Speaker 1: And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Dirk Durham and tonight my guest is my.
Speaker 2: Good buddy, Josh Boyd.
Speaker 1: Josh is a Montana resident, a great hunter, and all
Speaker 1: around good guy. Welcome back, Josh.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me back, Derek. It's always fun to chat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Our listeners might remember you from our earlier episodes
Speaker 1: we did last spring. One was on Elk Hunting and
Speaker 1: another one was on Spring Bear Hunting, and if you
Speaker 1: guys haven't listen to those, it's a it's a must
Speaker 1: must listen. There's a lot of good a lot of
Speaker 1: good nuggets and good conversation there.
Speaker 4: Josh.
Speaker 1: I saw all of your success on Instagram and we
Speaker 1: just haven't had a chance to catch up about how
Speaker 1: your fall went down. So I thought, you know, what
Speaker 1: better time to get on the podcast and just kind
Speaker 1: of talk about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you bet. It was a great fall. It
Speaker 3: just seemed to fly by. I don't I really honestly
Speaker 3: don't know where the time went. I just it seems
Speaker 3: like it was just a few weeks ago. I was
Speaker 3: just putting gear together to head to Wyoming for early
Speaker 3: September Elk and it just I cannot believe it's mid December.
Speaker 3: It's crazy how fast time goes.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Did you hunt in August and all or just September, October, November.
Speaker 3: September, October, November. I mean, we do have long seasons
Speaker 3: in Montana, and the antelope season archery season starts October
Speaker 3: excuse me, August fifteenth here, and I just don't have
Speaker 3: how much time to get to the east side to
Speaker 3: hunt that time of year. I'm still busy with work
Speaker 3: field seasons going on, and I just don't make it
Speaker 3: out in August, and I hunt so much the rest
Speaker 3: of the year that it's just really hard to get
Speaker 3: away that much. And I try to burn my family
Speaker 3: preference points later on September and October if I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good thinking. It's a little nicer to be
Speaker 1: a little nicer weather, I guess in September October than
Speaker 1: it is in August. I feel like those eastern Montana
Speaker 1: August tenths would be pretty warm.
Speaker 3: Oh, it would be brutal out there, I think. And yeah,
Speaker 3: the only thing I have to hunt out east would
Speaker 3: be antelope. And this past year I had a rifle tag,
Speaker 3: so I kind of like to wait till October and go. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's a really fun haunt because it's kind of in
Speaker 3: between our archery season and our general rifle season in
Speaker 3: the state. Okay, so it's a great little like long
Speaker 3: weekend trip to head head out there and enjoy the prairie.
Speaker 3: So I kind of try to see if I have
Speaker 3: a rifle tag. I try to save my antelope tag
Speaker 3: for that opening week of rifle analo rifle.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been applying for I think this is year three,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe four for ant help. I'd have to look
Speaker 1: at my points, but I still haven't drawn. I thought
Speaker 1: for sharsing draw this year and I still haven't, so
Speaker 1: maybe next year. Really looking forward to it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm super like interested in shooting like a
Speaker 1: giant trophy one. Maybe, I mean, if I see what,
Speaker 1: I'd love to shoot one. But I just want to
Speaker 1: go and have the experience and just go Analoe hunting.
Speaker 1: Everybody says it's so fun and you can do it
Speaker 1: all day, and it's not just a dog down and
Speaker 1: dusk type of a hunt, you know, like some hunts
Speaker 1: can be sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, it is a fun hunt. I it,
Speaker 3: and they're easy to kill, so I make it into
Speaker 3: a trophy hunt, just to to drag it out a
Speaker 3: little bit. Oka But it seemed, well, it seems like
Speaker 3: every year I end up shooting a pretty good buck
Speaker 3: that first day. Yeah, but I go over a few
Speaker 3: days early and I scout and hike and glass and
Speaker 3: try to find a couple of trophy bucks, and I
Speaker 3: end up just getting on them first thing in the morning.
Speaker 3: But you know, sometimes it's you know, there's a little
Speaker 3: bit of effort you have to have to apply. You know,
Speaker 3: you have to sneak out, and I'm hunting them out,
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of miles away from a road too,
Speaker 3: so that it's a naxtra effort for sure. So I
Speaker 3: take my backpack with me so I can shove that
Speaker 3: the whole antelope in my pack and pack it across
Speaker 3: the prairie when I am successful. But yeah, you can
Speaker 3: make it into a much of a hunt as you
Speaker 3: want it to to be, so it's it's super fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I found with Eastern Montana
Speaker 1: muleder hunting. I mean, if you want to drive around
Speaker 1: your pickup and shoot them from the pickup. You can
Speaker 1: if you want to spot them from the truck and
Speaker 1: then make moves. If you just want to go like
Speaker 1: my buddy and Ryan Lampers, I think they'll go and
Speaker 1: and backpack in and stay out there in that cold,
Speaker 1: nasty weather and you know, suffer and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you can make it whatever you want.
Speaker 2: I think you know.
Speaker 3: Which is cool, which is that's awesome. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: beauty of it.
Speaker 1: It's there's something there for everybody, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was a.
Speaker 1: Man I I seen that. I will say, you know,
Speaker 1: I I'm like, I don't know if I don't really
Speaker 1: care if I shoot a big one or not, but man,
Speaker 1: I saw that one you shot and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, oh wow, I want one like that. That was
Speaker 2: a nice buck.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the unit that I apply for, it's I
Speaker 3: haven't drawn one. It seems to be the pattern that
Speaker 3: I've fallen into is every other year I'll get it
Speaker 3: for that UNI and there seems to be some decent
Speaker 3: bucks in there. I don't know what it takes to
Speaker 3: get to be a big buck. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's genetics, nutrition, I don't I've kind of heard it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily old age but anyway, we're I've been hunting.
Speaker 3: I've been seeing a lot of nice bucks, and so
Speaker 3: every tag that I've pulled from this unit produced really
Speaker 3: solid antelope, and they're really neat. I just like the
Speaker 3: looks of those big bucks. They'll have that big, dark
Speaker 3: nose and it kind of has a Roman bend to it,
Speaker 3: so it kind of droops, and they get a little
Speaker 3: longer when they get bigger like that, okay, and blacker,
Speaker 3: and the face markings are more striking, and of course
Speaker 3: the horns stick up and are very impressive. So I
Speaker 3: don't know, It's just kind of fun shooting big animals
Speaker 3: if you can do it. Not that I'm strictly a
Speaker 3: trophy hunter. If you look at a bunch of the
Speaker 3: elk I've shot, you can I can tell you. I'm
Speaker 3: definitely not a trophy hunter when it comes.
Speaker 1: To elk, But I'm the same way I got it
Speaker 1: but here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I like shooting big animals, you know, if
Speaker 3: given the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And it looks like you found a big old deadhead too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, it looked like a kaya kill. Potentially,
Speaker 3: I don't know what killed it, but it was a
Speaker 3: you know, the spinal cord was or column was there
Speaker 3: attached to the head and still had its horns, but
Speaker 3: it had been pulled down into a gully. So I
Speaker 3: took my daughter over there for her first real hunt.
Speaker 3: She wasn't hunting, she just wanted to go along and
Speaker 3: one of the she's eleven and she was had never
Speaker 3: really spent much time out in a prairie, so she's
Speaker 3: really into exploring the country. So one day before the
Speaker 3: season started, we just decid to walk down some of
Speaker 3: these big washes, these big blown out gullies. She was
Speaker 3: looking for who knows what crystals ens, dinosaur bones. She
Speaker 3: is looking for whatever catches her eye. And we walked
Speaker 3: up on that dead antelope and it was kind of stinky.
Speaker 3: She it caught her eye, but she wasn't going to
Speaker 3: hang out much longer, especially when I touched it. She
Speaker 3: didn't want nothing to do with that stinky things.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, are you able to retrieve dead heads in Montana?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah you can. Yeah, but if oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like yeah, it's it's it'll be good staying
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty nasty smelling.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of a lot of Western states
Speaker 1: don't allow you to pick up dead heads like Oregon
Speaker 1: and Washington, Wyoming. One year, we were all kuinting of
Speaker 1: Wyoming and we could glass across this huge basin and
Speaker 1: we could see a big bowl elk that was dead
Speaker 1: and there was a bear on it. It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that looks like a pretty nice bear. And we sit
Speaker 1: there and as we bugled and listened for other bulls
Speaker 1: and glassed for other bulls, we thought, you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of got caught up watching this bear and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a cool, but far enough away for
Speaker 1: the can of cameras we had we couldn't really video
Speaker 1: anything good.
