Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Welcome back to the Meat Eater Podcast.
Speaker 1: You are about ready to dig into The Meat Tree
Speaker 1: Part two. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about is a story about a fog
Speaker 1: Neck Island and a particular brown bear. This doesn't sound
Speaker 1: familiar to you, back up a episode and go listen
Speaker 1: to The Meat Tree Part one. If you've already listened
Speaker 1: to The Meat Tree Part one and you know that
Speaker 1: you're in the right place, welcome back. We will now
Speaker 1: proceed with the story. Are you the first guy it
Speaker 1: saw it? I definitely heard him first, and I think
Speaker 1: I expressed some some fear that there was something in
Speaker 1: the woods right next to us. And then as soon
Speaker 1: as I heard that breathing and that that deep, you know,
Speaker 1: panting noise, you started hearing some twig snap and you
Speaker 1: could hear something coming out as full bore, and then
Speaker 1: it was like all hell broke loose? Would you agree
Speaker 1: that's how that's you saw? And then and then made Wayne,
Speaker 1: Chris and I were sitting did you see him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys, I saw Pat's face and that, like I am,
Speaker 1: my attention immediately went to the sound and I just
Speaker 1: saw like that light color hair just shaking back and
Speaker 1: forth and locked eyes with him and he was coming.
Speaker 1: And that was probably that's when that pandemonium of oh,
Speaker 1: f bombs, shit, this is going down, and it was
Speaker 1: this is it was like no chance to grab bear,
Speaker 1: spray pistols, anything. It was like that bear was on
Speaker 1: top of us before we even knew what was going on. Basically,
Speaker 1: what was what was your first, registrate, when did you
Speaker 1: first register it? I think in the same moment, But
Speaker 1: I knew like the whole time. And this was um
Speaker 1: complacency on my part. I didn't have any protection and
Speaker 1: like I didn't cross my mind and look for some
Speaker 1: sort of spray or I should have been I should
Speaker 1: have had something. And so like my initial reaction not
Speaker 1: even seen it, was get behind the separate myself from
Speaker 1: the sound in the direction all the ship was happening
Speaker 1: and the tree. So I just ran behind the see
Speaker 1: it before it was in amongst us. No, I saw
Speaker 1: only when it wrapped around the tree after all the
Speaker 1: other Yeah, and that's yeah, And it was right, I
Speaker 1: saw a charging through the woods. I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: So you guys saw a char the woods, you suck pounder,
Speaker 1: When did you see it? I was sitting there eating
Speaker 1: my sandwich, and I remember looking at Pat and seeing
Speaker 1: Pat's face and like him registering what was going on.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, everybody's up and I
Speaker 1: see the bear. So I'm like looking at Pat and
Speaker 1: I look laughing, there's a there's a bear, like right there.
Speaker 1: I had my back to the bear's approach, and I
Speaker 1: somehow when I saw it, like you know, like you
Speaker 1: I see all you like the guys that see it,
Speaker 1: causes me to turn toward it, turned to my left
Speaker 1: toward it. But then it's like passing. I just remember,
Speaker 1: it's just teeth passing, I mean within arms reach of
Speaker 1: the right side of my face coming into I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the like. You know, there's this
Speaker 1: there's this idea that, uh, when you remember reading about
Speaker 1: this thing where this guy is saying that like you
Speaker 1: tell a dude guy that fell off of his roof,
Speaker 1: and the feeling that like your life like flashes before
Speaker 1: your eyes, you know, and then later feeling like you
Speaker 1: think that it did right. There's this idea that, uh
Speaker 1: that in that in those seconds you really maybe are
Speaker 1: processing a bunch of thoughts or there's a there's this
Speaker 1: argument psychology that you really are like processing quick processing
Speaker 1: thoughts and fractions of seconds, or the memory you later
Speaker 1: your mind overlays the memory with thoughts, and that when
Speaker 1: your life flashes before your eyes in a moment, it didn't.
Speaker 1: It just becomes overlaid in recollection because you're like thankful
Speaker 1: that you're still there, and you and you think that
Speaker 1: they were contemporaneous, they but they perhaps weren't. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking at the teeth. I remember thinking that, uh, I
Speaker 1: was like, life will be different now, yeah, because someone
Speaker 1: is someone is getting um, someone is going to be
Speaker 1: maimed or killed right now, and life is different. Everything
Speaker 1: is in life is different from this point forward. It's like,
Speaker 1: I feel like that happened to me the second I
Speaker 1: turned and it was like within easy arms reaches, the
Speaker 1: thing's a gape mouth and the noise it was making
Speaker 1: that that second was ah, yeah, I feel like I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember the things that were the most disturbing. Part
Speaker 1: of it is the things that you were thinking while
Speaker 1: this is going down. I feel like like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario type the worst case scenario. But
Speaker 1: I distinctly in the moment had thoughts. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was after the fact, but maybe it will. That's
Speaker 1: that's because I just like, well, but my my actions
Speaker 1: of the thoughts that I had, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So my thought, my first thought was oh shit, obviously,
Speaker 1: but what I was thinking of is my pistol is
Speaker 1: there and the bear is running towards my like I
Speaker 1: have no protection. This is how we're gonna die. And
Speaker 1: my thought was as soon as I can get a
Speaker 1: chance to get that pistol, I'm either gonna get named
Speaker 1: getting that pistol or I'm not gonna like, you know,
Speaker 1: because somebody is going to get it here. You know,
Speaker 1: My first like actual real thought that I know happened
Speaker 1: because I acted upon it was to dive out of
Speaker 1: the way of the bear. And I didn't hurt my ankle.
Speaker 1: I never like twist my ankles, but actually injured my
Speaker 1: ankle clearing myself of the bear. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: you got to your feet? No, I don't know. What
Speaker 1: I did was in a very relaxed like on his
Speaker 1: side almost like you're supporting your body on your elbow,
Speaker 1: you're laying down, and especially if you remember that bear
Speaker 1: coming down within arms reach and those teeth, I almost
Speaker 1: feel like you must have like moved from a down
Speaker 1: position to like another down position. I think I just
Speaker 1: kind of rolled and sprang downhill. That's what I downhill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely downhill. Yeah, there was no because I was at
Speaker 1: that little cut out, a little dugout spot. I rolled downhill. Yanni,
Speaker 1: Now you tell what happened, because this could be a
Speaker 1: thing that's this could be like a very important part,
Speaker 1: like what you did. I feel like I'm involved in
Speaker 1: the pivotal, pivotal moment, but there could be a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons, like a lot of other uh things that
Speaker 1: made it a pivotal moment, you know, obviously, just like
Speaker 1: what the bear decided to do at that moment. But
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't have have um thoughts. There were There
Speaker 1: are no thoughts. There was I did I remember pat
Speaker 1: saying something. I remember like registering that like yes, there's
Speaker 1: a bear coming in, and then I remember like my
Speaker 1: sandwich being thrown to the ground. I remember being on
Speaker 1: my feet. I do not remember picking up hiking poles.
Speaker 1: I do not remember that. I just remember like, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember the bear, Like there was like a
Speaker 1: little gully that the bear came out of, right, and
Speaker 1: then there was about probably ten to fifteen feet of
Speaker 1: open grass before he got to us. And I feel like, really,
Speaker 1: the only thing I remember is being in a very
Speaker 1: aggressive stance with two ski poles held by the handles
Speaker 1: in my hands. Yeah, flick locks, fuck saved our lives.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember making the choice because I had
Speaker 1: my bear spray on my hip and I just like,
Speaker 1: on your pack, no, no, no, I had my pistol.
Speaker 1: I was running in the same thing I ran last
Speaker 1: week hunting the elk. I was running pistol on the pack,
Speaker 1: bear spray on my actual belt. That way when you
Speaker 1: go take a pack off, take a pee or whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm at least carrying one of the And um, I'm
Speaker 1: still gonna always have bear spray first, gone second. It's
Speaker 1: just gonna I think it's gonna be my life rule
Speaker 1: in Gris Country. We can talk about that later, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just there on top on like on top
Speaker 1: of us. I remember thinking, yes, this is it. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get mauled and I like, all I can
Speaker 1: think is that I somehow made not consciously, but somehow
Speaker 1: somewhere in my head it was fight. And so I
Speaker 1: swung those poles as hard as I could, right at
Speaker 1: his face, at his head. And I've already recounted the
Speaker 1: story a few times, but there's never been a moment
Speaker 1: in my life where there was a um more unexpected
Speaker 1: outcome to one of my actions. It was like kids,
Speaker 1: they don't just go like, okay, then exactly, here's here's
Speaker 1: kind of here's a I'm gonna try to make a
Speaker 1: good analogy here. It would be like me stepping into
Speaker 1: the cub stadium and if someone could give me a
Speaker 1: picture's name and then throwing a fastball at me Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali it was not a picture, he was a boxer,
Speaker 1: and me taking a ninety mile fastball and swinging that
Speaker 1: bat and knocking it out of the park. That would
Speaker 1: be like how unexpected you would think the outcome would
Speaker 1: be of that action, right, because you'd expect just to
Speaker 1: whiff and you wouldn't even touch the ball. Maybe you
Speaker 1: would like touch the ball and foul out behind you, right,
Speaker 1: But what it felt like was that I hit that
Speaker 1: ball and then went out of the stadium because as
Speaker 1: I connected with this with this bear's face, he did
Speaker 1: a reason or maybe not quite one eight because I
Speaker 1: felt like he came in if you can imagine like
Speaker 1: in acute triangle that you're looking from the point down.
Speaker 1: He came in on one of the sides, and he
Speaker 1: turned and went off the other side. That was that
Speaker 1: was a blur of bear that wasn't. That was most
Speaker 1: surprised to me is that it I was anticipating this
Speaker 1: being a sort of a drawn This was gonna be
Speaker 1: a drawn like I feel as though I was thinking
Speaker 1: that this is gonna be a sort of drawn out thing.
