Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
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Speaker 1: Nor where you stand with on x Alright, first thing
Speaker 1: I want to do, Clay Um Clay Newcomb right off
Speaker 1: the bat, just to get it started like a cold
Speaker 1: open man. You've cold opening show business? Uh do uh
Speaker 1: talk about how you guys fixed squirrels down there in
Speaker 1: the Ozarks, like the number one if you had to
Speaker 1: eat them the rest of the one way the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. Simple answer that there's there's only one answer,
Speaker 1: that's frieda. But there's more than that, right, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you don't that's it. Well, I like to double
Speaker 1: batter them. So you used to take your buttermilk, and
Speaker 1: if you got to take this in the field with
Speaker 1: you gotta have a little preparation, some zip like bags whatnot,
Speaker 1: but buttermilk flour mix it holdup a little bit more
Speaker 1: because we don't know if you're butter milk. So you
Speaker 1: got your squirrel, you got your squirrel quartered. He's also
Speaker 1: you've you've also got the rib cage and mid section,
Speaker 1: so you've got five pieces of squirrel. When you're when
Speaker 1: you're cooking squirreled you, uh, do you discard I mean
Speaker 1: the actual rib slab. Well, I mean, I mean you're
Speaker 1: not eating that right, Well, kind of as a hat
Speaker 1: tip to two the squirrels, I usually cook it just
Speaker 1: you got some squirrel backstraps on there, you know. H yeah,
Speaker 1: but so so. But typically you would just eat the quarters. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the quarters and the like the whole I'm trying to
Speaker 1: look with the vocabulary of squirrel, isn't it the saddle,
Speaker 1: the four legs, and then from the right in front
Speaker 1: of the pelvic bone right up until about the second
Speaker 1: third rib. Yeah, that kind of like oyster like with
Speaker 1: the spine in the middle. Saddle. Yeah, the saddle saddle.
Speaker 1: That works for me. But you take and cook the
Speaker 1: rib cage too, well, if i'm I mean, if we're
Speaker 1: if we're cooking in the field, I would, but there's
Speaker 1: not much meat there. There's not much meat there. I mean,
Speaker 1: really we're talking about four quarters, but you're not throwing
Speaker 1: the saddle out. Well, I mean it's I guess it's
Speaker 1: it's a less process just to cook all of it.
Speaker 1: Just cook the saddle with the ribs. So you just
Speaker 1: got this big like a saddle handle. Yeah, five pieces,
Speaker 1: So you got five pieces, five pieces. So what I
Speaker 1: would do is I would I would take those pieces,
Speaker 1: dip them in buttermilk. Have a zip like bag with flour.
Speaker 1: If you're at your house to be a pan or whatever,
Speaker 1: bat put the put the buttermilk squirrel into the flour.
Speaker 1: In the perfect world, you soak them in the buttermilk.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna be honest here. I never have
Speaker 1: but I've never eaten squirrel with that much like forethought.
Speaker 1: Times it's just like, hey, we killed some squirrels, let's
Speaker 1: eat them. That's typically the way that I do it.
Speaker 1: So I have not like done that, but so buttermilk
Speaker 1: and then put them back in the flour for the
Speaker 1: double the double backs. As you're saying, you're going buttermilk flour,
Speaker 1: buttermilk flour. You ever cook catfish by going, uh, you
Speaker 1: go flour, then egg because it gives the egg the
Speaker 1: egg sticks to the flour, and then the corn meal
Speaker 1: sticks of the egg. I've never done the corn meal first,
Speaker 1: I would have done the egg first corn meal. Well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: So you're actually saying, like actual white flower. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: take those, You take the fish, put it in flour,
Speaker 1: dusted and flower. Then it goes to the egg because
Speaker 1: then it gets then the egg. It's like you're sticking
Speaker 1: the flower to the squirrel, the egg to the flour,
Speaker 1: the corn meal to the egg. And you're doing like
Speaker 1: you're sticking the flour to the squirrel. No, you're stick
Speaker 1: in the buttermilk to the squirrel, then flour, but then
Speaker 1: sticking more butter milk onto the flower, and second and
Speaker 1: getting yet more flower. The second dip is where the
Speaker 1: magic happens, because that's when you really get the thick better.
Speaker 1: I like a good thick you know, thick battery, you
Speaker 1: know deep fried. Do you find the as it cooks
Speaker 1: that all that falls away because you've got too much
Speaker 1: of it? Probably seven you probably maintain the batter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest of it's just like crumbled in the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pan. So that makes the great Yeah. The
Speaker 1: key though to the way that I have learned and
Speaker 1: and I can't I won't lie and say I've been
Speaker 1: doing this my whole life, but bare oil, and you're
Speaker 1: sitting there holding ladies and gentlemen. Clay newcle was holding
Speaker 1: a jar barrel which is half pint, which is some
Speaker 1: pure white. I'd call that pearl. I'd go so far
Speaker 1: as I call it pearly white. I've got a question
Speaker 1: for you about this later, but let me should I
Speaker 1: were so many, so so I would, I would. I
Speaker 1: would fry that squirrel, double double battered squirrel in some
Speaker 1: type of pure animal larden. I mean if you if
Speaker 1: you didn't have barrel oil, if you just had like
Speaker 1: pork lard, I would fried in that. You know, you
Speaker 1: know I'm a mid I'm a mid kind of guy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to You're not deep frying it, so
Speaker 1: you don't need it like an inch deep, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to skimp on it too much. Classic mid fry,
Speaker 1: mid fry. You know I'm gonna fried. It's not deep ride.
Speaker 1: I think that counts as a shallow fry, because anything
Speaker 1: shallower than a shallow fry counts is just saute like fry.
Speaker 1: I pictured the oils coming halfway up it. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: probably not that because barrel oil is such a precious commodity.
Speaker 1: You don't want to waste it on one spin, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Dude, I have you ever hear
Speaker 1: the chef um he's a friend of the program Jesse
Speaker 1: Griffith's Texas. He was talking. I knew this like a
Speaker 1: thing people did, but I just kind of forgot about it.
Speaker 1: He fries his fish and uh be fat, beef fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he buys at his restaurant. At his restaurant, he buys
Speaker 1: beef fat, renders his own bee fat, fills his fryer's
Speaker 1: full of bee fat, and fries is fish in there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't like the smell of beef fat. It's heavy duty.
Speaker 1: It's heavy duty. So then uh, there you are. You
Speaker 1: don't power boil it, you don't double fry it. So
Speaker 1: you like a good chewy hunk of squirrel. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't say that I'm like the ultimate
Speaker 1: squirrel chef. That's just the way we do it. That
Speaker 1: was my question, How do you do it? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's the way we do it. I've had some squirrel
Speaker 1: and some like new bruns with stew that we've made
Speaker 1: which kind of like, uh, you know, where you would
Speaker 1: boil it and then add it to a stew with
Speaker 1: you know, carrots and onions and all kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But those are the main way. I mean, there's really
Speaker 1: only it's really only one way to eat a squirrel.
Speaker 1: In the South, we had three four ways we cooked
Speaker 1: it as a kid, and I don't think any of them, like,
Speaker 1: none of them are traditional. You had gray squirrels in Michigan,
Speaker 1: fox and gray and then both. You know you guys,
Speaker 1: where you're at, you have black face gray very very
Speaker 1: little black squirrel is like, you kill a black squirrel,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get it out. Oh you know what's interesting,
Speaker 1: Like in my mom's yard. Um, in my mom's yard.
Speaker 1: Over the course of my lifetime, it's been funny. It
Speaker 1: went from very rare to see a black phase gray
Speaker 1: squirrel and in her yard to now it's rare to
Speaker 1: see a gray face. Really what happened? It's just you know, well,
Speaker 1: I think a gray squirrel can have a litter that
Speaker 1: has gray face and black face in the same litter,
Speaker 1: and for something, it's just trending towards black h the
Speaker 1: predators pick up on it. Could be ever hide in
Speaker 1: the black ones. Yeah, it could have something to do.
Speaker 1: Remember how we were just talking about black and white
Speaker 1: squirrels or black or yeah, white and Brown's could be
Speaker 1: that some there's some really proficient squirrel hunter naturally doesn't
Speaker 1: like black face gray square. You would have to think
Speaker 1: that would be a pretty significant change in terms of
Speaker 1: that's that animals number one line of defenses its color.
Speaker 1: It really would be. And yeah, I mean I wish
Speaker 1: I could tell you some hard date on it, but
Speaker 1: that's happened. But what I was gonna say about the
Speaker 1: traditional aditional cooking is there's not like where I'm from,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of but people don't think of
Speaker 1: like traditional fried fish is traditional there, but traditional a
Speaker 1: lot of places. But we had four like my mom
Speaker 1: would do four things with it. And one was like
Speaker 1: something that everybody did back then with wild game, which
Speaker 1: kind of fell out of favor, is you would take
Speaker 1: a crock pot and put all your squirrels in it
Speaker 1: and then you dump cream and mushroom soup. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing that back and then turn the crock pot
Speaker 1: on Minnesota. Same thing you did, the same thing, ladies
Speaker 1: and general. That's Kevin Harlander. Hello you more? Do you
Speaker 1: like more of a Harlander? Hard hard Lander? You know
Speaker 1: that depends I guess Harlanders, great Harlander, Um, yeah, cooking
Speaker 1: there and then you would put it on egg noodles.
Speaker 1: You'd put it on toast, oddly shot on a shingle
Speaker 1: with squirrel, shingle being the toad godfair and Southern has
Speaker 1: ever done that? That can't be true. I don't know
Speaker 1: any put it on noodles or put it on toast both.
Speaker 1: Really you put it on a biscuit. But they cooked
Speaker 1: it down, they've done you know, Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: I think so. But you would never put it on
Speaker 1: a piece of toast. You put it on a biscuit,
Speaker 1: because I know, damn sure you do that. Well, tried
Speaker 1: on toast. I'm the shingle being, you know, and the
Speaker 1: toast and you put the uh. We would do that.
Speaker 1: My mother would. Um. My mom had a recipe card.
Speaker 1: I bet she still has it. She had a recipe
Speaker 1: card that she got from her mother. And her mother
Speaker 1: got it from the package that some frozen rabbit came
Speaker 1: in from the store thirties. It was like Hassan Feffer.
Speaker 1: It was like rabbit, and it was like, hey, here's
Speaker 1: what you do at the rabbit. It was like a
Speaker 1: recipe card. And my mom said it was stuck onto
Speaker 1: a package, and they liked it so much she cut
Speaker 1: it out. And that's how she would cook cotton tail
Speaker 1: rabbits if she was cooking them. And she would cook
Speaker 1: squirrels and we'd eat hoss and fever with them, and
Speaker 1: then we would eat them. And my dad's deep friar
Speaker 1: a lot, and sometimes my mom would brown him. Like
Speaker 1: you're saying, do exactly what you're talking about. This is
Speaker 1: how my brother Matt likes to cook. Him still do
Speaker 1: everything you're talking about now. He doesn't know what he
Speaker 1: doesn't do. The double dip chrome, double dip deal single dip,
Speaker 1: single dip um in a pan, then finished them in
Speaker 1: a three degree oven for a long time, covered in foil.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, and it's it tenderizes them. But that works. Okay,
Speaker 1: moving on a little bit. You're good on that, Ni. Well,
Speaker 1: I did have one follow up on cooking squirrel. You
Speaker 1: treat a young squirrel and an old squirrel the same.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't if you wanted him to taste good. Oh
Speaker 1: I mean again, I'm I'm my squirrel cooking has been.
Speaker 1: We killed the squirrel, We're gonna eat it. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna be that worried about, you know, the culinary aspect
Speaker 1: of it. The joy inside of this is just we
Speaker 1: killed the squirrel and we're gonna eat it. It's that simple.
Speaker 1: So so sometimes if you cook it the way that
Speaker 1: I have described as my buddy Michael Lanier says, big
Speaker 1: squirrel hunter hunt with some as he said, when you
Speaker 1: get one like that, you just pitch it to the dogs,
Speaker 1: a tough one. Yeah. How does he know it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a tough one? Well, he bite it. Oh, I
Speaker 1: got you, I got you. Yeah. And if if it's
Speaker 1: just super tough, and then they will be. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you can't completely tell, but an older squirrel, So I
Speaker 1: don't I don't have any tricks for tenderizing older squirrels.
Speaker 1: If that's where we were going, you know, are you
Speaker 1: familiar with Oh no, I was gonna say that. My
Speaker 1: only trick is that I look at him like that
Speaker 1: one is a it's gonna go into the slow cooker file,
Speaker 1: and that one is a young tender one and I'll
Speaker 1: fry it or grill it or whatever. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the term the fell? The fell? No? Uh. We we
Speaker 1: used to have a really old neighbor in Miles City, Montana.
Speaker 1: This guy was so old. Um, I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: there's a couple boys I can describe how old he was.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this way to tell you how old
Speaker 1: he was. He was sold that he wants. They were
Speaker 1: sawing firewood with a sawmill blade. They would pull the
Speaker 1: wheel off a truck and jack the back of the
Speaker 1: truck up. Wow, and run a sawmill blade by putting
Speaker 1: the accelerator on the truck turn a saw blade. It's impressive.
Speaker 1: He was using this saw blade and cuts off his
Speaker 1: thumb like back where he took the base of the
Speaker 1: thumb with it. And his brother flicked that thumb into
Speaker 1: the hogpen and the hog ate it. No, just to
Speaker 1: get rid of it. That told he was so people
Speaker 1: know to run off to the to the hospital. You
Speaker 1: put it in butter milk. Just no doubt. You cut off,
Speaker 1: you cut off anything, you put it in butter milk.
Speaker 1: That's what I've always heard. And he was a butcher.
Speaker 1: Um he was. He did cost him slaughter work. Here's
Speaker 1: no way of telling how old he was. I've talked
Speaker 1: with this guy a lot, but he was old that
Speaker 1: he used to shoot horses, shoot wild horses and fat
Speaker 1: and hogs on him, and was reluctant to send him
Speaker 1: off to market with a belly full of horse meat
Speaker 1: because of how it might look to the slaughterhouse people.
Speaker 1: So he'd give him barley for a while before selling them,
Speaker 1: so that no one knew he was fattening him on
Speaker 1: horse meat. And he said that their condition worsened while
Speaker 1: eating barley. He said, their tail wouldn't have a tight
Speaker 1: of a corkscrew to it, and they're high to lose
Speaker 1: a little bit of it. Chip. Is that a correlation
Speaker 1: to how good the meat is, how type? He said
Speaker 1: that he was a big proponent of uh so he
Speaker 1: back then he was a little bit. He felt like
Speaker 1: this practice was a little bit shady, he expressed, being
Speaker 1: reluctant to send them off with a belly for the
Speaker 1: horse meat. I don't know it. He that's how old
Speaker 1: he was. I can tell you how old he was.
Speaker 1: He's about ninety three. But when at the time when
Speaker 1: he passed away, so he described he would talk about
Speaker 1: the fell on rabbits or the fell on squirrels, and
Speaker 1: to be like the skin under the skin, m hm,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like the what sits between
Speaker 1: the muscle in the hide when you pull it off.
Speaker 1: And he would talk on rabbits that had the fell
Speaker 1: was too thick, and he felt that was a rabbit
Speaker 1: that wasn't very Would the fell actually be like the
Speaker 1: layer of like fat me queeny, Yeah, the connective tissue
Speaker 1: vis queeny membranes thing and he would point your rabbit,
Speaker 1: talk about they had a thick fell. It wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be a good rabbit. Miriam. Miriam Webster defines it
Speaker 1: as a thin, tough membrane covering a carcass directly under.
Speaker 1: So he was right. I had no ideas right, he
Speaker 1: got it right. I just thought it was like his
Speaker 1: Oh the fell. It can also be a synonym for skin,
Speaker 1: hide or pelt. Really, or if you if you fell
Speaker 1: off your bike and scrape your felt, if the squirrel
Speaker 1: fell out of the tree. Okay, taking a break from
Speaker 1: that for a minute. Uh, Kevin, speaking of hogs, You
Speaker 1: see that transitions nice. That's what they call sego called
Speaker 1: pivot and found some folks called the pivot. I like
Speaker 1: to think of it as a segue. Uh, you're fatting
Speaker 1: some hogs? Have you? Have you been a lifelong hogan? No?
Speaker 1: So I grew up Minnesota. Both my grandparents from dairy farms.
Speaker 1: So there dairy people. So why wasn't your parents from
Speaker 1: Why weren't your parents from dairy farms? So my grandpa
Speaker 1: and my grandma grew up on different farms, right, married,
Speaker 1: and they moved off neighboring farms. Yeah, oh, Pole and
Speaker 1: holding for Minnesota Germans, one town Polish and the other.
Speaker 1: There's a probably a lot of animosity between those, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think they helped that. I think so.
Speaker 1: It was later later down the down the trail and
Speaker 1: you heard a World War two heard of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at that point they were probably his new immigrants
Speaker 1: to the country. Yeah. I think they're like second, second
Speaker 1: and third generation together. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: grew up farming, met each other, fell in love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota. So I got away from farming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your parents got away from farming. Yeah. Yeah, Well my
Speaker 1: grandparents got away from farming. They moved off my my
Speaker 1: granddad's strung telephone wire from North Dakota down to so
Speaker 1: they had to get away from farming, did yeah, for
Speaker 1: like economic reason? Think so, I think so. And my
Speaker 1: great uncle still runs the farm he's like ninety two,
Speaker 1: I think, so he's still up there. He's got two thumbs.
Speaker 1: He has two thumbs. So yeah, but yeah, so they
Speaker 1: we had started raising hoggs last year as a twenty eight,
Speaker 1: so we just started last year and that was that
Speaker 1: your was that your that's your girlfriend that your partnered
Speaker 1: up with on hog rais. Yeah, yeah, we actually used her.
Speaker 1: Her folks live over in eastern Oregon where we moved
Speaker 1: from UM and they've got a little chunk and ground
Speaker 1: we've been raising some hogs on. So it's been great.
Speaker 1: And this is the second year, second year, Yep, it's
Speaker 1: going well. So I hear I've been over too much,
Speaker 1: very easy. Did you know that I purchased one of
Speaker 1: these hogs and I'm gonna give you a bunch of it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but what a great surprise. I'm gonna share my I'm
Speaker 1: gonna share my hog. I'm gonna share my hog with
Speaker 1: the people that I work with. Nice's generous and he's
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna include all the fat. Yeah. So when
Speaker 1: I make when I grind up venison, I'm gonna cut
Speaker 1: in my my pig and do it right. We just
Speaker 1: did East Pig are in or eastern eastern Oregon right now.
