Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to episode number fifty of The
Speaker 1: Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and we made it the
Speaker 1: episode fifty. It's pretty cool. I never thought this podcast
Speaker 1: would last episode number five, let alone number fifty, so
Speaker 1: I am very happy to be here with you. Uh
Speaker 1: and with us today is two men, uh Byron and
Speaker 1: Darryl Pace from Scotland, and I would imagine that if
Speaker 1: you've never been to Scotland, or if you don't, you're
Speaker 1: not aware of their hunting culture. These are two the
Speaker 1: two best guys to be talking to to get the
Speaker 1: perspective from that side of the world. And Byron and
Speaker 1: Darryl also prolific creators of media. They have a podcast,
Speaker 1: they're wonderful photographers, and they are also filmmakers. Um. It
Speaker 1: made me feel a little bit lazy by seeing and
Speaker 1: watching and learning about what they do. But also they've
Speaker 1: lived amazing lives for their young years, and well, we
Speaker 1: wanted to get into a lot of the land use
Speaker 1: and wildlife management in Scotland, but we didn't get there
Speaker 1: because their life stories are so damn interesting. So please enjoy.
Speaker 1: Straight from the Mediator Offices of Montana, Byron Darryl Pace
Speaker 1: the Pace Brothers on the episode number fifty. I'm warming
Speaker 1: up now. Yeah, yeah, you getting used to it after
Speaker 1: it said would have been a week. It is, but
Speaker 1: we left, we left Scotland. It was pretty cold, although
Speaker 1: not minus twenty, which is what it was in Yellowstone
Speaker 1: when we visited the first day. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: couple of degrees undering a wee bit of snow. It's
Speaker 1: all gone. Now. You enjoyed Montana. Now it's terrible. It's
Speaker 1: it's views are terrible. Yeah, it's it makes you not
Speaker 1: want to come back. It's it's amazing here, absolutely spectacular.
Speaker 1: It's actually screwed me up, if I'm honest, because I've
Speaker 1: kind of spent I've spent so much of my life
Speaker 1: always looking for the backup to Scotland, where we live,
Speaker 1: where we're from. And despite all the awesome places I've
Speaker 1: been around the world, there's always it's never it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not I wouldn't make that trade. And now I've
Speaker 1: been here a week and I'm like, oh, dear, oh,
Speaker 1: I found I found a place. I'm very much into
Speaker 1: Plan B. I have like this thing where I in
Speaker 1: case I lose my job, and my wife and son
Speaker 1: decide they don't want me around anymore. You gotta have
Speaker 1: like a you know, pull the ripcord. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's New Zealand. It used to be Alaska. Until I
Speaker 1: went to New Zealand. I was like, WHOA, I could
Speaker 1: live here. So that's my my plan B. So maybe
Speaker 1: this could be your plan B in case everything doesn't
Speaker 1: work out. If maybe plan A. If you guys let
Speaker 1: us in, yeah, well we would let you. And okay,
Speaker 1: we're so temporary. We're not pass ben nicely for a
Speaker 1: temporary job. Yeah. As you can tell around here, we
Speaker 1: have plenty of seats and people to fill them. I
Speaker 1: was tempted when I was looking. I was looking through
Speaker 1: your store at the meat each story the other day
Speaker 1: and I saw a couple of jobs up for grabs
Speaker 1: and something, Well, let's do an into view. Now, tell
Speaker 1: me about your skills, no, I hear at the Meatia,
Speaker 1: we will ask you, like, what if you were a bird,
Speaker 1: what type of bird would you be? That's how that's
Speaker 1: how our interviews begin. Well, after seeing a bold eagle
Speaker 1: for the first time the other day, I think I
Speaker 1: want to be that. That's a that's a bad motherfucker.
Speaker 1: First time I've seen one, Yeah, right outside Tyler's house.
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't you know, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I saw a bald eagle until I was in my
Speaker 1: teenage years because I lived on the East Coast and
Speaker 1: then very rare. They're not populated. That not populated. There
Speaker 1: there are some around. You would see him, you know, rarely.
Speaker 1: But then now I live over here on the Gallatin
Speaker 1: River and they fly across my backyard every morning. Pretty special.
Speaker 1: It's pretty special thing they must be. I mean it
Speaker 1: was above my head. So it's difficult to judge the
Speaker 1: scale of something when it's just in the sky. That
Speaker 1: golden little sea eagles are the biggest thing we have
Speaker 1: in Scotland, the golden eagles being more common, but they
Speaker 1: were a lot bigger than a golden eagle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're They're a big raptor um and and you know
Speaker 1: for us that they have you know, when you go
Speaker 1: you go like Prince of Wales Island, say coastal Alaska,
Speaker 1: and they're like buzzers. I mean they're everywhere, and every
Speaker 1: pile of trash has a gold ea has a bald
Speaker 1: eagle on it. Every dead carcass has ten bald eagles
Speaker 1: on it. You know, every dead seal is washed up
Speaker 1: on the shore has ten bald eagles. So imagine if
Speaker 1: you lived in that place, your your perspective might be
Speaker 1: a little bit different. But here and to see a
Speaker 1: bald eagle, I mean now, we were sitting in the
Speaker 1: airport and I look out and there's like a bald
Speaker 1: eagle flying with a backdrop of the Bridge mountains, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh man, in my in my mind, I
Speaker 1: was like, America. Yeah, that's the American dream. That's it
Speaker 1: right there. That's like if I was a pilgrim coming
Speaker 1: out west then I stopped and saw that, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'll live here, I will homestead here. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a lot about um where you came from.
Speaker 1: But first I want to talk about your time in Montana.
Speaker 1: You gotta give me. We got bison hunts. You guys
Speaker 1: have met and podcasted with some interesting individuals and and
Speaker 1: plan to do more. So yeah, I gotta tell us
Speaker 1: all about it. We've got a busy day head today.
Speaker 1: We've got we're seeing your buddy Brad. Yeah. Um, over
Speaker 1: said kill a. So, which is gonna be pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And we the first well, the first thing that happened
Speaker 1: when we came to to Montana was it went to Yellerstone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that doesn't get much better than that. I
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty good introduction. Yeah, what you know,
Speaker 1: being from uh Scotland and coming here, obviously that's a
Speaker 1: legendary place. I mean it's it's a place of held
Speaker 1: in high regard in our country. And does it does
Speaker 1: it hold up to the to the legend in your mind? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It does. You know, everyone at home knows Yellowstone pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone in the thing. Everybody knows Yellowstone. It's probably,
Speaker 1: I dare say it's probably the most well known national
Speaker 1: park in the world. The other day in the UK,
Speaker 1: Like you'll be lucky if three or four national geographics
Speaker 1: a year don't have something to do with the Yellowstone
Speaker 1: in the UK. So, I mean it's it's widely known. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is. I mean it's I went to for
Speaker 1: the first time two years ago and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean there's not just a wildlife. Did you guys
Speaker 1: go to the paint pots and go to the well.
Speaker 1: A lot of the roads are closed. There was only
Speaker 1: sort of the main drags. There was only one of
Speaker 1: the thermal areas that when you could get to, so
Speaker 1: we were told it wasn't the most vivid, but it
Speaker 1: was still cool to see. But it was the bison
Speaker 1: that kind of behind blew us away. Was it's this,
Speaker 1: it's this icon of North America and it's this icon
Speaker 1: of conservation and I kind of expected to go in
Speaker 1: there and see them, but they might be over there
Speaker 1: when we might have to know. Looking with the buyers
Speaker 1: for an hour, and we were in there for all
Speaker 1: of about thirty there's a bison, and it was like yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Tyler, who was driving us around and schurefeuring us,
Speaker 1: it's okay, you're gonna see that, And sure enough we
Speaker 1: went around the next bend there was thirty and then
Speaker 1: it was fifty. And then we went down to on
Speaker 1: this plane where we were looking for one of the
Speaker 1: wolf packs and there was maybe two or three hundred,
Speaker 1: and it was like it kind of made me feel
Speaker 1: like the early pioneers and how they must have felt,
Speaker 1: just like popping over the horizon and just seeing this awestness,
Speaker 1: this wilderness and all these animals everywhere. And I think
Speaker 1: going in the wintertime, um, which I again I did
Speaker 1: this winter for the first time and going in the
Speaker 1: summertime it is a completely different experience. I mean it
Speaker 1: completely and the summertime you just a traffic jams around
Speaker 1: the Buffalo, you know, and and to go there and
Speaker 1: just as like you said, to see it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not untouched, but to see it rather unbothered. You know,
Speaker 1: we were pretty lucky there wasn't that many people on
Speaker 1: the road that they were they were saying that it
Speaker 1: was very quiet, which I'm glad. I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you got to experience it without without you know,
Speaker 1: a car load of people behind you, and that's you
Speaker 1: know that that is the very you go in July
Speaker 1: and you will have that. So it is we've talked
Speaker 1: about on this podcast before. I feel I felt always
Speaker 1: felt conflicted about that because I think it's it's as
Speaker 1: great as you said, this great representation of what the
Speaker 1: Western United States has to offer, and really there are
Speaker 1: this this continent has to offer um. But sometimes you
Speaker 1: go there and you feel like, man, I wish you
Speaker 1: would wish we would have put a thumb on this
Speaker 1: some years ago, but we talked about and passed on
Speaker 1: some other conversations it being just a representative for wildlife,
Speaker 1: you know, being a place that everyone can go to
Speaker 1: see what it's like in wild places without having to interact.
Speaker 1: Is not everybody will go and interact in the way
Speaker 1: that it's important because it gives people. It gives people
Speaker 1: a reason to be interested when they can see it
Speaker 1: in in a tangible form. But we have the same
Speaker 1: problem in Scotland and certain locations, not so much with wildlife,
Speaker 1: with landscape and like the Isle of Sky, which is
Speaker 1: the most awesome place, and yet through the summer months
Speaker 1: we just don't go there anymore because there's just so
Speaker 1: many tourists And it's which which is because we're also
Speaker 1: a tourists and it's it's a it's a conflict, isn't it,
Speaker 1: Because I don't want to be self and said, we
Speaker 1: don't go there because I don't want you because you're
Speaker 1: paining the ass, You're blocking all the roads and there's
Speaker 1: two cars parked to go and you know, look at
Speaker 1: a particular rock formation because I want to see it,
Speaker 1: so why should I not share it with everyone else?
Speaker 1: But there's a difference here though they're paying to go
Speaker 1: in they are paying and there they don't In Scotland.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't pay, and so it's it is
Speaker 1: actually having detrimental impacts to the local people and the environment.
Speaker 1: Though also the scale is much bigger Yellowstone. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you do have loads and loads of people
Speaker 1: disturbing wildlife on roads and potentially walking on trails, and
Speaker 1: that it's so big that wildlife can move off into
Speaker 1: its own area and not be disturbed. So we we
Speaker 1: were doing the maths of of scale of Yellowstone and
Speaker 1: it's just compared to what we have at home, it's colossal. Yeah, sure, Miles, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just unbelievable. We think our national parks pick Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like a drop in the ocean. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's I've come to appreciate the fact
Speaker 1: that for what it represents, it represents a chance for
Speaker 1: for people to go and see wildlife and be inspired
Speaker 1: to go and learn more. Um. But sometimes when you
Speaker 1: go there and there's a traffic gam for an hour
Speaker 1: and a half to be old faithful, you think, damn, man,
Speaker 1: like this is what it what are we really doing
Speaker 1: this the right way? But I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much positive that comes from and you can't you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard to really focus on the negative.
Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful place. Yeah, it is. It blew
Speaker 1: us away for sure. Good, it's good, and I'm glad
Speaker 1: you got to, like say, I got to go there
Speaker 1: in the winter experience it that way. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: calumness there in the winter that there there certainly isn't.
Speaker 1: And we were learning something interesting yesterday because we saw
Speaker 1: so many bison and we saw two elk fighting. We
Speaker 1: were telling you about this the other day, fighting in
Speaker 1: the petrol station. We put a picture of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we saw a handful of female elk. But we
Speaker 1: were speaking to someone yesterday and they were telling us
Speaker 1: how the olt population inside Yellowstone has declined so much
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years, largely due to the wolf predation,
Speaker 1: which I hadn't I hadn't appreciate it at all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it. It becomes. I think test case
Speaker 1: is probably the wrong world, but that's what it becomes.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an untouched landscape where the human interaction
Speaker 1: is not allowed because there's no management. It'side Yellowstone Atoll,
Speaker 1: not no no. Um, there's you know, problem, animals are killed,
Speaker 1: there's interactions with humans. But there's no hunting based management
Speaker 1: within within the Yellowstone at all. I'm uh. And you
Speaker 1: know people love to hunt the edges had We had
Speaker 1: a buddy out there doing that just the other day
Speaker 1: for bison. Um. So it is it is this like
Speaker 1: you know, often anti hunters or vegans would say, like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't we just why do we have to prey upon animals? Now,
Speaker 1: you know, we can just go to the store and
Speaker 1: eat meat, and let's let's allow the natural predator prey
Speaker 1: balance to you know, let's reintroduce grisly bears, reintroduced wolves
Speaker 1: in Serenade range and just let it go. And I
Speaker 1: would say Yellowstone is a good example of what can
Speaker 1: happen and what likely will. It's I think people don't
Speaker 1: appreciate this quite the scale of landscape that you need
Speaker 1: for wildlife to truly balance itself. As we've said, Yellowstone
Speaker 1: is colossal. But the grand scheme of these massive migrations
Speaker 1: that historically used to happen in the interactions of wildlife
Speaker 1: across all of North America, which is a vast place,
Speaker 1: it's still relatively small. Everything is relative. It is small
Speaker 1: in relation to North America, but it's large in relation
Speaker 1: to a land mass in Scotland, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think people it's very difficult for us to get our
Speaker 1: heads around actually what scale you need? Yes, for wildlife
Speaker 1: to look after itself. Um, So what else do you
Speaker 1: guys do in Montana? Is there? Um? Is there anything
Speaker 1: that that sticks out beyond the grand this is yellow Stunt? Well,
Speaker 1: I think Daryl's probably. I mean, we've been meeting people.
