all the way. She had
Speaker 1: to walk with her head about shoulder level all the way.
Speaker 1: I remember walking the tent the first time and saw that.
Speaker 1: I was like, now, how did that get here? She
Speaker 1: she was a good old meal. That it's an old
Speaker 1: We called her Molly. She was just the fact Landing
Speaker 1: was four years old when I put her, put him
Speaker 1: on her, and she just took care of She tried
Speaker 1: to brush him off on under pine boughs. Everyone's she
Speaker 1: was a big She was used a mule last year
Speaker 1: that was ginormous. In her name was Molly. That's fine,
Speaker 1: probably her she was, she's dead. She's she was about
Speaker 1: thirty when she died, so it would be a different mule.
Speaker 1: Then she'd been around the block. We packed her out
Speaker 1: of a you know. We fact, if we had real
Speaker 1: steep terrain to pack an elk out or a mule deer,
Speaker 1: we usually took her. Is it true that people tell
Speaker 1: me this all the time. Is it true that a
Speaker 1: horse or a mule will deliberately go under a sweeper
Speaker 1: to try to dislodge the rider or is it just
Speaker 1: that it knows it can fit and it doesn't think
Speaker 1: about whether or not there's a rider who's gonna get dislodged.
Speaker 1: I think there's a little both. Uh. I watched Landing
Speaker 1: with Molly, and she deliberately would walk close to trees.
Speaker 1: The trail wasn't under the tree. She would deliberately walk
Speaker 1: under it, and he just kind of laid back and
Speaker 1: then he popped up like one of those little blow
Speaker 1: up things that he had come right back up in
Speaker 1: the saddle there like you know, that was no big deal.
Speaker 1: He just ride around some more. But I watched her
Speaker 1: and it was very deliberate. Um, And I've seen it
Speaker 1: with other horses. I've I've ridden horses that too, seemed
Speaker 1: to be a little more deliberate in their approach to
Speaker 1: Rather than going around the tree, even when the trail
Speaker 1: was taking you around, they shortcut it. And uh so
Speaker 1: they're they're a little smart in which you think. I've
Speaker 1: seen some funny things. I saw a hunter. Uh we'd
Speaker 1: seen some milk and we were galloping up the hill
Speaker 1: because I'd kicked my horse and into a gallop and
Speaker 1: we were It wasn't steep hill, but it was enough.
Speaker 1: We had some momentum going. And he was the last
Speaker 1: guy and he wasn't hadn't had no control that horse,
Speaker 1: and she took him under a great big dug fur
Speaker 1: that had There was a pine bough that would have
Speaker 1: been probably about all three inches across hanging out from
Speaker 1: the tree at least twelve to fourteen feet, and it
Speaker 1: was low enough at saddle horn heights when she went
Speaker 1: underneath that, and that started in the flecks of that
Speaker 1: finally could only go so far. It just cat have
Speaker 1: pulled him off the back door. It was it was
Speaker 1: a cartoon to behold because it just it blew him
Speaker 1: right off the back of the horse. All the other
Speaker 1: guys were laughing at him. He wasn't too too excited
Speaker 1: about that, but they will, I mean they in that case.
Speaker 1: I don't think the horse was thinking how to get
Speaker 1: the rider off. I'm I'm just trying to catch up
Speaker 1: with the rest of the group, and he didn't. He
Speaker 1: wasn't right directly behind, and that guy didn't control the horse,
Speaker 1: so he ended up in a fine bow you know,
Speaker 1: catapult reason. But once we set out to start hunting,
Speaker 1: I feel like you probably did do this. I felt
Speaker 1: like you kind of wanted to work close first, and
Speaker 1: then as the days go on, you kind of gradually
Speaker 1: start doing bigger forays out and uh well, and where
Speaker 1: our camp is situated, I think we have some of
Speaker 1: the prime hunting just within a very short ride. I
Speaker 1: mean you're talking right above camp. You're here in our bugle.
Speaker 1: You're seeing deer within the ten minute ride of being
Speaker 1: outside of camp and we've even spotted deer from Camp Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's one of the great things of where
Speaker 1: we're located is that you have that nucleus, if you
Speaker 1: like Um, where you can just branch out and then
Speaker 1: we know there's other country out there that we can
Speaker 1: go out and and if we needed to, like we
Speaker 1: did this trip to try and see if we couldn't
Speaker 1: find I mean, we saw plenty of bucks. We just
Speaker 1: needed to see what else was out there and if
Speaker 1: we could find you know, that one big buck that
Speaker 1: was hanging out that was just maybe on the perimeter.
Speaker 1: But that's the definitely the benefit of where we're at.
Speaker 1: That first day out one Adam and I rode off
Speaker 1: with Stewart, I mean we must I think we saw
Speaker 1: fourteen bucks or something like that. Fourteen bucks I think
Speaker 1: was at the day thirty forty elk and two bears.
Speaker 1: It was understood. I was undisturbed, like it was undisturbed.
Speaker 1: It was the opening day, yeah, And we didn't go
Speaker 1: far and it was just dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of it getting distracted by out
Speaker 1: bugling and all the other cool things out there, and
Speaker 1: Jason after a bear. Oh man, Yeah, we saw a
Speaker 1: bear and decided to go run it down on the
Speaker 1: side of a you know, pretty rocky hill and go
Speaker 1: after it. But yeah, I mean that was all well.
Speaker 1: We went a pretty good distance even that first day though,
Speaker 1: didn't We mean we went this fonsy that made dear
Speaker 1: though it was well. And the other thing, um that
Speaker 1: we we we feel like, I mean, they sense your
Speaker 1: presence and uh, we don't like to just you know,
Speaker 1: keep it so tight that perhaps it makes it that
Speaker 1: much more difficult, but it also gives the hunter another
Speaker 1: perspective because you can see, uh, maybe from where you
Speaker 1: went the day before country back looking back on some
Speaker 1: of the country, you were a little better angle in
Speaker 1: which you experienced because of the fact that we had
Speaker 1: been there a couple different times looking off in that
Speaker 1: same spot, but because of our perspective, we could not
Speaker 1: see everything it was below us. You know what's funny
Speaker 1: about that spot is the first time we went there. Um,
Speaker 1: you were talking about how bucks like to lay on
Speaker 1: this cliff face. It's not a cliff face, but very
Speaker 1: crazy full of avalanche shoots and fingers and fingers of
Speaker 1: timber and rocky, and you're like, they like to lay here. Um,
Speaker 1: And you started creeping along peering over the edge, and
Speaker 1: Adam said to me, I I do gather they'd like
Speaker 1: to lay here based off Stuart's like very intense focused
Speaker 1: down the hill. You know, you're expecting to find one
Speaker 1: that's where you shot your Yeah, but that's all I
Speaker 1: was gonna talk about. We twice crept along, twice crept
Speaker 1: along that glass and down those avalanche shoots and seeing
Speaker 1: deer laying here and there on it, and possibly twice
Speaker 1: because he was a little bit farther down, possibly maybe
Speaker 1: twice walked past the buck that I got. But then
Speaker 1: it wasn't til it wasn't ntil. We then went around
Speaker 1: peer back onto that hillside, and then it wasn't even
Speaker 1: like we said. I I sat down with landing to
Speaker 1: start glass in the hillside between snow squalls, and I
Speaker 1: didn't even have my tripods set up, and He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a buck like and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: one of our camera guys lost the sunglasses about fifty
Speaker 1: yards in that buck, you know. Uh. But looking back
Speaker 1: on it was interesting because there he was. And that's
Speaker 1: and that's what's kind of fun about it. It's difficult
Speaker 1: country from the uh perspective of not being able to
Speaker 1: see it in a in a clear, concise, imaginary way
Speaker 1: of saying, this is how I would imagine it would
Speaker 1: have played out. And then you get on, you know,
Speaker 1: you go around on the other side, looking back, and
Speaker 1: you can see where timber, the lay of the land,
Speaker 1: and how the timber and the shadows fall on it.
Speaker 1: You say, now, I can see why we didn't see
Speaker 1: as many or see that buck there because he was
Speaker 1: able to hide in such a fashion that we couldn't
Speaker 1: see him from above. He could only be seen from
Speaker 1: the angle down below or on another I don't want
Speaker 1: to give away too many of you guys trade secrets,
Speaker 1: but in the daytime and the warm part of the
Speaker 1: day or in the midday, you guys like to be
Speaker 1: up looking down a face knowing that it's so steep
Speaker 1: that the deer gonna bed Basically they're bedding up against trees.
Speaker 1: They dig out little beds, and they're on the top side,
Speaker 1: on the top side, and you're not gonna see him
Speaker 1: from across. But then in the mornings or evenings you
Speaker 1: can go around and peer back onto the hillside when
Speaker 1: they might be on their feet. But in the daytime
Speaker 1: you'd like to be a bedding time, you'd like to
Speaker 1: be peering straight down. And what that men in this
Speaker 1: terrain was often several miles and several thousand feet of elevation.
Speaker 1: You don't running over there. It's not like let's go
Speaker 1: to the bottom now, like you know yesterday or whenever
Speaker 1: that was day before. I guess went with your honest book.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was three miles around to get to
Speaker 1: where we could see, you know, from that other angle.
Speaker 1: So with the terrain, it means a lot of moving.
