Speaker 1: This is the me Eat podcast coming in you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bitten and in my case, underwear listening don't Eat podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything, damn everyone. First thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about, um, how annoying it is? Like I
Speaker 1: don't understand people who don't wanna who guys would like
Speaker 1: to hunt, who act like they don't want to hunt turkeys?
Speaker 1: You heard so much? You have that any razor? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. I just don't get it.
Speaker 1: I hear that from so many people, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: county my house. Do you have answer? Spring thunder Dude,
Speaker 1: it's just it's minneo Coutton. Just locate them. What it's like?
Speaker 1: I understand, Like, what's not like big old damn bird
Speaker 1: coming through the woods? Is head changing colors? Right? I
Speaker 1: mean you know why because I think when most people
Speaker 1: think hunting turkey, they're not thinking hunting wild turkey. They're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: I'm hunting butter ball and cartoon turkey, and who whatever
Speaker 1: the turkey is that's in their head or the turkey
Speaker 1: that like is in there. They go to their mother
Speaker 1: in law's house, you know, in some suburban New Jersey
Speaker 1: and there's a turkey in the yard, and they think
Speaker 1: that's what turkeys are. Like, it's hard to give the
Speaker 1: turkey respect until you've been schooled by the turkey a
Speaker 1: few times. Multiple dog is sick of hearing about that
Speaker 1: from people. Man, it's like the I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: most one of the most hunted critters on the planet.
Speaker 1: Not on the planet's one of the most hunted critters
Speaker 1: in the country. If you look at man hours, the
Speaker 1: most shot animal in the country is morning doves. Numbers
Speaker 1: man hours, I because I think man hours is dear
Speaker 1: pure numbers as doves. Man hours is dear. I like
Speaker 1: turkeys up there, though the squirrels gotta rank high to you.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think about doves, did you go
Speaker 1: out and you know, like we went dove hunting this year.
Speaker 1: A couple of hours into you've got sixty doves laying
Speaker 1: there with a bunch of guys, you know, so, he ha,
Speaker 1: it's the most harvested critter we're here with. Uh, how
Speaker 1: do you like to describe yourself? Jason call maker? Call
Speaker 1: maker Jason Phelps. Phelps Quality Game calls this guy. What's
Speaker 1: interesting about this guy's he actually is out in his
Speaker 1: grige he makes the calls, I mean from scratch out
Speaker 1: in his garage, right, yeah, literally, I mean we besides
Speaker 1: the laminate coming to me pre pressed, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: I get a big sheet of plywood and that's what
Speaker 1: I start with on the wood calls. And you know,
Speaker 1: the the diaphragm started as a piece of UH scrap latex,
Speaker 1: a piece of tape and an aluminum frame, you know,
Speaker 1: And and every thing's hand built. So far, I've been
Speaker 1: able to keep up with the man. But everything's hand built,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, and you're a real painting. He asked
Speaker 1: about getting American made stuff pretty much, I mean very
Speaker 1: very The green bands on some of these calls are
Speaker 1: made in like Indonesia, but that's about his You know,
Speaker 1: I've really tried, you know, the whole bleed, red, white
Speaker 1: and blue thing, pretty proud American. I've I've really tried
Speaker 1: to source all my plastic, you know, in in the
Speaker 1: US and and work with companies that, um you were
Speaker 1: able to source everything in the US. So why did
Speaker 1: you ever get interested in UH and making game calls? Okay,
Speaker 1: here's I'll keep the story short. But we were there
Speaker 1: was a small local UH sporting goods show Um, they're
Speaker 1: in my hometown a real small explain where that is Minlow, Menlo, Washington.
Speaker 1: I think it was the Pacific County Outdoor Show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're recording right now in Seattle, Washington, so in my
Speaker 1: brand's peakty New Garage and Jayson he's too. You're from
Speaker 1: two hours south Sea. Yeah, down Peel, Washington is actually
Speaker 1: where I live, but just outside of sin trash of
Speaker 1: this area. And you come from a long line of loggers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody in my family it is there. It's still it's
Speaker 1: it's still going good down there. And really I was
Speaker 1: joking because I thought I was like, it's still I
Speaker 1: mean they you know, they worked for where I was,
Speaker 1: which was one of the last they're doing pulp and
Speaker 1: stuff though, right yeah, export where I was, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of export, but you know, get too deep
Speaker 1: into it. You know, they're on you know, thirty five
Speaker 1: to forty year cycles, so a lot of it, you know, isn't.
Speaker 1: They aren't getting the export and stuff anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's you know a lot of them still make make
Speaker 1: a living out there that you know, my hometown is
Speaker 1: pretty much loaded with loggers, you know that work out
Speaker 1: of the Warehouser, peel camp, got you, got you, but
Speaker 1: then you like peeled off. Yeah. Yeah. My old man
Speaker 1: he's like, I don't know if it's because he was
Speaker 1: afraid I wasn't gonna cut it and so I was
Speaker 1: gonna hurt his pride or what. But he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to go off and go to school. And
Speaker 1: so I ended up pretty good. It's pretty good at maths.
Speaker 1: So you know, naturally went the engineering round, got a
Speaker 1: masters and masters and game calls. Yeah. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you always had a passion growing up ever since my
Speaker 1: first elk calling. It was you know, the the switch
Speaker 1: was flipped, and uh, I've been hooked ever since. So yeah,
Speaker 1: getting into it. You obviously started out like liking make
Speaker 1: a game making animal noises. Yeah, you know. It started
Speaker 1: off with the Primost thunder bugle or the terminator bugle
Speaker 1: called my first bowl and I'm like, man, you know,
Speaker 1: how can I incorporate this in, you know, to my
Speaker 1: livelihood or to my passion and how the um did?
Speaker 1: It started at seven years ago, so I was twenty five,
Speaker 1: just just had my first first kid, and you know what,
Speaker 1: shortly after that, I started up UM the game calls,
Speaker 1: no no, how old are you when you got it? So?
Speaker 1: I mean, like how old when you blew your first
Speaker 1: game call? Um I bought my first out call nine,
Speaker 1: so I would have been sixteen. It was a It
Speaker 1: was a night before our archery opener here in western Washington,
Speaker 1: and we were out just scouting for musloder and rifle,
Speaker 1: and we actually pulled up to a landing and the
Speaker 1: elk scattered. You know, seen us pull up. That's weird,
Speaker 1: pulled to a landing like in a boat. Uh No,
Speaker 1: a landing where they logged from. So you said, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he pulled up on the landing and the elk scatter,
Speaker 1: and um, I didn't know what I was doing, get
Speaker 1: out and rip a bagle and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you hear bagle down the timber where it ran from.
Speaker 1: And you know, before probably ten minutes, we had a
Speaker 1: bowl thirty thirty yards in front of us, just going nuts,
Speaker 1: you know, piston all over himself and uh man, this
Speaker 1: is easy. Bow season starts tomorrow. No, none of us
Speaker 1: have boat takes. We're all rifle or mosloader hunters. And
Speaker 1: um I I didn't hunt archery that year. And then
Speaker 1: so in my junior in high school. I I got
Speaker 1: a bow out of the Cabella's catalog. I remember, like
Speaker 1: a mail order bow. You know, don't go to your
Speaker 1: local pro shop get fitted, none of that, just left
Speaker 1: handed right. Yeah, but you know, have no clue on
Speaker 1: draw length or any of that stuff because at that time,
Speaker 1: nobody around us a bow hunted. Um, So mail order
Speaker 1: a bow right out of Cabella's. Just that long ago,
Speaker 1: late nineties. There's nobody hunt, no, not in our area.
Speaker 1: It's it's taken a huge exponential you know, it's grown exponentially,
Speaker 1: um since probably the two thousand's. But uh, at that time,
Speaker 1: it was pretty much you had any elk you wanted
Speaker 1: to yourself. Really, yeah, you could go out nobody. There
Speaker 1: were very few. I mean a couple of local guys.
Speaker 1: I knew that bow hunt had some old timers and
Speaker 1: you know, growing up doing it their whole lives, but
Speaker 1: there was nobody compared to what there is now out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it was you know, everybody was
Speaker 1: a muzzloader rifle hunter out there. Um went out the
Speaker 1: next day, opening day of archery elk and it still
Speaker 1: may be my biggest tree Roosevelt I've ever called in
Speaker 1: a big six by seven forty yards. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: that's within twelve hours. Yeah, within twelve hours, I've called in,
Speaker 1: you know, two of the biggest Roosevelt I've ever seen
Speaker 1: during rifle or moseloader season. And no, I still wasn't
Speaker 1: bow hunt. Yeah, I was still just sneaking off. Oh
Speaker 1: it was both season the night so you called the bull,
Speaker 1: and both season without a bow close a ton of
Speaker 1: shot opportunities. Yeah, but as you go get a dude
Speaker 1: with the bowl, we try run ads. But the thing
Speaker 1: you could, you could, you couldn't barely find anybody. Back then,
Speaker 1: it was it would have been a tough chore to
Speaker 1: find somebody with the bow. Tag Um, So you're kidding me,
Speaker 1: it was, And then of course it took off. But
Speaker 1: then next year I bought a bow, and I think
Speaker 1: I missed six bowls. I thought it was gonna be easy,
Speaker 1: he said. I go out there and I didn't have
Speaker 1: the whole nerves under control. Yeah, that's that's a cost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So six bowls, I think I flung arrows over and
Speaker 1: then finally the seventh one I had somehow settle all
Speaker 1: the nerves and made it count. We're talking about this
Speaker 1: dr Night is like, uh, buddy, mine, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how he's got so many friends that can shoot on
Speaker 1: paper so much better and he can. He's like, they
Speaker 1: just know more about the gear. They can shoot better me.
Speaker 1: They can talk circles around me. They asked me questions
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to. But you put them
Speaker 1: in front of elk, they can't hit it, yep, because
Speaker 1: you put me in front of the elk, I just
Speaker 1: hit it. But just it's psychological, man. Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: guys that have ice fall into their veins, for sure.
Speaker 1: But you gotta beat that out of yourself too. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you just got like some people
Speaker 1: have a certain number Mrs laid up and I mean yeah.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, you know I didn't put a
Speaker 1: whole lot of practice in, you know, being a converted
Speaker 1: rifle hunters, like, ah, you pick your bow upside your
Speaker 1: twenty through forty yard pinning and go out and you know,
Speaker 1: I I quickly learned that you know, the dedication to
Speaker 1: the archery trade, and you know that it required a
Speaker 1: lot more than going insite and your rifling. You know,
Speaker 1: a week before season, it required you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a year round commitment and so yeah, you know, dialed
Speaker 1: all that in. But yeah, I would think of hunting
Speaker 1: as a discipline, but like, but but it's not. You
Speaker 1: don't even need to think about like archery has to
Speaker 1: be a discipline, you know, anyone it's good at it
Speaker 1: unless you just got like the ice, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: not only not on you need ice fall into your veins,
Speaker 1: but you need just like uh another uh used to
Speaker 1: the word discipline, just like the kind of discipline to
Speaker 1: know when and you have a shot when you don't
Speaker 1: have a shot. So if you can do that, if
Speaker 1: you can go out in the woods and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll shoot thirty yards or I don't shoot, you know,
Speaker 1: and guys that are able to stick to that and
Speaker 1: let a bull walk it's thirty five forty yards away
Speaker 1: because they drew in their line. Like that's my thing. Man,
Speaker 1: You give me a bullet thirty yards, I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: it right in the heart or I'm not gonna shoot.
Speaker 1: But you wind up shooting then later being like pace
Speaker 1: it off. You have no idea where the thing was,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? This is hard. I don't
Speaker 1: even miss it that I like to bow hunt a lot,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I try to give Yanni minute
Speaker 1: about try to give Yanni a piece of archer equipment.
Speaker 1: He told me he don't bow hunt anymore. I honestly
Speaker 1: think it's easier than rifle hunting. Now, well, yeah, in
Speaker 1: that you're not dealing with hordes of dudes. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: just I mean just saying the same area. I could
Speaker 1: hunt area a bow season and hunt rifle season, whatever
Speaker 1: season they give me. I'd rather have a bugling bowl
Speaker 1: and and take those odds versus a rifle and have
Speaker 1: the extended range but not necessarily be able to know
Speaker 1: where they're at or dial m in or um. You know.
Speaker 1: So I honestly think from a success standpoint, i'd rather
Speaker 1: pick up a bow. Yeah. I think if God came
Speaker 1: down and put a gun to my head and said,
Speaker 1: you uh, you know, I gotta get it out this
Speaker 1: year or I'm gonna pull the trigger, and I had
Speaker 1: to pick I could do like rifle, especially in Montanics.