Speaker 1: It's been you know, catching up with you and a
Speaker 1: whole heap of other people that are been doing some
Speaker 1: podcasts and also you know, we've we've been staying staying
Speaker 1: with Tyler Sharp, editor Modern Huntsman. We've been we did
Speaker 1: some stuff on volume two and we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing some bits and pieces and working on volume three
Speaker 1: as well. So that's been part of the reason for
Speaker 1: being here. But I think Daryl probably managed to steal
Speaker 1: the highlight of sort of activities because he was photographing
Speaker 1: a bison hunt yesterday before, yeah, like two day, two
Speaker 1: days ago. It was Yeah, it was pretty damn amazing
Speaker 1: because especially when you're told we're going to go and
Speaker 1: do a bison hunt and then you find out it's
Speaker 1: on horseback as well. And it was last minute. We
Speaker 1: come here knowing that this was going to happen, hooked
Speaker 1: up for us while we're here, literally like twenty four
Speaker 1: hours before. It was like yes or no, like you're
Speaker 1: going and that So I went. And being on a
Speaker 1: horse riding up into the mountains, it's kind of just
Speaker 1: been a dream of mine for forever. And this is
Speaker 1: what I was trying to tell the people I was with.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think you appreciate how special
Speaker 1: this this is because they do all the time, but
Speaker 1: this for them, this is a yearly thing. UM taking
Speaker 1: horses up into the you know those mountains, and it
Speaker 1: was it was annoying because I was taking pictures. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. Actually it's difficult to appreciate, appreciate, you know,
Speaker 1: just like when you're doing when you're doing a job.
Speaker 1: But also it was the added challenge of taking pictures
Speaker 1: on horseback. So that was that that was interesting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we rode higher and higher and you know wooded area
Speaker 1: and UM went up this track and it was I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't unfortunately didn't see anything at all. We saw
Speaker 1: problems and you didn't see anybody, But that was right
Speaker 1: at the bottom basically by the truck when we started.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's funny as perspective there, because you know,
Speaker 1: from the hunter's perspective, who's from this area and does
Speaker 1: that every year, it's like, wow, this is this is
Speaker 1: an unsuccessful day. But to you, it's like this is
Speaker 1: a day I'll remember for a long time. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said this, and I was like, you do not.
Speaker 1: I appreciate this so much that I got to go along. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were speaking for people back home,
Speaker 1: and people back home literally save up for potentially their
Speaker 1: whole life to do what I just did, so like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's so easy to forget the importance of the
Speaker 1: things that are on your doorstep. And the same is
Speaker 1: true for us. We live just below the Highland Faults
Speaker 1: in Scotland, so when we look out from our office
Speaker 1: the mountains start, that's the Highland Faults of of historic
Speaker 1: Scotland right there. We've got like four castles like where
Speaker 1: we live, and you know, we know, of course we
Speaker 1: don't think about it. You guys live in a castle, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course everyone, but you know, we don't think about
Speaker 1: it every day, and sometimes I do have to just
Speaker 1: sit there normally with a brandy in hand or something
Speaker 1: something like that, one of contemplation, juice and look at
Speaker 1: the mountains and just take a deep breast, like this
Speaker 1: is where I live, and the same is true for you, know,
Speaker 1: you the folks who live here and get to experience
Speaker 1: what is really quite quite a unique thing. Horseback into
Speaker 1: the mountains of Montana. Yeah. Yeah, everywhere I go, I
Speaker 1: always I remember, prior to moving to Montana, when I
Speaker 1: felt like I lived in a less impressive environment. I
Speaker 1: would when I was coming here. But one of the
Speaker 1: first questions I would ask the guide or whoever was
Speaker 1: hosting me here, whomever I was with it lived in
Speaker 1: that place, is like, did you ever does this ever
Speaker 1: get old? Do you ever wake up and just like
Speaker 1: breeze by the mountain and just forget what you're looking at,
Speaker 1: Like you forget that you're on the doorstep of the
Speaker 1: Greater Eli Yelstone ecosystem that holds, you know, America's wildlife
Speaker 1: treasures in it. I've been here for about three months,
Speaker 1: so hasn't hit me yet that I'm here, You know,
Speaker 1: It's like the reverse. I haven't yet got to appreciate
Speaker 1: it because I'm not I don't think I've it's hit
Speaker 1: me that I live here and intend to live here
Speaker 1: for a long time, So I mean it is, that's
Speaker 1: it's the opposite. But you're right. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: people are lived all their life. There's days they wake
Speaker 1: up and they just breeze through life and they forget.
Speaker 1: You get busy, and you get busy with life, just
Speaker 1: human nat. I'm just glad. I've spent quite a few
Speaker 1: years learning to ride horses back home, and it's quite
Speaker 1: different here, different saddles and a different environment. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: the most we ever did was kind of trails and
Speaker 1: across fields, kind of hacking across farmer's fields and things
Speaker 1: like that, but into the mountains as such, because we
Speaker 1: don't have we don't have this kind of wooded alpine
Speaker 1: steep areas that you can just ride a horse into.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't exist back home. So that was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty cool. My horse was called Shrek talk. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that he was pretty chilled because I was clicking
Speaker 1: the camera obviously above his head and the guy though,
Speaker 1: and the horse was like, yeah, it might be a
Speaker 1: bit edgy with that, because that's making the same noise
Speaker 1: as the electric fence in his paddock right above his head,
Speaker 1: and he was a bit edgy for the first ten
Speaker 1: minutes and then he kind of just easy easy now.
Speaker 1: I mean it's good to hear that you have that
Speaker 1: perspective and coming all the way across the world like
Speaker 1: you did to have that experience. I appreciate that too.
Speaker 1: And and for my for my money, I'll do my
Speaker 1: best not to ever to not you know, to lose
Speaker 1: perspective on this place. And you know what it is,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think that's that's why people here want
Speaker 1: to fight for it so much, fight for access to it,
Speaker 1: fight for for its health, and it's you know, the
Speaker 1: health of these ecosystems, because it's because it is such
Speaker 1: a prize. For me, Montana was one of these locations
Speaker 1: that was always on the bucket list for visiting. And
Speaker 1: it's going to be a little bit cheesy, but that
Speaker 1: started with a river runs through it. Incredible. I mean
Speaker 1: it's even today. I mean it is a piece of
Speaker 1: cinema for sure. It's a it's a beautiful film hired
Speaker 1: from the local library on tape exactly on VHS and
Speaker 1: just seeing that, I mean it was it was the mountains,
Speaker 1: it was the river, it was the fish. It was
Speaker 1: obviously of a different period, and I am probably somewhat
Speaker 1: guilty of hankering for periods of the past true of
Speaker 1: North America, and it was That's probably one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I have spent so much time in Africa. But
Speaker 1: because of that, it was always it was what was
Speaker 1: the catalyst from my intrigue of North America and understanding
Speaker 1: what happened here historically. And of course you guys have
Speaker 1: a fascinating story. Yeah, I mean, it's you know, fascinating
Speaker 1: wildlife story. But I think you know I was doing
Speaker 1: this earlier. I just thought, what if I if I
Speaker 1: google hunting in Scotland, what's going to come up? Nothing
Speaker 1: comes up. There's no good information, at least in my searching,
Speaker 1: Like there's no here is the pre eminent source to
Speaker 1: learn about hunting in Scotland or or you know, hunting
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, over and above that. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: you say, because funny enough, I was just thinking the
Speaker 1: other day because I write, I write a back page
Speaker 1: of Hunting magazine at home, and when I took it
Speaker 1: over it was always on historical figures in hunting. And
Speaker 1: when I took it over. I said, I'm not just
Speaker 1: gonna make about historical figures, but I'm going to make
Speaker 1: it about historical and current figures. And it's going to
Speaker 1: be people who have not only been important for hunting,
Speaker 1: but also important for conservation, even if they had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with hunting. So I think it's important many
Speaker 1: of them did, especially the historical figures. And it's very
Speaker 1: very easy to find awesome examples in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. I mean North America is full of them, yes,
Speaker 1: just some great examples in Africa and India and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. And we do have them in
Speaker 1: the UK, but they're not spoken about their names that
Speaker 1: if you were to mention them now, people wouldn't know
Speaker 1: who they are. And that's kind of sad. And I've
Speaker 1: just I realized this week in the long journeys, we've
Speaker 1: been driving around and he's trying to readdress that a
Speaker 1: little bit, and I have been putting them on the
Speaker 1: back page, but it needs to be it needs to
Speaker 1: be more than that some magazine that goes in the
Speaker 1: bin every month. Yeah. No, I mean I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot about it from you guys specifically, but without you guys,
Speaker 1: I probably would still think it's you know, dudes and tweed,
Speaker 1: you know, asking the gamekeeper if they can go out
Speaker 1: and kill a red deer. But so talk about, um,
Speaker 1: where do you come from? And it's kind of your
Speaker 1: your upbringing in a little bit of you know, kind
Speaker 1: of take us over to Scotland and give us a
Speaker 1: little bit of an insight into your lives growing up.
Speaker 1: Do you want to start going? Yeah, I can, I can,
Speaker 1: I can start start Mr Navy Yes, so um me
Speaker 1: and by while I was born in the Highlands, so
Speaker 1: in Inverness on the banks of Loch Ness looking at
Speaker 1: a monster. It wasn't really but I was born in Inverness.
Speaker 1: I don't really remember my time up there too much
Speaker 1: because you're around one years old. Yeah, but we had
Speaker 1: a boat on Loch Nest and then we moved. Where
Speaker 1: would we Where do we go to after that? Um? Yes,
Speaker 1: well where we live now? Yeah, it was straight for you.
Speaker 1: It was straight from from Invernessta there basically from there
Speaker 1: we um ever since we were I don't know, we
Speaker 1: could walk. My dad took us out hunting, rabbit hunting,
Speaker 1: a bit of pigeon shooting, fishing, fishing, and that was yeah,
Speaker 1: that was just our life. We used to do a
Speaker 1: lot of like stock ponds because when you're when you're small,
Speaker 1: you want to it's it's better to catch a child's
Speaker 1: attention if they're guaranteed. I used to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad, just take a drop your line in this
Speaker 1: hole and you'll pull out of sunfish every time. It's
Speaker 1: more exciting and then and then you can move on
Speaker 1: to the days of no catching catching, which is quite
Speaker 1: common back home. But in the early days kind of
Speaker 1: hunting for us was a little more of a necessity
Speaker 1: than them for fun or anything. Because both our parents
Speaker 1: are from Rhodesia which is now Zimbabwie, and they basically
Speaker 1: came to the UK due to uh well, it was
Speaker 1: after the after the after the Bush War, and they
Speaker 1: saw that things we were going to go downhill. And
Speaker 1: while you can see the state of Zimbabwie now, it
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed since then, if not, it's worse than ever.
Speaker 1: And they came to the UK and my dad will
Speaker 1: tell you with two sick cases and four pounds, which
Speaker 1: is probably probably true. And they were my dad was
Speaker 1: shooting rabbits for for food, yeah, digging. He was also
Speaker 1: told us about digging coal out from an old coal bunker.
Speaker 1: And that's true for for heat, for heat, because they
Speaker 1: rented this shitty little cottage on a farm somewhere outside
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to live He didn't want to
Speaker 1: live in the city. Yeah, you want to live in
Speaker 1: the countryside. But obviously you've gone forward to Florida. So
Speaker 1: it's like the damp. He did point it out to
Speaker 1: us once, just this damp, little one bed cottage with
Speaker 1: nothing to stay warm. But yeah, it was through it
Speaker 1: was through a complete necessity of extra food meets expensive
Speaker 1: um so shooting rabbits, pigeons, just whatever you could get
Speaker 1: his hands on. He was working behind a bar. Um
Speaker 1: there's not a huge amount of money to support a
Speaker 1: family of four. And then as life went on, he
Speaker 1: got a different job and we moved and the hunting
Speaker 1: aspect just stayed stayed with us our entire life. A
Speaker 1: lot more fishing early earlier on a lot more fishing
Speaker 1: because where we live now, where our offices, there's a
Speaker 1: river that just goes straight past it. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of after school, we could go take our rods and
Speaker 1: just fishing Tenute walk. It was kind of like a
Speaker 1: little section of paradise and it was all if it's
Speaker 1: we can do about this later. But it was most
Speaker 1: of the rivers and the lands private, and this was
Speaker 1: owned by the local farmer who was a friend. So
Speaker 1: we had like four or five miles of river that
Speaker 1: no one ever fished that we could fish. And we're
Speaker 1: like ten and twelve. Did your father in Zimbabwe did
Speaker 1: they did they hunt there or did he just pick
Speaker 1: it up like you said, ada nessess. I mean he
Speaker 1: hunted a lot as a as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: with an air gun and uh, you know whatever else
Speaker 1: is his our grandfather would bring back from the from
Speaker 1: the army there. He was always bringing him back different
Speaker 1: guns and stuff to shoot. But it was different times.