Speaker 1: And we just moved in May, so we this was
Speaker 1: hogs were purchased prior to the move, so we didn't
Speaker 1: really know where going yet. Are you gonna move your
Speaker 1: hog operation closer to home or you have to get
Speaker 1: out of it now? Man, I think we're gonna try
Speaker 1: to keep in it, but we'll see. We gotta move
Speaker 1: out of catching. We probably gotta go down to Hailey
Speaker 1: or Bellevue or something like that. Just get you one
Speaker 1: of those good privacy fences. Yeah, we want back there.
Speaker 1: We should backyard, we should. Yeah. So how many hogs
Speaker 1: are you fattening? Three right now? And do you call
Speaker 1: it fatten him? I think we just we're just calling
Speaker 1: raising him. Just doesn't sound as cool as I know. Okay,
Speaker 1: is this a business or is this a hobby farm?
Speaker 1: It's hobby so it's a hobby however, but you're bowling yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I don't think he's like you just turned it
Speaker 1: into a bit. We're just covering costs most because he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I bought it from him. I'm saying, I don't think
Speaker 1: that if you asked him what he did for a living,
Speaker 1: he'd probably say he works in first light, I thought
Speaker 1: he says he's a hog man. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I just never uttered those words actually, just like I'm
Speaker 1: not a chicken man. Yeah, that's a chicken man. But
Speaker 1: you do. But I've been I've you've been known to
Speaker 1: let eggs go to cover costs. Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're all about, trying to cover the costs. And it's
Speaker 1: really awesome because we had it to all our grind
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, that's what I'm interested in. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he took the bacon eggs. And I shouldn't say I
Speaker 1: do this. My friend Jake Keys, who owns a butcher
Speaker 1: shop in the Grand Organ, who's a phenomenal cutter. Um,
Speaker 1: he add added all the hog bacon eggs from one
Speaker 1: of our hogs to all the bacon ends, the bacon
Speaker 1: eggs and bacon ends eggs, just your cut ends. He
Speaker 1: added all those to our elk grind. Um, it's delicious.
Speaker 1: Oh so he smoked it. Yeah, and then you made
Speaker 1: your own bacon elk grind. Yeah. Have you noticed when
Speaker 1: I've done that in the packs I've bought specifically bacon
Speaker 1: end before, have you noticed it almost a grind? You
Speaker 1: notice it mostly like when you do something like a burger,
Speaker 1: but that you almost get like it almost like firms
Speaker 1: the burger up a little bit, the sausage up if
Speaker 1: you get enough of that actual pork meat in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've been kind of messing around with different percentages, um,
Speaker 1: you know, different percentages of pork in the actual olk grind.
Speaker 1: But what do you what do you what do you
Speaker 1: what are you going at? I think like ten to
Speaker 1: fiftent is pretty good. That's why I feel like that's
Speaker 1: industry standards. Yeah, but that's not full fat, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like bacon end. So you're getting junks and muscle
Speaker 1: in there as well. So yeah, it does add a
Speaker 1: little bit of firmness to that burger. We actually just
Speaker 1: did a little video clip at First Light about making
Speaker 1: burgers over and open fire. So that was elk with
Speaker 1: with your your port your own home raised pork. My
Speaker 1: brother got all he got all snooty for a while,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to put any any domestic meat
Speaker 1: into his wild meat, which is like I get it,
Speaker 1: but you know, like put eggs and ship in there.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but he had chickens too, though, but
Speaker 1: he put eggs in there to try to bind it,
Speaker 1: but just help. It helps. Uh, it just helps to
Speaker 1: add that fat in there. And we always would do ten,
Speaker 1: you know, and you go to some guys and be like,
Speaker 1: oh I do fifteen or twenty. But when you get
Speaker 1: too much of it. I talked with this four, it
Speaker 1: feels like it stops being a wild game and become
Speaker 1: something else, like a blend is like is that wild game?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, we feed a lot of folks
Speaker 1: that come through and friends of ours that don't eat
Speaker 1: a lot of wild games. So I feel like a
Speaker 1: little bit of bacon in there is always a good
Speaker 1: entry level, especially with elk. You don't hardly need it,
Speaker 1: but good entry level piece of wild game to serve
Speaker 1: those kinds of people. How big is my pig gonna be?
Speaker 1: We'll probably killing me like to to fifty somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: And then are you gonna charge me on the hoof
Speaker 1: guts in and everything? Or how do you do think it's?
Speaker 1: It's based off anyway? So what are you gonna charge me?
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. I gotta look at the books.
Speaker 1: That's more silly as departs. So you just starts following
Speaker 1: the commodities market. You're setting it off that you're setting
Speaker 1: it off global pork prices. That's right. Well, last year
Speaker 1: in the driver's seat, Okay, you've got this sale before
Speaker 1: you even told him the costs. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I roped him right in that. I'm a hogman. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: we used to I worked at a brewery before first light,
Speaker 1: and I was doing a handful of things and we
Speaker 1: get all that spent and grain, so all that barley
Speaker 1: actually with all the sugar out of it. I was
Speaker 1: like a start over again. Now, we used to work
Speaker 1: at a brewery, right for a first light. There's this
Speaker 1: stuff called spent grain. What's that you said, we used
Speaker 1: to work at a brewer. Well, I worked at actually Silia,
Speaker 1: and my girlfriend worked at the brewery as well. She's
Speaker 1: on the front end of Cilia. Cilia. How'd you spell that?
Speaker 1: S I l j E. Yeah, she's from North Norway.
Speaker 1: Her families from Norway. Okay, yeah, I met her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I liked her. She's awesome. Um. So you guys used
Speaker 1: the word to brewery yep um. And so I worked
Speaker 1: on the business side and I would take all the
Speaker 1: spent grain, which is brewery grain. Mash that's been brewed
Speaker 1: through UM and bring that to the hogs and they
Speaker 1: love that and it has some nutritional values, just a
Speaker 1: little bit all the sugars out of it. It's kind
Speaker 1: of just like a filler, a fattener if you will,
Speaker 1: so work pretty good. Where do you feed in mine?
Speaker 1: They're getting a blend from this guy named what do
Speaker 1: You Wolf? If he raises barley and what do you wolf?
Speaker 1: What do you Wolf? That's a good name. Yeah, great guy.
Speaker 1: He's in the lower Rollawa Valley. UM. He actually raises
Speaker 1: all the grain for the Carmen Corey Carmen's hog operation,
Speaker 1: which is in in Willao County as well. Is something
Speaker 1: that I would know about, probably not. She does a
Speaker 1: lot of like grass fed beef and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: She's entered entered quite a few markets with that products.
Speaker 1: They have a hog side to UM. So you're not
Speaker 1: feeding any kind of restaurant slop right now. A little
Speaker 1: bit of compost here there, you know, ends of like salad,
Speaker 1: greens and things like that, and then how are you
Speaker 1: gonna kill it? There's a guy named Dale who's got
Speaker 1: a mobile slaughter operation. It's pretty awesome. He comes through
Speaker 1: kills its skins, It brings it to Jake, and Jake
Speaker 1: takes care of their ast. So how much space is
Speaker 1: my pig have to run around on? Quite a bit,
Speaker 1: It's like acre and a half. There's three of them,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty good. They tend to want to stick
Speaker 1: into the shade this time of year because it's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty hot. So have you named my pig? No? No?
Speaker 1: Do you know the one that's mine? Ah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so, I start scraggly looking one. I'm just kidding. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna advise that you feed it a little bit
Speaker 1: of Asian food right before you slot. Okay, I just
Speaker 1: I just I just hear people. I hear people talk
Speaker 1: lil Asian food just fattens him, fattens him up, flavors
Speaker 1: them up right. I'm kind of joking. I like you said,
Speaker 1: he said, He said that he didn't feed him any
Speaker 1: like restaurant slop. Do what you're doing, Yeah, about three
Speaker 1: weeks before you give it a little Asian food. The
Speaker 1: point of the Grandma story was they used to take
Speaker 1: the skim off of their milk, like the thick, and
Speaker 1: they would throw that in as as their main food
Speaker 1: source without mixed with old oats. So that was probably
Speaker 1: pretty delicious pork, I imagine, I think, way to bring
Speaker 1: it back. Thanks dude, that was he should host this thing.
Speaker 1: That was good. I appreciate it. But you know what
Speaker 1: was bad about it is he took the damn long
Speaker 1: that it wasn't fresh in people's minds that while you
Speaker 1: were talking about your grandma. That's right. So you went
Speaker 1: from there, and then you've been with First Light essence
Speaker 1: about may. I just started with those guys actually, just
Speaker 1: as as we were kind of marrying up these two operations.
Speaker 1: So I feel like we're cousins now. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we are. I think we are kissing cousins, all right.
Speaker 1: And then you're liking it over there, loving it. It's
Speaker 1: the best job I've ever had, for sure. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: hands down. I mean I just got back from a
Speaker 1: week in Texas access to deer hunting, so it's pretty
Speaker 1: damn good. And you were at work, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: at work. Um, I can't I can't talk about it.
Speaker 1: But we looked at a bunch of the new First
Speaker 1: Light stuff coming out. Yeah, I guess we can talk
Speaker 1: about just that. It's there, it's in development, so we're
Speaker 1: working hard. On that. We got a whole new robust
Speaker 1: program for gear testing, and I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get it to a lot of key guys.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you guys are gonna wear it
Speaker 1: somewhere this week. You're heading somewhere. Yeah, Um, we're heading
Speaker 1: up Me and my wife and children, Brodie Henderson and
Speaker 1: his wife and children, and then my wife's buddy and
Speaker 1: her husband and children are going up to our fish shack. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna wear that new summertime ish. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good way to put on that new summertime. Feeling
Speaker 1: too too much. You guys are leading in U into
Speaker 1: the Texas market. Yeah, it's been been spending quite a
Speaker 1: bit of time. Actually, just I can tell you. I
Speaker 1: can tell you guys have been hanging out in Texas
Speaker 1: and you've got some clothes that are like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: getting close set that wasn't hot in Texas. Yeah at
Speaker 1: the latest gear me and they're like, so what do
Speaker 1: you guys think about some elephant skin boots rhino Ostrich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was yeah, that was a The one of the
Speaker 1: more shocking things about Texas is all the things you
Speaker 1: can make boots out of the man's, isn't it. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of thing about going in that direction. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, you don't know if I could really
Speaker 1: pull it off, like wearing boots of all different critter types.
Speaker 1: Like if I was sitting here and you said that, hey,
Speaker 1: one of those boots made out of and I was like, elephant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like you'd be like that. I was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a poser well, being from Michigan. I
Speaker 1: work at Bay Boots once in a while, but they're
Speaker 1: just leather, you know, I just made out of cow's hide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just got ease into it. Maybe. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if I could. I can't even pull that off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that would be the harder part, More than
Speaker 1: worrying about what species it was. It just be like,
Speaker 1: are you comfortable in some high heels? This is legit
Speaker 1: choice though, Yeah, but your neck of the woods. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: they're comfortable though. But you have the right person, you
Speaker 1: have the right personality and everything for it, and these
Speaker 1: are just leather. Listen. I mean you get into like
Speaker 1: the guys wearing like the ant eater boots, boots growing
Speaker 1: up eaters. Oh yeah, my god. I mean used to.
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid sitting around and the guys
Speaker 1: used to wear shorter pants and they do now. So
Speaker 1: my uncles would have their legs crossed, and so you
Speaker 1: could see like almost the entire boot, you know, when
Speaker 1: they their legs crossed, like the upper leg over the
Speaker 1: knee boot is then exposed. I remember my dad being like,
Speaker 1: look at his ant eater boots. I mean to me,
Speaker 1: it was just like that is top level, that's you know,
Speaker 1: you made. I've never I've never had anything other than
Speaker 1: leather though, just uh yeah, I mean I I've had boots,
Speaker 1: but I started wearing cowboy boots probably I don't know,
Speaker 1: eight or nine years ago. I mean, like where wearing
Speaker 1: them casually? And where are they comfortable? Like right off
Speaker 1: the bat, like acquired. It's an acquired taste. I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's partially. I mean, I'm of the firm belief
Speaker 1: that I'm man ought to be wearing leather boots, leather
Speaker 1: shoes of some sort. Almost all the time. I'm uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Like I have sandals. I mean I like sandals. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. You'll see me, You'll see me with sandals,
Speaker 1: But quit wearing flip flops a few days ago for
Speaker 1: the same reasons that you're okay, Well, why do you
Speaker 1: wear leather boots? Man, I was gonna wear you defend
Speaker 1: your family. Man, I'm serious. When I wear these, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm wearing like armor. Like I was yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was gonna when I was fine up here, I
Speaker 1: was like, man, I'll just wear my tennis shoes. I
Speaker 1: have some shoes for like running these different things. And
Speaker 1: I was like, man, I can't do it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wear the boots. I mean, if it, if it goes
Speaker 1: fisticuff somewhere, I need these. I mean, I'm being serious.
Speaker 1: I'm not I want to talk about Ronnie Beam anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'll start now. Um. He like he always asked himself,
Speaker 1: am I ready for a volcano to erupt? And when
Speaker 1: he has uh, I can't remember. He has some crazy
Speaker 1: word for flip flops, but anyways, He's like, I just
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm ready for that occurrence. And the
Speaker 1: other day, a longtime friend of mine who I've been
Speaker 1: hanging out with for forever, I was sitting there, we
Speaker 1: were having dinner, and I had flip flops and he said, man,
Speaker 1: just like really surprises me to see you and flip
Speaker 1: flops and he's from Montana. That who this friend is
Speaker 1: Dave McKay. So Dave McKay's from Montana. And he was
Speaker 1: with his wife in New York once and they went
Speaker 1: into a comedy store, comedy show right to watch stand up,
Speaker 1: and the stand up guy sees Dave and Dave's got
Speaker 1: flip pops on and he yelled, where are you from
Speaker 1: because you're not from here. It's not from Montana. And
Speaker 1: he goes, and you're gonna defend your wife in those shoes,
Speaker 1: And it got to him and him pointed out to me,
Speaker 1: got to me that, like, you're not ready for action.
Speaker 1: It's true, he's not ready for action, and he strap on.
Speaker 1: I got on, Now I'm ready for action. You can
Speaker 1: move in those yeah, spring over and defend him and
Speaker 1: he'll be falling over his flip pops. Oh, I forgot this.
Speaker 1: The day we went to dinner, I had tripped twice
Speaker 1: in my flip flops, fell off a curb and tripped
Speaker 1: coming through a doorway. It was top of mind. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that other people shared my sentiments about shoes.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, I've never I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever like verbalized when I just said being ready for
Speaker 1: a yeah, but it's very real. The first guy that
Speaker 1: ever brought this to my attention was Donnie the wild
Speaker 1: Man McConnell, who I've talked about before. Was that just
Speaker 1: the guy that would so pistol pockets into his leather vest,
Speaker 1: that's the guy. That's the guy. Yeah. He says that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't do anything. He wouldn't even get ready for bed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, he just laid down. Yeah, there wasn't even
Speaker 1: sleeping bag on his bunk. And I don't always try that.
Speaker 1: When I was just starting there, I would trying to
Speaker 1: always steal that bunk, and they'd like, no, it's Donnie's bunk.
Speaker 1: He's he's just for gets. There's like nothing there besides
Speaker 1: an ash tray and some empty coke cans and empty Budweisers.
Speaker 1: And uh, that was how his day went, was when
Speaker 1: he when he would finish the day with Budweisers and
Speaker 1: some cigarettes, and he would take his boots off and
Speaker 1: lay down jacket with in this pistol pocket and all.
Speaker 1: And then when your alarm and go off, you get
Speaker 1: up and we'd spend fifteen minutes getting our ship on,
Speaker 1: getting all geared up and brushing our teeth, and he
Speaker 1: like donning breakfast, you know, and he just sit up,
Speaker 1: put his boots on, light a cigarette, crack of coke,
Speaker 1: and be gone. That man, that's like the Mitch Hedberg joke.
Speaker 1: He wanted to get clothes made out of blankets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so ahead, so at night he didn't need to do anything.
Speaker 1: Um oh, my thing about Ronnie Bam. Did you guys
Speaker 1: notice that you know what a trombo is? No, a
Speaker 1: trombo trombo You ever spent much time in Mexico or Greece. Nope,
Speaker 1: you know you know what Tacos l pass store is not.
Speaker 1: Really you can help me out here, man, just go
Speaker 1: with the hero I'm talking about the spiraling. Okay, the engineers,
Speaker 1: let's go lace ups. He's reads the fan piel is
Speaker 1: gonna spring out of that little booth there and coming
Speaker 1: in that Phil is gonna be coming in to the rescue.
Speaker 1: So it's like you take you slice a bunch of meat,
Speaker 1: thin thin slice, not cooked, which is raw slice, raw meat,
Speaker 1: thin slice, and you marinate it and then you put
Speaker 1: it and you stack it on this skewer and so
Speaker 1: it winds up being on the skew were in the
Speaker 1: shape of a giant pineapple. And I say that because
Speaker 1: they often put slices of pineapple in there. And then
Speaker 1: it turns vertically on a spit. And you gotta either
Speaker 1: a propane burner or charcoal that's oriented vertically. And this
Speaker 1: thing turns on a spit with a vertically oriented heater.
Speaker 1: And then when it's kind of like and then you're
Speaker 1: just ready, that thing's just running around the clock. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you you put that. We usaid when we started
Speaker 1: first started travel to Mexico, we called it a pork
Speaker 1: rock because it looks like a giant rock man out
Speaker 1: of pork um. And that spit turns and when you
Speaker 1: go to make a taco, you just hold the taco
Speaker 1: up against the rock of meat and and it's all
Speaker 1: stacked like if you put one hand on top of
Speaker 1: your hand and another hand on top looks like this
Speaker 1: is a solid piece of meat, you can't really tell.
Speaker 1: But then you slice also vertical slices off, so you're
Speaker 1: just taking the ends of all this stuff that the
Speaker 1: part that's cooked, and you slice the cook part onto
Speaker 1: a taco, or you slice it into a euro Um.
Speaker 1: And that device, that cooking piece of equipment I recently
Speaker 1: learned is even though I owned one, is a trombo.
Speaker 1: So Ronnie Bam. When I got married all those years ago, uh,
Speaker 1: we had you know, you'll have like a party. No,
Speaker 1: we had a party the day I got married. Before
Speaker 1: I got married, so we had a party before the party.
Speaker 1: And at this party, my brother took a bunch of
Speaker 1: deer meat and Ronnie Beam welded us up a trombo
Speaker 1: out of stainless steele and it was a hand turn
Speaker 1: kind you had a hand crank it. So we cooked
Speaker 1: a bunch of venison tacos like this, and then I
Speaker 1: kind of forgot about it for eleven years. But I
Speaker 1: was just home at my mom's and found the trombo
Speaker 1: and the pole barn brought it back here and had
Speaker 1: a fabricator here in Bozeman named Travis Barton, who's a fireman.
Speaker 1: Yanni introduced me to him. He did a lot of
Speaker 1: the metalwork at Yanni's house. When Yanni remodeled UM, he
Speaker 1: raised it on a higher let eggs and put a
Speaker 1: rotisserie motor so you don't need to hand turn it anymore.