Speaker 1: The fight that is gonna begin, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna resolve. It was gonna be like someone he's gonna
Speaker 1: get that a gape mouth is gonna get on someone
Speaker 1: that we're gonna have to like that that we're in
Speaker 1: a mix up. Now like the fight has begun, but
Speaker 1: it ended, so we haven't even got into the saga
Speaker 1: of dirt myth. Yeah, so you connect on his head,
Speaker 1: he spins, and what I registered from that moment is
Speaker 1: that at that point I turned and I feel as
Speaker 1: though he has dragged is dragging dirt downhill. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought he had dirt. It was hauling dirt downhill.
Speaker 1: Dirt's ready because he just spit into his just spit
Speaker 1: into his high end juice bottle that was orange first
Speaker 1: light logo and a bear orange logo and a bear
Speaker 1: going in the same direction. Yeah, I thought he was
Speaker 1: dragging you down, and I we'll get to the reality.
Speaker 1: But I thought he was dragging you down. And I
Speaker 1: was frantically trying to find my pack, which wasn't hard
Speaker 1: to find, leaning against the tree to get my spray
Speaker 1: to go down and like that we would all go
Speaker 1: down and attack the bear with with whatever. I was like,
Speaker 1: where's the spray, where's the guns? Right, We're go save dirt.
Speaker 1: But what happened was that so I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I wasn't opposite of Yanni. My instant deal was flight,
Speaker 1: Like it didn't ever occur like face this thing and
Speaker 1: the assess well, because there was but there was something.
Speaker 1: There was no face. He was like already, um yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah no, but I'm saying so like funny, I couldn't
Speaker 1: have a three stooges. But it's just like he was
Speaker 1: just like it was like he wasn't but I wasn't
Speaker 1: like looking at my pack for my spray type. I
Speaker 1: think everybody had that. There was no decisions made. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Remy did say he like, I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I was. My intention was to go because when I
Speaker 1: said I, well, I didn't add this the story, but
Speaker 1: I was thinking pistol and it's in front of me
Speaker 1: where you were. You ran out to the side, and
Speaker 1: I like start to go to the pistol, and now
Speaker 1: I'm caught between. Now I don't have any time. So
Speaker 1: I did this like juke move and jumped to the side.
Speaker 1: That's when Yanni took two steps up and that bear turned,
Speaker 1: so I thought, oh shit, Like I I went left,
Speaker 1: the bear went right towards Janice, and then the bear
Speaker 1: wheeled around. But Janice was at this point, I couldn't
Speaker 1: see the action of the swinging. I just saw Janice
Speaker 1: and bear right here. I mean I was within arms
Speaker 1: arms reach of the bear, and I think Janice must
Speaker 1: have turned around. I juked, then he turned around and
Speaker 1: the bear went down. Yeah, it was so much that
Speaker 1: I don't even know if if I like made like
Speaker 1: if I made contact with the bear or not, like
Speaker 1: in rolling out of the way. It was so fast.
Speaker 1: It was very fast because it was like here and
Speaker 1: just to reach across the couch to grab a pistol
Speaker 1: where you go forward, and the action of going for
Speaker 1: the pistol made me go, oh funk, I have no
Speaker 1: time to get away. So like that left right real fast,
Speaker 1: like which day am I gonna go? And I went
Speaker 1: right and the bear kind of went right and I
Speaker 1: went left, and then the bear kind of did that
Speaker 1: towards Janice. Janice must have swung because I said just
Speaker 1: after I joked him, the bear turned around and it
Speaker 1: was and then later your honest was like you know
Speaker 1: why he turned around? It's like no clue, Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1: It would be like if you were like sitting in
Speaker 1: your living room watching TV and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like the bear doesn't come in through the front door.
Speaker 1: The bear is just like next to you and you're like,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something, and it's like that's the reaction speed,
Speaker 1: Like that's how fast happened. I think what the saga
Speaker 1: of dirt myth? Yeah, so I was behind the tree,
Speaker 1: like you said, even though it's happening fast, I remember
Speaker 1: thinking like something it's going to be messing people up
Speaker 1: and like assess it kind of and but like the second,
Speaker 1: I mean that happened split second, and that same second
Speaker 1: it came on the back side where I was, and
Speaker 1: I think and try and like, oh, ship you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's happening here. Do you mean he went
Speaker 1: all the way around the tree, so the way like
Speaker 1: he came in. I don't know if he went all
Speaker 1: the way around the tree, because if he did, he
Speaker 1: would have the bottom because he would have had to
Speaker 1: come over my head and he didn't. I don't think
Speaker 1: you ever turned around where Steve was sitting. He came
Speaker 1: down my side of the tree. Yeah, he couldn't have
Speaker 1: gone around because he would have stepped out all messed
Speaker 1: up because I like, I've literally been plant back over
Speaker 1: and over. Yeah, but at some point, so I'm totally like,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because this whole time I've been thinking
Speaker 1: he went above like uphill of the tree, wrapped around
Speaker 1: to where I was at. That's what I thought happened
Speaker 1: to you and Steve must have ended up in similar places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. So it's like this freeze frame of this,
Speaker 1: I mean, ship man that was like four ft broad bear.
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't know if that's an exaggeration.
Speaker 1: Big right there and in some movement of mine or
Speaker 1: being bumped by someone, I think in like trying to
Speaker 1: get out of the way, I tripped and fell on
Speaker 1: its back as it was passing by and was riding
Speaker 1: on its on its bag, on its hump, on my back,
Speaker 1: just pure coincidence and momentum, like for one Mississippi was
Speaker 1: on its back act and got bucked off into an
Speaker 1: alder down he went. You went on him about fifteen
Speaker 1: feet down and crashed into an alder pack. And I
Speaker 1: thought when I was on his back, like my thought
Speaker 1: was like I'm the one that's fucked, like he's this
Speaker 1: is like he's gonna like I'm gonna drop and he's
Speaker 1: gonna turn and get me. And when I got bucked
Speaker 1: and was he already had you? I thought he was
Speaker 1: carrying you. It looked I was just riding riding him,
Speaker 1: riding the storm. Later talking about how he got hurt
Speaker 1: when he got bucked off. He's got a bruise. I've
Speaker 1: seen it, but the yeah and then then yeah, immediately
Speaker 1: realized everything was okay, and hear did you guys say,
Speaker 1: where's Garrett? It was surreal, I mean for everyone, but
Speaker 1: it was like did I Yeah, I remember somebody yelled
Speaker 1: to count off. Remember ever he goes, because I I
Speaker 1: remember seeing Garrett at this point. I had my pistol ready,
Speaker 1: and I saw you and I started running down in
Speaker 1: that direction and then you stood up, and I thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's got to be right there because I saw you
Speaker 1: and bear and going downhill, and I did you because
Speaker 1: you would have been on that side of the tree
Speaker 1: by that point as well. No, I saw Garrett right,
Speaker 1: I thought the bear had Garrett. So at this point, Yanny,
Speaker 1: you had your you had your pistol by now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think as soon as he was going downhill
Speaker 1: with Garrett, I think you were the one saying like,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody, get your bear sprays, get your pistols.
Speaker 1: And I said, not all of this is legal or not.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's legal. I said, if that bear comes back,
Speaker 1: kill it. And I said no, ship yeah I was.
Speaker 1: I was like, I think at this point we've crossed
Speaker 1: into because here's the thing you can't okay in Alaska,
Speaker 1: you know, so in the Lord forty eight bears are
Speaker 1: covered with the exception, with the exception very recently of
Speaker 1: the greater you Elstone ecosystem. Uh that you know in
Speaker 1: Indiana sized hunk of ground of Idaho, Woming, Montana. Until recently,
Speaker 1: we hold me back. That was a confusing way of
Speaker 1: putting it. In the lower fort they have ees a
Speaker 1: protection outside of a very small area. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: it's like, if you kill a bear to defense, in
Speaker 1: self defense or in defense, you can't kill it in
Speaker 1: defensive property. Okay, you can kill it in defensive life.
Speaker 1: In Alaska you can kill a bear in defense of property.
Speaker 1: So if a grizzly, if a brown bear grizzly is tearing,
Speaker 1: is destroying your camp, you can kill the bear. You
Speaker 1: can't kill the bear to protect your kill. If a
Speaker 1: bear claims your moose kill and you don't have a
Speaker 1: permit to kill the bear as a hunter, you need
Speaker 1: to forfeit the kill to the bear. But in this case,
Speaker 1: we've been attacked. It wasn't like and there was no
Speaker 1: access to the meat for this bear. Yeah he would
Speaker 1: he didn't have it. We've been a hacked. So I
Speaker 1: yelled out, if that bear comes back, shoot it because
Speaker 1: you know, because of obvious reasons, Um, sweet have been Yeah,
Speaker 1: defensive life in that case, uh, suddenly uphill, even though
Speaker 1: he left downhill, suddenly uphill. We heard him wolfing. So
Speaker 1: there's different among our group. There's different interpretations. I feel
Speaker 1: as though it was the same bear. They're so freaking fast,
Speaker 1: he was just back up there wolfing. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: the idea that that it had a cub up there,
Speaker 1: then that cub was wolfing. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what happened. I think that bear just was so freaking
Speaker 1: he was jack jacked up and fast he was back
Speaker 1: up there. Um. I mean we kind of surrounded the tree.
Speaker 1: People everyone facing in different directions. I went up in
Speaker 1: the tree started cutting meat out. Some people would have
Speaker 1: just ditched it, but I wasn't. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: ditch it was I was like, let's get the heck
Speaker 1: out of here. We we We made a pretty good
Speaker 1: formation quick though. We circled up. Everybody was pointing in
Speaker 1: a different trection. We circled up around the tree. Everybody
Speaker 1: had protection at that point. To Johannest and I were
Speaker 1: the two with the pistols. Everyone now had bear spray
Speaker 1: in their hands, so we were we were collecting everyone's
Speaker 1: at this point, cool headed and collected. Our backs were
Speaker 1: to a tree, so we couldn't get attacked from the back.