Speaker 2: But we were.
Speaker 1: Watching and yeah, that's a pretty nice bear. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, he just jumps up and runs off,
Speaker 1: like huh wow. Something spooked it out. And then a
Speaker 1: big bear came out. This other bear was giant. It
Speaker 1: dwarfed that other bear and it went over there and
Speaker 1: it like ate on the elk a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then it would just lay right on top of the elk,
Speaker 1: and he was so big he would just cover that
Speaker 1: whole elk. Like if you can imagine a bear that big,
Speaker 1: he covered you. He covered up most of that elk
Speaker 1: when he'd lay on it, and he would just lay
Speaker 1: there and take a nap, and then every now and
Speaker 1: then that other little bear would kind of come around
Speaker 1: and like peek around, and he'd get up and kind
Speaker 1: of flex a little bit, and that other bear dike off.
Speaker 1: But man, it was cool. The funny thing is the
Speaker 1: night before we were over there and we're bugling a
Speaker 1: bull and we're like, man, something dead up here. We
Speaker 1: could smell it, you know, And this bull was bugling
Speaker 1: right up there, right by that dead elk.
Speaker 2: And just bugling.
Speaker 1: We were right on him right at the last light,
Speaker 1: and we got up there and it's like, man, it stinks.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden you could hear a bear
Speaker 1: come down the hill and chased off my buddy and
Speaker 1: my two buddies are up there putting the sneak on
Speaker 1: this elk, and uh so coincidentally, the next day we're
Speaker 1: glassing over there, like I wonder what was dead over there,
Speaker 1: and we could see that elk, and then we saw
Speaker 1: the bear. The first one was like, oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty big bear, and then the other one's like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, and he looked he was colored like a grizzly.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh my god, it's a grizzly bear. Holy
Speaker 1: this in this area of Wyoming, what at the time
Speaker 1: wasn't really known for grizzlies, Okay.
Speaker 2: And we were like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: You know grizzly. And we watched that thing for a
Speaker 1: long time and finally determined it wasn't a grizzly. It's
Speaker 1: just a black bear colored like a grizzly. He didn't
Speaker 1: have a dished face, and it took a lot of
Speaker 1: looking though to to like, you know, if he'd stand right,
Speaker 1: it looked like he had a hump on his back.
Speaker 1: But after spending a couple hours you know, watching him,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, that's a that's just a giant
Speaker 1: black bear.
Speaker 3: Those big male black bears. Yeah, if they're the right color. Hey,
Speaker 3: sometimes they are really hard to tell between that and
Speaker 3: a darker face grizzly because they will have a hump
Speaker 3: on their shoulders, they'll have a shoulder.
Speaker 2: Up mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's not as distinct as a grizzly, And a lot
Speaker 3: of times the face will give them away and the
Speaker 3: ear size and all that. But the last fall bear
Speaker 3: I shot up here, it was a big, dark, chocolate
Speaker 3: male black bear, and I looked at it for a
Speaker 3: long time before I shot it, just to make sure
Speaker 3: because it had a serious hump on his shoulder. And uh,
Speaker 3: obviously it turned out to be a black bear, And
Speaker 3: I made dang sure before I pulled the trigger. Yeah
Speaker 3: that there was no doubt in my mind. But it
Speaker 3: took me a little bit to like really look at him.
Speaker 3: I watched him for solid maybe fifteen minutes before I
Speaker 3: determined for sure that he was illegal bear. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that's interesting. He was on at elk kill.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, he was just on it. And it was
Speaker 1: a nice bowl. It was like a three hundred inch bowl. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the story, like you can't take dead heads then,
Speaker 1: where he's like, man, it'd be cool to go back
Speaker 1: to town and get a bear tag and go shoot
Speaker 1: that thing and then get that elk crack, But you
Speaker 1: can't keep the alk cracks, you know, dead heads in Wyoming.
Speaker 3: So it was like a pah. I did not know
Speaker 3: that bowl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we just had to watch and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: But you know, for guys like us, we we hadn't
Speaker 1: seen grizzly bears really up at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: in our lives to be like, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we're easily to spot a grizzly, you know, but I
Speaker 1: think a lot of folks like us. Maybe first the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is say grizzly Barry, because it's
Speaker 1: just giant and the right colors and stuff.
Speaker 2: But once we kind of shoot on it for a.
Speaker 1: While, then it's like, that's not a grizzly.
Speaker 3: So yeah, huh.
Speaker 1: But so you talked about Wyoming, Tell me, did how
Speaker 1: did the elk bugle this faull Did you have good bugling?
Speaker 1: Did you have crappy bugling?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. That first time hunting this area,
Speaker 3: so don't really have a lot of, you know, background
Speaker 3: information on it. The bugling was good first thing in
Speaker 3: the morning for maybe two hours they were and all
Speaker 3: night we were just dealing with the full moon.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: We laid there in our tents listening the bulls bugle
Speaker 3: all night, all night most nights. Yeah, And then they
Speaker 3: were still fired up for a few few hours in
Speaker 3: the morning, and then by like say nine thirty, ten o'clock,
Speaker 3: maybe not even ten, they were done. As it got warmer,
Speaker 3: we kind of had that little heat wave kind of
Speaker 3: build it that window in the morning got shorter and shorter.
Speaker 3: But we had great, great action for a couple hours
Speaker 3: in the mornings, and we had some evenings that were sporadic.
Speaker 3: But we had a hard time coch and bulls to
Speaker 3: bugle in the day. Midday we'd get it. Occasionally'd get
Speaker 3: one of the bugle out of its bed, but it
Speaker 3: would not respond beyond just a little tiny light bugle
Speaker 3: maybe once twice, but just could not get them going midday, okay,
Speaker 3: which is kind of what we were after, you know,
Speaker 3: those midday boys or just ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, try to get one of those big herd bulls
Speaker 1: di leave his cows. Yeah, this year we had a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Like midday we just didn't hear any
Speaker 1: bugles at all. They kind of experienced some of the
Speaker 1: same stuff and we had the first day it was
Speaker 1: pretty warm, but then a huge storm came in. This
Speaker 1: is Idaho, a huge storm came in and man it
Speaker 1: got cold and rainy and snowy, and the.
Speaker 2: Bulls picked up.
Speaker 1: They started bugling pretty good, but they weren't bugling on
Speaker 1: their own. They weren't, you know, unless we prompted, you know,
Speaker 1: unless we were started doing some location bugles.
Speaker 2: They didn't.
Speaker 1: They weren't out there talking on their own, and it
Speaker 1: took a little bit of you know, creative talking on
Speaker 1: our part.
Speaker 2: To get them to bugle.
Speaker 1: But once they'd kind of bugle, they bugled pretty good
Speaker 1: during that cold weather. But but then after the storm
Speaker 1: had kind of passed, and think I thought, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: once this storm passes, they're really going to kick things
Speaker 1: in high gear.
Speaker 2: Oh it just went to a ghost town.
Speaker 1: Man. It was.
Speaker 2: It was tough.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, bulls would just you get if
Speaker 1: you got very close to him and did any call,
Speaker 1: and they would just run. They they did not want
Speaker 1: any competition. Maybe they thought we were hunters, but we just didn't.
