Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening past. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Kurt Roscoe dude wrote in to say
Speaker 1: that you were harder than a woodpeckers. I want to say,
Speaker 1: like a woodpeckers pecker, But that wasn't what he said.
Speaker 1: But it had a ring to it. But it was
Speaker 1: like harder than a woodpecker's beak. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that was it. I guess it is a comment, but
Speaker 1: he was referring more to the eating of the of
Speaker 1: your trick of your hot tip of just instead of
Speaker 1: putting boiling water into freeze dry food envelopes, you just
Speaker 1: put regular water in there at noon in order there
Speaker 1: will be people rehydrated by nighttime. Yeah, and that makes
Speaker 1: one harder than a woodpeckers pack or whatever it was. Uh,
Speaker 1: were you employing that strategy on your I did a
Speaker 1: couple of days. Yeah, yeah, but it got so that
Speaker 1: was one thing I didn't you know mentioned before, is
Speaker 1: it got so cold that sometimes it just never rehydrates
Speaker 1: or it was almost crazing way it was it was snowing,
Speaker 1: So that can create its own problems too. I brought
Speaker 1: more fuel. Surprisingly enough, after our conversations, I got to
Speaker 1: thinking about it, and I thought you did. You did
Speaker 1: on several things. The first thing is is that I
Speaker 1: brought a pair of sunglasses. Oh yeah, but they were
Speaker 1: a cheap pair and I lost him on the hike.
Speaker 1: Ind so they didn't do me much good. Some dude
Speaker 1: loving it, yeah something, I liked it, and then I
Speaker 1: stuffed him in my pocket. Next thing, they're gone, and
Speaker 1: that's the where it goes. I haven't brought I didn't
Speaker 1: bring some glad doll sheep hunting, and I didn't bring
Speaker 1: a melk hunting. You talked me out of it, and
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have used them on our sheep punt. There's
Speaker 1: maybe a day. But you know out there too, I
Speaker 1: feel like the sun is so low. It's not like
Speaker 1: you know, at those higher latitudes right where you're not
Speaker 1: getting that like direct sun. It just is like you've
Speaker 1: seen that stuff where you're hunting at super high latitudes
Speaker 1: where especially get later in the year where it just
Speaker 1: seems like it's dawn and then sometime around one or
Speaker 1: two o'clock nothing changes. But you just saw a sunden
Speaker 1: registering as evening because the sun is at this super low,
Speaker 1: shallow angle way off at the horizon. It just is
Speaker 1: like dawn all day and at some point you just
Speaker 1: jumped to thinking of it as the evening. And it
Speaker 1: never feels like mid day. It's almost a flat light.
Speaker 1: It seems like almost like a cloudy day, yeah, type
Speaker 1: of it's never that just you know, bearing down on you.
Speaker 1: But you went out. Uh so, what tell us what happens?
Speaker 1: We'd like talked about the prelude this is this is
Speaker 1: Kurt doing the impossible hunt. Yeah, so, um explain the
Speaker 1: impot I like to call it the impossible hunt. I've
Speaker 1: never done it. Yeah, well, uh so we've talked about
Speaker 1: it before. There are five districts in the state of
Speaker 1: Montana that are they call them the Unlimited Sheep Hunts,
Speaker 1: and they're unlimited in the sense that anybody can purchase
Speaker 1: a tag from anywhere and go and each each one
Speaker 1: of the units has a quota typically right around two
Speaker 1: sheep two legal rams, which in most cases ends up
Speaker 1: being you know, five year old ram. It's a checked
Speaker 1: their eggs, but kind of a four and five eighths
Speaker 1: or uh what would I say, little under three quarter
Speaker 1: and and so from there. Uh, the season stays open
Speaker 1: for about two and a half months all the way
Speaker 1: through regular rifle season, as long as the quota stays open.
Speaker 1: And that's really kind of the h I hunted at
Speaker 1: four years and killed one, killed one. Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: I should clarify it. I will have hunted at four
Speaker 1: years by next year. So yeah, if I've hunted it
Speaker 1: three years so far, because if you get one, you
Speaker 1: have to take seven years. I'll take seven years off. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you just finished your seven year hiatus and went
Speaker 1: this year went, didn't see a single hold on. I
Speaker 1: don't understand this was your fourth season or not. No,
Speaker 1: next year will be my fourth season. I said, like,
Speaker 1: how many times are you going to You did it once? Yep,
Speaker 1: you did the underlimited unit once, saw sheep or didn't
Speaker 1: see sheep. I didn't see sheep. You did it once
Speaker 1: and didn't see it. You did it again, killed one, yep.
Speaker 1: Waited seven years, ye did it, and we'll getting what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah didn't you ship? Nope? And then next year you're
Speaker 1: going who knows? Yeah, yeah, who knows. Yeah, that'll be
Speaker 1: the fun part. Didn't see a single one, No, didn't
Speaker 1: see a single one. Are you looking, that's all you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like your secrets special canyon. Yeah, WHI you hunted before
Speaker 1: I did? Well, I headed that direction. I made it
Speaker 1: nine miles in when I hunted it the last time,
Speaker 1: and this time I went a bit further and got
Speaker 1: about seventeen miles and uh kind of started working my
Speaker 1: way back from there. And yeah, that was just the program.
Speaker 1: You know. You get to a nice spot where you
Speaker 1: can glass and then spend as much of the day
Speaker 1: behind the spotting scope and binoculars as you can just
Speaker 1: trying to pick out you know, you're looking little rock slides,
Speaker 1: avalanche shoots, any anywhere you think it's gonna hold game,
Speaker 1: and just keep changing your angle, try and find bedded
Speaker 1: during the day and obviously the hot times during the
Speaker 1: evenings and in the mornings. So they're pretty u creposcular,
Speaker 1: like just like an elk or a mule there, like
Speaker 1: you're gonna see them on their feet mostly early in
Speaker 1: late yeah, I think typically. But the other thing I
Speaker 1: found too is that I haven't found necessarily especially elk,
Speaker 1: is that you'll see him get up and move around
Speaker 1: during the day at random times, like taking No I've
Speaker 1: caught him. I've caught him feeding, okay, in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day or you know, late mornings. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you just never know. I think it's the key is
Speaker 1: just to be behind the glass and be ready for
Speaker 1: whenever they are moving. What name for me the mammals
Speaker 1: that you saw the way over? Two pounds? I saw
Speaker 1: grizzly bear, black bear, goats, a couple of meals there
Speaker 1: on the way in, and that was it. It's pretty
Speaker 1: devoid of game, no ELK, not even an ELK. Grizzlies
Speaker 1: just one. Yeah, way off for up in your business. No,
Speaker 1: he was. He was just right across the canyon, right
Speaker 1: where I was glassing for sheep. Yeah, just rumming around.
Speaker 1: What was the black beard doing? He was running away
Speaker 1: from me. I jumped him in the timber coming Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: no ELK. How days you spend glasses? Ah? Six? I
Speaker 1: was in there six and then the unit shutdown. The
Speaker 1: unit shut down. Yeah. Have you talked to the guys
Speaker 1: that mind up getting them? No? Uh yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you hear little rumors. I don't know exactly where they were, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, the first one happened pretty quick, and
Speaker 1: then the second one was a few days into the
Speaker 1: season and did you run into any other sheep hunters?
Speaker 1: I did not, not where I was. But when I
Speaker 1: got back to about the nine mile mark, I saw
Speaker 1: a couple more camps in that area, and then you
Speaker 1: know a few other camps on the way out from there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. Oh huh, nobody was around horse camp.
Speaker 1: There was one camp. There was a horse camp. I
Speaker 1: was really surprised to see horses back in there. I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen him that far and it's too rough a
Speaker 1: ground for horses. Yeah. Yeah, I'm no expert on horses,
Speaker 1: but it's it is just chunky, rocky boulder, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of exposure and spots um. So yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see him there. What was the
Speaker 1: longest period you sat sitting in one spot? The spent
Speaker 1: sitting in one spot without moving your without moving at all,
Speaker 1: probably three or four hours, and then I'd try to
Speaker 1: get up and at least change you know, by a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred yards. But the wind that so my
Speaker 1: camp was up over eleven thousand feet and I just
Speaker 1: you'd have to find spots that are secluded or hidden
Speaker 1: behind rocks too, just because the wind just relentless but
Speaker 1: well it's cold and you can't keep your glass still. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty wind coming across some of those plateaus
Speaker 1: during the day soul. After a while, it does, it
Speaker 1: starts to feel like you go a little bit insane, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, So, you know, but being able to
Speaker 1: tuck off of one edge and get into some you know,
Speaker 1: larger boulders, there's a lot of structure in there, so
Speaker 1: if you can find a nice spot, but it all
Speaker 1: just spend it on wind direction and you know where
Speaker 1: you were. But I had I have several other friends
Speaker 1: that were hunting the district, so including me, there was
Speaker 1: you know, four other groups of good buddies that I
Speaker 1: talked to after they got out. In between our four groups,
Speaker 1: you know, one group saw two sheep and so it
Speaker 1: was just it was one of those years you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not. So do you feel that they
Speaker 1: were in your Did you just hunt one canyon? No?
Speaker 1: I hunted. I I had a I had a plan
Speaker 1: where I just sequentially worked through the different canyons and
Speaker 1: and it really depended on on the time of day
Speaker 1: two because there's some stuff you can't glass in the
Speaker 1: morning that they would be better to glass in the
Speaker 1: evening or the sun comes up you get the glare
Speaker 1: you just can't pick it apart like you need to.
Speaker 1: Or or the wind. You know, it's hard to be
Speaker 1: on one side of the mountain when you're getting this
Speaker 1: constant wind coming through in the morning. Seeing nice beds
Speaker 1: and nice sheep ship and everything. Uh No, there isn't
Speaker 1: a lot up And that's that's kind of the differences.
Speaker 1: I was glassing from a spot that really isn't gonna
Speaker 1: hold sheep. You know, you're area where you're sitting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, look,
Speaker 1: but that's it. Yeah, trying to find goodvantage. You should
Speaker 1: have been with us, man, we saw a dandy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: real dandy. Different state. Yeah, if you have ferment in
Speaker 1: southeast Washington. Yeah, a lot of beds, a lot of tracks,
Speaker 1: and then one nice big ram. So is the fact
Speaker 1: that you're calling us the impossible hunt because it's an
Speaker 1: unlimited hunt. Everyone's going and they're chasing them and there's
Speaker 1: just success. Yeah. For example, the United I hunted this year.
Speaker 1: They didn't ever take a ram out of last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two and half season. Yeah, this isn't the units where
Speaker 1: they're trying to wipe them out right. No. That yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was a little bit different. That was
Speaker 1: a very unique situation in the tendoise here, and that
Speaker 1: was like a pneumonia thing. That was a pneumonia thing,
Speaker 1: you know that they decided to, you know, turn over
Speaker 1: and ask the hunters to help with the management of it.
Speaker 1: Can you I have seventeen big horn points? Can I
Speaker 1: do the unlimited hunt without using my event teen points?
Speaker 1: That's a really good question. I'm not sure I believe
Speaker 1: you can, because man, I want to go. I know
Speaker 1: at some point you'd lose them though, so I don't
Speaker 1: know if you could put in or if you could,
Speaker 1: that would be something you'd have to check in their eggs.
Speaker 1: What I needed to happen is you to get one
Speaker 1: and then you'd want to go and just mess around
Speaker 1: in your seven year period, and I would go with
Speaker 1: you after I draw my regular one. See that's that's
Speaker 1: probably a good plan. So there's a lot of steps
Speaker 1: that need to fall into place here. But I'm kind
Speaker 1: of curious about it, man. Yeah, um, okay, So not
Speaker 1: a single elk, A lot of wind, A lot of wind.