Speaker 1: But it's either that or nap mid day, which I
Speaker 1: know you do like Steve, I like it under certain conditions, um,
Speaker 1: when you can't be productive during that noon now and
Speaker 1: when it's very nice and warm. I took one like
Speaker 1: this this week. I took one ten minute. Now that's
Speaker 1: all I got, one ten minute. You're honest, how many
Speaker 1: do you have? At least three good ones? Like one
Speaker 1: period of time? Oh good enough for me? It is
Speaker 1: like ninety minutes plus the very first day we were out,
Speaker 1: we're probably pushing two and a half just laid low,
Speaker 1: got hot, you know, and it kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the action died down, and but we did end up
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of bedded bucks this weeked Man finding
Speaker 1: bedded bucks. That's especially exciting it is. We one time
Speaker 1: had a did a did an episode of our show
Speaker 1: where I crept, crawled up on and shot a bedded
Speaker 1: antelope and got a handful of emails people all riled
Speaker 1: up about that it's non sports been like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you go creep up on a bedded down antilope, Come
Speaker 1: tell me it's not sports been like, it's not easy
Speaker 1: to creep up on him. Well, yeah, and there's that
Speaker 1: argument too of like yeah, like it's somehow better to
Speaker 1: shoot one it's staring at you. Well, and that's and
Speaker 1: that's exactly and that's why, you know, like, uh, the
Speaker 1: day that Adam shot his buck, we had decided to
Speaker 1: let and I call it to get off and do
Speaker 1: an Indian hunt because I respect their their method of
Speaker 1: how they had to hunt in the early day. They
Speaker 1: had to they had to sneak up on things they
Speaker 1: didn't have. The didn't have the high powered rifles or
Speaker 1: or the good binoculars to to really help their cause,
Speaker 1: and so everything was very stealth driven. And I like
Speaker 1: that style of hunt where you go into a patch
Speaker 1: of timber that you know is a place where they
Speaker 1: bed down on a regular basis, and you're you're matched
Speaker 1: with their sense, their keen sense of smell and hearing
Speaker 1: um and whatever the other sense that they have that
Speaker 1: seems to if they sense danger, they're out of there.
Speaker 1: And will you try will you try to pull off?
Speaker 1: I just I just call it a still hunt. Will
Speaker 1: you try to pull that off with a client into Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've done that. In fact, I'll put them in front
Speaker 1: of me and I'll just say, then you'll say, hey,
Speaker 1: back up, because you missed the deer. I'll just say
Speaker 1: I'll say, we're gonna walk just a couple of steps quietly,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna glass, and we're gonna glass, and then
Speaker 1: we'll make a few more. So it takes you a
Speaker 1: long time to get through a patch of timber, but
Speaker 1: you know, I've not through the ears and depending on
Speaker 1: the terrain. Um. I've always been amazed at how an
Speaker 1: animal will see you coming and and are blowing out
Speaker 1: the timber when you're thinking, God, I didn't even see them. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because their eyeballs are usually down, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: knee heights because they're bedded down, and that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of your your brush sometimes and at least in
Speaker 1: our terrain is less, so they see your leg movement
Speaker 1: and you can't see them. Yeah, So it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely critical if you're gonna go in there, your
Speaker 1: heads up in the fur needles and stuff, and they're
Speaker 1: looking and they're seeing low so they see that movement
Speaker 1: and that's something that is a set off to them,
Speaker 1: even though there may be no scent, it's something different
Speaker 1: and it alarms them. And so you I I like
Speaker 1: the challenge because when you go through like that, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna just march prayed through a patch of
Speaker 1: timber and think you're gonna get a buck, the buck's
Speaker 1: really got to be tired and sleep be. It occurred
Speaker 1: to me just while we're having this conversation that of
Speaker 1: the three deer we got, um we got to be
Speaker 1: using three very different methods. We got one sort of
Speaker 1: like the one I got was like very like very
Speaker 1: textbook spot and stock like spotted from way off. While
Speaker 1: we're like sitting there and intentionally glass in a distant hillside,
Speaker 1: crept up on it and you know, sniped it from
Speaker 1: ways off, and then Adam got one still hunting, creeping
Speaker 1: through the timber, and then ye only got one of
Speaker 1: the classic almost like deer drive, not almost classic classic.
Speaker 1: Well I don't always say almost because like more deer
Speaker 1: drives don't happen on anybody can say classic unless you
Speaker 1: were the one driving with Stewart. Do you want me
Speaker 1: to unpack mine? And then we silly story. We just
Speaker 1: you know, you and I Steve were he came around
Speaker 1: on this hill where we knew there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of timber and you were going down. What were you told?
Speaker 1: Maybe three yards below me? Can of stop from the
Speaker 1: I'm then I'm gonna let you just go. Have you
Speaker 1: heard the term still hunt me? No? I have, I have,
Speaker 1: but I guess you know through the years, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not taking offense. I'm not taking offense that that
Speaker 1: saying it like an Indian hunt. But I mean in
Speaker 1: the East he called a still hunt, and it means
Speaker 1: like going. I remember my dad writing a letter to
Speaker 1: the editor because the guy wrote an article. He had
Speaker 1: the letter. The letter to the editor was published and
Speaker 1: he kept in his office where a guy wrote an
Speaker 1: article describing his still hunting strategy, and my dad calculated
Speaker 1: it by the end of the day he would be
Speaker 1: fifty yards from his truck because his description that he
Speaker 1: takes a step and waits five minutes or whatever. My
Speaker 1: dad got to thinking, well, he wouldn't make it anywhere.
Speaker 1: But so you have heard the term I have heard,
Speaker 1: murse I was misleading because you're not being still like
Speaker 1: you think, like, how is sitting in a tree stand
Speaker 1: not still hunting? You're still, no one's going anywhere. But
Speaker 1: it means to still hunt means to not be still well,
Speaker 1: and then be still and then not be still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the way I've always twisted it to make
Speaker 1: make it make that term makes sense to make head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good way of putting it is that you
Speaker 1: move in such a way that if something looks at you,
Speaker 1: it would perceive you as being still. That's what you
Speaker 1: had to do to make that makes sense. That's fine, Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, Adam. Sorry, that's why I wanted to get
Speaker 1: I wanted to get into I wanted to get into
Speaker 1: the Norman clature a little bit. So yeah, so we
Speaker 1: we headed into this patch of timber knowing a few
Speaker 1: different things. Number One, if we were to spook a buck,
Speaker 1: you gotta be ready, like really quick. Sometimes what that
Speaker 1: means is you've gotta be ready with your rifle really quick.
Speaker 1: So whether it's slung on your shoulder holding in your hand.
Speaker 1: Number Two, you may not have a lot of time
Speaker 1: to judge its size, and that makes it a little
Speaker 1: bit more challenging as well. But it also brings about
Speaker 1: a different sort of adrenaline. You know, when you just
Speaker 1: boom it it's right there, and what am I gonna
Speaker 1: do in that moment? Yeah, you feel all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you feel very present. Yes. And and it also even
Speaker 1: right when you hop in the brush the timber at
Speaker 1: that moment, even though you have no clue if there's
Speaker 1: a deer in there or where the deer is, you
Speaker 1: feel like you're stocking something. And you have that they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: lets me real quiet. You know, you just even to
Speaker 1: yourself and I'm gonna go because there's probably one right here,
Speaker 1: and there's probably what So it it's kind of exciting,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you can't nap while steel, honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then also Stewart was pretty precise. He's like, you
Speaker 1: go that far, you go that far, we'll meet you
Speaker 1: over here. Is this getting into zones? No, No, it
Speaker 1: was I was gonna be at the top, Steve, you
Speaker 1: were going to be at the bottom, nearer, nearer to
Speaker 1: where there was kind of an open bench. And so
Speaker 1: so I went in towards the top and there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of sign in there, both elk and deer, um
Speaker 1: and bear. Actually it's the same area that we've seen
Speaker 1: the black bear two days before, snow fresh and it
Speaker 1: had snowed that morning. Is when it snowed. I believe
Speaker 1: this is day three of our hunt. So we've gone
Speaker 1: day one, day two. We'd seen a lot of bucks
Speaker 1: every day. Uh, they'd all been small, nothing, I don't believe,
Speaker 1: whider in their ears on those first couple of days.
Speaker 1: And so we kind of I punched in there, and yeah,
Speaker 1: saw the bear heading the same direction that I was heading.
Speaker 1: With what would have been in the last five to
Speaker 1: six hours a bear had been through there in that
Speaker 1: same direction, came through a whole lot of elk signed,
Speaker 1: a whole lot of deer sign a lot of beds, Uh,
Speaker 1: beds were everywhere in there. I mean the smell was there.
Speaker 1: So all your senses, I mean it's fine, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean all your senses, you're seeing tracks, you're doing
Speaker 1: all these things, and uh, it's so, you know, it
Speaker 1: was awesome. So we get to the middle of probably
Speaker 1: this section and i'd put, you know, on ax where
Speaker 1: Stewart was going to be at the end, you know,
Speaker 1: a little put a little way point where we're gonna
Speaker 1: meet up, and so really kind of sidehiling, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, stepped in this open area in the
Speaker 1: middle of this timber where there's probably fifty yards of clearing,
Speaker 1: and there was a buck standing there and probably stood
Speaker 1: there for a second or two and then trot it
Speaker 1: off a period of three to four total seconds. Not
Speaker 1: enough to get my glass up, not it wasn't that
Speaker 1: far though, at the same time, not enough to get
Speaker 1: my rifle scope up. You know. It was just like
Speaker 1: there's a deer that you know, you're just kind of
Speaker 1: taking off guarden. He didn't stand there for a long
Speaker 1: time like sometimes they might do, and I was surprised,
Speaker 1: to be honest, that we were able to sneak up
Speaker 1: on him like we did. He was on the other
Speaker 1: edge of this kind of little open measure him he
Speaker 1: had probably stood up. Yes, yeah, definitely there, because when
Speaker 1: we walked over there a couple of minutes later is
Speaker 1: a bed right there. So I decided. I decided, I'm like,
Speaker 1: usually if you bump a deer in that case, the
Speaker 1: deer's gone and okay, let's keep going through. And then
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, now, we probably just went through and
Speaker 1: bumped the whole stinking, you know side of the hill
Speaker 1: and everything's gonna be gone. Yeah, you don't generally decided
Speaker 1: to go and check out where it went, but I did. Well.