Speaker 1: Single single speed. Can you regulate the speed? Just single speed?
Speaker 1: It's about this fast? Mak it sounds like but smooth like? No. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna make a mountain lion. Oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make a pork rock out a mountain lion. I like it.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be good. Yeah, we already started that. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, Okay, how do you describe? Uh? Do do
Speaker 1: you say you're from the Ozarks? Yeah? Yeah, I live
Speaker 1: in the Ozarks? Now, hunt and the washing Toss something
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring, But that's Kevin. You don't have
Speaker 1: pronounced that mountain range the wash toss. He he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't see the spelling. I called the au cheetahs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you saw the spelling, it's spelled. Oh you
Speaker 1: a c H I t A. You mentioned how we
Speaker 1: mispronounced it was me because I don't think I would
Speaker 1: venture to try to pronounce. Well. I don't want to
Speaker 1: name any names here, but it was a guy that
Speaker 1: was from the Ozarks and he mispronounced. Well, you you
Speaker 1: mispronounced it and he didn't correct you, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the way you said. Who was it? Man? I
Speaker 1: honestly can't remember. It was on one of the turkey
Speaker 1: hunting episode y'all did with Brandon Butler, but there was
Speaker 1: he the one that It wasn't Brandon. I'm not throwing
Speaker 1: Brandon on the was it a guy that was the
Speaker 1: other guy, our friend Steve Jones, the Wild Game chef.
Speaker 1: I don't Parker Hall. No, it wasn't Parker. It was
Speaker 1: were narrowing it. It was a guy that was a
Speaker 1: turkey hunter. He was describing how he called turkeys with
Speaker 1: his mouth, but it was kind of like it felt
Speaker 1: like it was kind of he didn't really know, but
Speaker 1: it was kind of just like, yeah, that's the way
Speaker 1: he said, guys uck. What's that? Guys uck? May have
Speaker 1: been so you're so polite you don't want to say
Speaker 1: who did it? Well, I mean, I just hate to
Speaker 1: throw the guy under the bus, But at the same
Speaker 1: time vowed to my people that if it ever came
Speaker 1: to it, I would I would would bring back the
Speaker 1: honor of the wash Ittals. So oh you a he
Speaker 1: starts with a w. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like
Speaker 1: oha cheetahs, chah cheetah and say wash it talk like
Speaker 1: with a hard w wash wash yeah yeah, yeah, why
Speaker 1: don't you guys just spell it different? Man? We didn't.
Speaker 1: We just we're just some messengers. Man, this is a
Speaker 1: chock talk. Well, actually, there's three things that they that
Speaker 1: they say that. First of all, it is a transliteration
Speaker 1: of a Catto Indian word for wash it talk explain
Speaker 1: cattle Indian. It's just a it's just a type of
Speaker 1: Native American that lived in Southeast Catto Indian. Yeah, try
Speaker 1: like Choctaw cherry. And I was like when you when
Speaker 1: they talk about language types like Proto Indo European or
Speaker 1: so it's a trans It's a French transliteration of the
Speaker 1: way the Cattos said wash ital and they said it
Speaker 1: with a W. But it's a bunch of French guys
Speaker 1: over here that said, oh, we're gonna spell it o
Speaker 1: U A c h I t A and it actually
Speaker 1: means good hunting grounds. Yeah, so there's three things. There's
Speaker 1: another guy that says that the O U A c
Speaker 1: is the choc Tall word for buffalo, and it actually
Speaker 1: means buffalo hunting grounds given a throwback to the woodland buffalo,
Speaker 1: which totally was in Arkansas buffalo. And then, um, the
Speaker 1: third there's three possibilities and there's no agreement on truly
Speaker 1: what it means. The third one is another choc tall
Speaker 1: word that they think it means far away hunting ground.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I got. Like ozark man the French
Speaker 1: like named a bunch of stuff back in that country.
Speaker 1: So the word ozark describes a bend in the Arkansas River.
Speaker 1: Arkansas River flows, it doesn't really flow north, but there's
Speaker 1: a north trending bend in the Arkansas River and they
Speaker 1: called it ox Arc. They called this region above the
Speaker 1: arc ox arc a u x arc French. And so
Speaker 1: the trans well it grew into the Ozarks. So the
Speaker 1: Ozarks are north there above the ark Ship. So those
Speaker 1: are the two I like them all. Those are the two.
Speaker 1: Those are the two mountain ranges in Arkansas. And they're
Speaker 1: very different. I could totally nerd out about the differences
Speaker 1: and or culturally geologically sometimes those are inseparable though right right,
Speaker 1: they're similar enough in size and and like the geology
Speaker 1: will shape the culture in some ways. Absolutely. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: so the y stalls where are in east west running
Speaker 1: mountains uh formed from uplift when the when the South
Speaker 1: American continent bumped into the North American continent, and it's
Speaker 1: the only mountain range between the Appalachians and the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountains that runs east and west. And so what happens
Speaker 1: when you're hunting in the Washingtalls is you have two
Speaker 1: very different types of terrain because you have these southern
Speaker 1: facing slopes and then north facing slopes, because the mountains
Speaker 1: are running east and west with me. So the north
Speaker 1: it's like really thick, moist, vegetative, not as much strict sun.
Speaker 1: The south sides are arid, have a lot of pine, blueberry,
Speaker 1: a little bit more open, so that critters used that
Speaker 1: different terrain in different ways. Pretty interesting that you go
Speaker 1: up hung along the rim where you're kind of tapping
Speaker 1: into both. Yeah. Well that's the other feature of these
Speaker 1: mountains is that they're formed by uplift, so they're these
Speaker 1: like hogback ridges, and so there's these real distinct tops
Speaker 1: which are usually fairly flat but but small. So either
Speaker 1: walking straight it up are you're walking straight down the
Speaker 1: other side, but there'll be you know, these flat tops,
Speaker 1: and critters travel on them. So you hunt the tops
Speaker 1: of these mountains quite a bit. You know, while you
Speaker 1: were talking about all that stuff reminds me of two
Speaker 1: good pieces of barroom banter. One being you talk about
Speaker 1: the buffalo hunting, you know where that word comes from?
Speaker 1: What they're one of the ways they think that buffalo
Speaker 1: came about. I read your book. I shouldn't know, but uh,
Speaker 1: good for making buffalo leather. M But there's even occurrences
Speaker 1: where people called man and teese buffs thick leather. Now
Speaker 1: buffalo wasn't the Native American word for it. This was
Speaker 1: an English word. Yeah, they would call him buffs. You
Speaker 1: just spelled all kinds of different ways, and the eventually
Speaker 1: became buffalo. But it's something good for making buffalo leather.
Speaker 1: Um like thick leather, you know. And the everything you're
Speaker 1: talking about, like the geology. Have you ever read uh,
Speaker 1: Animals of the Former World by Geo McPhee. It explains
Speaker 1: all the geography in the US. They want a Pultz
Speaker 1: front different east to west than won a Pulitzer. But
Speaker 1: it was the interesting thing in there where um, you know,
Speaker 1: Alaska kind of a created and docked up. It was
Speaker 1: a bunch of islands, just a big mishmash of ship.
Speaker 1: The decreed did and docked up against our continent and
Speaker 1: then rolled north on a transform fault. And I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I think in eighty seven million years Japan we'll have
Speaker 1: a created all of the illusions and slammed into Alaska. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all them bears and everything going to be in Japan,
Speaker 1: which is in Alaska. Uh, how'd you getting none? Man?
Speaker 1: I grew up. It's just I grew up with it
Speaker 1: my dad. I always say that my dad was bow
Speaker 1: hunting before bow hunting was cool. Uh he so, I
Speaker 1: mean I I grew up bow hunting for white tail deer.
Speaker 1: My dad got into hunt to stick. No, no, that's new.
Speaker 1: My dad is like totally a compound like speed guy.
Speaker 1: My my movement into traditional archery probably is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a throwback from his his uh kind of
Speaker 1: the the intricacies and he took he takes tuning bows
Speaker 1: and all this kind of to the extreme. I never
Speaker 1: really liked that side of it. I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be simple, and so I still shoot compound and love it.
Speaker 1: But my dad shot a reeker before compounds came out,
Speaker 1: and then he rolled into compounds hard. Now see that's
Speaker 1: the way these guys think though, Like my dad is like,
Speaker 1: why the heck would you want to go backwards? Because
Speaker 1: that's where he started to you know, shooting these traditional
Speaker 1: bows that they couldn't kill anything with. And then so
Speaker 1: to go backwards just the forty years. Yeah yeah, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we grew up deerhund. We had a place in northern Minnesota,
Speaker 1: so we kind of grew up in that North Belt
Speaker 1: country of just honey, small racked, big bodied white tails,
Speaker 1: and then really got into waterfall hunting in high school
Speaker 1: because it's accessible where I lived. You run right for
Speaker 1: the get go, Yeah, yeah, right right away. It's been
Speaker 1: a part of my family for a long time m hm,
Speaker 1: because you had access to those farms. Yeah. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of good pheasant hunting, a lot of good duck hunting,
Speaker 1: pretty good deer hunting. Not as good as Iowa and
Speaker 1: on the west actually, but it's great, good way not
Speaker 1: as good, yeah, at least in northern Minnesota. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with yeah, still pretty good though, great for the
Speaker 1: camaraderie sense from the deer camp since uh, not as
Speaker 1: big a deer for sure, but great great deer populations. Certainly.
Speaker 1: Are you guys in wolf area? Yeah yeah, certainly has
Speaker 1: that changed a lot for real? Or can't you even
Speaker 1: look at it for real? Because you're still wrapped up
Speaker 1: in the differences. That's a loaded question, I think. Um,
Speaker 1: if you talk to people up there, they'll say it
Speaker 1: has impacted it tremendously. Um, But I think in my case,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it to the point where it's made
Speaker 1: the deer hunting in my lifetime that that different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels different. Yeah, certainly feels different. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I would say that my experience in the West, specifically
Speaker 1: in Oregon, with with wolf free introduction has been my
Speaker 1: My experience in the short time I've lived out there
Speaker 1: has changed traumatic, like pretty dramatically. Let's say, yeah, where
Speaker 1: we go ahead, Well, I might I want to name
Speaker 1: an example, Like, what's the common thing you've seen change?
Speaker 1: I think in eastern Oregan specifically, it's just the balance
Speaker 1: back between the ranching community and and sort of the
Speaker 1: introduction of wolves. It's a obviously a slippery slope conversation,
Speaker 1: but they've been impacted in a different way than they
Speaker 1: haven't been in the last fifty years. UM. From a
Speaker 1: hunting standpoint, A lot of guys will say, oh, those
Speaker 1: alcal quatter in this area now, which I think I've
Speaker 1: had a few experiences with that. Although it's you know anecdotal,
Speaker 1: it's not based off science. So, UM, I think my
Speaker 1: experience in in see Ean wolves to have seen a
Speaker 1: couple in eastern Oregon. That's different when than when I
Speaker 1: started hunting there when I was a nineteen and I
Speaker 1: didn't see wolves until two years ago. Um, just quite
Speaker 1: a few. Now you started hunting organ when you're nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was out there to fight fire when I was
Speaker 1: in college, So that was the first time ever stepped
Speaker 1: foot in Oregon for real. So I was spending mostly
Speaker 1: about May through and in September there and then going
Speaker 1: back to school. I heard my first wolf from my
Speaker 1: deck a couple of nights ago, just to two howls,
Speaker 1: and there's just happened. I was out there watching a
Speaker 1: small herd of elk, and every single one of those
Speaker 1: mature cows was looking down the hill and across the drainage.
Speaker 1: Nobody was eating, nobody had their heads down, everybody was
Speaker 1: just staring. When that wolf was out, but he only
Speaker 1: it only it howled twice. Now is that? Yeah? Such
Speaker 1: a different sound too. It's pretty remarkable. Uh. You got
Speaker 1: like your grandpa's a big hunter. My grandfather was a
Speaker 1: quail hunter, that's all he hunted. Really, that's that's all
Speaker 1: he out of luck now, uh yeah, yeah, Well, so
Speaker 1: there was a time in the South when I mean
Speaker 1: the heyday of quail hunting would have been from the
Speaker 1: forties to well nineteen eighties. Do you regard yourself as
Speaker 1: being from the South, Yeah, it's really I mean I
Speaker 1: do being from Arkansas, but I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: can drive twenty miles and technically well yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Arkansas is it's definitely not Deep South where I live.
Speaker 1: But I live in northwest Arkansas on the mountains, and
Speaker 1: so the mountain culture truly is not Deep South. You
Speaker 1: get into the Arkansas Delta, you absolutely would feel like
Speaker 1: you're in the Deep South. This is very different. But
Speaker 1: also my my grandfather, he was a renowned bird dog trainer,
Speaker 1: and that's all he did. I mean, they would they
Speaker 1: would go out there were I mean he talks about
Speaker 1: going out and you know, finding nine covees of quail
Speaker 1: and day and you know, several guys killing their limits
Speaker 1: of quail, and then about night the quail world just
Speaker 1: started to dry up. And um, I had bird dogs.
Speaker 1: When I got my first bird dog when I was
Speaker 1: in sixth grade, got it from my grandfather, And we
Speaker 1: actually had two or three cuvees of quail back behind
Speaker 1: our house. And uh, my dad wouldn't let me take
Speaker 1: the shotgun. At that time, there were had some houses.
Speaker 1: It was kind of suburban, rural Arkansas. And so I
Speaker 1: would take that dog out and we pointed quail during
Speaker 1: the winter. I mean, I probably didn't go out every day,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I did. Snow undergrown. No not
Speaker 1: not not in Arkansas. Really, I thought we do get
Speaker 1: a little bit, but not a lot. I mean just
Speaker 1: a few days a year. Well yeah, but he so,
Speaker 1: he he is the one that really introduced my dad.
Speaker 1: He my grandfather did some squirrel hunting, but he was
Speaker 1: he was a bird dog man. I mean that's like
Speaker 1: in the South. That was like a like a nobleman's sport,
Speaker 1: you know. And then he was a trainer and then
Speaker 1: was the affluent. Tell me what you mean by that,
Speaker 1: Like was he When you say, what was the word
Speaker 1: you used, I said, it was a nobleman's sport, I
Speaker 1: mean like affluent. Was he wealthy? No? No, No, he
Speaker 1: was a He was a biology teacher for a public
Speaker 1: school and a pastor and a pastor of a church.
Speaker 1: When he said like noble. This noble in the sense
Speaker 1: of like this is a this is not no no
Speaker 1: no YEA good good clarification there. But but he and
Speaker 1: part of truly what influenced still influences me today is
Speaker 1: that I watched my grandfather the last twenty five years
Speaker 1: of his life lament the demise of the animal that
Speaker 1: he loved. Really, I mean, I didn't know that conservation
Speaker 1: was cool. I didn't know that. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: what happened before me. But every time I talked to
Speaker 1: him and would be like, man back, and he was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was embittered against it or he
Speaker 1: like he hunted just the same when there were no
Speaker 1: birds as he did when there were lots of birds.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't like he was like, I'm getting
Speaker 1: rid of the dogs, there's no more quail. He he
Speaker 1: hunted until the He didn't huntil the day that he
Speaker 1: died when he was ninety four. But but he was
Speaker 1: a he was a good man, good good dog trainer.
Speaker 1: What uh, I don't want to ask what his idea
Speaker 1: was about what happened to the quail, but like what
Speaker 1: you take on what happened to the quail? There are
Speaker 1: so many different versions. You know what I mean. Do
Speaker 1: you remember you read something that I sent to you
Speaker 1: one time and it's pretty to think about the fire ants. Nope,
Speaker 1: but a habitat mine had to do with invasive grasses
Speaker 1: fence posts. So I mean basically, back in the day,
Speaker 1: there was no fescu and bermuda grass, and because of
Speaker 1: the cow calf operations that all these farms have turned
Speaker 1: to in the last forty years, cow calf operations in
Speaker 1: Arkansas need fescu and bermuda grass. It's just the best.
Speaker 1: And those grasses it's just it's just hardy, it's nutritious,
Speaker 1: it grows like crazy. That's what everything is. I mean
Speaker 1: right now, you go and look at any grass and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be some type of fescue or bermuda, which
Speaker 1: are both invasive grasses and their turf type grasses, which
Speaker 1: means they grow by rhizomes. So what the quail would
Speaker 1: have been used to back in the day before these
Speaker 1: invasive grasses would have been clump grasses, and so clump
Speaker 1: grasses provided uh places for the birds to move through.
Speaker 1: We see, like I'll hear you from the people on
Speaker 1: bunch grasses. Yeah, I mean just the native grasses of Arkansas,
Speaker 1: like orchard grass and some of the some of the
Speaker 1: sage UH would have, they would not have grown in
Speaker 1: like these continuous patches. Like even if it looked like
Speaker 1: a continuous patch, if you open it up, you'd see
Speaker 1: ground underneath it. And so basically habitat was destroyed by
Speaker 1: those two invasive grasses. And then with the advent of
Speaker 1: basically modern brush hogging machines and just people kind of
Speaker 1: taking better care of their farms. People have t post
Speaker 1: fence rows now, when back in the day they probably
Speaker 1: would have just strung barbed wire between trees and put
Speaker 1: up some wooden fence. And not that wood or metal
Speaker 1: makes a difference, but basically they had these robust edges
Speaker 1: that product provided habitat for quail and and and we
Speaker 1: don't now we have t posts. And with a t
Speaker 1: post fence you can mow right up beside it. You
Speaker 1: can right you can mow within six inches of one
Speaker 1: side and six inches of the other, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's two sided fence. So that was big. I mean,
Speaker 1: those really are the it's it's it's habitat degradation. But
Speaker 1: the other thing that's happened in Arkansas. That's crazy. That
Speaker 1: has to do with the ground nesting bird is our
Speaker 1: quite Our turkey populations are down like six. So it's
Speaker 1: almost like there's this fuzz of nobody knows really what's
Speaker 1: going on with the ground nesting birds other than that
Speaker 1: they're doing really bad. You know, we had an article
Speaker 1: we ran on uh the meat eater dot com about
Speaker 1: declining turkey numbers in some states, and it's kind of funny, Man,
Speaker 1: piss people off. You come war with my house. We've
Speaker 1: got playing turkeys. I'm like, I'm sure you do, man,
Speaker 1: But I mean, there's certain things you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of states that have for the first
Speaker 1: like for the first time, and you know, a decade
Speaker 1: or so you're seeing like declines and turkey numbers. But
Speaker 1: people get here, I don't know, it's like a weird
Speaker 1: thing to get irritated about. No one said like turkey huntings,
Speaker 1: but you're seeing like like you're seeing a widespread decline
Speaker 1: in turkey numbers in certain parts of the country. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's guys, like I can go back to
Speaker 1: some of my good spots that maybe there is a
Speaker 1: six decline in turkey numbers, and I can still hear
Speaker 1: a turkey gobble from there, but there's not eight of
Speaker 1: them there anymore. There's one, you know. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like to the guy that's really not paying that much attention,
Speaker 1: he goes in there and he kills that bird, and
Speaker 1: he's like, like, kill the bird last year, killed the
Speaker 1: bird year before that. Don't you tell me about my turkeys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got some good homes down to Missouri. Yeah, now Missouri, oddly,
Speaker 1: Missouri is totally different. Man. You go and this is
Speaker 1: what's bizarre. And you can't blame any of the commissions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it's anything they're doing. But
Speaker 1: any direction you go from Arkansas, turkey hunting gets better
Speaker 1: quick huh, no doubt. I mean even where you are
Speaker 1: hunting with with Brandon Butler. I mean that's a couple
Speaker 1: hours from my house, like three hours and uh, dramatically
Speaker 1: better turkey hunting up there. I've talked about this. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we staught this interesting thing hunting in Kentucky, UM,
Speaker 1: which is another area that used to have great quail hunting,
Speaker 1: and the quail are gone kind of gone. And we're
Speaker 1: home with our friend Kevin Murphy, and he was explaining
Speaker 1: that when he hunts a small game, he likes to
Speaker 1: hunt on the Amish farms because he said, they don't
Speaker 1: clean farm. They they still dirty farm and you go
Speaker 1: out there, and it was so funny the whole time
Speaker 1: run around with him. That was the place we saw
Speaker 1: quail was on an Amish farming, described dirty farming. I've
Speaker 1: heard you said before. But well leave like they'll pick corn,
Speaker 1: leave it for the winter. So they'll pick corn, leave
Speaker 1: the ground covered all winter. They will have uh big rows,
Speaker 1: like big huge wind rows and they don't win untill Okay,
Speaker 1: they leave crop coverage on the ground for the winter.