Speaker 1: Were you regretting? Were you liking it? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was perfect. It was. I mean it was. It
Speaker 1: was a great hunt. Yeah. The only thing is that
Speaker 1: it just wasn't long enough. Yes, snowed on me one
Speaker 1: day is And you know, in my position, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's that's really important is getting good days
Speaker 1: of field to test your products. So that that was
Speaker 1: a big part of being able to do that, and
Speaker 1: those type of conditions are very conducive to doing that.
Speaker 1: The limits of stuff. Yeah, I see the limits of
Speaker 1: stuff and see how they truly perform, because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to go out and wear something for a hike.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different thing to live in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what kind of stuff you're tested? Ah, we have
Speaker 1: like future things. Yeah, yeah, we we have quite a
Speaker 1: bit of stuff coming out here January. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: can get all tight lipped. Yeah, there's there's some of
Speaker 1: it that like just give me like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a like a whatever you can. Well, I'll just
Speaker 1: say I was I was very warm at night in
Speaker 1: my sleeping bag. Yeah yeah, yeah, Yeah. We have a
Speaker 1: couple coming out in that line, so really Yeah, side
Speaker 1: zipp or center zip side classic Yeah, vent then you
Speaker 1: can vent. Yeah, he's been running like the old schooling
Speaker 1: this hoodless sleeping bag for warm weather. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know they made those anymore. I didn't either. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a special um Nemo makes it. It's uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's called there are galy tensor combination. But it's meant
Speaker 1: to be like a warm weather backcountry hunters set up
Speaker 1: where no hood to lighten it up, no bottom insulation
Speaker 1: lighten it up. You're sleeping pack slides in there and
Speaker 1: to act as your bottom insulation. So I mean the
Speaker 1: whole rig is I mean the bag compresses down to
Speaker 1: like this. I think it's right out of pound. It's
Speaker 1: a fifteen degree or you know, you're the pad is
Speaker 1: a pound, so your whole kids at two pounds. And
Speaker 1: it's even got like a waterproof sort of barrier over
Speaker 1: the bottom two feet so if your feet are sticking
Speaker 1: out from underneath your shelter, you know, if you're just
Speaker 1: running a tent or something. You know. So it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as it gets colder, um, you'd like you
Speaker 1: missed that hood. So you guys didn't make a sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: Just say, just say, would you just come out with
Speaker 1: like a single fifteen or would you come out with
Speaker 1: a with a zero I think I think if we
Speaker 1: were going to do it, we'd probably come out with two. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you wouldn't wind up being like a like a
Speaker 1: negative and a fifteen, or it would probably end up
Speaker 1: being in that fifteen and then a zero range and
Speaker 1: totally only two and they would be conservative at that,
Speaker 1: you know, at that, and then these would probably be
Speaker 1: filled with u parts from a bird or parts the
Speaker 1: oil field, very very likely from a part from a bird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: woodpecker beaks water repellent birds. After twenty two decades, I
Speaker 1: think of sleeping in bags stags two decades. Sorry, like
Speaker 1: from the old test, was trying the whole test, people
Speaker 1: would have to be six years old. I was trying
Speaker 1: to say twenty years and then somehow as I was
Speaker 1: saying it turned into decades. Um. But I've had a
Speaker 1: negative twenty and I've had bags I think as warm
Speaker 1: as forty or forty five, and just like those fringes. Sure,
Speaker 1: if you got all the money in the world and
Speaker 1: you just want to have every bag from the specific situation,
Speaker 1: sure have them. But for for me, what I do
Speaker 1: and how I hunt a fifteen and zero gets it done.
Speaker 1: I'm a four. I like four because I got a
Speaker 1: way ass negative mm hmm, which is nice at times.
Speaker 1: I don't use it that much, but I have a
Speaker 1: way ass negative nemo bag down then I like to have.
Speaker 1: But you understand, like the peculiarities of my life. Man,
Speaker 1: we're like, I get a lot of gear. This isn't
Speaker 1: like I'm going down to the store and buying all
Speaker 1: these no. I know. I was trying to present it
Speaker 1: when I was saying from from a normal average Jones.
Speaker 1: Then I'm gonna present at the average Joe. So scrap
Speaker 1: the one. Because you can combo your bags anyways. You
Speaker 1: can take two bags in combo, so scrap. I would
Speaker 1: never go by the mega negative. I would have a
Speaker 1: zero fifteen. And then this isn't like breaking the bank
Speaker 1: because when I'm up with my fish shack and stuff
Speaker 1: and it's super warm, but you gotta bring a sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: I like just a summer weight bag. But they don't
Speaker 1: charge any money for those anyways, So I don't think
Speaker 1: you need that synthetic summer weight bag. I feel like
Speaker 1: you can just rock your fifteen or twenty degree bag,
Speaker 1: but open I use that the summer. That's what use
Speaker 1: running like a blanket. I've done that. Um. So meanwhile,
Speaker 1: while you were out there, were did you got the dates?
Speaker 1: Were you hunting? Were you hunting white tails at the
Speaker 1: same time when I was in uh, say that seventh No,
Speaker 1: I went in the Okay, So that's when I ended
Speaker 1: my hunt. Yeah, I hunt it from the first through
Speaker 1: the tenth. No, Snow, I was down weight on the
Speaker 1: valley the other side of stay. It's funny these two
Speaker 1: things that mark Canyon's deal and your deal would be
Speaker 1: in the same state because you're like hunting big horns
Speaker 1: at eleven thousand feet marks out in the bad lands
Speaker 1: ish bad lands, that sort of appearance. It's hot and
Speaker 1: low chasing white tails and what was going on? What
Speaker 1: was your deal? Well? I was hunting Montana first, and
Speaker 1: then if I could fill in Montana tag, I was
Speaker 1: gonna go over to North Dakota and try to fill
Speaker 1: at TAG over there. So you just got like little
Speaker 1: little spots, little spots public land. How many states do
Speaker 1: you have little white tail spots in? Oh? Jeez, um,
Speaker 1: five or six seven? Something like that. I mean usually
Speaker 1: hunt like Michigan, Ohio, and either Indiana or Illinois or Nebraska.
Speaker 1: I one of those states, like usually those three states
Speaker 1: like every year some cycle there and then I've been
Speaker 1: adding in like a western state every year and then
Speaker 1: western one. But I've you know, love Montanas. I've been
Speaker 1: hitting that the last three years. Do you go out
Speaker 1: and hunt white tails in Wyoming? No, but I want to.
Speaker 1: I've I've looked at it. I have some ideas where
Speaker 1: to go. You don't hunt any white You don't hunt
Speaker 1: any public land in Michigan. Day do southern Michigan, southern
Speaker 1: and northern. Yeah, I've got some southern land stuff that
Speaker 1: I hit like on days when the conditions aren't great
Speaker 1: to go into my really good areas that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wait for the right time to hit
Speaker 1: that stuff. But I still on a hunt. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of pieces of public land that I kind of
Speaker 1: dive in and try like aggressive tactics that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: normally try. What kind of public land I'm even what
Speaker 1: county stuffy Um. We used to hunt some public land
Speaker 1: in Michigan that wasn't even really that public. It was
Speaker 1: like it was a property owned by a township. So
Speaker 1: nothing you're looking at is ever gonna say like, hey
Speaker 1: go here, if you know, like if you go to
Speaker 1: a state website and you're like, here's places it's not
Speaker 1: gonna name. It was a township where someone had at
Speaker 1: one point. I don't understand how this works. Someone at
Speaker 1: one point in time came in and they like surveyed
Speaker 1: the whole thing. We're gonna break it up into lots.
Speaker 1: And this is on a lake, they're gonna break it
Speaker 1: up into lots. I don't know how it happened, but
Speaker 1: it fell back into the township's hands and we hunted
Speaker 1: waterfowl on it, trapped snap turtles on it, shot a
Speaker 1: lot of ducks off it. There were deer on it,
Speaker 1: hunted squirrels on it. Public land but kind of like
Speaker 1: no one locals treated it publicly, but it was not
Speaker 1: like a destination public land. ONYX opening up, open up
Speaker 1: everyone's eyes to that kind of stuff, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't interpret it for you though you might look
Speaker 1: and be like, that's township. We went down and asked
Speaker 1: the township, like the township had a commissioner, and we
Speaker 1: went down there and said what is up with this?
Speaker 1: And he, guys said, I can't tell you not to
Speaker 1: go on it. I can't tell you to go on it.
Speaker 1: I can't really tell you not to go on it,
Speaker 1: and we took that to be go ahead. We took
Speaker 1: that to be the welcome invite. Yeah, that's reasonable. So
Speaker 1: you you chase him on county land and some state
Speaker 1: land up north. We've got my little family deer campus,
Speaker 1: a little forty acre piece, but it's surrounded by state forest.
Speaker 1: So I grew up hunting that state forest, just roaming
Speaker 1: around swamps, and that was this huge willderness to me
Speaker 1: as a kid. But you haven't gotten that Michigan yet
Speaker 1: this year. No, it hasn't opened up yet. October they
Speaker 1: still round the October one opener they do. That's just
Speaker 1: a few days away. I'm excited. I've been looking at cameras.
Speaker 1: You're heading out there now, Yeah, after this and getting
Speaker 1: the truck and drive twenty four hours back home and
Speaker 1: uh three days from now or four days from now,
Speaker 1: get after those white tails at home. Um? And what happened?
Speaker 1: How did you? I mean, I know how your Montana
Speaker 1: deal went down, but explain the whole, like what your
Speaker 1: situation was. Um. So this was a piece of public
Speaker 1: land the east side of Montana. Um. Basically, what I
Speaker 1: look for when I'm finding these spots is is public
Speaker 1: land that is either adjacent to or intersects with a
Speaker 1: rip with a river corridor. So looking for those riparian
Speaker 1: areas where there's that great cover and food that these
Speaker 1: white tails need in these air areas. And what's kind
Speaker 1: of cool about Western white tail hunting versus at home
Speaker 1: is at home, the white tail habitat is spread out
Speaker 1: over everywhere. These deer are all over the place. In
Speaker 1: my Tanner, Wyoming or Colorado or the Dakota's it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of crammed down into the smaller corridors. So you're
Speaker 1: kind of amazing. I noticed that in my house. I
Speaker 1: mean there's like a distinct line where it's like below
Speaker 1: that line, that's where the white tails live, and above
Speaker 1: that line is where the mule deers. When I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in my new house, we've got white tails zigzagging across
Speaker 1: our yard. And last night we with the spot and
Speaker 1: scope we glassed up too like impressive mule deer box
Speaker 1: up above our house. You got anyone white tail hunting
Speaker 1: your backyard, get wouldn't go over, would go over. I've
Speaker 1: a saw our car about hunting one this morning. Man
Speaker 1: about our car about tagged out. Yeah, it'll happen. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So over the years I've found a handful
Speaker 1: of different little spots like this, And this is a
Speaker 1: spot that i'd gone and scouted and shed hunt in
Speaker 1: the spring, looked it over, real good fun. A lot
Speaker 1: of antlers like the looks of it. Um. And when
Speaker 1: you're out there, you've seeing other tree stands, other trio cams.
Speaker 1: Not at all. It was very different than back home.
Speaker 1: And again I think it's because because people here don't
Speaker 1: care about what you're always it's marked untouched white tailed paradise.