Speaker 1: I I just said, I wonder if I knew in
Speaker 1: that case, in the midst of timber, there's no way
Speaker 1: on earth you'd ever in a million years gonna be
Speaker 1: able to catch up buck right, I mean one in
Speaker 1: a million. But I said, if there's an open clearing,
Speaker 1: we could kind of I could kind of truck through
Speaker 1: this timber and maybe see it going up clearing it stops.
Speaker 1: Broad said for a second, looks back at you, right,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, And so pull up the map.
Speaker 1: It kind of looked along there and saw quarter mile,
Speaker 1: half mile something like that further down this hill, you know,
Speaker 1: sidehiling it so further in the direction I was already
Speaker 1: gonna be going, but slightly down a little towards the
Speaker 1: border of my zone and your zone. Steve close to
Speaker 1: that but not across it. You just just I found you. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm working at the lower end. I found you well
Speaker 1: below me. I got on a hunt. I was hunting.
Speaker 1: It was fair chase, and I was chasing. You went
Speaker 1: into like a third zone hadn't been discussed zone. That's correct,
Speaker 1: that's correct. I cannot confirmed order that. So basically I
Speaker 1: go down through here and I kind of went up
Speaker 1: pirate first thing, and I looked down because I thought
Speaker 1: the angled direction that the buck did leave was more
Speaker 1: down in the in the same direction that I had
Speaker 1: been going. And so anyways, I get to where this
Speaker 1: clearing is and I get to look out in the
Speaker 1: clearing and there's no buck. But as I look towards
Speaker 1: the left down the hill, I see the rack through
Speaker 1: the trees. With my bare it was yards away. It's
Speaker 1: hard to range because it was through the trees, and
Speaker 1: if I moved my head three inches or six inch
Speaker 1: to the right left up or down, like I'd lose
Speaker 1: the deer. It was one of you know, when you
Speaker 1: just zone in. And it was like eyeball to eyeball.
Speaker 1: With the window me looking straight at this deer straight on,
Speaker 1: I could see it was wider in its ears, and
Speaker 1: it was wider and aning we see. I couldn't see
Speaker 1: due to all the trees and branches. It couldn't see
Speaker 1: the forest, couldn't see more, you know about thickness, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I stopped and stared at this buck and got
Speaker 1: my buyos, and the buck didn't move, didn't blink, didn't
Speaker 1: twitch and hear, and just stared right at me. It's
Speaker 1: crazy when you talk about Stewart, how the deer can
Speaker 1: see you, because I I felt pretty lucky that I
Speaker 1: saw this deer through this window and it obviously saw
Speaker 1: me right away. And so I'm looking through this thing
Speaker 1: and I put up the buyos and I'm just wanting
Speaker 1: him to turn his head so I can get a
Speaker 1: clear look from the side. Wouldn't turn his head, wouldn't
Speaker 1: move things straight on one and then uh, I ended
Speaker 1: up picking up my rifle. And and the thing is
Speaker 1: it was at that type of heights where I couldn't
Speaker 1: I certainly couldn't go prone, I couldn't sit down, and
Speaker 1: I have that tripod, you know, and they can go
Speaker 1: up and down or whatever, and uh that can use
Speaker 1: his sticks. Uh. If I was standing like at a
Speaker 1: regular standing heights number one over a hundred yards, I
Speaker 1: don't like to do free standing, specially with the visibility there.
Speaker 1: It was a crouching position. It was like the most
Speaker 1: awkward position, uh, that you can have, is this crouching position.
Speaker 1: Is the angle I could see the deer at I
Speaker 1: knew if I left this window, the deer was gone.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting there and I get my steak.
Speaker 1: It must have looked like the most uncoordinated setup because
Speaker 1: I'm like this, My feet kind of kept falling, and
Speaker 1: so I get the rest and I have the crosshairs
Speaker 1: on the deer, but I can only see kind of
Speaker 1: from the chest up half the chest up. It's looking
Speaker 1: straight on. And so at that point I knew the thing.
Speaker 1: I was hoping the thing would turn and then i'd
Speaker 1: have maybe a second or two for it to step across,
Speaker 1: maybe a wide enough clearing, maybe it's body length, and
Speaker 1: for me to judge its antlers and pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: And so I was sitting there and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: but you know, how it is once you have your
Speaker 1: cross hairs on the animal, once the animals looking at you,
Speaker 1: I can see it's wider in its ears. I even
Speaker 1: turned to my cameraman behind me, who was with me,
Speaker 1: and said, I'm gonna kind of wait and see, and
Speaker 1: I was like talking to him and just wrestling it
Speaker 1: through my mind. As soon as he turns his shoulder,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna engage it. Well, sure enough, I finally get
Speaker 1: in position and it it had been minutes of just
Speaker 1: a direct stare off right there, and the deer turns
Speaker 1: presents its shoulder and I just pulled the trigger. I
Speaker 1: just it was that instinct of like, there's the shoulder,
Speaker 1: there's the cross hairs through the trees, and uh down
Speaker 1: it went in that one shot, and uh so I
Speaker 1: run around even kind of just leave my packs at
Speaker 1: my spotting scille down everything kind of on the ground
Speaker 1: steep hill, and I just because of the brush, I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of get over to the side to
Speaker 1: just see what's going on, what had happened. But I
Speaker 1: could see that the thing just went straight down and
Speaker 1: and sure enough it it didn't move but five or
Speaker 1: ten feet um from where we found it, and walked
Speaker 1: up on the buck and UH started taking some you know,
Speaker 1: some pictures and whatnot before we'd got it out and celebrating,
Speaker 1: and honestly, you know, i'd I'd been looking probably for
Speaker 1: a larger buck, but in that moment, it was the
Speaker 1: end of day three and we hadn't seen any shooter
Speaker 1: bucks yet, and I just said, oh, let's get something
Speaker 1: on the ground. And I was, you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: wait eight years. It's a general tag for me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'll just come back next year if I want to.
Speaker 1: This guy's gotta wait until, like my kids are grown
Speaker 1: and married and probably had children before. So then I
Speaker 1: recovered the buck, and then all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: see Steve walking clearly into my zone down Stewart and
Speaker 1: they both heard the shot and UH and came up
Speaker 1: and it was I would say, probably pretty close to
Speaker 1: your zone, Steve. It was, but it had traveled like
Speaker 1: I'd spotted it well in my zone. And so I
Speaker 1: don't know where that is in a book of hunting tactics,
Speaker 1: but no, I think if you're on a hot trail,
Speaker 1: you get to just I think, okay, how often do
Speaker 1: you bump a deer while st still hunting, look at
Speaker 1: something on a map, go and find it and shoot it.
Speaker 1: But I would have shot that bug had I come
Speaker 1: across it. Yeah. Yeah, is afternoon to day three, which
Speaker 1: incidentally just a point that I hadn't thought about. All
Speaker 1: of the bucks we shot this week, we're in the evening,
Speaker 1: early even hours. That's a good point. Well, you're right, Uh,
Speaker 1: the one, the one I got. It's interesting story. But
Speaker 1: the highlight of my trip, Um, besides me to you guys,
Speaker 1: I'm watching you work with the horses and and and
Speaker 1: all that, which is really educational. Uh, the highlight of
Speaker 1: my trip was something I glimpsed. It's it's words really
Speaker 1: do it justice. But Uh, when we're all hunting, there's
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of deer around, and we
Speaker 1: have a long time and we're all admirers of big mulders,
Speaker 1: so we're trying to find you know, mature box big
Speaker 1: racks on them. Uh, and then kind of wrestling with
Speaker 1: this equation of how much time do you have left? Right?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm definitely gonna get a buck, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wait and wait, but I gotta wait too long.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's like I'm willing to go home with
Speaker 1: no buck. I'm gonna keep waiting. And you know, you're
Speaker 1: wrestling all this out in your head, and meanwhile you're
Speaker 1: looking at you're already seeing deer. And so every time
Speaker 1: you see a mule deer's rump through the timber or
Speaker 1: wherever it is, um, no matter what I mean, you
Speaker 1: gotta sit down and assess that thing and see what
Speaker 1: it is like. Is it a buck? Is it a
Speaker 1: big buck? And there was a time I was I
Speaker 1: think I was was. Yeah, I was with Steward. I
Speaker 1: can't remember who else is there, but I was with
Speaker 1: you and we I think you had spotted a deer
Speaker 1: in September. And then I started looking in there and
Speaker 1: and we started to put together there's three of them
Speaker 1: in there, and we see two of them. We see
Speaker 1: there are just two little ones, and there's a third one.
Speaker 1: We're waiting for the third one to reveal itself. And
Speaker 1: one of these other boxes, he'd stepped into a spot
Speaker 1: where he's just got the bright sunlight on his rump
Speaker 1: and they really shine. And the buck that I was
Speaker 1: waiting to see, I couldn't see him at all. Now
Speaker 1: he's completely behind a tree. But all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I see the most perfect shadow of his rack on
Speaker 1: the sunlit buck, to the point where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a three by three because it's shadow was like
Speaker 1: someone doing like finger puppets on the bedroom wall, blasted
Speaker 1: against this deer and it lasted like this fleeting glimpse.
Speaker 1: But it was the most bizarre thing I've seen a while.