Speaker 1: And so he was just saying, then he did our
Speaker 1: part of it is he said, he says they're hell
Speaker 1: on predators. Yeah, so they provide habitat kill predators and
Speaker 1: it's like small game golds. He goes way out of
Speaker 1: his way to hunt the Amish farms. That's the games
Speaker 1: all the game is. Man sounds good. Yeah, did uh
Speaker 1: did your grandpa hunt quail on mules? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't. But how did you get into hunting on mules?
Speaker 1: You know, my my dad doesn't hunt on mules. We
Speaker 1: actually did not grow up having ecoin animals. I mean
Speaker 1: it grew being in rural Arkansas. I grew up with
Speaker 1: horses and stuff. I mean just people had them, you know,
Speaker 1: Buddy's had them, and we'd ride and stuff. But it
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell about four or five years ago that I
Speaker 1: just said it's time to get a mule, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was as you know. I'd give you a short
Speaker 1: version or a long version of that, but I think
Speaker 1: I'll tell people what a mule is. A mule is
Speaker 1: when a donkey and a horse do it. A mule
Speaker 1: is a hybrid cross between a male donkey called a
Speaker 1: jack and a female horse called them mayor, and it
Speaker 1: produces a what in the biology world, how's it work with?
Speaker 1: How's it work with? The gender? Again, So it's a
Speaker 1: a mule is a male donkey, a jack and a
Speaker 1: female horse. The opposite is what's a genie mule? That's okay?
Speaker 1: That is when it's a man. I'm gonna get I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mix it up. I'm not an expert, but it's
Speaker 1: a differ for an animal. When you do the inverse,
Speaker 1: when it's a male horse and a female donkey, it
Speaker 1: produces a different animal. It's it's escaped me what that is.
Speaker 1: It's really rare. People don't do it. Well, that's what.
Speaker 1: That's what a genny mule is or whatever. I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a phrase for it, and I can't recall what
Speaker 1: it is. Jenny, I think it's g So the cool
Speaker 1: thing about we'll come back to you. The cool thing
Speaker 1: about a mule is that it's a classic example of
Speaker 1: hybrid vigor. You know the phrase hybrid hybrid, hybrid, hybrid,
Speaker 1: hybrid vigor, hybrid, I mean I know it in terms
Speaker 1: of egg Yeah. So, so basically, you take the strength
Speaker 1: of these two animals, which both have great strengths like
Speaker 1: a donkey. Like a donkey strength would be like hard feet, nimble,
Speaker 1: very strong for its size. Um. And you would take
Speaker 1: a horse, which would be its strengths would be um,
Speaker 1: it's it's speed, it's trainability. And basically inside of a
Speaker 1: mule you get you get the best characteristics of both
Speaker 1: animals in one animal. And this is fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: A mule will live longer than both a donkey and
Speaker 1: a horse live longer. I mean, uh, they're not. It's
Speaker 1: actually viable. They're they're not. Do you still geld him. Yep,
Speaker 1: they have all the same desires, but no, no real ammo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you gotta you gotta, you gotta cut a male
Speaker 1: or he'll want to breed females and stuff but won't
Speaker 1: do any good, won't do them any good. But he
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, that's when you wanna want a boy.
Speaker 1: That's when a boy stallion and a girl donkey a
Speaker 1: jenny they do it. They get a henny, correct, honey,
Speaker 1: male horse, female donkey? What is the opposite what you're
Speaker 1: talking about? And it's a different animal. They have different
Speaker 1: they're usually not as big and for some reason people
Speaker 1: just don't do that very much. It's not his story.
Speaker 1: So stature, shorter ears, stronger legs, and a thicker mane.
Speaker 1: So guys who produced mules for the mule trade, um,
Speaker 1: they just they have some donkeys, they have some horses.
Speaker 1: Well you would you would have a set of Let's
Speaker 1: say there was a guy that was actually a mule breeder,
Speaker 1: he would have a set of mayor horses that would
Speaker 1: be I mean, if he was good. They would be
Speaker 1: selected horses based upon them being a good horse, being trainable,
Speaker 1: being not KICKI being having good feet, I mean, have
Speaker 1: all these like traits that you want a good horse,
Speaker 1: and then he would have he would have a jack
Speaker 1: that suited and produced what he wanted in side of
Speaker 1: a mule. And so a lot of guys use mammoth jack's,
Speaker 1: which a mammoth jack it's like a jack that's over hands.
Speaker 1: It can be up to like seventeen hands, which is huge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like a dinosaur. You got to
Speaker 1: look up. A mammoth jack looks crazy. But so you
Speaker 1: just have you have you know, one or two breeder
Speaker 1: jack's and and it's just like any type of animal breeding.
Speaker 1: You make a cross and maybe it produces a mule
Speaker 1: that's really good, that's tempered right, that's built right, that's
Speaker 1: a good feet, that's strong, that's colored the way you
Speaker 1: want it to. But there's a lot of quirks inside
Speaker 1: the mule world too. It's really hard to get a
Speaker 1: mule bred with color like actually the fur color of
Speaker 1: a mule typically tends to be solid ball. For everybody, buddy, man,
Speaker 1: it's just a it's just a it's just like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the mule that I that I trained and own, Like
Speaker 1: in the mule world, it's like, oh, that's a flashy mule.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like your bow. It's just like
Speaker 1: your boat. I mean, like you want a bow that
Speaker 1: you like the looks of it. Yeah, my new bowl,
Speaker 1: my new boat. All bowls are this way now almost,
Speaker 1: But I got a new Matthews and it's flat black
Speaker 1: looks it looks menacing. Many verdicts everybody. Everybody wants one
Speaker 1: of them flat black black bows because he looks like
Speaker 1: a killer. Remember Fridge Perry, oh, the football player. Yes,
Speaker 1: remember you know they won the Super Bowl. That was
Speaker 1: kind of the last football game I watched. Uh a touchdown.
Speaker 1: My mom was from Chicago. He wore black shoes back
Speaker 1: when everybody had white shoes. And he was saying he
Speaker 1: wore black shoes because people looked at him, they think
Speaker 1: they're gonna he was gonna be slow, but then he
Speaker 1: just slam them with black Now, why would black shoes
Speaker 1: make you think they're slow. Let's dude, this is man.
Speaker 1: We just thirty seven years ago. People to who knows.
Speaker 1: That's what was his theory on it. But that black boat,
Speaker 1: what the point is? My black bowl looks fast. Jet
Speaker 1: black bowl looks menacing. Man, I shoot the same color
Speaker 1: bow mean, if I had a guy pop up to
Speaker 1: shoot me with the arrow, and he had wanted and
Speaker 1: he had I choose whether he had a camel bow
Speaker 1: or a black bow, I'd go with camel if he's
Speaker 1: shooting at me, because I'd be like, yeah, you think
Speaker 1: could be. But he had a flat black boat that's
Speaker 1: menacing fops, I do shoot my bone flipflops a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: How much is the mule? Man? That's just like every
Speaker 1: other thing on the planet when you're dealing with a commodity,
Speaker 1: there's all kind of variations. I mean, just this last week,
Speaker 1: somebody asked me how much I paid for the mule
Speaker 1: that I have, which I trained my mule, so it's
Speaker 1: an untrained mule. I mean basically she was totally untrained.
Speaker 1: But no one knew what it had. No one knew
Speaker 1: what it was the only the only thing, the only
Speaker 1: reason I bought the mule that I did, traded and bought,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you what I gave for it. It
Speaker 1: was because it was a flashy mule that was the
Speaker 1: right size that I wanted so wanted you, oh I have.
Speaker 1: I have no apologies for wanting to flash man. If
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feed that thing and see it every day
Speaker 1: out from my house. I wanted to look good. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you why you don't want to flashy mule.
Speaker 1: Let's see you get a flashy mule, okay, and it
Speaker 1: winds up being a shitty mule. People are gonna be
Speaker 1: like that guy taking those all cool looking and now
Speaker 1: he's got But let's say you have a shitty looking
Speaker 1: mule and he's a shitty mule. People will be like, whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got some old mule. I don't know what. Dude
Speaker 1: doesn't do what he says. But it's like a lot
Speaker 1: different if you bought a really fancy sports car and
Speaker 1: then the minute you take it out, you crash it. People,
Speaker 1: it's more funny to people. That's gonna be more funny
Speaker 1: to people. It's he bought an old junkie car and
Speaker 1: crashed it. So you're just more you're gonna head your
Speaker 1: bets on like the social the social aspect, Like Romella
Speaker 1: bought an ugly mule. Really it turns out stupid mule
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work good. But I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you expect? Well, do you understand what I'm saying? You
Speaker 1: don't understands? Yeah, we'll see the thing about. I'll try
Speaker 1: to be brief here. I mean, you can. I can
Speaker 1: leave it rest. You bought a cool looking mule, right,
Speaker 1: you could. You could. You could pay ten dollars for
Speaker 1: a mule easily based on what it looks like, based
Speaker 1: upon a whole bunch of stuff. Men, The complexities inside
Speaker 1: of the animal world, especially one that you're gonna ride,
Speaker 1: are so at the point at which it's broke, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't. It's intelligences And yeah, you'd never buy like
Speaker 1: an untrained ten thousand dollar mule. The reason can you
Speaker 1: spend on a horr mean, he's spend like you can
Speaker 1: spend times out of a horse. Sure, yeah, because of
Speaker 1: the racehorse industry and some of the stuff. But but
Speaker 1: you know, the reason that I bought the mule that
Speaker 1: I did is because I like the way it looked,
Speaker 1: its right size, and nobody had ever messed with it.
Speaker 1: Which that's the one thing with a mule is that
Speaker 1: they're easy to mess up there, so the strong they're
Speaker 1: easy to mess up very So you don't want to
Speaker 1: get a mule from a guy that's like, I trained
Speaker 1: this smele a little bit. You know, I'll sell it
Speaker 1: to you for this much. You don't know what's happened
Speaker 1: with that mule. And that's that's the one negative people
Speaker 1: talking about formed a really bad impression of people. They
Speaker 1: they're highly unforgiving. But in the same sense, that's what
Speaker 1: makes a mule great, is that if he trusts you,
Speaker 1: if you train him right, if you do it right,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be an incredible animal forever. That's an abbreviated
Speaker 1: like simple thing inside of a complex situation. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to I wanted a mule that nobody had messed with.
Speaker 1: And you want to your mistakes to be your own, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I wanted to know because I got a
Speaker 1: mut I had a mule before that that was green broke,
Speaker 1: and green broke is basically just a way of saying,
Speaker 1: this thing ain't trained. And I had one means technically
Speaker 1: like you could put a saddle on it and get
Speaker 1: on its back. It's trained enough for that and could
Speaker 1: ride a little bit. But it's broad term. But green broke,
Speaker 1: in my book, means highly dangerous. Really, you don't know
Speaker 1: what this animal has. So I had some bad experiences
Speaker 1: with a with a green broke mule, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to train one on my own, and I this guy
Speaker 1: has now become my friend. But a guy in southeast
Speaker 1: Oklahoma had this mule, Craigslist mule dangerous. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: do it almost almost every day. And uh, he had
Speaker 1: this mule I wanted about He wanted fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for an untrained mule, which is you could buy a
Speaker 1: broke mule for fifts, but the mules special. Basically, I
Speaker 1: traded him n Honda four tracks four wheeler, an old
Speaker 1: Russian World War two rifle. It was worth about seventy
Speaker 1: five dollars one of those. Man, it was a little
Speaker 1: set with what call. It was given to me as
Speaker 1: a gift, and it fired. It's some odd caliber but no,
Speaker 1: it's like it was like seven six to like whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with one of those four wheeler, one of those rifles
Speaker 1: and five dollars cash and he took me to the cleaners. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm not a good negotiator when it comes to stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I'm a little too nice. So he got
Speaker 1: a gun, a quad Runner and five hundred bucks and
Speaker 1: I got a man. It was an incredible, incredible experienced
Speaker 1: just for hunting. None. Yeah, there's six mules for sale
Speaker 1: on the boat on the bowsman Craigslist right now? If
Speaker 1: you is there a dead deer on that same page
Speaker 1: mule deer? Get you get on that? Oh you want
Speaker 1: to know people selling mule deer Kawasaki mule four wheelers.
Speaker 1: You gotta do a lot of digging to buy mu
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nuances in the Craigslist mule world
Speaker 1: that guy has to get tuned up on. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, man. But you don't love the thing about
Speaker 1: hunting with mules down where you're at is um Is
Speaker 1: it really like an access issue? You know, like what
Speaker 1: can you get you on a mule that you can't
Speaker 1: get to in your in your truck. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. It's legitimate. I mean, we don't have the
Speaker 1: wilderness that you guys have in the West. I mean
Speaker 1: we just don't. But we do have. We do a
Speaker 1: big but I think we have two point two million
Speaker 1: acres in National Forest and Arkansas and a lot of
Speaker 1: it's fairly remote, fairly well, all of it's pretty rugged.
Speaker 1: We have eleven wilderness areas in Arkansas that are you know,
Speaker 1: limited to foot travel, leaqueline travel, Federally designated wilderness like roughly.
Speaker 1: How big are they? Um, the biggest ones about thirty
Speaker 1: thousand acres. Yeah, the smallest one is probably six seven
Speaker 1: thousand acres. Is that thirty acre one fairly contiguous or
Speaker 1: is it buzz it all up into a thousand contiguous?
Speaker 1: No kidding? Yeah? Yeah, yeah for the south or you know,
Speaker 1: if we're considering Arkansas at the south, which it is,
Speaker 1: we uh, we have some incredible rugged I mean, well,
Speaker 1: it is wilderness, it's federal wilderness, wilderness area. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: the Buffalo Wilderness that's the biggest one. And no, kid,
Speaker 1: I can't remember I've never hunted the Buffalo Wilderness. Because
Speaker 1: the Buffalo Wilderness has become a hot spot for tourism
Speaker 1: because of the Buffalo River, which is the nation's first
Speaker 1: national river. So it's incredible. The Buffalo River area is
Speaker 1: probably the most rugged, true representation of the Ozarks that
Speaker 1: there is, and but it's become a hub for tourism
Speaker 1: big time. So it's it's a positive thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't really want to go there and hunt. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got you. Yeah, it sees a lot of nine tourism.
Speaker 1: Yeah it does, it does. But so being an issue
Speaker 1: of access, like it's not like I'm gonna ride my
Speaker 1: mule like eighteen miles back into the wilderness to hunt
Speaker 1: that that's just not gonna happen. But definitely I go
Speaker 1: places that other people don't go and stay longer. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole point of it, is to go further
Speaker 1: and stay longer and a lot of times ill. And
Speaker 1: now I learned this technique from James Lawrence. You know
Speaker 1: what it does, but it's but it's right, I add,
Speaker 1: that's my one of my I call him a friend,
Speaker 1: but he's almost he's more than a friend. Guy named
Speaker 1: James Lawrence. James is he he grew up hunting in
Speaker 1: wilderness in Arkansas, and what he would do and this,
Speaker 1: and he taught me how to do this, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of a lot of what I do.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do what James did, and it's just
Speaker 1: I like to do it. But he would use a
Speaker 1: paniard and lead a horse in with all his gear
Speaker 1: on it for like nine days. So he'd just hauled
Speaker 1: his horse in with packs on, and then once he
Speaker 1: got to his camp, he'd unload all his stuff and
Speaker 1: then he'd ride the horse. And I liked hunt that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw one of the one of your videos that
Speaker 1: you made. You're a good writer, man, Thank you like
Speaker 1: you right? Like the narrations, Well, I like it. It's
Speaker 1: well done. Um, you can shoot off that mule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't even give a ship. Yeah, shooting right off
Speaker 1: over his head. Dude. At one time got in a
Speaker 1: horse with a muzzle loader, and that most lord swung
Speaker 1: across the corner of his eye. I was down on
Speaker 1: the ground so fast and so hard. Man, I hate
Speaker 1: that just from not even shooting it swung in his
Speaker 1: peripheral vision. I'll spook a man off of lip out
Speaker 1: and landing on a rock. We with an outfitter, were you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well I was on a reservation, so I was with
Speaker 1: some tribal members messing around. See a good animal is
Speaker 1: not gonna do that, Steve, You're gonna desensitize it. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I spend We'll just dude. You know what's funny,
Speaker 1: The guy knew enough to know that. He knew enough
Speaker 1: to know that, Um, it might not like that. See
Speaker 1: that's you shouldn't put You shouldn't put somebody. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: put somebody on an Yeah, my sister in law takes
Speaker 1: my daughter outright, and she picks a horse that she
Speaker 1: thinks is suitable for my daughter. Yeah, she's like, this
Speaker 1: would be a good horse for her. Yeah, because of X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. This guy's like, this would be a
Speaker 1: bad horse for that. Let's go put him on that horse. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys hunt raccoons. You guys hunt raccoons on mules?