Speaker 1: We don't see the bear coming in at this point.
Speaker 1: You were now in the tree getting the meat, started
Speaker 1: cutting meat down out of the tree. And then anytime
Speaker 1: somebody went to go get something, we had the pistols
Speaker 1: and we made we were creating our own confusion. But
Speaker 1: because we're making a ton of noise, because thinking that,
Speaker 1: and I know it works, making noise at bears bugs bears. Right,
Speaker 1: So like an authoritative like hey, I just noticed through
Speaker 1: a lot of personal experience, like an authority hate of
Speaker 1: standing up group of guys going hey is intimidating the bears. Dude,
Speaker 1: my voice is still raspy from you. But we made
Speaker 1: it rule too, don't say bear unless you see a bear. Hey,
Speaker 1: and all that's okay, but going hey, bear bar because
Speaker 1: we kept like causing a little bit confusion about whether
Speaker 1: someone was seeing it or not. And I'm up in
Speaker 1: the tree and I got a pretty good view at
Speaker 1: half the ground around us. Cut the meat down. Then
Speaker 1: we just grabbed the meat up by hand. I remember
Speaker 1: looking down from my sandwich and it had been mashed,
Speaker 1: and it was as mashed as the original bear ship
Speaker 1: laying under that tree. My sandwich was destroyed. UM hacked
Speaker 1: to meat down either tree. We just picked up bags
Speaker 1: of meat and then in defensive formation. It was impressive
Speaker 1: for guys carrying meat. Two guys with everybody with pepper spray,
Speaker 1: two guys toting pistols. Do you carry the bone in
Speaker 1: shoulder with a busted ankle down a hill and down
Speaker 1: to steve Hill and up a steep ravine and a
Speaker 1: river crossing until we had a big open area to
Speaker 1: load up our packs. I was walking point with the
Speaker 1: shoulder son. Now here's what Here's a little bit about
Speaker 1: not now we're getting into conjecture. Here's a little bit
Speaker 1: about what I think might have happened. Like if I
Speaker 1: had to go, if somehow this had all been captured
Speaker 1: on film by some secret camera we don't know about, um,
Speaker 1: and I had to bet like what the footage would reveal, uh,
Speaker 1: And also if this footage was able to assess the
Speaker 1: psychological state of the bear and evaluate his motivations. I
Speaker 1: feel like this is what I kind of feel like
Speaker 1: this is what happened. I feel as though, um, somehow,
Speaker 1: in the hours before our arrival, a bear had come
Speaker 1: in and was like, uh wow, right, some a lot
Speaker 1: of meat, a lot of stuff going on, a lot
Speaker 1: of people smell, and he was sussing ship out. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised to learn that us approaching, making a
Speaker 1: lot of noise, hooting and hollering. Perhaps I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised to learn that we maybe move the bear off.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised to learn that. Then we sat
Speaker 1: down to eat sandwiches, and we're all on the ground.
Speaker 1: You can't really see what's going on in there. He
Speaker 1: is in the area he comes back. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: not like a big, threatening pound bear that's coming and
Speaker 1: claim to kill site. It's like some low, not very
Speaker 1: intimidating things under that tree. I think he came in
Speaker 1: to assert his presence, and I feel was kind I mean,
Speaker 1: this is so conjectural, almost hesitated even bring it up.
Speaker 1: But it's like an interpret I'm offering up an interpretation,
Speaker 1: an unprovable I feel that he ran in it was
Speaker 1: kind of overwhelmed by what he ran into. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: the six, like a collection of six yelling, screaming, extremely
Speaker 1: hands swinging like mayhem, and then also one that jumped
Speaker 1: on him from his perspective. I think he's telling his buddies, Dude,
Speaker 1: I gotta check my people. It was we in that situation.
Speaker 1: I feel like, looking back, we were zebras because they
Speaker 1: survived in these groups. And when the lion runs in,
Speaker 1: it's this scattered confusion effect that the predators stretched so
Speaker 1: many ways they don't know a single target to focus on,
Speaker 1: and they end up giving up and reassessing. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: explanation I have is that that like one ham like,
Speaker 1: how could that that mouth have not gotten to somebody?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, okay, there's two explanations. One that it
Speaker 1: was such an explosion of like it might have been
Speaker 1: expected as much as it expects or whatever. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like their predators they attacked you. They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: He was attacking maybe a thing that he thought was
Speaker 1: a thing, a single thing, and in fact it was not.
Speaker 1: It was out of his line of sight. Was all
Speaker 1: of this stuff right? And that that he never got
Speaker 1: ahold of someone or it was never his intention to
Speaker 1: get his mouth on something. It felt like he was intending.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it meant to get ahold of something.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that it knew whatever whoever it was
Speaker 1: looking at as it came through the brush. It knew
Speaker 1: that I am a lot bigger than that thing. I
Speaker 1: think we should also clarify this would like for people,
Speaker 1: this was not a bluff charge. This was a full
Speaker 1: on charge. And he's been false charged and and there's
Speaker 1: a big difference, like false charges go down a certain way.
Speaker 1: This was nothing close to a false charge, the type
Speaker 1: of charge when a guy ends up if he's there
Speaker 1: gets attacked or dying, the surprise charge that goes a
Speaker 1: dent of the way. This was that charge. Yeah, false
Speaker 1: charge being like lots of hooffing, teeth clack and gets up,
Speaker 1: spins that fifteen yards, maybe comes in and spins that
Speaker 1: fifteen yards. Yeah, but there is nothing this dude, Yeah yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: I had a gun pulled on me in the Vata
Speaker 1: and it took a couple of hours. My hand equipped
Speaker 1: shaken and I had uh and the time that we
Speaker 1: got false charged, it took me a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: My handquipped, shaken. It's like that level of but this
Speaker 1: was in there was no spin. He crashed through us,
Speaker 1: um and I think must have gotten confused, got wrapped
Speaker 1: in the face, uh, got jumped on from his perspective, right,
Speaker 1: got gang piled. Yeah, he's like what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on? You know, and and ran down. I have
Speaker 1: a question. I'm sorry not to do you think, like,
Speaker 1: how relevant is it that? The more I think about it,
Speaker 1: the more it makes sense. It was one bear and
Speaker 1: he was back above us, like susten us out even more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have it, I mean not really knowing. I
Speaker 1: have no doubt that that's what I happened. But so
Speaker 1: in that case, in my mind too, that's very relevant,
Speaker 1: like to see even though it's super thick, like if
Speaker 1: that would have all gone down and we would have
Speaker 1: seen him on the other side of the main creek
Speaker 1: like just getting out of there and been like, yeah
Speaker 1: he didn't, I don't know. The fact that he wrapped
Speaker 1: back around into like a aggressive point contact freaks me
Speaker 1: out even more, like he was just like still like
Speaker 1: it that way For that attack to happen again, it
Speaker 1: was a very confusing moment. It was like in those
Speaker 1: movies where someone's getting attacked and it's over here then
Speaker 1: over there. It was very over here over there that
Speaker 1: we didn't know which way he was going to come
Speaker 1: back in because we heard, we saw him go down,
Speaker 1: weird crashing to the side, and we heard noises over
Speaker 1: here and we heard the wolfing up here. So it
Speaker 1: was a very orienting thing where he could come in
Speaker 1: again in any direction. And that was the the almost
Speaker 1: more scarier for me than the actual charge. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the charge was all instinct, You're just like react, but
Speaker 1: this was like just waiting for it to happen again,
Speaker 1: and it was intimidating. Man. Now there's this thing and
Speaker 1: and and and bear deal with bears and bearrass safety.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that if you are attacked by a
Speaker 1: black bear, um what you're experiencing as an act of
Speaker 1: addation and um, that you would fight that bear as
Speaker 1: long as you could possibly fight, because he's attacking you
Speaker 1: in an active predation and it's his aim to kill
Speaker 1: you and eat you. Grizzly bears grizzly you know, brown
Speaker 1: bears do that too. They do predatory attacks, but they
Speaker 1: also do attack of that they're startled or threatened or spooked,
Speaker 1: and their response to the spooking is to neutralize the threat.
Speaker 1: And a black bear's response to spooking is to act like,
Speaker 1: you know, everything else in the world run off. So
Speaker 1: when people say that this whole like playing that idea
Speaker 1: with a with a brown bear attack, grizzly attack, is
Speaker 1: that that you're betting on that it's the neutralization of
Speaker 1: a threat thing that's happening to you, and it once
Speaker 1: you cease to be any kind of a threat. And
Speaker 1: he could be like, don't mess with me, man that
Speaker 1: that maybe you'll be lucky, and he'll then leave you
Speaker 1: alone because he's like, hey, this thing scared me. I
Speaker 1: got the situation resolved. Now I'm done. There's all that
Speaker 1: kind of talk, right um now. And I've always maintained
Speaker 1: that like when people ask these questions you know about
Speaker 1: how to deal with bears and bear safety and what
Speaker 1: you should carry in this, and that I usually say
Speaker 1: like best practices or or when people who have exhaustively
Speaker 1: analyzed all these maulings and attacks, like what do they
Speaker 1: find to be recommended practices? I'll point these out to people,
Speaker 1: but I oftentimes will awful clarify that if it were
Speaker 1: actually happening, I don't know how much all of this
Speaker 1: is going to be really that helpful. And now that
Speaker 1: I know what happens when it happens, I'm more um,
Speaker 1: I'm just more aware of of that. It's almost a
Speaker 1: shrug of the shoulders. It's like how it really goes
Speaker 1: down is so fast and dizzying and overwhelming that you're
Speaker 1: not even operating even in a reptilian thing, you know,
Speaker 1: like meaning like that your brain is like these layers
Speaker 1: right and deep in your brain or these ideas of
Speaker 1: just that you need to breathe, okay, like just basic
Speaker 1: things that you do, and then layered over it are
Speaker 1: these more you know, like these more like I like
Speaker 1: emotional ideas and sophisticated actions, right, and I don't. And
Speaker 1: I feel like the shutdown that occurred for that half
Speaker 1: second was a very deep shutdown occurred to my brain,
Speaker 1: like a deep like a deep instantaneous shutdown. And then
Speaker 1: you then coming out of that was like if you
Speaker 1: found if you're in a boat, if you're in a
Speaker 1: boat that capsizes and you're thrust underwater and you need
Speaker 1: to swim up to the surface, I feel like I
Speaker 1: had to swim up out of a I had to
Speaker 1: swim up out of the water to find a breath
Speaker 1: of air, the breath of air being a clear thought.