Speaker 1: You know, he would give him a gun to say,
Speaker 1: you know, here's son, you've I've taken this for the
Speaker 1: weekend for you to shoot. But you know, here's six bullets.
Speaker 1: You know. It's not like you know, we're spoiled now,
Speaker 1: or it was. He had he had an air gun
Speaker 1: that his um an uncle had bought him, if I'm
Speaker 1: remembering the story correctly. And they didn't have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money either, so it wasn't you know, I
Speaker 1: when I bought my first air gun. I bought five
Speaker 1: thousand pellets just so that once I found the ones
Speaker 1: I liked because I didn't want to run out, He'd
Speaker 1: be given a little box of twenty five and that
Speaker 1: was there, and then he'd have to go and ask
Speaker 1: our grand making a better Yeah. So he did a
Speaker 1: lot of that, but not You would think growing up
Speaker 1: in Africa that there would be lots of big stories
Speaker 1: of big game, but there wasn't for him. But one
Speaker 1: generation back there was. There's also a bush walk going on,
Speaker 1: so he was doing you know, they were fighting people
Speaker 1: when they should have been having fun. You know, in
Speaker 1: the teenage it was like national service. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want to venture too far into the bush because there's
Speaker 1: people it's kind of kind of stolen from them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: well and it sounds to me like despite you know,
Speaker 1: I would say relative you know, poverty. When you guys
Speaker 1: are growing up, you found that it seems like you
Speaker 1: had a happy childhood. We had a great I mean
Speaker 1: we wanted for nothing. We can we can't go zero
Speaker 1: complaints by the time we were you know, of any age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dad had forged on. Mom and dad forged on. He
Speaker 1: had good jobs worked in the oil, and then that
Speaker 1: was from working in the bar. Someone someone behind the bar,
Speaker 1: was like, you shouldn't be behind the bar. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a job in a while, and he
Speaker 1: got a job. I got a job in a while, um,
Speaker 1: and then was made redundant very quickly after a few years.
Speaker 1: The year I was born was one of the big
Speaker 1: oil slumps globally oil oil slump, which I then paralleled
Speaker 1: then in two thousand and both of us two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen or whatever when this next global oil slump came.
Speaker 1: Because I was working in all times funny parallel. But
Speaker 1: to continue with my story, I guess. Yeah. So growing up,
Speaker 1: going through high school, I didn't really do a huge
Speaker 1: amount of hunting or anything. Through high school, bar and
Speaker 1: did a lot more than than I did. I would
Speaker 1: go out pheasant shooting and pigeon shooting. I did that
Speaker 1: quite a bit, but nothing too serious. I'm too busy
Speaker 1: chasing girls. My brother. My brother still that this day
Speaker 1: doesn't really hunt at all, or doesn't hunt at all,
Speaker 1: and I attributed to his partying. Yeah that's what it was, buddies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Saturday morning. Would you like to get up early
Speaker 1: in about four am and drafted a hunting spot and
Speaker 1: spend all day walking around the woods, or would you
Speaker 1: like to stay up all night and then go to
Speaker 1: sleep at four am? See what he hasn't told you
Speaker 1: is that his incentive of riding horses was also motivated
Speaker 1: by that. It was do you want to place minated
Speaker 1: by females? It was I was like the old lady
Speaker 1: that could ride a horse. I found it a good
Speaker 1: it's a good match. I was the only dude and
Speaker 1: it was about fifteen girls. It was. It was a
Speaker 1: no brainer. You're a smart man to be admired. What
Speaker 1: was it was there a hunting culture growing up for you?
Speaker 1: I mean, because was it as prevalent as you've seen
Speaker 1: here in the States. It was definitely not as prevalent.
Speaker 1: And the thing for us was, although like Daryl said,
Speaker 1: Dad was, you know, showing us the ropes as best
Speaker 1: as he knew. It was still a new country for him.
Speaker 1: So the equivalent of my dad if he had grown
Speaker 1: up in Scotland, you know, I would have known all
Speaker 1: the plants all you know, all the floora, all the
Speaker 1: fauna and all the intricacies of the wildlife and management there.
Speaker 1: You know, by the age of like twelve, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't tell us that because he didn't know and he
Speaker 1: didn't know anyone either, So we had, you know, at
Speaker 1: the beginning, almost zero access too for shooting. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about zero access to going shooting anywhere, because you especially
Speaker 1: where we live, if you want to shoot easily accessible land,
Speaker 1: then you've got to know farmer on the low ground.
Speaker 1: So that's what we've We've their whole life now and
Speaker 1: now we have access to all of it around our
Speaker 1: little kingdom of our round the castle. I knew it, ah,
Speaker 1: But why was asking about the culture? But there is
Speaker 1: I mean we can and we can expand on that,
Speaker 1: but the there is a There is a really there
Speaker 1: is a good culture of hunting and an incredible historic
Speaker 1: story of hunting in the in the UK and in
Speaker 1: Scotland in particular. But it's not as sort of publicly
Speaker 1: in your face as it isn't here. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean that in a bad way, but it's very obvious
Speaker 1: for me driving around here the person probably hunts. You
Speaker 1: just see the way people addressed and the way people
Speaker 1: act in the Rocky Mountain Foundation place around this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in the mecca of it. Aren't we. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're in the core of it here for sure.
Speaker 1: So we had to you know, gun safety fishing. We
Speaker 1: were given the elements to take it on if we wanted.
Speaker 1: But a lot of what we did after was, you know,
Speaker 1: we were teaching ourselves and then eventually teaching Dad because
Speaker 1: he's been because he's busy working. He was away rafting
Speaker 1: and working well to the age of what twelve thirteen
Speaker 1: years old, working back he was still working in Africa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's it's very similar to a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: the Patrick Lennard Patrick lineal um, the way that it
Speaker 1: happens here like it. For me, it was I grew
Speaker 1: up my dad. My dad had this amazing ability to
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a kid. He could name
Speaker 1: every tree, name every bird, you know, name pretty much
Speaker 1: everything and you know, for me and teach me that.
Speaker 1: But um, at the same time, he came up and
Speaker 1: he didn't his father didn't hunt. He came to hunting
Speaker 1: on his own, and again he didn't have this like
Speaker 1: this is the way we do it, this is how
Speaker 1: we hunt. It's just honey, was the thing we did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't It wasn't so structured. It was like, we
Speaker 1: can buy a license, we'll go out and shoot this deer,
Speaker 1: we'll eat this deer. And we didn't talk much more
Speaker 1: about it than that. I mean, it was kind of
Speaker 1: that's what we We never talked about the philosophies of it,
Speaker 1: or or our wild places or conservation. We never did
Speaker 1: that because it was just part of it was just
Speaker 1: part of our lives, part of our lifestyle, never to
Speaker 1: be questioned, never to be you know, I really thought
Speaker 1: through um on a deeper level. And that's that's not
Speaker 1: to say anything bad about my dad, but that's just
Speaker 1: how how it was. Then. It was just a more
Speaker 1: accepted practice. I feel like at least where I where
Speaker 1: I grew up then from well after I finished Chasing
Speaker 1: Girls writing. That's also very natural for American for the
Speaker 1: American hunter to like start hunting around twelve, hunt till eighteen,
Speaker 1: taking a little break during college, chase girls, drink beer,
Speaker 1: and then come back to it. In the early twenties,
Speaker 1: I we we had an experienced try dive, So this
Speaker 1: is kind of where my career started at the age
Speaker 1: about sixteen, and it was basically going to swimming pool
Speaker 1: try scuba dive in Aberdeen, and I was like this,
Speaker 1: it's awesome being able to breathe underwater. It's like I
Speaker 1: can fly, bloom, blew my mind. So I decided there
Speaker 1: and then that's what I want to do for a living.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I want to do. And kind of
Speaker 1: I was like, how how do I achieve this? So
Speaker 1: I was in my last year of high school and
Speaker 1: I said to them, I want to be a diver.
Speaker 1: They didn't really know what to do with me, because
Speaker 1: that's an insane career choice as far as they were concerned.
Speaker 1: And um, I managed to arrange to work at a
Speaker 1: dive shop in Aberdeen on Fridays and they basically said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can take the Friday off school and you can
Speaker 1: basically work experience. There's an hour from where we look,
Speaker 1: so it's not exactly close, a bit of a community.
Speaker 1: And my neighbor worked in Aberdeen as a recruiter for
Speaker 1: the military and he was like, I'll give you a
Speaker 1: lift um to the dive shop every day because he
Speaker 1: kind of went past it, and you know, the weeks
Speaker 1: go by, weeks go by, and he starts speaking. He's
Speaker 1: like he's like, you know, the Navy has divers right,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, I didn't know that. He's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's um. If you want some more information, then they
Speaker 1: do it. Come along to the office and they gave
Speaker 1: me this this leaflet and it basically was just like
Speaker 1: three pages of pictures of like divers doing underwater knife fighting,
Speaker 1: bomb disposal, like Hawaii on a beach with ten women
Speaker 1: and you can come up like I refused the bar
Speaker 1: ladies ladies signs tried and I was like, that is
Speaker 1: That's the coolest thing ever. I want to do that,
Speaker 1: and so I, um, I signed up, did all my
Speaker 1: tests and what they didn't tell me originally, they were like,
Speaker 1: there's basically a two percent chance of you you're doing this.
Speaker 1: That's that's a success rate. From the moment that you
Speaker 1: walk through the careers office to the moment that you
Speaker 1: finish your dive training, there is a two percent chance
Speaker 1: that you'll make it to the end. Um just due
Speaker 1: to a number of factors. One, some people just don't
Speaker 1: like the diving because it's mainly dark. Secondly the physical aspect.
Speaker 1: I used to be a lot a lot fitter than
Speaker 1: I was now. And thirdly the mental aspect, which is
Speaker 1: probably the most most important. So I joined up basically
Speaker 1: when I turned eighteen, because you had to be eighteen
Speaker 1: to join that unit. And I went through training and
Speaker 1: and I don't think I quite appreciated how much bomb
Speaker 1: disposal was enrolled in because I was a wind clear start.
Speaker 1: It was, it was, it was in the title. But
Speaker 1: I didn't quite appreciate how much we were going to
Speaker 1: be doing, which was really cool because I do like
Speaker 1: blowing things up. It doesn't it doesn't like it is.
Speaker 1: It is, like, its interesting if somebody says you're gonna
Speaker 1: dive and you're going to diffuse, you're going to take
Speaker 1: care of these bombs, like it's pretty freaking badass man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was cool and I loved it, you know, as
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old like that, that's the coolest job
Speaker 1: title on the planet. And yeah, I loved it. Um,
Speaker 1: But I mean training was it was bloody hard. I
Speaker 1: mean when so once you go through basic training, basic training,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically a piece of piss. It's it's just
Speaker 1: tow the line, polishing, ironing, washing, marching, all that kind
Speaker 1: of ship and you have a bit of like battle
Speaker 1: damage repair and it always quite cool. Actually, you do
Speaker 1: spend a bit of time. That's like this huge like
Speaker 1: part of a ship and then they pretend it's been
Speaker 1: hit by missiles and it starts to flood and the
Speaker 1: whole thing is like on hydraulics and starts to rocks.
Speaker 1: It's like the ultimate simulator and the components filled to
Speaker 1: the top. So if you don't stop the leaks, guess
Speaker 1: what you're underwater? Um, So that's that's pretty cool and
Speaker 1: basic training. But once you finish that, you're like, right,
Speaker 1: dive training week one beaver in mind, you've already done
Speaker 1: a selection to be on the dive course. This is
Speaker 1: like the second selection and it's one week. We started
Speaker 1: on day one with thirty eight people. By the end
Speaker 1: of the week we had ten left and then when
Speaker 1: I finished, so that basically by the end of the
Speaker 1: training it's it's almost a year basically once you've gone
Speaker 1: through all. By the time I finished, there was four
Speaker 1: of us left. That was it. People are just dropping
Speaker 1: out because they can't hack it physically. Mentally, I would
Speaker 1: say that it's a mental game. You do have to
Speaker 1: be physically fit, of course, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: was Yeah, it was just it was a mental game.
Speaker 1: A lot of time by yourself. You were diving for
Speaker 1: three four hours by yourself and the pitch black, out
Speaker 1: of time and just swimming. I mean it was pointless
Speaker 1: tasks in a way other than getting used to your
Speaker 1: dive set in that but it was swim until you
Speaker 1: run out of of a That was it and for
Speaker 1: hours and hours now And what's it like being down
Speaker 1: there in the dark, like you know, like said flying
Speaker 1: or you know it's suspended in some way. Well, I
Speaker 1: was in a fortunate position where I'd actually done quite
Speaker 1: a lot of diving before I joined, which was a
Speaker 1: good and a bad thing, because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you're learning how to drive and then you go
Speaker 1: on to do like an advanced driving course or please
Speaker 1: driving course like I did, and then they look at
Speaker 1: you can go your ship. We just dive once we
Speaker 1: passed our like civilian course, all the gear, and then
Speaker 1: we just the two of us just went diving on
Speaker 1: the cust So there's a lot of things that you've
Speaker 1: got to kind of unlearn and then relearn. But diving
Speaker 1: just gives you the most amount of freedom you can think,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a nice, nice waters and we are.