Speaker 1: It's like Eastern Do you ever feel like weird that
Speaker 1: pig and mud. Yeah, it's great because everyone thinks either
Speaker 1: a little like rats run around their farms and I'm
Speaker 1: just the happiest kid in the candy store. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard him called that. They called them like fuel rat
Speaker 1: through prairie rats or something like that. So I've never
Speaker 1: seen another tree stand in North Dakota. I saw tree stands,
Speaker 1: but run in the dudes, we're like, hey, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? What are you after? I do express surprise, Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: white tails, there's there's there's elk up there. I'm like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you got it all wrong. Sonny. Three years ago, I
Speaker 1: bumped into two guys white tail hunting the same section
Speaker 1: I was hunting. They were walking around it with their bows, UM,
Speaker 1: and then they saw me in a tree and hey,
Speaker 1: and they turned belly crawling on them. Just yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: they weren't to that point yet, but they were upright
Speaker 1: to do that. You don't do that much. I haven't,
Speaker 1: but more people are testing the waters with that, and
Speaker 1: it's intriguing to me. I've been seeing more folks chase
Speaker 1: white tails on the ground and showing that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's certainly possible with a bow. UM. So it's something
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm thinking about experimenting a little bit more with.
Speaker 1: I've been trying a lot of new things that I'm
Speaker 1: going to be doing a bunch of new things this year.
Speaker 1: As far as that kind of stuff, using some different
Speaker 1: um gear to get in the tree, we can talk
Speaker 1: about that later. But instead of tree stands, I've been
Speaker 1: shifting to a tree saddle, UM, which has been something
Speaker 1: really interesting. UM that helps a lot with the public
Speaker 1: clan kind of stuff I do. UM. So, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you came out and shed hunted this spot as a
Speaker 1: scouting measure, Ye, walked it, found antlers, you know, confirmed
Speaker 1: what I thought from maps and from previous times. Kind
Speaker 1: of walk around the area and um, what I really
Speaker 1: like to find is, like I said, this public land
Speaker 1: that's intersects with that right parent area. But if it's
Speaker 1: particularly hard to get to in one way or another,
Speaker 1: that's of course something that is is a benefit to
Speaker 1: any public land hunter. Right. You guys talked about that
Speaker 1: one elk and mule deer. Same thing with white tails.
Speaker 1: It's just that the bar for being hard to get
Speaker 1: to as much lower for a white tail hunters. So
Speaker 1: a mile mile and a half walk is like most
Speaker 1: white tail guys just won't do that. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that they won't, but just typically doesn't happen, and it
Speaker 1: winds up being like because in that type of honey too,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of guys that are going out
Speaker 1: after we're going out in the morning. You just kind
Speaker 1: of want to get up and right. Yes, not exhibition style.
Speaker 1: It could be counterproductive because it's like they don't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the white tails aren't necessarily living five miles away from so.
Speaker 1: So the two spots that I in particular was interested
Speaker 1: in getting after on this trip, one of them. You
Speaker 1: had a piece of public land that was from the
Speaker 1: road to a river, and then that piece of public
Speaker 1: land that was not very productive. It was grazed over,
Speaker 1: no cover. UM didn't see that the deer used it
Speaker 1: much except for yeah and sheep um. I didn't think
Speaker 1: that they were using that except for not big horns.
Speaker 1: These are like the basheep um fields, the through field
Speaker 1: rats and uh, they weren't using this area in daily
Speaker 1: maybe crossing it at night, but it wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: spoted one to hunt. But there was a piece of
Speaker 1: landlocked public land back behind some private land that you
Speaker 1: could get to if you walk that river. So we
Speaker 1: talked about this the other day. But the basic gist
Speaker 1: of this situation was I I assumed that with the
Speaker 1: stream Acxis laws in Montana, you could walk that river
Speaker 1: to get in that private land or to start to
Speaker 1: get past the private land and hunt the public land.
Speaker 1: After talking to some people hearing some different ideas on this,
Speaker 1: it sounds like there were some gray areas around that
Speaker 1: whether or not I can legally use the public waterway
Speaker 1: to get to the public land. So I had gotten
Speaker 1: permission from this private landowner whose land was around the
Speaker 1: public in the spring to shed hunt it and scott it.
Speaker 1: Never thing coming into the hunting season. I called him
Speaker 1: again a week ahead of time, just to confirm. Hayese,
Speaker 1: it's still okay that I walked the river to get
Speaker 1: to this public land. It's tucked behind yours. He expressed.
Speaker 1: You know that, No, not, do not. And you're not
Speaker 1: saying I want to hunt your place. You're saying him,
Speaker 1: I'm not hunting your place. I'm passing through exactly and
Speaker 1: not and I'm not even gonna be on your ground.
Speaker 1: I'm literally gonna walk the I'm gonna walk in the river.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna way to the river below the below the banks. No, dear,
Speaker 1: gonna hear me, see me, smell me. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: mess up anyone else's hunting. It's gonna walk the river,
Speaker 1: step up into the public land. Any beaver signing that river, Um,
Speaker 1: you know not much. Surprisingly, Um, I didn't see anything
Speaker 1: like that. Do you ever killed white tailed deer? Kurt Hey, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have when I was living over in the western
Speaker 1: part of the state. You know, I grew up. What
Speaker 1: have you done that out there on the western set
Speaker 1: of state? But I want central man, we go up
Speaker 1: by my sister in law's place. It's like nasty, thick,
Speaker 1: but people in rattle in, people rattle in big giants
Speaker 1: over there. Well, my trip next year. I want to
Speaker 1: next year to a backpacking white tail hunt in like
Speaker 1: northern northwestern Montana and northern Idaho. Backpack into some of
Speaker 1: that stuff. So happily going. I can know some let's
Speaker 1: do it. Got some hot tips beats. I think that
Speaker 1: would be really cool, O cay so go on, no
Speaker 1: beaver sign a white tail. I got permission the spring,
Speaker 1: but in the fall when I called back, it was like,
Speaker 1: probably not. I've got family that's gonna be hunting his property.
Speaker 1: So that kind of threw me. For your tails tails
Speaker 1: hunt white tiss Yes, they have a like a grandson
Speaker 1: or son in law or something like that. Who does
Speaker 1: la ton white tails? Um? And what's your wired to hunt? Fan?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I didn't go that far. Um. But
Speaker 1: what's cool? What's what's what makes this piece of public great?
Speaker 1: I already mentioned the first in the repairent area number two.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get too because to get to it
Speaker 1: you have to do this long hiked in the first piece,
Speaker 1: and then you have to take a half mile down
Speaker 1: this river. The third thing that's great about it is
Speaker 1: that on the private land is food. The best food
Speaker 1: source all around these big alf alfa fields, so you've
Speaker 1: got irrigated lflf irrigate alf alfa fields. So tons of
Speaker 1: deer coming in defeat on that private land, and this
Speaker 1: public land is really nicely tucked right behind that basically,
Speaker 1: and they're bedding up. And what they're bedding in like
Speaker 1: Russian olive bushes and some intermittent cottonwood groves. You know,
Speaker 1: have you seen this down there, because I've seen this
Speaker 1: in that part of the state where they're actually going
Speaker 1: up into the canyons. Quite a waste to bed see.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that in this area, but I was
Speaker 1: pretty far from the canyon walls. Like the area I
Speaker 1: was hunting. It was. It was wide enough at that
Speaker 1: those areas were the sandstone bloffs come down and actually
Speaker 1: form like like classic like rock wall. Yeah, because we've
Speaker 1: been in hunting mule deer and sad at night and
Speaker 1: watched white tails come out of the juniper and ponderosa
Speaker 1: and there's these little like can they got the bottoms
Speaker 1: got green ash and come out at night and just
Speaker 1: do these long tracks down into hit that riparian stuff
Speaker 1: and then come up through the stage brush and ship
Speaker 1: and filter up into these little canyons to go to
Speaker 1: bed at night. They're incredibly adaptable animals. It is amazing
Speaker 1: the different types of areas they can make work. Um.
Speaker 1: In this area, there was so much concentrated cover right
Speaker 1: there along the river that they were just packed in there. Um.
Speaker 1: So this public was kind of really nicely settled right
Speaker 1: behind the food, kind of in the midst of the betting,
Speaker 1: but a bit of a transition from the best betting
Speaker 1: to the food. So long story short and all this
Speaker 1: is that I ended up being worried that I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna have any more premission permission. So I was looking
Speaker 1: at the maps trying to find a few other spots.
Speaker 1: But when I showed up, I went and talked to
Speaker 1: the landowner, had a really nice conversation with him and
Speaker 1: his wife, and um, this is you know, it's okay,
Speaker 1: our family isn't going to be now here for another
Speaker 1: week or two. Greece and some palms. Uh No, I
Speaker 1: was just no, no grease and palms, just having a
Speaker 1: nice friendly chat. And it's a nice boy. Nice wholesome boy.
Speaker 1: Nice wholesome. Yeah, really you got manipulative. No, it just
Speaker 1: came up in conversation. I'm not going to hold that back.
Speaker 1: He really wanted to home. Starving doctor says, you can't
Speaker 1: ain't even dear meat. I don't know how I did it,
Speaker 1: but somewhere or another I did get permission, um and yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was really excited about that because I had
Speaker 1: all those things going for it, and then he didn't
Speaker 1: have to be looking over your shoulder like we're talking.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do anything. Gray means when I was a younger man,
Speaker 1: Gray ment go now gray means man. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not I just hate that feeling. Not worth it.
Speaker 1: I hate the feeling. Yeah, agree. So it was great
Speaker 1: to get that green light. Feel really good about that.
Speaker 1: So I was just camped off the road my truck,
Speaker 1: sleep in the back of my truck, camping there, and
Speaker 1: then every day would go on and hunt these deer.
Speaker 1: And the fourth thing was so good about this area
Speaker 1: was that that river allould you almost perfect access and
Speaker 1: exit without notifying deer that there was a human hunter
Speaker 1: in there at all. Because I could get into that river.
Speaker 1: I was like four ft below the bank banks. So
Speaker 1: I would walk that riverbed leaving no scent because I'm
Speaker 1: in the water almost the whole time. Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1: And um, and then basically I'm able to hop right
Speaker 1: up on shore and get up in a tree. So
Speaker 1: you were waiters hip waiters I bought. I bought. I
Speaker 1: was stupid. I bought like fifteen dollar packable waiters wigs.
Speaker 1: Uh no other hots man, Yeah, I guess. So, I
Speaker 1: don't know for that long hike, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they would have put in your pocket. You know what
Speaker 1: those are the ones without the feet, the one for
Speaker 1: the plastic boots. But that also the same because then yeah,
Speaker 1: that probably lets the last long time. Yeah, they last
Speaker 1: for a long time. But we're talking about is um
Speaker 1: have we talked Have we covered this for? We must
Speaker 1: have talked about it in our dull sheet hunt, but yeah,
Speaker 1: explain them. It's uh, it's basically it looks like an
Speaker 1: oversized sock that comes all the way up to your crotch.
Speaker 1: Um almost, it's just got at the top end of it.
Speaker 1: It's got a little clip that goes around your belt
Speaker 1: and the bottom has just a very thin, rudimentary sort
Speaker 1: of soul. But they're big and bagging off that you
Speaker 1: can just slip them right over your boots. So every
Speaker 1: time you get to a stream crossing, you just pull
Speaker 1: them out of your pack. We were crossing the stream
Speaker 1: so much we were we were just hanging them off
Speaker 1: our shoulders strap and we get there to throw them on.