Speaker 1: In that particular spot at that time, we hadn't really
Speaker 1: seen a bunch of people. So I don't know that
Speaker 1: it was pressure. I just and we've kind of been
Speaker 1: told that these elk in this air area in general
Speaker 1: don't like calling, and they made a believer out of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to Yeah, I guess the first bull
Speaker 3: that my partner killed with this we were in there
Speaker 3: when it was still archery. Our first trip back into
Speaker 3: the back country was still archery, and we had a
Speaker 3: we had a little bit of a rough go getting
Speaker 3: bulls of bugle like the first day, but we found
Speaker 3: some elk got him fired up that evening. The next day,
Speaker 3: it was dead silent in there, but we still dropped
Speaker 3: down into this canyon and made this big loop into
Speaker 3: this canyon and around the top and the backside of
Speaker 3: this knob, and we got a bowl of bugle. He
Speaker 3: answered consistently. It was noonish eleven, OK. But he hammered
Speaker 3: a couple different times right away, and it was pretty warm.
Speaker 3: But as soon as he hammered on the bugle, I
Speaker 3: thought they had this bull's going to come in for sure.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so we did call that bulling and Trevor
Speaker 3: shot him nice. So yeah, that was good. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: were both at full draw on him and he came
Speaker 3: in and I was, I mean, I was waiting for
Speaker 3: him to like just move a front shoulder forward, And
Speaker 3: just as he was moving that front shoulder forward, I
Speaker 3: had my pin barry. He was under twenty yards probably
Speaker 3: like sixteen eighteen yards from me. Wow, so top ten
Speaker 3: had that top pen buried in his shoulder. I just
Speaker 3: as I released another arrow, like smacked him from the
Speaker 3: from the other side any world, and my arrow went
Speaker 3: right in front of his front shoulder as he spun
Speaker 3: away Reilly, Which that's incredible. I know, I've never had
Speaker 3: that happen. I thought for sure. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this bull is so dead. And it's like what he
Speaker 3: was a half a step. He was moving his leg forward.
Speaker 3: You know that that shoulder moves. Yeah, they're stepping forward.
Speaker 3: I was just waiting for that to come to completion,
Speaker 3: and I was just gonna just peg him, and another
Speaker 3: arrow hits just as I was squeezing. It was funny. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway, we got the bowl. But that was a
Speaker 3: midday bowl. Yeah, pretty warm out and uh, that was
Speaker 3: really our best midday action that we had was that bowl.
Speaker 3: And he came in hot, came in all fired up.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I god, I love that ID two s.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was awesome.
Speaker 3: And that happened to be like River's second archery bowl.
Speaker 3: I think it was his first public land bull. So yeah,
Speaker 3: he was super promatant. We were all pretty excited about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, huh you said they they were They were
Speaker 1: talking really good the night before and then they kind
Speaker 1: of shut down.
Speaker 2: What do that? What's your opinion on that?
Speaker 1: Do you have any kind of a hypothesis or a
Speaker 1: theory of why up do that, because it's not uncommon
Speaker 1: for them, like one day they're just boiling hot.
Speaker 2: The next day it's like ghost town. Why is that?
Speaker 3: Well, so we camped. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: This is maybe if this is one theory, So we
Speaker 3: in that situation. We camped not far from where we
Speaker 3: heard these bulls bugle in that night, and they definitely
Speaker 3: didn't wind us, they didn't see us. We were very stealthy.
Speaker 3: We were on this little tiny finger ridge back away,
Speaker 3: but we could hear in there, and they bugled all
Speaker 3: night long. They went nuts down there, and one bowl
Speaker 3: you could hear him round up his cows and he
Speaker 3: pushed him up past our camp and we could hear
Speaker 3: him going through this meadow behind us, just away from us.
Speaker 1: All night.
Speaker 3: The cows just fitted in the meadow, and I think
Speaker 3: they just exited out the back end of the meadow
Speaker 3: and just kept going away from where the rest of
Speaker 3: the oak word. I just think they were so busy
Speaker 3: all night they just wore themselves out, and the next
Speaker 3: morning they're just like, we're done. Yeah, we partied all night.
Speaker 3: We're just we're good. So I don't know, I think
Speaker 3: there's various reasons for it, but I think that in
Speaker 3: that situation, that was what was kind of going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Have a lot of belief in that same idea as well.
Speaker 1: Part of me says too, sometimes they get to moving
Speaker 1: around too and like they'll like maybe one herd bowl
Speaker 1: or grab the cows and make a mad dash and
Speaker 1: out of one drainage to another and the party moves right.
Speaker 1: I kind of think there's some of that also think
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it is.
Speaker 1: Man, they party pretty hard, and they they run that
Speaker 1: whole evening and all night, and the next day they're
Speaker 1: just licking their wounds. Maybe that cow is not heed anymore.
Speaker 1: They got the job done and it's just we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a break today, guys, it's gonna.
Speaker 2: Be a lazy in milkwoods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have yet to have anybody, Yeah, I know, I
Speaker 1: kind of feel that way. Yeah, I have yet have
Speaker 1: anybody you know, explain it any different, like you know,
Speaker 1: but I'm always I'm all ears. I'm always looking for
Speaker 1: for you know, the reasons why on these help they
Speaker 1: seem to you know, by the time you think you
Speaker 1: know something you don't really know anything. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how long have we been doing this and we're
Speaker 3: still learning? It's pretty Oh that's I mean, that's part
Speaker 3: of the beauty of it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If it was just like fishing, shooting fish in a
Speaker 1: barrel would be like, man, that's kind of boring now
Speaker 1: and probably something different.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's always a challenge.
Speaker 1: Now, you killed a bowl, and there was quite a
Speaker 1: story backstory for perhaps the area.
Speaker 2: Uh and maybe maybe you.
Speaker 1: Killed this bowl in an area your grandfather hundred years
Speaker 1: and years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was an area that my dad grew
Speaker 3: up in and I'd been hearing stories of and I
Speaker 3: actually went to their hunting camp when I was a
Speaker 3: little kid.
Speaker 2: Okay, So.
Speaker 3: My dad, his father, and my dad's grandfather hunted elk
Speaker 3: in this mountain range forever and my great so that
Speaker 3: would be my great grandfather and my great grandfather's father hunter.
Speaker 3: I mean, then they have native they're enrolled Indians out
Speaker 3: of Wyoming. So they go way back, you know, six
Speaker 3: thousand generations or so, so they've been they've been trapesing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they've been trapsing those mountain ranges for years and years
Speaker 3: and years and I was as a little kid. Some
Speaker 3: of my first memories of hunting were up there in
Speaker 3: my great grandfather's hunting camp. Like my parents would take
Speaker 3: me out of me and my brother out of school
Speaker 3: and we would drive all the way to Wyoming and
Speaker 3: then we'd go up to this camp and there would
Speaker 3: be some a couple old trailers that he pulled in
Speaker 3: to his cow camp slash hunting camp, and then my
Speaker 3: great grandfather and my dad would get on their horses
Speaker 3: and go into the back country and shoot elk for
Speaker 3: themselves and the whole family for the most part. But
Speaker 3: it was like I remember seeing story or hearing stories,
Speaker 3: seeing pictures, being immersed in the hunting camp, you know,
Speaker 3: in early October, and just the sights and smells, and
Speaker 3: I just had never really got to experience that mountain
Speaker 3: range as an adult. Yeah, so this was an opportunity
Speaker 3: for me to go hunt that same mountain range and
Speaker 3: kind of get a feel for how those elk act,
Speaker 3: how they use the landscape, how I can navigate and
Speaker 3: get around in that landscape, and just to see if
Speaker 3: I can put the puzzles together with the help of
Speaker 3: some friends. Of course, sure, of course, And I wasn't
Speaker 3: over hunting, you know, in their area where my great
Speaker 3: grandfather hunted. But it was just fun. And there's a
Speaker 3: picture on the wall in the hallway of my parents' house,
Speaker 3: and I remember seeing it ever since I was a
Speaker 3: little kid of my great grandfather with a big bully
Speaker 3: shot and my dad was with them the day the
Speaker 3: he shot it. They got into a herd elk and
Speaker 3: this bowl had some cows pushed up into these small
Speaker 3: pines and he ended up shooting it pretty close. They
Speaker 3: shot a couple of elk that day, and I think
Speaker 3: they were packing it out and my grandfather's horse like
Speaker 3: fell over on top of a log with my grandfather
Speaker 3: on it and crushed him kind of injured him and
Speaker 3: he had to go out early out of the hunting camp.