Speaker 1: It's like a perfect like I didn't even need to
Speaker 1: stick around to let him come out of where he
Speaker 1: was hiding because of how perfectly shadowed his uh deal was.
Speaker 1: But the day I got the buck I got, we
Speaker 1: kind of scoured around a fair bit and it was
Speaker 1: real snowy, and the kind of strange thing that's really
Speaker 1: fortuitous series of events happened where we saw a dough,
Speaker 1: where we saw a deer, and by the time we
Speaker 1: get set up a spotting scope this, the snow picked
Speaker 1: up so bad you couldn't see. So you went and
Speaker 1: hit out in some trees. You got out of the wind,
Speaker 1: made a little fire and it got clear. And the
Speaker 1: minute it got clear, right, well, let's go run down
Speaker 1: and look at the hillside we were trying to go
Speaker 1: look at and I'm still set up my spotting scope
Speaker 1: and Landing's like, there's deer that looks like a buck.
Speaker 1: I set up my spine and scope like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a nice I mean nice buck. Was all
Speaker 1: the whole trip like that's a nice buck. And I
Speaker 1: remember you had said, quote what a stud and so
Speaker 1: the buck not me and it was that was it
Speaker 1: like nine yards away or something that's quite quite a
Speaker 1: ways way? And all of a sudden, our our camera
Speaker 1: guy Lauren remarks like, man, is there a squall headed
Speaker 1: our way? And I look up the mountain and just
Speaker 1: like this wall of white is coming and this wall
Speaker 1: of white and it was fog, intense wind and a
Speaker 1: lot of snow just engulfs Us and Land and I
Speaker 1: kind of look at each I were like, you know,
Speaker 1: we could walk over there like this buck would never know.
Speaker 1: And we literally just ran threw a white out, arrived
Speaker 1: at where we were, like below the buck. The white
Speaker 1: out is so strong that we're able to pick which
Speaker 1: sort of tree would be best to hang out at
Speaker 1: hunker down that eventus you could kind of see the
Speaker 1: base of the hill, then you can make out some timber.
Speaker 1: Then it cleared and just there's the buck. Two and
Speaker 1: fifty yards away. Nothing works out like that. It was perfect,
Speaker 1: I mean the wind. We kept watching the wind to
Speaker 1: make sure that the our wind was right, and the
Speaker 1: whole situation was just a perfect uh, perfect stock And
Speaker 1: it couldn't been any better because we caught him right
Speaker 1: in that window between the snowstorms, and then we were
Speaker 1: able to use the snowstorm as our cover to then
Speaker 1: get within a range where he didn't even know we
Speaker 1: were there because we had a bare hillside with opa
Speaker 1: pockets that we needed to be able to get through
Speaker 1: to get down to him. But then the snow also
Speaker 1: helped muffle the noise, you know, the wind and everything,
Speaker 1: and then it got like beautifully calm. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that we both observed later that never happens. We
Speaker 1: had a landmark which was the shiny white the shiny tree,
Speaker 1: nag uh. And a lot of times you kind of
Speaker 1: move aways and your landmarks ceased to make sense. But
Speaker 1: we got up and as it started to clear, we
Speaker 1: were in agreement, like that's the tree, yea, And then
Speaker 1: lo and behold, like the bark was under the tree.
Speaker 1: It was nothing, I mean not nothing ever works out
Speaker 1: that way. But that was one of the more amazing.
Speaker 1: That's how good crooked sky is. They can call into
Speaker 1: salls some of the squall. We had that kind of
Speaker 1: power sometimes. But so how and how far was that?
Speaker 1: How far did you get then when you stopped? Was
Speaker 1: it to something? We stopped and hunkered down and waited
Speaker 1: for the water to clear. And when the bucks stepped
Speaker 1: I mean he still I say he stepped out, But yeah,
Speaker 1: he stepped out. We we couldn't see him in all
Speaker 1: sinar he was two six yards. Nothing ever works out
Speaker 1: quite like that unless Stewart says, I've got a plan.
Speaker 1: Let's drive this piece of timber up here at on
Speaker 1: the side of the Shale Mountain and you just go
Speaker 1: and sit down at the end of the Shelle Mountain
Speaker 1: and wait for a buck to come to you. Your
Speaker 1: word for it doesn't give away your spot. That's your
Speaker 1: own personal term for it. Or do people know it
Speaker 1: as I think you said, huh, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know that we we uh, we gave it a name,
Speaker 1: but I don't think there's any name on a map
Speaker 1: like that. But we gave gave it a name of
Speaker 1: dangling gardens because you're virtually hanging when you're coming around
Speaker 1: patch of timber. You're grabbing for any kind of pine
Speaker 1: bow to keep you upright, because it's just it's really
Speaker 1: steep on the on the side, slant with rock and
Speaker 1: and uh it's a workout. They'll have you in a lather,
Speaker 1: just in a in about a half a mile, you know, hike.
Speaker 1: I tripped eleven times and slid downhill on that drive.
Speaker 1: For you, you had a little counter pressing the button
Speaker 1: every day. My my film guy just kept laughing and
Speaker 1: then other way back he kept doing it. That was
Speaker 1: and that's the thing, man, So much respect for you,
Speaker 1: steward of of the I mean the physical nature. We
Speaker 1: talked at about horseback, but I mean that that day,
Speaker 1: uh that you shot your Bucky on us, I mean
Speaker 1: it was you know, there's I think I looked it
Speaker 1: was eighteen miles and maybe ten of that was on horseback,
Speaker 1: and eight we didn't stop for fourteen hours. We were
Speaker 1: just just going, yeah, I know, it was a beautiful
Speaker 1: day to walk around the mountains. And he was just
Speaker 1: yeah that good horse rides. Oh No, I want to
Speaker 1: tell the story of the things that I think it
Speaker 1: kind of demonstrates. One year hunting was someone who spent
Speaker 1: thirty years hunting the area. Yeah, just like talking about
Speaker 1: how that played out with the buck he got. Well.
Speaker 1: Prior to that was the first day I got to
Speaker 1: hunt with Steward prid Of that had been hunting with
Speaker 1: Land and we've been hunting sort of the other side
Speaker 1: of this drainage and looking over at this mountain which
Speaker 1: dangling gardens dangle on, and he kept saying, you know,
Speaker 1: there's bucks in that patch of timber, and like when
Speaker 1: you're seeing them. Well, no, well he's seen him there
Speaker 1: in the past. And Adam went by it one day
Speaker 1: and he's like, man, it's just like a big rocky hillside.
Speaker 1: There's probably not any bucks over there. And then the
Speaker 1: next day or no, that same afternoon, I hunted it
Speaker 1: backwards and I looked over there some and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't look like a real bucky spot because
Speaker 1: it's just like rocks to right. Yeah, yeah, Um, it
Speaker 1: wasn't Wasn't there a story of the past where we've
Speaker 1: done the same thing and a lot of bucks came
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah. We had a hunter from Pennsylvanian and
Speaker 1: he'd been all over he'd been to Africa and so
Speaker 1: he you know, when he was he was a good hunter.
Speaker 1: But he was in there his older years, and so
Speaker 1: that was a way for there. It couldn't have been
Speaker 1: that old. Well he was, he was in his uh
Speaker 1: he would have been in his late late sixties, early seventies,
Speaker 1: and uh he was a bigger fellow and and but
Speaker 1: pretty physical and robust even at his age. But we
Speaker 1: rode him. We got him, uh, dropped off at the
Speaker 1: point that would have been close to where on horseback
Speaker 1: he wasn't gonna get off. So we we we we walk.
Speaker 1: That was a drop off, not the not the high through,
Speaker 1: but we we went through that same batch of timber.
Speaker 1: We'd had it. It was a tough we were having it.
Speaker 1: It was a dry, uh kind of an almost Indian
Speaker 1: summary type hunt week, and so everything was just really
Speaker 1: tough and held up in the timber tighten. We thought,
Speaker 1: this is one of our only options is to see
Speaker 1: if we can walk through this, uh, this strip of
Speaker 1: timber which has kind of a natural funnel effect. They
Speaker 1: don't like to go down on that. They they'd rather
Speaker 1: traverse around because they've got to cover and feed. And
Speaker 1: we haven't dissed. We don't have time to get into
Speaker 1: we haven't discussed the slide like this is the most
Speaker 1: slide rock intensive location I've ever been. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of rock and and a lot of we
Speaker 1: call it slide rock up that you know from our tourman.
Speaker 1: Nothing wants to walk on that stuff. They don't, they
Speaker 1: don't like to, and so that's part of the you know,
Speaker 1: that timber was kind of nestled in such a way
Speaker 1: that as it came around in a tree line fashion
Speaker 1: on that on that mountain that in the past we
Speaker 1: had driven that and we had driven out. When we
Speaker 1: got over, we heard a shot get around. He just
Speaker 1: killed a buck. And the guy says, I had to
Speaker 1: do something. He says that there were thirteen bucks went
Speaker 1: in front of me and I had to take so,
Speaker 1: you know, he just you know, he just it blew
Speaker 1: him away that that would even because I think and
Speaker 1: I thought the same thing early on is when you
Speaker 1: glass that, you're thinking, there's no way it's too rocky too.
Speaker 1: But they like it does have brush in there that
Speaker 1: they like to nibble on. But there's there's the places
Speaker 1: that they've through the years of you know, pawt out
Speaker 1: to make a bed on the uphill side of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they like excavate their beds, and they do. That buck
Speaker 1: I got was in a place I feel a lot
Speaker 1: of I feel most hunters would would not scrutinize the
Speaker 1: hill where I found the buck because they're gonna be
Speaker 1: looking at the meadowy stuff, right, You're gonna see all
Speaker 1: those beautiful grassy meadows, not realizing that those older box
Speaker 1: are in the not there in like like hidie holes,
Speaker 1: like weird spots. You know. When we walked through those
Speaker 1: trees doing the drive and I saw a bed and
Speaker 1: I was like, how did this bed even hardly get made?