Speaker 1: I had to like swim through a haze to come
Speaker 1: out with with a clear idea of what to do next.
Speaker 1: It was such a mental setback of all your thinking
Speaker 1: and situational awareness, spatial awareness, of just being a person
Speaker 1: who's like prides themselves on knowing how to deal with
Speaker 1: bad situations right learned through like being out in the woods,
Speaker 1: lot hunting a lot, being in in shitty situations. Subjecting
Speaker 1: yourself to that, you get like pretty good at problem solving.
Speaker 1: It was like all that was gone for some part,
Speaker 1: for some collection of seconds, maybe it was just wiped
Speaker 1: out and I had to like swim to the surface
Speaker 1: of some very murky water to put my head up
Speaker 1: and be like, here's what you need to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in the time it occurred to make that metaphorical
Speaker 1: swim to the surface of consciousness was probably the time
Speaker 1: in which you're just in its teeth, not even feeling it.
Speaker 1: Other maulings play out different ways. Because there was a
Speaker 1: guy that got killed, you know, by Donaly, and he
Speaker 1: had been photographing the bear that killed him up until
Speaker 1: it's very far away and he was still snapping photos
Speaker 1: of twenty yards then the bear killed him. So there
Speaker 1: you have like a situation like that. We've had older
Speaker 1: bears come into our camp or come to claim, like
Speaker 1: a caribou kill, that you had all kinds of time.
Speaker 1: But I think that all that time gives someone who
Speaker 1: knows how you're supposed to behave time to make it
Speaker 1: not happen through how you present, how you can figure
Speaker 1: your group, how you use firearms for warning shots. Like,
Speaker 1: all that time is all the action needed to make
Speaker 1: it not become a situation. But when the situation is
Speaker 1: fast like that, I feel that like it would take
Speaker 1: you would have to live through that six times to
Speaker 1: be able to become right. Yeah, it's just like my
Speaker 1: analogy of like skiing giant freaking black diamond moguls fast. Right,
Speaker 1: the first time you go down that ski run, you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, oh my god, you fall,
Speaker 1: You're trapping. This is worrying by you. And then you
Speaker 1: get to a certain level of feeling comfortable and you're like,
Speaker 1: even though you're smoking that hill, it's all happening slow,
Speaker 1: every every single turn and bomb just happens nice and easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would take a lot of very charges. But the
Speaker 1: thing but I want to I want to preface. I
Speaker 1: want to preface. I'm using that the preface one I
Speaker 1: angles stakes. I am going to turn this into a recommendation,
Speaker 1: right good, That's where I was gonna go with that,
Speaker 1: too yet recommendations, So all of that said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: turn into recommendation that. UM. I think that that that
Speaker 1: it's possible to go into an area, and you go
Speaker 1: into an area, a risky area, and initially you're very
Speaker 1: aware of the risk, but it's mentally exhausting. Two, it's
Speaker 1: mentally exhausting to be aware of risk, and I think
Speaker 1: that some part of your brain wants to get out
Speaker 1: of the risk mode, and you're like, Okay, we've gone days,
Speaker 1: we haven't seen a bear, I don't see evidence that
Speaker 1: a bear has been on the kill, and you just
Speaker 1: have a gradual letting down of your defenses that that, UM,
Speaker 1: you maybe wouldn't have made that mistake on the first
Speaker 1: day when you went into it, ready for this thing
Speaker 1: to be happening. We were talking about it, we read
Speaker 1: about it, we discussed it, we were joking about it.
Speaker 1: But over the course of a few days, it's somehow
Speaker 1: like a level of complacency took place, UM. And the
Speaker 1: concrete recommend dation one would be to try to to
Speaker 1: try to maintain that level of awareness even when it's
Speaker 1: not being uh reinforced by constant reminders of trouble. Because
Speaker 1: the first bear eye laid eyes on on that trip
Speaker 1: was within arms reach. Mm hmm. So there's that in
Speaker 1: a much more like practical, much more like practical, real
Speaker 1: time thing. Having your deterrent um on the waist belt
Speaker 1: of your pack is great when you wear in your pack.
Speaker 1: But when you take that pack off and set it
Speaker 1: down and you remove from it and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden the bear that you see as an arms
Speaker 1: reach away, getting it isn't really an option, especially if
Speaker 1: the first thing you need to do is roll out
Speaker 1: of the way of the thing. It's like you have
Speaker 1: to have you have to have it kind of on
Speaker 1: your chest. Mm hmm. I would even say having it
Speaker 1: in the holster could be clumsy, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: you can't just carry it well, I mean if you
Speaker 1: take your pack off and you're just hanging aroun just
Speaker 1: having it unholstered with the safety on just close to
Speaker 1: you all the time. You could have it on your pack,
Speaker 1: but have also like a secondary location where you if
Speaker 1: you take that pack off, Like Rammy, you actually had
Speaker 1: two holsters. Two holster approach. So I promised, I just
Speaker 1: had a weird feeling about this trip, and I went
Speaker 1: and bought a second holster in Anchorage on my layover
Speaker 1: because I was like, and I promised myself, I said,
Speaker 1: because I got just a weird you know those just
Speaker 1: you feel a little uneasy, I said, I promised myself,
Speaker 1: if I take my pack off, I'm gonna put my
Speaker 1: pistol in my other holster, even if it's just to
Speaker 1: go take a leak. I was diligent with it, though
Speaker 1: one time during the trip I did not do it.
Speaker 1: Was that that time because your packs right next to you,
Speaker 1: and I think that that well it was, and I
Speaker 1: remember seeing it sitting there and thinking to myself, I
Speaker 1: should grab that pistol. I was thinking tap and I
Speaker 1: sat and then the confusion of someone sitting where I
Speaker 1: was sitting because I had I actually when we sat down,
Speaker 1: I unclipped the unclipped the whole the part of the
Speaker 1: safety catch, so it was ready to grab. Because I
Speaker 1: was sitting down, I put my hand on it as
Speaker 1: like a mock pull out, and then I got up
Speaker 1: to get the water, and then people had moved and
Speaker 1: I wasn't sitting in that position anymore, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll grab that. But then throughout the week we had met,
Speaker 1: we we had talked about, oh, our best defense is
Speaker 1: going to be having six people. A bear wouldn't attack
Speaker 1: six people, which is which I think, which is actually
Speaker 1: which I ended up probably saving us or one person
Speaker 1: from some kind of When I say the group thing,
Speaker 1: I mean when you have a bear who's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's some stuff, I'm gonna go over towards that stuff
Speaker 1: to suss out what's going on. What they do, They
Speaker 1: see stuff and they just go toward it. I think
Speaker 1: having a group of people is is very intimidating to
Speaker 1: a bear. It is And I think what made because
Speaker 1: I'm my dad is hyper bear and now bear anoid.
Speaker 1: And after this experience, I'm gonna go apologize to him
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of times that I've done dumber
Speaker 1: stuff than what we did, way dumber and had no consequence.
Speaker 1: If you were by yourself under that tree, you'd be dead.
Speaker 1: I agree with the question. Yeah. And and when my
Speaker 1: brother and I were on the island previously, we took
Speaker 1: very we were seeing bears, but we also took every precaution.
Speaker 1: We never loitered around the meat treat. We moved the
Speaker 1: meat to cash. Is the minute we got to the cash,
Speaker 1: we climbed to the tree and looked. One person always
Speaker 1: had their deterrent out. We we had a plan, and
Speaker 1: we stuck to that plan because there was two of
Speaker 1: us and we knew that it would probably be one person.
Speaker 1: One person was always on the lookout, one person was
Speaker 1: doing things we were. You know, we went in with
Speaker 1: that plan and said, no matter what, that's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. But with the amount of people we had
Speaker 1: and not seeing bears and other things, that whole situation
Speaker 1: got lax, you know. And and that's why my first
Speaker 1: thought was, like, shot, I'm gonna die without in my pistols.