Speaker 1: When you're in training, the water is not particularly amazing,
Speaker 1: and at night because you're you're wearing a rebreathe most
Speaker 1: of the time, and you've got a head up display
Speaker 1: and the early dive set, which we kind of called
Speaker 1: the death set because it killed so many people. Uh,
Speaker 1: the eels used to come at night and see the
Speaker 1: green light and the red light on your head up display,
Speaker 1: and they used to hit you straight in the face,
Speaker 1: square in the face, but you didn't see them coming.
Speaker 1: Was pitch black, and I used to give the hard
Speaker 1: heart rate going, um so, yeah, what Once I had
Speaker 1: finally finished training, then it was into the big bad
Speaker 1: mix and you've basically gone a ship for three three years,
Speaker 1: about three years. Um so I ended up doing two deployments,
Speaker 1: one out into the Baltic Sea, which is basically it was.
Speaker 1: It was basically a piss up around Europe well blowing
Speaker 1: up money and we basically visited nearly every country in
Speaker 1: that basin. So what years released? It was two thousand
Speaker 1: and so I joined in eight oh nine, and then
Speaker 1: I think it was two thousand and ten was my
Speaker 1: first deployment, and that was seven months part of a
Speaker 1: NATO task force. And yeah, so we basically spent like
Speaker 1: two weeks just looking for ordinance and then and then
Speaker 1: go ashore and then get drunk and run around Europe.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was it, I mean a proper sailor.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, in my first deployment, I visited maybe ten
Speaker 1: eleven countries in my first appoint and that was that
Speaker 1: was really cool. And also we're working with so many
Speaker 1: other nations as well, and a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: we were looking for was stuff from World War One,
Speaker 1: world War two. That was and there was some modern
Speaker 1: day stuff as well. We found a U boat, which
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. So they used sonar to look on
Speaker 1: the seabed and we found a U boat. But that
Speaker 1: was like like some ridiculous steps, so we didn't get
Speaker 1: to go into now. We didn't. It was way too deep.
Speaker 1: Could it have been full of gold potentially? Potentially? But
Speaker 1: we the Germans were with us. The story was going,
Speaker 1: we found the goal and that's why we've got a castle,
Speaker 1: as you well know. We found the goal. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we we found a lot of audence. We
Speaker 1: actually found one um it was German c mine and
Speaker 1: it was it was almost in the harbor entrance of Estonia.
Speaker 1: There are main harbor entrance where they have maybe ten
Speaker 1: plus ferries a day going in and out of there,
Speaker 1: like huge passenger ferries. And this was like a two
Speaker 1: thousand pound c mine. It was huge. And we found
Speaker 1: it and we're like, okay, well we'll go and get
Speaker 1: rid of it. And the Germans that were with us,
Speaker 1: we're like, no, that's right, it's our it's our mine.
Speaker 1: So we did it. We did it, We'll deal with it,
Speaker 1: and we we we found it, and we don't always.
Speaker 1: We didn't always used to do it. We used to
Speaker 1: send basically an RV down to have a look at it.
Speaker 1: Um that didn't always happen. Sometimes most of the time
Speaker 1: it was the divers that went down and did the
Speaker 1: initial see what it is. But this time we sent
Speaker 1: r V and we I did it, and the Germans
Speaker 1: sent down there r V when it was their time
Speaker 1: to go and get rid of it, and there are
Speaker 1: of a hit it and it went off. And this
Speaker 1: was from World War two. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: like we but basically the rule thumb was if it
Speaker 1: was German, it was very well made and it probably
Speaker 1: still functioned, uh not always. I mean, I mean I
Speaker 1: could go into the different ways of uh you know,
Speaker 1: the different way in the whole afternoon with different ways,
Speaker 1: different minds and the way they functioned. And some of
Speaker 1: them have safety devices in them, so after i know,
Speaker 1: like a hundred days or a hundred twenty days, basically
Speaker 1: explosive cutters would would blow through the side. So that
Speaker 1: means that you could use an area again it was
Speaker 1: like a safety device. Um, but they didn't it didn't
Speaker 1: always function. You know. These things were made on mass
Speaker 1: in factories by on the whole um young children and
Speaker 1: women because all the men were fighting during the war.
Speaker 1: Um and Russian minds particularly were quite dangerous because they
Speaker 1: looked like they were made in the garden shed, probably
Speaker 1: because they were I mean to the point of they
Speaker 1: were armed from the moment they went came out the factory.
Speaker 1: So it was quite dangerous transporting them. But they can
Speaker 1: you imagine that Laury full of mind put them in
Speaker 1: the way by the German and the British minds. They
Speaker 1: had soluble plugs. You plopped them in the water and
Speaker 1: twelve hours later they would they would arm themselves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what we were doing. We also found a
Speaker 1: torpedo as well a few a few other things. But
Speaker 1: we also did stuff on land, so UM. We didn't
Speaker 1: actually end up doing the job, but we um one
Speaker 1: of the town's near one of the harbor cities. They
Speaker 1: had found it was even in Germany, a construction site
Speaker 1: they had found a whole heap of ordinance because there
Speaker 1: was probably it was probably usked it was it was
Speaker 1: that was bombing it UM and it was actually the
Speaker 1: German dive team that went and dealt with that. But
Speaker 1: you know, we were doing all sorts of things and
Speaker 1: then came back home. You do a lot of trading
Speaker 1: and the next point was out to the Middle East,
Speaker 1: so we went out there seven and a half months
Speaker 1: out there, huge range of stuff. It was basically a
Speaker 1: lot of it was forced protection, keeping shipping channels open,
Speaker 1: but we're also doing um some stuff on land as well.
Speaker 1: And then we went out awards Um Somalia as well
Speaker 1: and was doing some anti piracy things out there just
Speaker 1: as a as a force role as part of an
Speaker 1: American Task force. So most of the time in the
Speaker 1: Middle East you were working with the American units, which
Speaker 1: is is pretty cool. After that deployment, came home and
Speaker 1: then I was part of a bomb team based in Glasgow,
Speaker 1: so West coast of Scotland in falls Lane, and our
Speaker 1: job was kind of to support the submarines aroughout the
Speaker 1: world because that's where the main submarine basis, that's where
Speaker 1: the people the nuclear weapons, and the other role was
Speaker 1: bomb disposal. So on that team, they've got I D
Speaker 1: and UM E O D on that team. So we covered.
Speaker 1: Our range was huge. It was like all the way down.
Speaker 1: It was like part of the way down to England,
Speaker 1: the whole of Scotland and part of northern Ireland as well,
Speaker 1: So it was a huge range. And yes, so that
Speaker 1: that was an amazing time because you just youve got
Speaker 1: to drive around the kind tree blow things up on
Speaker 1: beaches and um hand grenades. We had one where a
Speaker 1: walker and found hand grenade and they walked into a
Speaker 1: police station and put it on the counter and the
Speaker 1: police are like, what the fuck they exactly I found?
Speaker 1: Hey guys, look, I don't know what this is. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it functions, but can you take it? It
Speaker 1: It had a pin in it, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't It turned out it was some weird I can't
Speaker 1: because we couldn't even idea properly. We we did eventually,
Speaker 1: but it was some Eastern European hand grenade that we
Speaker 1: hadn't hadn't even seen before. Um, and you plunked it
Speaker 1: on the counter, and obviously that the whole pee station
Speaker 1: has to evacuate when when you do that, and they're
Speaker 1: like cheers. I mean the normal small bomb. But the
Speaker 1: normal advice is if you find a piece of orange,
Speaker 1: leave it where you found it, and then just call
Speaker 1: the police and then and then they'll call whoever needs
Speaker 1: to be called. Um, if anything comes out of this podcast, folks,
Speaker 1: if you find leave it be Yeah, we were. We
Speaker 1: were once in the same place at the same time
Speaker 1: I was. I was doing some hunting up in the
Speaker 1: Isle of Sky and Daryl knew that I was up there.
Speaker 1: So it was when he was in this team and
Speaker 1: he says, are you still in the sky? He says, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm still here. I'm here with our body Scott McKenzie,
Speaker 1: who's interestingly the last full time gamekeeper and stalker on
Speaker 1: the island used to be full of them, but it's
Speaker 1: the last like managed to stay. Um. So I was
Speaker 1: doing stalking with him and taking some pictures and Dara said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm on my way up right now. We've got the
Speaker 1: lights on. They've found something on the beach, and it
Speaker 1: just so happened that his boss was big into hunting,
Speaker 1: and because I wrote for one of the hunting magazines,
Speaker 1: he also had like read my articles on that. So
Speaker 1: he he said to Daryl, if he can, if he
Speaker 1: can be there, you should come down and we can
Speaker 1: have a look and I can watch the team work
Speaker 1: and watch my brother work. And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll try I'll try it for can. But we had
Speaker 1: we had an agenda. We were getting content stuff for
Speaker 1: the magazine. So that then he messaged me back and says,
Speaker 1: the boss is that if you can make it, you
Speaker 1: can press the button to blur it up. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay, every range. So I don't think it really was.
Speaker 1: I think it was just a piece of scrap metal.
Speaker 1: But they did a lot of put a lot of
Speaker 1: explosives on it so that I could press the button
Speaker 1: and it was. It was a very you know were
Speaker 1: you couldn't even see it where we pressed the button from,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that we weren't in the blast range,
Speaker 1: but you could feel it in your chest. You pressed
Speaker 1: the button and it was there's vibration, So yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was pretty cool. We we
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what one more. I was gonna say
Speaker 1: any close calls along the way, because I am interested
Speaker 1: in this subject. I had close calls diving. Um. On
Speaker 1: my it was a day before my nineteenth birthday. We're
Speaker 1: in the middle of the English Channel and I my
Speaker 1: captain said to me, I hadn't This was my first
Speaker 1: piece of ordinance I had done on my completely on
Speaker 1: my own. And he said to me, your birthday, congratulations,
Speaker 1: happy birthday. Yeah, we found something. So I went down
Speaker 1: that did the first first dive, did all my measurements. UM. So,
Speaker 1: basically how it works is that most of the time
Speaker 1: you're working in the dark. The North Sea is particularly
Speaker 1: bad for visibility, so you measure everything with your body parts.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of your training is you know,
Speaker 1: knowing your measurements. You're thumbed, your arms, so on, so on,
Speaker 1: and you've got to be within ten percent. And basically
Speaker 1: if you put all these measurements in and the shapes
Speaker 1: and sizes of it into a computer, then it will
Speaker 1: bring up what piece of ordinances and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: where the explosives is and basically the best place to
Speaker 1: place charges or anything you want to do to it.
Speaker 1: So I went down, did the the wrecky on it,
Speaker 1: and I did it. It It was a five pound German
Speaker 1: air drop bomb and it's just been rolling around the
Speaker 1: seabed and it was in a fairly busy shipping channel.
Speaker 1: I mean, the English Channel is probably one of the
Speaker 1: busiest in the world in the world, and so we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's get rid of it. So a few hours later
Speaker 1: it's it was now Yeah, I was poke about three
Speaker 1: four in the morning now and they're like, right, you can,
Speaker 1: you can do it. It was four twos under the water.
Speaker 1: So I went down and basically because the depth, I
Speaker 1: only had a certain amount of time before I could
Speaker 1: um go into stops and stops facing means that when
Speaker 1: I come up, I might have to wait at ten
Speaker 1: ms for ten minutes or fifteen minutes and then and
Speaker 1: so on so on. And the idea. The idea is
Speaker 1: that if you're placing explosives on a piece of ordinance,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be doing any stops, or you
Speaker 1: can do drifting stops where the boat kind of takes
Speaker 1: you away from the piece of ordinance. UM And I
Speaker 1: went down there and I didn't make the explosive pack up,
Speaker 1: so basically it's um it's plastic explosives with debt chord
Speaker 1: going all the way to the surface onto a float.
Speaker 1: And the swell had picked up by the time we
Speaker 1: got out there, and basically there was like a two
Speaker 1: m kind of swell. And the person who I think
Speaker 1: I know who it is, We're not gonna mention it
Speaker 1: had hand hadn't taken into account the swell. So basically
Speaker 1: the debt chord was slightly too short. So I'm down
Speaker 1: there and I've got half a meter of between the
Speaker 1: bomb and where I can actually pull, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: how am I going to explosive pack underneath or like
Speaker 1: around this thing? Eventually I kind of like anchor myself,
Speaker 1: like holding onto the bomb, and and I managed to.