Speaker 1: What kind of dogs you chase them with? I've got
Speaker 1: plot hounds, so you don't use your squirrel dogs? No, No,
Speaker 1: what's the plot? Plot? Hound? Is a It's a uk
Speaker 1: C registered breed of dogs p L O T T
Speaker 1: the plot home plot? Is it like a walker? Is
Speaker 1: it like over? I mean it's a it's a hound,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a fascinating story, like a lanky,
Speaker 1: long legged deal. Now it's a pretty compact. I mean
Speaker 1: my dogs are like fifty to sixty pounds, females in
Speaker 1: the forty five to fifty pound range, males in the
Speaker 1: sixty to sixty five pound range. If it wasn't black,
Speaker 1: it would look like a hound I'm looking at. That's
Speaker 1: what you're run raccoons with. You bet you like one
Speaker 1: of them? Like, what's the dog? I'm looking Catahoulo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of a brindle dog. My dog, one of
Speaker 1: my dogs is black. But the plot, the plot hound
Speaker 1: is the only breed of hound that didn't descend from
Speaker 1: European fox hounds. So Walker, blue tick, red tick, English.
Speaker 1: All these dogs descended from European fox have all been
Speaker 1: tainted by Europe. Well, the plotthhounds were to the plothounds
Speaker 1: came from Germany. But they were big game dogs in
Speaker 1: Germany and they were brought over in seventeen fifty by
Speaker 1: sixteen year old boy named your Honness Plot and Johannes's Plot.
Speaker 1: He his father bred these dogs for a nobleman in Germany.
Speaker 1: He sent his son to the New World, and what
Speaker 1: he sent him with was five hounds, which were the
Speaker 1: original plot hoounds. They came in. Johannes's Plot was sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. His brother died on the journey over. He
Speaker 1: and to one other brother came. They ended up in
Speaker 1: North Carolina with these five dogs. I mean they weren't
Speaker 1: plot hoounds, that that was just their last name. They
Speaker 1: were just hunting dogs. And he had a mix of
Speaker 1: males and females presumably. Yeah, And so the the story
Speaker 1: is is that the plothhound breed descended directly from those
Speaker 1: five dogs, and the plothhound is it's it's absolutely true
Speaker 1: to a degree. There's some like real hardcore plot men
Speaker 1: that are like, the plot breed has never been bred
Speaker 1: by anything outside of those five dogs. But clearly when
Speaker 1: you look at the history and the culture, I mean
Speaker 1: dogs on tethers out in people's yards and these mountain
Speaker 1: people they were breeding other dogs in but in general
Speaker 1: they stayed true to that, to that plot lineage. And
Speaker 1: uh so the plot is the national dog or the
Speaker 1: state dog of North Carolina, and it's the only hound.
Speaker 1: Jana is married into North Carolina. He's essentially from North Carolina. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the plot, the plot hound is the only breed
Speaker 1: of hounds that is directly associated with bear dogs. Some
Speaker 1: it's like a plot bear dog. And so for me,
Speaker 1: hunting coons with with plots is actually primarily because we
Speaker 1: cannot run big game in Arkansas with hounds, and so
Speaker 1: I wanted to have plot hounds, and what we can
Speaker 1: run is raccoons. And so a tree dog is a
Speaker 1: tree dog. They'll chase anything with fur and they've just
Speaker 1: got to have that tree and instinct. So the difference
Speaker 1: between a bear dog and a raccoon dog is very
Speaker 1: different depending on how much you want to nerd out
Speaker 1: about it. But you could take a bear dog and
Speaker 1: train it to be a raccoon dog. Why do you
Speaker 1: guys call all it when when a when a tree, squirrel,
Speaker 1: a raccoon taps the tree, jumps from one tree to
Speaker 1: the next. Why do you call it that he timbered
Speaker 1: the tree? You know, I guess because that's I say tap,
Speaker 1: because that's the Jerry Clouds possible description of it. Steve,
Speaker 1: what else have we heard for that? Like Mississippi? I
Speaker 1: think you know that taps the tree, taps the tree.
Speaker 1: Let's say, when I hear the word taps the tree,
Speaker 1: to me, that means that the raccoon, squirrel, whatever went
Speaker 1: halfway up the tree and then came back down and
Speaker 1: went to another tree. Oh you know, that might be
Speaker 1: what Jerry claud was talking about. Yeah, that's what he
Speaker 1: was he was. Yeah, that's what he's saying. He tapped
Speaker 1: the tree. Yeah, so they timbered because he timbered out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he timbered Like we didn't have we don't have a
Speaker 1: word where I'm from, We didn't have a word for that.
Speaker 1: You have to say something like he jumped into another tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you didn't settle with something like that. So that's what,
Speaker 1: like he tapped it but didn't climb, And that happens
Speaker 1: a lot. A lot of people would think that they
Speaker 1: did that on purpose to throw off the dogs. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that happens. I think that the critters
Speaker 1: just moving around and maybe went up that tree for
Speaker 1: a little while and goes to another one. So what happened? Dogs?
Speaker 1: And so the dog starts tree and on that tree
Speaker 1: you get there, there's no animal in the tree. And
Speaker 1: the guy goes, I tapped this tree, you know, and
Speaker 1: the coon's not there. That's good. Yeah, you guys eat
Speaker 1: the raccoons. No, no, I mean I can't. I can't.
Speaker 1: I have eaten them. But it's not the norm. Are
Speaker 1: you selling hides right now? You know? Uh? Uh? An
Speaker 1: Arkansas raccoon hide. I think the average market value last
Speaker 1: year per the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission report that
Speaker 1: they give was like less than two dollars a pet.
Speaker 1: It's sad. Yeah, we just don't have good for density.
Speaker 1: It's just not that good of a it's just not
Speaker 1: that good of a hide. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we take so many people raccoon hunting. I have this
Speaker 1: like spiel down to like a science when I take people,
Speaker 1: because we do skin the hides. I've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of hides right now at a tannery. And uh and
Speaker 1: I get the hides tan flushing yourself. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: and gived. Have you send up a we can do
Speaker 1: an exchange program. Done, I'll send you one. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna get him back to like December over my I
Speaker 1: keep a raccoon hide over my desk chair. You come
Speaker 1: out of dog Durn's barn, well, come out of his
Speaker 1: his grain silo. Yeah, you know, obviously reasons that wanted
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, well we you know. So I talked
Speaker 1: to people that I take hunting new hunters because we
Speaker 1: take a ton of new hunters raccoon hunting, We really do.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I talked about how this this
Speaker 1: hunt is is your there's two birds being killed with
Speaker 1: one stone, and that this is a conservation hunt, depredation
Speaker 1: hunt in terms of we're trying to remove an unnatural
Speaker 1: amount of raccoons that are here. There's an unnatural amount
Speaker 1: of coons right now because because of agriculture, because of
Speaker 1: all the things that are going on ecologically, So we're
Speaker 1: trying to remove them because of their suppression of ground
Speaker 1: nesting birds, you know. And uh and yeah, we just don't.
Speaker 1: We just don't eat raccoon that much. It's laborious to
Speaker 1: cook it, you do, Like any when you talk to
Speaker 1: the eats raccoon, they're usually doing two or three things
Speaker 1: to it, like you cook it this way, then you
Speaker 1: cook it that way. We like slow cooked one, you know,
Speaker 1: and then finished it on a grill. It's not bad, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not bad. I've cooked it over an open fire,
Speaker 1: pretty open fire. You guys eat raccoons. You grew up
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. You read to raccoon JOHNI I have not.
Speaker 1: You don't. You don't remember anybody eating them. Just last
Speaker 1: guy told me he was eating raccoons and still making
Speaker 1: them cooking him was bo what it's for? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was the name of that podcast. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that was the last the most reason and he still
Speaker 1: eats them. M hmm. I'd like to cooking on the
Speaker 1: one up. I mean, there's a million of them around
Speaker 1: here east here especially. You say it's pretty similar to beaver,
Speaker 1: no greasy, greasier. I think it's not a ton different
Speaker 1: than bear meat, even though I think bear meat is better,
Speaker 1: but it has that same, you know, kind of greasy feel.
Speaker 1: Diets fairly similar. But I really don't think it's that
Speaker 1: it could be eaten. But it's just not it's just
Speaker 1: not what you do. You know. What had to me
Speaker 1: that was funny is today I was thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're looking at YouTube videos, I was wondering how
Speaker 1: fixed the ratio is of likes and dislikes on YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: This is like honestly going through my head today. Um,
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, it'd be interesting to take
Speaker 1: an analysis of all YouTube videos and add up the
Speaker 1: likes that dislikes because it's like, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: like less than like generally runs lessan ten percent all
Speaker 1: like dislike. Yeah, I feel like I was thinking, like,
Speaker 1: it's such it's so weird that there seems to be
Speaker 1: such a fixed ratio, like and when we put out videos,
Speaker 1: you look at the thumbs up and thumbs downs, they're
Speaker 1: like always fixed, right, overwhelmingly positive, but always yeah. And
Speaker 1: then I was reviewing one of your videos that that's
Speaker 1: got like one point eight million views and it has
Speaker 1: more dislikes and legs, which shattered my operator, which shattered
Speaker 1: the theory that I had just been thinking about that day.
Speaker 1: You know what's amazing video on talking about talking about
Speaker 1: let me tell you something that's amazing about that. I've
Speaker 1: been tracking that video now for about two years. Video.
Speaker 1: I put it up I think in September of seventeen,
Speaker 1: so almost two years seen his video. You haven't seen
Speaker 1: his video, h the like, the likes and dislikes were
Speaker 1: within a hundred of each other for years. It's ten
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven thousand right now, Well it's it's started
Speaker 1: to kind of go over, but that's still very close. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like I wanted to start
Speaker 1: like calling my friends, like hey, you like this video.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny? I need to pull it back
Speaker 1: up and like it. It would help man over. Yeah, no, kids,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a time when I want to say,
Speaker 1: it was below a hundred difference between and it was
Speaker 1: just like, it's amazing that there's just this tug of war,
Speaker 1: but it actually stayed above on the positive side, and
Speaker 1: just in the last like a couple of months, it's
Speaker 1: kind of tipped over. Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. Tough being
Speaker 1: a YouTuber. Do you do you think of yourself as
Speaker 1: a YouTuber? Man, I never wanted to be on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Intentionally stayed off YouTube two years ago because we were
Speaker 1: creating We've been creating video content for five years, and uh,
Speaker 1: never wanted to be on YouTube. To me, YouTube was
Speaker 1: like for cell phone videos and stuff you didn't want
Speaker 1: to watch and bad stuff. If you didn't want to
Speaker 1: watch it, that's where you put it. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: had a buddy of like the garbage can. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the way that was my perception. But just someone
Speaker 1: recently told me that, um, every minute, I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is true or not. I think from judging
Speaker 1: by the source, I think it's probably true. Every minute,
Speaker 1: four hundred hours of content are uploaded to YouTube. I
Speaker 1: believe that cynd hours per minute. Incredible. I had a
Speaker 1: buddy you could tell about the video. Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna continue on how it got there. Yes, how you
Speaker 1: asked me if I felt like I was feeling at
Speaker 1: some point we need to get around to what's in it? Okay,
Speaker 1: but go ahead. You're you used you use the word YouTuber.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I'm a lot of surprised when someone calls
Speaker 1: himself a YouTuber. No, I don't really consider myself a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: but I do have content on YouTube, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I would think, because you wouldn't be like, um,
Speaker 1: it just seems weird to name like if you're a musician, right,
Speaker 1: and what you wind up that most of your money
Speaker 1: comes from Spotify? Do you call yourself a Spotify or right?
Speaker 1: Just a platform for the art? Really? Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: it's like it just it always felt weird for me
Speaker 1: to be like, like, oh when it used to be
Speaker 1: like iTunes store. I would like to interject though, that
Speaker 1: I feel that YouTube made YouTubers and not that musicians
Speaker 1: made Spotify. Spotify wouldn't exist without musicians, That's what I'm Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're saying that platform created a platform, created a type
Speaker 1: of content producer, and it wasn't like musicians, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we used to make our business this way. Now we
Speaker 1: distribute that way in the way that that YouTube handles
Speaker 1: creators kind of channels do they handle creators? You bet? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get if you guys are on you, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I get, but I don't think of them as like hand.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say they handle well, they I feel like
Speaker 1: they're trying to help creators, like with the best possible
Speaker 1: ways to do things and to upload and create content,
Speaker 1: and so they kind of created this culture of hey,
Speaker 1: you guys are YouTubers. I mean, and you know, but
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily identify with that. But but now, so,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about the video when you're ready?
Speaker 1: I'm ready. So it actually surprises me that you brought
Speaker 1: this video up. Why you know? To me, well, I
Speaker 1: brought it up because of the really supernatural thing. I
Speaker 1: was not supernatural, like like above natural, but like exceedingly
Speaker 1: natural that I was thinking about the ratios then I'm
Speaker 1: then I was like before we came and talked, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, it's funny. Yeah yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no it it's the year the people don't like it.
Speaker 1: More than man that this video has taught me a
Speaker 1: lot and really is toughened up my skin. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine talks about video. You don't know about the video video. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not let me tell about it. No, you're telling
Speaker 1: about it. I was. I was a bear hunting in Saskatchewan,
Speaker 1: bear hunting in Saskatchewan. I believe in uh. I like
Speaker 1: the way you pronounced Saskatchew. Now you're gonna have some
Speaker 1: dude like you calling in and talking about how you
Speaker 1: didn't say it right, a skatchewe what you calls a
Speaker 1: cat scratch one. So, so hunting in Saskatchewan with it
Speaker 1: was it was a wilderness based boat hunt. So we
Speaker 1: were boating back in like on these on these Canadian rivers,
Speaker 1: and man, the Canadian wilderness is incredible. Oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't play around up there, man, like legit wilderness. Not
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even classified as that. But we I was
Speaker 1: twenty one miles from the nearest road and we were
Speaker 1: hunting bar over bait and that is camping. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we were camped closer to the road system,
Speaker 1: but we were going we were traveling by boat twenty
Speaker 1: one miles a day to get one way to get
Speaker 1: to this particular spot. Well, how do you get before
Speaker 1: it gets darker, before it gets late in the morning,
Speaker 1: You don't. You just typically are hunting in the evenings
Speaker 1: the days. Yeah, in June and northern Saskatchewan hardly gets dark,
Speaker 1: you know, so you just you just kind of navigate
Speaker 1: out and you you gotta give up on the idea
Speaker 1: of hunting from dawn until dark. And that's the hard
Speaker 1: one breakfast. Yeah. So, and that's the key component of
Speaker 1: this video is it was true wilderness to the to
Speaker 1: the other direction from me. According to my buddy, it
Speaker 1: was the outfitter. The closest road was fifty six miles away.
Speaker 1: So we're twenty one miles away from this road, and
Speaker 1: then the other direction, the closest road is fifty six miles.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like a seventy five mile block
Speaker 1: of wilderness. Now they were they probably would have been
Speaker 1: like snowmobile trails and stuff in there, but like you
Speaker 1: couldn't have taken a motorized vehicle back in there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: us in Alaska, if you headed west, you won't hit
Speaker 1: a role till you get into Siberia. Yeah. The first
Speaker 1: day of the hunt, we come to this it's a
Speaker 1: bait site and nobody's hunted there that year. And he
Speaker 1: he told me, he's like, man, there's a big black
Speaker 1: bear coming in here. That's you know, that's what you're after.
Speaker 1: And so I was looking for a big black bear.
Speaker 1: He's beating with what oats and he's a lot of
Speaker 1: oats and grease up in northern Saskatchewan. Fry oil. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: that's primarily what they used. So he he goes around
Speaker 1: the restaurants and saves all their grease and pours it
Speaker 1: on top of oats. Yep. I met a guy that
Speaker 1: long ago that was baiting with um. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's the same brand. Do you know Jolly Ranchers.
Speaker 1: He gets barrels of that syrup that hardens into a
Speaker 1: Jolly rancher. Shots of that man puts them ever clear
Speaker 1: in air anyhow So, so it's the first said of
Speaker 1: the hunt, the I miss a bear. So this video
Speaker 1: shows a ton of barry Interactionally, I missed this beart
Speaker 1: like probably twelve yards with a tradition, I'm hunting with
Speaker 1: a traditional bow. We're hunting off the ground there. The
Speaker 1: trees up there too small to put tree stands in.
Speaker 1: And so now why are you hunting with a traditional bowl,
Speaker 1: Just the same reason I write a mule. Just I
Speaker 1: like it. It's hard. You can't fake it. I like
Speaker 1: doing stuff that you can't fake. I mean, yeah, but
Speaker 1: you can say that about baiting bears. Yeah, I'd love
Speaker 1: to talk directly about that. When I say, when I
Speaker 1: say fake it, that's probably a hard term. But like,
Speaker 1: and that's not why I do it. But you can't
Speaker 1: fake being a traditional archer, like you can't just go
Speaker 1: pick it up. And it's probably a harsh term. I
Speaker 1: don't want to. Well, we talked to a guy yesterday
Speaker 1: that they've been doing this, they've been training new hunters
Speaker 1: up and shooting cross bowls and three hours they can
Speaker 1: have you ready to kill a deer. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: would say in three hours they're ready to kill a deer.
Speaker 1: I would say you could do that with a compound
Speaker 1: boat today. I disagree hand three days, No, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends, man, but not no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Okay, I can conceive that. But you
Speaker 1: can get them shooting accurate quick, Yeah, you really can't.
Speaker 1: And that's a good thing. I'm not like yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm walking real careful here because uh no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm dogging on your bow and crossbows because
Speaker 1: everybody knows that their own both way to go. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's right, No, do it like me? Yeah that's the
Speaker 1: right way. Yeah. Okay. So anyways, there you are on
Speaker 1: the traditional bowl on the ground recurver long bow. This
Speaker 1: was a hybrid longbow, which is just kind of in
Speaker 1: between a recurve and a long bow. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: confused with those bows a long bow. It's the most
Speaker 1: simple way to think about is a long bow has
Speaker 1: pretty much straight limbs and a recurve bow has the
Speaker 1: curved limb tips. And that's the simplest way to think
Speaker 1: about it. It's this bowl would have been kind of
Speaker 1: like you could call a cross bowl, but then it'd
Speaker 1: be like I mean crossed, like a little bit of
Speaker 1: each It would be a little confusing though. It would
Speaker 1: be confusing as hell. Yeah, I mean, so I missed
Speaker 1: this bear and then a different bear. I missed a
Speaker 1: bear that I never killed, big big like big Boone
Speaker 1: and Crockett, potential type bear. And did it spook him off? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He ran off, he did. He never came back. And
Speaker 1: see like the noise he knew. He all the bears
Speaker 1: know that you're there. That's that's that's what I kind
Speaker 1: of want to talk about. Well, we'll get the story
Speaker 1: will reveal this. So what we didn't show on the
Speaker 1: video is that almost all those bears walked up to us,
Speaker 1: not much different than the bear did. So these these
Speaker 1: bears they see you, so far in the wilderness that
Speaker 1: they are. They're not They're not that alarmed by human presence.