Speaker 1: Right there. The best recommendation, the best recommendation, um, don't
Speaker 1: hunt in bear country. Yeah, but that's not accessible, it's
Speaker 1: not So you need to work down to a solution
Speaker 1: that you can live with. Yeah, yeah, that's I think
Speaker 1: that's very relevant. A solution you can live with is
Speaker 1: I now realize no one wants to have like extra
Speaker 1: unneeded stuff hanging off their body, but I can live
Speaker 1: with the idea of having some annoying contraption, which in
Speaker 1: in and of themselves are dangerous because I've been holes
Speaker 1: by pepper spray. It sucks. H M. Handguns have inherent
Speaker 1: dangers to yourself and your companions. So it's like you're
Speaker 1: and I have at times been jokingly said, uh, pepper
Speaker 1: spray is more dangerous than bears. Haven't been involved in
Speaker 1: a couple of situations where peppers cans blew off, went
Speaker 1: off inadvertently. So it's like you it's like you're, you're,
Speaker 1: you're weighing all these things. But yeah, for the real
Speaker 1: time recommendations, it has to be the reason I say,
Speaker 1: your chest too. It has to be somewhere where you
Speaker 1: can get it blind and your waist belt, your jacket
Speaker 1: covers things, things get in the way. It's get caught
Speaker 1: out now. I mean it right here is the easiest
Speaker 1: place to reach, even if you're if you're on the ground,
Speaker 1: you can defend yourself with your arms and still reach
Speaker 1: your chest. And I had my GPS unit up front
Speaker 1: on my waist belt and my spray and the whole
Speaker 1: damn trip. I kept thinking that I should take a
Speaker 1: second and reverse them so that the spray was easier
Speaker 1: to get at, And every time I look at it,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh yeah, I you know, I should
Speaker 1: really get around to never did it. And that's still
Speaker 1: the waste belt problem, the waiste belt problem. And to
Speaker 1: think too that we used to we used to bowl
Speaker 1: hunt elk. We sometimes have our spray in the lid
Speaker 1: of our pack. What and the hell good is that? Well?
Speaker 1: I have hunted this island with spray in my pack.
Speaker 1: That's stupid. I will never do that again. No, you
Speaker 1: only hurt yourself probably with spraying your back your gear.
Speaker 1: I think if I could have a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: on you take a minute, but there for me the recommendations, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that for me it's like even a step
Speaker 1: earlier or two steps earlier, Like I feel like we
Speaker 1: did a good job coming in there making noise, but
Speaker 1: then we quit making a noise, right. It's like and
Speaker 1: you can read like on our website, you can go
Speaker 1: to the articles about grizzly bear attacks and the prevention
Speaker 1: stuff and stuff that that Frank van Mannett was talking
Speaker 1: to us about. It's like constantly making noise. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like where like bear belts come in you know,
Speaker 1: to play where people attach them to their backpacks or
Speaker 1: their hiking sticks whatever, you to avoid like utterly surprising. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the surprise factor, you know. And I think that us,
Speaker 1: you know, making noise throughout you know, obviously not taking
Speaker 1: the break, but making noise throughout the meat retrieval process
Speaker 1: and basically done what we did after the attack, and
Speaker 1: and sort of taking that approach without having that bear
Speaker 1: come in. And again this is hindsight, right, but that's
Speaker 1: how we should have done it. We should have gone
Speaker 1: in there with freaking four four sets of eyes, two
Speaker 1: dudes working the meat, two dudes packing the packs, four
Speaker 1: sets of eyes looking all directions, constantly making noise, yelling,
Speaker 1: being bearware, and moved out of there, even if it
Speaker 1: is two yards, but to a place where we could
Speaker 1: see and we couldn't get surprised. How do we if
Speaker 1: we could see a hundred yards every direction, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been surprised. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I was actually
Speaker 1: gonna add that that, like, and I tried to earlier,
Speaker 1: I said, like, the first mistake was lingering under the
Speaker 1: hanging tree. But yeah, like without really knowing, I feel
Speaker 1: as though had we done what you're just saying, this
Speaker 1: might not have happened and hooting and holler and the
Speaker 1: whole time, standing up, big presence, loud presence, deterrence, drawn yelling,
Speaker 1: hey bear, hey bear, hey bear, getting what you needed
Speaker 1: to get taken care of, and getting out of there,
Speaker 1: very loud, lots of noise, clustered together, standing up bodies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I could add is I think when you do
Speaker 1: that right, you get into this mode where say, say
Speaker 1: we did that, nothing would have happened. Then you get
Speaker 1: this mindset like, well, nothing happened, it was a waste
Speaker 1: of time. Can get that. Yeah, But from if we
Speaker 1: could lend any advice to anyone is if it feels
Speaker 1: like a waste of time, it's working. You already know
Speaker 1: that you're in the mix. Just assume that it's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and then when it doesn't happen, whatever you're
Speaker 1: doing is the correct solution. But by us getting that
Speaker 1: waysy like, oh it doesn't happen, it hasn't. I mean
Speaker 1: I've spent a good portion of my lifetime in bear
Speaker 1: country and had nothing happened. Yeah. It's like the first
Speaker 1: time you go take a growler, you select the growler
Speaker 1: site where you can see you got the shotgun right
Speaker 1: with some slugs, you got your spray by the third growler,
Speaker 1: You're out there in the dark, chalked up some burm.
Speaker 1: How many times did I ask you where your bear
Speaker 1: space was? And how come you weren't carrying it? To times?
Speaker 1: Too many times I was like, I don't, I got
Speaker 1: too much, I got can't, I got too much stuff,
Speaker 1: I got time for I don't got time for spray.
Speaker 1: That's the other unique thing though, too, is filming. You're
Speaker 1: like in you're on your monitor, not necessarily aware of
Speaker 1: you know, you guys should awareness, but yeah, you need to.
Speaker 1: You need to have a system before you go in
Speaker 1: and stick to the system. And because you aren't having
Speaker 1: encounters or whatever, you just go like Pooh made it
Speaker 1: through that day without an encounter. But I'm still doing
Speaker 1: my system, still doing my system. It's almost like it's
Speaker 1: a pain in the ass, but it's better than getting mauled.
Speaker 1: It's almost like like my brother Danny has the thing
Speaker 1: they do when they're moves on. This has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with bears, but it's interesting. Thing is people get
Speaker 1: carried away in the moment when you're moves on. It's
Speaker 1: hard to pack moves. So he'll go up hunt with
Speaker 1: a group of his buddies and because they know that
Speaker 1: you get carried away in the moment, they'll that like, okay,
Speaker 1: before we go, before we get started, what is the
Speaker 1: distance that everyone in this group agrees, we will pack
Speaker 1: a bull and draw that line now and then later.
Speaker 1: There is no room for someone to be like, ha, guys,
Speaker 1: I shot one four miles off the river because there's
Speaker 1: no room for like making individual assessments about what's past.
Speaker 1: It's like they come into it, we're like, okay, we
Speaker 1: all agree, we're hunting on our own and everyone here.
Speaker 1: If someone kills a bull within a mile and a
Speaker 1: half of the river corridor, everyone's cool, and that's we're
Speaker 1: packing and unless you want to move it yourself, stay
Speaker 1: within one point five miles of this river corridor. And
Speaker 1: it works for them. I feel that a good bear
Speaker 1: approach would beat that. If you have a hunting partner, um,
Speaker 1: this doesn't like work for like my brother Matt like
Speaker 1: largely hunts alone. This is self enforced. But if you
Speaker 1: have a hunting partner or hunting partners that you would
Speaker 1: prior to trip. So like, what's our bear plan? Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: let's make a deal that this bear plant plan is
Speaker 1: concrete and it is not open to it's not open
Speaker 1: to like later complacency or different interpretations of it. Like
Speaker 1: our bear plan is this. At any given time, you
Speaker 1: have whatever we determined through our own research to be
Speaker 1: the most effective deterrent for where we are be at
Speaker 1: a pump shotgun with slugs, a pistol, spray pistol l
Speaker 1: and spray redundant systems. That our bear plan is such
Speaker 1: that there's no deviation from this plan, and we agree
Speaker 1: that that's how I think that that needs to become
Speaker 1: our way. Yeah. So I just think that one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting things of this experience to me was
Speaker 1: the mindset. Okay, so before the event, our mindset was
Speaker 1: such that we were not going to be attacked by
Speaker 1: bears and treated it like that. From the moment that
Speaker 1: bear attacked us till the time we got the heck
Speaker 1: off the island, we were expecting to be attacked. Everywhere
Speaker 1: I looked completely flipped. It went from Oh, they don't
Speaker 1: attack to oh, we are going to be attacked. It
Speaker 1: was and we did see another bear after, and it
Speaker 1: was instead of but had we seen that bear before,
Speaker 1: we thought, oh a bear, no big deal. Now we
Speaker 1: saw that bear and said that bear wants to kill.