Speaker 3: But anyway, you hear all these stories and see these pictures,
Speaker 3: and this picture of that big bull with my great
Speaker 3: grandfather was on the wall my whole life basically, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, just always intrigued me, always drew me
Speaker 3: to that area of the state and just made me
Speaker 3: like get excited to go down there and just to
Speaker 3: see what it was like and hunted as an adult
Speaker 3: and experience it. So yeah, that was this trip to
Speaker 3: Fall was getting back to that country and just seeing
Speaker 3: what it looked like and seeing if I could kind
Speaker 3: of piece together things from a just hunting on your
Speaker 3: own perspective.
Speaker 1: Did you did that just hit different? Did you like
Speaker 1: have did you have the fields? Did you feel the fields?
Speaker 1: Did you like have some like man the nostalgia, like
Speaker 1: I kind of remember some of this or was it
Speaker 1: completely different and foreign from what you remembered as a kid?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it was a little different. You know, where
Speaker 3: they're hunting camp was on the one side of the
Speaker 3: mountain range. It was a slightly different terrain. It was
Speaker 3: still rockies. It was just real rugged, but there seemed
Speaker 3: to be bigger, like willow complexy meadows. Yeah, just slightly
Speaker 3: different terrain, but it was still pretty similar. Some of
Speaker 3: the smells, Like there's a certain kind of willow that
Speaker 3: grows down there. It's different than the willows I'm used
Speaker 3: to having appear in western Montana, And they just have
Speaker 3: a slightly different smell in those meadows. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's with some of the sedges that grow
Speaker 3: there as well. And there's beaver dam complexes and the
Speaker 3: whole you know, mess of the ecology those wetland meadows
Speaker 3: that makes them smell that way. But they definitely there's
Speaker 3: a distinct smell to those. And you know how smells
Speaker 3: are linked to memory. So when I first popped out
Speaker 3: into one of those meadows, like it just hit me
Speaker 3: as like, oh yeah, this smells exactly like it did
Speaker 3: at my great grandfather's hunting camp. So it kind of
Speaker 3: gives you a little bit of the kind of the
Speaker 3: those feelies as you were saying.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, my grandfather hunted in area here in
Speaker 1: Idaho at the time was full elk, and my dad
Speaker 1: and my uncles would hunt there too. And you know,
Speaker 1: fast forward several years too, when I was a young adult,
Speaker 1: I started hunting there and and there's some there's some
Speaker 1: meadow grass, kind of those those moose bog type meadows,
Speaker 1: and that kind of tall yellow grass that grows in
Speaker 1: there's kind of that swampy stuff and I can, I
Speaker 1: can just smell it right now. Just the thought of
Speaker 1: like I can, I just triggers that that thought of
Speaker 1: memory of of going there as a young kid, and
Speaker 1: that particular smell for that area. I haven't smelled that
Speaker 1: anywhere else I've ever been.
Speaker 2: You know whether it's.
Speaker 1: Wyoming or even way way way North Idaho or wherever
Speaker 1: in Idaho or Montana. I haven't smelled those same smells
Speaker 1: per se. There's just exactly what you say. You know,
Speaker 1: the willows had a different smell than what you're used to.
Speaker 1: And yeah, those like just just what you said. It
Speaker 1: triggers little memories and things. And you know, in this
Speaker 1: one drainage, my grandfather used to hunt and in two
Speaker 1: thousand I called in the biggest bull I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life anywhere on planet Earth, you know, hunting.
Speaker 1: Of course, I know you see pictures on the internet
Speaker 1: all the time, but uh, it was. I would say
Speaker 1: it was close to a four four hundred inch bowl
Speaker 1: and this area is not really known for that size
Speaker 1: of bulls. And when I seen this bull, I thought, man,
Speaker 1: I wish there was somebody with me because nobody is
Speaker 1: ever going to believe this. And it was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was just such an amazing thing. And I you know,
Speaker 1: the it's classic elk hunting story. You know, the bull
Speaker 1: was screaming, just coming in on a string like tension
Speaker 1: on the bow string. The brush is moving, you haven't
Speaker 1: quite seen him yet, and then the wind hitch in
Speaker 1: the back of the neck and.
Speaker 2: He takes Ah.
Speaker 1: It was right on this little ridge ledge and where
Speaker 1: it kind of opened up. It's kind of a timbered ridge,
Speaker 1: and over on the ledge of the ridge, it kind
Speaker 1: of opened up a little bit. So it ran over
Speaker 1: the real quick, and he ran off in the backside.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a little basin in there that
Speaker 1: was nothing but olderbrush up in this flat kind of
Speaker 1: basin that graduate had a gradual climb up to a
Speaker 1: up to another ridge. And I ran over there and
Speaker 1: I looked and I seen this bowl, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: holy cow, nobody's ever gonna believe this thing.
Speaker 2: And of course it's out of bull range.
Speaker 1: And he goes over to the alders and he and
Speaker 1: they're huge alders, and he starts raking. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: he starts he puts his antlers on those alders and
Speaker 1: just starts messing with him, just starts raking. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe he's not that spooked. I can call him back.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, he just kind of
Speaker 1: just lunges and jumps into the middle. He was trying
Speaker 1: to part them, is what he was trying to do,
Speaker 1: because they were so thick. He's trying to part them
Speaker 1: with these antlers, and he jumps and he just jumps
Speaker 1: right into those alders and just kind of just kind
Speaker 1: of just kind of did this this walky jump thing,
Speaker 1: treading through these all this older patch all the way
Speaker 1: up out of this basin. So I walked this giant
Speaker 1: rack and head float through the alders all the way
Speaker 1: up out of this basin and out of my life forever.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm like, nobody is ever gonna believe this.
Speaker 2: Ah. So it was like surreal, you know.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, if I could have killed that bowl,
Speaker 1: it would have been like the icing on the cake.
Speaker 1: But I had killed bulls in that in that drainage
Speaker 1: that my grandfather hunted and which was really special, and
Speaker 1: my mom always said, she's like, this is her dad.
Speaker 1: And back in the old days, he would he would
Speaker 1: get like PBC pipes or like galvanized pipes and put
Speaker 1: the little plug in the end of them and blow them.
Speaker 1: Remember those kind of elk beagles people used to have.
Speaker 1: It's just like kind of a whistle and he'd mess
Speaker 1: around with that and he's like, man, if I could
Speaker 1: just figure out how to bugle and sound good, like
Speaker 1: a real elk man. We could really kill these things.
Speaker 1: And he was always messing with it and wishing and
Speaker 1: wanting to be able to bugle like a real elk.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, you know, he passed away when I was
Speaker 1: really little, so he never got to see the progression
Speaker 1: of elk bugles that we have today or even in
Speaker 1: the eighties. You know, he passed around pretty early eighties. So,
Speaker 1: but that was always a really special place. So I
Speaker 1: can understand the nostalgia and the want to go hunt
Speaker 1: somewhere where, you know, and we would always go up
Speaker 1: there as a little kid, you know, to return to
Speaker 1: those places for the nostalgia, I can I can relate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was fun. It was It made my
Speaker 3: entire year, my entire season, regardless of what happened after September,
Speaker 3: it was that was like it just it just made
Speaker 3: everything perfect.
Speaker 1: But yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: I still went and hunted more and had a bunch
Speaker 3: more fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Matter of fact, as I was driving I was leaving Wyoming,
Speaker 3: I got a text from my good hunting buddy back home.
Speaker 3: He's like, Hey, what are you doing this weekend? I
Speaker 3: want to go el hutting. And I'm like, well, let
Speaker 3: me check the temperature of my household when I get
Speaker 3: home and let you know, He's like, oh yeah, I UNDERSTANDABLEOK,
Speaker 3: cause I was gone, like I don't know, eighteen days
Speaker 3: down there, so maybe not quite that much, but close
Speaker 3: to that. And so I got home unpacked and looked
Speaker 3: at my wife and she's like, so you're going out
Speaker 3: this weekend and I was like, yep, yep, I am.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm going out. So we went out and
Speaker 3: it was awesome too, because my partner here, he decided
Speaker 3: this year that he was going to hunt elk strictly
Speaker 3: with his recurve. He's never killed the bull his recurve.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And so he's like, I'm gonna take my recurve.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well.