Speaker 1: Take five or ten steps to get across the stream,
Speaker 1: and then you know, take them off and put them
Speaker 1: back on. Yeah, and they roll up like way smaller
Speaker 1: than a nerve football. Yeah, there's probably a pound pound
Speaker 1: and a half. What's the fabric or what what? What's
Speaker 1: it made of? It's a seventy D nylon, I think
Speaker 1: some of the yeah, I know there's a flow. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they use it to to tin nine long. Some
Speaker 1: of them are seventy depends on which ones you get.
Speaker 1: And then um, I believe they use it's a it's
Speaker 1: a full euro thing. Coding is what they create the
Speaker 1: so it's reasonably strong. Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: bush flag through a bunch of beaver shoot sticks with him,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. The guy we bought him from said,
Speaker 1: if you just leave them on and just start in,
Speaker 1: hike up the you know stream bed, crossing the stream,
Speaker 1: and then hike on dry rocks for a while. You're
Speaker 1: gonna put holes in them quick. So I got something
Speaker 1: kind of like that, but it must be the much
Speaker 1: less quality version of that. It's fifteen dollars on Amazon. Basically,
Speaker 1: it was like an oversight garbage bag that I split
Speaker 1: up both my legs. I've done that too, Contractor bags, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of essentially, that's what it was. You can get
Speaker 1: a lot of miles out of across the creeks on
Speaker 1: Contractor bags, probably more than I got out of these.
Speaker 1: It was that it was that deep though. Huh you
Speaker 1: needed it up to your hip, Yeah, there are spots
Speaker 1: were up to your hips, and I ripped at the
Speaker 1: very first crossing hip a big old hole in it.
Speaker 1: So then the rest of that night I had to
Speaker 1: just wade through it and filling it with water. I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, Okay, So I got soaked that first night,
Speaker 1: had to drive an hour and a half to the
Speaker 1: nearest town. The next day. I bought hip waiters. Oh
Speaker 1: then you bought hip waiters. Yeah, good hip waiters, like
Speaker 1: those irrigator ones you know. Uh, you climb about a creek. No,
Speaker 1: no smell ye all nice and dry, All nice and
Speaker 1: dry your sign and uh flip up into your spot.
Speaker 1: Are you carrying a tree stand around in your back? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So that's usually. I've got a tree stand and climbing
Speaker 1: sticks that I bring with me, which are basically like
Speaker 1: a big metal stick that's got three steps on it.
Speaker 1: You strapped out to the tree, climb up, strapped another
Speaker 1: one to the tree climb up. But this year, like
Speaker 1: I said, instead of the tree stand, I've got this saddle,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a rock climber's harness or
Speaker 1: like arborust harness um. And then so I attached these
Speaker 1: sticks to the tree so and climb up to or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then I attached a rope of the PRUSI knot
Speaker 1: on the end of it that basically allows me adjust
Speaker 1: the height of this clip. Suicide prussick or double prussick
Speaker 1: wraps on top and two raps on bottom. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Pre tid I didn't pay too much, as we had
Speaker 1: a big conversation about this the r day when I
Speaker 1: used to do ir risk work, Like when you tie
Speaker 1: a prusick. If you look at us, got like four
Speaker 1: wraps two raps above and two raps below tree climb.
Speaker 1: When I used to do like tree climbing work, you
Speaker 1: would just do two below and one above and you
Speaker 1: can control with your thumb, like the slightest amount of
Speaker 1: thumb pressure would open the knot and you just like
Speaker 1: fast like you're supposed to two wraps. Then you got,
Speaker 1: like forcibly pull the rope through the knot. But the
Speaker 1: guy worked for would call a suicide knot. He didn't
Speaker 1: like it, but it was just really nice because just
Speaker 1: like a little flick your thumb, that knot would open
Speaker 1: up and you're you know, this would have been definitely
Speaker 1: been two on top to them. I only bring this
Speaker 1: up if we're just discussed this year because the same
Speaker 1: knot is great for tightening tent. Yeah guidelines, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So basically you've
Speaker 1: got just clip into this thing and then you are
Speaker 1: your knees up against the tree and then you're just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging sitting not not just like legs fall
Speaker 1: asleep and stuff up there. You've got a you've got
Speaker 1: a platform that your feet can set on. So there's
Speaker 1: a couple different options people do. Some people just keep
Speaker 1: their they have their climbing stick pegs there at at
Speaker 1: the foot level, or they'll put in a handful of
Speaker 1: other steps around the tree, or you can attach a
Speaker 1: small platform. So what I was using is you're you're
Speaker 1: basically a tree stand, a cast aluminum I think tree
Speaker 1: stand type platform, but a tiny miniature version of that.
Speaker 1: So instead of like a thirty inch long tree stand platform,
Speaker 1: this is like eight inches by ten inches, is a
Speaker 1: little tiny thing that you can attach to the tree
Speaker 1: that just gives you some keep your feet and it
Speaker 1: gives you like a pivot point to allow you then
Speaker 1: to pivot in different directions around the tree. So I
Speaker 1: could shoot almost three hundred six degrees anywhere around this tree,
Speaker 1: spinning around, leaning left, leaning right, um, all the time.
Speaker 1: You had to practice a lot out of this thing. Off.
Speaker 1: I did practice a little bit, yeah, but it was
Speaker 1: it was much more intuitive and comfortable than I had
Speaker 1: even expected. And so instead of going in there with
Speaker 1: you know, let's say a ten or twelve pound pack
Speaker 1: of sticks and then a twelve pound or thirteen pound
Speaker 1: tree stand, plus my camera gear, plus my backpack, plus
Speaker 1: my bow range finder, all that other stuff, instead of that,
Speaker 1: I maybe cut like thirteen pounds right at the gate
Speaker 1: without carrying that tree standing. Um. So it's much lighter
Speaker 1: weight hiking in, much less work getting set up in
Speaker 1: the tree and um comfortable. And so that first night
Speaker 1: was the first time I'd ever hunted in It was
Speaker 1: that first night of the season in Montana, and snuck
Speaker 1: in there, got up into a tree, and it was
Speaker 1: in this spot where I thought, based off what I
Speaker 1: had seen in the past, you know, walking around and
Speaker 1: seeing this area, these deer were in a transition from
Speaker 1: that Russian alfe type brush were they're bedded through this small,
Speaker 1: a little open cottonwoody grove towards the private land where
Speaker 1: that food was behind me. And that's what happened, basically.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, while I was getting set up
Speaker 1: in the tree, I had two small year and half
Speaker 1: a bucks come by, and then the course of the night,
Speaker 1: just deer after deer after deer flooding out of there.
Speaker 1: Squirrels like that Russian olivet to eat it, I believe it.
Speaker 1: Did you see fox squirrels in there? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not a little bit. I'm sure. I'm sure I
Speaker 1: saw squirrels. I don't know if I paid enough tension
Speaker 1: to say what they were. But if I'm not a
Speaker 1: squirrel guy, Like I'm not a skunk guy, but if
Speaker 1: I see a skunk, I'm like, I register it. There's
Speaker 1: so many white tails in there, register and squirrel. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a non native plant. It's a real dell interious.
Speaker 1: But I have heard about that. It was brought in
Speaker 1: like the Depression era, wasn't it. It's fast growing, can
Speaker 1: make wind rolls out of that. I think that was what.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it's displacing native trees. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, it's like a it's all over the
Speaker 1: place out there on squirrels. Like. But the deer I
Speaker 1: love it too. Um. And I saw a lot of
Speaker 1: deer and eventually, uh at one almost in the same
Speaker 1: couple of minutes on mature buck. Group of five bucks
Speaker 1: came by on one side of me, including one mature
Speaker 1: buck that I would have would have tried to take,
Speaker 1: and then behind me another mature buck, both of about
Speaker 1: eight yards on either side of me. No one out
Speaker 1: there hunting, nobody else out there hunting, um, my little playground,
Speaker 1: and they look all summary yeah, because I mean most
Speaker 1: of them are still in velvet, still have their summer coat,
Speaker 1: kind of orangey coat. Beautiful. I mean, it's neat to
Speaker 1: be out there in the woods at that point when
Speaker 1: you're seeing deer look makes as look really because next
Speaker 1: or thin. They don't have any puffy hair out and
Speaker 1: looks strange. Their faces look kind of emaciated. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I know they're fat and happy. And at that time
Speaker 1: you're so so fun because these deer are on such
Speaker 1: a consistent pattern. You know, they're they're going to bed
Speaker 1: and go to feed. They're gonna bed, They're gonna go
Speaker 1: to feed. That's basically all they do. Because they're not
Speaker 1: playing grabbit, they're not playing grab bass. They are very
Speaker 1: comfortable because they haven't been hunted yet at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the season, so you can really see these
Speaker 1: dear acting very naturally, going about their everyday life. And
Speaker 1: that's just fun. From a dear enthusiastic I just love
Speaker 1: watching these critters getting to be in that kind of
Speaker 1: situation and seeing dear do dear things, you know, rather
Speaker 1: than back home in Michigan. And by the time you
Speaker 1: get too laid October, these are deer that feel like
Speaker 1: they're in the middle of a war. Zone. Um, that
Speaker 1: are hardly moving daylight at all, and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: see mature bucks hardly at all or anything like that.
Speaker 1: They're all nocturnal out here. I'm seeing four and five
Speaker 1: and six year old bucks happily hanging out, playing with
Speaker 1: each other, sparring, doing different things. That's just neat. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was enjoying it from that perspective. You're painting
Speaker 1: a compelling picture. It's not that great. You should not
Speaker 1: come out, um. But yeah, the basically just to that
Speaker 1: first night was that I saw, um a couple of
Speaker 1: nice bucks that I would have gotten a shot at
Speaker 1: if I could have been close up, but they're out
Speaker 1: of range. Um. So I snuck out that night after
Speaker 1: everything had passed through and had a game plan for
Speaker 1: the next day. And the issue though, was that the
Speaker 1: next day I had a wind direction that would have
Speaker 1: been blowing into that betting area, and I knew, like,
Speaker 1: this spot is so good if I go, I want
Speaker 1: to go back in the right away. Right I've seen
Speaker 1: all these bucks. I knew if I moved my my
Speaker 1: not my stand. But I moved where I was hunting,
Speaker 1: like sixty yards farther north to where most of those
Speaker 1: deer came by. I thought I'd be able to get
Speaker 1: a shot. I was pretty confident. Well, if the wind
Speaker 1: was good, I could move sixty yards up there. But
Speaker 1: win wasn't good. That takes restraint, man, It takes restraint
Speaker 1: to bag it because the wind's bad. Yeah, and it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was tough. Like I so badly wanted to go
Speaker 1: back in there, had seen so many deers like this
Speaker 1: is such a honey hole. But I just knew if
Speaker 1: you wait till the conditions are right, you will kill
Speaker 1: it deer there. If you go back in there tomorrow
Speaker 1: and just hope to get lucky, you're you're gonna mess
Speaker 1: it up. So I said, nope, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go to the honey hoole. There was one of the
Speaker 1: piece of public I've seen on the maps that looked
Speaker 1: pretty good, and I hadn't been to ever before. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give this other spot of rest. Wait till
Speaker 1: the winds right, I'm gonna go check out this new spot.
Speaker 1: And this new spot kind of had all the same
Speaker 1: things going forward. The nine number one spot did um.
Speaker 1: It was along the right pairing corridor, it was hard
Speaker 1: to get to, and it was tucked behind private land
Speaker 1: the head food on it. But what made this one
Speaker 1: hard to get to versus the first was that rather
Speaker 1: than walking a river, I had to walk more than
Speaker 1: a mile up on top of this big bluff and
Speaker 1: then go down one of those steep, nasty canyons like
Speaker 1: you were talking about. Like basically sliding down this canyon.