Speaker 1: And I'm realized I'm digging myself a hole, but I
Speaker 1: would love to talk myself out of it after I
Speaker 1: tell the story. So the bear, huh, you haven't seen
Speaker 1: this video. A bright blonde salve bear comes in, A
Speaker 1: bright blonde salve bear, beautiful bear comes in, and another
Speaker 1: bear comes in and they begin to frolic on the
Speaker 1: ground breed. I mean, it was incredible to watch him.
Speaker 1: I don't think you really ever. It was like early summer.
Speaker 1: Well I was late June, which is a primetime for bear,
Speaker 1: you know. So these bears are frolicking around and literally
Speaker 1: rolling on each other, and he'd kind of jump up
Speaker 1: on her and act like he's gonna breed her, but
Speaker 1: he never really did. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: off down beyond the bait, I see, I see a
Speaker 1: big color face bear coming up the hill. He's got
Speaker 1: a his lip was drooping and had saliva and dripping
Speaker 1: from his lips. Man, he did not like the looks
Speaker 1: of that one bear getting on that female he saw.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were literally he the big the black
Speaker 1: bear was on top of the South, and they were
Speaker 1: just like, oh hey, you know, that's like they got busted.
Speaker 1: And he charges them, and these three bears just run
Speaker 1: right past us, and uh. And when I saw the
Speaker 1: color phrase bear, I was like, I want that's the bear.
Speaker 1: That's the bear I want to shoot. That's a shooter,
Speaker 1: old age class male, That's what I'm after. Forty three
Speaker 1: seconds later, the bear comes back in the colored bear,
Speaker 1: and they don't really look at you. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of I've probably heard people talk about this was
Speaker 1: like grizz attacks and stuff. They he didn't he didn't
Speaker 1: just like look at me, but you could tell he was.
Speaker 1: He totally knew we were there. And he basically just
Speaker 1: kind of like starts walking towards us, but kind of
Speaker 1: at an angle, and then he gets about eight yards away,
Speaker 1: and at that point he directly looked at me, and
Speaker 1: then he turned and started to two to walk in
Speaker 1: a a place that was going to project him to
Speaker 1: be about five yards from me. Broadside is just walking
Speaker 1: this way, and I'm thinking, here's my chance. You know
Speaker 1: what's better than a Barrett tin yards is a Barrett five.
Speaker 1: You know, when you got a traditional bow. And so
Speaker 1: I mean I got three fingers under the knock. I
Speaker 1: mean this is about to happen. You do three under,
Speaker 1: you don't do one over and two under? Three? Is
Speaker 1: that for suckers? To do one over and two one?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's it's no meridian. One over two under
Speaker 1: is the traditional way to shoot a traditional bow. My
Speaker 1: kids do it. Oh really happen one over to under?
Speaker 1: Now let him shoot three under? Well, the reason we
Speaker 1: didn't weird kids because our arrows didn't fit our strings
Speaker 1: and you had to use You can chew on them
Speaker 1: all day long and bite the knocks down, but you
Speaker 1: still like had to pinch it on there. Why do
Speaker 1: you actually three fingers? I just think you can shoot better.
Speaker 1: It transformed my shooting when I when I just one
Speaker 1: day started shooting three under because you can draw that
Speaker 1: era right beneath your eye and there's some ship where
Speaker 1: you stack your fingers to right, you count down. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's yeah, yeah, people do that, but that's not normal
Speaker 1: in hunting. That's more like Olympic style target shooting stuff.
Speaker 1: They tically not do that with hunting. So there we are,
Speaker 1: so the bears coming at me, and when he gets
Speaker 1: to like this place where he's just about to be
Speaker 1: broadside five yards away. He just turns and just comes
Speaker 1: at me, comes at you, like to the point where
Speaker 1: he comes up and touches your arrow. How do you
Speaker 1: how do you know he's not gonna um, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna do anything. He's not gonna try to get a
Speaker 1: bite of year or get piste and scratch you when
Speaker 1: he's at close to get scared and take a jump
Speaker 1: out of you. This was the only situation thus far
Speaker 1: in my hunting career where a situation got out of control.
Speaker 1: Fucking say it that way. Up until he touched the
Speaker 1: end of my arrow, I thought I was in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat because I thought he was gonna turn. I
Speaker 1: thought he was just gonna kind of wheel in about
Speaker 1: two or three yards and just kind of spin and
Speaker 1: go on because he weighs quite a bit more than you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was probably you know, it was It was probably
Speaker 1: a two in fifty pound bear. I mean you could
Speaker 1: tell somebody it was four and they probably believe it
Speaker 1: was probably to fifty. And when he didn't stop coming
Speaker 1: and and I I subconsciously used the tip of the
Speaker 1: arrow to like I didn't poke him, but like I
Speaker 1: positioned my arrow so that. I mean, imagine a dog
Speaker 1: like attacking you and you've got a bow and arrow
Speaker 1: in your hand, and you're not gonna shoot him in.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd like use what you had in your
Speaker 1: hand to keep the animal in between, you know, away
Speaker 1: from you. And when my arrow touched his nose, that's
Speaker 1: when I said, oh crap. Literally, that's what I said.
Speaker 1: And uh and I backpedaled and it startled him and
Speaker 1: he raised up on his hind legs about three quarter
Speaker 1: It's not like he just stood straight up, but he
Speaker 1: he kind of reared up and he stuck his head
Speaker 1: in the blind and just kind of smelled us and
Speaker 1: then dropped down and uh and yeah, do you feel
Speaker 1: that that was his first encounter with humans? Absolutely? And
Speaker 1: there's a couple of back things behind it too. The
Speaker 1: uh Kobe Morrison had never seen that bear before. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are stations that they know what barriers are coming in,
Speaker 1: never seen that bear before. I am confident that Barrett
Speaker 1: never encountered a human and that's why he did what
Speaker 1: he did. It was just like, who are these guys?
Speaker 1: Like what is that? Who are these guys? And I
Speaker 1: it's the only time in my life that I didn't
Speaker 1: think he was gonna eat me. I was just reading him.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just didn't think he was gonna attack
Speaker 1: me and eat me. Yeah, but I I yeah, not
Speaker 1: that he's coming in with that intention. But when he's
Speaker 1: that close, there's no room. Right when he's that close,
Speaker 1: like the minute he gets scared, he's so on top
Speaker 1: of you that you could just see and I know,
Speaker 1: like like a grizzly would be a very bad situation.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't let that happen. Yeah, And like black you
Speaker 1: couldn't write because they when they get scared, day lay
Speaker 1: the lash out. And so you could be thinking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: when black bears get a scared, day run. But at
Speaker 1: that close, it's just hard to rule out that he's
Speaker 1: not going to get scared and neutralize what he's also not.
Speaker 1: And I thought that's what was gonna happen. After I
Speaker 1: said oh crap and I stepped back, I thought, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, one time almost drowned, and it was like
Speaker 1: slow motion, like, oh, this is what it feels like
Speaker 1: to drown. In that moment, I thought, oh, this is
Speaker 1: what it feels like right before you get roughed up
Speaker 1: by bear. I mean, I thought he might just kind
Speaker 1: of like whack me. I thought he might knock my
Speaker 1: bow out of my hand or something. And yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was scary but it But a lot of people
Speaker 1: are like, what were you thinking? What were you thinking?
Speaker 1: I was trying to kill that bear. I did not
Speaker 1: have another thought in my mind other than that's the
Speaker 1: bear I want to kill. And I was in I
Speaker 1: was in mode of that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: surprised me how much you kept your composure. Two. Then
Speaker 1: take the shot, man, that's what I took a ton
Speaker 1: of heat for, even from bow hunters. What the shot? Well,
Speaker 1: we can talk about that later. But yeah, so he
Speaker 1: because he's like two ft away. Man. You go read
Speaker 1: some of those comments, I made a conscious decision not
Speaker 1: too well. Yeah, I understand that. Well, that's another another
Speaker 1: when I'm trying to when I'm trying to, like um taken,
Speaker 1: well formed, well thought out sentences, I don't typically go
Speaker 1: to the YouTube comments. I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, A lot of people had a
Speaker 1: sentiment of that bear gave you spared my life and
Speaker 1: then I took kids. What a terrible things he spared
Speaker 1: your life? Steve It's incredible how many people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I bet since I've been in Bozeman, someone has made
Speaker 1: a comment that that bear spared my life and what
Speaker 1: a expletive expletive expletive I am for shooting him, and
Speaker 1: how cowardly it was for me to shoot him once
Speaker 1: he turned his back on me. No, I'm not. I mean,
Speaker 1: hundreds hundreds of comments, and that's a sentiment the hunters
Speaker 1: have no no, Okay, what I took for on flag
Speaker 1: for the shot was and this goes just a shot
Speaker 1: placement stuff. People said there was a terrible shot and
Speaker 1: shot him in the butt or something. Man, that was
Speaker 1: a full length shaft, thirty inch long shaft. I got
Speaker 1: seventeen inches of penetration, steep quartering away angle, hit it
Speaker 1: in the last rib. It was totally immortal shot. I
Speaker 1: won't give on that because people are like, oh, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't killed because I made a follow up shot that
Speaker 1: was better than the first shot, granted the first When
Speaker 1: you shot again, man, he just strolled out. I sorry,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell what the arrow did. I just tendering him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: out there he felt either arrow would have killed him.
Speaker 1: Either arrow, But you know, I mean he's he's he
Speaker 1: just he just kind of strutted out there like nothing happened,
Speaker 1: Like he didn't evenine that. So I was just like,
Speaker 1: what do you do when he keeps walking? You shoot
Speaker 1: him again? How far was it the second time? About
Speaker 1: twenty four yards? Dude watching it it's unsettling. Man, It's
Speaker 1: like it's like you're like, wow, you know. But then
Speaker 1: the thing I think is, yeah, it's unsetting because you're
Speaker 1: sort of watching it through other people's eyes. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: anything like you're hunting, the objective is the objective is
Speaker 1: to get a bear. You got a bear, yea? What
Speaker 1: is it removed? The objective of the bearer comes up
Speaker 1: and touches your arrow? Yea? If you had, If you had,
Speaker 1: if someone was hunting deer and the buck came up
Speaker 1: and touched the arrow and the guy shot it, that's
Speaker 1: not going to annoy people. It does, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I've made I mean to annoy some of it wouldn't
Speaker 1: annoy eleven thousand of them. I mean it would have
Speaker 1: made it would have made these people that had complaints
Speaker 1: happier if I had shot the bear a tin yards,
Speaker 1: which that doesn't make any difference. But now there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot to this, and obviously people don't understand baiting
Speaker 1: and and Steve, honestly, this is awesome that we're having
Speaker 1: this conversation because I have been torn at different times
Speaker 1: and I feel like I've created my my position, which
Speaker 1: I assume you would agree with hopefully maybe. But just
Speaker 1: like when I first put that up, I thought, is
Speaker 1: this good for hunting? For this to be on YouTube?
Speaker 1: Because of how misunderstood it was, and from a guy
Speaker 1: that's running a small business, and you know, I mean
Speaker 1: like this has been good for my business. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, am I gonna? I mean, I've really
Speaker 1: wrestled with that because man, the first few months that
Speaker 1: I had that up, I was like, this is bizarre.
Speaker 1: I mean, people talking about my mama, people talking about
Speaker 1: my wife, people, my kids. Oh, just people saying I
Speaker 1: hope your mom dies. I hope she dies of cancer.
Speaker 1: I mean just like mom, yeah, oh yeah. They talked
Speaker 1: about juju yeah, oh yeah. So that's when my kids
Speaker 1: call my mother. But no, I just just like like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it means, but like yeah, Karmen,
Speaker 1: Like my mother's name is Judy, So my my kids
Speaker 1: call her juju. So we joke. We joke with my mom.
Speaker 1: We're like, YouTube hate you. So they were like, I
Speaker 1: hope your mom because they're like, you're dying would be
Speaker 1: bad enough. I want your mother to die. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if picked up my skin. For a while, I had
Speaker 1: the comments closed down because I was just like, this
Speaker 1: is crazy, that's a great future closing comments. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: then I then I decided to open them back up,
Speaker 1: and I've just left him up in in the you know.
Speaker 1: I guess it has to do with just how much
Speaker 1: time I have. But I've gotten to where I respond
Speaker 1: to some people if they have it, if I can
Speaker 1: discern that they have a genuine like question of why
Speaker 1: we do it. You could write a book off the
Speaker 1: off the comments that I've made two genuine people about
Speaker 1: the North American model for wildlife conservation and hunting older
Speaker 1: mature males being selective. Um bear number bears are thriving
Speaker 1: all across North America. Most of these people think that
Speaker 1: I killed the last black bear on the planet. Actually,
Speaker 1: they think I killed the last grizzly bear on the
Speaker 1: planet because of what color it was. Oh absolutely, They're like, God,
Speaker 1: dare you kill it? Grizzly, and I'm just saying, Kevin,
Speaker 1: have you have you killed the bear over bait? No,
Speaker 1: we're just talking about this. I've never killed a bear.
Speaker 1: He's never killed because we're gonna swop. Yeah, how did
Speaker 1: you avoid bear hunting? I think the biggest part of
Speaker 1: it was in Minnesota. I was always playing baseball in Springs,
Speaker 1: I played college baseball. So, yeah, can I read your quote? Sure,
Speaker 1: we pull it up, go on, finished talking. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I guess it just wasn't a thing we grew up doing.
Speaker 1: And then when I came out West and I've been
Speaker 1: on bear hunts, haven't killed one myself, but I hear
Speaker 1: a quote from Jim Harrison. Sure, in the spring and summer,
Speaker 1: the boys in the town carry either baseball mits or
Speaker 1: fish poles on their bicycles. Two different types are being formed,
Speaker 1: and though they might merge or vary at times, most
Speaker 1: often they have set themselves up for life. So you
Speaker 1: broke the trend. Yeah. We used to tell Jim here
Speaker 1: he was wrong, but he's dead. Yikes. Yeah. In baseball,
Speaker 1: we usa these like hunting racks on our bikes, and
Speaker 1: we biked baseball practice. One hole would have fishing rod.
Speaker 1: One would have the back. Yeah. Yeah, I think he's
Speaker 1: being a little rigid there. I just I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that. Is what happened was, Um, I want to
Speaker 1: get back to this YouTube video. But the other day
Speaker 1: of my boy for the first time. He's nine and
Speaker 1: we don't him straight too far. But his buddies, the
Speaker 1: neighbor kids twelve, and they both liked to fish, so
Speaker 1: they wanted to go fish where they had to ride
Speaker 1: off a mile away or whatever. Um, and I said,
Speaker 1: I said, you can go, but I took the twelve
Speaker 1: year old boy. His name Oddley's Harrison. Took twelve year
Speaker 1: old boy, and I said, you're in charge, and and uh,
Speaker 1: that's great if you guys go together, but I want
Speaker 1: to make sure you come back together, like don't you
Speaker 1: split and leave him and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And they rolled off together with their backpacks and they
Speaker 1: rigged the rods up their backpacks and rolled off together.
Speaker 1: And dude, it was heartbreaking because he didn't want me
Speaker 1: to go. He didn't say it, but he was like,
Speaker 1: didn't want me to go. He wanted to have the tag.
Speaker 1: He's like was awesome, real concerned about what if it
Speaker 1: was his tackle box or not. If it was his
Speaker 1: rod or not. It was not like old come with right.
Speaker 1: She was just like, we're out of here. He kind
Speaker 1: of like, I hope you don't want to go, and
Speaker 1: they took off and his way out, he goes to
Speaker 1: get a zip like bag for his fish and they
Speaker 1: took off down the road, and um, I put it
Speaker 1: on Instagram the video him taken off on Instagram, and uh,
Speaker 1: and and and I thought of that Jim Harrison quote,
Speaker 1: and I put that Jim Harrison quote in there. Dude,
Speaker 1: it was heartbreaking. Just wait, just wait, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: shat wraps disappearing on your tackle box. I grounded him
Speaker 1: last night because he lost a bowl, Like, how do
Speaker 1: you lose a boat? I caunually losing arrows, but you
Speaker 1: don't lose the bowl. Was talking about all this stuff
Speaker 1: of disappearing. Now it's starting to come back around. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he found it and got on grounded. But but I
Speaker 1: had to like try to find a way to express
Speaker 1: to him that it was not acceptable to lose the
Speaker 1: whole bow. Oh man. Anyhow, Uh, playing baseball didn't bear hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sell me on bear sell me on bear bait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anywhere that you can hunt bears over bait. It's
Speaker 1: a management tool for the powers that be that have
Speaker 1: the data, that want to achieve a harvest objective of
Speaker 1: taking out a certain number of bears. That's the way,
Speaker 1: that's the only way they can do it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you you look at any place where it's legal bait
Speaker 1: bears and it is a management tool. Spotting stock hunting
Speaker 1: could not take out the number of bears that they need,
Speaker 1: and so they use baiting as a management tool for bears.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you a story about the first bear
Speaker 1: I ever saw in Michigan? Grew up there, there's bears there.