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, how do you even level it out?
Speaker 1: I mean it's but they felt safe up there. I
Speaker 1: mean we didn't think they were there. Probably nobody thought
Speaker 1: they were there. I didn't think there's anything living on
Speaker 1: the side of that dangling gardens. That's that's their bed
Speaker 1: down the site. You all that they can, especially when
Speaker 1: it's cold, they can go around it. It gets that
Speaker 1: it's on a south facing slope and they can get
Speaker 1: that sun. And yet they've got escape routes you know,
Speaker 1: out the wazoo. Uh, they can go down if they're spooked.
Speaker 1: But you were pretty confident when we were there ahead
Speaker 1: of time with the honest you know, we even said,
Speaker 1: well wouldn't they go down or whatever? They'll go usually
Speaker 1: go right around to go around. Yeah. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: were looking at it from across the way, you kept saying,
Speaker 1: see how that bandit timbers rafts right around that point,
Speaker 1: you know, and it narrows down. It just necks down
Speaker 1: to where if they want to stay near any kind
Speaker 1: of timber they have to take this one path. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, anyways, I hate to skip through all that
Speaker 1: all this day because we had this just this wonderful
Speaker 1: day of hunting that culminated in this in shooting this box,
Speaker 1: because we had seen prior to that, I think eight
Speaker 1: other bogs. We had three inches of fresh snow that morning,
Speaker 1: like the biggest snow we had gotten. It was the
Speaker 1: morning after you killed yours. That squall had come in
Speaker 1: that allowed you to kill yours, laid down about two
Speaker 1: or three inches depending on where you were in the mountains.
Speaker 1: And it was just like that. You couldn't pick a
Speaker 1: better morning. And that's something I'd like to remark on.
Speaker 1: Did you notice how the weather seemed to really like
Speaker 1: it was either like very nice or you'd have this
Speaker 1: like crazy squaw move in and holy shit, and then
Speaker 1: that would last for not too long and then all
Speaker 1: sudden just be beautiful again. There wasn't a lot of
Speaker 1: in between. There's a lot of putting clothes on and
Speaker 1: taking them off. Laters are very important for um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we hiked around a good bit. Like Adam said, we
Speaker 1: did basically one whole hunt and then decided to continue
Speaker 1: up the mountain, got back on our horses, and that's
Speaker 1: when we like, I felt like we graduated to level
Speaker 1: ten horse riding was that afternoon because we just went
Speaker 1: off the trail and straight up, straight up. It was
Speaker 1: the Man from Snowy River, but uphill down. If you
Speaker 1: watch that movie backwards, it was man, it was it
Speaker 1: was cool. Um, where do we get to? We got
Speaker 1: to like, uh, we got to a pass. We got
Speaker 1: up to a rim that that had could look down
Speaker 1: into a bowl, great big bowl. It was actually the
Speaker 1: only time we stopped all day. Did lunch there for
Speaker 1: about a half hour, and other gnat from dark to dark.
Speaker 1: We didn't stop moving, right, I mean, other standing glass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other than the time when we got up to the
Speaker 1: top of this unnamed peak and Stewart said I've got
Speaker 1: a plan and involve you, Adam and Stewart walking the
Speaker 1: dangling gardens. And I was gonna get to walk down
Speaker 1: the ridge and go sit and wait for bucks to
Speaker 1: come around the corner. And uh, yeah, it worked out perfectly.
Speaker 1: I got Also, I got nestled in and I had
Speaker 1: a nice little shooting perch when I had my tripods
Speaker 1: set up where I could shoot zero to two or
Speaker 1: fifty yards if they came close and if they got
Speaker 1: by me. And it's kind of spilled out in this
Speaker 1: big open basin that was to my left. I had
Speaker 1: my pack already set up so I could switch positions
Speaker 1: and get on my pack and make a longer shot.
Speaker 1: You had your mees on plas. Yes, that's culinary term. Yes, four,
Speaker 1: all your stuff in order. Yeah, you're prep um. I
Speaker 1: used to do a lot of MEAs in plas. Uh
Speaker 1: do you know what she was trying to remember? The term? Now,
Speaker 1: when you cut like a real fine dice, like a
Speaker 1: quarter inch, what's that called? You gotta have like quarter
Speaker 1: ins dice carrots and your musing plus come on, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that when you get your carrots and your onions,
Speaker 1: your mushroom diced up. It's a mere plais Yeah, no mushroom,
Speaker 1: so just selary but not to diverge. Um. I was
Speaker 1: ready and it took a while. You called on the
Speaker 1: radio and he said are you ready? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: said we're starting in. And a lot of times on
Speaker 1: the drive, I feel like, if it's gonna happen, it
Speaker 1: happens pretty quick, because you bump something as soon as
Speaker 1: you get into the patch that you're gonna push, and
Speaker 1: the deer or the elk or whatever goes through its
Speaker 1: own and it happens. Well, like fifteen minutes went by,
Speaker 1: and I'm chatting with Tyler, the camera guy, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm half expecting these guys just to pop out at
Speaker 1: any moment, you know, we'll be getting on out of here. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm telling myself, stay ready, stay ready, And sure enough,
Speaker 1: like right on the point of the ridge, here comes
Speaker 1: two bodies, you know, two bucks coming together. Yep, and uh,
Speaker 1: they were probably I don't know, a hundred yards hundred
Speaker 1: fifty yards below me, kind of wrapping around and at
Speaker 1: some point, for whatever reason, when they were maybe twitter
Speaker 1: yards away, they decided to come straight up the hill.
Speaker 1: But I knew they wouldn't go over the top because
Speaker 1: it's all that shale rock and you know, just there's
Speaker 1: no nothing to travel on and so they want to
Speaker 1: kind of hit that stuff. They turned. It almost made
Speaker 1: it tough because they were coming almost at me. I
Speaker 1: didn't really have a shot. I would have shot him
Speaker 1: earlier had he give me, give me a broadside shot
Speaker 1: when he came and kept just coming at me side
Speaker 1: to wait until they finally just like the angle decreased
Speaker 1: and he became broadside and that was probably there was
Speaker 1: somewhere between fifty and seventy yards. It's pretty close. Piled
Speaker 1: him up, Yeah, yeah, shot I had. I was shooting
Speaker 1: for like chest, like front of the front shoulder because
Speaker 1: he was quartering two pretty severely, and uh he was moving.
Speaker 1: He just had a little gap that he went through,
Speaker 1: and uh I touched off, caught him in like the
Speaker 1: lower neck, lost my neck, grosstst half of one shoulder.
Speaker 1: But a piled up you didn't go anywhere. There was
Speaker 1: three three bullets fired and three bucks down. I remember
Speaker 1: hearing that shot from across the canyon because yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I just listened for the radio chatter after that, and
Speaker 1: Stewart came on the radio asking if Yanni had shot
Speaker 1: and Joanni said, I had to shoot him almost in
Speaker 1: self defense. Yeah, he was gonna go for me. It
Speaker 1: was good. I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do my concluders,
Speaker 1: My concluders A two part concluder. Okay, um, part my part.
Speaker 1: One of my concluder is we had there was a
Speaker 1: big winter kill, two big winter kills in western Wyoming.
Speaker 1: And don't don't they estimate that about fifty of the
Speaker 1: mule deer got killed. Well, our phone mortality was over
Speaker 1: and uh, I don't know what the total, but you know,
Speaker 1: you look you lose over your your phone crop that severe.
Speaker 1: And we had talked about doing this hunt a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago in Landing. Uh generously in character with himself,
Speaker 1: UH said, you know, you guys might want to wait
Speaker 1: a little bit to see kind of how things are
Speaker 1: gonna shake out with the meal to your population. Um.
Speaker 1: And there's still some chatter, you know, in in in
Speaker 1: Um people who like to hunt this area to some
Speaker 1: still some chatter about is it worth it or not?
Speaker 1: And how are the mule that you're doing? Uh? My
Speaker 1: sense after looking around, is that barring another weather catastrophe Um,
Speaker 1: this place is gonna be special in a couple of
Speaker 1: years because there are a lot of up and coming
Speaker 1: I don't know if it always seems like that, but
Speaker 1: there seems to be like a lot of up and
Speaker 1: coming bucks, like a lot of like classic four by
Speaker 1: four mule deer Bucks on the mountain right now that
Speaker 1: are younger your three and four year old bucks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if, like unless something some kind of other catastrophe
Speaker 1: would happen, I'd have to think that things are gonna
Speaker 1: be like things are gonna be kind of back to
Speaker 1: the good old days. The genetics, the genetics are all there,
Speaker 1: and and the ones that survived that those tough winners
Speaker 1: are only going to pass on those good genetics and
Speaker 1: continue to build our herd. Um And. So I you know,
Speaker 1: I think what we saw this week, you know, I
Speaker 1: we probably saw forty or fifty different bucks, um and,
Speaker 1: and a good chunk of those, I think, being four
Speaker 1: point that are up and coming gonna be the majority.
Speaker 1: This is really surprising, the majority. It almost you always
Speaker 1: have to worry about the where are all the forkys?
Speaker 1: So I don't know where you guys are gonna be
Speaker 1: at five years, but in one or two years. That's
Speaker 1: what they know. And that points out the fact when
Speaker 1: you don't see that many forkies, that you realize that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the fun mortality was up. That was two years ago.