Speaker 1: I had to bring tent poles because I didn't have
Speaker 1: truck and sticks or anything. So I had like like
Speaker 1: a tarp pole. Yeah, so it was not ideal, but
Speaker 1: it was all I had. And I said, well, I
Speaker 1: need something to give me some kind of support as
Speaker 1: I'm sliding down this So got down in this sound
Speaker 1: so bad you needed to repel it. That's a beat
Speaker 1: of repellent. But that's next year. Um. But got down
Speaker 1: in this canyon, got in this little piece of public
Speaker 1: land again, and same kind of deal. They were dear
Speaker 1: betted back in public russianale of cotton wood brush and
Speaker 1: they would transition through this little piece of public out
Speaker 1: towards that private land with the alfalfa. Um. But again
Speaker 1: it wasn't right close enough. So I did see another
Speaker 1: mature buck that I would have shot at if I
Speaker 1: could have but he was about hundred and twenty yards away,
Speaker 1: a bunch of doughs, some little bucks. Um, not quite
Speaker 1: as much action as the first night, but again it
Speaker 1: was I felt good like I've got a second. I've
Speaker 1: got a second big huge giant buck. Uh, not a
Speaker 1: big huge giant like m I'd say similar in that,
Speaker 1: like definitely you know, three or four or five year
Speaker 1: old somewhere in that. He was probably four or five
Speaker 1: years old. And um, he's a ten pointer, kind of
Speaker 1: tight and tall, like one thirties somewhere around maybe one
Speaker 1: if if we care about score at all. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was a buck. Yeah, Um, so it's cool
Speaker 1: to see that too far away. So then I waited
Speaker 1: until they all went through way till after dark to
Speaker 1: everything and transitioned off to those have a fields. Snuck
Speaker 1: out there again. Now I know I've got two different
Speaker 1: spots I can work with, so depending on wind direction,
Speaker 1: whatever other conditions might change, I can adjust. Now you're
Speaker 1: hunting by yourself, yep, this car camping by yourself. Just
Speaker 1: car camping. Sleep in the bed of the truck, make
Speaker 1: a little hot dog on the girl at night, drink
Speaker 1: a beer, pass out. Don't you wish you had a
Speaker 1: story like this, Kurt, that sounds nice, and all these
Speaker 1: rams some more rams, and yeah, it's a different I
Speaker 1: couldn't decide which ram I wanted to go after. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: we could go on for a while with the juxtapositions here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, same state, very very different experiences that happened.
Speaker 1: So next day the wind wasn't right for the first area.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going back to the honey hole. Honey
Speaker 1: hoole number one, Go back honey hole number one. And
Speaker 1: I now have learned something since the first night. I
Speaker 1: know that the majority of these deer weren't traveling through
Speaker 1: the middle of this kind of transition. The majority of
Speaker 1: them were working this edge along the northern spot. So
Speaker 1: I snuck back in there, this time with the better
Speaker 1: waiters because I had to go town and get the
Speaker 1: good waiters, and knowing that I want to go set
Speaker 1: up in a new tree, snuck in there, got in
Speaker 1: there pretty early, hanging your tree in the cotton, hanging
Speaker 1: your slinging the cotton wood, cottonwood, and um, got set
Speaker 1: up the same kind of deal as the first night.
Speaker 1: It's very These deer were moving pretty early in the day.
Speaker 1: They were very comfortable. Yeah. The video, the video you
Speaker 1: have of your shooting the bucket shot, it looks like
Speaker 1: it looks like a hundred degrees out the middle of
Speaker 1: the damn day. Yeah. So I'm not gonna talk about
Speaker 1: day four. We're still on day three. But jumping ahead
Speaker 1: each day was warm. I'm saying, it looks like it
Speaker 1: looks like daytime. All this activity was happening daytime, pretty warm.
Speaker 1: And again it comes down to these are comfortable, not
Speaker 1: very hunted deer, and I was I was kind of
Speaker 1: secretly able to get pretty far back in their movement pattern, right,
Speaker 1: So these deer were moving past me real alatively early
Speaker 1: in the day because they still had another couple hundred
Speaker 1: yards to get to the wide open field where they're
Speaker 1: gonna feed. Um. So most of mine, it was getting
Speaker 1: dark eight thirty or something like that maybe or eight
Speaker 1: fifty at night. It was getting dark, and these deer
Speaker 1: were coming. The majority of the action I was seeing
Speaker 1: was between like five forty five and sixty five, So
Speaker 1: several hours before dark they were passing by me and
Speaker 1: then making their way out to these fields. So that
Speaker 1: night got in there, here comes the deer started seeing
Speaker 1: some young bucks. Some does but I was a little
Speaker 1: worried because the first group of deer of seeing they
Speaker 1: actually cut in. They were heading right towards me, but
Speaker 1: then about sixty yards before they got to where I
Speaker 1: was going to be, they cut into this Russian aale
Speaker 1: of stuff and kind of skirted inside away from me,
Speaker 1: just out of range and this thick stuff, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: O my head and my head, I'm like, gosh, is
Speaker 1: that what those deer did the night before? And my
Speaker 1: memory was just wrong? Did I set up thirty yards
Speaker 1: away from like the perfect spot? And I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: another night here frustrated seeing all these deer go just
Speaker 1: out of range. Out for the last first half hour,
Speaker 1: sitting there kicking myself and thinking, should I just pull
Speaker 1: everything down and move thirty yards? Um? But there's already
Speaker 1: deer moving all over the place. I decided to stick
Speaker 1: it out, and I'm glad I did because around six
Speaker 1: fifteen or something on those lines, I'm looking over my
Speaker 1: left shoulder trying to see if there's anything behind me,
Speaker 1: and when I turned back, there's a big giant buck
Speaker 1: at fifteen yards right in front of me in my
Speaker 1: main shooting lane. Right there. Um came no I was
Speaker 1: looking this way and then turn around he's there looking
Speaker 1: at No, just kind of waltzon through and this is
Speaker 1: like full velvet, big, like a tall time kind of
Speaker 1: curling in great, big, giant templar um beautiful deer. And
Speaker 1: it was situally instantly knew, oh yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: buck I'd like to get a shot at. Um. The
Speaker 1: issue was that you know he what he must have
Speaker 1: done is he must have come out of that russianalef
Speaker 1: and there was one big bush in front of me
Speaker 1: about twenty yards and if that deer came from the
Speaker 1: left right of that tree, of that bush, I would
Speaker 1: have seen him. But if he came in on that
Speaker 1: direct line where the bushes in between, would never know
Speaker 1: till he was right there. That must be what happened.
Speaker 1: So I see him there two other nice bucks come
Speaker 1: behind him, so it's a batchel a group of these
Speaker 1: three bucks. He's right there like he'd be the ideal shot.
Speaker 1: Like when I planned and saw out when I sat
Speaker 1: in that tree, was like, this is where I want
Speaker 1: to get a shot at. Well, that's where he was
Speaker 1: right now. But he was there before I was holding
Speaker 1: my bow, before anything. So I see him register. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's a buck I want to get a shot at.
Speaker 1: And at the same time I try to grab my bow,
Speaker 1: spin into position and turn my camera on and swinging
Speaker 1: the camera to get film of him where, yeah, where,
Speaker 1: And of course that was I was not able to
Speaker 1: do that fast enough before he got behind some branches
Speaker 1: and I couldn't get a shot. I was like trying
Speaker 1: to weasel my way. Can I spin around a little
Speaker 1: more and like slip it through some branches, But I
Speaker 1: knew that I wasn't gonna risk some kind of spook shop.
Speaker 1: He didn't spook. He walked right in and was just
Speaker 1: kind of like I think, if I remember, he could
Speaker 1: started coming straight at me. These other two bucks with
Speaker 1: him did come directly to my tree stand or my tree.
Speaker 1: My steps were like sniffing around underneath there um and
Speaker 1: eventually one of them caught windn't of something that they
Speaker 1: didn't quite like, and one of them bolted. They didn't blow,
Speaker 1: they didn't really freak out, but the one bolted, and
Speaker 1: that caused the other two to kind of bounce off
Speaker 1: and they stopped. He kind of looked around and then
Speaker 1: just walked away, but no shot opportunity. That was frustrating.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a great public lam buck there
Speaker 1: in range close encounter. Couldn't make it happen. Um, But
Speaker 1: that's how it goes. And then the salt in the
Speaker 1: wound at the end of the night was that the
Speaker 1: mature buck that I had seen walked by this spot
Speaker 1: the first night, the reason why I had moved to
Speaker 1: this new area. He goes walking by where I sat
Speaker 1: the first night at the end of the evening, So
Speaker 1: again i'd seen two different nice shooter bucks. Um. That
Speaker 1: was day three. Any questions on day three? No, all right,
Speaker 1: Day four. I appreciate you guys hearing out my whole
Speaker 1: long white tail stories. Not nearly as adventurous as Kurt's
Speaker 1: big mountain trip, but there's more exciting in the show notes.
Speaker 1: We're gonna post all these GPS way points. So day four,
Speaker 1: a cold front hits. So it's going from like eighty
Speaker 1: and ninety I think that day the day three is
Speaker 1: like nineties, and now cold front was hitting overnight. It
Speaker 1: was gonna drop twenty to thirty degrees. So the next day,
Speaker 1: day four, is going to be a high of I
Speaker 1: think in the sixties. So I knew this front's passing.
Speaker 1: This is going to get the deer moving even earlier.
Speaker 1: I believed there's it's been great action already, but this
Speaker 1: should ramp it up even more. Cold frinds are one
Speaker 1: of those things that more consistently than any other factor
Speaker 1: will get white till on their feet and moving. So
Speaker 1: you guys, because they get cold. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: because they get cold. I think it's um probably because
Speaker 1: there's some kind of biological drive like you gotta start
Speaker 1: packing on the food, just trigger or something like that. Um, So,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, I figured they'd be moving earlier.
Speaker 1: So I had been, like I mentioned, seeing mostly activity
Speaker 1: like five or sixty five somewhere around there. So I've
Speaker 1: been getting into the tree at like five On this day,
Speaker 1: I was like, I should get in there at least
Speaker 1: an hour and a half earlier than that, just in case.
Speaker 1: So that's like six hours before dark. Kind of ridiculous
Speaker 1: for early season white tail hunting. You never see that
Speaker 1: kind of activity early in the day. But it's been great.
Speaker 1: I better make sure I'm covering my butt so sneak
Speaker 1: in there. Get to that tree at three thirty in
Speaker 1: the afternoon. I'm up in the tree at three thirty five,
Speaker 1: settled my cameras, set my bows. I'm comfortable. I grab
Speaker 1: a bottle of water because it's you know, it's still
Speaker 1: a good hike, and there was like a mile and
Speaker 1: a half hike. Play nuts in here. Yeah, still in
Speaker 1: those squirrels. Though I can't I can't say one way
Speaker 1: or another. Confidence don't like I would think, see Dirk
Speaker 1: can talk. At least you know what kind of tree
Speaker 1: you were sitting in. Pat Dirkin talked about white tail
Speaker 1: guys get so focused on one thing, white tails, that
Speaker 1: they that they that they have blinders to the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. Do you feel that you're guilty of that.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of that to a degree. I'm aware of
Speaker 1: the things that are of that are relevant to the hunt,
Speaker 1: like im, so, I'm aware of the types of trees
Speaker 1: that they like to feed on. I'm aware of the
Speaker 1: types of trees that they're more likely to rub on.