Speaker 1: My brother drew a bear tag. We put out and
Speaker 1: lived our whole lives. Never saw damn bear. He put
Speaker 1: his out a bait pile. Within a couple days, I
Speaker 1: saw my first bear. You know what I'm saying. It works,
Speaker 1: just flat thick. Yeah. Why did game in Phish agencies
Speaker 1: need to reduce the numbers of bears? That's just I mean,
Speaker 1: just like every other thing, there's a suitable amount of habitat.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like we've got X number of
Speaker 1: available quality habitat for bears. Those bears that bear population
Speaker 1: will remain healthy if it stays at these numbers, bear
Speaker 1: population is increased by ten percent per year if you
Speaker 1: don't if you don't harvest these bears, then overpopulation isn't
Speaker 1: like the end of the world. But you know, if
Speaker 1: if a block habitat is supposed to can confeasibly hold
Speaker 1: ten bears and it's got fifteen in it, all fifteen
Speaker 1: or compromised in some way, so why not take out
Speaker 1: those five balance it and have a population that stable.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just just like any other species. But
Speaker 1: you're talking about a little bit different situation when you
Speaker 1: we're talking about a big predator. That there's a low
Speaker 1: cultural tolerance for a bear being on your back porch
Speaker 1: eating your bird seed as opposed to deer. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that we just had a running We just
Speaker 1: had a bear in our neighborhood. That bear is not
Speaker 1: alive anymore. Yeah, he wasn't killed by a hunter. See,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the thing. Bears are going to
Speaker 1: be taken out of the population, you know, So why
Speaker 1: wouldn't we use hunting in Arkansas? Like so? Arkansas reinstated
Speaker 1: s bear season in nineteen eighty, So from nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: to two thousand, one that all you could do in
Speaker 1: Arkansas would be equivalent to a Western spot in stock hunt. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean you just had to go out and just
Speaker 1: hunt them. Okay, Oh, I do that now by choice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do that now by choice. But I'm I'm giving
Speaker 1: you an example. So for twenty one years you could
Speaker 1: only hunt in that way in Arkansas, and they killed
Speaker 1: I don't have the exact data, but I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: less than twenty bears a year. I mean, because it's
Speaker 1: just such a tough hunt. It's just such a low
Speaker 1: odds hunt. I mean, bears were being killed just by happenstance,
Speaker 1: by walking past the deer hunters. Opportunistic yeah, yeah, opportunistic
Speaker 1: deer hunters killing bears. And so basically the bear properation
Speaker 1: got to a point where they said, man, we've got
Speaker 1: to take out three bears a year. How are we
Speaker 1: going to do that? Well, in Arkansas, the furthest you've
Speaker 1: seen in any directions about fifty yards in most places,
Speaker 1: so that's not by spot and stock hunting. And they said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna use bow hunters over bait on private land
Speaker 1: to manage the bears in Arkansas. Do the same thing
Speaker 1: in southeast Oklahoma, and so where people have a problem
Speaker 1: with it is this emotional sense that some way it's
Speaker 1: not you know, fair to put out bait and draw
Speaker 1: a bear in Well. My position on it is is
Speaker 1: that if if the goal of conservation is to strategically
Speaker 1: take out animals, bear baiting is has the opportunity to
Speaker 1: be highly selective. You can be highly selective. Not everybody is,
Speaker 1: but you have the opportunity to be highly selective watching
Speaker 1: animal for a long period of time before you can
Speaker 1: you can sex it, you can tell its age, you know,
Speaker 1: get a general estimate, you can make a wise decision
Speaker 1: about where you're gonna shoot that bear. I would argue
Speaker 1: that that spot in stock hunting is the least selective
Speaker 1: type of hunting. Oh, I'd agree with that at least opportunity.
Speaker 1: Like if you say that does it and what chance
Speaker 1: does the hunter have the map whether he acts on
Speaker 1: it or not, and what chances the hunter have the
Speaker 1: maximum capability and knowing what we're going on, I'd be
Speaker 1: like a tree hund hunting. Yeah, in bait probably one
Speaker 1: of the same, because officis, they might treat you high
Speaker 1: up to get a good look at him and the
Speaker 1: third being spot start. Yeah, and so if you're talking about, well,
Speaker 1: who's the conservation hero, because I've been, I'm on both
Speaker 1: sides of it when I kill the I don't want
Speaker 1: to get too far away from what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But like that's the number one foundational thing that I
Speaker 1: think gives us is that this is a management tool.
Speaker 1: But what nobody People can buy that, but they can't
Speaker 1: buy what. People have a hard time understanding, and it's
Speaker 1: because of a skewed foundational understanding of wildlife as they
Speaker 1: feel like that this is somehow unfair to do this.
Speaker 1: And I feel like Steve, that we're shooting ourselves in
Speaker 1: the foot by hunters. It's almost like we are giving
Speaker 1: into the emotional propaganda that a wild beast is is,
Speaker 1: you know, like you shouldn't you shouldn't kill a bear,
Speaker 1: charismatic megafauna. You know, you shouldn't kill a bear. It's
Speaker 1: okay to kill a deer, but you shouldn't kill a bear.
Speaker 1: Like totally emotional propaganda. This is an animal that just
Speaker 1: we have this emotional connection to and I kind of
Speaker 1: feel like that hunters play into that a little bit,
Speaker 1: like we're like, yeah, I don't mean that they the
Speaker 1: hunters are like, Okay, I'll give you I'll give up
Speaker 1: on that one. Yeah. And and here's I'm not jumping
Speaker 1: too far ahead, Steve, but I feel like that we've
Speaker 1: we've started to use a hashtag called guard the Gate. Okay,
Speaker 1: guard the gate in the right now, the biggest threat
Speaker 1: to hunting. I mean, there's lots of threats, you know,
Speaker 1: access to land and habitat and these things, but one
Speaker 1: of the most direct threats is anti hunting community massively
Speaker 1: coming in on us. And bear hunting is the gate
Speaker 1: for the anti hunting community to get into our space.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with for And so our stance is
Speaker 1: why wouldn't we want to like create and form And
Speaker 1: I'm open to for input, but like, why wouldn't we
Speaker 1: want to create and form this powerful narrative for why
Speaker 1: that we do what we do? Why do we use hounds?
Speaker 1: Why do we use bait? Because a lot of hunters
Speaker 1: don't understand that a lot of hunters would be like, ah,
Speaker 1: we could give that to them. Like honestly, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of hunters would just be like, Hey, why
Speaker 1: don't we just give them, just give them the hounds
Speaker 1: and the bait. Just let them have that, but we
Speaker 1: all know that that will not solve the problem, because
Speaker 1: they're not just after hounds and bait. It's just the
Speaker 1: lowest rung on the ladder. It's just the it's just
Speaker 1: the easiest thing that's easy enough to sell. And so
Speaker 1: if we could sit down in a perfect world with
Speaker 1: the anti the powers that be in the anti hunting
Speaker 1: community and could truly say, hey, will you stop harassing
Speaker 1: our way of life if we will give this to you,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it, though, Well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even make even if I knew it was like even
Speaker 1: if like somehow it was like an enforceable deal, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do the deal. Well, but the thing
Speaker 1: is is that they wouldn't. I mean, like if we
Speaker 1: give them let's say, let's say that, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: just say it was somehow it was possible, like through whatever,
Speaker 1: it was like possible that you would make a truce
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, I'll forfeit, I'll forfeit these two
Speaker 1: things and then you'll never mass with us again. Um,
Speaker 1: I would be like I wouldn't. I wouldn't make the deal,
Speaker 1: would make that deal. And that's why I think sometimes
Speaker 1: we're missing it when it's not. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: been really my personal I mean, I would rather kill
Speaker 1: a bear in the National Force in Arkansas with my
Speaker 1: traadbo just out in the mountains. So it's not like
Speaker 1: I just have this love affair with bait and bears,
Speaker 1: but I feel like that it's a critical component of
Speaker 1: this whole mechanism of hunting that we have to guard
Speaker 1: this thing and so guard the gate, you know, the
Speaker 1: well that those That's that's my main my main thoughts.
Speaker 1: What annoys me a little bit and you run into
Speaker 1: this in a in a handful of things, is people
Speaker 1: will take it's almost like almost it's almost like I
Speaker 1: almost the only want to bring it up. No, I
Speaker 1: bring it up. Let's say a hunter says I don't
Speaker 1: have any desire to shoot a bear over bait. People
Speaker 1: take that to be a condemnation. And yeah, no, people
Speaker 1: do like I don't uh hunt whether they are so
Speaker 1: people be like, oh, he must condemn a r So
Speaker 1: like I don't hold the long bow. Do you also
Speaker 1: think that I condemn long bows. It's just like I
Speaker 1: just feel like there's a little bit of a part
Speaker 1: of that sensitivity is people want to. There's if there's
Speaker 1: a practice that the broader public might view as being
Speaker 1: controversial that somehow you not participating in it is supporting
Speaker 1: that when you could, when you could have very much
Speaker 1: like I think they're uh, typically it would be I
Speaker 1: haven't hunted that way, I haven't gone out and booked
Speaker 1: a trip to go do that. Do I have a
Speaker 1: problem with it? Absolutely not. But there are a thousand
Speaker 1: things to do in this world. There's a thousand hunts
Speaker 1: to do kinds of hunts in a lifetime. You only
Speaker 1: get to do a hundred, and so does that mean
Speaker 1: I hate Yeah, I think that's probably a symptom of
Speaker 1: being the bottom round on the ladder. Maybe you're a
Speaker 1: little insecure. I get it, I get it. But then
Speaker 1: if you take someone like another beleaguered group would be trappers,
Speaker 1: trappers don't get pissed at people for not trapping. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think bear hunters are upset
Speaker 1: for people for not hunting bear over bait. I think
Speaker 1: it's just a general a general stigma, and not everywhere,
Speaker 1: but in some places that just it's like taboo to
Speaker 1: do this, you know, Yeah, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that people mix up a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: People mix up. They're like, and we talked about this
Speaker 1: all damn time. We talked about yesterday ethics, right, but
Speaker 1: like ethics and what end do you need, like ethics
Speaker 1: meaning the challenge for the hunter or somehow something to
Speaker 1: do with ethics meaning the experience of the animal, the
Speaker 1: experience of the animal. You're not doing the animal service
Speaker 1: or disservice to kill it one way or another, except
Speaker 1: for what's most effective. You'd be if you're gonna look
Speaker 1: and say, like, what is most ethical? And I would say, okay,
Speaker 1: in terms of the likelihood of success us or in
Speaker 1: terms of like sort of like what's the most ethical
Speaker 1: way to dispatch an animal? I think that if you're
Speaker 1: saying the most ethical way to dispatch an animal to
Speaker 1: be bait because you have the greatest chance for a
Speaker 1: really good shot opportunity. So people be like, honeymore based,
Speaker 1: not ethical. I'm like, what what part of this you're
Speaker 1: talking about? Because getting a twenty yard shot at a
Speaker 1: stationary animal that's broadside you that you can make a
Speaker 1: good judgment on what's going on and place your arrow carefully,
Speaker 1: that's pretty damn ethical. If the goal is to kill
Speaker 1: it quick. Yeah. But then but that's not the that's
Speaker 1: not what people are on the top about that. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. That's why I hate when people use the
Speaker 1: word I almost hate, like the word ethics. I don't
Speaker 1: hate the word ethics, but I mean I hate when
Speaker 1: it's like describing that way. Like I've had so many
Speaker 1: people come to me and say, oh, I hunt with
Speaker 1: the bolks. It's more ethical to play devil's advocate. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are. I think the thing we've brought it before.
Speaker 1: The bait that can trip people up is that you're
Speaker 1: changing the animals natural behavior or natural patterns. But then
Speaker 1: some people would argue this, when a whale water is
Speaker 1: up on the beach and there's twenty bears feeding off it,
Speaker 1: is the weale guilty of changing their natural patterns. No,
Speaker 1: what's natural is if there's a big cache of food
Speaker 1: out in the woods, as an elk carcass, if you like,
Speaker 1: If you butcher an elk and leave the gut pile
Speaker 1: on the bear eats, that have you changed the bear's
Speaker 1: natural habits. He's out in the woods, he finds a
Speaker 1: big thing to eat and hang it. You're capitalizing upon
Speaker 1: a natural thing that a bear does. I mean a
Speaker 1: bear interacts with a bait site the same way that
Speaker 1: he interacts with a wide oak acorn covered ridge. I
Speaker 1: mean he pounds it until the food sources gone. I
Speaker 1: mean like it. Yeah, I mean you're I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just doing the whole Devil's advocating. We're two douvils advocating. Hey,
Speaker 1: can I can I paying the story? That could. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna step on anybody's toes, but it could. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's legit. So I think I
Speaker 1: think the issue, especially with hunters, is is an issue
Speaker 1: that I think could be characterized by fair chase. People
Speaker 1: say it's not fair chase to hunt. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start the story by saying that I love
Speaker 1: Western spot in style hunting. I hunted Montana, killed the
Speaker 1: bear in Montana, hauled my mules up here this year,
Speaker 1: and hinted to do it yourself. Deal. I love it,
Speaker 1: but let me Yeah, I killed the bear man, brought
Speaker 1: my mules up from Arkansas. Where, Oh, Western Montana. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you right where after we're off there here. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know where you're out here hunting the spring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how made you see a lot? We we saw bears
Speaker 1: al ust every day, killed the killed a nice boar.
Speaker 1: You show me where. I mean, I don't even know exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. I'll show you. Um, So, what's what's
Speaker 1: more fair Chase? Two hunt with a high powered rifle
Speaker 1: with a custom turret on it, have technological mapping capabilities
Speaker 1: that absolutely are supernatural compared to the human navigation abilities
Speaker 1: we have. I'm talking about having like an app on
Speaker 1: your phone, having a four wheeler, and having optics which
Speaker 1: greatly radically increase your natural ability to see. So what's
Speaker 1: more fair chase we're talking about we're talking about success rate? No,
Speaker 1: we're talking about fair Chase like fair well, but we
Speaker 1: have to have a way. We have to have a way.
Speaker 1: We're finally checking it. If it's success rates, it's still
Speaker 1: better to home with bait. Okay, I said, you cut
Speaker 1: me right to the chach. I should have known you
Speaker 1: would have done it. Man, you're good now. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so you give me those four things, which optics and
Speaker 1: we're gonna give a plug for on X hunt maps
Speaker 1: because they're awesome. I wouldn't have killed the bear I
Speaker 1: did without on X, that's the truth. Um, And uh,
Speaker 1: you know a four wheeler, a map or you got
Speaker 1: a bucket of bait and a mule and a bow.
Speaker 1: Which one is? Which guy is more fair chase? Again,
Speaker 1: it's a difficult word to work with because we don't
Speaker 1: know what it means. If we mean that it makes
Speaker 1: it really if we mean what way makes it harder
Speaker 1: to kill a bear? Which I think is what some
Speaker 1: people are kind of talking about, like evens the playing field.
Speaker 1: And you said to me, which of those people a
Speaker 1: guy with a quad and an X and a high
Speaker 1: powered rifle and optics in a non bait state compared
Speaker 1: to a guy with bait and a bow and a
Speaker 1: bait state, the guy with bait and a bow will
Speaker 1: have a higher success rate than the guy in a
Speaker 1: non bait state. But I don't know that that's what
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's what people mean when they
Speaker 1: talk about this kind of Eldo Leopold. This guy slipped
Speaker 1: this in real quick that Boone and Crockett basically says
Speaker 1: the fair chase is just in a in a manner
Speaker 1: that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair
Speaker 1: advantage over the game animal. Again, it's slippery language. Crockett
Speaker 1: is all basically, well, they're they're totally cool with baiting hounds, Boone,
Speaker 1: crock It is. I am too. Yeah, I'm glad to
Speaker 1: hear that. Man, I am one of one of the
Speaker 1: when what I've ever said or done something to make
Speaker 1: you feel otherwise besides saying what's interesting to me? Now?
Speaker 1: I get it. You know I think I don't like starfruit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I think sometimes we're probably probably a
Speaker 1: little maybe a little insecure for real, Like you got
Speaker 1: what Randall Weaver calls the persecution complex. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1: I mean what's true because they are persecuted. I mean
Speaker 1: we we really are. So nah. Yeah, you know I
Speaker 1: got half my Brody, our buddy Brody. He would he
Speaker 1: did a hound hunt this year. Man. I loved hunted mountains,
Speaker 1: the hounds. I haven't had it. I would. I would
Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and go hunt Bear the house. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's like home with hounds. You don't like? Very interesting?
Speaker 1: To come with me to New Mexico on a meal
Speaker 1: based hound hunt for Bear. You do that, I'm going
Speaker 1: to you get around a little bit, uh yeah, you
Speaker 1: bounce around? Yeah? Yeah, I would do that it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be. I'm really interested in hounds, man, Like how
Speaker 1: like all this stuff? I mean, I like how much
Speaker 1: stuff those people know. Yeah, so it's powerful for us
Speaker 1: to get a get even just a small hat tip
Speaker 1: from a guy like you, Steve for real. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like the first bear ever eight was my brother.
Speaker 1: The first piece of bearing me to ever eate, we
Speaker 1: eat we that bear down to the nobles was a
Speaker 1: bear my brother Danny killed over bait Pie when he
Speaker 1: drew a bear tan in Michigan. Second bear every it
Speaker 1: was the one my other brother killed over bait Pilo, Michigan.
Speaker 1: This this is what we say, and you may say
Speaker 1: it too. Maybe I've never heard you say it, but
Speaker 1: we have absolutely got to defend every legal method of
Speaker 1: hunting that I mean and in my traditional use, every
Speaker 1: legal method of hunting that's legal today in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: it's been run through the ringer of all the things.
Speaker 1: You know, is that science based? Is that? This? Is
Speaker 1: that that? And we've got nothing left to give the
Speaker 1: anti hunting community. Well, my my perspective on this, I mean,
Speaker 1: my perspective is, like I said, you know, I support
Speaker 1: people's right two have a legally ordained and legally managed
Speaker 1: way of extracting natural resources of sustainable populations of wildlife.
Speaker 1: I've used population like healthy populations of wildlife where there's
Speaker 1: public demand, and used for it a view that we
Speaker 1: have a right set up, a system set up by
Speaker 1: which we determined the resources viable and it can withstand
Speaker 1: x amount of pressure, and we allocate that through a
Speaker 1: democratic process and give people the right to go out
Speaker 1: and utilize resources. And bears are part of that. There's
Speaker 1: certainly desire always has been. If you went to the
Speaker 1: frontier settlements, they shot deer for hides, they ate bear meat.
Speaker 1: H Now, in a lot of places, that's just the
Speaker 1: only way to go about it, Like traditionally, that's all
Speaker 1: people have done it. I have no desire to see
Speaker 1: that be taken away from them, especially in places where
Speaker 1: you're effectively killing bear hunting and then nolier effectively killing
Speaker 1: bear hunting. Yeah um yeah yeah. And I you know,
Speaker 1: I love I want to say that I'm not like
Speaker 1: I mean, I I enjoy baiting bears, I do, but
Speaker 1: you know I enjoy spotting stock bear hunting just the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, I see what a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand that have never baited bears? Is how difficult that
Speaker 1: it is, truly and that may sound crazy, but if
Speaker 1: you've never done it, and difficult in terms of not
Speaker 1: just killing the bear, but killing the bear that you're after.
Speaker 1: It's just like hunting a big white tail. It's difficult.
Speaker 1: People don't understand that. Um, it's a ton of works.
Speaker 1: Understand that hunting a cat behind hounds is difficult. It
Speaker 1: takes It takes a dedication of a lifetime to be
Speaker 1: able to do that, to have your own pack of dogs,
Speaker 1: to know the cats, to know where they crossed, to
Speaker 1: know what you need in a hound. I mean it's
Speaker 1: laughable in someone you know, sitting on the edge of
Speaker 1: the edge of an apple orchard with a crossbow in
Speaker 1: a tree shoots a deer, which I'm all for, God
Speaker 1: bless you. But when they're like, oh, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's okay to to spend your whole life training up
Speaker 1: a hound dog and learn how to find a damn
Speaker 1: mountain lion, And it's like, oh, that doesn't take any
Speaker 1: nohow man, We've said. The houndsman that we've gotten to
Speaker 1: spend some time with, have always been the best. You know,
Speaker 1: overall outdoorsman. You can't take it in the woods. You know,
Speaker 1: the best woodsman that we've ever met trackers, and my god,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, they dedicate their their lives to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't people just still it down to
Speaker 1: one thing that you shoot something in a tree. They
Speaker 1: boiled the whole thing down to the part that they
Speaker 1: care least about. And it's such a traditional method to
Speaker 1: I mean, like the hunting culture of North America was
Speaker 1: built not totally on the backs of hounds, but I
Speaker 1: mean they've been doing it since the beginning at least European.