Speaker 1: Whenn't it well too well, I think too back almost
Speaker 1: back to back, we've had the almost comparable. It's true
Speaker 1: we did not see a lot of films. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of like books that are like like Doug
Speaker 1: during says, there are a lot of nice buck next
Speaker 1: year's Um. That's my one observation. The second we don't
Speaker 1: do many um a lot of us with you, none
Speaker 1: at all. We don't do many hunts to go out
Speaker 1: with outfitters. Uh. But man, it's real eye opening. Um.
Speaker 1: I realized that it's almost like a kind of it's
Speaker 1: almost like a like a like a kind of vanity
Speaker 1: or something, or like a kind of pride that uh
Speaker 1: would prevent one partially to prevent one from wanting to
Speaker 1: go and like have someone else be really in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, you know. Um, you get to relacate, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know how to do you know, I know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I'll do it, by God, I can do
Speaker 1: it myself. Uh. And I kind of over the years
Speaker 1: developed that sentiment a little bit. And and there's another
Speaker 1: friend of ours, Jay Scott, who I've spent something he's
Speaker 1: a guide and spend some time around him. Um, and
Speaker 1: you learn a lot. It was fun, Like it was
Speaker 1: really fun to be out with you guys and see, Um,
Speaker 1: you have phenomenal game eyes. I want to know if
Speaker 1: you have a good game. I in looking for those
Speaker 1: animals in that spot. I'd love to see if you
Speaker 1: got a good game I somewhere else. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like if you were in Michigan, would you be spotting
Speaker 1: deer through thick brush all the time? Would you'd be like,
Speaker 1: there's a dear ankle twenty yards away? Or um, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys have phenomenal game eyes. And then just the
Speaker 1: stuff about the horses, and I appreciate and hanging out
Speaker 1: with you guys. That's why I would just so hardly
Speaker 1: recommend people that want to go do a hunt like
Speaker 1: this to hook up with you guys. Is um you
Speaker 1: you teach like you guys teach without lecturing. I don't
Speaker 1: know quite know how to put it, but in a
Speaker 1: very like gracious, friendly way of just wanting not wanting
Speaker 1: to like get people to do what you want to do,
Speaker 1: but just wanting to get people to um have an experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you have an experience and come away a better person.
Speaker 1: Like you really shared a lot of information. You shared
Speaker 1: a lot of information in a very cool way, like
Speaker 1: a really digestible, friendly way. Um without ever yeah, without
Speaker 1: ever seeming like you guys are look down on your clients,
Speaker 1: are annoyed by your guests, right, or that you're there,
Speaker 1: like you'd got it done so fast if they weren't
Speaker 1: there kind of attitude. It was really fun. But I
Speaker 1: had a really really great six days of hanging out
Speaker 1: with you. Well it's like I told you guys that
Speaker 1: before we left. You know, it's fun to hunt with
Speaker 1: guys that are willing and game hunters to do what
Speaker 1: it takes to hunt in a fair chase style. Uh,
Speaker 1: and know that there's always a chance that you might
Speaker 1: not find that uh dream buck that you imagined that
Speaker 1: you were going to see behind every tree. I think
Speaker 1: you honest, And I've talked earlier about the you know,
Speaker 1: the tough winner, and that there was always that possibility.
Speaker 1: We hadn't really seen what what we were gonna experience,
Speaker 1: but what it became apparent and I have to be honest,
Speaker 1: I was nervous knowing that you guys had you know,
Speaker 1: eight eight points. That's a lot of points, UH had
Speaker 1: taken and cash in on those to come and hunt
Speaker 1: with us this year. Uh, maybe it'd be a disaster
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't see any dear that it was. It
Speaker 1: was gonna be that tough, But you guys made it
Speaker 1: worthwhile to with because you guys had good game eyes,
Speaker 1: which improves our ability of saying, Okay, we know the train.
Speaker 1: You guys you know may have seen that buck. Now
Speaker 1: we know how a little bit how to get to that.
Speaker 1: Those are things that to me, the experience of the
Speaker 1: hunter that comes and hunts with us is is overall,
Speaker 1: whether it's in camp, whether it's on horseback, because the
Speaker 1: more you can enjoy the horseback ride, the more you'll
Speaker 1: enjoy the overall hunt, because uh, it's no fun if
Speaker 1: if if you're just if you got you know, puckered up,
Speaker 1: but in the saddle thinking thinking when this ride gonna
Speaker 1: be over? You know, I I to me it it
Speaker 1: just I could empathize because I knew I grew up
Speaker 1: on a horse and the first time I went with
Speaker 1: Dad hunting as a fourteen year old boy and we
Speaker 1: were traversing across a sidehill that was slick and snowy,
Speaker 1: and my horse slipped. It just frightened me to death.
Speaker 1: And that Wow, I don't know if i've it's not
Speaker 1: very comfortable scenario. Yeah, it's been a lot time wondered
Speaker 1: what's like to have one of those things roll over
Speaker 1: on you. But you had you rolled over on you.
Speaker 1: You were all right in the creek. Gotta get out
Speaker 1: of the way. Yeah, seth, what you got You got
Speaker 1: a good concluder, even bad conclue. I don't care. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm quite a horseman yet. No,
Speaker 1: you're allergic to horses stuff the whole time, says the
Speaker 1: eyes are water and his nose is running. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like being out on a boat with honest. After this week,
Speaker 1: I respect horses in a way that I've never I've
Speaker 1: never done before. Um, I've always kind of like just
Speaker 1: rode him off because I'm, you know, always miserable when
Speaker 1: I'm around them. Grow Let's thing. You grew up on
Speaker 1: a farm, though, but you guys raise hogs and whatnot.
Speaker 1: We had horses too when I was younger. Just I
Speaker 1: never like, I don't know, I just never pay attention
Speaker 1: to never drawn to him. Yeah, I never drawn to him. Um,
Speaker 1: But watching Landing and Stewart do what they do with
Speaker 1: horses and and just like the overall experience this week,
Speaker 1: um makes everybody want to be a cowboy on that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was like riding out being like, where
Speaker 1: would I keep a horse? Yeah? Seems like you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll keep one out in Maths place. Honest, I
Speaker 1: asked you the same thing on the way out today
Speaker 1: we were riding MI. So you think you'd ever get horses? Right? Yeah, first,
Speaker 1: I I'm just gonna start with some chaps and a hat.
Speaker 1: I mentioned getting a horse and keeping the mats, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh yeah, just let it go feral. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, probably probably that I'd get kicked in the
Speaker 1: head by it and sell it. But if you just
Speaker 1: weared the cat, the hat and the shaps, you'll be
Speaker 1: considered a drug store cowboy until you've been through and
Speaker 1: had that hat banged up a few times and stepped
Speaker 1: on him. Well, that's partly not true. His land And
Speaker 1: was the saying that he does even he wears his
Speaker 1: baseball cap out riding horses and doesn't put his cowboy
Speaker 1: head on until he goes to buy a horse there's
Speaker 1: or a cow, yeah, or a cow. Those hats don't
Speaker 1: come cheap. These chaps that Stewart's got it on pretty
Speaker 1: nice here, Stewarts. And they're muddy too, they're still muddy.
Speaker 1: That's horse power mud. But it could be a little
Speaker 1: blood on there too. But uh, you know, all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we experience, you know, you're you're realizing
Speaker 1: through the years for us. Uh, I was raised on
Speaker 1: a ranch like cowboys, a lot out on the range,
Speaker 1: but most of my cowboy was done without a hat
Speaker 1: and with tennis shoes because I had an image of
Speaker 1: a cowboy, you know, because of what I had seen.
Speaker 1: Some of the cowboy images I had weren't the kind
Speaker 1: of heroes that I you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of great cowboys that I could probably call heroes, but
Speaker 1: back in my day, of people that I observed weren't
Speaker 1: weren't cowboy heroes. Uh. And the dress didn't impress me. Oh,
Speaker 1: I got you associated with reality rather than the mythics exactly.
Speaker 1: And so you know, it wasn't until I got out
Speaker 1: of high school that I, you know, really engaged and
Speaker 1: wearing the Wrangler pants all the time. Found out they
Speaker 1: were comfortable, they wear good and uh cowboy boots were
Speaker 1: comfortable and and uh, but I like a hat in
Speaker 1: the mountains because it is a it that brim sticks
Speaker 1: out and it becomes my uh you know, my test
Speaker 1: against pine bows. If I feel pine bows starting to
Speaker 1: hit my hat, I know to duck my head. Instead
Speaker 1: of a hat band, you leave your head lamp on
Speaker 1: there all day long. That true. I forget to put
Speaker 1: it in my pack because you know we're leaving in
Speaker 1: the dark and we'll go headed home in the dark.
Speaker 1: So and in a rainstorm where those hats sure keep
Speaker 1: that rain from running down here that in the pine
Speaker 1: needles they don't get down. The back of your neck
Speaker 1: is easily snow too. I have some epic photos of
Speaker 1: Stewart in a snowstorm, just snow drying neck, snow laying
Speaker 1: on top of his hat. I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: home those photos of anywody got Oh man, we had
Speaker 1: Tyler and I got to ride a bucking blondie who
Speaker 1: are attached at the hip figuratively, and uh, we got
Speaker 1: our horsemanship marit badge. I felt at least an honorary
Speaker 1: horsemanship Marrit Badge. The day that you guys left us
Speaker 1: hunting in that zone to go and where you guys
Speaker 1: found your buck, remember that. And so we got well
Speaker 1: we knew on radios at some point in the day,
Speaker 1: but then we got there and there's a little note
Speaker 1: in my gun scabbard and said that's where it was. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's where I was gonna probably go to first.