Speaker 1: I'm aware of the types of plant life that I'm
Speaker 1: focused on because I know that deer will be feeding
Speaker 1: on this saw raccoon. Would you register it, register? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll register most animals, squirrels. I feel like you're just
Speaker 1: kind of kind of what I don't know they're beneath
Speaker 1: my radar. I guess not not in like a not
Speaker 1: like beneath me. But I just like, there's so many
Speaker 1: of them usually I can't trigger it. Well, but you're
Speaker 1: in a you're in the transition zone. You're in the
Speaker 1: transition zone where there's not in this place. I'm honey, Montana.
Speaker 1: You're just in the area where they start to where
Speaker 1: where they you know they they're in the major Riperian
Speaker 1: corridors nosing westward. Okay, it's like an incomplete map. And yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. It's just good to know. When I get back,
Speaker 1: I will register cottontails. Yeah, yeah, I see a cottail.
Speaker 1: It will click in your mad like, oh, let's grab it. Yeah. Turkeys. Uh,
Speaker 1: he'd probably just come back and say I saw six
Speaker 1: mammals over three pounds under Yeah, but when you're seeing
Speaker 1: when you're seeing like sixty mammals over three pounds for
Speaker 1: over a hundred pounds, the little two pounders just kind
Speaker 1: of heart to keep track of. Okay. Well, I'm just
Speaker 1: requesting for next time that when doing this sort of thing,
Speaker 1: you don't need to tell me if you saw them
Speaker 1: in Michigan, because they're they're omnipresent. But I'm just requesting
Speaker 1: that in in these just keep a mental note duly noted.
Speaker 1: I will put them in the to do list next
Speaker 1: time around. So there you are, nuts, you grab a
Speaker 1: sip of water. Three thirty five in the afternoon, Grab
Speaker 1: a sip of water, assuming that I'm gonna have some
Speaker 1: time here to kind of just relax. Yeah, and while
Speaker 1: I'm and and I lost my main Nalgian water bottle
Speaker 1: on one of these hikes back and fourth, so the
Speaker 1: only water bottle I had was one of those great
Speaker 1: big steel YETI ramblers. And so in my headily, this
Speaker 1: is stupid to be bringing U out in the woods
Speaker 1: just because it's big and flashy. So in my head
Speaker 1: is like, well, I have a couple of SIPs right now.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to pull it out when there's gonna
Speaker 1: be deer moving around or anything. Um, but take this
Speaker 1: big swig and made swig I catch moving out of
Speaker 1: left of my eye three thirty seven, here's this big
Speaker 1: giant buck walking right towards me. Stop messing around doing something.
Speaker 1: And it looked in my head that the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought I saw the frame of those antlers, said
Speaker 1: that's that same buck from yesterday. He does not have
Speaker 1: velvet anymore, so peel is velvet, rubbed it all off
Speaker 1: overnight in the moment, that's us thinking in retrospect, probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened that fast. But in my head, I'm
Speaker 1: like that this must be that same deer had the
Speaker 1: same kind of tall times curving in um tall browb times.
Speaker 1: And so I'm I canna let that same thing that
Speaker 1: happened yesterday happened where I wasn't quick enough to get ready.
Speaker 1: So he's coming in. I throw the water bottle in
Speaker 1: my backpack, grond my bow, turn the camera on, spin around,
Speaker 1: get into the position. All the while he's slowly kind
Speaker 1: of walking in, and he walks into fifteen yards. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better situation
Speaker 1: and got a shot him at like a fifteen and
Speaker 1: he goes running off and I got an aarrow in
Speaker 1: a public lamb buck just like that, three thirty seven
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. The video is funny because you could
Speaker 1: you could like the camera thing is funny. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: zoomed way out and the self filming self filming the
Speaker 1: white to hunt. That's kind of tricky. It's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of deal man. Yeah, but I got him on
Speaker 1: foot I got on film. It's not like beautiful footage
Speaker 1: or anything, but I thought it was great. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a good video. But he looks pretty far. It
Speaker 1: was a nice shot. Mart definitely wasn't that far. What
Speaker 1: do I need to do? Just go to bar to
Speaker 1: hunt dot com. Yeah, well i'd go to the YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Maybe go check that out. Um it's on the mediator
Speaker 1: dot com to um and there's a series. I did
Speaker 1: a video every day of that hunt. So each day
Speaker 1: I I showcased what I was doing throughout that day.
Speaker 1: So there's one, two, three, and then day four and five.
Speaker 1: I put in one video at the end because double feature,
Speaker 1: double feature, because I shot this buck um and the
Speaker 1: shot looked pretty good, Like in my mind's I looked
Speaker 1: pretty good. I looked at the footage because it so
Speaker 1: zoomed out, you couldn't really tell, but it looked like
Speaker 1: it was probably the back of lungs is where I
Speaker 1: thought the shot was. That's that's one nice thing about
Speaker 1: having films stuff. Mhmm. It doesn't make it worth it
Speaker 1: in and of itself, but it's a nice thing of
Speaker 1: having film and stuff to analyze huge. So based off that,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, I'm gonna give just just
Speaker 1: give him a forty five minutes an hour just to
Speaker 1: be safe, and then I'll go down there and look around,
Speaker 1: check for blood, do some of that. And so that
Speaker 1: all happened, and then I got to thinking, well, I'm
Speaker 1: a mile and a half away from the truck. I
Speaker 1: don't have like my buck barrito. I have this like
Speaker 1: sled that I want to just cut him up and
Speaker 1: carry him out. I should have done that, but as
Speaker 1: a Michigan guy, like we just don't. I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. And in retrospect, of course you can do that,
Speaker 1: because you can do that with elk or meal they
Speaker 1: or whatever. But in some states back East and you're
Speaker 1: not to do that. Um So in just my head
Speaker 1: and it was like, I'm just gonna drag it out
Speaker 1: like you always do. I saw the little thing you had,
Speaker 1: a little deer dragger. So it's just basically kind of
Speaker 1: like a plea sold for that purpose. It's like fifteen bucks.
Speaker 1: I was gonna buy just a sled, and then when
Speaker 1: I looked for a sled on Amazon, that popped up
Speaker 1: specifically called like deer dragons and sled or sometimes get
Speaker 1: one of those otter sleds um. So I decided to
Speaker 1: hike back to the truck, get that, unload all my
Speaker 1: gear that I don't need, changes some light away clothes,
Speaker 1: come back in. Did all that got back in? That night?
Speaker 1: Started trying to look for blood. The condensed version of
Speaker 1: this is that I could not find blood that night.
Speaker 1: UM started kind of body searching into that thick stuff
Speaker 1: where I thought he must be because I last saw
Speaker 1: him going those Russian oil I couldn't believe that he
Speaker 1: could go too much further, but nothing. So after dark
Speaker 1: finally got to the point where it just seemed to
Speaker 1: be fruitless to keep on walking in there. I can't
Speaker 1: see more in ten yards in front of me. I
Speaker 1: was really stressed. Yeah, I was pretty upset UM, because
Speaker 1: it just looked like such a slam dunk that I
Speaker 1: thought for sure that Buck would be tipping over just
Speaker 1: inside the brush and he'd be right there because he ran.
Speaker 1: I watched him run for a couple hundred yards through
Speaker 1: this open transition, so I would have been I was
Speaker 1: shocked to see that he wasn't down so soon UM
Speaker 1: came back in the next morning, first thing, first light,
Speaker 1: and still couldn't find blood. Um at the shot side,
Speaker 1: just to tiny a little bit, and then after that,
Speaker 1: no blood trail. I went to the last spot I
Speaker 1: saw him again, and I'd watched the video and I was, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he went in front of this tree,
Speaker 1: but behind this bush. So I went to that area
Speaker 1: and then just started walking back and forth, just staring
Speaker 1: at the ground trying to see anything, and I did
Speaker 1: end up finding blood. Now I have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a unique situation and that I've got a little
Speaker 1: bit of red green color blindness. So red does him
Speaker 1: pop as much to me is like my buddies. So
Speaker 1: I'll be like blood trailing with a friend like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: blood blood, blood blood, and I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I have to get down like really like look
Speaker 1: at it. So now for me, you need to look
Speaker 1: like the Manson murders before you for it to be
Speaker 1: a really easy blood track. So I found Now I
Speaker 1: look more for like the shape of like a blood splatter,
Speaker 1: or the glimmer of like that little like fluid glare. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the sheen, And then I spot that kind of and
Speaker 1: and I can see, oh yeah, that's red blood. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit more difficult for me, a
Speaker 1: little bit slower process. So maybe someone else would have
Speaker 1: spot all this blood faster than I did. But I
Speaker 1: eventually got it. I was able to follow a small
Speaker 1: blood trail about eight yards and that kind of pointed
Speaker 1: me into the brush the right way, so now I
Speaker 1: had a better idea of what his trajectory was. Dried
Speaker 1: up again, though, I spent the next several hours then
Speaker 1: circling out from there trying to find more blood or
Speaker 1: find him. And it's just that, like you said, that thick,
Speaker 1: nasty Russian olive stuff crawling around on all all fours
Speaker 1: for most of the time to get underneath it, because
Speaker 1: like just deer tunnels to there. Um. And after four
Speaker 1: or five six hours that morning doing that, I stumbled
Speaker 1: on bole lomhol there it was. Now did it looked
Speaker 1: like he had tipped over, like curled up. He was
Speaker 1: tipped over. He wasn't curled up, um, But but I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was a situation where he was
Speaker 1: he maybe he had been there for a while. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I don't know how long it took um,
Speaker 1: but he definitely wasn't like curled up, bedded. He was
Speaker 1: laying there like he just fell. Was it a cool night.
Speaker 1: It was a cool night, But he wasn't all like
Speaker 1: super stiff and regul mortists like you see many of me.
Speaker 1: Was still good. I was worried about that. If you
Speaker 1: tasted it yet. No, Um, it was a situation where
Speaker 1: it was really hot that day when I found him,
Speaker 1: and I was worried about that. So I found him
Speaker 1: by that time it was already I don't know, eleven
Speaker 1: thirty or noon or something, and I don't know seventies
Speaker 1: or eighties. And then you know, it took a very
Speaker 1: long time to get him out of there, Drag him
Speaker 1: through the river, get him out those steep river bay as.
Speaker 1: I developed like a police system with ropes to get
Speaker 1: him up and over the bank. Um, you need to
Speaker 1: develop a system with a knife in a backpack, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: lesson learned. We can help you out. Yeah, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I made things much harder. But he's not gonna drive
Speaker 1: home with them a hole anyway. The thing is that
Speaker 1: you can't, Yeah, you can't drive home with him. You
Speaker 1: can't cross state lines or anything with CWD and all
Speaker 1: that too. Um, But got him out of there, get
Speaker 1: him cleaned up. And what did the netcropsy reveal of
Speaker 1: your shop placement? It was back of lungs. It ended
Speaker 1: up being a slightly quartering two shot. So in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized that he was a little bit quartering
Speaker 1: to me. So that shot nick to the back of
Speaker 1: the lungs, liver, and then the front of the stomach,
Speaker 1: just a little nick off the front of the stomach,
Speaker 1: and then that exit wound was plugged up with like
Speaker 1: some of that stuff. Um. And so I think that
Speaker 1: led to why he was able to go much further
Speaker 1: than I expected. Those single lung hits, at least for
Speaker 1: white else, are notorious for being you know, it should be,
Speaker 1: it should be. It's a shot. You think that that
Speaker 1: deer would die, but many times they don't, or they
Speaker 1: go much further than you think. Um. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of one of those dreaded shots you hear about a
Speaker 1: lot oh yeah and alkohin one lung as I feel
Speaker 1: like they'll go miles yeah. Um. So I was fortunate
Speaker 1: he didn't go too far. I found him. It was
Speaker 1: a little bit of luck and a little bit of
Speaker 1: persistence probably um and I was really a music It's
Speaker 1: a great public land buck, really fun hunt um. So
Speaker 1: it was great. Then headed in North Dkota. What did
Speaker 1: you with your dear? So because of that warm weather,
Speaker 1: I dropped him off of the processor, so he got
Speaker 1: it frozen. He got frozen if they just get him
Speaker 1: in the fridge right away. And then he got me
Speaker 1: up with my friend who was across the border hunting
Speaker 1: the other spot. We had some uh with that elk.