Speaker 1: European hunting on this continent highly traditional. You know what
Speaker 1: Prus houndsman like don't view the kill as the thing
Speaker 1: because they don't care who does the shooting. You have
Speaker 1: some guy that like you have some guy that patterns
Speaker 1: some big white tail and finally cracks the coda on
Speaker 1: some big white tail. Does he turn around going you know,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, Bob w don't you go up
Speaker 1: there and get shot? He don't know, Like, dude, all
Speaker 1: the work is getting it, catching it, like I really
Speaker 1: don't care. Like they don't care. And a lot of
Speaker 1: them get to where they don't shoot. They're like, don't shoot. Ah.
Speaker 1: They release way more, way more animals than they take,
Speaker 1: almost all of them, almost every hounds. When I know,
Speaker 1: I got one last quick question for you. Uh how
Speaker 1: do you how do you how do you spot stock
Speaker 1: bears in Arkansas? What are they doing? So we're hunt
Speaker 1: in the fall, and uh, man, I'm looking for white
Speaker 1: oak acorns and bear sign, bear scat and white oak acrens. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, ambush hunt. So I do a lot of
Speaker 1: what I call slip hunting, which is just slowly moving
Speaker 1: through places, covering a lot of ground with a wind
Speaker 1: in your face, moving into just covering a ton of ground,
Speaker 1: just trying to find bear. And you might kill a
Speaker 1: bear while you're doing that. You might see a bear
Speaker 1: before he sees you, and then you're able to put
Speaker 1: a stock on him. Or in your rambling you find
Speaker 1: a ridge top or a finger or a flat or
Speaker 1: a saddle that's covered in bear scat and bear trails
Speaker 1: and white oak acorns, and maybe there's not a bear
Speaker 1: there right then, but you come back in the next
Speaker 1: day and hunting like a deer. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: essence of it. I'd say it's it's one of the
Speaker 1: toughest big game hunts in North America. Have you been
Speaker 1: successful doing that? Yeah, it's to me, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the sheep hunt of the South. Yeah. Now, one of
Speaker 1: my one of my greatest, most personal, you know, achievements
Speaker 1: inside of hunting was I killed a bear in Arkansas
Speaker 1: with my bow spotting stock, actually killed it over water.
Speaker 1: And uh, in the next day, I went into Oklahoma
Speaker 1: and did the same thing, killed the bear of the
Speaker 1: tread bow, just stalking. So two days. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was because I just I wouldn't even plan it on hunting.
Speaker 1: It's a whole another story. But I had gone into Scout,
Speaker 1: made a big spin, found a ton of bear sign
Speaker 1: Luckily I had my bow. I mean, I wasn't even
Speaker 1: gonna bring my bow. And uh, it's all on video.
Speaker 1: It's a YouTube video that YouTube shut down and probably
Speaker 1: have it. It's got like six thousand views right now,
Speaker 1: but they shut it down because of graphic content. Sad story.
Speaker 1: The but so I found all the acrons that year
Speaker 1: was high. So in in our mountains, like mass crop
Speaker 1: varies based upon things that happened in the spring, you know,
Speaker 1: like freezes, different things, so that year, all the acrons
Speaker 1: were up high. I didn't know that. I just was
Speaker 1: going in to scout this area, found a ton of
Speaker 1: bears and uh, kill the bear, packed it out. I
Speaker 1: had an Oklahoma bear tag. So the next day I
Speaker 1: went into Oklahoma, which was just the exact same terrain
Speaker 1: the Washingtons run into Oklahoma and the Ozarks. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, if they're high in Arkansas, they'll be
Speaker 1: high in Oklahoma. And man, I went up there and
Speaker 1: killed another bear spotting stock on the ground. The next
Speaker 1: morning by ten o'clock. Was that a place you had
Speaker 1: been in before? Not in Oklahoma? The Arkansas place? Was
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma place? Was? I got on what's what's graphic about?
Speaker 1: What's more graphic about that video? Nothing? The human that
Speaker 1: decided it was graphic from YouTube that flagged it. You
Speaker 1: know what it could be as a volume of a
Speaker 1: volume of planes? Yeah, one hundred hours a minute. Man,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of artificial intelligence using that stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. They shut it down though. It was getting
Speaker 1: fifty thou views a day, and they shut it down,
Speaker 1: and and and since that time, it's gotten like maybe
Speaker 1: fifty views in two years. Yeah, I've found they for
Speaker 1: whatever reason they cherry pick they shut down one. If
Speaker 1: you want, I don't know if you want to give it,
Speaker 1: if you want to pull, We'll put it on our
Speaker 1: website if you want, if people want to come check
Speaker 1: it out. I mean you're saying, like my YouTube video
Speaker 1: or like content. No, we could just like put the video,
Speaker 1: could put it. I mean that doesn't go to YouTube
Speaker 1: if they shut it down, right, Oh, I see, just
Speaker 1: like put it on your website. Yeah, absolutely would be awesome. Man,
Speaker 1: that's see that video to me is the is the
Speaker 1: epitome of of hunting. I mean, the bears were not
Speaker 1: and this again goes back to it's not selective to
Speaker 1: be spotting stocking. I mean both of these bears were.
Speaker 1: They were not large bears. They were just average bears.
Speaker 1: But man, you'd hear me say it if I if
Speaker 1: you watch the video, I shoot this bear out of
Speaker 1: the water. Bear standing in the water, eight yards on
Speaker 1: the ground, just tendering this bear, And I say, I
Speaker 1: would rather kill that bear than a Kodiak brown bear.
Speaker 1: That bear. I did it on my turf. And and
Speaker 1: the thing is is that just nobody's doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how many likes and dislikes they have I don't even know.
Speaker 1: No serious, if you want to put it out just
Speaker 1: the listeners can go see the video, we could like
Speaker 1: host it on it. You're saying it's back on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Now it is on YouTube. It's on YouTube, but you
Speaker 1: have to be eighteen years old or older to watch it.
Speaker 1: And what happens when YouTube flags one of your videos
Speaker 1: as they quit promoting it, so you know the algorithms
Speaker 1: it was getting views, so now they don't prompt anyone.
Speaker 1: If you like this, you'll okay, and like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: just have the link up that like if if you're
Speaker 1: but if someone under eighteen or a someone tried to
Speaker 1: watch the video and they weren't logged in the YouTube,
Speaker 1: they couldn't watch it, got it because the YouTube has
Speaker 1: to know, oh this person's over eighteen, so you actually
Speaker 1: have to have an account, like if you logged on
Speaker 1: and tried to watch it right now? Uh? Are things
Speaker 1: heating up? First? Light? Heating up is the time of
Speaker 1: year when people start buying a bunch of stuff. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It just like when fourth of July, I think people
Speaker 1: are like to shoot the fireworks off. Then like what's next?
Speaker 1: The like, oh, ELX season's almost here, It's the same
Speaker 1: thing with archery shops. I talked to my friend John,
Speaker 1: who runs archery shop in Eastern Oregon's like, man, it
Speaker 1: is nuts in here right now, all the way until,
Speaker 1: like August said, people will come in as we speak.
Speaker 1: Our guy, Joe Ferrigno is Joe Farron attles cutting my
Speaker 1: arrows down right now. Man, I just got a couple
Speaker 1: of built myself. I'm excited. But yeah, things are heating up,
Speaker 1: Like people are coming coming, sniffing around looking at gear. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have more people swinging by the office. Is this
Speaker 1: the show room, no, sir, Yeah yeah, oh yeah. They
Speaker 1: want to come in to buy stuff. Yeah, we send
Speaker 1: them to the interwebs. Though, do you guys sell, um,
Speaker 1: you guys sell a lot more like mountain stuff before
Speaker 1: you start selling the white tail stuff, Like, do white
Speaker 1: tail dudes wait a little bit longer? I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the most guys that are getting
Speaker 1: geared up right now are kind of getting geared up
Speaker 1: four in November already, they're starting to starting to get ready.
Speaker 1: But um, I think the majority of the purchases right
Speaker 1: now are from our two thousand nineteen line that just
Speaker 1: kind of get came out, So most of that stuff
Speaker 1: has hit the website as of Yeah, it's about a
Speaker 1: week and a half ago. What's the hottest selling item, Man,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Probably brooks Down sweater. That's a
Speaker 1: great one this year. Um, the Sawbucks that thing along.
Speaker 1: You've tried those sawbucks hunt? Yeah, but tell you what,
Speaker 1: I was wearing them hunting down in Old Mexico and
Speaker 1: I was greasing through that like man, everybody else's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: cat Colm, me squite all that stuff. I got a
Speaker 1: feeling that's gonna be I got a feeling like after
Speaker 1: we went down we go down there. We've been on
Speaker 1: it quite a few times. Go down there January hunt
Speaker 1: COO's dere in the desert, and um, I got a
Speaker 1: feeling that there's gonna be a lot more those pants
Speaker 1: on the ground come this January than we're last. Dude,
Speaker 1: my legs are the only ones not ripped up. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: that's an incredible pair of pants. The best part is
Speaker 1: it's not like a thick canvas pant where you can
Speaker 1: actually eat their breathable for the hotwell, I lived it
Speaker 1: every morning. I just pulled all the Southern listeners. Guys
Speaker 1: are talking about briar bridges. Yeah about this today, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Should have called him that briar bridges, briar pants brush pants.
Speaker 1: But no, things are things are getting pretty heated up
Speaker 1: at first. People are getting excited. Yeah, yeah, we're coming
Speaker 1: up on it. Antelope season starts in August. I think
Speaker 1: you guys all hunt animal withoutree equipment? Yeah you guys, Yeah,
Speaker 1: guys over here, that's right. It should be fun. I've
Speaker 1: actually never killed aniop with the bow. So so who's
Speaker 1: buy our the sawbuck pants? Is it? Like? Um, a
Speaker 1: lot of bird hunters are big game. I mean they're
Speaker 1: built for for for the bird hunter, chucker hunters and
Speaker 1: and folks like that. But um, actually a lot of
Speaker 1: folks in tech to start buying him. I was wearing
Speaker 1: them squirrel hunting Missouri. Sweet. It's like it's sick of
Speaker 1: getting scratched up by the brush. Yeah. Ye, eliminates the
Speaker 1: need for a gator on the bottom when it's hot.
Speaker 1: I was crawling out of the river the air day
Speaker 1: with U, and I didn't want my little boy to
Speaker 1: climb through the rolls, bushes and thistles, so I picked
Speaker 1: him up over my shoulder and climbed up through there.
Speaker 1: Gash my legs all up. I had my shorty pants
Speaker 1: on because we're coming out of crayfishing. Oh nice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to make those shorts just have a big
Speaker 1: gap in the thigh right there. All right? Man? Yeah,
Speaker 1: any what do you got anything final thoughts? I do, Man,
Speaker 1: we net We need to finish up on the barrel oil.
Speaker 1: Why does it say okay barrel oil. It's only a right,
Speaker 1: it's only so good. That's okay. Well that's uh, that
Speaker 1: isn't oklaholm for Oklahoma. Yeah, so I brought I brought
Speaker 1: you guys some barrelil, Johnnie and Steve, and this is
Speaker 1: this is Oklahoma barrel oil. Well okay, so I did
Speaker 1: it test on how to render fat, whether there was
Speaker 1: any difference in rendering it slow or rendering it slow
Speaker 1: and low? This is this is not viscous, not at all.
Speaker 1: That was gonna be my question to you after I
Speaker 1: tell you a few things about this. Um. So, I
Speaker 1: brought you this barre oil to use it your pleasure.
Speaker 1: But this is a testament to black bear conservation because
Speaker 1: black bears were brought into Arkansas. It's considered the most
Speaker 1: successful reintroduction to large carnivores in the world's reintroduction of
Speaker 1: bears into Arkansas. And these Oklahoma bears are bears that
Speaker 1: have infiltrated into Oklahoma from Arkansas and now have a
Speaker 1: huntable population and are thriving. That was a fifty pound
Speaker 1: Oklahoma black bear. Yes, sir, yes, sir, Oklahoma head on
Speaker 1: him to bet you well, I'm one of the few
Speaker 1: people on the planet besides they, of course holding a
Speaker 1: bottle of Oklahoma barre oil right now. Well, hey, not
Speaker 1: only do you get that, but I'm gonna give you this,
Speaker 1: uh bear grease weather chart that you can use. It's
Speaker 1: in a magazine. What magazine is that? Okay? Yeah? This
Speaker 1: this is Bear Hunting magazine. And we wrote an article
Speaker 1: this like are we published an article we didn't write
Speaker 1: it about an old guy in New Mexico named Gordon Websad.
Speaker 1: He died in Gordon Websitt was nationally known for sixty
Speaker 1: years of watching and forecasting weather based upon bar oil forecasting.
Speaker 1: Absolutely he could forecast weather with a high degree of success,
Speaker 1: says this article. And this is his personal chart. And
Speaker 1: so this this chart shows, I mean, you know, one
Speaker 1: if the barrel oil looks like that, then you go
Speaker 1: heavy and bottom no changes for several hours. Clear. Number two,
Speaker 1: there's a slight bulge in so barre oil for people
Speaker 1: who wouldn't know it watching the bear matric pressure. Ye,
Speaker 1: well he you you got to read this article earthquakes
Speaker 1: with this, I mean does it? I mean I like it.
Speaker 1: I believe that he believed it right, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: bother you that I'm not buying it. I'm with you, okay,
Speaker 1: But it's just it's thrilled. I'll yeah, it's just eccentric.
Speaker 1: It's just cool. I love stuff with bear grace. It's
Speaker 1: a cool. It's a cool article about that old guy
Speaker 1: Gordon whims that my fridge is gonna set up like
Speaker 1: a rock. Yeah. Well my question is, how do you
Speaker 1: render fat? That's clear because I have rendered bear fat, Steve,
Speaker 1: that was totally clear. Well, once it gets warm, it's clear. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like piss colored. Yeah, but somebody told
Speaker 1: me that has to do with what the bear eight
Speaker 1: and actually like the the chemical makeup and well yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like when you get like, uh, you know
Speaker 1: sometimes just like you know, I've seen it on on
Speaker 1: when I killed a buffalo that was in a certain
Speaker 1: area there's a lot of caroteen and he had orange
Speaker 1: like orange, like a damn orange orange fat. But uh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't surprise me that the I know. I know
Speaker 1: because I have people with contested but it's true feeding
Speaker 1: on when they're feeding on blueberries, the fat takes on
Speaker 1: a tint from that coloration. Well, just my question is,
Speaker 1: and what I was trying to decide by doing different
Speaker 1: temperatures is I have rendered it before when it was
Speaker 1: almost clear all the time, like if you can put
Speaker 1: in refrigerator, it would have solidified up, but it looked
Speaker 1: like olive oil. Yeah, well even look at put it
Speaker 1: in your fridge, it was clear. Yeah, even after that,
Speaker 1: I don't know that was possible. Right, not long ago.
Speaker 1: There's a whale fat Mark Tuck skin and the fat
Speaker 1: I don't know that's Mark Tuck or not. I think
Speaker 1: part of the skin. I don't know. Either way, we're
Speaker 1: eating some whale fat. That was interesting, pretty good. Uh,
Speaker 1: good looking magazine, So you're good. Bear tell us again,
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting, Yeah, Bear Hunting magazine. Yeah, we've been in
Speaker 1: print for twenty years. I've had the business the last
Speaker 1: six years. But we're making a yep, that's us print
Speaker 1: magazine six times a year. Read all about bear grease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the editor's note and this one is titled guard the Gate.
Speaker 1: That would be a good one. Uh, you got any
Speaker 1: concluding thoughts? Kevin for Antelope season comes. Get those Guidelight pants.
Speaker 1: They're sweet. That was a good one coming out. Are
Speaker 1: there out right now on the website. It's gonna be hot.
Speaker 1: And man, when you get those, get yourself a Marino
Speaker 1: T shirt. What's the light one called the Wicks, the
Speaker 1: New Wicks. Yeah, I've keep mean to do it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it next time I climb up Baldy. We've
Speaker 1: been going up Baldly every Thursday, and I wear my
Speaker 1: Wicks T shirt and everybody else is wearing like a
Speaker 1: T shirt plus another layer. And I started off just
Speaker 1: the hair chili, which is always you should start a mountain.
Speaker 1: But that T shirt makes it through the whole experience.
Speaker 1: Starting at fifty degrees or so, and by the time
Speaker 1: we get down it's probably well into seventy and we're
Speaker 1: running and it's hot, and that T shirt just it
Speaker 1: spans that whole you know, variants and temperatures and you
Speaker 1: get up top on Baldi and the winds howling, even sweating,
Speaker 1: and it's trying to blow through you, but it dries
Speaker 1: out and it still keeps you warm. I feel like
Speaker 1: everybody should have that is their basic as their first
Speaker 1: you know, piece on their skin. Thank you, My concluder
Speaker 1: is I think now that these these guys pointed out
Speaker 1: a little problem. I think you ought to work up
Speaker 1: a price on that hog. I'll see what I can
Speaker 1: do by eight. So I'm gonna roll back over there
Speaker 1: and i'll drop it off. It's gonna get it cutting wrapped,
Speaker 1: cutting wrapped like a pro. I'm gonna be generous with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm keeping all the fat for myself. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good, good plan. Well, I'll give Yanni a little fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole jar right now? If I just buy my half,
Speaker 1: can we just split it and share it? Oh? Has
Speaker 1: he's straight up right now. I'll shake on it. I
Speaker 1: get the left half, we'll bulk up that left side
Speaker 1: for it. Alright, Clay, you got your final thoughts. Man,
Speaker 1: I've I've said enough. I appreciate you having me on truly.
Speaker 1: Do you do a good job? Thank you? Yeah, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks for opening. It's been great. This is really sweet.
Speaker 1: Go give his video films up. Yeah. Man, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: if everybody works really hard, we could tip it back
Speaker 1: over the other direction. Would help. Great. What's it called?
Speaker 1: I think the title I mean they need to check
Speaker 1: out the like Clay new Comb bear hunt. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's called bear bumps into traditional Archer's arrow, like
Speaker 1: we we tried to describe in the title. But if
Speaker 1: you just go to the Bear Honting Magazine YouTube channel
Speaker 1: and hit popular, like there's a tab up there that's
Speaker 1: some of the most popular videos, you'll see three or
Speaker 1: four come up and it'll it'll be there. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm more proud of the squirrel hunt on mule videos
Speaker 1: and stuff like that than that. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: Everybody should watch that one too. Steve and I both
Speaker 1: enjoyed that one. All right, man, thanks for coming on. Hey,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thank you appreciate it.