Speaker 1: I got one bomb here. I managed to pull it
Speaker 1: underneath so like the pressure is pulling it up so
Speaker 1: that the float doesn't yank it, and I managed to
Speaker 1: tight on. I took a bit longer than that than
Speaker 1: that it should have taken, but I didn't go into
Speaker 1: any stops. And I came back up and about we
Speaker 1: blew up and it all that all went fine, But
Speaker 1: about an hour later I just started losing the vision
Speaker 1: of my eyes like blurry, couldn't see within thirty centimeters
Speaker 1: of me. And we had a phone call at home
Speaker 1: from I don't know, somebody on this ship. It was
Speaker 1: my it was my exit that called, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, like this is this is not good. And
Speaker 1: it it was really cold as well. It was like
Speaker 1: minus twenty celsius and I mean it was so cold
Speaker 1: that that that we had like icicles off the site
Speaker 1: at the side of the ship. I mean, it takes
Speaker 1: a lot to free seawalls. And we we're lucky enough
Speaker 1: that the Germans that were with us, they had a
Speaker 1: diving nurse who specialized. We were all medics to help
Speaker 1: each other anyway. So I was sitting in the chamber,
Speaker 1: our dive chamber on our ship and it broken. It's
Speaker 1: the seal had broken on it. So we're like our
Speaker 1: dive chambers out and so I was transferred to the
Speaker 1: German ship and the German nurses there and she's they're
Speaker 1: doing you know, all all everything you can think of,
Speaker 1: and she's trying to put bloody ivy in me and
Speaker 1: she missed four times in my arms and I told
Speaker 1: her to funk off because I was like as she
Speaker 1: because she said to me, do you do you have
Speaker 1: wanted in your foot? And I was like you can know? Boy, well,
Speaker 1: I was like, go away, I don't need fluids. And
Speaker 1: event they had a seeking helicopter come and pick me
Speaker 1: up and take me to a place called hell Go Land,
Speaker 1: which isn't I think it was helleg Land, an island
Speaker 1: off the west for voting. Yeah, uh, basically an island
Speaker 1: off of Germany. And they had a diving doctor on
Speaker 1: that the island, and they took me there and you've
Speaker 1: gotta fly really low level because if you're still you
Speaker 1: basically no, you still know, so you're not completely not blind.
Speaker 1: But I can't see like it literally I couldn't. If
Speaker 1: I was holding my phone, the entire screen was blurred.
Speaker 1: How long did this go on for? It lasted two days.
Speaker 1: It's quite a long time. I was thinking that two hours,
Speaker 1: two days, unbelievable. They flew me there and the diving
Speaker 1: doctor was like, I have no idea what's wrong with them,
Speaker 1: because they started just ruling things out there like we
Speaker 1: don't think, we don't think it's the beds and I
Speaker 1: didn't think it was either. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 1: but I just like, it's just there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: my vision, but I don't know what it is. Eventually
Speaker 1: they made the decision not to put me in the chamber,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the British military all over
Speaker 1: made the fantastic decision. I've gone, I've got no idea
Speaker 1: why they did this. They're like, you need to fly
Speaker 1: home now. Bear in mind they had no idea what
Speaker 1: was wrong with me. So I then they they dropped
Speaker 1: me off with a rib on the jetty in Germany
Speaker 1: with a piece of paper beare in mine I couldn't
Speaker 1: see properly to the taxi driver gave it to him.
Speaker 1: He took me to the airport and then I had
Speaker 1: a note in German basically saying on me to keep
Speaker 1: on me if I pass out, what's wrong with me
Speaker 1: on the plane because there was a high chance that
Speaker 1: something might happen if flying because now he's going to
Speaker 1: alt But after two days they kind of were it's
Speaker 1: relatively safe, all right back to the UK and my
Speaker 1: vision just started coming back. I got no idea why
Speaker 1: I went. I went to an ice specialist and she
Speaker 1: was sitting with Google open, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: was a good. Do you don't think the German doc
Speaker 1: you have no idea what was wrong with me. Basically,
Speaker 1: the conclusion that they came to it was actually a
Speaker 1: combination between the diving and the really cold temperatures basically
Speaker 1: made my um the muscles and that in my eyes too.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's muscles, but basically you know
Speaker 1: when your eyes focused, and clothes like a camera. Basically
Speaker 1: they had just frozen, not frozen, but they just stopped
Speaker 1: functioning for whatever lagging like yeah, but yeah, that was
Speaker 1: kind of the closest the closest call two days, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty It was pretty scary because I didn't
Speaker 1: really know what was wrong with me, but I had
Speaker 1: confidence that I was going to come out on the
Speaker 1: other side, and I did. I went straight onto Christmas
Speaker 1: leave after that, because it was actually the end of
Speaker 1: the deployment that that's what really annoyed me. It was
Speaker 1: like three days before the end of the deployment. I
Speaker 1: got sent home and I booked flights personally myself that
Speaker 1: I paid for because the dive team was allowed to
Speaker 1: go home slightly earlier because we were doing another job
Speaker 1: after and they flew me home for free. Anyway, and
Speaker 1: my flightside just booked paid for I couldn't use. And
Speaker 1: then I was diving like three weeks after that, and
Speaker 1: it was part of a crossover course of new I said.
Speaker 1: And after a week of it, someone comes in diver base,
Speaker 1: we've got a thing here saying that you're not actually
Speaker 1: medically clear to die. No one had told me. I've
Speaker 1: been diving for a week. So then I had to
Speaker 1: go to the experimental diving medicine place and they did
Speaker 1: loads of tests on me and just made sure that
Speaker 1: I could. I was gonna be okay. I never had
Speaker 1: a problem since. Yeah, I never had a problems. That's
Speaker 1: not calmon that it can't be calming, I mean, the
Speaker 1: way you describe it, Yeah, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone had a clue. And to this day, I still
Speaker 1: don't know what what happened, what went wrong, But I
Speaker 1: was fine afterwards, no ill effects. My eyes are sharp
Speaker 1: as anything. I'm just glad it's never happened. Happened since
Speaker 1: all this time your brothers are around as an outdoor writer, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you were doing some other things. But uh I
Speaker 1: did care though, like let me get this deer down.
Speaker 1: And then then I'll deal with this, then I'll come
Speaker 1: home and make sure you can see. So during all
Speaker 1: this time, what were you doing? So I had, I
Speaker 1: did quite well at school. And one of the frustrating
Speaker 1: things that I I've come to realize since then is
Speaker 1: that there's an expectation from most people. You go through
Speaker 1: high school, next step university. Yes, I'm sure it's the
Speaker 1: same here, especially if you've done kind of same here.
Speaker 1: Though I didn't have. I didn't do well enough. You
Speaker 1: could have gone to university probably if you really want,
Speaker 1: if it would have been a waste, it would have been.
Speaker 1: And you know what really annoyed me is I joined
Speaker 1: the Navy because I was like, I hate exams. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I hated I liked school. I was good. I was
Speaker 1: good at school. By I never did particularly well in
Speaker 1: any magxams UM other than the ones I was really
Speaker 1: passionate about, like P because it was just physical exercise
Speaker 1: and history. I did really well in History UM. But
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm going to join the Navy and
Speaker 1: then fuck exams. I did more exams and then I
Speaker 1: have ever done in my entire life. It's funny, how like,
Speaker 1: you know, my brother is a world class artist. I
Speaker 1: can't draw sticks figure like you know, I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: He can't write his way at any enjoy like the
Speaker 1: but drawic pagassa. This is funny how those It is strange,
Speaker 1: isn't it. You know whether that's nature or nurture, who knows,
Speaker 1: but you you have a degree in economics. I went
Speaker 1: the stupid things you think when you're sixteen. So I
Speaker 1: actually left school year early because I had everything I needed.
Speaker 1: When I finished school, I was still sixteen, but I
Speaker 1: was seventeen by the time I went to university. A
Speaker 1: lot of the university's actually they would have taken you,
Speaker 1: but they recommended, you know, you've got in, but wait
Speaker 1: until you've a year older, a bit more drink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, that's part of it, because you can drink
Speaker 1: to here to your eighteen. But I had this great
Speaker 1: plan that I was gonna go and work in the city,
Speaker 1: be a fun manager or something like that, or stop
Speaker 1: broke and retire at thirty From thirty one, so I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not retired yet, so you can tell that that
Speaker 1: plan never worked. But you know the motivation. The motivation
Speaker 1: for that was because I wanted to do the things
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to do, which was the only
Speaker 1: thing that I did when I wasn't studying at school
Speaker 1: or swimming, both of us. I was missed a massive
Speaker 1: part of his growing up, which we did a lot
Speaker 1: of competitive swimming um which helped me in the water situation.
Speaker 1: So that I mean that took up a lot of
Speaker 1: our time when we were when we were younger. Was
Speaker 1: that I just wanted the time and money to be
Speaker 1: able to do the things that I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: So this was my grand plan. Sacrifice ten years of
Speaker 1: your life. We all have grand plan. Man up, tough
Speaker 1: it out, get in there, get the job done, get out.
Speaker 1: So I studied economics, which is a perfect thing to
Speaker 1: do if that's where you want to go. And I
Speaker 1: knew sort of, so I went to studied at the
Speaker 1: University of Sterling and I got I actually got a
Speaker 1: sports scholarship for swimming for the first year, but I
Speaker 1: knew within about six months later. It's really not interesting
Speaker 1: me that much. I'd rather I'd rather go fishing. My
Speaker 1: cousin incidentally, who now lives in New Zealand, but he
Speaker 1: was my good sort of fishing hunting buddy growing up.
Speaker 1: He he did a similar thing and he went to
Speaker 1: study medicine, and he liked fishing so much that he
Speaker 1: failed to use in medicine. But he still became a
Speaker 1: very and was moved to short the Mecca fishing. But
Speaker 1: you know, parents are always encouraging you to, you know,
Speaker 1: stick in and kind of tough it out. So I did,
Speaker 1: and I was quite good at it, you know, I did.
Speaker 1: I did. I did well well. And exams and the
Speaker 1: sort of competitive nature in me is probably more than
Speaker 1: anything else what made me do well at it just
Speaker 1: a lot of study, more than any more than anything.
Speaker 1: But after three years, I just kind of I just
Speaker 1: had it, kind of had enough, like that, I want
Speaker 1: to be in the bush. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to be I want to be in Africa. I spent
Speaker 1: my whole childhood reading capstick and hearing the stories, you know,
Speaker 1: from my dad, and then we we visited all the
Speaker 1: time anyway to see my grandparents. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: years later that I really saw Africa when I worked
Speaker 1: there myself. So I ended up but somehow through summer
Speaker 1: gardening jobs, um getting a role or being involved in
Speaker 1: a in a company that manufactured and design tranquilizing darts
Speaker 1: for darting big game, and they were based literally five
Speaker 1: minutes from my parents house. So I started doing some
Speaker 1: stuff with them, and then the opportunity came as part
Speaker 1: of the sort of testing and development to go out
Speaker 1: to Africa and start darting elephants and in in Kruger
Speaker 1: National Park. That's right, you've done your research, Ben, I'm
Speaker 1: just reading the thing I got. No, I've done no research.
Speaker 1: Now when I read, I just was reading all that
Speaker 1: this morning about you guys, and that came across that
Speaker 1: and I thought I knew we were going to talk
Speaker 1: about Where did you read that? It's on your website.
Speaker 1: It's an easy mark, real fucking research clicked on the web.
Speaker 1: Kruger Park um, which is you know, you know probably
Speaker 1: in my mind is stands up to the Yellowstone Park
Speaker 1: because it's it's not right. Most people will probably know
Speaker 1: Krueger if they had to name an African park. So they,
Speaker 1: I mean, all the stuff that we were doing there
Speaker 1: was all the rhinos were d horning or chipping for
Speaker 1: obviously rhino poaching. The stuff with the elephants was recallering, um.
Speaker 1: So they actually I didn't dart it, but I was
Speaker 1: there with the team and the helicopters and stuff. They
Speaker 1: darted this, at the time, the second biggest bull in
Speaker 1: Kruger Park. Interestingly, that day when we did that, they
Speaker 1: went up in the helicopters and they found the elephant,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't darted any elephant. Um, well, this is
Speaker 1: what I was I was told. I haven't actually checked
Speaker 1: that this was true, but no reason to doubt it.
Speaker 1: They hadn't actually darted any elephant on foot there for
Speaker 1: a very long time, because it's quite dangerous. That was
Speaker 1: gonna be my question. Normally it's out of a helicopter.
Speaker 1: But the whole point behind the new dart system was
Speaker 1: that you could dart at much longer ranges. You could
Speaker 1: I mean I shot at plenty. You could dart out
Speaker 1: almost hundred meters very successfully. So this was kind of
Speaker 1: the point. Let's start on foot. So they found the
Speaker 1: elephant that they wanted to dart with the collar on it,
Speaker 1: and they went in. They darted it. It took a
Speaker 1: little bit of time to find it after it went down.
Speaker 1: Um no, sorry, it took quite a lot of time
Speaker 1: and much longer than they they it should have taken
Speaker 1: to find it. And so they went up in the
Speaker 1: helicopter again and then they found the elephant still standing,
Speaker 1: so they thought they had missed it, so this time
Speaker 1: they darted it from the helicopter, and it turned out
Speaker 1: they darted two elephants and there was another elephant there
Speaker 1: with another collar that they didn't know it was in
Speaker 1: the area. So they ended up changing the collar that
Speaker 1: needed collar that they needed changed, and then just checking
Speaker 1: out the other elephants and then you know, giving the
Speaker 1: revival stuff and they're being on their way. It was
Speaker 1: the one are the mechanics of changing an elephants color.