Speaker 1: It's got it was hot, lost a little meat, not
Speaker 1: a little lost meat. And then I got home and uh,
Speaker 1: I was just like, man, I just gotta dive in
Speaker 1: and eat something, just find out what I'm dealing with
Speaker 1: beause I need to set my mind at ease. I
Speaker 1: took it. I took a huge chunk of it and
Speaker 1: corned it because I wanted to be like, you feel
Speaker 1: like that's gonna mask Well, that's the thing, So here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I'll work backward from there. So I went
Speaker 1: to an extreme because if it's a little bit sour,
Speaker 1: I don't you know, it's like you just got a
Speaker 1: tough Like there's a there's a point at which you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit sour, but not enough to warrant.
Speaker 1: As soon as I corned it looking phenomenal. So now
Speaker 1: like I know that they that'll work right, Like you
Speaker 1: damn sure you know that you make like sausage sticks
Speaker 1: out of it, You probably make regular sausage out of it.
Speaker 1: I know that I can corn it. And now I'll
Speaker 1: begin exploring right to the point where you're you know,
Speaker 1: the end of the rope would be that you're cutting
Speaker 1: sashini slices like a little bit of coarse sea salt
Speaker 1: on it, eating it. But I started rather than starting
Speaker 1: there and have this disappointing experience, I started at what
Speaker 1: what will I know will be good? My wife aided,
Speaker 1: kids all ate it, no complaints. I did. Brian it
Speaker 1: quite long enough, so it was a huge block of it,
Speaker 1: and when you got in the middle, it was the
Speaker 1: Brian hadn't hit a little bit brown in the middle.
Speaker 1: Had it like St. Patty's Day, cabbage, carrots, taters, creamed
Speaker 1: horse radish. It's so good man. So they they had
Speaker 1: to fight with about that, like how you do they
Speaker 1: don't like the corn meat. They just sometimes they were
Speaker 1: like a pain in the ass man, like boiled cabbage
Speaker 1: just somehow struck him as like what in the world.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Last night I fried him up
Speaker 1: bourbon fried bourbon, French fries and salad and then ever
Speaker 1: and then I have to the whole dinner. I don't
Speaker 1: need to say anything, clean that whole thing out. But
Speaker 1: with making corn meat, I had to be like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to square up, square up in your
Speaker 1: seat and eat your food, square up, and eat your food,
Speaker 1: square up and eat your food. Fried fish, you don't
Speaker 1: say anything. You just talk to your wife and they
Speaker 1: just sit there and eat. This is a good good
Speaker 1: lessons for me to learn fried fish. You got to
Speaker 1: train them up on it. But coming from the Midwest,
Speaker 1: like where fried fish is pretty normal, um fried fish
Speaker 1: and kids, just like just give yourself a break down.
Speaker 1: Then if you're kind of like because we're strict, man,
Speaker 1: like we're strict, we don't let him off the hook.
Speaker 1: As far as they're gonna have to eat what you're
Speaker 1: putting from. If I cook dogshit, they're gonna be like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to eat that. It's a good way
Speaker 1: to go. I don't know why. I don't think it actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it actually even helps. If you
Speaker 1: came and told me, if you came and told me
Speaker 1: that it was actually detrimental and made your kids worse
Speaker 1: and less likely to be likable and less likely to
Speaker 1: be successful, I'd still make them eating because like, it's
Speaker 1: not about I'm not even playing long game. I'm playing
Speaker 1: short game. But I don't like to take them to
Speaker 1: someone else's house. When we go to someone else's house
Speaker 1: to eat and we're like, you know, square out eat,
Speaker 1: that's just how that's how it's gonna be. I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have them go there and have to
Speaker 1: have someone makes some extra thing for them. Yeah. Naturally,
Speaker 1: I feel like kids, uh like the idea of menu
Speaker 1: and the palatability of what they'd like to eat will
Speaker 1: naturally just narrow down if you leave them up to
Speaker 1: their own device. Where where the reason I always are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna eat it so heaven, Yeah you know,
Speaker 1: and that and that gives him that wide range where Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we hung out with some family of mine last
Speaker 1: summer and it was it was yeah, look I'm just
Speaker 1: saying how it was. But there was like adult food
Speaker 1: and then there was kid food. Yeah, kids love it. Oh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if my kid's going to a situation like that, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you could have these buttered noodles. Yeah right, They kids
Speaker 1: any butter needles every day. Yeah, yeah, you're not there yet. No,
Speaker 1: he's in the sala food now, still drinking mama's milk,
Speaker 1: still drinking mama's milk, but twice a day he's having
Speaker 1: you know, some little veggie easer. He's dabbling with real
Speaker 1: food chunks of venison in nine months. I'm we're I
Speaker 1: want to get home. We did it where you chew
Speaker 1: it up and then give it to like a street
Speaker 1: pigeon like you Actually no, but I would take meat,
Speaker 1: chew it all up and then give it to them
Speaker 1: to eat. They're drinking milk out of their moths breast.
Speaker 1: They can eat some meat out of other day's mouth.
Speaker 1: You guys got young kids, are you guys? Do you
Speaker 1: guys do the like like do you play kadhim or
Speaker 1: do you know? I know it's uh, they get what
Speaker 1: we eat and cooking salmon or you'd say yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's really all that we have is wild game salmon,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the majority of our of our diet.
Speaker 1: I didn't win one form or another, and no, my
Speaker 1: wife Nicole does a really good job of that and
Speaker 1: she the other thing we found is if you keep
Speaker 1: putting it in front of him, you know, the first
Speaker 1: couple of times, I'll bucket and and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of our role as well. If it's a new food,
Speaker 1: you just have to try it. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all kinds of stuff. But you know it's it's
Speaker 1: working because they will be picky if they want. But
Speaker 1: you know, just the other day, we took him out
Speaker 1: the sushi and total experiment and the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: they're eating everything there where'd you guys go Dave's. It
Speaker 1: is awesome, but I mean they're eating calamari, they're eating
Speaker 1: things that you know, most kids don't want to stick
Speaker 1: a squid in their mouth, you know, to start, but
Speaker 1: they try. And I'll give you a sack of squid
Speaker 1: um because we're still sitting on some squid from from Seattle.
Speaker 1: But I fried it for him and they're like, that's good, right,
Speaker 1: that's squid. And I grilled him some and I had
Speaker 1: to defend that it was actually squid, Like, that's not squid.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that the squid is fried there's some other
Speaker 1: bullshit you. Yeah, that's the fact. Yeah, it's fun. I
Speaker 1: mean it's not fun. It's aggravating, Like it's just like
Speaker 1: gravating at dinner. I'm just saying the same things over
Speaker 1: and over. And what I don't get is there will
Speaker 1: just be that one day when you put it on
Speaker 1: the plate and they fought it and then it's gone.
Speaker 1: They just date it all just one day they decided
Speaker 1: that Okay, yeah, I'm not gonna fight it. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna eat this. And ten years ago, kids weren't asking
Speaker 1: for something else. This had what you had, or you
Speaker 1: went hungry. Probably probably not even that long ago. I
Speaker 1: was going I was going to a way safe number. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got anything you want to add, Kurt, lots of
Speaker 1: good hunting stories, man, I gotta follow up question on
Speaker 1: very hunting stories because we talked a lot about gear,
Speaker 1: you know, before you went out, Um, was there anything
Speaker 1: that you brought but you didn't use? It's done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I was thinking, is saying a lot
Speaker 1: of weight but just bringing some pepper spray. Um. No,
Speaker 1: But funny enough, one of the things that I picked
Speaker 1: up after we talked about it you guys were talking
Speaker 1: about bringing a multitool, like a leatherman of some sort.
Speaker 1: I started thinking, what would I do? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: stay around, got jammed in or you know, a screw
Speaker 1: comes loose, and you know, I've I've had other little things,
Speaker 1: but I got one of those little tiny leatherman squirts.
Speaker 1: Don't know that one? Yeah, well it's it's two ounces
Speaker 1: and I don't know exactly how much you get done
Speaker 1: with it, but it's a pretty cool little tool. How's
Speaker 1: all that stuff? So, yeah, there's a few things like
Speaker 1: that that I didn't. You got in your head. You did,
Speaker 1: so you got into my head a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you're back came in it and I bumped
Speaker 1: it up. Do you do you bring a butt pad
Speaker 1: like a sitting pad? Yeah? I do. I took a
Speaker 1: um therm arrest made those old ridge crests or ridge
Speaker 1: runner whatever that I can't remember what they were called.
Speaker 1: It's just a real thin foam ones and just cut
Speaker 1: it down and we started making the egg crape pad.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I don't like that. These guys, like guys
Speaker 1: that work with use the egg crate one, but we
Speaker 1: only run it because that's all it's available, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we'd all run smooth. And the major gripe
Speaker 1: is is that the the water if it gets wet,
Speaker 1: all it just like it's like the land of ten
Speaker 1: thousand lakes under your butt. Yeah, yeah, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, but I still have the old style.
Speaker 1: I got like a piece whatever is did at one
Speaker 1: point in time, I got where I cut off just
Speaker 1: a three ft chunk on my sleeping pad, thinking of
Speaker 1: my legs that need to be on a pad anyway,
Speaker 1: don't think about taking a couple more inches off that
Speaker 1: and making that my sitting pad. No, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of people to do that. And then to replace your pad,
Speaker 1: you just put your backpack flat down there. Just it's
Speaker 1: not gonna be pad you, but it's gonna give you
Speaker 1: some separation from the cold ground, especially during the winter.
Speaker 1: I do that. I sit on my pack all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't even Yeah, yeah, it gets you just that
Speaker 1: little bit of elevation. Yeah. Yeah, but no, I used
Speaker 1: I used most everything I brought, you know, other than
Speaker 1: the survival type things. So, but the follow up questions,
Speaker 1: that follow up question is was there anything that four days?
Speaker 1: And you're like, I should have brought that. I wish
Speaker 1: I had that. Well that one morning I woke up
Speaker 1: and it was just sucked in and it was blowing,
Speaker 1: and I started thinking, Man, I wish I would have
Speaker 1: brought a book. If you could have brought a book,
Speaker 1: what book would you grab? What do you oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I probably would ask my wife
Speaker 1: Nicole when she was reading and grab grab taking her book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's good, that's funny because I packed around a No.
Speaker 1: Actually I did read an article out of a out
Speaker 1: of a magazine last week. Yeah. I like to bring
Speaker 1: magazines because I was thinking the back of my head
Speaker 1: I could burn them. Yeah, and the light. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: if you know, with our we're always the cruise, so
Speaker 1: you don't feel bad ripping articles out and passing around.