Speaker 1: Another thing that people another thing This interesting, man is
Speaker 1: I think about a lot of the lessons I learned
Speaker 1: from our time talking to the uh Rourke Denver, who's
Speaker 1: an author and a retired seal commander, and him talking
Speaker 1: about that they train in practice so much in such
Speaker 1: real situations that when you're actually doing something, like the
Speaker 1: training is so real and so ingrained that when you
Speaker 1: actually go and do it and in his case, that
Speaker 1: you're actually thrust onto the battle field, it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: any different to have it be in reality than what
Speaker 1: it did. That what you were trained to do, Like
Speaker 1: the training is so real and repeated that it's fluid
Speaker 1: to go into reality. He didn't even think like when
Speaker 1: he was actually in situate, he never thought about it
Speaker 1: being like, oh, this is the real thing because everything
Speaker 1: was so real. And I feel that a good system
Speaker 1: with like a good system with sort of managing your
Speaker 1: deterrence would be that you would with your bodies kind
Speaker 1: of test it. Right, Do you think you're cool? Like
Speaker 1: where you is your spray cool? I don't know. Let's
Speaker 1: let's see, like, okay, get your spray. Yeah, how much
Speaker 1: time it was? It's like seven seconds? But you get
Speaker 1: your spray out. That's not a good system. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: I have a lot of analogies running through my head
Speaker 1: about um and Garrett and Pat. You guys can speak
Speaker 1: to this too, about like staying safe in the back country,
Speaker 1: you know, learning how to use your avalanche beacon, reading snow,
Speaker 1: making group decisions, you know, practicing, it's practicing, I mean, yeah, practicing, digging,
Speaker 1: you know, using your probe. I mean it's proven that,
Speaker 1: you know, groups, the bigger the group is, the more
Speaker 1: dumb decisions are made. You know. It's like another similarity. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I feel like I don't I've I've discharged
Speaker 1: bear spray. You said you have just you. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: three out of the six of us have three, haven't
Speaker 1: That should be mandatory that everybody sprayed it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: Dirt was even that we ran out of time. Dirt
Speaker 1: was even asking about caught loose with a can. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you carry spray or if they even
Speaker 1: make like a non act they make a non active
Speaker 1: ingredient of practice, can do that just to know what
Speaker 1: I mean. The throw is an impressive cloud. That thing
Speaker 1: actually kicks when you hit the button. It throws an
Speaker 1: impressive cloud. But practice with it. The nice thing about
Speaker 1: the one with no active ingredient is you can see
Speaker 1: how it works in the wind, because a big problem
Speaker 1: we had is we were in an area with very
Speaker 1: high winds and came in with the wind. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing too. He came into us traveling
Speaker 1: with the wind. You all. You know, if someone said
Speaker 1: to me him and bear is gonna come attack, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, he's gonna come from down wind, because
Speaker 1: he's down wind right now. But he didn't. He didn't,
Speaker 1: he didn't play the wind. The thing I was thinking
Speaker 1: about um about the bear plan is like you got
Speaker 1: all your deterrence and you're all set up and you practice,
Speaker 1: but a bearrett say, a bear charges you, and neither
Speaker 1: your shotgun jams or your spray doesn't go off, or
Speaker 1: something happens in your group and you're with somebody or
Speaker 1: you're alone and you do end up getting mauled. What's
Speaker 1: your plan to like get help at that point? Because
Speaker 1: like that's what I was thinking about. I was like,
Speaker 1: if somebody here got mauled and I had to be
Speaker 1: the one to like make a call to the coast
Speaker 1: guard or whoever the hell they get a HELLI back, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. So like knowing
Speaker 1: that kind of thing about like where you're at, who
Speaker 1: you're going to contact, having something on you that allows
Speaker 1: you to reach the outside world in those situations is
Speaker 1: a good idea. And that's applicable to any emergency. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because in it most kind of like travel like this. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like we could have the same discuss
Speaker 1: if one of us had gotten a compound fracture. We
Speaker 1: could have a big conversation about having a compound fracture
Speaker 1: on your femur. So yeah, there's there's that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You guys all know the A K Troopers, which is
Speaker 1: the line you call for help when you're out in
Speaker 1: the bush. It's in the SAT phone for that reason.
Speaker 1: That's good. I also had a emergency beacon on me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but their thing is travel with and this is something
Speaker 1: we do pretty good at, is uh. I mean people
Speaker 1: come into our organization and and out of it, and
Speaker 1: I think that the people that stay within our organization
Speaker 1: are cool headed people. So, um, if you're testing out
Speaker 1: new hunting buddies and stuff, this isn't like a good
Speaker 1: place to find out if someone's a good fit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do it somewhere else. You don't want to be with
Speaker 1: a guy that dude. If somebody just freaked out and panic,
Speaker 1: that ain't bad. Situation gone even worse. Yeah. And I've
Speaker 1: been with people who a couple of times, I've been
Speaker 1: with people who like full on legit had like panic
Speaker 1: attacks about kind of like wilderness travel and and and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just don't want to be around I don't mind
Speaker 1: like talking to those guys like you know, I don't
Speaker 1: mind talking to people like that, but I don't like
Speaker 1: being around him in situations it could turn dicey. But
Speaker 1: give me. Yeah, it shook me out, man. I mean
Speaker 1: just like just for me to kind of like for
Speaker 1: me to kind of summarize it. Um, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a it was a real eye opener, and it
Speaker 1: made me reassass a lot of assumptions I had about, uh,
Speaker 1: how I would like to think I am. And it
Speaker 1: was because I didn't. I don't like knowing that a real,
Speaker 1: big bad surprise can snap me, A real big bad
Speaker 1: surprise can so readily snap me out of um uh,
Speaker 1: out of my my my mental processes. But without you know,
Speaker 1: you could get really hard on yourself about that. But
Speaker 1: also you could be like, well I managed the roll
Speaker 1: clear of the bear. Yeah, maybe there's some guys somewhere
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have done that. It's a laid down gotten
Speaker 1: I don't know. So it's like, so you want to
Speaker 1: be like nothing happened. So maybe we did as good
Speaker 1: as we could have done. And this is an important
Speaker 1: point we talked about a lot among ourselves afterwards. Even
Speaker 1: if everyone had had no, No, Remy felt that he
Speaker 1: had times he saw it coming. If I had had
Speaker 1: a pistol or pepper spray in my actual hand the
Speaker 1: way I was, there would have never been a safe
Speaker 1: opportunity to discharge it. Oh No, I would have been
Speaker 1: where I was, I would have been at risk of
Speaker 1: shooting one of us because I was behind people. It
Speaker 1: sounds like Remy and Janice could have possibly had a
Speaker 1: chance to Oh, had I had it in my hands
Speaker 1: safely safety and sprayed m Yeah for sure. Yeah so yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, because I had Yeah, I would have had
Speaker 1: time to it would have had, I think though, the
Speaker 1: way we were sitting, it would have had to been
Speaker 1: on my chest because it would have been really hard
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, I don't know about that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like again, I didn't make the decision, but something like
Speaker 1: I've been carrying the freaking thing on me for a week.
Speaker 1: I feel like in all of September, I've had a
Speaker 1: bear spray on my hip almost and it just like
Speaker 1: did it didn't come through my head to pull the
Speaker 1: bear spray? And I don't know if that was no
Speaker 1: real decision came through my head, except I just was
Speaker 1: like in this like it was almost like an out
Speaker 1: of body experience. There's somebody else there like just doing
Speaker 1: this motion. And then once the bear was running away
Speaker 1: and we started talking, and again that might have been
Speaker 1: me swimming through the murky waters of my capsized ship
Speaker 1: next to it. But yeah, it just it's like it
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing. And I don't even like even if
Speaker 1: it was on my chest, I don't know if there
Speaker 1: would have been the time to pull it out, but
Speaker 1: we never practiced. I feel like we need to start
Speaker 1: doing things. Draw. Yeah, like now that someone's just draw
Speaker 1: and everbody has to whip their ship. Yeah, me and
Speaker 1: my brother would do that, like, yeah, we do. That's
Speaker 1: the test. Your say it, like, okay, spray and rip
Speaker 1: and grab or pistol or whatever you've got or rife,
Speaker 1: you know, and to see how just like when you're
Speaker 1: a kid, or even now, I still do it. When
Speaker 1: I'm wings shooting, I will walk around, I'll throw the
Speaker 1: gun up, constantly throwing the gun up, even though I've
Speaker 1: shot Chucker my entire life. In those mountains, I practiced
Speaker 1: throwing the gun up randomly because when that flush happens,
Speaker 1: I needed to be instinct to put that gun to
Speaker 1: my cheek and shoot and I and yeah, there was Well,
Speaker 1: Dirk got a picture of me practice drawing. Actually I
Speaker 1: did a couple of times. But yeah. I one time
Speaker 1: watched uh, I was watching the Green Bray a team
Speaker 1: train and what they were working on the moment I
Speaker 1: have to be watching them is they're working on transitioning
Speaker 1: from your rifle to your pistol. It was like they're
Speaker 1: doing drills where you drop one and picked the other
Speaker 1: one up, and like, dude, I never once it was like,
Speaker 1: so what would happen if I really needed to quickly
Speaker 1: get my pepper spray out? Um, that's probably a whole
Speaker 1: lot more would say about it. I got got the
Speaker 1: elk out, ran another bear on the way that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna say on a cycle. Like, the biggest thing
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wrestle with now is keeping that due
Speaker 1: diligence up, but also being able to enjoy and relax
Speaker 1: in Bearer country because I love outside of hunting. I'm
Speaker 1: out in mountains with bears all the time, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be I don't want to let this
Speaker 1: that experience, you know, be a constant anxiety. And I
Speaker 1: think the way to fight that is to know that
Speaker 1: you're doing everything you're you can do and then just
Speaker 1: focus on the enjoyment of of the mountains in the
Speaker 1: wildlife to no no, but it's it's you know, at
Speaker 1: a point on that hike out, it was like I
Speaker 1: just can't deal with us, but you're like, no, I can't.
Speaker 1: I just gotta be Yeah. I feel like if anybody
Speaker 1: did after that, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say anything. I
Speaker 1: would like if you found me, I would would be understanding.
Speaker 1: But I like the places that I always have liked
Speaker 1: the place to have them. Like, if you gave me
Speaker 1: two options, you can hunt in a place that has
Speaker 1: them or a place that doesn't, I'm always going to
Speaker 1: pick the place that does because I like there. I
Speaker 1: like their presence, and I like the knowing that part
Speaker 1: of that is. Part of that is like um, kind
Speaker 1: of feeling not comfortable with risk, but kind of feeling
Speaker 1: like drawn to risk. And that's and I'm I'm definitely
Speaker 1: no doubt about it back to my normal state with
Speaker 1: the addition of being diligent on you know, knowing what
Speaker 1: needs to happen. The physiologist Jared Diamond, Um, he's a
Speaker 1: bunch of things, but that's one of the things he studied.
Speaker 1: He had this idea of why is why is really
Speaker 1: reckless behavior? Why was it not um wiped out through
Speaker 1: natural selection? Because when it comes to natural selection, you
Speaker 1: have like sexual selection. In a natural selection, so sexual
Speaker 1: selection would be things that UM enhance and organisms ability
Speaker 1: to reproduce. So like having like big antlers, having like
Speaker 1: giant antlers is in one hand, can be a detriment. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're putting a lot of energy in the production of
Speaker 1: those antlers. That's not helpful. You could be putting it
Speaker 1: into fat reserves. Um, it's harder to get around through
Speaker 1: the woods, right, you got big antlers on your head,
Speaker 1: you can't maneuver as good. So that's like a detriment.
Speaker 1: So what is the point, Well, the point is there
Speaker 1: could be sexual selection, Like the females look at that
Speaker 1: and they want to breed with you. And so even
Speaker 1: though like natural selection might it might not fit with
Speaker 1: that sexual it makes up for it in sexual selection.
Speaker 1: He has this idea of like why would it be
Speaker 1: that you have Like why would it be that you'd
Speaker 1: have Why is it attractive to a species like the
Speaker 1: human species to be like that someone can really party hard?
Speaker 1: Like why would it being a hard partier not have
Speaker 1: been just eliminated through sexual or natural selection? And there's
Speaker 1: a sort of thing this idea he gets. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing a very good job articulating it, but it's a
Speaker 1: demonstration of fitness to be like I am so fit
Speaker 1: that I can afford to do something so reckless in
Speaker 1: such a dramatic expenditure of energy, Like that's how fit
Speaker 1: I am and come out of the other side of
Speaker 1: that still walking. So the idea of like why are
Speaker 1: you drawn towards risk? Like why has it like risk
Speaker 1: been wheedled out? You know, it could just be that
Speaker 1: it's like a demonstration. It's like you're demonstrating a level
Speaker 1: of preparedness and level of fitness by courting disaster and
Speaker 1: that in hindsight, was amazing experience. Dude, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: it any other way. It worked because it worked out. Yeah, alright, Garrett.
Speaker 1: Concluding thoughts, The experience without the consequence was a gift
Speaker 1: by Mr Brown Bear a fog neck and with this crew,
Speaker 1: Like when when we got out of the the swampy
Speaker 1: waters of our intellect, we were tight tight, like I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a still fear, but I felt like we
Speaker 1: it was like I wouldn't want to be with anybody
Speaker 1: any other people, Like everyone was on the same page.
Speaker 1: Damn get this meet out of there. There was some
Speaker 1: group cohesion there. But I also literally and figurative there
Speaker 1: was something that we didn't mention was after the rest
Speaker 1: of the No, well, this is I think something that
Speaker 1: needs to be mentioned before we sign off the rest
Speaker 1: of the suck of the day. The sock is But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, we had the bear attack. It's a story
Speaker 1: worth telling. The bear attack and then the gayale force
Speaker 1: winds which destroyed our camp. So not only do we
Speaker 1: have a bear attack that same day, we come back
Speaker 1: to a destroyed camp. To to describe the winds as
Speaker 1: we're nearing the past, that we've went over I don't know,
Speaker 1: a half dozen times during the week, some winds come
Speaker 1: up to the point that Stephen, I think Chris. Chris
Speaker 1: got knocked over by the knocked down by the wind.
Speaker 1: And moments later Pat's rain cover gets ripped off of
Speaker 1: his pack and disappears into the sky like a helium.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the even chance that you would try
Speaker 1: to go find everybody in the panel of Florida, it's
Speaker 1: probably like whatever, freaking little bitches. You don't know what
Speaker 1: wind is. But it was windy, and so we went.
Speaker 1: When we crest over the past and look down, I
Speaker 1: see a sleeping pad from from I think what was
Speaker 1: a thousand feet above camp, I see a sleeping pad
Speaker 1: with sheets of rain. Yeah. Yeah, And then having to
Speaker 1: disassemble tents, redo a bear fence because now we're all
Speaker 1: to get killed, re set up tents, dry out, wet
Speaker 1: sleeping bags, fighting hypothermia the entire time. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: just it was a very taxing day. It was. It
Speaker 1: was a mostly taxing you know, hypothermia gets way more
Speaker 1: people then. Yeah, And I could picture in that situation,
Speaker 1: I could picture like the like a loan or a
Speaker 1: pair of inexperienced campers could have gotten in that situation
Speaker 1: and also on themselves in very serious trouble. I think
Speaker 1: we had two pretty close brushes with some trouble. Trouble,
Speaker 1: serious trouble. That's a song by the National Trouble Will
Speaker 1: Find Me. It found us on multiple occasions. Um Pounder. Uh,
Speaker 1: My concluding thought was gonna be kind of piggybacking off
Speaker 1: of what Dirt said. Just thankful to if you know,
Speaker 1: having to go through that at all, just going through
Speaker 1: it with a group of dudes like you, guys that
Speaker 1: are just like level headed and able to handle troublesome
Speaker 1: situations and be cool with it. You wouldn't trade it.
Speaker 1: Good Now, I'm gonna go back to your lonely apartment.
Speaker 1: This is not lonely. I got a lady there. You're
Speaker 1: gonna go back to Miss Pounder and tell the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I would trade it for going in there
Speaker 1: and doing a few things differently and not having it happen. Oh,
Speaker 1: to trade it to not have it happen at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I want to trade it. Now it happened.
Speaker 1: I'm glad it happened. Learning experience, that's true. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you like that that way, I don't want it to
Speaker 1: happen again. But yeah, I wouldn't trade it. I don't
Speaker 1: have too much, but I do know that in the
Speaker 1: net the minutes, maybe half an hour. Like he said,
Speaker 1: it took half an hour to quick shake, and I
Speaker 1: didn't get the shakes, but it took me maybe half
Speaker 1: an hour minutes to catch my breath. Yeah, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't get Yeah. I didn't mean to say it
Speaker 1: for I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't
Speaker 1: have that like I when I got the gun pulled
Speaker 1: on me. I didn't get the shakes, but I got
Speaker 1: something else. YEA, Well, no, I mean the the endorphins,
Speaker 1: you know, adrenaline. Uh. You know, it's a freaking serious
Speaker 1: high that you're taking on and then you know, coming
Speaker 1: down off of that, it's uh. I got emotional quite
Speaker 1: a few times. I kept thinking about how I really
Speaker 1: wanted to give my kids a huge I thought about
Speaker 1: that a lot by the way out of there. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, that's about it. It was a fun trip.
Speaker 1: It was an adventure. It's like you said, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be one of those ones that's fun to talk
Speaker 1: about later. But wasn't that much fun while you were there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I was gonna ask you your honest just as
Speaker 1: a direct question. I felt like the you know a
Speaker 1: little bit afterwards, your demeanor had changed, and I was
Speaker 1: kind of curious, Now he's not back to normal, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, is it the family that runs through
Speaker 1: your mind? Is it the thought of are you mad
Speaker 1: at yourself for not doing things the right way? Like?
Speaker 1: Or is it just kind of a general funk where
Speaker 1: it was like that was a real shitty experience. You're
Speaker 1: more of a learning lesson. I was just kind of
Speaker 1: curious on your take on it. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's just just processing it all still. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not through processing it, and uh, I feel a lot
Speaker 1: of responsibility, you know, not really to you, to Remy
Speaker 1: and Steve, because I feel like you guys just sort
Speaker 1: of here on other or don't know, different here as
Speaker 1: a guest, you know, but the guys that you know,
Speaker 1: I hire, and you know we sort of set up
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I apologize to all of them from
Speaker 1: putting it into that. You know, I could feel that
Speaker 1: on you because like you're you're a natural leader, Like
Speaker 1: you have leadership tendencies, and when when I could sense
Speaker 1: that you were down on yourself, I imagined, Um, I
Speaker 1: imagine that you were feeling like you were feeling like
Speaker 1: some level of responsibility, which you should know at least,
Speaker 1: I may be for both of us, like I understand
Speaker 1: the ticket that I'm signing up for. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not. Yeah, I'm I'm not. No. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that. You know, you guys, you guys get the
Speaker 1: heads up for sure. But that still doesn't it just
Speaker 1: like you know, that's what it feels like. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it's just it does suck,
Speaker 1: you know, because we do. We all keep thinking about like,
Speaker 1: well would have happened had you know? For me, it
Speaker 1: keeps like I keep just that moment of like the
Speaker 1: bear turned, Why did he turn? You know, I have
Speaker 1: no idea, but he turned, and that like it changed
Speaker 1: it all right, because you know, you having to call
Speaker 1: my wife, you know, and because man you're telling something,
Speaker 1: you know, um, telling her you know, some bad news. Uh,
Speaker 1: I feel shitty about it. So yeah, just a lot
Speaker 1: of process. So yeah, I guess, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: out of everyone after the situation, you definitely had the
Speaker 1: most weight on your shoulders of you know, you're responsible
Speaker 1: for this crew of guys, and I could see that.
Speaker 1: You know, if I was on a guiding trip and
Speaker 1: something like that happened, I would feel like it was
Speaker 1: my responsibility to the people that I brought in there.
Speaker 1: I can understand, probably even legally. Yeah. But no, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that was That's a lot, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of process. But you did, you you, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what I said. I felt at ease afterwards because of
Speaker 1: your presence. You did do a very good point. You know,
Speaker 1: I did feel protected because you were there and that
Speaker 1: behind us with that piste. Yeah, or even like I
Speaker 1: feel like you were a big part of that whole
Speaker 1: when we regrouped, like all right, you guys start protecting
Speaker 1: like Steve's getting the meat. You were, Yeah, you did.
Speaker 1: You were a leader that made it efficient and safe. Pat,
Speaker 1: what's your take because you do a lot of you
Speaker 1: do a lot of things that are more high risk
Speaker 1: because you like to climb. That's what stuff ice, stuff whitewater.
Speaker 1: Uhuh And I love that that risk element that's more
Speaker 1: like that's more risky than el coton. Well yeah, climbing
Speaker 1: it that's what. That's what. When Yanni called me up
Speaker 1: and suggested that come on this trip, I was like,
Speaker 1: hell yeah, that sounds like a badass trip. Like I
Speaker 1: want to be involved. You know, if he had been
Speaker 1: if you called me up and said, hey, we're going
Speaker 1: to Maryland or whatever, I probably would have been like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm busy. But I had nothing else going
Speaker 1: on us, and I was like, hell, yeah, I'll go
Speaker 1: to Alaska and you know, brown Bear Country and you
Speaker 1: guys need to call if you guys, are anybody out
Speaker 1: there looking for work Pat because he always had so
Speaker 1: much of it. No, no, no, that's not what I've said.