Speaker 3: That's great, let's go. Let's see who we can do.
Speaker 3: And we went out that morning. He shut his first
Speaker 3: bowl at his recurve by like eight thirty.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it was awesome. I'm so jealous.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was perfect. I mean, the wind was perfect.
Speaker 3: It was that cold, crisp morning. I bugled off this
Speaker 3: little point and there's just this little i don't know,
Speaker 3: forty acre pocket a brush of just mefi and spruce
Speaker 3: and subalpin fur and huckleberry brush, and he just screamed
Speaker 3: instantly out of there. We dropped in closed the distance
Speaker 3: a little bit, screamed at him a few more times,
Speaker 3: cut him off, and I could just hear him come.
Speaker 3: And my buddy Jared went out in front and he
Speaker 3: got set up, and I videoed the whole thing with
Speaker 3: my phone, and I just I could see Jared and
Speaker 3: just pan over to the elk. I could see the
Speaker 3: elk rack in my phone. I could see the elk
Speaker 3: pretty well by you know, I had my phone down low,
Speaker 3: kind of my bino arms sure, and I saw Jared
Speaker 3: come to full I saw the bull move forward, and
Speaker 3: then I heard a little squeak, like a little tiny
Speaker 3: light calcohol from Jared, and I'm like, oh, here we go.
Speaker 3: And then all I heard was this wet thud oh
Speaker 3: of that of that arrow just smacking it and the
Speaker 3: bull world I bugled, and then it was just silent,
Speaker 3: and then I looked over at Jared. He was just
Speaker 3: frozen there. Then he like dropped his head and he
Speaker 3: looked up and dropped his head again, like, oh no,
Speaker 3: did he just whiff it? Oh no, this is not good.
Speaker 3: And then he just gives you that fist pumped, you know, like,
Speaker 3: oh yes, yeah, he's yeah, twenty yards, perfect placement. The
Speaker 3: bull world went down the hill thirty yards and just
Speaker 3: fell over dead, rolled down into the brush and just
Speaker 3: laying there dead. Or Elvis's that's awesome, wet thud.
Speaker 2: I love it, man.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody describe it as that. And as
Speaker 1: soon as you said it, man, my brain started going,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't He didn't hit any ribs, so he
Speaker 3: didn't hear that crack. It was just a yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So that's awesome.
Speaker 3: And then there was a bull. Like as we butchered
Speaker 3: that bull and packed it out, there was a bull
Speaker 3: bugle and at the head of the base and he
Speaker 3: did not shut up all day long. He sat back there,
Speaker 3: bugled and and bugled. We dropped down with one load
Speaker 3: to the truck and hiked back in, and as we
Speaker 3: were hiking back in, he was still bogling back there.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I know, isn't it always the times that you just
Speaker 1: don't have the time, opportunity, whatever, that you can go
Speaker 1: after those that you got balls the cranking like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, when we were starting off of there with
Speaker 3: the second load, I'm like, Jared, what do you think
Speaker 3: should we drop this load down there and go after
Speaker 3: that bull. He's like, yeah, Okay, let's do it. But
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just joking, let's get this thing
Speaker 3: to the truck.
Speaker 2: Oh man, man, if.
Speaker 3: That kind of finished out my when was that? That
Speaker 3: must have been like the last weekend of September. Okay
Speaker 3: maybe yeah, something like that. So that kind of finished
Speaker 3: out my September. So it was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of all.
Speaker 3: I not for ELK. I did not go look for
Speaker 3: Elk at all with my rifle. I still had a
Speaker 3: Montana tag and my freezer's packed with Helk. Beat it
Speaker 3: just to the brim because I shot two bowls last year,
Speaker 3: so I'm still working on some of that. And then
Speaker 3: I shot this Wyoming bowl and I was like, I
Speaker 3: do not need to shoot another bowl. I know it's
Speaker 3: not about need sometimes, but I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: and rifle hunting for elcause it seems to be more
Speaker 3: of a chore at times than it is enjoyable. So
Speaker 3: I just took my time and hunted mule deer after
Speaker 3: my ad a little punt in October a hundred mule deer.
Speaker 3: And then I got beat down pretty hard with some
Speaker 3: of the deep, deep snow that we got in mid November,
Speaker 3: I took a break and hunted some white tails.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really wanted to pick your brain on these
Speaker 1: white tails. Now, you won't brag on yourself at all.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to do it a little bit.
Speaker 1: You're kind of an old I mean, you're all around hunter,
Speaker 1: like one of the best all around hunters I know.
Speaker 1: But you're pretty dang good whitetail hunter too. Now, it's
Speaker 1: been a while, but there was a time when you
Speaker 1: had a picture on the cover of a major outdoor
Speaker 1: publication with a giant white tail. Is that?
Speaker 2: Am I right?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes you are.
Speaker 2: What magazine was that and when was that?
Speaker 3: So that was Eastman's Bow Hunting Journal, and that well
Speaker 3: I killed the buck in two thousand and six, Okay,
Speaker 3: so I think the magazine came out in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven. Ok Yeah, it was a cover. Like it's
Speaker 3: not very often you get a white tail on the cover.
Speaker 4: Of an Eastman's.
Speaker 3: No, it's usually an antelope or a sheet, or an
Speaker 3: elk or a mule deer. I mean, your classic Western
Speaker 3: big game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to get a white tail on there. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's saying something that was a big buck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was pretty fun. Yeah, and that buck was
Speaker 3: that consumed my life for a while. I spent so
Speaker 3: much time trying to put together the puzzle of that
Speaker 3: white tail. I saw him at the very end of
Speaker 3: the previous hunting season. Okay, Like so it was like
Speaker 3: right after the season ended. I actually went on a
Speaker 3: little I was going for a trail run, and I
Speaker 3: thought I might as well just run through this little
Speaker 3: area I like to go a white tail hunt. There's
Speaker 3: kind of an old logging road that goes back. There's
Speaker 3: all really grown in, kind of more than two track.
Speaker 3: Now sure did anything. I'm like, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: go for a run through there. And I was jogging
Speaker 3: through there, I see this deer kind of like drop
Speaker 3: into this little draw and pop out the other side.
Speaker 3: Massive deer. I mean it was just immediately in my
Speaker 3: mind like that is a giant buck. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: where did he come from? And how do I how
Speaker 3: do I get him? How do I find this thing?
Speaker 3: Next year? So I spent I don't know how many
Speaker 3: days just looking for his sheds and I never did
Speaker 3: find his sheds. Apparently some dog dog walker picked him up.
Speaker 3: I kept found out later. Man, he take his dog
Speaker 3: out down the Seoul Loggin Road and they were just
Speaker 3: laying there. But I found an antler from the previous year,
Speaker 3: so it had been there, been laying there two years,
Speaker 3: and uh, it's like, oh, this is a big bucket.
Speaker 3: I was finding big rubs, trails, and I just and
Speaker 3: it's just this weird kind of flat and so I
Speaker 3: kind of put together a game plan and had all
Speaker 3: these tree stands hung in this area. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you scout in the spring and your shedhitting in
Speaker 3: the spring, you're seeing all this sign from the previous year.
Speaker 3: You've seeing all the old scrapes, and the trails are
Speaker 3: more observable, and you can see the rubs and you
Speaker 3: can see the rubs that have been rubbed multiple years
Speaker 3: in a row, like big heavy trees. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: that buck is definitely rubbing these trees over and over
Speaker 3: year after year. So I kind of focused on that,
Speaker 3: and man, I ended up sitting a few times. I
Speaker 3: passed up a pretty nice buck and I decided, here's
Speaker 3: the crazy part. I decided to bowhunt them. I don't
Speaker 3: know why. It was rifle season, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: I just I'd been reading a bunch of articles about
Speaker 3: bow hunting white tails back East, and I'm like, I
Speaker 3: just I want to kind of experience that, so I'm
Speaker 3: just going to do it.
Speaker 1: Sure, So I just did it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think the fourth time I was out
Speaker 3: rainy was after like a four day rain in November.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and everything was kind of hunkered down for
Speaker 3: a while, and then it just started to let up.