Speaker 1: It's I mean the box on it's like the size
Speaker 1: of your laptop, like this deep um and it's just
Speaker 1: a big I don't know, I can't remember a synthetic
Speaker 1: collar that held on with bolts, so it's just ratchets,
Speaker 1: you know, It's like six bolts and you just ratchet
Speaker 1: it off and then ratchet it back on. And I
Speaker 1: guess there was a new battery pack in there so
Speaker 1: that they could keep tracking them. So that was definitely
Speaker 1: one of the coolest things I did when way cooler
Speaker 1: than I thought. It's not that I think you were cool,
Speaker 1: but like you die. You died in the English channel
Speaker 1: and put out a bomb and you were darting elephants
Speaker 1: and Krueger. Well, I don't know what I was probably doing.
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention chicks in a bar in Maryland.
Speaker 1: I probably had the most expensive fishing bow on the
Speaker 1: planet because because I was on a mine hunter when
Speaker 1: they were when they were hunting for mines, they travel
Speaker 1: at like almost nothing, but it's enough for a trawling speed.
Speaker 1: So I, yeah, throw a line over the back of
Speaker 1: the ship and just troll for fish. And when when
Speaker 1: I was out in the Middle East, I actually used
Speaker 1: to catch loads of fish off the back and I
Speaker 1: used to trade them with a local guy for like
Speaker 1: ice creams and chocolates and DVDs like Pirate of DVDs
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. And yeah, I used
Speaker 1: to trade and trade of fish for doing that. But
Speaker 1: fish were literally arranged from some some of them I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what they were, and I just knew
Speaker 1: that he would buy them. It looks like this guy
Speaker 1: like this thing. Yeah it looks edible. Uh, But a
Speaker 1: mine hunter is the most expensive ship per square meter
Speaker 1: because it's made out of fiberglass. Entire ship, so it
Speaker 1: was the most expensive off the trolling off the back
Speaker 1: of it. And it doesn't have props either, so you
Speaker 1: can you're lying, can go straight down almost and you
Speaker 1: know you won't get caught in the props. Pretty pretty
Speaker 1: and empty. I got nothing, nothing one time, So you
Speaker 1: you know what a lot of interesting subjects we had
Speaker 1: to that was speed up you had to go. But
Speaker 1: that for me to see. The weird thing with that
Speaker 1: kind of initial experience was as I said earlier, we
Speaker 1: we've been going back and forth Africa for years, but
Speaker 1: becausins their grandparents still lever obviously parents from that, but
Speaker 1: I kind of always gone. Even though they lived there,
Speaker 1: none of they can. My grandpa fished and stuff a bit,
Speaker 1: and they did some cool stuff called bikes and jet
Speaker 1: skis and that, but they weren't hunting and they weren't fishing.
Speaker 1: They weren't involved. We would go to Kruger Park and
Speaker 1: you look around, but you were tourist. And then I
Speaker 1: was there and I was like part of the team,
Speaker 1: and I was like ship. Now I can smell Africa,
Speaker 1: and it really got onto my skin. I mean it
Speaker 1: was under my skin anyway. But I was just completely
Speaker 1: screwed after that because I ended up going um, So
Speaker 1: I had two years out of university UM during that
Speaker 1: period of time, and I went back to Africa in
Speaker 1: that sort of two years and I spent a couple
Speaker 1: of months there. My grandparents very kindly kind of looked
Speaker 1: after me as I was bouncing around visiting different people,
Speaker 1: and then that was kind of my HQ. I'd go
Speaker 1: back to their house. They were they were very kind
Speaker 1: to kind of put up with. Somebody was a bit
Speaker 1: lost trying to work out, you know what, what the
Speaker 1: hell do I really want to do? But I made
Speaker 1: us some awesome friends during that period, and a lot
Speaker 1: of my hunting bodies and phs out there now are
Speaker 1: people I met during that period of time. I was
Speaker 1: during most of that I was writing for a hunting
Speaker 1: magazine UM back in the UK, Sporting Rifle, and a
Speaker 1: few other publications, and it became my kind of gateway,
Speaker 1: an excuse to visit places. So I literally just arrived
Speaker 1: on that the second trip, and I wrote about thirty
Speaker 1: emails to outfits to say, you know, I right back
Speaker 1: in the UK, spent a lot of time in Africa.
Speaker 1: I'd love to if you've got a hunt going on,
Speaker 1: I'd love to just just join it. You know I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't expect to do any hunting, but I'd love
Speaker 1: to just write about it, take some pictures and then
Speaker 1: you can get some exposure back at home. And a
Speaker 1: handful of them got back to me and I made
Speaker 1: some great friends that way, so that was pretty Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty incredible, and I've gone back once or
Speaker 1: twice a year ever since. But after sort of two
Speaker 1: years out so we needed to four years to get
Speaker 1: your honors degree back at home, I kind of came
Speaker 1: to the realization that what I was doing with that
Speaker 1: the company wasn't really going anywhere, and they've actually folded.
Speaker 1: They don't exist anymore. So even in hindsight, it was
Speaker 1: a shrewd move, and I think there was always this
Speaker 1: element of it's probably fair to say, sort of disappointment
Speaker 1: from my parents that I didn't finish my degree properly.
Speaker 1: I had a bachelor's, but I mean that doesn't really
Speaker 1: mean anything. Didn't finish my honors and at that point,
Speaker 1: like no one else in the Pace family had a degree,
Speaker 1: like I was the first to go to university in
Speaker 1: that line. So I didn't need to do much to
Speaker 1: finish it because I've done quite well, so I just
Speaker 1: like sold it. Let me just go back. So I
Speaker 1: went back. I got my honors degree, and now I've
Speaker 1: got this honest, this first and economist. Like what the
Speaker 1: hell they do? Feel? Yeah, feeling a little bit pressured.
Speaker 1: I mean not that they put pressure on me, but
Speaker 1: you just feel it like you know people around you
Speaker 1: and like, what the hell you've been because I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I'd had a lot of fun for two years, and
Speaker 1: I've been trying to find myself, but I didn't have
Speaker 1: a career. I was doing some writing that would put
Speaker 1: a little bit of food in my mouth or no,
Speaker 1: I was eating about my parents table. I was using that,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, but I you know, I applied for
Speaker 1: jobs that you would get with an economics degree, and
Speaker 1: I ended up getting a job with black Rock's largest
Speaker 1: investment company in the world. I think it still is,
Speaker 1: certainly was at the time, but at two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: so just when he's going to Navy, I get a
Speaker 1: job at the start of the financial crisis in finance brilliant.
Speaker 1: But I was a risk analyst, so that was the
Speaker 1: one thing everyone needed. No one knew what anything meant
Speaker 1: or what it's worth. Was so they needed risk analysts
Speaker 1: to work it out. So that's what I did, and
Speaker 1: I knew within like the first five days of that
Speaker 1: job I hated it. I was there was there any
Speaker 1: exciting moments. There was there was. There was one highlight
Speaker 1: in that two and a half or three years. So
Speaker 1: I started in Edinburgh, um, which was which was good
Speaker 1: for me. Edinburgh a beautiful city, so I had to
Speaker 1: live in a city Edinburgh. I could probably stomach it,
Speaker 1: and I did for for a couple of years. But
Speaker 1: basically on Friday, when I finished work, because we started
Speaker 1: at six in the morning and we could finish a
Speaker 1: bit earlier. That very rarely happened, but on Friday always
Speaker 1: tried to finish it earlier. I got in my car
Speaker 1: and I drove straight homes that I could hunt all weekend.
Speaker 1: That was That was my routine every week. I basically
Speaker 1: it was stupid of me because I didn't see much
Speaker 1: of Edinburgh even though I lived there for two and
Speaker 1: a half years. But the highlight of that black Rock
Speaker 1: experience that obviously talking a lot of life lessons, but
Speaker 1: the highlight of it was I helped set up the
Speaker 1: fixed income side in India because they were continually trying
Speaker 1: to cut costs, so that was why they moved our
Speaker 1: team from London to Edinburgh. And then eventually I set
Speaker 1: up the team that I had been part of in
Speaker 1: India UM for a couple of months and my my
Speaker 1: plan there was just kind of work the Monday to
Speaker 1: Friday and then experienced India was so I was taking
Speaker 1: trains up into the mountains and um fishing the rivers there.
Speaker 1: There's there's there's no hunting, but just trying to immerse
Speaker 1: myself in the culture as much as I could. I
Speaker 1: actually took a train. This was kind of near the
Speaker 1: end of my trip. I wanted to go up to
Speaker 1: to fish the Ganges River because on I knew that
Speaker 1: there was Golden Marsiera in there, and I had seen
Speaker 1: Golden Marcia in the Corbett River. Obviously, the famous writer
Speaker 1: and hunted Jim Corbett had been in his National Park
Speaker 1: UM the weekend before that, and the only way to
Speaker 1: get there was basically to take a train. So I
Speaker 1: took this sleeper train, which is very very different to
Speaker 1: the sleeper trains that we have at Hume up hours
Speaker 1: and hours. It was like six or seven hours UM.
Speaker 1: So I got on it in the evening, and I
Speaker 1: found my little space, which was my bed wasn't much
Speaker 1: wider than your laptop, and it was sat on chains
Speaker 1: and there was three on each side, and then seats
Speaker 1: because and that that was like one of the premium
Speaker 1: carriages as well. So I didn't sleep at all because
Speaker 1: it's really noisy, absolutely stinks, and I was also worried about,
Speaker 1: you know, people stealing my stuff, so sleeping on on
Speaker 1: my rucksack. But for some stupid reason, I had never
Speaker 1: thought to think to myself, how am I going to
Speaker 1: know when I get off? Because if you get on
Speaker 1: a sleeper at home, you know when you stop it
Speaker 1: and someone comes and chaps on your door. They even
Speaker 1: bring you a cup of tea. Yeah, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I used to take the sleeper down to London when
Speaker 1: I worked there, so right only costs about five thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't paying for it. I wasn't paying,
Speaker 1: but obviously you don't have that on on these trains.
Speaker 1: So I woke up as the train had slowed down,
Speaker 1: and I look out the window, and out the window
Speaker 1: I can see the name of the place I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to get off. In the trains going and this train
Speaker 1: went right to the north of India like next stop
Speaker 1: big in China. Um. So I'm like, what the hell
Speaker 1: am I going to do? And there wasn't many stops.
Speaker 1: That only stopped like three times in seven hours. So
Speaker 1: I ran to the door and all the doors were
Speaker 1: opened with my backpack on, and I'm looking just like
Speaker 1: at the railroad going past and all the bush and
Speaker 1: in the distance I can see some lights. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna have to wait. There's nothing I can do.
Speaker 1: I can't exactly jump off at this speed. And then
Speaker 1: it slowed down, like thirty minutes later, it slowed down
Speaker 1: a bit but didn't quite stop, and I could still
Speaker 1: see lights in the distance that I just saw it.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna jump off because I don't know what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. How am I going to get to where
Speaker 1: I need to go. So I jumped off the train
Speaker 1: and it's like four o'clock in the morning in the dark,
Speaker 1: and then walk through the bush like minutes to this
Speaker 1: little village and eventually imounaged to solicit a ride to
Speaker 1: the place I needed to go to uh and then
Speaker 1: I I camped and in a little hammock and walked
Speaker 1: down the river back to a place that fishing, back
Speaker 1: to a place that I thought I could get a
Speaker 1: lift back to the train station. And long story short
Speaker 1: there that I ended up at a whitewater rafting camp
Speaker 1: by mistake, and the owner there, who was an Indian guy,
Speaker 1: I thought I was completely mad to be walking out
Speaker 1: there by myself because I saw leopard prints in the
Speaker 1: sand where I've been camping. I think they were leopard.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've been tiger, but they looked like
Speaker 1: leopard to me. And he just thought that it was like,
Speaker 1: what on earth are you doing, your little white boy.
Speaker 1: I don't understand, just a risk analyst, exactly what I'd
Speaker 1: calculate that lately I was living. And he so gave
Speaker 1: me food and everything. I ate it his camp. And
Speaker 1: then I met this Indian couple there. It's it's weird
Speaker 1: how life works out this who just got engaged and
Speaker 1: they were there with their friend. It was kind of
Speaker 1: a weird honeymoon because it was a couple of plus
Speaker 1: they had their body there and they'd lost their camera
Speaker 1: and they were so gutted that they had lost their
Speaker 1: camera and they had no photos from like the last
Speaker 1: week up there and I have obviously had a camera
Speaker 1: with me and they were like would you mind Obviously
Speaker 1: because I looked at a place, they ended up speaking
Speaker 1: to me. It's like, would you mind taking pictures? Like well,
Speaker 1: we're just us and around beach for the next half
Speaker 1: an hour and you know, send into the class case
Speaker 1: we got nothing from our honeymoon. It's like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: no worries. And then they gave me a lift all
Speaker 1: the way back to the day. So that was but
Speaker 1: I left that because the moment there, I ended up
Speaker 1: going work back in Edinburgh. I've told the story a
Speaker 1: few times but people have taken something from it. So
Speaker 1: I was sitting in Edinburgh at my desk looking at
Speaker 1: my three screens of graphs and analytics, just I was
Speaker 1: looking for any excuse art. I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to become a helicopter pilot. Anything can must be better
Speaker 1: than this, and I was desperate, desperate to get out.
Speaker 1: But you still got to make a living. So I'm
Speaker 1: fairly young still, I'm twenty four or five at the time.