Speaker 1: You know. I might have told this story before. This
Speaker 1: is my concluding thought. We got stuck in the fog
Speaker 1: one time hunting sheet for a couple of days. I
Speaker 1: tell this. My brother had a book. It's like the
Speaker 1: It was the biography. How the hell he wanted with
Speaker 1: this book? This is not the New York Times best
Speaker 1: seller list. It was a really old biography of the
Speaker 1: first Superintendent of the Nally National Park. But he had
Speaker 1: a paperback and we got stuck in the fog, and
Speaker 1: so he took it, cut it in thirds right down
Speaker 1: the spine, and he's like, well, I get the first
Speaker 1: third first because it's my book and I want to
Speaker 1: after to read. I got read like the second third first,
Speaker 1: and then we because there's three of us, switched it around.
Speaker 1: Then you got to read the middle or whatever. Then
Speaker 1: you got to read the beginning, and he got to
Speaker 1: read it the proper order. But that got us through
Speaker 1: a couple of days of sitting in a tent reading
Speaker 1: about that guy. The best part of that book I
Speaker 1: don't really The only detailed book I remember is how
Speaker 1: vital it was for the people he hung out with
Speaker 1: to kill a bear in the fall for lard did
Speaker 1: It was just of paramount importance to stock up on
Speaker 1: a large were they black bear black bears in the fall?
Speaker 1: To render out the large for baking, because if you
Speaker 1: didn't have large, this was no fun. Bacon biscuits, wild
Speaker 1: fruit pie cross now not knowing can you use the
Speaker 1: fat from sheep or anything else in the same It
Speaker 1: doesn't have people like, here's the thing, I was just
Speaker 1: reading this book, uh, Land of feast and famine, which
Speaker 1: is about fur trappers and the you know, they kind
Speaker 1: of were flirting with the edge of the Arctic and
Speaker 1: the boreal forest in northwest territories. Point being, this is
Speaker 1: in the nineteen this is in the early uh. Now
Speaker 1: we look at like deer tallow. Okay, Like dear fat
Speaker 1: is waxy and people trim it off because the flavors
Speaker 1: off it spoils in your freezer. It's coats the inside
Speaker 1: of your mouth with wax. These guys would trade in.
Speaker 1: They would trade and rump fat. So when you like,
Speaker 1: if you kill a summer deer, you've seen this mark,
Speaker 1: no doubt where you skin it and along the rump
Speaker 1: you got these big flat hunks of fat. They would
Speaker 1: square those pieces up and use it as a currency.
Speaker 1: It was of such value to them to slice and
Speaker 1: eat it. And that's tallow. But like you don't When
Speaker 1: we were kids, we would, Me and my buddy Eddie
Speaker 1: Lulfs used to take dear fat and melt it on
Speaker 1: a burner and put it on our boots to water
Speaker 1: proof our boots. But it doesn't smell that great. If
Speaker 1: you take bear fat, which is more like you know,
Speaker 1: it's not waxy. So you take bear fat, mountain lion
Speaker 1: fat would work because that's not why acually at all
Speaker 1: we were eating that. That's pretty good pig fat, and
Speaker 1: that renders into a lard. You can make a similar
Speaker 1: product with deer, but it's tallow. So you ever tried
Speaker 1: rendering beer like me, Eddie Lulas rendered a bunch of it,
Speaker 1: and my friend Layton and that and the product you
Speaker 1: get from that is still smells. It doesn't smell nice.
Speaker 1: It doesn't say waxy to eat. My friend Layton would do.
Speaker 1: He did a couple versions. He would make a boot
Speaker 1: waterproof and he would get he would go out and
Speaker 1: harvest his own pine pitch. He would track honeybees. He'd
Speaker 1: sit in his yard and see a honeybee and he'd
Speaker 1: watch it. You know, the tom petty song. I can
Speaker 1: track a single bee to its hive. Layton couldn't. He would.
Speaker 1: He would be in his yard. You'd be in his
Speaker 1: yard and a honeybe had come by. He watched that
Speaker 1: honeybee go and he'd mark in his mind where he
Speaker 1: saw that honeybee vanish. The next day or whenever he
Speaker 1: had more time, he'd stand in that spot and wait
Speaker 1: till honey bee came by and mark where it went,
Speaker 1: and again and again and again until he was standing
Speaker 1: there at the hive with his chainsaw, and he chainsaw
Speaker 1: the tree apart and get the bees wax out. He'd
Speaker 1: go out to harvest his own pine pitch. He would
Speaker 1: wound pine trees and get the pitch and then render
Speaker 1: down dear fat and calmbo to make like a tribe
Speaker 1: blend waterproofing agent. It was hardcore. Was hardcore. He one
Speaker 1: time had a sheep and a bear killed a sheep,
Speaker 1: and he killed the bear and fell to the hole
Speaker 1: and it ate the bear. The whole thing worked out
Speaker 1: for it might have been a goat sat his own
Speaker 1: goat carcass, mourning over his goat carcass while waiting for
Speaker 1: the bear to come back to his way. Hardcore. He
Speaker 1: was a tree man, arborist. Um. What was the point?
Speaker 1: I was making point being, I don't well, I don't
Speaker 1: think he would bake, and I can't say this with
Speaker 1: certitude certainty. I don't think he would bake with deer tallow.
Speaker 1: I think that someone should try, and that might even
Speaker 1: try this year. But you can definitely bake with bear lard.
Speaker 1: And at one time rendered down fat from a buffalo,
Speaker 1: and that fat was good, and I kept some of
Speaker 1: that in a jar just to see how long it lasts,
Speaker 1: and I kept it for five six years, and the
Speaker 1: colors slowly changed over time. It started out pretty orange
Speaker 1: because the caratin, because it was in the summer in
Speaker 1: their fat turns orange and the summer are eating the
Speaker 1: one they're on green grass um. And over time it
Speaker 1: turned kind of whitish and then kind of yellowish. But
Speaker 1: it was good to eat. But that fat's good to eat.
Speaker 1: It's not waxy, and it's not off tasting. But the
Speaker 1: off tasting is something that we've only recently decided is
Speaker 1: off tasting, because, like I said, if you read about
Speaker 1: indigenous people as they trafficked in it and liked it,
Speaker 1: they didn't, I think it was off tasting. Apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my concluding thought. You got a cluder mark, you know.
Speaker 1: I guess the only thing I would say is just um.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this in the past, but one
Speaker 1: of the greatest challenges that a lot of hunters, especially
Speaker 1: east of the Mississippi, deal with his access finding places
Speaker 1: to hunt in their places continue to lose people are
Speaker 1: losing permission. Stuff is getting leased up. It's harder, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I just echo the fact that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of great public land opportunities for white
Speaker 1: tiled deer hunters. It doesn't I think there's a misconception
Speaker 1: and it's changing, definitely, just changing over the last three
Speaker 1: to five years. But there's been this misconception that public
Speaker 1: land for deer hunters is lousy. Um. And there are
Speaker 1: spots that are really challenging, no doubt about it. But
Speaker 1: you can find you down to your state game area
Speaker 1: and parking the marked parking lot. Yeah, it might be
Speaker 1: a little chaotic, yeah, but you can find like really interesting,
Speaker 1: exciting opportunities that you don't need to pay lease fee,
Speaker 1: You don't need to pay an outfitter um, especially if
Speaker 1: you go west of them, if you can take a
Speaker 1: little drive, go west of the Mississippi, these great plain
Speaker 1: states have tremendous white tail hunting opportunities that are not
Speaker 1: getting tapped into. And it's a fun little adventure camp out.
Speaker 1: See a new country hot dogs. He hot dogs, grew
Speaker 1: up a steak, he baked beans out of can for squirrels,
Speaker 1: paid more attention to squirrels. So I would just say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's possible. It's a lot of fun, doesn't
Speaker 1: need to cost a lot of money. Um, something considered Janice.
Speaker 1: And if you want to be a sheep hunter, you
Speaker 1: don't have to go to Alaska and pay twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or he gets super lucky. You can come to
Speaker 1: Montana and just over the counter buying going to Great Hike.
Speaker 1: Just get a beautiful scenic window. Don't need to bring
Speaker 1: a rifle. But yeah, he could be a sheep hunter
Speaker 1: for next to nothing. A guy wrote in he always
Speaker 1: looks at the show notes and sees it talk to you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like your names are in there. He
Speaker 1: was thinking it was Janie. He's like, man, it's Janis
Speaker 1: person never says ship. He's expecting to hear a female.
Speaker 1: It's like Steve and his Yanni guy. But then Janie
Speaker 1: must be someone like an engineer who never gets to talk.
Speaker 1: I think I've told you this before, but one of
Speaker 1: my first jobs was answering phones for my dad when
Speaker 1: his company is just based at his house and after school, UM,
Speaker 1: I would just roll in and answer phones for two
Speaker 1: or three hours. Building this is funny, Building inspector, and uh,
Speaker 1: I would it was before when I was really young,
Speaker 1: before my voice broke. Then nobody could tell, and so
Speaker 1: I would just roll with it. They just thought they
Speaker 1: were speaking to a young woman, I guess. Jane says like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really yeah, I mean so I was. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was young, you know, I was probably I don't know, twelve.
Speaker 1: So you've got a good character to be able to
Speaker 1: do that, just running with it, like, you know, my
Speaker 1: wife is real mean and didn't change your name to
Speaker 1: my name. Me check into a hotel. We check into
Speaker 1: a hotel and they call up. They're like, hi, mr Finch.
Speaker 1: I'm always like man, and have you come down everybody?
Speaker 1: How did that go? Or maybe that's not a conversation
Speaker 1: for this po go Why is she so mean? No? No, no, like,
Speaker 1: how did the decision to keep Finch versus because she
Speaker 1: she swindled me. She said, well, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: going through all the paperwork. When my passport expires, maybe
Speaker 1: i'll do it. Then passport came and went. She went
Speaker 1: out and got like a little email address that kind
Speaker 1: of throws a nod. It's it's horrible. I have to say.
Speaker 1: I say, this is the thing I always bring up,
Speaker 1: like I say like, um, people have to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Ronello's are coming over, and her too. My wife's
Speaker 1: reasoning was she had had that name already for nearly
Speaker 1: thirty years. She should have been sick of it. Right
Speaker 1: there you go, So she kept hers too. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: me and Yanni. Man, I got no. We got no
Speaker 1: control over our women. Man. So that's why you guys
Speaker 1: get along. So while you can kind of convincer women,
Speaker 1: our women just our women just run over us, man.
Speaker 1: But that we got no say enough. That's brutal, you know,
Speaker 1: we just sit there and just take it. Mrs Kanyan
Speaker 1: and Mrs Rasco. Yeah, oh yeah, no questions there these
Speaker 1: days it's fifty fifty. Yeah. I feel like I know
Speaker 1: a lot of gals that I'd be annoyed if my
Speaker 1: daughter took some dude's name. Really, yeah, it's from her name.
Speaker 1: She's got a good name. It's got a good ring
Speaker 1: to it. Hold on, there's a name for what you
Speaker 1: just did. It's called the pockets Urt. You got your
Speaker 1: conclude hers final thoughts, Oh, man, I'm doing good. You
Speaker 1: got it all. You're spent. Yeah, yeah, it was really interesting. No,
Speaker 1: that was mine was two It was working off of marks,
Speaker 1: telling everybody can go be a sheep hunter from next.
Speaker 1: That was a good concluder, all right, man, guys, uh,
Speaker 1: next time you got a couple of hunting stories, you
Speaker 1: know where to find us, come back and join it. Thanks. Thanks,