Speaker 3: And then the deer started crawling out of the woodwork
Speaker 3: and ended up kind of rattling, and I used a
Speaker 3: doughe eat and some other bucks came in, some smaller ones,
Speaker 3: and started sparring out in front of my tree stand.
Speaker 3: And they just sat there and sparred and sparred and
Speaker 3: sparred all evening long, and I just kind of like
Speaker 3: let him do their thing, yeah, and thinking it's gonna
Speaker 3: there's a big buck around, He's going to come in potentially.
Speaker 3: And I was really focused on watching those deer because
Speaker 3: I they'd be like three of them sparring. And then
Speaker 3: I looked up and I saw another one come out
Speaker 3: of the timber and join in, and I was just
Speaker 3: really focused on those deer, and I decided I better
Speaker 3: and I thought to myself, I better keep an eye
Speaker 3: out behind me and off to my left. And I
Speaker 3: look over and I could see the top of this
Speaker 3: this larch tree just whipping back and forth about one
Speaker 3: hundred yards away. I was like, oh, what is that?
Speaker 3: And then out he walks kind of heading straight down
Speaker 3: right to me. He was going to walk right in
Speaker 3: front of me to where these bucks were over to
Speaker 3: my right, and so I just stood up, grabbed my
Speaker 3: bow and got ready. He walked out at fifteen yards
Speaker 3: right below me, and I just stroked him. And I
Speaker 3: didn't know how it was like the buck that that
Speaker 3: I was after, but I saw he was a big deer.
Speaker 3: He looked real heavy, and his tians kind of looked
Speaker 3: short because he was so heavy. But after the arrow hit,
Speaker 3: you know, any whirled and went out there and crashed.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, man, that's a good deer. And
Speaker 3: I walked over and pulled his head up out of
Speaker 3: the brush. I was like, who, this thing is a
Speaker 3: giant deer. This is the this is the buck I
Speaker 3: was after. That's the on was yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 3: that was a crazy yeah, but I'd spent maybe twenty
Speaker 3: five thirty days in that area just scouting, looking and
Speaker 3: also looking for his sheds. I was like, my wife
Speaker 3: was in grad school in another state, and I was
Speaker 3: living on my own. I didn't have a kid, I
Speaker 3: had nothing else going on.
Speaker 1: Nothing, but yeah, the good old days.
Speaker 2: Yes, life gets in the way. Done that sometime.
Speaker 1: Yeah you wouldn't trade it for nothing, but no, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it'd be nice to just be able to
Speaker 1: have some of that time and pret go do that
Speaker 1: stuff again. That uh, that buck. I just have a dull,
Speaker 1: distant memory of what it looked like, and I remember
Speaker 1: it being incredibly massive. If you don't mind sharing, what
Speaker 1: did that buck score?
Speaker 3: M hm? I never got it officially scored.
Speaker 5: Okay, but if I remember right, lots of people asked,
Speaker 5: so I put a tape on it, and I want
Speaker 5: to say it was one eighty two gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, nets are for fish, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, I'm not much of a fisherman.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a solid deer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a giant, giant buck. So now this
Speaker 1: year you killed a great white tail.
Speaker 2: I was so happy to see that. I've seen it
Speaker 2: come across my feet on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yes, my white tail buddy is back.
Speaker 1: He did it again. It's really nice, beautiful buck. Tell
Speaker 1: me tell me that story.
Speaker 3: Boy, It's not as exciting as the archery one, but it.
Speaker 3: I have a coworker who is just sort of kind
Speaker 3: of getting into hunting. Yeah, he listens to the Meat
Speaker 3: Eater podcast all the time. He's always asked me questions
Speaker 3: about different rifle and how to hunt and where to hunt,
Speaker 3: and super curious about it. But he's never really asked
Speaker 3: to go out hunting with me. And I was spending
Speaker 3: a ton of time earlier and in November looking for
Speaker 3: mule deer. Oh yeah, And he kind of went after
Speaker 3: some mule deer for a little bit, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: super pumped on shooting one. So one day I asked
Speaker 3: him like, Hey, you want to we should go We
Speaker 3: should go out hunting at some point together. And he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: really you want to do that. I'm like, yeah, let's
Speaker 3: do it. Let's just do a day hunt for white
Speaker 3: tails or something. So we put together a plan and
Speaker 3: there's a spot that I I kind of know, it's
Speaker 3: sort of little not I wouldn't say it's a secret spot,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not the most logical spot to go
Speaker 3: park and then go hunt. So it was a day
Speaker 3: hunt I took. Of course, I always take my backpack,
Speaker 3: my big backpack when I go day hunt, because I
Speaker 3: never go in places where I can get a deer
Speaker 3: out hole.
Speaker 1: For the most part, you don't want to drag it.
Speaker 3: No, I thought about dragging this one out, but it
Speaker 3: was a way, so I'm glad I had them a pack.
Speaker 3: But so we just split up, and I was kind
Speaker 3: of give them the spiel about still hunting and sitting
Speaker 3: and watching like the edges of some of these clearcuts
Speaker 3: and some of these little brushy draws, and just trying
Speaker 3: to tell them about the train that these deer liked
Speaker 3: to use and travel through, how the they feel protected. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And also it was middle of the rut, and I
Speaker 3: was like, you can see a deer at any point, anytime, anywhere.
Speaker 3: Just stay vigilant, take your time, don't move too fast.
Speaker 3: And so you know, we split up before daylight, and
Speaker 3: we had a plan to meet up on top of
Speaker 3: this ridge and later in the morning. And so I'd
Speaker 3: hiked up this ridge and popped up on some high points,
Speaker 3: and I glass some kind of some brushy clearcuts, and
Speaker 3: the snow was still kind of on the brush at
Speaker 3: this time, but it was starting to warm up. We'd
Speaker 3: had a fresh snowfall the night before, so you can
Speaker 3: kind of see fresher sign. And I popped out on
Speaker 3: the edge into this clear cut and I could see
Speaker 3: most of it, and I thought, I'm just gonna like
Speaker 3: work my way through it. And it's kind of sat
Speaker 3: on this shoulder, so you could kind of see. It's
Speaker 3: kind of on a ridgetop, so you could see kind
Speaker 3: of both sides of the shoulder, so think of like
Speaker 3: a saddle on a horse. I was just walking right
Speaker 3: down the backbone and I got out there and I
Speaker 3: could see like a fairly fresh track that crossed the
Speaker 3: clear cut from heavy timber to heavy timber. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna follow that track for a little ways. And
Speaker 3: I worked my way down this track and I could
Speaker 3: see where it bedded, and then it got really fresh
Speaker 3: and it went a little I could see it kind
Speaker 3: of going down the hill towards this opening, and I
Speaker 3: glassed down in this opening, and sure enough, there's a
Speaker 3: new it. It was a dough so I just kind
Speaker 3: of leaned there against the tree and watched her for
Speaker 3: quite a while, and she just fed and fed and fed,
Speaker 3: didn't act nervous. You could tell she was by herself,
Speaker 3: like there's nothing else around. A lot of times you
Speaker 3: could tell and there's something bugging them, or they're waiting
Speaker 3: for another deer, be it their fawn, or there's a
Speaker 3: buck pestering them, but she seemed to be alone. So
Speaker 3: I just sat there for a long time. It was
Speaker 3: a great vantage point, and I kept thinking myself, like,
Speaker 3: you know what, you better watch your backtrack there, buddy,
Speaker 3: because how many times you walk back on your own
Speaker 3: track and see deer tracks that have crossed your own
Speaker 3: a lot a lot. So I, yeah, it happened to
Speaker 3: me all the time. So I just looked back and
Speaker 3: I caught a little glimpse of movement out of the
Speaker 3: corner of my eye, and it was a flash of
Speaker 3: a deer coming up out of that heavy timber into
Speaker 3: the clear cut, and I could see it was a
Speaker 3: buck rider just by its body language and size of
Speaker 3: the shape of it. So I kind of dropped down
Speaker 3: to one knee looked at it through my scope, and
Speaker 3: I could tell it was only one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: yards away, right, and I could tell it. It was like
Speaker 3: it's a good deer, good dear. Something looks a little
Speaker 3: funky with him, but boy, it looks like a good buck.