Speaker 1: And we've had a week where we've had a lot
Speaker 1: of like big dogs over from New York and stuff,
Speaker 1: and we've been out for a lot of dinners, and
Speaker 1: I'd heard a lot of stories. And you know, if
Speaker 1: if you and I were to go out for a beer,
Speaker 1: and or any of the people that I've been with
Speaker 1: this week, it's it's like, it's fascinating. You're talking about
Speaker 1: really interesting ship and I was just bored up my
Speaker 1: mind all week. I'm eating in fancy restaurants in places
Speaker 1: I can't afford to eat, and you're starving afterwards, You're
Speaker 1: starving arswers, and I'm hearing all these insignificant stories about
Speaker 1: fast cars and lap dance and clubs, and it's just bullshit,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff that Okay, yeah, we we all do
Speaker 1: it and can appreciate that two dimensional yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: like life is more than that. So I literally at
Speaker 1: the end of that week, I wrote my resignation letter.
Speaker 1: I printed it off in the printer behind me, and
Speaker 1: I gave it to my manager and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave you guys stuck, because it
Speaker 1: was it was an important job, So tell me how
Speaker 1: long you need me for and then I'm afraid I'm
Speaker 1: out of you. And after that I went, I went
Speaker 1: back to Africa, and then kind of I paddled around
Speaker 1: for a bit writing doing started to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of film work, and then again I was looking
Speaker 1: for a direction, but also knowing that I really needed
Speaker 1: to kind of get a serious job. I need to
Speaker 1: I need to buy a house, you know, I got
Speaker 1: to do something that's that's a bit more. So I
Speaker 1: ended up going and I started studying petrolleum engineering and
Speaker 1: I got a job in oil for three years as
Speaker 1: a drilling fluids engineer. But then the downturn came, and
Speaker 1: then that's kind of where our paths and lives crossed.
Speaker 1: So during this whole time, I'm I mean, I've missed
Speaker 1: out all the hunting and fishing because but that was
Speaker 1: like that was every spare minute that I had um
Speaker 1: I was reading, writing or hunting or fishing. That's basically
Speaker 1: what I lived for. But there are paths crossed at
Speaker 1: this point because Daryl had come out the Navy and
Speaker 1: had done a year in Australia commercial diving and had
Speaker 1: come home and was trying to find a job commercial
Speaker 1: diving and spear fishing, comercial diving. That's basically spend my
Speaker 1: year day. Were you married at that time? Now that
Speaker 1: time you got an Australian to my wife that's from Scotland,
Speaker 1: but she came out with me to Australia. Yeah for
Speaker 1: a long time. Yeah uh. And I really enjoyed my job. Now,
Speaker 1: it was a really good job and I was I
Speaker 1: was good at it, but it's still not hunting or fishing.
Speaker 1: And the reason that I did it was one it
Speaker 1: was interesting, but two of us six months off a year,
Speaker 1: some rotation work three weeks. You're off three weeks. What
Speaker 1: can I do in those three weeks and go hunting fishing.
Speaker 1: But when the downturn came, that kind of all went
Speaker 1: to ship because loads of people lost their jobs. I didn't, fortunately,
Speaker 1: but it meant that they were always trying to make
Speaker 1: the best use of resources. So I was never at
Speaker 1: home and I was not doing my job most of
Speaker 1: the time either. I was doing ship jobs like cleaning
Speaker 1: pits of just crap out of oil rigs on that
Speaker 1: because they were like, well you should, you should feel
Speaker 1: lucky that you've got a job now, and we I
Speaker 1: said to Darryl. Whatever reason, I still can't quite know
Speaker 1: exactly what the catalyst was, just like there is a
Speaker 1: gap in the market in the UK to make some
Speaker 1: hunting films that means something and I've done a bit
Speaker 1: of filming before. He hadn't, but he'd always you know,
Speaker 1: taking pictures and use the camera and said, what do
Speaker 1: you think let's try and let's try and start this.
Speaker 1: So we at the same time, there was these Merlin
Speaker 1: groups were starting up in the UK, which was a
Speaker 1: collection of areas around Scotland initially that were designed to
Speaker 1: basically helped portray in a positive manner how our uplands
Speaker 1: are managed and they needed to tell the story que
Speaker 1: us just starting to make films and we there are
Speaker 1: local group which has been one of the most successful
Speaker 1: in their endeavors to our films, part partly due to
Speaker 1: our films, but also because they've got an awesome court
Speaker 1: and they do who is now a very good friend
Speaker 1: of ours. Um. We we kind of got together and said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can do that. We didn't know we could do it,
Speaker 1: but we said we could do it. And Darrel eventually
Speaker 1: left his laboring job that he was doing. I couldn't
Speaker 1: get a job diving. I came back from Australia and
Speaker 1: I was like, what have I just done? Because I
Speaker 1: had a really good job out there and I came back,
Speaker 1: I was I kin find any work, and then I
Speaker 1: was just doing a laboring job, and yeah, it was
Speaker 1: soul destroying. So this was a lot more fun. These
Speaker 1: are the yeah, man, these are the best stories. Like
Speaker 1: so we just we just started. We just started, and
Speaker 1: I kept working in all of our money and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept working in all for a year just to
Speaker 1: kind of help support the start of the business. And
Speaker 1: after a year I left. We had done a couple
Speaker 1: of films for the Merlin groups. But over that period
Speaker 1: of time our kind of idea of showcasing what we
Speaker 1: could do. I believed we could do it. I didn't
Speaker 1: quite know how we would do it. But it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to go to company and say, hey, do you
Speaker 1: want to make your film? It's gonna be awesome. Never done, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, just show me something you've done before. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I haven't actually done anything, but I promise you it'll
Speaker 1: be awesome. Like it's very it's very difficult by self belief.
Speaker 1: So we so Fortunately, because I've been writing for so
Speaker 1: many years, I had a lot of good friends who
Speaker 1: were connected with different companies in the UK, and I
Speaker 1: managed to convince them that we could do it, and
Speaker 1: we were going to do a film, a short six
Speaker 1: part series m A called Into the Wilderness, and it
Speaker 1: was just going to be us hunting the way we
Speaker 1: like to hunt, which is actually quite different to most
Speaker 1: of the hunting in the UK. It's much more like
Speaker 1: how you guys hunt, but trying to tell a little
Speaker 1: bit of the culture in the story in it. That
Speaker 1: was kind of the original thought process. So we got
Speaker 1: some sponsorship in for it that kind of just paid
Speaker 1: enough to be able to afford to sponsorship, and that
Speaker 1: was that kind of little portfolio was the catalyst for
Speaker 1: everything else that followed. And actually we always thought we
Speaker 1: would carry on doing stuff like that because we like
Speaker 1: and we get to hunt a lot, and even if
Speaker 1: we're filming ourselves, and we've basically done nothing like that sense,
Speaker 1: because off the back of it, we've continually been asked
Speaker 1: by various people or companies to be involved in projects
Speaker 1: where we've been the people filming or producing or taking pictures,
Speaker 1: which I'm not complaining about because it's a lot different
Speaker 1: than being in front of the it's a lot of
Speaker 1: being in front of the camera and we've got to hunt.
Speaker 1: Hunting inverted commas, some of the most awesome places on
Speaker 1: the planet. And to it's certain extent, I don't care
Speaker 1: like I don't. I've hunted a lot, and I don't
Speaker 1: need to be killing something every time, and I've shared
Speaker 1: the experience, like like the bison hunt, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: on I wasn't going to be pulling the trigger. No.
Speaker 1: I could see it in your eyes when you're telling
Speaker 1: the story. You know that the brief story about your bison,
Speaker 1: Like your eyes were lit up just to be there. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's something a lot of hunters could learn from. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah here, And I've seen a lot of our
Speaker 1: industry and I've been that way some parts of my careers.
Speaker 1: Like you just want to hunt. You don't just want
Speaker 1: to hunt, you don't really like you're not thinking about
Speaker 1: the end result. You just want to go out there,
Speaker 1: smell it, find it, Like wherever it is, you're gonna
Speaker 1: find it. And if it's you have a job where
Speaker 1: there's like maybe a hunt, you'll do anything. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The best stories. The thing that I was so gutted
Speaker 1: by when I was back at Black Rock was that
Speaker 1: the stories were ship that all these people were telling.
Speaker 1: It's like, these are not interesting stories. Like Darrell's just
Speaker 1: told you a heap of interesting stories the name and
Speaker 1: he's only scratched the surface. It's like, get a whiskey plan.
Speaker 1: I cannot live my life and be an old man
Speaker 1: and have those stories. Yeah, I mean that's my life.
Speaker 1: What is the point? Like I said, I always say this,
Speaker 1: there's the two dimensional life and the three dimensional life.
Speaker 1: Like a two dimensional life are the stories you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Like I have this, I have, this is what I have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what is it giving you? Really? And what's it
Speaker 1: giving the people around you? Like you've been to Nepal,
Speaker 1: you could free you know, you could share and now
Speaker 1: through experiences you have shared connections. So like when we
Speaker 1: when you were on our podcast the first time, I
Speaker 1: started off asking you about Nopole because we there was
Speaker 1: this weird connection that because we've been in the same
Speaker 1: place at a slightly different time, and it brings people together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something about that, you know. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 1: wouldn't wouldn't say this, but I feel like when I
Speaker 1: look over to your part of the world or anywhere
Speaker 1: close to where you guys, are you the most prolific photographers, filmmakers, podcasters.
Speaker 1: I mean it is, Uh, the breath and depth of
Speaker 1: work you've been willing to that you've put out over
Speaker 1: the last year is amazing. I mean, it really appreciate
Speaker 1: you saying that. And you've spun these like you know,
Speaker 1: you guys are smart dudes with passion forward and you
Speaker 1: found it because you had to the point. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was a choice. Yeah, you just like you.
Speaker 1: Just like you said, you just like you, You're always
Speaker 1: looking for it, even if even if you get lost
Speaker 1: in a career choice or you know, some destination you
Speaker 1: think you have to head towards. You Still the podcast
Speaker 1: was an interesting one because we we just we started
Speaker 1: that just because we felt there was a lack of
Speaker 1: education in in the UK and we just wanted we
Speaker 1: wanted an open plant, an access for free. And how
Speaker 1: long you've been doing the podcast? Yeah, three and a
Speaker 1: half years and so three years? And how many podcasts
Speaker 1: do you feel like are hunting fishing related in in
Speaker 1: this Well? Yeah, but I mean so one only started
Speaker 1: six months ago, another one was probably a year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that regular, it's not that regular. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we were we were the first in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and what's the you know, there's obviously the
Speaker 1: American influence, right, I mean that I talked about if
Speaker 1: you talk about that all the time around, like how
Speaker 1: much of the American culture and our value systems and
Speaker 1: our model conservation has affected other UM hunting cultures around
Speaker 1: the globe. But like, what do people where you're from
Speaker 1: saying about what you're doing? You know, are they what
Speaker 1: we do? Yeah? Are they inspired by? Do they pick
Speaker 1: up a rifle and go a field because of of
Speaker 1: what you're doing? That's the beautiful thing and I a
Speaker 1: combination of the film, but probably more importantly the podcast podcast.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it was people are inspired by also,
Speaker 1: not by us. It's more the guests. The podcast is
Speaker 1: probably the biggest thing that really gets people thinking. And
Speaker 1: we've had more emails and messages from people saying, I'm
Speaker 1: getting my my certificates for rifles, UM doing my first
Speaker 1: hunt because of the back of this, this and this
Speaker 1: and this that they've listened on the podcast or they've
Speaker 1: now email s Now, I get it. There's something I
Speaker 1: didn't know before I had a um a misconception about something.
Speaker 1: Now I get it. Or yeah, maybe I don't fully
Speaker 1: agree with you, but I understand more and that you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it can be sometimes you can wander, especially with
Speaker 1: the podcast, and what our intention for it was is
Speaker 1: whether if you're really making a difference because we can
Speaker 1: talk all day to hunters and it's good fun, but
Speaker 1: is that really going to make a difference to the
Speaker 1: understanding of what we do in the greater the world? No,
Speaker 1: we need to reach we need to reach out, and
Speaker 1: this is a it's a free medium, it's hopefully easily consumable,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you have a lot of people listening
Speaker 1: to your your podcast who have found it somehow, who
Speaker 1: it's maybe not a big part of their life, but
Speaker 1: and we don't want it. We are not saying that
Speaker 1: everybody needs to hunt, but it's good that people can
Speaker 1: at least understand it from a different point of view.
Speaker 1: And that's been I mean, that's been incredible. I always
Speaker 1: every time I get an email like that where I
Speaker 1: hear from somebody who is not inside the general hunting
Speaker 1: community who has taken something from a conversation with one
Speaker 1: of the awesome guests that we've had on it just
Speaker 1: makes me smile. Yeah, we have a good contingent of
Speaker 1: people that don't hunt on our podcast. And a part
Speaker 1: of that it's just due to some of the guests.
Speaker 1: Some of our guests are just not they're not hunters
Speaker 1: in any way, but they're adventures explorers, you know, just
Speaker 1: doing really cool ship stories and living life as it
Speaker 1: should be, which means whatever you're doing, you need to
Speaker 1: find meaning and you need to enjoy what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And anyone who enjoys what they're doing in life is
Speaker 1: going to be a cool person and have awesome stories.
Speaker 1: And it's about sharing that. I mean, who are your
Speaker 1: your I guess this can be cliche, but who are
Speaker 1: you're like outdoor heroes? Who are the people that you
Speaker 1: know drove you to that if you have them for adventure, yeah,
Speaker 1: or just just sometimes you read some somebody who's like
Speaker 1: shared ideas like clicked in you that you know, we
Speaker 1: tell stories all the time around here about you know,
Speaker 1: books and writings and people that that you know there's
Speaker 1: something inside of you that you you can't explain, and
Speaker 1: then someone explains hunting or explains fishing in a way
Speaker 1: that you're like, that's it for me. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean it's were we well, now, I there was two things.
Speaker 1: One watching you McGregor and Charlie Boorman go around the
Speaker 1: world on a motorbike. When I saw that, it just
Speaker 1: kind of it kind of blew my mind. When I
Speaker 1: watched them first do that and the adventure they had
Speaker 1: going around, I was like, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to do something like that. And the second one was
Speaker 1: Ed Stafford. He was the first man to walk the
Speaker 1: full length of the Amazon. We're lucky enough to actually
Speaker 1: just have him on our podcast, which is really cool
Speaker 1: because it's here in mind. And then he comes on
Speaker 1: our show and I saw him talk as well a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and he's just a phenomenal inspirational person.
Speaker 1: And the trips and the expedition he does solo are
Speaker 1: absolutely They're incredible. I was incredible, say if if I was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: going by his book, I think it's just called Walking
Speaker 1: the Amazon. It's also TVDM well Worth, well Worth going
Speaker 1: to see. For me, it was it's probably a little
Speaker 1: bit more, a little bit more cliche for the on
Speaker 1: the hunting fishing side. When I was younger. On the
Speaker 1: fishing it was a um an English, a very famous
Speaker 1: English fisherman and naturalist called Hugh Focus. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever combined that familiar but beautiful book, the
Speaker 1: book on Sea chat in particular. I used to read
Speaker 1: that book when my mom was driving us to the
Speaker 1: swimming pool to go swimming training every night. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a big, thick book like this, and I consumed
Speaker 1: it multiple times. So he was probably my first sort
Speaker 1: of hero of the countryside would have been Hugh Folcuse,
Speaker 1: it turns out later as I found out more about him,
Speaker 1: he was a complete womanizing, a bit of an asshole.
Speaker 1: He was a fantastic but he was a fan. I've
Speaker 1: never met him, but it was just what I heard,
Speaker 1: so it might not have been true. But but he
Speaker 1: was an amazing naturalist. His the detail with which he
Speaker 1: studied what he was passionate about was incredible. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, I mean the usual suspects for
Speaker 1: um being intrigued about Africa and then North America, the
Speaker 1: one that is there's two books that have impacted me
Speaker 1: most in recent times. One is Aldo Leopold's book Sam
Speaker 1: County Almanac, and I yeah that you yeah, it's in
Speaker 1: that bag sitting there. And the second one was a
Speaker 1: book which I literally have only read in the last
Speaker 1: six months, and it was sent to us by a
Speaker 1: podcast listener completely out of the blue, with just a
Speaker 1: letter in it by Gray Owl, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the name of the actual book. He didn't write that
Speaker 1: many is has slipped my mind at the moment, and
Speaker 1: he is one of the great conservations for the Canadian wilderness.
Speaker 1: And that book just was unbelievable, the section about I
Speaker 1: gave it to my dad when it arrived and he
Speaker 1: was sitting in his office. He's just retired, but he
Speaker 1: had an office next two hours and I gave it
Speaker 1: to and said, you know, I can believe this podcast
Speaker 1: Listen just sent us a first edition book about Gray
Speaker 1: l with a with a handwritten notes saying, I heard
Speaker 1: you mentioned this film about Gray al and this book
Speaker 1: made a big impact of my life, Soti. When I
Speaker 1: saw it in the bookshop, I just bought it. That's
Speaker 1: why I want you to share it with you guys,
Speaker 1: which was incredible. Our listeners are awesome are And I
Speaker 1: gave it to my dad and I went back in
Speaker 1: like forty five minutes later, and he's always busy and
Speaker 1: he was reading the book. So have you been reading
Speaker 1: the book the whole time? He says, I can't take
Speaker 1: my eyes off it. And it was like that for me.
Speaker 1: So when I remember the Pilgrims of the Wild, Gray
Speaker 1: Our Pilgrims of the Wild, that book is unbelievable. And
Speaker 1: if you can't appreciate nature after reading that book, then
Speaker 1: that's there's no hope. Yeah, you're hopeless. What do you guys?
Speaker 1: What's what's on the horizon for what you you know?
Speaker 1: For your adventures? Ah, we're off to Africa. We are.
Speaker 1: We're off to Africa in April. We've got some clients
Speaker 1: going out um and we're going to be making some films.
Speaker 1: We're doing some filming with pangulin. So we've just started
Speaker 1: an auction to raise some money for some panguin research
Speaker 1: and we're hopefully working with a company that was approached
Speaker 1: us again through the podcast Funny Enough Um, to try
Speaker 1: and get some software together for tracking pengulin with a
Speaker 1: guy over there in South Africa who we've got to know.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what penguin is, it's like an
Speaker 1: armadillo looking creature. I guess which is the most traffic
Speaker 1: mammal on the planet. Really, I didn't know that. I
Speaker 1: was thinking. I bet people listen to that don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there was the most trafficing is most most
Speaker 1: traffics and they're they just found a big consignment of
Speaker 1: it recently. They're they're endangered that these guys are poached
Speaker 1: for their scales, which have zero medical benefits, the same
Speaker 1: as your nails that are on your hands, and people
Speaker 1: are you know, grinding them up so they can get
Speaker 1: a big hard on. And that's basically what it is.
Speaker 1: It's for viagra and all different it's not for viagra
Speaker 1: like like foodoo, medicines that don't work and uh, And
Speaker 1: we're working with the guys in Africa because there's actually
Speaker 1: species of pangulin in Asia as well, and well, I
Speaker 1: don't know how they're going to tackle that because obviously
Speaker 1: it's quite hard with governments there and that's where most
Speaker 1: penguins are going anyway, so it would be quite hard
Speaker 1: to any kind of rescue effort over there. But in Africa,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's still hoping, there's people on the groundings
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. And so I mean in our media future,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's what we're doing next. We're going to
Speaker 1: make a film film about it, and and the calendar
Speaker 1: will undoubtedly book up. Yeah, I'm often Ambia in May
Speaker 1: um for that a conference for the Council of International
Speaker 1: Conservation to talk about basically the future of the future
Speaker 1: of conservation and hunting. So that's gonna be interesting. We'll
Speaker 1: probably be off to Norway at some point. I was,
Speaker 1: I've been. We we keep going back to Norway. I
Speaker 1: was there in October November last year. Oh yeah, we're
Speaker 1: photographing a moose hunt. Wow, that's a whole story in itself,
Speaker 1: an incredible experience. That's that's the place in the world
Speaker 1: that I most want to get. Are you got to
Speaker 1: do in a This is like hunting moose in the
Speaker 1: mountain and it is your your leg are just killing
Speaker 1: you by the end of a few days. But you know,
Speaker 1: you're walking so many miles each day, and it's it's
Speaker 1: such a cool community thing they have over there where
Speaker 1: you'll be ten of you that kind of go out
Speaker 1: in the morning and you're spotting in the mountain mountain
Speaker 1: range and these are steep, steep mountains, and you see
Speaker 1: a moose and then you'll go out and you'll walk,
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen miles kind of across these these things,
Speaker 1: and they'll shoot a moose out right at the back
Speaker 1: of where a probably a glacier would have been and
Speaker 1: once it shot, they were the one we did shoot
Speaker 1: on kind of the last day, it's all cut up,
Speaker 1: hung up in a tree because it was later in
Speaker 1: the day. And then the following day we hiked down
Speaker 1: the mountain, went back up again. Whole community, the whole
Speaker 1: community kind of walked. It was like ten eleven people.
Speaker 1: We were up there by seven in the morning, and
Speaker 1: there was people already with backpacks walking back down. And
Speaker 1: when they when they come back down, they finished the
Speaker 1: job in a garage and then that shared out between
Speaker 1: all the people that were hunting and in that community
Speaker 1: all of the meat. I might start a commune just
Speaker 1: like that. That's very cool. I think I'm weird, but
Speaker 1: like that's I you know, people that a lot here
Speaker 1: in the States talk about solo hunting and celebrate going
Speaker 1: out in the wilds by herself. I do enjoy that,
Speaker 1: but nowhere near as much as I enjoy like being
Speaker 1: in a camp with a bunch of people, being surrounded
Speaker 1: by a bunch of people, like the counterflast stories, campfire stories,
Speaker 1: man camp fire stories. Well, we're gonna get our ass
Speaker 1: kicked by an ex navy sealing you guys, better go ye.
Speaker 1: This dude, he will kick yours. I've met him a
Speaker 1: few times. I don't know him. I've heard the rumors.
Speaker 1: The Mountain Tout Fitness is like, but we gotta work
Speaker 1: out twelve we've been traveling. If we're late, that workout's
Speaker 1: gonna be even more painful, feel bad. Let's close the
Speaker 1: podcast about you telling everybody we figured out earlier what
Speaker 1: your poor names were, What was it, what wasn't? It's
Speaker 1: the first it's your first. Pete is the first name,
Speaker 1: and your last name is You didn't have a street
Speaker 1: where you grew up in the town where you grew up,
Speaker 1: so it would be Bimbo inch Bar would be my well,
Speaker 1: the same pet, but my first actual pet that was
Speaker 1: mine was a dull, cold Sparky and they're close close
Speaker 1: to inch Bear where I went to school is Edzel,
Speaker 1: so be Sparky, ed Sparky, Edsel and Bimbo inch Bear.
Speaker 1: You almost got through the podcast that I haven't I
Speaker 1: almost forgotten. Then you brought up the the boner down
Speaker 1: to boner scales. In my mind was like I had
Speaker 1: to make sure I mentioned I dragged down the podcast
Speaker 1: ruined the end. I ruined the ending all right, boys,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming appetially. What you do. It's great speak
Speaker 1: to you again. I need to come to your neck.
Speaker 1: There is an open invite for you in Scotland and
Speaker 1: the Highlands, so alright, make that journey. Convinced Ronella, let
Speaker 1: me out of Montana. Alright, that's it. That is all
Speaker 1: number fitting of books. Pretty cool, pretty cool discussion with
Speaker 1: those two boys. It was early in the morning, snow
Speaker 1: was falling in Montana. Um, but it was an interesting conversation,
Speaker 1: and it's good to know a little bit about their
Speaker 1: backgrounds and what they do. I'd love to have them
Speaker 1: back or go visit them in Scotland and learn a
Speaker 1: little bit more about wildlife management and and things and
Speaker 1: land use over there. They're part of the world. But
Speaker 1: we just had an interesting conversation. We got rolling and
Speaker 1: didn't get to it, but we'll get to it next time.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this one either way. I love
Speaker 1: those guys. What else, what else? What else? Well, Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of things going on, but but number one,
Speaker 1: we're still rocking and rolling on the Mediator Live Tour.
Speaker 1: You've heard me say it before. I would imagine if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this that it's going. So if you
Speaker 1: go to the meat Eater dot com, you go over there,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna find is the events page. Click on that,
Speaker 1: find the event near you, and then go. We just
Speaker 1: launched the We just announced the Austin podcasts. I believe
Speaker 1: it's on April two in Austin. Come see us, man,
Speaker 1: I'll be there. I'll be on stage and I hope
Speaker 1: to see all you Texans out there cheerings on talking
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing. Um. You know, regular business. Subscribe to
Speaker 1: our newsletter. Go to the website to do that. Go
Speaker 1: to the website, look at our stores. See if you
Speaker 1: find anything in there you'd like to wear, or stickers
Speaker 1: you might want to put on your truck or vehicle
Speaker 1: or prius who knows. I like reasons are fine with me.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with it. But all those things you can
Speaker 1: do here with our folks at the Meteor dot Com.
Speaker 1: But I would say in closing for for ups at
Speaker 1: number fifty, uh, it is exciting to be a part
Speaker 1: of this company. I am running around every day for
Speaker 1: meeting to meeting, discussing concepts for content, new content around people.
Speaker 1: You know, some people you don't ideas you that I've
Speaker 1: never considered. It is invigorating and inspiring to be around
Speaker 1: these people, and I cannot wait for you all to hear,
Speaker 1: to read, to watch what we're producing here right now
Speaker 1: in the future. I think it's gonna be an exciting
Speaker 1: year years for us, and I know some of the
Speaker 1: concept we're discussing and pitching and batting around here and
Speaker 1: even producing already our heller and it's it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to be a part of this crew that includes Ryan Callahan,
Speaker 1: you as Matelas, Steve Vannella Morgan Mason, Spencer Newhart, Sam Longren,
Speaker 1: Miles Nulty, all the guys I'm working with. Um It's
Speaker 1: it is an amazing team, and I am very excited
Speaker 1: for all of you too to hear and watch and
Speaker 1: listen to our content going forward. So I'll get off
Speaker 1: my soapbox in regards to that, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: been a good time here in Bozeman lately, and so
Speaker 1: that's all I have for this episode. Join us next
Speaker 1: Tuesday for some more talking and hopefully the next time
Speaker 1: you will join us as well here on the Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: Bye bye,