Speaker 1: I did so much of my bowing in there, But
Speaker 1: when I would do it, I'd be like, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I got a six week archery archery season, you know,
Speaker 1: and I can pretty much hunt by myself, I would
Speaker 1: probably go that route, yea, knowing that just like just
Speaker 1: the pressure aspect of it, because like moo and you
Speaker 1: go find Elk and there's a reasonable assumption he's gonna
Speaker 1: be there tomorrow if you leave him unmolested rifles season dude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's gonna run into him? Who knows? Man? So any
Speaker 1: out you were out there, a little kid calling a
Speaker 1: bowl calling a bowl. I was hooked a teenage and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, so do you have a do
Speaker 1: you havent make? But do you have like a story
Speaker 1: where you're like, yeah, my call failed me? And I
Speaker 1: knew that I had to make my own. No, there
Speaker 1: was a there was a time where the current call
Speaker 1: company I was using, I uh, there were some quality
Speaker 1: control issues and I was like, man, I gotta you
Speaker 1: know my my call that was money everyone I'd buy
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you know, went out of
Speaker 1: four one out of five is good, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the you know, what's going on? And uh, that
Speaker 1: was that kind of led to it. But the real reason,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a strange reason to ever started business.
Speaker 1: And I was at this that Sportsman show walking through
Speaker 1: and there was an old man in the corner had
Speaker 1: an old lathe and was actually turning calls with the show,
Speaker 1: and I just I was with it was my girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the time wife now, and just kind of watching him.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can do that. You know, You're like, hey, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think you think that guy is sexy because he's
Speaker 1: turning He's turning calls over there, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I like, you know, being a semi red net growing
Speaker 1: up in a small town that I can work a lathe,
Speaker 1: you know, have wood shop in school, I can do
Speaker 1: all that. And it was kind of so I was
Speaker 1: able to kind of time my passion into you know
Speaker 1: that kind of let the spark. This guy was sitting
Speaker 1: there making calls and they didn't sound very good. I'm like, why,
Speaker 1: you know, let's let's sit and play around and see
Speaker 1: what we can do make one sound good and then
Speaker 1: we'll kind of do a slow release. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought when I started making this, it all started
Speaker 1: with the wood out call. That was the very first
Speaker 1: call I made. And what do you call that one?
Speaker 1: The easiestris easiest, Yeah, just you know, they I got
Speaker 1: on a lot of the at the time, there was
Speaker 1: three or four custom call forums, you know where the
Speaker 1: custom call makers were on their uh you know, talking
Speaker 1: about woods they were using and in styles and finishes,
Speaker 1: and so I was just you know, soaking it all
Speaker 1: in as much as much as I can learn, you know,
Speaker 1: what what would goes with what finish and you know
Speaker 1: what what acoustic properties do you get out of certain densities?
Speaker 1: And so I was soaking it all in. And uh,
Speaker 1: I actually traded my first muzzloader bullhorns for a lathe
Speaker 1: from a now their local call maker down there. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I sent him three maple birls that my uncle had
Speaker 1: cut as a as a timber faller, and I traded
Speaker 1: a set of my horns because he he makes calls
Speaker 1: out of the actual horn. So I traded. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: you know it's to me they're just sitting in the
Speaker 1: garage collecting dust. But it had some sentimental value. But
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is this is you know, just had
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, like, this is my this is
Speaker 1: my entry in. So he traded me a lathe um
Speaker 1: for for that three girls. And and so how old
Speaker 1: were you then? Yeah? Kids, a little bit young, not
Speaker 1: young young by modern standards. Yeah, so yeah, I was
Speaker 1: twenty five, had the kid was like three months old.
Speaker 1: I think when I kind of started and got the
Speaker 1: lathe and ordered all the all the tools and and
Speaker 1: you know, all the Chucks and all the wood turning tools,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I thought, I'm holding the call
Speaker 1: right now. Check it out. No, I mean the band.
Speaker 1: I make a style without the band, which is kind
Speaker 1: of my standard. Um, you know, we we fancy him
Speaker 1: up with the bands, but the call really hasn't changed
Speaker 1: at all for the last six years. And you'd call
Speaker 1: that just like a basic external read external read. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's tuned nasally a little bit extra cy
Speaker 1: um you know, which, in my opinion in September is
Speaker 1: kind of the sound I'm going after. Um we a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, we talked a little bit before, you know,
Speaker 1: can we change that sound and that Yeah we can.
Speaker 1: If somebody prefers a deeper tone or whatever, we can,
Speaker 1: I can custom cutter read and really dial that into
Speaker 1: your preference. I've called elk in with that call. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I met Jason through Jay Scott and then made a
Speaker 1: few phone calls and was begged him for a few
Speaker 1: free calls because I remember you have one of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's gotta be five. So you
Speaker 1: started turning him on a lathe, the barrel, the wooden barrel,
Speaker 1: and you did a lot of extra of uh not
Speaker 1: that I shouldn't say extra, like doesn't matter, but a
Speaker 1: lot of like it's an ornate it's like an ornate call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean started, you know, got to finish, got the sound,
Speaker 1: got the size and the shape. You know, some people
Speaker 1: wanted it to you know, fit their hand right, some people.
Speaker 1: And so I got the sound. To me, the sound
Speaker 1: is always going to rule a call. So I worked
Speaker 1: on the sound first and then made him look good second,
Speaker 1: because I knew that was gonna, you know, what was
Speaker 1: gonna sell them, and so I kind of dialed this
Speaker 1: all in and uh in that first year instead of
Speaker 1: selling tan, I think I sold two or three hundred,
Speaker 1: you know on the local where honey Washington dot com.
Speaker 1: There's a form local you know, I know that for him, yeah,
Speaker 1: Honey Washington dot com. And just started putting them. I
Speaker 1: become a sponsor for dirt cheap prices, like they let
Speaker 1: you know, level of entry was was dirt cheap, like
Speaker 1: fifty bucks for a year. So I got on side
Speaker 1: on as a sponsor and just calls just started rolling
Speaker 1: off and then like you know, keep going back to
Speaker 1: you know, small country kid. I don't know how websites work.
Speaker 1: I don't know how e commerce stores work. I don't
Speaker 1: know any of this works. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like I'm hit in the face with the you know,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna keep up? How are you gonna
Speaker 1: you know, let people get on them buy him, you know,
Speaker 1: And and so that was that's a whole different road.
Speaker 1: And I'm just a call maker at heart, and so
Speaker 1: all this other stuff, like you know, business decisions and stuff.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're um, I did the best I could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: rip a couple of notes on that thing. That's the
Speaker 1: easy estress m. Yeah. Really it is really easy to use,
Speaker 1: really easy to use. Um. I always joke with my
Speaker 1: old man, he's the only guy in the face of
Speaker 1: the planet. I haven't been able to teach to use
Speaker 1: this thing. It looks like it looks painful. He gets us,
Speaker 1: He gets his big you know, squint, squints his face
Speaker 1: up like I might know if you're trying that hard, Like,
Speaker 1: let's start over. But uh, I actually made him a
Speaker 1: special bite and blower, you know, like the old school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he uses that style. That's what I started when
Speaker 1: I first started messing around. And that's what I would
Speaker 1: have is just the bite blows because you can anybody
Speaker 1: can make a noise. But see that's the thing is,
Speaker 1: that's why I always sucked that game calls, because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't work on it at all. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: was brought up like I mainly I hold a lot
Speaker 1: of friends, but I mean then I mainly with my
Speaker 1: two brothers and the middle brother, I'm the youngest. The
Speaker 1: middle brother was just like more of a tinkerer man,
Speaker 1: like he was kind of gotta you know, just totally
Speaker 1: dismantled electronics and ship and often leave him dismantled. But
Speaker 1: he would like dismantle or and he got he made
Speaker 1: a little kid to wrap his own rods, you know,
Speaker 1: So he'd wrap his own rods and lacker them like
Speaker 1: just all the painsteaking, meticulous hunting, fishing type stuff. And
Speaker 1: he learned how to do game calls, not make them,
Speaker 1: but just learn how to mess with them and mess
Speaker 1: with them and tune them. And he was just always
Speaker 1: like the family caller. And I it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: just it wasn't a way later. Like it kind of
Speaker 1: goes like this. When I was in college, regular school college,
Speaker 1: you know, they make it take Spanish three years, right,
Speaker 1: I never paid any attention. Man, I'd go in there
Speaker 1: and I try to memorize the ship ahead of time
Speaker 1: so I could get a grade. The minute I got
Speaker 1: out of school, I went to Mexico for a month
Speaker 1: to fish, just camp on the beach and fish. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't believe. I just wasn't paying any
Speaker 1: attention the whole time they were trying to teach me Spanish.
Speaker 1: Because now I'm saying, you're looking at these guide books
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to say basic ship that
Speaker 1: I know I learned in school and didn't care because
Speaker 1: it wasn't like real to me at the time, and
Speaker 1: all those years and you had any responsibilities and anything
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be doing. If I had just been
Speaker 1: messing with calls, I missed ten years of practice. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I it's like, what else are you do with like
Speaker 1: a ten year old dude should be messing with game calls? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You leave one laterund my house. The kids have got
Speaker 1: it sloughed up, you know, they sound like a dying
Speaker 1: rat or dying cat whatever, whatever they have noise they
Speaker 1: can make. But yeah, the kids, the kids are just
Speaker 1: my kids mouths all the time now just because you know,
Speaker 1: they run around. Everything sounds like a kazoo. But it's
Speaker 1: like just getting some basic familiarity with it, you know,
Speaker 1: because like, but so much of the hunting we did,
Speaker 1: we were kind of like pre when I grew up
Speaker 1: hunting tree stands in Michigan, like before people were real
Speaker 1: serious about the science of whitetail hunting. You know, we
Speaker 1: do it for ducks. We do a lot of pass shooting,
Speaker 1: a lot of jump shooting, you know, and you'd see
Speaker 1: you'd be out there and just like guns blazing on
Speaker 1: the marsh and some guy way on the duck call.
Speaker 1: It's like, dude, it's just like doesn't matter. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna bring one in with that call. You know, we're
Speaker 1: pass shooting now here. So it's just like stuff I
Speaker 1: just never figured out. And we started field hunting for
Speaker 1: geese and and uh yeah, man, but I was. I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties four I got I started realizing
Speaker 1: what I was missing out on. You know, when you
Speaker 1: moved to Montana, probably started hunting out and that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Then it started messing around the bite and blow. Alcohol
Speaker 1: started to matter. Yeah, I remember calling one of the
Speaker 1: first times I went out. I remember calling the Kyle
Speaker 1: Elkin real close. She came in and started blowing at me,
Speaker 1: like barking at me, you know, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a powerful medicine man calls. But really, ELK
Speaker 1: calling and ELK calls aren't that much older than before.
Speaker 1: When you're saying you started doing it right when you
Speaker 1: brought that first bugle to I mean ELK calls maybe
Speaker 1: another ten years, I think. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: the whole history. I know Larry D. Jones out of
Speaker 1: Oregon and then Carlton were kind of on that cutting
Speaker 1: edge of of diaphragms and kind of introducing that and
Speaker 1: then uh, you know, kind of the next historic Marcus
Speaker 1: Rocky Jacobson, um, you know, developing that pallet plate and
Speaker 1: then you know the whole patent issue with them in
Speaker 1: Primos and then they carried that and then yeah, it realistically,
Speaker 1: ELK calling isn't that old. My brother I have an
Speaker 1: older half brother. I was just talking my brothers. I
Speaker 1: have an older half brother and he was he guided
Speaker 1: out for many years out of s s part Colorado.
Speaker 1: And remember it must have been the early eighties they
Speaker 1: were messing around with they were taking uh, diaphragm calls
Speaker 1: made for turkey. There was no elk one taking diaphragm
Speaker 1: calls made for turkeys and taking PVC um black plastic,
Speaker 1: you know, vacuum hoses or anything they can get blowing
Speaker 1: out bugles and back then, hearing about it back then,
Speaker 1: it just worked, dude. It was like the it's just
Speaker 1: like it was like the cutting edge. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, my my grandma, my grandpa passed away now,
Speaker 1: but my grandma she shows me the like the old
Speaker 1: uh like straws, the hard hard plastic straws that you
Speaker 1: can kind of coil up and if you blow through
Speaker 1: those you can get that kind of the high pitch.
Speaker 1: My granph used to locate bowls, you know, back with those.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's just kind of funny the progression,
Speaker 1: you know, anything that these guys could get their hands
Speaker 1: on to give them the edge. And you know, and
Speaker 1: then it went to you know, going to find your
Speaker 1: shot back and still in the hose and chopping it up,
Speaker 1: and then you know we're talking earlier with the honest
Speaker 1: you know. Now it's a blast, a black plastic bat.
Speaker 1: You know. People are a lot of guys use those.
Speaker 1: They just chop them up and drill holes in him,
Speaker 1: using them for their bagle tubes. The first bull elk
Speaker 1: I ever maybe you never saw and then proceeded to kill,
Speaker 1: didn't find him, but killed him. And that bull was
Speaker 1: bugled in, but he was bugled in with a PBC
Speaker 1: tube like a three footer. No mouth call at all. No, no,
Speaker 1: he had a mouth call, but he blew it through
Speaker 1: a PBC tube, you know, And that was in two thousand.
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing the way the animals adapt, you know,
Speaker 1: where they hear sounds and sounds get old in their
Speaker 1: community and then they associate those sounds of the man.
Speaker 1: Do you think like you got elk turn it up?
Speaker 1: That's so much of turkeys, but you got elk turn
Speaker 1: it out that are in their twenties, dude, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of experience, a lot of Have you found that
Speaker 1: to be true here in Washington and calling it elk?
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean there's there's a huge difference between
Speaker 1: calling elk within a mile of the road versus calling
Speaker 1: elk fifteen miles in a um, you know, walking a
Speaker 1: lot of our industry, real timber lands out there are
Speaker 1: walking access only. And you know, there's a big misnomer
Speaker 1: that Roosevelts don't bogle here here from you know, locals
Speaker 1: around here or people that have hunted both places. I
Speaker 1: rose about bulls don't bogle at all. I'm like, well
Speaker 1: I can if I wasn't gonna if I show you
Speaker 1: my honey hole, I would prove you wrong, or you know,
Speaker 1: watch my video that we put together. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean Roosevelt bulls, there is a difference in my opinion
Speaker 1: and her dynamics. You know, some of those Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: bulls have a lot of more mature satellite bowls, you know,
Speaker 1: that are kind of pestering the herd, and so that
Speaker 1: that does naturally bring out more buglin. But it's not
Speaker 1: un normal to go out in the morning here and here,
Speaker 1: you know, ten different bulls and a canyon boglin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so yeah, you talk about in the rainforest, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you're not here in three mile away bowls. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and the same thing, you know, pressure
Speaker 1: oak you know here and stuff getting a custom and learning.
Speaker 1: Um I killed a bull in two thousand eleven and
Speaker 1: um in a Christmas tree patch. Basically, we're replanning probably
Speaker 1: ten years and we've been hunting this canyon all day,
Speaker 1: roads around it, you know, biggling from the roads or
Speaker 1: walking out finger ridges and biggling nothing all day. I
Speaker 1: sat without bull, um, you know, as my buddy went
Speaker 1: to get help in our bike carts. We were on
Speaker 1: a biking area. Who's gonna push both of our bikes up?
Speaker 1: And as I sat without bull, the canyon just lit up.
Speaker 1: You know, probably by time we were done, you know,
Speaker 1: eight to ten different bulls that canyon. We've been biggling
Speaker 1: and hunting that thing all day, but there's roads around it.
Speaker 1: But you know it's that is you know, sun went
Speaker 1: down and those bulls just lit up, and so it's
Speaker 1: like they've been there the whole stinking day. It's just
Speaker 1: so much pressure. If they've heard people bogle from every
Speaker 1: point along that road, they just right, we're gonna answer anything.
Speaker 1: So let's back up though, because when you started making that,
Speaker 1: you started making your cow call, why would people even
Speaker 1: buy it from you? Like? What would you because you're
Speaker 1: just saying like yes, I make a call. You don't
Speaker 1: have any way to show to share what it sounded like. No,
Speaker 1: I mean we we did, you know, a small video
Speaker 1: production that I was back in oh seven. We did
Speaker 1: me and my buddies, you know, primetime outdoors, four of
Speaker 1: us over the shoulder camera action. So we did have
Speaker 1: some um you know video. We went out and did
Speaker 1: like a two minute little you know YouTube video of
Speaker 1: this is what the call sounds like, you know, so
Speaker 1: that helped a little bit. Um. But I was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough in two thousand and nine to kill a muzzloader
Speaker 1: bowl on on film, um out out there in my
Speaker 1: neck of the woods, and that helps all the call.
Speaker 1: And then you know, it was funny though you called
Speaker 1: that bull in. Yeah, I actually called him in twice.
Speaker 1: UM called him in kind of going through the timber.
Speaker 1: He got to about forty yards and realized something and
Speaker 1: then all the all the elkwares single filing muzzloader. Well
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a bad musket cap
Speaker 1: or what, but pal drive, you know, it just the
Speaker 1: cap went off and nothing. So we backed out and
Speaker 1: actually called they ran around, but it was we were
Speaker 1: in a salal patches the jungle patch and we actually
Speaker 1: went back eight lunch for forty five minutes, circled the
Speaker 1: next little finger ridge over and I called him and
Speaker 1: another bowl back in, just using that easy estris and
Speaker 1: I killed the one bowl, and um, you know, so
Speaker 1: that we had that video to share, and you know,
Speaker 1: the it was kind of yeah, it was kind of
Speaker 1: cool that, you know, call a bull and scare the
Speaker 1: heck out of it and then turn around and call
Speaker 1: that bull back in kind of like what are the
Speaker 1: chances there's two dudes? Yeah, I got kind of post rets,
Speaker 1: you know, so it worked. Help so the call and
Speaker 1: then you're not fast forward and too much. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, I had killed a really big bowl
Speaker 1: here in Washington, and it was funny I had already
Speaker 1: had the diaphragms out. I was tinkering with, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of completing the line. And then as soon as
Speaker 1: I killed that bowls like, oh, these calls must be
Speaker 1: even better. You know. It's like, no, they were the
Speaker 1: same calls before I left that arrow ago, and they
Speaker 1: were the same calls after I left that, but now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they were better calls, you know,
Speaker 1: And that was really and then that was kind of um,
Speaker 1: you know, social media kind of it was all just
Speaker 1: timing was perfect and that's kind of helped me, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of pool So yet it was definitely starting out
Speaker 1: in the ELK world. Yeah, yeah, definitely, And you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a business decision, whether it was more of
Speaker 1: my true passion. But um, you know, some of these
Speaker 1: other call markets are so flooded, you know, like Turkey call.
Speaker 1: What how can I differentiate myself from anybody else in
Speaker 1: the Turkey world, you know, because there's a thousand Turkey more,
Speaker 1: there's a thousand plus Turkey call manufacturers. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at ELK and there's four or five and
Speaker 1: that's what I was best at. And so I you know,
Speaker 1: that was like let's let's focus on that and then
Speaker 1: we'll expand the predator line in Turkey line down the road. UM.
Speaker 1: So you don't mess around white tail stuff. Then no,
Speaker 1: I've got some you know, production type stuff. I really
Speaker 1: get a lot of requests you know on this side
Speaker 1: of the state for black tail and meal deer calls. Um,
Speaker 1: you know one and I was fortunate enough to um
Speaker 1: do a lot of um listening. Um. You know, our
Speaker 1: state allows bait hunting and I went over and hunted
Speaker 1: with my buddy on the east side, and you know,
Speaker 1: so we had a lot of We literally sat in
Speaker 1: a ground line and didn't have more than two minutes
Speaker 1: without a group of deer in front of us, you know,
Speaker 1: in bucks running, you know, and and running and call
Speaker 1: one and you know, coming in and out. We could
Speaker 1: hear him approaching from behind us and from the side.
Speaker 1: You really got to take a listening species deer. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, that at least the bucks we were
Speaker 1: listening to are so quiet and deep. I'm like, I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm having a heck of a time replicating that. And
Speaker 1: you mean like grunting does, yeah, or grunting but you
Speaker 1: know grunting bucks chasing does, and like it's such a
Speaker 1: deep sound compared to what you hear all the white
Speaker 1: or white tail calls make. And so I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can replicate that. You know,
Speaker 1: I could with the calls that I had, but it
Speaker 1: was pretty rough. So do you make a black tail
Speaker 1: like a like a fond blye or deer call? Yeah,
Speaker 1: um that call or the my close read predator um
Speaker 1: is tuned for fond distress um zapp that once do
Speaker 1: you do like a bear kind of deal like that,
Speaker 1: like the sick of black tail guys use you like similar, Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of that. Yeah, you know, but this this
Speaker 1: call that brings that brings the dose in. Just got
Speaker 1: probably ten those that are in my yard, all your
Speaker 1: black tails, and I will when they you know, here
Speaker 1: in April or May, when you know, June, whenever the
Speaker 1: fall and start dropping, I'll go out and mess with them.
Speaker 1: I'll go to the corner of my house and blow.
Speaker 1: I mean you can just you have dose, like literally
Speaker 1: criss crossing your yard, running around the corner and just
Speaker 1: going nuts. Yeah, there's a couple of there's a couple
Speaker 1: of calling things that just make you wish all calls
Speaker 1: her that way and they're calling avelina and then blowing
Speaker 1: one of those at a black tailed dough. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, even when you stand up, she
Speaker 1: still is like, Okay, I see a dude, but there's
Speaker 1: a fawn here somewhere in distress. Yeah, I bet you
Speaker 1: more than fifty percent of the time, even when I
Speaker 1: kind of pop out of the corner, she stands here
Speaker 1: and looks at me and still just stomping and bowing
Speaker 1: like I'm hey, you know here, I'm I'm a guy,
Speaker 1: you know, go back to your falling or whatever. Don't
Speaker 1: get to uh you know, asked a couple, Uh, I
Speaker 1: mean the honest for I asked a couple this fall
Speaker 1: just to just kind of watching because like they're so convinced,
Speaker 1: you know, running down the mountain, you know, snort and
Speaker 1: a is stopping their feet leaving coming back. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just like you feel like you got an animal
Speaker 1: on a tether. You know. It's just not a feeling
Speaker 1: you get all the time long game calls. I've watched
Speaker 1: them hunts up there on you know, shick a blacktail
Speaker 1: and during the rut they'll do it, and the does
Speaker 1: will come around with a lot of times those bucks
Speaker 1: are like still chasing him, and that looks like a kick.
Speaker 1: That's what a buddy mine says. He thinks that. He's
Speaker 1: like when I call it buck in, He's like, they
Speaker 1: just know they're going toward deer activity. And he was
Speaker 1: saying too that when you get that dough in there
Speaker 1: stopping around raising holy hell, during the rut, he's like,
Speaker 1: just hold her there, Bucks show because the bucks gonna show.
Speaker 1: Because he hears her messing around. You know he's gonna
Speaker 1: show up. Now, He's not coming to the rescue. You know,
Speaker 1: he's not like coming to like he's not coming to
Speaker 1: help with fun. He's like, oh, yeah, something's dying, but
Speaker 1: there might be a do over there looking that doing
Speaker 1: he still so now it's just you know, the whole
Speaker 1: game call thing. I don't know if it's a god
Speaker 1: complex or what, but you know, being able to have
Speaker 1: control over chure is always just I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's been my passion, Like, man, I can I'm literally
Speaker 1: like the steering wheel to this, you know, a thousand
Speaker 1: pound bowl, you know, elk or I'm the steering wheel
Speaker 1: to this, you know, twenty pound black butter ball. You know,
Speaker 1: I basically controlling nature at this point, you know, and
Speaker 1: and ful them. And so that's always been kind of
Speaker 1: that allure and what's drove me to, you know, develop
Speaker 1: all these calls and like you know, have whether it's
Speaker 1: a I feel like I have a small part. You know,
Speaker 1: you get the pictures, and it's pretty rewarding to say,
Speaker 1: you know, you know your calls were part of this,
Speaker 1: even though I say a lot of times like it's
Speaker 1: a carpenter. It's not the hammer, you know, Like, don't
Speaker 1: give me the credit. You're the one running the calls,
Speaker 1: making the right decisions. But it's cool to just feel
Speaker 1: like you have a little bit of, you know, a
Speaker 1: part in that success. When we're down, we're down in oblivion.
Speaker 1: We're out in the jungle with you know, just like
Speaker 1: like indigenous South Americans. And they would go and suck
Speaker 1: on their hand to make a monkey noise. Remember that.
Speaker 1: They would take a blade of grass to do a
Speaker 1: tape here, whistle what other kind of stuff they do.
Speaker 1: They would make a lot of noises. They've under that
Speaker 1: big date tree. He's sucking on his hand, make a
Speaker 1: look nose, remember him doing that the night I got
Speaker 1: to go out. Oh no, no, no, no no, I forgot
Speaker 1: hey there that night camera guys every night. So yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they would go there under this tree, and they knew
Speaker 1: there's monkeys up in the tree, and they were just going,
Speaker 1: you know. And then later they're taking grass and making
Speaker 1: a whistle, and I couldn't ask them. Later I was
Speaker 1: able to ascertain that there the tape here'll make a
Speaker 1: whistle like that, you know. So they're just out like
Speaker 1: doing game calls. The native materials, you know. You know
Speaker 1: it's you know, people always have been doing it for
Speaker 1: a long, long long time. Man. That's like my favorite
Speaker 1: turkey locator, you know, just the old alcohol with your hands.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just some rewarding about just being able
Speaker 1: to replicated with nothing more than your hands, a barred
Speaker 1: alcohol and get that turkey to snap back. And that's
Speaker 1: that's a I'm glad you brought it up because this
Speaker 1: is something that we've debated and argued about for a
Speaker 1: long time. I'm curious to get perspective on it. We'd
Speaker 1: go out and we were like going out in the
Speaker 1: pre you know, in the dark hour and a half
Speaker 1: for a daylight to to locate a turkey. And it
Speaker 1: was like ship you know, and someone like slam a
Speaker 1: car door. It's like I gave up eventually, I know
Speaker 1: that like owls and all that. But we would go
Speaker 1: out and just make noise. Now I take a predator
Speaker 1: call and I don't even try to like, I don't
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, these turkeys are wise, so this needs
Speaker 1: to sound like something killing the fawn, you know. I
Speaker 1: just go out and make the most hilacious sound, the
Speaker 1: most abrupt, hilacious sound I can make on that call
Speaker 1: to shot gobble. One day, I mean, we were laying
Speaker 1: there hunting turkeys and we couldn't find anything where you know,
Speaker 1: got the peacock thing. It's like, how many turkeys have
Speaker 1: heard of peacock? Right? But they gobblet got a peacock thing.
Speaker 1: We've got a coyote thing. All this stuff, nothing's god.
Speaker 1: But one day my brother matches like it's time as
Speaker 1: long as stops, yea, Like, I just don't know what
Speaker 1: they really like. I don't know if it matters that much.
Speaker 1: I don't either. You're shocking them up with and I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're thinking when he yells hey and
Speaker 1: he gobbles, I don't think that turkeys and saying I
Speaker 1: better relieve now because that was a man he was
Speaker 1: just yea responding back basically, Yeah, just I we you know,
Speaker 1: we've our experiences all of Washington turkey hunting. But there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for locating at night. You know,
Speaker 1: we got that. I call it the thirty minute window
Speaker 1: from about ten minutes before you know, dusk and twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after. Yeah, if they if they're gonna gobble, that's
Speaker 1: what kyot. How for some reason will locate, you know,
Speaker 1: for us over there locates everything at night. But then
Speaker 1: you're like, you're just saying we have always been hesitant
Speaker 1: to use it during the day because now it's like,
Speaker 1: well do they want to come run into Kyote? You know,
Speaker 1: so you're trying to like process this so much. I
Speaker 1: think I don't know how much they think about way off,
Speaker 1: way off sounds because I've watched them. Uh, if he
Speaker 1: was a seventy five yards though, just happen to be
Speaker 1: a huge difference. If you give him some credit, if
Speaker 1: they don't live that long, you know, the three old
Speaker 1: turkeys old turkey, give him some credit. He's definitely watch
Speaker 1: other turkeys bite the dust at the hands of Kyle.
Speaker 1: So if you think about how like turkeys are born
Speaker 1: to die right of nests roughly nests to get laid
Speaker 1: are destroyed before they hatch. Sev of the turkeys that
Speaker 1: hatch are dead was in their first year. Se of
Speaker 1: the ones that are not are dead within the next year.
Speaker 1: Sevent of those are dead within the next year. That's
Speaker 1: why when people find like a big, you know, a
Speaker 1: three year old bird, it's like he's a survivor man.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, and they'll drop multiple clutches,
Speaker 1: but I mean they just die all times. It's like
Speaker 1: turkeys are constantly dying all over the place. You have
Speaker 1: to think that if you're an area that has significant
Speaker 1: numbers of kyote, to the turkey in his one or
Speaker 1: two years on earth is gonna be like, that's not
Speaker 1: a good sound. Dude like that. I can tell you.
Speaker 1: The dude yelling, I don't know what that is, but
Speaker 1: that's I think it's gonna But yeah, so I hear
Speaker 1: all that, and I do like the natural noise because
Speaker 1: when you're out in the woods, you do want to
Speaker 1: be discreet, you know, and so running around screaming and
Speaker 1: blowing honky car horns, it's just like it's just an
Speaker 1: unnecessary thing, just naturally. I have heard turkeys shot gobble
Speaker 1: crows in real life. You know. I've heard turkey shot
Speaker 1: gobble thunder in real life. I've heard him many times
Speaker 1: shot gobble redtail hawks where I see the hawk here,
Speaker 1: the turkey, dogs, barking, coyotes, yipping, jets flying over, walking
Speaker 1: geese flying over. Yeah, yeah, a lot of times that that,
Speaker 1: don't you know? You get the whatever that that noise
Speaker 1: it rolls off every once in a while off the
Speaker 1: jet and bam, all right, we don't have to make
Speaker 1: a noise. That was easy to get that one started,
Speaker 1: you know. And yeah, I just think it's like he's
Speaker 1: just out there making racket. But yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: would never yell. If you if you yell a turkey
Speaker 1: seventy five yards away and do that, hey, I think
Speaker 1: he's gonna haul us out of there. But the way
Speaker 1: off noises, I don't know if they're processing it. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think so either. We've we we've always been
Speaker 1: careful in the morning, you know, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times will locate at night and then try to get
Speaker 1: where we think, you know, hundred yards within that tree
Speaker 1: for the morning. You know, if nothing else is exciting,
Speaker 1: because it's thinking things, gonna gobbill fifty times on the tree,
Speaker 1: it flies down. But yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll kill him later.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we usually you know, that's our morning is
Speaker 1: usually silent, just kind of enjoying the sunrise, enjoying all
Speaker 1: the sounds. And uh yeah, we used to get out
Speaker 1: there and think that, uh you know, like because everyone like, yeah,
Speaker 1: call him off the ruse, calm off the ruse. You
Speaker 1: know'd be like eight thirty in the morning, be like,
Speaker 1: damn it. Yeah. The other way I would just sleep
Speaker 1: till now and get and get him at ten level.
Speaker 1: Taking me ten years to even realize that now. And
Speaker 1: maybe people have been saying it and I just wasn't listening.
Speaker 1: But you should really never call at a turkey that's
Speaker 1: in a tree. You should never call it one in
Speaker 1: a tree. You should always let him hit the ground.
Speaker 1: Just wait. Never Yeah, especially when you hear him up
Speaker 1: there and you got all these hands going up. Now,
Speaker 1: I've done it, and I've you know, I've no people
Speaker 1: have done it, and I've seen it done. But it's
Speaker 1: just yeah, late morning. Many spirit like just don't even
Speaker 1: mess with them. But your whole life you brought up
Speaker 1: like Yetta, be out there hunting at dawn and it
Speaker 1: does happen, and then it feels good it happens. But
Speaker 1: if you're gonna give me, if I had to pick
Speaker 1: two hours, if someone, if I had to be like
Speaker 1: I could only turkey hunt two hours a day, I
Speaker 1: don't have from eleven to one. I'd probably pick ten
Speaker 1: to noon. And some of the best turkey hunters I
Speaker 1: know public, you know, not not your private land guys.
Speaker 1: But some of your public land guys here, they won't.
Speaker 1: They sleep in the late breakfast in camp and they
Speaker 1: and go. They don't even start their turkey out until nine.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, let you know, and then just
Speaker 1: the natural process of the hens going to lay, you know,
Speaker 1: breaking up the floor. It just all makes sense, you know.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's just part of you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to be part of that cool experience at sunrise
Speaker 1: and you know, turkey's gobbling a ton in the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I necessarily want to miss out
Speaker 1: on that, but some of these old timers are like, you,
Speaker 1: young bucks can go chase these turkeys around in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'll go out there at nine and kill him, or
Speaker 1: ten o'clock and kill him. Yes, because if I hear
Speaker 1: a guy will the more like pre dawn darkness, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say, like, man, we're gonna get this turkey. But
Speaker 1: if you're out it's like leven, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of sunny out getting warm, we get ready for nap.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, we have, we have we You're like, dude,
Speaker 1: we're gonna kill that turkey. Yeah, start the oven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just know, it's like that dude is gonna play
Speaker 1: ball the same without you know, not to switch gears completely.
Speaker 1: But I say, that's why it's almost a merror image
Speaker 1: to me. Um, it's like, man, you get that help
Speaker 1: to answer at ten or eleven or noon, and it's bad.
Speaker 1: It's like that's a you know, that's a killer boiling
Speaker 1: the same same thing. It's just some reasons, like us
Speaker 1: things board in the middle of there, someonell keep me entertained,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we've had great success turkeys, And later I
Speaker 1: thought about it, but I can see it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's probably more likely to play he's had just one
Speaker 1: of like one of a thousand alcohol making racket in
Speaker 1: the first five minutes of the daytime. Yeah, at ten am,
Speaker 1: he's probably not traveling like he is at six am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's in my opinion. You know, there's probably people that
Speaker 1: could you know, argue, but family, Yeah, they always but
Speaker 1: you know, we've always had great success or at least
Speaker 1: at least have an opportunity if we hear that boy,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between ten and one, if he does
Speaker 1: bigle be you know, usually getting close and at least
Speaker 1: have an opportunity or get to see him or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, once you got out of doing the asterisk, uh,
Speaker 1: not got out of but you made the easy asters.
Speaker 1: What was the next call you added to your line
Speaker 1: is that when you got a diaphram um, we bought
Speaker 1: the presses Um. You have one one press that uh
Speaker 1: you know, basically presses down the aluminum frame. We stretch
Speaker 1: the latex out. It's all on a micrometer, you know,
Speaker 1: so I can tell within ten thousands of it. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tear this call apart just so you can.
Speaker 1: That's what I don't tear that. Okay, There's there's an
Speaker 1: aluminum frame under here, and it starts out as an oval.
Speaker 1: It's open. I bend it and then it cramps it
Speaker 1: on both sides. So I'll crimp this side first, So
Speaker 1: this side and then I'll stretch this side underneath, stretch
Speaker 1: my hand. It's all on a press. It's on a
Speaker 1: press when you're pulling the late Yeah, it's all by
Speaker 1: feel and by hand. And that's really the art and it.
Speaker 1: You know, when I first got this thing, I about
Speaker 1: quit diaphragms. I probably threw a thousand of them away,
Speaker 1: like I'm never gonna get this and it truly was
Speaker 1: like there was there's tricks to it, and I was frustrated,
Speaker 1: like something handed me a Rubi's cube, Like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not ever going to get right tension right or the
Speaker 1: cuts right, or you know, there's side tension, there's back tension,
Speaker 1: there's you know, tension forty five. There's all different kinds
Speaker 1: of stretches you can put into these things, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't um, you know, master turkey calls and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fend the turkey call makers are easier to make the
Speaker 1: elk calls. There's a lot more, in my opinion, finesse
Speaker 1: to get these things to to react right. So that
Speaker 1: was my next venture is you know, being a die.
Speaker 1: At this time, I had been hunting archery oak for
Speaker 1: eight years and new, uh, you know, all serious elk
Speaker 1: hunters want diaphragms, they want to be hands free, they
Speaker 1: want to be able to you know, bhgle calcoll all
Speaker 1: from the same call. So that was my next rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I started running down um and in the in between,
Speaker 1: I have these are all you know what I call
Speaker 1: my medium now, which is what of the guys order,
Speaker 1: what fit the guys. But before that, I had a
Speaker 1: youth in a large and I knew at the time
Speaker 1: I was trying to market these things. They weren't the
Speaker 1: best for everybody, but I was trying to either fit
Speaker 1: them in one or the other. And finally I had,
Speaker 1: you know, did well enough that I developed my you know,
Speaker 1: my own frame, this medium frame. Um. My wife worked
Speaker 1: for Northodonist. You know, they make lots of molds and
Speaker 1: people's mouth. I was like, hey, let's start making take
Speaker 1: some measurements off of pallet inside pallets. I want to know,
Speaker 1: I want to get this average figured out, you know.
Speaker 1: And so we kind of you know, dialed in there
Speaker 1: and came up with the size that was gonna work.
Speaker 1: So what is the average pallet we southern Washington? Two inches? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's don't tell us, yeah no, no, no, you po
Speaker 1: me on the spot. I'm like, no, it's something easy,
Speaker 1: something you know, anybody could buy him in measure room.
Speaker 1: It's um that's a good idea though, man, So uh,
Speaker 1: hit a couple of notes on the on your diaphragm.
Speaker 1: This is this is yeah, yeah, this is you know
Speaker 1: my you didn't bring an ELK one, I can use
Speaker 1: the double. Um, it's not gonna sound the greatest. I
Speaker 1: didn't bring any ELK calls up, um, but this is
Speaker 1: pretty tight double It's similar to EI. This would be
Speaker 1: more of a bugle read. But so let me ask
Speaker 1: this first. Is an ELK call. Is the latex tighter
Speaker 1: or looser than a turkey? Um? A little bit looser, um,
Speaker 1: and usually not as many layers. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of turkey calls in that being doubles or triples just
Speaker 1: so they can kind of stand that, you know, hard cutting. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of my ELK calls are like one of
Speaker 1: what I call one and a half read or or
Speaker 1: a double read. And do you do you sell more
Speaker 1: diaphragms or more? Um? I sell, you know, just for
Speaker 1: pure quantity, more diaphragms. Yeah, but you know, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the easy ESTR sells really well too. And
Speaker 1: it's it's priced a lot higher, so you know, it's
Speaker 1: all and the Beagle tubes. Actually, if I could keep
Speaker 1: the stinking things in stock and the manufacturer can keep up, um,
Speaker 1: I probably sell the most bagle tubes. Um. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: easy astras as long as you don't lose it, I
Speaker 1: mean you could, this thing will work ten years, right,
Speaker 1: just replaced the castration man. Yeah, I mean yeah, this
Speaker 1: latex isn't really protected from UVA or that latex. It's
Speaker 1: in that castration band. Castraight ban that's what that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you go to the farm store, I buy you know,
Speaker 1: tail docking slash castration bands and your ship. That's what
Speaker 1: that is. That's a lot of guys will call me
Speaker 1: up and say, hey, will you shipp me one? I'll
Speaker 1: pay for shipping. I was like, it's cheaper if you've
Speaker 1: got a farm store. Just wrap that around my nuts. Man,
Speaker 1: I could have brought the tool for you. No. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but all calls are stretched a lot looser, um, you know,
Speaker 1: not quite as much latex, and they're a lot easier
Speaker 1: to blow. This is this is a double It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a little bit hard to control as a note call,
Speaker 1: but I could make it work, especially for a bugle.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not it's not perfect. It's not perfect
Speaker 1: by any means. I Um, my competition calls that I
Speaker 1: used are all like one and a half reads, or
Speaker 1: if I was out hunting, I would use it one
Speaker 1: and a half read to do all the locating and stuff,
Speaker 1: and just a lot easier for me to operate and
Speaker 1: that's that fills forign in my mouth even trying to
Speaker 1: be you go on it. But so when when you're
Speaker 1: blowing on diaphragms, what are you mostly doing with your
Speaker 1: hand when I put my Let's talk about turkeys first,
Speaker 1: Like what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying
Speaker 1: to achieve that that you're sounding like a bird, like
Speaker 1: a ventriloquist like thing. Are you trying to actually affect
Speaker 1: the sound? Yeah, by by using your hand that you know,
Speaker 1: use it on one side or the other. It's it's
Speaker 1: causing some sort of deflection off of your hand. You
Speaker 1: know that sound's gonna hit your hand and bounce back,
Speaker 1: and so you're really kind of adding that rich tone
Speaker 1: and some reflection in that call. Um. I was a
Speaker 1: nerd when I first started this with our cameras, and
Speaker 1: I would go set up fift yards away and do
Speaker 1: it with my hand and without with my hand with without,
Speaker 1: and you could hear a deaf and difference in the tone. Um.
Speaker 1: By just having the hand better, it's just richer, you
Speaker 1: get some bounce back, you kind of break the call up. Um.
Speaker 1: If I'm on top of a high ridge, I won't
Speaker 1: put my hand because I want that. I don't want
Speaker 1: anything to block, you know, that sound. If I'm trying
Speaker 1: to locate, um, you'll just that rip and and don't
Speaker 1: use my hand. But you know, typically I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You just got your hand in there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But sometimes when I'm watching guys, dude, I'm like, that
Speaker 1: can't all make sense. I feel like it's just like
Speaker 1: a thing where you feel like you need to be
Speaker 1: doing something with your hands. I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do with my hands. You know, ELK call, and especially
Speaker 1: when I do, you know, cow calls, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you always got your hand kind of cupped. Um, I
Speaker 1: ventured down. I had another external ELK call for a while,
Speaker 1: called the Director, and that call really opened up. When
Speaker 1: I designed it, I didn't realize what my you know,
Speaker 1: I designed the tone board, then designed the barrel afterwards
Speaker 1: to get that right sound. That barrel ended up being
Speaker 1: less than an inch long, and it absolutely changes a
Speaker 1: sound whether you put your hand over it and you're
Speaker 1: leaving it open, if you put your hand over the
Speaker 1: end of that barrel and blow, versus if you leave
Speaker 1: your hand open like that, you know, if you open
Speaker 1: your hand up completely change the call and completely change
Speaker 1: the characters characteristics of the call um, you know, So
Speaker 1: not so much with the easy esterros. You can cut it,
Speaker 1: you can tighten it, it it doesn't affect as much. But
Speaker 1: on that call um specifically, it made a big difference, um,
Speaker 1: you know, by by reflecting some of that sound. So
Speaker 1: how many different diaphragm elk calls do you make on online?
Speaker 1: I make? Uh, I usually make six different turkey diaphragms. Um,
Speaker 1: I've kind of six. Yeah, I've expanded to two more.
Speaker 1: So I've got eight total, just different cuts or different
Speaker 1: different cuts. And then on the elks side. And when
Speaker 1: we say cut, like, explain just because I wish that
Speaker 1: we could that everybody can see one of these things
Speaker 1: landing from us. But most guys know what a diaphragm
Speaker 1: call its like. But explain what what do you mean
Speaker 1: by a cut? Okay? So on a turkey diaphragm we've got,
Speaker 1: you know, typically three will say three pieces of latex
Speaker 1: um in order. The top reads usually the furthest out um,
Speaker 1: you know, the read under that's set back just a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then the third read set back a
Speaker 1: little bit more. That top read um. We we typically
Speaker 1: put some sort of a cut in it. And what
Speaker 1: that does is by letting that little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: since we put the top read out the farthest, we
Speaker 1: leave them of that read hanging over um that second read.
Speaker 1: So the second reads actually you're calling read and then
Speaker 1: that top reads actually um introducing some rasp to the call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like when you saw about his cut. It's like
Speaker 1: you got like a little V shaped piece of latex
Speaker 1: which is vibrating. Yeah yeah, I mean so it's flat.
Speaker 1: It's like like management as you blow air cross and
Speaker 1: it's like flapping in the wind, but at a very
Speaker 1: very high frequency. And we can you know, I played
Speaker 1: with us a ton of how however, big a chunk
Speaker 1: you know, like this is uh, nobody can see what
Speaker 1: this is. A ghost cut. Industry could refers to this
Speaker 1: as a ghost cut. The center's cut out of it.
Speaker 1: And you know there there's all different kinds of cut um.
Speaker 1: You know, the split, split wire, the split v um
Speaker 1: is a typical cut. We've got the bat wing cut. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the split is usually a really raspy call.
Speaker 1: Because you have so much material. We didn't take any
Speaker 1: material out, you know, so you left all of that
Speaker 1: material overhanging the second read. Um, now what I found,
Speaker 1: you know, with the cuts, I found that calling turkeys,
Speaker 1: I like a key key so like that I don't
Speaker 1: want to cut or I don't want a big cut,
Speaker 1: like yeah yeah yeah, so I certain calls it better
Speaker 1: me with it. That's the thing is that every just
Speaker 1: got to pick them up and mess with him. I
Speaker 1: don't think you can really anticipate. Nope, what's gonna work
Speaker 1: for people? Yeah, that's that's a hard part. You know.
Speaker 1: Some guys come in with a what I consider kind
Speaker 1: of like a shoe string budget. You give me your
Speaker 1: best two calls. I'm like, you just put me in
Speaker 1: a hard spot, you know, to decide for you, because
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to be the best two
Speaker 1: calls for you. I can recommend based on what you
Speaker 1: know feedback. I've gotten stuff. Um, you know you get
Speaker 1: for a single diaphragm seven to eight bucks. I'm still
Speaker 1: fairly low, but you know, I think turkey diaphragm is
Speaker 1: a six pack cells for like thirty five bucks. You know,
Speaker 1: so we're we're under you know, six bucks of diaphragm,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty good deal. You make all these
Speaker 1: all of them, I said, I can make anywhere from
Speaker 1: If they're a single read call, I can make fifty
Speaker 1: of them an hour, and if some of these triple
Speaker 1: reads and stuff, I'm probably at thirty of them an hour.
Speaker 1: The whole process. Yeah, I mean, but it's it's doubt
Speaker 1: You're efficiency definitely, UM depends on doing one call, the
Speaker 1: same cut, the same stacking, you know, because I gotta
Speaker 1: lay all these super sharp um um seamstress scissors. Basically
Speaker 1: everyone's hand cut stretch it. Yeah, and some of these
Speaker 1: the latex is like a pain, you know, like you
Speaker 1: know that one you basically cut on the ghost cut.
Speaker 1: You make the two cuts and then you grab that
Speaker 1: piece of latex and pull it in. It rips. Well,
Speaker 1: you can see sometimes it doesn't, and so you know,
Speaker 1: like this calls the ghost cut specifically, that's my cast
Speaker 1: per tricky call. It's got like a uh throw away
Speaker 1: because the cut doesn't turn out right. So you make
Speaker 1: if I if I know I have fifty to make
Speaker 1: for an order, I'll make seventy because I know I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ruin twenty of It's kind of a just you know,
Speaker 1: part of the part of the deal and the larger manufacturers.
Speaker 1: Uh do they have it figured out where they're doing
Speaker 1: it completely automated? No, this as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: there are some you know, big companies that make calls
Speaker 1: for other companies. Basically, you know, they come up with
Speaker 1: their specs and then somebody's sitting there spitting them out
Speaker 1: all day. But I think, uh, there was one of
Speaker 1: the larger call companies tried to go overseas and basically
Speaker 1: stretch out you know, ten yards of latex at a time,
Speaker 1: and they didn't and then you know, have a press
Speaker 1: come down and hit two hundred of them at a time.
Speaker 1: It didn't work because as everything hit at a different time,
Speaker 1: you were getting variations in the stretch and it just
Speaker 1: didn't work out. I think, to my understanding, everybody's making
Speaker 1: diaphragm calls, has somebody or a group of somebody's sitting
Speaker 1: down hand pressing all of these. So what makes a
Speaker 1: good one with everybody making them? What made well? How
Speaker 1: do you differentiate a good one from a shitty one? Consistency?
Speaker 1: If I in my opinion, and and you know anybody
Speaker 1: can hold the hold me to this. If you buy
Speaker 1: my cast per turkey call, if you buy my rip
Speaker 1: and red Turkey call in the order A hundred of them,
Speaker 1: all hundred of those. I expect to be the same
Speaker 1: um with me making the call. And this is right now.
Speaker 1: I'm able to keep up. But say I'm paying you
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars an hour to sit at the press, I
Speaker 1: can only make it like four hours and my back
Speaker 1: starts cramping up, my shoulders hurt. Now say I'm paying
Speaker 1: you fifteen dollars, you don't, Or if you're getting paid
Speaker 1: piece work, you don't care if this one's off by
Speaker 1: ten thousands or you didn't stretch it. You know you're
Speaker 1: stamping him and throwing him in the pile because you're
Speaker 1: getting paid. I'm not saying everybody does that, but I have,
Speaker 1: you know, control over my name is going on the call.
Speaker 1: I have some pride in this. If I if I
Speaker 1: fold a piece of latex, or if I miss a
Speaker 1: cramp or something's wrong, I'll toss in the garbage. It's
Speaker 1: not worth it, you know, for me to put my
Speaker 1: name on that um, and that's there isn't uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a call maker, and I don't want to discredit
Speaker 1: other call makers, but really, when it boils down to it,
Speaker 1: it's somebody stretching latex and putting tape on it. It's
Speaker 1: not rocket science, you know, so to so to speak,
Speaker 1: and um uh that's the only that's what. There's stretch,
Speaker 1: there's there's art and um you know, because there is
Speaker 1: no dial indicators on some of these stretches, so it
Speaker 1: really is by feel. Um. But I ask you about that.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you can use to press against
Speaker 1: that late texas see how much rebound it has? Or
Speaker 1: you could probably come up with the gage, but then
Speaker 1: you've got to try to hook like an alligator clip
Speaker 1: to the back and then somehow, you know, on a
Speaker 1: fine scale, measure the you know, the pound edge or
Speaker 1: the um you know, whether you probably measure an ounces
Speaker 1: of pool. I don't even know how you measure that.
Speaker 1: So we do have a I have a dial indicator
Speaker 1: on the one stretch, but it still matters on how
Speaker 1: much stretch I put on the the opposite side. So
Speaker 1: everything truly is by field. Um. Yeah. I can remember
Speaker 1: when I was told that when I was having issues
Speaker 1: with diet fhragms because the same thing. It's like you
Speaker 1: have two or three and you'd be like, man, these
Speaker 1: things are money, and you'd go buy a couple more
Speaker 1: and then be like the same call, and the next
Speaker 1: two would suck, you know. And finally I talked to
Speaker 1: somebody and they were like, oh yeah, every year I
Speaker 1: started off the season with thirty of them and I
Speaker 1: have five at hunt with the other go into the trash,
Speaker 1: you know. And so it's it's cool to hear that
Speaker 1: you you know, put them. Is that when you open
Speaker 1: up a package, you're not guessing whether it's gonna work
Speaker 1: or not. Uh, you know, like when I went to
Speaker 1: here's a I went to Oregon State calling Championships three
Speaker 1: or four weeks ago, and it's kind of my little backstory.
Speaker 1: I I blew out. We had the Portland Sportsman's Expo,
Speaker 1: which is one of the largest sportsman shows west of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi here down and I had a booth there
Speaker 1: and I blew out my competition call, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's almost heartbreaking, like the one I used in Vegas.
Speaker 1: And now it's gone and I have a competition next week.
Speaker 1: And I got down there and uh, my buddy Corey,
Speaker 1: who had made a bunch of calls for um, he's
Speaker 1: gonna buy him from me. He needed some calls for
Speaker 1: the competition and I was like, Corey, I need to
Speaker 1: borrow one of those one of the Beasts, which is
Speaker 1: the name of one of my bugle calls, and you know,
Speaker 1: to pull out of the package and then turn around
Speaker 1: and use that in the competition. It is kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, my own personal testament that you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't sit and pick through a hundred or two
Speaker 1: hundred of these calls to get the perfect call. I
Speaker 1: pulled one right out of the package. That was an
Speaker 1: inventory that I had a ship to anybody, um, you know,
Speaker 1: And and that's really what I strive for. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times I'll make fifty hundred at a time
Speaker 1: and if I can't grab four or five out of there,
Speaker 1: and you know, they hit the perfect note, you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily scrapped a whole lot. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back to and inspect him, like, you know, do
Speaker 1: the do the cuts the cuts look right, do the
Speaker 1: stretches look right? And if they don't, all toss him
Speaker 1: and kind of clean that lot up. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: I think that's some of the stuff you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: get with everybody. And but you probably, but don't you
Speaker 1: wind up hitting the thing where you know, as you
Speaker 1: as you keep doing this and and find more success
Speaker 1: at it, that you're just gonna come to a crossroads.
Speaker 1: To day is coming. It's it's coming quick because your
Speaker 1: kids aren't old enough their name will be on it.
Speaker 1: People who have told me that women are better call
Speaker 1: makers on the diaphragm, you know, smaller, I got big
Speaker 1: old pause. I'm trying to get in these tight little
Speaker 1: um spaces. You know, train somebody? Do you train family?
Speaker 1: That's really been my my hang up is wanting to
Speaker 1: give give up control of the quality control, you know,
Speaker 1: the quality assurance and quality control part part of the deal.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what I'm gonna do, to be honest, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're running out of time. Of the days I
Speaker 1: didn't need to you know, still a line from my
Speaker 1: good buddy Aaron. Either sleep faster or I need thirty
Speaker 1: six hour days, one or the other. Hit. Uh. What
Speaker 1: year did you start doing at selling Turkey calls? Two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine? I started kind of development in late
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and I think I sold my
Speaker 1: first one in nine? What's your first one? What was
Speaker 1: the cut on your first one? Um? Oh? Oh, Turkey Calls?
Speaker 1: Let me. That was two thousand and eleven when I
Speaker 1: got depressed, Um, the ripping red um, they kind of
Speaker 1: all came together. I developed those six kind of originally yeah,
Speaker 1: um and it you know, you basically looked at Turkey calls.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't reinvent the wheel. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what popular cuts are out there? And so I tried
Speaker 1: to replicate the cuts. Um. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: dragon Slayer one of my oak calls. It's really similar
Speaker 1: to the Casper. We just cut the corners off, um,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of knew about where I wanted
Speaker 1: that thing. So what on the on the dragon Slayer,
Speaker 1: we just cut the corners off. So off the latex, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that adds too much rask. So on an ELK call,
Speaker 1: I wanted it cleaned up. And so there's just there's
Speaker 1: tons of plan and once you learn kind of how
Speaker 1: the latex reacts and what does what it kind of
Speaker 1: you know, and then I'll come up with a new design.
Speaker 1: And that just kind of slapped myself on the side
Speaker 1: of head. Why didn't you knew all the components to
Speaker 1: this call? Why don't you to develop this three years ago?
Speaker 1: As you know, it's my new best call or whatever.
Speaker 1: Now I've had these, uh, because I hunt a lot.
Speaker 1: Just keep it in my mouth. I mean, I'll try
Speaker 1: to bite and have it out of my mouth, but
Speaker 1: I've had to get wet and fall apart. Are is
Speaker 1: your we have? There are tape issues and a lot
Speaker 1: of us get our tapes from the same manufacturers and
Speaker 1: not saying this didn't happen with a felt it will
Speaker 1: happen with mine. You know, I try to warrante him.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily my fault. But if these things, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's water resistant tape. It's not waterproofing, so
Speaker 1: you get d I've learned to be much more careful
Speaker 1: about just having to be just like slobbered up all time.
Speaker 1: What's your method for keeping them dry? Like how much
Speaker 1: do you run around? And if you just chase them
Speaker 1: a bowl of or a day, maybe you haven't heard
Speaker 1: one for an hour or two, but like through the
Speaker 1: course of the day, how much does that call in
Speaker 1: and out of your mouth A lot? I used to
Speaker 1: he's gonna play some years. That's the rassy red. I
Speaker 1: don't want to rip too loud. Get yours out, answer
Speaker 1: you the question. We get yours ready, um, so on
Speaker 1: an elk count as much as I need it in
Speaker 1: my mouth, I will, But as soon as you know
Speaker 1: there's a break or we're chasing or removing. UM. I
Speaker 1: have a buddy who local guy down there just south
Speaker 1: to me. He had what's called a read vice and
Speaker 1: it's kind of a homebrew little thing. It hooks to
Speaker 1: my hat and then it's basically got like alligator clip
Speaker 1: that comes off. So I hook the one thing I
Speaker 1: found this year in Idaho hunt elk degrees all day.
Speaker 1: Latex doesn't like direct sunlight, so you start getting little
Speaker 1: hairline cracks in your call. Like all right, So then
Speaker 1: I flipped the underside of my hat when I was
Speaker 1: kind of blocking my vision. But that's where your engineering degree. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can get rid of the sun. So I use
Speaker 1: a read vice, and I also I have a prototype
Speaker 1: basically like a little wing per squeezer. But the thing
Speaker 1: I didn't like with that is a lot of guys
Speaker 1: were using vinyl and you know what they put like
Speaker 1: a whole punch in it. Well, that wasn't breathing very good.
Speaker 1: So I used a piece of like five cordua on
Speaker 1: one side and then like mi spec mesh on the opposite.
Speaker 1: Send me one of those. I'll have to get some
Speaker 1: made it. Trust me, I've got tons of requests. I
Speaker 1: just like, like I was telling you earlier, everything in
Speaker 1: the US is ordered by the thousands. It's like my
Speaker 1: in this order was like twenty dollars, and diaphragm pouches
Speaker 1: are like, man, how long am I gonna? You know,
Speaker 1: have to but no, I can get some more maine.
Speaker 1: I'll definitely. So you try to keep it dry as dry,
Speaker 1: and often are you pulling apart the layers, the latex layers,
Speaker 1: I mean, is it bad to get in there. I'll
Speaker 1: be getting in there all the time. And like tying
Speaker 1: on turkey calls, especially that top reed once it gets
Speaker 1: stuck to the underreead it it's not near his drafty
Speaker 1: and it kind of locks the call up. So a
Speaker 1: lot of times in the morning you gotta it is
Speaker 1: okay just to like do this, I'll do this and
Speaker 1: get a little here's my get it wet first, put
Speaker 1: in your mouth for a minute, and loosen everything up,
Speaker 1: because if you try to pull that when it's dry,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, especially like on these small little cuts,
Speaker 1: you'll rip the the latex right off because it's pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have done that and put it under a faucet
Speaker 1: to just to Yeah. Yeah, if you pull one, if
Speaker 1: you don't clean it and you finished turkey season and
Speaker 1: throw it in a desk jarld out later, Dude, it's
Speaker 1: hard to get apart. So I'll like run it under
Speaker 1: a faucet and eventually I'll get a whack them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of stuff. If if you
Speaker 1: have toothpicks around, you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you can slide a toothpick in between um provide, you know,
Speaker 1: but it is okay to like, yeah, you know, gently
Speaker 1: separate them. But yeah, you can definitely separate them. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of times all get mad. The casper or
Speaker 1: something like the casper um that's called it has like
Speaker 1: really fine ones laying over when he gets stuck. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't add in your asps. So it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I want so you'll yeah pull pull, pulling the coal
Speaker 1: apart in the middle of the morning and you hit
Speaker 1: a couple of notes on your when of your your
Speaker 1: first one. That sounds good, man, I'm ready the wife
Speaker 1: ready spring thunder. Yeah, that's what I gotta do. I
Speaker 1: gotta get I gotta get to call in my mind
Speaker 1: into my wife's mouth because she's just like right now,
Speaker 1: they hate it. My wife hates me blowing around the
Speaker 1: house blowing game calls. And she's got the kids browled up.
Speaker 1: They used to like it, because she doesn't like it,
Speaker 1: and they're like, stop that, dad. They're like, give me one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't like it, but then they want to get
Speaker 1: one and go make a noise with it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I get my My wife's got my kids trained. You
Speaker 1: go to RiPP a bagle in the house and you
Speaker 1: you get three get out in the garage. Is all about.
Speaker 1: But she can blow a turkey call. You're saying, no,
Speaker 1: she likes to hunt turkeys, so she that's that's my
Speaker 1: wife's favorite. And she likes deer hunting all cotton, but turkeys,
Speaker 1: like you like the ribbon red I do. But it's weird.
Speaker 1: The headphones on. You can't tell what what you sound
Speaker 1: like at all. Sounds good. You got a nice rasping it.
Speaker 1: I admire that rasp man. I don't get it. But
Speaker 1: you're saying, like you you visualize, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it makes sense. I just in visualize. I visualized putting
Speaker 1: the air towards the end of the read. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it matters or not, because here I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what. I'll blow towards the back. I'll imagine blowing
Speaker 1: towards the back, and I'll blow towards your front. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. That sounds good, has a lot of ass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you want to actually mad is I think I've
Speaker 1: got this whole like wild hen Talk mastered. And you
Speaker 1: go out and you hear some hen Off d yards
Speaker 1: yapping away, I'm like, man, I don't sound anything like
Speaker 1: hands me every spring. You know what that hand sounds like.
Speaker 1: That hand sounds like a ten year old kid with
Speaker 1: a box call. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: every you're in here trying to do this finesse. To
Speaker 1: hear something upbout a ridge top just laying out, it's
Speaker 1: either that's like someone with a rusty box call yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a hit, yeah, chocolate box or something just
Speaker 1: up there like the most well, the same thing like
Speaker 1: listening to Elk. You know, like you go out like
Speaker 1: there's like the perfect bugle right when you go out
Speaker 1: and you're watching some bull and he's basically like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some nice ones, but you also just hear
Speaker 1: a lot of There's just a lot of variation out there,
Speaker 1: you know, and you hear some bullies all like horse
Speaker 1: you know, to actually sound like that premost Terminator two
Speaker 1: were you were you thinking like, you'll never hear a
Speaker 1: bull it will actually sound like flutey like that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he lives out there, Ye, Yanni does. Yanni can whistle
Speaker 1: where it sounds like, you know, like when you can't
Speaker 1: even tell if you heard a bull or not it's
Speaker 1: so far away. Do your whistle that wasn't That wasn't
Speaker 1: a great one. Yeah, it's like you're like, goddamn, I
Speaker 1: just heard my way off. That's that's my goal every
Speaker 1: year is and not getting called in by somebody. But
Speaker 1: I think it's screwed up my chances on real helk
Speaker 1: Sometimes oh yeah I'm not that call me that not
Speaker 1: the other way. I've had more times where I wrote
Speaker 1: a bowl off as being some jackass and then it
Speaker 1: turns out to being out. Ye one time we played
Speaker 1: it all the way through and ended up getting a
Speaker 1: shot and kill the bull. But I was convinced. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not taking one more step because I'm
Speaker 1: not getting called in by somebody. He's like, it's a
Speaker 1: real bull. I'm like, no, it's not listening. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: And he was back fifteen yards to my left but
Speaker 1: could see over the ridge better and he's like, here
Speaker 1: they come like a son of a gun. And I'm
Speaker 1: glad we stayed. But I was here by myself, I
Speaker 1: would have went the other way, like I'm not or
Speaker 1: mess with somebody. I like to call people a top
Speaker 1: of mountains and stuff. Mess with him. But I would
Speaker 1: write to a couple. One time we were actually walking
Speaker 1: off the mountain. We'd have been in there for I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe three or four days. I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was my dad and the only time he went
Speaker 1: in the back country, but we could hear him calling,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, just sure that a deaf.
Speaker 1: I think he might even even run in the hoochie mama,
Speaker 1: which that call, you can definitely pick it out, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I just figured, well, I'm just gonna just
Speaker 1: trump down right through the forest, just right at them,
Speaker 1: which in retrospect probably wasn't the smartest thing to do,
Speaker 1: because I come through like the last two Christmas trees
Speaker 1: and like six ft away there's a gal a girl
Speaker 1: stand there with an arrow knocked not drawn, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: but not in just I can see the top of
Speaker 1: in just just like just shaking, you know, and her interdor.
Speaker 1: I don't know if your boyfriend, her husband behind her
Speaker 1: is like kind of smiling over her shoulder. He mustn't,
Speaker 1: you know know, and that you know I was coming
Speaker 1: and he caught a glimpse of me. But you know,
Speaker 1: in retrospects, fight out the best thing to do. You
Speaker 1: just gonna charge it in on what was what was
Speaker 1: the response like when you started selling Turkey calls? Do
Speaker 1: you sell Turkey calls of the guys in the easter
Speaker 1: as it always it's pretty local, I is my Turkey.
Speaker 1: A lot of it stems from guys have sold ELK
Speaker 1: calls to uh, you know, it's kind of that because
Speaker 1: saying Turkey call markets so saturated, and you know, you've
Speaker 1: got the big companies back east, you know, the you
Speaker 1: know whatever, the there's just a lot of turkey call
Speaker 1: manufacturers back East, and it's just so there are guys
Speaker 1: making Turkey calls, big companies that make Turkey calls that
Speaker 1: aren't making ELK calls. Yeah, correct, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of those companies back Easter, you know, maybe waterfowl, turkey,
Speaker 1: um maybe you know uh uh squirrel, you know squeal
Speaker 1: you know and and you know there there's some different mix.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, a lot of these call manufacturers
Speaker 1: have stayed away from from ELK. It seems like a
Speaker 1: lot of your manufacturers, besides Primos um, you know, like
Speaker 1: Hunter Specialties and Night and Hill have dabbled in it
Speaker 1: woods Why some of these companies have dabbled in ELK calls,
Speaker 1: but then have a huge presence out here where you know,
Speaker 1: out west, we've got um, you know, premos from from
Speaker 1: back east, but you've got uh, Rocky Mountain game calls
Speaker 1: are biggling bull whatever you want to call him. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got Barry game calls. You've got point Blank, which
Speaker 1: used to be the old Larry D. Jones UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like out west there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot fewer um, you know, ELK call manufacturers. You make
Speaker 1: a dusky grouse call, I don't I did you watch
Speaker 1: our episodes about dusky gross I didn't. I didn't see
Speaker 1: I see you. You'll sell five six of those every
Speaker 1: decade see you guy. You guys are intriguing because I
Speaker 1: hear about all the stuff you hunt, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm literally a mule deer, blacktail and an elk hunter.
Speaker 1: That's like, that's I cut my teeth on that. And
Speaker 1: it's just I've got an opportunity. I can hunt those
Speaker 1: every year. You know. I've always got the moose, caribous
Speaker 1: sheep stuff on the radar. But that's gonna be a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot harder to make. Have you haven't been able
Speaker 1: to make it in a nice cow call for moose? No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we haven't played around. I made some markets limited on
Speaker 1: that because so many guys would like to hunt moose
Speaker 1: just learn how to do it, yeah, with their boys.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you, a man a dusky grows call
Speaker 1: for guys like to hunt spring hooters, you'd be the
Speaker 1: only guy in the market's tough call. Everybody tells me
Speaker 1: that a male call is easy because you like a
Speaker 1: jug or something, you know, but the female calum you
Speaker 1: figure that one out. I get a lot of requests
Speaker 1: for antelope calls. I'm like, I'll just get you like
Speaker 1: the little the little North that I don't know what
Speaker 1: I always joke with him because I don't know and
Speaker 1: they do like a yeah, I just figure I was
Speaker 1: cann get like two glasses of water pouring back and
Speaker 1: forth and then just let the antelope hear the water
Speaker 1: and I'll call him, Yeah, that make a noise. And
Speaker 1: they make a noise and it's uh, they use it,
Speaker 1: you know, and you can make it back at them
Speaker 1: and get a good response out of them. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, the closer you compare it to, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really compare it mean, like a white tail's warning call,
Speaker 1: you know when they blow. Yeah, they just got like like,
Speaker 1: here's the white tail, like right, animals like, but they
Speaker 1: like when a white tail does it, the white tail
Speaker 1: doesn't give a shit about hearing it back, you know,
Speaker 1: like no matter, it's never gonna come. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: come check the noise out and over intrigued by that noise,
Speaker 1: come back with the noise. So you're saying no to
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But is there like the next rabbit
Speaker 1: hole for felps game calls, Like, is there a challenge
Speaker 1: like a call you've been wanting to make or trying
Speaker 1: to make that you just haven't figured out yet, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't ultimately blacktail. I want to make a black
Speaker 1: tail grunt. It seems to be really popular. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's highly requested. Um mule dear grunt. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the late season bow hunters haven't grunts. Bow hunters.
Speaker 1: A lot of the late season bow hunters think that
Speaker 1: they potentially when they get in close, you know, it
Speaker 1: could be you know, they wouldn't use it all the time,
Speaker 1: but you know a lot of the guys say, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be a game change, or it could work occasionally.
Speaker 1: And I just I wonder if, I mean, if Mulder's
Speaker 1: gonna act any different when he hears the white tail
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what I mean, does he give
Speaker 1: a ship? I don't if he hears the white tail grunt,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never That's one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm not real versed on. You I'd probably I'd probably
Speaker 1: calling some people that have messaged Yeah, it's it's it's shorter,
Speaker 1: and it's deeper and it's quieter from what I've heard. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, But like I said, I I don't do
Speaker 1: a whole lot of late season archery deer. Last year
Speaker 1: was the first year I've ever bow hunted for a
Speaker 1: late meal deer, and what I heard wasn't what I
Speaker 1: thought I was gonna hear a meal. Dear grant sound
Speaker 1: like said, all right, go back the drawing board, change
Speaker 1: up the read thickness, and change up the barrel diameter
Speaker 1: and making some changes so you never feel like messing
Speaker 1: with waterfowl. I will eventually, you know, if if I
Speaker 1: want to make a run at this thing full time,
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna have to develop the waterfowl line. But
Speaker 1: I don't. This is the other thing. You know, some
Speaker 1: guys may, you know, go reproduce a call that's out there.
Speaker 1: I'll probably bring in four or five guys, you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a waterfall expert. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: claim to be a duck hunter. Um. The ones that
Speaker 1: the waterfowl calls I sell now are basically Echo inserts.
Speaker 1: You can buy them, um, you're right off their website
Speaker 1: from Echo. And I basically just am a wood turner.
Speaker 1: You know, I can turn the barrel. I had my
Speaker 1: buddy come over and size the barrel for what he liked,
Speaker 1: and that's what I sell. You know, it's there's I
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot of investment or you know,
Speaker 1: my skill doesn't really come into play. My buddy basically
Speaker 1: sized it for me. Um, but I probably imagine you know,
Speaker 1: the predator call line is is decently got one close
Speaker 1: read and three open reads. Um, probably waterfowl's next, could
Speaker 1: you bring that? Yeah, the clothes read we did they
Speaker 1: do the fall in distress and also does that real
Speaker 1: raspy jack um once you break the read over really loud,
Speaker 1: like ob noxious, just just by get forces. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I mean you got that real quiet fall in distress
Speaker 1: and then you can crank it over and yeah, get
Speaker 1: like the Holy Smokes noise. Yeah. So so you're making
Speaker 1: Turkey elk predator, right, waterfall a little bit A couple
Speaker 1: of calls, which, like I said, just a would turn
Speaker 1: around the waterfall. But if you had to make just one,
Speaker 1: you're like you do out. Okay, you know that's what
Speaker 1: you're paying fall Turkey fall by predator probably in that order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, definitely, um passionate, most passionate about it. That's
Speaker 1: where if I try to align all my vacation up,
Speaker 1: it's like elk elk and then maybe a meal deer
Speaker 1: hunt on the end. You know, It's like I want
Speaker 1: to be elk cut in at least two weeks a
Speaker 1: year and in the red. How many elk trips you
Speaker 1: do every year? Um, last year was one, but I
Speaker 1: did it two weeks continuous, so like you know, weekends included,
Speaker 1: we were gone like nineteen days this year. Got a
Speaker 1: new job, so it's like two, you know, a nine
Speaker 1: day trip, come back for a week, and then a
Speaker 1: nine day trip. So I'll try to hit you know,
Speaker 1: I'll try to be in the oak woods anywhere from
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty days and in September calling it elk obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually we're pretty here with your rifle. Yeah, or I'm
Speaker 1: actually putting in for east Side special permits now, so
Speaker 1: typically don't hunt Washington if I don't draw, Um, we
Speaker 1: go out of state and do all over elk cutting. Currently. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the wife still hunts around here, so I
Speaker 1: gotta go out or the rest of my dad and
Speaker 1: his family, So I still gotta do a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, riding along and and hunting along and spot
Speaker 1: and stuff. But yeah, the life of a costom call maker, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's exciting. It's exciting. So it's your whole shop just
Speaker 1: given over entirely to Yeah. We Hey, I gotta basically
Speaker 1: built rooms within my shop because the dust was uncontrollable
Speaker 1: and I'm still just a yeah the dust and sand
Speaker 1: and it was getting everywhere. So we like enclosed the
Speaker 1: section of the wood shop and then we've got like
Speaker 1: her inventory and you know, a different section, and then
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still just a working out of the
Speaker 1: shop basically, so the lawnmowers parked on the other side.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just a game call shops and
Speaker 1: you and you, uh, do you have a distributor? You
Speaker 1: shipping all yourself? We do everything direct. You know, probably
Speaker 1: eight of the cells come um directly through my website.
Speaker 1: And then I've got people don't buy you off Amazon. No,
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've been approached by Phelps. You go
Speaker 1: to Phelps. Yeah right now. Um, we do we have
Speaker 1: four or five dealers um local bullshops that I'm just
Speaker 1: buddies with or buddy deals. And then we do have
Speaker 1: one other online retailer. UM. It used to be Elk
Speaker 1: one on one um but now it's black Ovis is
Speaker 1: is selling the calls out of Utah as well, So
Speaker 1: a couple online distribute. It's funny, you know, it's you
Speaker 1: debate and business models, you know, And I understand you
Speaker 1: want pro shop support, right, you want uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you want that guy to sell, you know, the guy
Speaker 1: that comes and buys a bow your call. If you
Speaker 1: take that away from him, you may lose that support.
Speaker 1: And since he's got a you know, biggling bowl or
Speaker 1: a Barry Read on the shelf, he's gonna sell him
Speaker 1: that because that's where he makes his money. So there's
Speaker 1: a balance, you know. I like the whole qu model,
Speaker 1: you know, as a business owner, I like that model.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I understand it's not the best
Speaker 1: model necessarily for the business I'm in. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: I never claimed to be a smart businessman, but some
Speaker 1: of this stuff is the stuff I'm wearing right now.
Speaker 1: Like what direction do we go? And what's the best direction?
Speaker 1: And and like you're seeing growth every year, though exponential
Speaker 1: growth every year. I don't know where it's gonna stop.
Speaker 1: But like the same conversation you start talking about that,
Speaker 1: and you come back full circle to how you're gonna
Speaker 1: keep up because I don't. I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be able to do in July and August. That's
Speaker 1: my two by far biggest months because you know, centered
Speaker 1: round everybody buying their OLK calls and geared up for
Speaker 1: ELK season. It's gonna be interesting this year. The wife said,
Speaker 1: I had one more year to do this all on
Speaker 1: my own, then I better figure out a streamline way. Well,
Speaker 1: she just it was. It was rough last year. You know,
Speaker 1: basically every weekend, you know, all weeknights un till midnight,
Speaker 1: get up at five, you to work, get home at
Speaker 1: five thirty, and you're making calls until midnight. And just
Speaker 1: a couple of hours south of Steve you probably call
Speaker 1: him up stretchatex stretched the latex my day that you
Speaker 1: never heard that one before. So now what you got
Speaker 1: a website obviously, Yeah, we're Phelps Game Calls dot com
Speaker 1: pH pH you know PS. You know the NATO phonetic
Speaker 1: alphabet I just like Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta supposed to
Speaker 1: be that all the NATO countries um that they would
Speaker 1: look at those words and pronounce, you know, how to
Speaker 1: pronounce those words. You know, I'm working on the confusing
Speaker 1: phonetic alphabet where I'm trying to find all like um
Speaker 1: like for p would be pneumatic um or for p
Speaker 1: you could do psychology or nomic for you know, so
Speaker 1: all words that don't start. I'm just bringing us out
Speaker 1: to point out that your name is not f E
Speaker 1: LPs for phone pH phelps pH e LPs And what's
Speaker 1: the what site? Though? Phelps game calls dot com? Phelps
Speaker 1: game calls dot com And people do usually this order online? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm pretty open on social media, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of times, and you know that's maybe
Speaker 1: the difference you get the experience with me. A lot
Speaker 1: of times I'll get him, you know, will message back
Speaker 1: and forth Benner, you know, back and forth at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: it at night. You know, what do I need to order?
Speaker 1: This is what I would order? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden you see the order
Speaker 1: pop through. You know, if you have dudes call up
Speaker 1: and be like hey, looking for advice and what to
Speaker 1: get or or a lot of times like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a new era, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's tacky or untactful. But a lot of times with
Speaker 1: my phone now, it's like it's easier to do a
Speaker 1: text message or a Facebook message. That's how I communicate
Speaker 1: and it makes it super streamline, so I can deal
Speaker 1: with a lot more customers that way. You know. So
Speaker 1: a lot of guys will just hit me up on
Speaker 1: Facebook and message me or text me um right off
Speaker 1: the website, and then it just makes it quick and easy.
Speaker 1: And then they then they place the order. Yeah, like instantly,
Speaker 1: I can. I was just talking to you know, Rob
Speaker 1: so and so, and then bam on my phone, I
Speaker 1: see the order come through. You know it's it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, and you got concluding thoughts.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful calls. Man, than you can rip a couple
Speaker 1: of notes on there. Let's hear jack Rabbit just I'm
Speaker 1: no good at them. I can run the easy astres,
Speaker 1: you can run the jack rabbit. He likes to blow
Speaker 1: those at grizzly bears when we see one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I've seen you guys running from a grizzly bear,
Speaker 1: and one of the efforts I do like to blow
Speaker 1: a man grizzly bears and annoys people I'm with, like,
Speaker 1: let's see this barrel. Check this out. Yeah, we're only
Speaker 1: camped a couple hundred yards away. Let's see if we
Speaker 1: can bring this grizzly bear close. You just don't have
Speaker 1: any fear of them or like is it it's not
Speaker 1: a lack of respect, but just no fear. I used
Speaker 1: to be real, I used to know, not real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just to me, it's like what happened? You know?
Speaker 1: Some dudes drive fast down the highway, right, I don't
Speaker 1: like that. I'll drive slow down the highway like I
Speaker 1: have that right, I have that thing. I just don't
Speaker 1: have the bear thing. I'm the same way. Some guys
Speaker 1: can drive a hundred miles an hour, right, we even
Speaker 1: in and out of I can't do that. But those
Speaker 1: guys might be scared of bears. I'm just not afraid
Speaker 1: of bears. I mean I'm afraid, like I respect them,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to see a bear. The first
Speaker 1: thing I'm not the first thing on my mind is
Speaker 1: that that he's gonna come scratch me up. So you're
Speaker 1: not reaching for bear sprayer or a gun or anything
Speaker 1: or no, I'm just like, wow, hey, a bear. I
Speaker 1: always felt like somebody's gonna pull my man card because
Speaker 1: like the whole eastern Idaho, southwestern Montana, northeastern Wyoming, like
Speaker 1: I'm I went deer hunting in region F and Wyoming
Speaker 1: you know, against the eastern border. We've seen like five years.
Speaker 1: I was the day after I killed my buck, there
Speaker 1: was grizzly bears everywhere, and I'm like, this isn't my
Speaker 1: thing at all. Like that, I honestly like, if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if I could have absolutely identical right places,
Speaker 1: everything exactly the same, and they're like, only difference is
Speaker 1: this one's guy grizzlies and this one don't. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: let's going on the grizzly one just because I like
Speaker 1: looking at him. They're cool from a distance. I like
Speaker 1: looking at him from like interne the way in the
Speaker 1: spot in scope. If we had more time to talk
Speaker 1: about it, I would talk about, um, the current debate
Speaker 1: around de listing in those area you're named, and it's
Speaker 1: I've looked at it from all angles. I think it's
Speaker 1: the best, the best way forward for the bears and
Speaker 1: for people's delisting, you know, and they got to delist
Speaker 1: them often endangered species list. Um, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: bears in those areas. They met the requirements. Um, you
Speaker 1: can't tell states and all these people, you can't tell
Speaker 1: them for decades that here's what recovery looks like. And
Speaker 1: we're all going to strive for recovery and make all
Speaker 1: kinds of sacrifices and and achieve the goal and then
Speaker 1: and then move the moving target and then move the
Speaker 1: mark around people. Man, It's just like it just makes
Speaker 1: people so resentful of the Endangered Species Act, when in
Speaker 1: fact it's a great tool that works well. But you
Speaker 1: gotta put it out and take it off. It's a
Speaker 1: one way street man. Stuff gets on, it never comes off,
Speaker 1: especially if it's charismatic. You know, you weren't gonna have time.
Speaker 1: But that's the whole same thing. Like this state in
Speaker 1: the wolves. I don't know if you've looked into much
Speaker 1: this thing recovery. The wolf recovery plan is absurd compared
Speaker 1: to the public ground we got versus the number of
Speaker 1: breeding pairs we have to have, plus the three year
Speaker 1: um wait time. It's like, we're why are objectives in
Speaker 1: this state so much higher than these other Western states
Speaker 1: that have way more public ground and way more you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: But even when they do hit it, someone's gonna block
Speaker 1: it because it's charismatic. Yeah, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I turned it over. Then it act as though turning
Speaker 1: it over to state management is some outrageous idea, and
Speaker 1: you wanna be like, well, hold on a minute. Every
Speaker 1: other animal is state management. So Montana is managing what
Speaker 1: seven eight big game animals, all fur bearing animals. They're
Speaker 1: managing everything. People like, oh yeah, just turn it over
Speaker 1: to state management. That's absurds like, but they manage all
Speaker 1: the game, they manage all the large carnivores. They're managing
Speaker 1: black bearers, they're managing mountain lions. They're on and off
Speaker 1: managing wolves, managing coyotes, managing by cats. It's not like
Speaker 1: they don't have a grip on that's frustrating. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to take it away from game calls. What was
Speaker 1: your concluding thought that you like the looks of the
Speaker 1: call gounty that's best. That's as much as you No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Now you got me thinking about you know, management. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we let's not get into that conversation right now. No,
Speaker 1: but it's really something that just that I think people
Speaker 1: need to learn more about. They do, because I really
Speaker 1: try to read both sides, you know, now, just like
Speaker 1: you know, there's been just so much written out there
Speaker 1: lately about like the Grizzly d listing and it really
Speaker 1: seems like at least everything I've read so far, and
Speaker 1: it's been probably a half dozen articles like against the delisting,
Speaker 1: it's very unfounded and like and just you know, kind
Speaker 1: of fanning the flames type of rhetoric where they're not
Speaker 1: really just laying out the facts there, like the only
Speaker 1: the only thing is gonna come from this do listing
Speaker 1: is basically uncontrolled trophy hunting. And you're like, whoa, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how it works, bro, Like what you just
Speaker 1: said is completely alive. But yet because of the magazine
Speaker 1: you publish that in million people just read that. The
Speaker 1: most irresponsible one I've read was in a was in
Speaker 1: a think called publication Daily Beast. If you read that one,
Speaker 1: I was suprea as the guy that wrote that he
Speaker 1: keeps his job because he says in there that there's
Speaker 1: no money, that the state doesn't have money to manage.
Speaker 1: And again you point out how many they manage all
Speaker 1: the animals, right, that they have no way of knowing
Speaker 1: how many get killed, which is absurd because you know
Speaker 1: how many tags the issue. It's like they know how
Speaker 1: many deer they're killing, you know, states killing thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of deer, they know how many deer they kill
Speaker 1: through how many tags your issue, you do surveys, you
Speaker 1: do mandatory surveys, you have quota systems are in place,
Speaker 1: it's fine tuned. So he's like, they have no way
Speaker 1: of knowing how many Like that's absurd because they track
Speaker 1: all that stuff. They would be controlled hunt in our
Speaker 1: country then if there were to be a grizzly bear hunt.
Speaker 1: And the other point that they misses all of these
Speaker 1: individuals and game agencies and conservation groups who have worked
Speaker 1: so hard to get wolves and now grizzlies off the list.
Speaker 1: Don't you think that after you work that hard to
Speaker 1: get them delisted, the last thing you're gonna want is
Speaker 1: to have him back on the list. Who who's interest
Speaker 1: would be being served if if you hand it over
Speaker 1: to state management that the state would shoot them all
Speaker 1: out so they get put back on the list again.
Speaker 1: Who's interest? Like, who's motivated to do that? You spent
Speaker 1: forty years basically trying to recover the thing and then
Speaker 1: act like you're gonna blithely go out and shoot them
Speaker 1: all down so they get put back on the list
Speaker 1: for another fourty years. And like, if that's the motivation
Speaker 1: make any sense, you'd like to look at that game call,
Speaker 1: I do. I'm fired up to go turkey hunting. I'm stived, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited about turkey hunt. Um, so you hunt
Speaker 1: turkeys besides Washington this year? I I you know, it's
Speaker 1: one of those and you know, kind of you started
Speaker 1: off with the whole. I don't even hit you with
Speaker 1: the It's just one of those things where I won't.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got three we have three species right here,
Speaker 1: and and you know, we've got Easterns on the west side,
Speaker 1: We've got um, you know, Miriam's down in the south central,
Speaker 1: We've got Rio's down in the southeast, and we've got
Speaker 1: kind of a Merriam Rio mixed up in the northeast corner.
Speaker 1: We've got you know, a ton of the opportunity right
Speaker 1: here close. So I typically don't travel more than you know,
Speaker 1: four or five hours across the state the turkey hid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you do good. Yeah, we've we've did really well, um,
Speaker 1: really well. You got concluding thoughts. That's where you get
Speaker 1: a chance to say anything lasting on in mind first
Speaker 1: as mine, but you already had to change, so you
Speaker 1: like the call. And then you've read some articles. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna conclude with I'm gonna get Annie, raised her out
Speaker 1: and change your mind because I think I've got Branney
Speaker 1: brothers coming along with us. It's I have like a
Speaker 1: two full plan because for me to help with my wife,
Speaker 1: someone's gonna stay in camp to tend to kids. So
Speaker 1: she's gonna come along and fill that, you know, void.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna also take her out, you know, turkey hunting
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then we'll coerce Annie to come
Speaker 1: along with us, and she'll next time she's on the podcast,
Speaker 1: she'll be here. So you have a whole pack of
Speaker 1: ladies down there hunting turkeys. Good they call him, you
Speaker 1: teach them to call I haven't yet, but we've been talking.
Speaker 1: We need to do all that very soon. Shot go
Speaker 1: pattern shotguns and get them calling a little bit. You know.
Speaker 1: Jason thought thoughts, Um, gon go out in left field here.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, I'm excited just to kind of see
Speaker 1: where this whole thing goes, and ultimately on my I've
Speaker 1: been you know, blessed um with the position to to
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not it reach as many people as you,
Speaker 1: but I feel blessed um. I get the chance to
Speaker 1: to discuss and talk with a lot of people and
Speaker 1: influence a lot of people, um, you know through this
Speaker 1: game coll avenue and ultimately you know, just trying to
Speaker 1: keep the keep the on the prize. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always thinking about my kids and my kids
Speaker 1: as kids, and you know, trying to leave this place
Speaker 1: so you know, and if I can, if I can
Speaker 1: influence or impact anybody from my position, you know, it's
Speaker 1: make sure we leave this place a better place for
Speaker 1: for all of our kids to hunt and have the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Especially um on the political front, that's where it's never
Speaker 1: gonna go away. I don't see it getting any better.
Speaker 1: So stay united. Um. You know, it's like I get
Speaker 1: so tired of hearing the archie hunters argue at the
Speaker 1: mostloader hunters argue with the rifle hunters and then you know,
Speaker 1: hitting each other, you know, pulling knives out of each
Speaker 1: other's backs, trying to you know, It's like it's just
Speaker 1: I always feel like we should, you know, focus our
Speaker 1: efforts elsewhere and you know, stand united. But said I
Speaker 1: arguing about whether it's better to do with the bow
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, yeah, that's like I said, I kind
Speaker 1: of went out in left field. But that's kind of no. No,
Speaker 1: that's like that's a good closing thought. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: a closing thoughts before. So my closing thought is, uh,
Speaker 1: the thing I've always liked about the world of hunting
Speaker 1: in the world of fishing is how yeah, it really
Speaker 1: invites so many people, um just to be inventive and
Speaker 1: like just make stuff, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: even growing up like I grew up around old guys,
Speaker 1: they'd like make their own bucket scalers and guys would
Speaker 1: make their own rods and tie their own stuff. And
Speaker 1: then you kind of get good at it and get
Speaker 1: a knack for it. Precon you're selling a couple of things.
Speaker 1: It's just like this funny little it's like such a
Speaker 1: great economy of entrepreneurs and you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: like American elbow Greeks man, you know, like just people
Speaker 1: getting in there and and and making stuff. And it's
Speaker 1: it kind of comes from people who are out in
Speaker 1: the woods and on the water all the time and
Speaker 1: they're messing around with their gear and they're like, man, this,
Speaker 1: you know, if I made this, I'd make it this way,
Speaker 1: or I'd make it a little bit better, and just
Speaker 1: like that constant cycle of invention and and and doing stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just fun that uh the way the way hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing, uh really invite people to get in there
Speaker 1: and and and be craftsman, you know, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff in your house, just like things you
Speaker 1: might do in your world where you just don't have
Speaker 1: the garage tinkers, you know, like you do in this world. Man.
Speaker 1: It's just it's it's funny. It So you imagine in
Speaker 1: the old days people just sit around and everybody would
Speaker 1: nap their own arrowheads, you know, And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like that to see people out there just like making
Speaker 1: hunting gear, you know, trying to do something a little
Speaker 1: bit better, and you can just get in there and
Speaker 1: do it and just on your own and in your case,
Speaker 1: getting there and do it and make a business out
Speaker 1: of it. It's fun, man, It's a fun world. So yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck to the I mean good luck to you
Speaker 1: making the calls. So it's cool to get a chance
Speaker 1: to me because I you know, I've been wailing on
Speaker 1: some of these calls for a couple of years. I've
Speaker 1: never got a chance to talk with you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get you loaded up before you head to Mexico.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for having me, thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: everyone to take care. M