Speaker 3: And then I could see him kind of walking around
Speaker 3: a little bit nosing, and there was enough brush there.
Speaker 3: I just didn't have a clear shot at him, but
Speaker 3: I could just get glimpses of him, and then I
Speaker 3: could see what he was after. There's a doe was
Speaker 3: right there in front of him. He just pushed a
Speaker 3: dough out into that unit and was just kind of
Speaker 3: hanging back. Well, she wasn't in any hurry. They weren't spooked,
Speaker 3: and I kind of lost sight of him for a second.
Speaker 3: So I just got ready, kind of dialed my scope
Speaker 3: power up a hare and probably like maybe ten power,
Speaker 3: and just rested on my knee, and as soon as
Speaker 3: he popped out and turned broadside, I just just you know,
Speaker 3: squeezed my first round off, first and only round off
Speaker 3: I shot, and he just disappeared like my rifle recoiled
Speaker 3: and he wasn't there anymore. Yeah, but there's enough brush
Speaker 3: and little roll there in the terrain. I just couldn't
Speaker 3: tell exactly if he just like jumped over some brush
Speaker 3: or just that roll of that ridge and I just
Speaker 3: couldn't see him. But the dough just stood there and
Speaker 3: looked around to start walking away. I have a suppressor
Speaker 3: on my rifle, okay, and it I mean she had
Speaker 3: was not concerned at all. But I just stayed there
Speaker 3: and looking at the last spot I saw him, thinking, well,
Speaker 3: if he's still up, I'm gonna see him here in
Speaker 3: a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I sat there for probably three or four minutes, and
Speaker 3: I never saw him re emerged. The doe walked off like, well,
Speaker 3: he's either either that shot hit close to home and
Speaker 3: he just high tailed it out of here, or I
Speaker 3: killed him. And I walked over there and he's just
Speaker 3: laying there, just spread out dead. I mean, he just
Speaker 3: dropped right at the shot kind of find out, and
Speaker 3: so I hit him a little on the he was
Speaker 3: cording away a little bit. I hit him kind of
Speaker 3: right in the back of the ribs and it angled
Speaker 3: forward through his chest and it just swattered him. Wow,
Speaker 3: And then I realized that that's a solid I mean,
Speaker 3: he was as big as I thought he was, but
Speaker 3: he looked a little funky because he had that he
Speaker 3: had a broken tie on one side. That photo that's
Speaker 3: on Instagram. He can't really see it, but if you
Speaker 3: look close, you can see one of his back times
Speaker 3: snapped off.
Speaker 1: I noticed that. I was like, something's not right here,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, oh, it's got a broken
Speaker 1: G two, which probably I would have matched.
Speaker 2: What was a ten inches it.
Speaker 3: Was maybe, yeah, maybe a little more.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty tall.
Speaker 2: It was a good buck.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And it was a fresh break too, so it
Speaker 3: seemed like it look to me like it had been
Speaker 3: within the last couple of days. It was just like
Speaker 3: that fresh, white, clean break. It hadn't been rubbed and
Speaker 3: polished at all from rubbing on anything, so you could
Speaker 3: tell it was fairly fresh. So that was November twenty first, okay,
Speaker 3: I believe. So they were hot and heavy, oh, right
Speaker 3: there in the middle of November.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I we've been talking about this for a
Speaker 1: long time. And one of these days, maybe next year,
Speaker 1: if I can get a tag.
Speaker 3: Dang Montana.
Speaker 1: They hate me, but if I could get a tag,
Speaker 1: I want to come over and go hunt that north
Speaker 1: country up in the White Tail Woods with you do
Speaker 1: the old yes little wall Tunt Camp and yeah, It's
Speaker 1: the thing about that time of year is of hunting,
Speaker 1: is the days are short and the nights are long,
Speaker 1: and man, you got to you gotta be camp with
Speaker 1: somebody that you like and enjoy their you're your time
Speaker 1: with them, because if you're by yourself. I've done this before.
Speaker 1: I've done these hunts by myself, and man, it is boring.
Speaker 1: The nights are long, like they are. It just like, man,
Speaker 1: I'd like to go to bed right now, but it's.
Speaker 3: Six six thirty yep.
Speaker 2: Shoot. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the last couple of years I've I've had this year,
Speaker 3: I didn't. This is the first year I didn't have
Speaker 3: one in a couple of years anyway. But I had
Speaker 3: some friends that come up and we put up a
Speaker 3: wall tint and woodstove, piles of wood cots, the whole works,
Speaker 3: and just hunt straight from that wall tint. We just leave.
Speaker 3: I'll just start hiking right from there. Oh yeah, just
Speaker 3: leave in the dark, come back in the dark. It's great.
Speaker 3: Don't even fire up the truck. Just there's so much
Speaker 3: country to go hunt that you can do that in
Speaker 3: a couple of these little areas that I know you
Speaker 3: can just just anchor in and then just go find deer.
Speaker 3: And we've been pretty successful over the years doing that.
Speaker 3: And it's fun. It's just you come back, you cook
Speaker 3: a good meal, you hang out, drink a little whiskey,
Speaker 3: tell some stories. Yeah, talk shop. Yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you should come up. You'd enjoy the hell
Speaker 3: out of it. And I know you liked to come
Speaker 3: hunt North Idaho for white tails. It's real similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's my cup of teas. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: that kind of hunting and that kind of country. You know,
Speaker 1: my wife and I came over two years ago, I
Speaker 1: think it was two three years maybe three years ago,
Speaker 1: into Montana whitetail hunting when we had a really short
Speaker 1: window to hunt and we were only they had like
Speaker 1: three days, right, so the conditions weren't ideal. But I
Speaker 1: ended up getting deer. I got a little buck. But
Speaker 1: but you know, I was a little weirded out because
Speaker 1: in Montana they check for c w D. Right, you
Speaker 1: have your CWD stations and they're checking for that all
Speaker 1: over it seems.
Speaker 2: Like nowadays, even Idaho.
Speaker 1: But they took a sample and and the same thing
Speaker 1: I had to. I bone this deer out, you know,
Speaker 1: and packed it out on my pack and in the head,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh man, you almost didn't get us
Speaker 1: that that little what is that. It's a little thing
Speaker 1: in the throat there in the back of the neck
Speaker 1: there that they keep.
Speaker 2: That's the lymph note.
Speaker 1: They sampled it for CWD way by taking those lymph
Speaker 1: notes there, just to see if it has CWD, and
Speaker 1: and they were kind of making a big deal about
Speaker 1: It's like, oh God, I'm scared to death to eat
Speaker 1: this deer. And they're like, yeah, don't eat this thing
Speaker 1: until if we till you, you'll get an email that
Speaker 1: tells you if it has IT or not. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: so get I get the email and it was fine,
Speaker 1: of course, which I was thrilled because man, I love
Speaker 1: deer meat.
Speaker 2: It's so so good. But yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: I got mind tested this year and it came back clean.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, you know, I probably have an
Speaker 1: unpopular opinion.
Speaker 2: Maybe I might be wrong.
Speaker 1: I've just this is kind of my gut feeling, like
Speaker 1: I feel like maybe cwd's probably been here for a
Speaker 1: lot longer than we think, and they're starting to find
Speaker 1: it more because they're testing more for it. I know,
Speaker 1: people and I've shot a deer that was obviously sick
Speaker 1: and weird and had something wrong with it, and I
Speaker 1: know other people that have and who knows, you know,
Speaker 1: that's been you know, twenty thirty years ago even but
Speaker 1: but who knows, you know, it may have been around
Speaker 1: maybe not, But.
Speaker 2: I guess we'll see.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a pretty big hot topic among you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the different state game agencies. They're they're
Speaker 1: taking it very seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're and they're finding it in more and more
Speaker 3: areas too. And they've been testing some these areas for
Speaker 3: a while, but they are finding it now. And I
Speaker 3: don't know how long it's been in our area, but
Speaker 3: we've been dealing with it for I don't know, six
Speaker 3: or seven years now, and it seems like a lot
Speaker 3: of deer are coming back clean from the tests. But
Speaker 3: they are still finding it. It's never going to go away. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: their their management strategies are questionable. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: not a wildlife biologist, but god, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 3: we're going to shoot our way out of the problem.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem to have
Speaker 3: worked in Wisconsin. They're still dealing with it right, Well, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I honestly I am ignorant on management strategies and how effective.