Speaker 1: But you had an us. There's a lot less horses
Speaker 1: than where. Yes, yeah, but I said, we've gone up
Speaker 1: the mountain and you boys get back after dark on
Speaker 1: your own, and uh, let us know what you're up
Speaker 1: to landing, And uh it was so we knew we
Speaker 1: had h ride by ourselves. So we left a little
Speaker 1: bit earlier than I probably would have if Landing was there.
Speaker 1: We had maybe thirty minutes of light left, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was snowing a little bit. It was quiet like
Speaker 1: it is after a fresh snow, and just you know,
Speaker 1: only two horses and just we didn't talk and there
Speaker 1: was no headlamps and we kind of rode and it
Speaker 1: just darkness slowly felt. I mean that's why you call
Speaker 1: it Magic Mountain. I mean, just like an amazing like
Speaker 1: people pay ten thousand dollars to experience that. You know,
Speaker 1: it was probably on the way in. I think it
Speaker 1: took us two hours. I bet you we got back
Speaker 1: to camp and just over an hour because when they
Speaker 1: go back to camp, they're using third gear, not first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they know they're headed back, man, But man, was it
Speaker 1: cool in the darkness. Well again, fresh snow and maybe
Speaker 1: a touch of moonlight coming take that same route out
Speaker 1: of there we were coming around. I think we still
Speaker 1: had the lake near us. We're on a pretty open
Speaker 1: hillside and we're kind of coming out of the timber
Speaker 1: and maybe only fift twenty yards away. There's a small
Speaker 1: cow elk standing on the trail facing us, and the
Speaker 1: horse didn't see her quite as soon as I did.
Speaker 1: If she took like three more steps and then stopped
Speaker 1: and they just kind of had a stare off, and
Speaker 1: finally the cow elk spooked. After that, Blondie was not
Speaker 1: taking the lead anymore. I had been in the lead,
Speaker 1: and she went up the hill and then just stood
Speaker 1: there and looked over her shoulder and Bud had to
Speaker 1: take the lead after that. Yeah, um, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: was it was a special evening. Special ride out. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah, man, I mean like you were saying, what
Speaker 1: a special experience. I think that's it's it's an iconic
Speaker 1: hunt to go into the mountains ten miles on horseback, um,
Speaker 1: hunt off of horseback. When you read about it, people right, novels,
Speaker 1: you know, many hunting magazines have stories of him and
Speaker 1: every fall about the adventure. We just did it, you know,
Speaker 1: And if you want to do one with some capable
Speaker 1: and trustworthy outfitters that have their program tight, these guys
Speaker 1: be the ones to do it with. I agree, Steve,
Speaker 1: can I say a couple of so I didn't, Oh no, no.
Speaker 1: I felt like you know when somebody invites you to
Speaker 1: their home and you know, the shoes come off and
Speaker 1: you're just you're comfortable, and maybe you're commenting on the
Speaker 1: taxidermy on the wall. You go into the garage and
Speaker 1: see what they have, and you just you feel like
Speaker 1: they just open up to you. That's how I felt.
Speaker 1: I think with Stewart and Landing, it was like, especially
Speaker 1: for Stewart because of all the years and even Landing
Speaker 1: since what going up there since you were four is
Speaker 1: I mean every every tree. I mean we even commented
Speaker 1: on the way out today on the horses. How we
Speaker 1: went in there and we'd looked on you know, the computer,
Speaker 1: different things you know, on AC and Google, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Earth or whatever. But we went in and
Speaker 1: came out felt like we knew that so much better
Speaker 1: after a week. Imagine thirty years or you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years or whatever it is to see it. And I
Speaker 1: felt like we got a view kind of into their
Speaker 1: living room, you know of them. Well tonight we got here,
Speaker 1: you remember the restaurant was closed. Yeah, we we got
Speaker 1: here after nine pm. Within and both their wives were there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pancakes and bacon, all those things. But then to go
Speaker 1: up there too, I felt like it was such this
Speaker 1: they have this pride and all those rocks and the
Speaker 1: you know, the you know, the crooked sky and all
Speaker 1: those different things, and that I felt like they had
Speaker 1: this like they just opened it up. And and I
Speaker 1: think it was an honor for us to be able
Speaker 1: to be brought into something that was so special for them.
Speaker 1: For me anyhow, Okay, you guys get to do years,
Speaker 1: but one of you. I hate to tell what a
Speaker 1: man what his concluder needs to be, but you should
Speaker 1: tell people how to come and find you, the best
Speaker 1: way to come find you and like and what you offer.
Speaker 1: You know, what kind of hunts you guys do well? UM.
Speaker 1: Obviously all guests go on on the beginning that, UM,
Speaker 1: we have an Instagram page, we have a Facebook page,
Speaker 1: We've got a website up, UM that we'd invite you
Speaker 1: to go check out. UM or we are a little
Speaker 1: bit lacking in some of that stuff. UM, but we're
Speaker 1: trying to make it better. UM. But we would encourage that.
Speaker 1: We do like to talk with people on the phone
Speaker 1: so we can be very up front and direct and
Speaker 1: tell him kind of what we got. So you know,
Speaker 1: emails work. We don't mind correspondence through emails. We'd encourage that.
Speaker 1: But you know, give us a call. We're not afraid
Speaker 1: to spend time talking with you, talking, you know, and
Speaker 1: if you got a buck tag that you've been putting
Speaker 1: in for you know, eight years, you know we're gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you if we feel like it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a good year. UM. But ELK, a guy could
Speaker 1: come on ELK on two to three points, two to
Speaker 1: three points and and we saw I'm gonna interrupt and
Speaker 1: just mentioned like if you had two or three points
Speaker 1: right now for Wyoming, I'd really recommend coming we saw Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I got a boatload of outpoints, but I'm I
Speaker 1: know it's pretty cool, really neat bulls. You know one
Speaker 1: bull we got on videos three fifty plus. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some really good genetics there. Our age group of
Speaker 1: our bulls is where they needs to be. Our bowl
Speaker 1: of cow ratio is really high. UM. But you know
Speaker 1: that's the thing that you know, as an outfit or
Speaker 1: we hope to be able to provide an expert opinion
Speaker 1: for people to be able to spend their money as
Speaker 1: as best as possible. Um. You know, so if they
Speaker 1: come and hunt with us, they know that their best
Speaker 1: interest is going to be held within it within us
Speaker 1: to say, hey, you know, this year is a good year.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do everything we can to get you because
Speaker 1: we know, you know, money doesn't always come easy for people, UM,
Speaker 1: as it hasn't for us UM growing up. And so
Speaker 1: that's one of the things we want people to feel
Speaker 1: confident in is that you know, money is really not
Speaker 1: our motive. UM. And so the way we manage the
Speaker 1: area we try to not over over hunt. UM. We
Speaker 1: try to be very good stewards of the area that
Speaker 1: we hunt to give people a good experience, and that's
Speaker 1: ultimately what we try to pursue as an outfitter UM
Speaker 1: and I guess that's what you could say we live
Speaker 1: by UM. Money does not drive what we do. It's
Speaker 1: the love of giving people the opportunity to experience, to
Speaker 1: fulfill dreams that they've had. You guys were very clear
Speaker 1: with us about what uh, what you expect and what
Speaker 1: you've seen, and there was nothing but pleasant surprises. Man, Well,
Speaker 1: we appreciated what hunting with you guys. I think that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that was most impressive to
Speaker 1: me was you know, obviously you guys know how to glass,
Speaker 1: you guys know how to hunt. That was very apparent,
Speaker 1: But it's the way you interact and the way you
Speaker 1: treat people. You know. We we felt, you know, very
Speaker 1: much UM at ease with you guys. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of people ask, you know, what
Speaker 1: was it like to hunt with them? What was it like?
Speaker 1: What are they like as people? You know, obviously people
Speaker 1: portray a certain way when they're on the video, you know,
Speaker 1: what are they like in person? And I never felt
Speaker 1: from a single one of the crew any kind of
Speaker 1: look down upon because of your status, you know, because
Speaker 1: of where you are at um in your life and
Speaker 1: what your your social status is. Would never felt that
Speaker 1: from any of you guys, and so we appreciated being
Speaker 1: able to hunt with you. It was a great experience
Speaker 1: that we learned, you know, things as we watched and
Speaker 1: observed how you hunted and and and how you went
Speaker 1: about things. You know, the little butt pad, I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna take that and adopt that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that if you guys can find, um,
Speaker 1: if you guys can find half of a ridge rest,
Speaker 1: you guys can hold on. If you get half of
Speaker 1: ridge rest each have two butt pads. Well that's what
Speaker 1: we want because I mean, those fine bows they only
Speaker 1: work for so long. So that was one thing we watched.
Speaker 1: You know, we do spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: our butts glass and that was something we saw from
Speaker 1: you guys that thought, you know, that's probably a worse
Speaker 1: while thing to do. Especially yes, and this time of year,
Speaker 1: you never know what the weather's gonna be like. And
Speaker 1: mine doubles as a napping pad, that's right, Stuart. Do
Speaker 1: you have any final observations, well, any any kind of
Speaker 1: thing doesn't matter. Well, for me, it was it was
Speaker 1: just a fun experience with you. You guys like to hunt,
Speaker 1: enjoy the outdoors. I I find more pleasure and I
Speaker 1: I find my friendship. This kindled quicker with people that
Speaker 1: appreciate that, like I love it and appreciate it. I
Speaker 1: never felt like at any point was the honey area
Speaker 1: um overrun by the thought of I can throw my
Speaker 1: trash or my sacks anything, because I and I've made
Speaker 1: it clear with hunters in the past that and maybe
Speaker 1: it was the older generation because I had to get
Speaker 1: after my own dad to do you that you're saying
Speaker 1: people would like to put their like a little sandwich bag.
Speaker 1: You under put the sandwich bag or there might Back
Speaker 1: in the early days when my dad guide it, they
Speaker 1: used to put out a little cana. I don't know,
Speaker 1: some these a little cans of juice, and uh. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing some of that generation say, well, it's just
Speaker 1: a monument to what you know, the people have sat
Speaker 1: down on this mountain before. I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: that kind of monument. I wanted to be pristine because
Speaker 1: I often find myself thinking about when I'm on top
Speaker 1: of a ridge looking across the expanse of the mountain range,
Speaker 1: you know, ahead what may have been like as a
Speaker 1: as an early explorer of that country, laying ice for
Speaker 1: the first time on that land. I think about it
Speaker 1: often and and it it causes me to to be
Speaker 1: a little bit nostalgic in my thought process. And so
Speaker 1: people that respect and have an enjoyment, I have a
Speaker 1: you know, my friendship is kindled right away in my
Speaker 1: interest in your own lives. And lastly, is it And
Speaker 1: I've said this to Landing many times, and I learned
Speaker 1: this a lot from my uncle, who he said, we
Speaker 1: want to do good in the world, and I think
Speaker 1: if we can, we can do good in the world
Speaker 1: by showing people the beauties that God created for man
Speaker 1: to enjoy, which we did. I think that's that to me,
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest fulfillments of what I get
Speaker 1: out of it. My wife says, why do you like
Speaker 1: it so much? It's so hard, You're late nights and
Speaker 1: early mornings, it's cold, it's stormy, And I said, it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain. But when I share the view of
Speaker 1: a beautiful scene upon a mountain under a horse or
Speaker 1: not under the horse. Hopefully we're on top to horse,
Speaker 1: but on top of a horse, a good horse. And
Speaker 1: and uh, you're just saying, man, well, look at that
Speaker 1: landscape or look at that uh you know, look at
Speaker 1: that big bull, beautiful big bull, or the sunset all
Speaker 1: that stuff. For me to enjoy that with another person
Speaker 1: that enjoys that. Uh, it's like we were kindred spirits
Speaker 1: that we we must have liked the same things, you know,
Speaker 1: before we ever landed on earth, so that we would
Speaker 1: have this opportunity to cross pass and enjoy it again.
Speaker 1: Because to me, this is uh, that's what it's all about,
Speaker 1: is enjoying what's before us. I guess early on, you know,
Speaker 1: as a as an outfitter and as a guide. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was tough for me to to not get an animal,
Speaker 1: you know, because my first several years I never missed.
Speaker 1: I I was sure I was gonna get my game
Speaker 1: as soon as the start of guiding that quit. I've
Speaker 1: probably in in thirty years, I've probably only killed maybe
Speaker 1: four or five animals. Never asked you about the last time,
Speaker 1: yell he says about decade ago or somebody. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things that Now, the fulfillment
Speaker 1: is being able to share what I know to hopefully
Speaker 1: be successful in getting somebody an opportunity to fulfill a dream,
Speaker 1: to to experience something that becomes a memory burned deep
Speaker 1: in their inside it says, hey, that was worth doing.
Speaker 1: One thing that illustrates, uh, you guys capacity for reverence. Uh,
Speaker 1: that I thought was quite impressive was what you went
Speaker 1: through to be able to go to church with your
Speaker 1: families on Sunday, to hunt all day and then after
Speaker 1: dark strike off on horseback to ride seven miles seven
Speaker 1: miles and then drive I don't know how many how
Speaker 1: long you got home at three am to go to
Speaker 1: church and your families then come riding back up into
Speaker 1: the mountains. Well, you know, we were a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't want to go a mile down the road.
Speaker 1: You know, we years ago we established the policy that
Speaker 1: we try to rest our horses and our guide just
Speaker 1: much on the side the day, just to help revive them,
Speaker 1: help them to stay in good spirits. And and we've
Speaker 1: even found that that hunters that have come with us
Speaker 1: may initially think I'm not sure I want to be
Speaker 1: able to hunt on Sunday. When they've had that break,
Speaker 1: say it's there that their hunt takes a Sunday in
Speaker 1: the middle of there, Uh, their hunt that they're thinking,
Speaker 1: we're grateful to heal up a few saddle sores and
Speaker 1: and it just revived the physically, and then they're they're
Speaker 1: they're ready for another day. But the reality of it
Speaker 1: is that we feel like that, uh, that heavy Father's
Speaker 1: been really good to us. Um. We've had very few
Speaker 1: incidents with people being injured on the mountain, and I
Speaker 1: think it's because we try hard to to reverence that
Speaker 1: day for us and and uh the back country and
Speaker 1: the animals and and so it's yet it's sometimes seems
Speaker 1: like a sacrifice, but it's always been a wonderful blessing
Speaker 1: to to be able to get out and and and
Speaker 1: refocus on some things that really are most important. That's
Speaker 1: the family. Uh. And even if even it's only for
Speaker 1: half a dozen hours and then back in to something
Speaker 1: that we can you know, we're ready, we're ready to
Speaker 1: be geared up to do it again. Uh. So it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun thing. Oh yeah, I didn't. I didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't find it any kind of annoyance. I thought
Speaker 1: it was I thought it was admirable. Well, we we
Speaker 1: appreciate that those are things to us that mean a
Speaker 1: lot to us. Uh and uh as I sensed us.
Speaker 1: We've talked with you guys on the mountain, which is
Speaker 1: a fun thing about how you you know your families.
Speaker 1: The family is where the lasting happening is really will
Speaker 1: come over over and above any of the other stuff
Speaker 1: that that we may you know, achieve in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's good in in Uh. You guys pulled
Speaker 1: some long days and it and it is you you
Speaker 1: come out, you guys. But I guess sometimes you guys pulled.
Speaker 1: You guys pulled twenty hour days there there they'll end
Speaker 1: up with twenty hours and you you know, you you
Speaker 1: come down a little jaded, you lose a little weight,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't take you long and put that weight
Speaker 1: back and you know when you get hold. But let
Speaker 1: me also comment though, because they're saying all these things
Speaker 1: that when Stewart and I did go to recover my buck,
Speaker 1: he did put a rifle in his scabbard and I said, oh, Stuart,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I said, you never know if
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump a big old buck up there, are
Speaker 1: we gonna go tell Steve and you're honest, and he
Speaker 1: just gotta gives me this smirk, so he still got
Speaker 1: it into he said, I got a tag. That's good. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: thanks so much, um for taking us out. Thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. I know you've been you you
Speaker 1: put in a very long week this week, so I'm
Speaker 1: glad he could come join us on the show. But
Speaker 1: I was I was very excited to kind of share
Speaker 1: some of your perspectives in the details of your business
Speaker 1: with with our listeners. So I know quite often people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, who don't have a lot of experience will ask, like,
Speaker 1: what would be a good way to kind of dip
Speaker 1: my toes into this whole thing, and it's it's nice
Speaker 1: to have found um, not that you, but some other
Speaker 1: people too. Uh guides. We know that where you'd be like,
Speaker 1: that would be a worthwhile Uh, that'd be a worthwhile
Speaker 1: venture to go on to hook up with you guys
Speaker 1: on a trip. So I encourage people to come find you.
Speaker 1: We appreciate that that that means a lot coming from
Speaker 1: guys that know how to hunt, and it's fun, Like say,
Speaker 1: it's fun to hunt with guys that like to hunt
Speaker 1: and know how to hunt. Yeah, it really does. We
Speaker 1: we learned from you, like to say, the butt pad idea.
Speaker 1: We call man a debt factor. Coming back was it?
Speaker 1: What night was it was? It was Sunday night, coming
Speaker 1: back in. I had seen a little pad sleeping pad
Speaker 1: that fell off somebody's back back, probably during the archery
Speaker 1: d and I've ridden past the time or two, you know,
Speaker 1: several times. But after seeing what you guys, I thought,
Speaker 1: I told Land and I said, hey, pick that up, book,
Speaker 1: cut that up. So a last but not least if
Speaker 1: you had to raise our group as her horseman, not individually,
Speaker 1: because I want you to point out one guy that
Speaker 1: really sucked on a horse. Yeah. Yeah, and don't cut
Speaker 1: the fact to be four days to figure out how
Speaker 1: to tie a quick release. Not as a group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can be one to ten. Yeah. I would say
Speaker 1: that you started out probably in the three to four range.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good places. And I think by the end
Speaker 1: I think you were, you'd gained probably another three or
Speaker 1: four points that I did. I you know, obviously you
Speaker 1: got used to the horse that you were riding. You
Speaker 1: were comfortable, and I thought it would be fun if
Speaker 1: you switched it up, because the more horses different personality
Speaker 1: horses ride, the better you become. Oh, instead of being
Speaker 1: used to the same how the horse behaves, a true
Speaker 1: horseman is becomes adaptable to the type of horses riding
Speaker 1: at that time. But did you guys be honest when
Speaker 1: you guys went into your bunk at night, did you
Speaker 1: guys goof on seuth a little bit? I didn't get
Speaker 1: the se seth too much. I did. I did talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about Mike's ability to control his horse,
Speaker 1: because if he had decided they wanted to go off trail,
Speaker 1: it was going off trail. A lot of it had
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that, uh, he didn't have
Speaker 1: a hold of the reins other way up on the ends,
Speaker 1: which has no control, so he was he was on autopilot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was fun. It's great. That was an awesome, awesome trip. Alright, guys,
Speaker 1: thanks again, Thank you,