Speaker 1: But it was like a trip you can't turn down,
Speaker 1: you know, because of the risk element sort of appealed
Speaker 1: to me. But like a couple of days before this
Speaker 1: whole thing happened, I was talking to Garrett. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a hunter, you know im, And
Speaker 1: we're kind of talking. We both like kayak and do
Speaker 1: some stuff like that, and I was like, you know
Speaker 1: what like hunting, Like it's cool being out in these
Speaker 1: remote places, you know, chasing these animals around, but it's
Speaker 1: just not like quite the adrenaline rush you know that
Speaker 1: I get from other activities. And we were saying, like
Speaker 1: you said to like pulling the trigger might be a yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've never like shot something. I'd imagine that's and
Speaker 1: like being a part of like the full process. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just here too, like carry stuff and shoot some
Speaker 1: b roll and stuff. But um, yeah, having this happened
Speaker 1: completely changed my perspective on what hunters have to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, it's just crazy. It
Speaker 1: was way scarier, way more of an adrenaline rush than
Speaker 1: I've ever gotten from anything I've ever done ice climbing,
Speaker 1: big wall climbing, kayaking, rafting. Yeah, it's not even close.
Speaker 1: It was like I've never felt like I was gonna die,
Speaker 1: like quite as much three seconds that this bear was
Speaker 1: like on our on our ship, you know, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was really reassuring to be with all
Speaker 1: you guys who I know have spent your entire lives,
Speaker 1: you know, dedicated to hunting, being outside. You guys know
Speaker 1: your ship more than anyone I've I've met. So it
Speaker 1: was like when we re huddled and the bear was
Speaker 1: still you know, somewhere out there in the woods, I
Speaker 1: was scared shitless, but at the same time, it felt
Speaker 1: really good having you guys there with me too. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a hell of a trip. I'm I'm really
Speaker 1: glad I was along for the ride. Uh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think um. At first, I was worried that this
Speaker 1: trip wouldn't stack up to the level of suckage that
Speaker 1: I had experienced. He was afraid it wasn't sucking off
Speaker 1: and he'd seem like a guy who blew the suckle arm.
Speaker 1: You know those guys who are like, oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: was real tough. And then everyone I was something like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? What a woos you know?
Speaker 1: And I feel like it met my expectations. I was
Speaker 1: a little worried we weren't gonna get those gale force
Speaker 1: winds that I promised the honest would happen, because I
Speaker 1: was like, it's gonna be windy. Can these tends to
Speaker 1: handle this and that and the other thing. So we
Speaker 1: got the wind, we got the bears, we got the hike,
Speaker 1: we got the water. It just overall reinforced my belief
Speaker 1: that I don't necessarily have to do that again, but
Speaker 1: we'll probably find myself there and um, and it also,
Speaker 1: I think was a good wake up call for me
Speaker 1: that I needed, uh, because I told myself that I
Speaker 1: needed that wake up call, but still felt lax and
Speaker 1: didn't do things I didn't I honestly was felt. The
Speaker 1: worst part about it is me feeling like I didn't
Speaker 1: do what I knew I should have done. And maybe
Speaker 1: it was the group thing because I just don't do
Speaker 1: things like that. It was just I just felt like
Speaker 1: I did things that were out of character for the
Speaker 1: way I would do things, and it led to situations
Speaker 1: that were bad. So outside of that, you know, you
Speaker 1: just gotta stick to what you tell yourself you're gonna
Speaker 1: do and be diligent about the way you do something
Speaker 1: and not take it for granted. Yeah, because there's yeah,
Speaker 1: there's your you know, you know, Steve, yourself and this
Speaker 1: whole crew. We put ourselves in a lot of these
Speaker 1: situations that if you if you go about it right,
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a problem. But there's always that element if
Speaker 1: something could happen. And I'm fully aware of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I this last year was hunting water Buffalo completely alone
Speaker 1: with no emergency system, in just a bow. You know,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous, it's stupid. I got charged there, but it
Speaker 1: was not anything is scary? Is that? Baar? Like I
Speaker 1: legitimately thought, this is how I'm gonna die, And that
Speaker 1: is not a I've had that happen in a handful
Speaker 1: of times in my life, and I just really, you know.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I wasn't. I used it
Speaker 1: more of as a learning lesson than anything. And I
Speaker 1: hope that you know, with all the platform that we have,
Speaker 1: ID like to see my life as a good way
Speaker 1: to take what I've learned and showcase it to other
Speaker 1: people so they can maybe learn from my mistakes, learn
Speaker 1: from my successes, and they go out in the field
Speaker 1: and they can have a better a good experience with
Speaker 1: having to put in a less amount of time. So
Speaker 1: I think that if you're listening to the podcast, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's just six guys sitting here bullshitting about
Speaker 1: some bear story, because I've heard bear stories before, and
Speaker 1: I haven't taken away what I should have taken away
Speaker 1: from those bear stories. I sat down on a couch
Speaker 1: and a setting like this from a guy that was
Speaker 1: mauled by a bear in that within five miles of
Speaker 1: that spot, and I didn't learn from his lessons this morning.
Speaker 1: His brother got mauled by a bear twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I think that if there's a takeaway
Speaker 1: take away the things that we're talking about, and the
Speaker 1: other takeaway is it reaffirmed my belief that when it
Speaker 1: actually goes down, like you're saying, you don't know what
Speaker 1: you're it's just you play it out in your head
Speaker 1: a million times, but the actual one that would probably
Speaker 1: get you maybe semi out of your control anyways, and
Speaker 1: you just gotta go with knowing that that's how it
Speaker 1: may go down. I got two concluders. One, if you
Speaker 1: had this coffee table in a house where you were
Speaker 1: raising children, you would get nothing done besides taking those
Speaker 1: children down for stitches. The blade coming out of my
Speaker 1: side of this beautiful table, it was beautiful. I look
Speaker 1: at I imagine little kids with cut foreheads think that's
Speaker 1: what it is. It's a it's a birch burrow. That's
Speaker 1: a giant. I would think it's a spruce. S don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My second conclusion thought is it's like I always try
Speaker 1: to you know what I'm thinking about hunting man. When
Speaker 1: I'll tell people it's like there's two ously there's two things.
Speaker 1: I'm like, if you remove the food, I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: it anymore, Okay, um, because it was the tangible thing
Speaker 1: would be gone and I need that like I need
Speaker 1: like in my stuff. I really like like tangible results. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you remove the fun, I wouldn't do it either.
Speaker 1: Look when I mean a guy who's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I don't believe in industrial livestock production, so
Speaker 1: I just hunt for my food. I'm like, but you
Speaker 1: know what, dude, you're having fun hunting. Stop acting like
Speaker 1: this is not like you're like, oh brother, here we
Speaker 1: go again. You gotta go hunting again, right, You're enjoying
Speaker 1: it all right. So I was like, if you remove
Speaker 1: the fun, I wouldn't like it anymore. Would I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it anymore. If you remove the food,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it anymore. Um. But I almost feel
Speaker 1: like that needs to be That third thing is like
Speaker 1: if the surprise was gone, if the not if the
Speaker 1: every time you wake up, just like being being in
Speaker 1: a situation, we just can't imagine everything that will happen
Speaker 1: today that uh, that they would lose something to Callahan.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, Ryan Callahan was talking about the feeling
Speaker 1: of someone says, oh, I got a private pond stocked
Speaker 1: with trout would you like to come fish? Cal's like,
Speaker 1: you're always gonna go once and he were like, he's right,
Speaker 1: this is great. There's a lot of fishness pond, but
Speaker 1: you're never gonna go a second time because you've eliminated
Speaker 1: the mystery. Well, it depends on the human because unfortunately,
Speaker 1: talking about the worthwhile ones, that's hard because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that even okay, okay, the kind I
Speaker 1: like to associate with or I don't know, there's two
Speaker 1: kinds of people. There's people who think they can divide
Speaker 1: everyone into two groups, and then there's that's a joke.
Speaker 1: That was my concluding thought. I love the surprise and mystery. No,
Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, you know, I always you know, we uh,
Speaker 1: my brother and I don't want to say we argue,
Speaker 1: but we debate about like the name of you know,
Speaker 1: the hunt e the T shirts, right, and it's just
Speaker 1: like we'd like someone us want to really push the
Speaker 1: whole like, oh, you're constantly just you know, hunting for
Speaker 1: the food, hunting for the food, hunt for the food.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, really, I mean, yes, for me, I'm
Speaker 1: not even that much like you are. We're like, I
Speaker 1: would just give it up if you took away the
Speaker 1: food aspect of it. I have to get to that
Speaker 1: point and then think about it. But for me, if
Speaker 1: you took away the chase and like you're saying, the
Speaker 1: unknown and the adventure and the exercise and just the
Speaker 1: whole activity and the process of the hunt, then I
Speaker 1: would not do it. Yeah. Ite, Like if you were,
Speaker 1: I was gonna draw some kind of golf analogy, but
Speaker 1: I'm real bad on golf. I feel like the the
Speaker 1: there's the same thing applies to to our job, minding
Speaker 1: Garrett's jobs because I don't always you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: always on this show working on hunting stuff. But like
Speaker 1: the same thing, if like the surprise of waking up
Speaker 1: and like, oh what am I gonna see today went
Speaker 1: away and stop being fun, I wouldn't do it. Like
Speaker 1: if I was working on like some show that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna do the same thing every day,
Speaker 1: I would probably try to find something else to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, And you do some when you're not working
Speaker 1: with us, you're still doing sketchy ship, doing some rowdy stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, that's it. Thanks for tuning in.