Speaker 1: They are, so take that worth maybe trying to do something,
Speaker 1: you know, let's let's try to do something to fix it,
Speaker 1: whatever that may be or for Unfortunately, like in Idaho
Speaker 1: and some of the places they found it, Man, they've
Speaker 1: they nuked the deer off. They killed a bunch of
Speaker 1: them in the first then the in the unit where
Speaker 1: they first found it they found it, and then that
Speaker 1: that fall they had an emergency hunt which they wanted
Speaker 1: to they give out I don't know, four or five
Speaker 1: hundred extra tags or I might be wrong on the number,
Speaker 1: but it would seemed like a lot and to go
Speaker 1: harvest somewhere deer and then that way they could test
Speaker 1: those as well to see, you know, how bad is it.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: Man, they've just kind of doubled down on killing. You know,
Speaker 1: let's shoot our way out of this. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's the right answer, But like you say, I'm
Speaker 1: not a biologist either by by no means. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess time will tell, you know, how it all
Speaker 1: plays out. I think everything probably runs its course a
Speaker 1: one way or another. And there's not a lot you
Speaker 1: can do about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, let's just so there researchers come up with
Speaker 3: some type of treatment that it can be dealt with
Speaker 3: in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They look to dolculate, like to uh, I guess, I
Speaker 3: don't know. It's hard saying I already know what they're
Speaker 3: even thinking about being in a pre on disease. It's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's preventable or if Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't you think they would. They've got a long ways
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 2: I guess. Yeah, Well, like EHD and and and blue tongue,
Speaker 2: you know, those are.
Speaker 1: Passed from the bugs or whatever. You know, nats bite
Speaker 1: in the deer and you know common you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even I don't know anything about anything, But I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: why aren't people spraying you know, you know, insecticides around
Speaker 1: ponds and areas where these deer are getting getting congregated
Speaker 1: during a drought year. You know, the area I grew
Speaker 1: up in. You know, there's a lot of cattle pond
Speaker 1: and stuff. Why why aren't they going out and just spraying,
Speaker 1: you know, killing bugs. Obviously that's not the right answer.
Speaker 2: They would have done it.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe that's just a foolish thinking, you know, the
Speaker 1: armchair from the armchair. It seems like, oh, we got
Speaker 1: all these ideas, why don't you do this?
Speaker 2: But yeah, you just don't know. Yeah, we.
Speaker 3: As a country, we sprayed a lot of stuff around
Speaker 3: and with very negative results for other creatures from unintended consequences.
Speaker 3: So I think people are a little leary of that.
Speaker 1: Songbirds and everything else. Yeah, we have little critters and stuff.
Speaker 1: Who knows, maybe the deer wouldn't like to spray, but
Speaker 1: yet they'll put all these other things, all these you know,
Speaker 1: we'd killers and crap on fields.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, it's weird.
Speaker 1: We'll never know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I it seems like those like EHD and
Speaker 3: blue tongue really really happened when there are yeah, dry seat.
Speaker 3: It seems like dry years and warm falls when we
Speaker 3: start like don't have a frost early on, those midges
Speaker 3: kind of can persist into the fall. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: guess I don't know. Maybe they reached this this threshold
Speaker 3: where it can start passing amongst the deer population and
Speaker 3: the midge population. All right, but yeah we haven't We've
Speaker 3: not had it affect our deer up here, but I
Speaker 3: it has affected the deer in the Missoula area, and
Speaker 3: I know central Idaho has had it, yeah, but it
Speaker 3: seems to be more persistent on the east side of
Speaker 3: the state of Montana and the river bottoms. Yea, in
Speaker 3: Montana anyway, I.
Speaker 1: Know where I grew up then in the agricultural areas
Speaker 1: and on the on the canyon breaks those areas, which
Speaker 1: is always a little warmer, little and I think there's
Speaker 1: more deer there too. And they had a matt when
Speaker 1: when the first hit, like we I think was ninety
Speaker 1: five or ninety seven somewhere in there, and man, they
Speaker 1: had a giant die off. You know. You talk to
Speaker 1: the farmers and they're like, man, we went out and
Speaker 1: there were dead rotten deer carcasses everywhere. Wow, picking up
Speaker 1: big deadhead bucks everywhere. And then they're you know, the
Speaker 1: biologists say, some of the deer will develop a they're
Speaker 1: not effected by it per se, or a resistance to it,
Speaker 1: and those deer will carry on and have more offspring
Speaker 1: that we'll have a resistance. But then a few years
Speaker 1: go by and then we have another.
Speaker 2: Big die off.
Speaker 1: So I feel like there's a lot of I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a perfect science.
Speaker 2: I might be right, but.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems to come around ever since then,
Speaker 1: ever since that year. We've never had it before, instant
Speaker 1: ever since that year.
Speaker 2: Where'd these damn nats come from? Did they blow in
Speaker 2: on the wind?
Speaker 1: I mean, how did like Idaho's had droughts before then? Right?
Speaker 1: Why all of a sudden We've always had a lot
Speaker 1: of deer back previous to that.
Speaker 2: So what made it happen? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I need to get a biologist on here and just
Speaker 1: really ask all those questions and hopefully they could maybe
Speaker 1: shed some light on that for us.
Speaker 2: That'd be great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, those are good questions. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: because you know we've had those those midges or gnats
Speaker 3: or whatever that transmits this disease. And why why now?
Speaker 3: And why so frequently? And if deer are developing resistance
Speaker 3: are the is the disease slowly changing or adapting? Is
Speaker 3: it this this back and forth war between resistance of
Speaker 3: the deer and the and a new kind of slightly
Speaker 3: different type of like just a little little change in
Speaker 3: the DNA of this disease to make it penetrate the
Speaker 3: armor of the the deer. I don't know. Those are
Speaker 3: all good questions. I'd like to know more about that
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have to start sniffing around and see if
Speaker 1: I can find a CWD expert that that I would.
Speaker 2: Love to get on here and talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a wildlife disease or parasitology expert.
Speaker 1: There's that guy on on Instagram, serve a nut or
Speaker 1: something maybe, Oh yeah, reach out to him, see if
Speaker 1: I can pick his brain, get him on her full finger.
Speaker 2: I think that's his name.
Speaker 3: Well, he's a I think he's friends with the meat eater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll see if I can look him up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be interesting to hear more about.
Speaker 1: Well, man, I appreciate we're we're we wrote. We've gone
Speaker 1: over an hour here, so man, I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1: It's always like we could sit here for hours and visit.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we got to catch up. It seems like
Speaker 1: we don't get to catch up until the Western Hunting
Speaker 1: Expo in Salt Lake, so now we'll have other things
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 2: When I see you down there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, but I appreciate it. How can folks find
Speaker 1: you if they want to look you up on social.
Speaker 3: They can find me on Instagram. That's the only place
Speaker 3: I really exist as far I guess I'm on a
Speaker 3: Rockslide as well as a staff writer. But yeah, in
Speaker 3: my Instagram handle is Josh Underscore boyd Underscore MT something
Speaker 3: like that. I don't even remember what it is, but
Speaker 3: if you do, if you go Josh Boyd MT, you'll
Speaker 3: find me. I'll show up. There'll be a bunch of
Speaker 3: hunting pictures. That's about all I share. There is some
Speaker 3: hunting content. Yeah, and if you go to rockslide dot
Speaker 3: com you can find me over there as well, mostly
Speaker 3: just review articles on the homepage for gear reviews. I
Speaker 3: do participate in the forums a little bit, but mostly
Speaker 3: it's just review writing, gear testing right on. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it seems to be a busy place over there these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good, well, thanks again man, I appreciate it coming
Speaker 1: on and yeah, look forward to more conversations down the road.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate it, Derek, it was a great, great conversation.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely