Speaker 1: Hey, this is the Meat Eater podcast, recording out a Bozeman, Montana,
Speaker 1: hometown of our guests, Randy Newburgh, who has been hosting
Speaker 1: hunting TV programs for a long time. Wow, how long? Well?
Speaker 1: I think, as my grandpa would say, Moby Dick was
Speaker 1: a mint on back when I started. Actually, it's weird
Speaker 1: to say, Steve, but I'm going into year eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's I'm not like Methuselah. But I guess you
Speaker 1: could say I've been there, done that long eight years.
Speaker 1: Long time to do anything. It is, especially I just
Speaker 1: turned fifty and I'm gonna be fifty one in November,
Speaker 1: and you know, I do these backpack hunts mostly, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna live long enough
Speaker 1: to do another eight years. It's just it grinds at me.
Speaker 1: You guys know you do it. You're also talking to
Speaker 1: uh that that leaves me to something about age that
Speaker 1: that's interesting. But um, I want to point out to
Speaker 1: our listeners that Randy, who's seen and done everything, was
Speaker 1: just marveling. He was blown away by the quality of
Speaker 1: the complete guy, the hunting, butcher and cooking wild game.
Speaker 1: I was that would take most people a lifetime. You
Speaker 1: hear those people and then you guys said, well, how
Speaker 1: long do you think? I said three years? And you
Speaker 1: guys looked at each other like, yep, so what So
Speaker 1: if I'm reading what you're saying, right, Randy, you feel
Speaker 1: like people are gonna get their money's worth. I don't
Speaker 1: know why you're going to price it at giving it away.
Speaker 1: You're giving it away. You you should buy two of
Speaker 1: them at that price. I mean, it's really I'm saying
Speaker 1: you have and you have a background that has to
Speaker 1: do with like you deal in people's money as a
Speaker 1: c p A. Yeah, I get to disinherit the federal
Speaker 1: treasury as a Randy thinks you ought to buy that book.
Speaker 1: If if you don't buy that book, folks, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna kill an elk next year. That's exactly right. I
Speaker 1: can promise you that if you do kill one, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna know how to take care of it out
Speaker 1: in the field. And I was reading your honest your
Speaker 1: piece about tuning up bows. Where did you come up
Speaker 1: with all that stuff? Experience just told all about it.
Speaker 1: He just wrote about it. I think you need to
Speaker 1: make that like into a pocket guide. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, you don't want to care. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's I can't call it original content. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I did put it down in my own words, but
Speaker 1: like it's not like I picked up a piece of
Speaker 1: wooden string and then I eventually learned how to make
Speaker 1: a compound, and then like how to tune a compound,
Speaker 1: you know, like all this stuff. Like yes, I've read
Speaker 1: you know, hunting magazines and and you know, watch YouTube
Speaker 1: videos and all this stuff since I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: and so that's you know, how it came out. But
Speaker 1: it's not like I made up how to you know,
Speaker 1: get ready for archery season. Like gazillion guys will be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how I do it too. But wow, I was impressed.
Speaker 1: I was thumbing through the book and I'm just thinking,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is a serious project. Just you
Speaker 1: guys go into a lot of detail, a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that no one will ever read. I don't
Speaker 1: want you. I was half joking. I mean I like
Speaker 1: to plug the book. I was half joking. But I
Speaker 1: want to get you to think about age. When we
Speaker 1: talk about like backpack hunting, how many years you think
Speaker 1: you got left well, I always tell hunting as you
Speaker 1: hunting out right. I told my wife I want to
Speaker 1: backpack hunt and tell him sixty five and last long
Speaker 1: it's like years doth wrong. I felle in November, so
Speaker 1: fourteen fifteen seasons. But last year I packed out three
Speaker 1: bulls on my back. And how many miles? Told you
Speaker 1: packed bulls out about? Gosh, I'd be just a guest Steve.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing combined all those trips thirty miles something like that.
Speaker 1: But one of them was out of a canyon in there.
Speaker 1: I don't and it was ugly. I mean, even though
Speaker 1: it was only two miles each way. I remember saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing there's different kinds of miles exactly. And
Speaker 1: and my guest hunter had blown out his a c
Speaker 1: L and before the hunt, and he told me, said, look,
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for years to hunt Arizona. I'm deferring
Speaker 1: surgery until after the hunt. Do you mind having a
Speaker 1: guy hobbling along? I'm like, hey, whatever. So he went
Speaker 1: into it saying I'm not gonna pack all right, he
Speaker 1: told me. I mean, and he's he was fifty five,
Speaker 1: I think blew out his A c L playing basketball
Speaker 1: down in Logan, Utah. And he shows up and he's
Speaker 1: got a brace on his knee that looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: Colonel Steve Austin of the six million Dollar Man. You're
Speaker 1: too young to remember that. You know, you have no
Speaker 1: idea what's shocking on about? All right, see again we're
Speaker 1: aging ourselves, Sarah. But anyhow, he shoots this ball down
Speaker 1: in the canyon really nice, but yeah, like a three
Speaker 1: twenty bull. And I'll tell you, I want to interject,
Speaker 1: I've never met the guy. I bet that man did
Speaker 1: not have a torn a c L. I started saying
Speaker 1: that I would be like, on every hunt, I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got enough in me. I got enough in me
Speaker 1: to get down in that candy to kill a bull,
Speaker 1: no problem. Yeah, it's just that once that happens, you know,
Speaker 1: So how hard can I can I hunt for how long?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I'm well, you get to a point,
Speaker 1: and I've said this on a few episodes where you
Speaker 1: realize that there are a lot fewer hunts in the
Speaker 1: front windshield than what are in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: and you enjoy every minute of every day of those
Speaker 1: hunts as you see the sand drain and out of
Speaker 1: your hour glass, and you start having this internal fear. Gosh,
Speaker 1: oh man, my hip's hurting today. Is that gonna lay
Speaker 1: me up from al cunning? Because you know that there's
Speaker 1: a terminal point when you're hunting anything, let alone backpack
Speaker 1: out cunning. So it's like, I'm definitely still just too
Speaker 1: young and dumb to have those thoughts. I don't, are
Speaker 1: you or you have to because like my brother is
Speaker 1: a couple years older me. My brother is like he
Speaker 1: started working out lifting weights, you know, and now I've
Speaker 1: been I've been the only thing I'm thinking about's like
Speaker 1: I'm married, I got three kids. Like, I'm not like
Speaker 1: working out because I gonna be all like go down
Speaker 1: to the beach, you know what I mean. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I work out because all I'm that's the
Speaker 1: thing I think about, not being able to get up
Speaker 1: a hill. Right it's Oregon and smoked by Janice to
Speaker 1: the hill way ahead of me, you know. The And
Speaker 1: I hunt a lot of my guest hunters very younger
Speaker 1: than I am, And I drive a desk for a
Speaker 1: living half the year, and so I have to make
Speaker 1: a serious point to get out and hike every day.
Speaker 1: And I'm lucky here in Montana where I live. I'm
Speaker 1: a mile from a four service trailhead, going to two
Speaker 1: our hike every day, and mentally, I am in way
Speaker 1: better shape to handle cold, terrible, miserable, ugly conditions than
Speaker 1: I was when I was forty or thirty. I mean,
Speaker 1: now I'll just put my head down, lean against the grade,
Speaker 1: and I don't even think about if I gotta walk
Speaker 1: all day. Oh well, I gotta walk all day, Whereas
Speaker 1: when I was twenty eight, God, I had to walk
Speaker 1: for another forty five minutes to get there. This sucks now,
Speaker 1: don't even fathe me. It's like, hey man, I'm still hunting.
Speaker 1: I got some buddies who are you know they're done,
Speaker 1: They're they're cashed it in or whatever. And so mentally
Speaker 1: is fine. I mean, I wish I had the mental
Speaker 1: fortitude when I was twenty eight that I have today.
Speaker 1: It just comes with age. One thing I think about
Speaker 1: when I think about getting old and not being able
Speaker 1: to hunt like I like to hunt, is I think
Speaker 1: that me now would be able to smoke me when
Speaker 1: I was twenty five. I think if I put myself
Speaker 1: back to when I was twenty five, even though I'm
Speaker 1: fifty now, I would agree. I would I was inefficient
Speaker 1: in how I operated my how I walked, you know
Speaker 1: how much gear I brought with it. I didn't need
Speaker 1: all those things. I and just mentally, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: walk myself into the ground today, whereas in I'd have
Speaker 1: to ship and have a sandwich after two miles. I
Speaker 1: had a guy there day telling me about a principle
Speaker 1: and fitness that my brother used to joke or hat
Speaker 1: and I used to has joked it people that are
Speaker 1: bigging across fit, you just get good at doing CrossFit,
Speaker 1: you know, like it doesn't do anything for you. And
Speaker 1: I'll sell this guy that he says it half jokingly.
Speaker 1: But this guy was saying, there's his principle and fitness
Speaker 1: called like said, okay, So it's specific adaptations to imposed demands.
Speaker 1: Because what I've often wondered about is you could have
Speaker 1: people who are fit by any measure, ye okay, like,
Speaker 1: but you take them out like, oh yeah, you really
Speaker 1: ought to before we go on the mountains, you really
Speaker 1: ought to like get in shape for oh no, I
Speaker 1: just ran a half marathon Broye And you go out
Speaker 1: and it's like they have never done anything. Ye, it's
Speaker 1: such a specific thing that I really don't think you
Speaker 1: can replicate the demand. I don't think you can replicate
Speaker 1: the physical demands of mountain hunting doing anything that maybe
Speaker 1: like mountaineering. Yeah, I would agree, And that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: all my a lot of my buddies go to the gym.
Speaker 1: I gotta be on the cardio, I gotta be working
Speaker 1: on this me. I put pounds in a backpack and
Speaker 1: I just hiked and walk because nothing replicates the uneven ground.
Speaker 1: The Okay, I'm going up a grade and then down
Speaker 1: a grade. I'm side Helen and whatever, and I just
Speaker 1: I haven't found any any mechanical device that replicates it.
Speaker 1: So you can just go hike anything you do, like
Speaker 1: obviously anyway you can become stronger, you know, and all that.
Speaker 1: It's like great, sure it's not gonna work against you,
Speaker 1: but there's just something about, yeah, the uneven ground. And
Speaker 1: I think another thing that really starts to throw people
Speaker 1: is in addition to that stuff, and it is just
Speaker 1: the physicality of it. There's all this layered stuff about cold, heat, boredom, um.
Speaker 1: All they're just discomfort things, you know, uncertainties and when
Speaker 1: you're changing food. When you're younger, you all of those
Speaker 1: get to you, and now don't don't get to me
Speaker 1: at all. Okay, throw my pack on. I'm usually hiking
Speaker 1: up the hill. I'm in a very light merino wall
Speaker 1: and I got some layers, and yeah it's cold, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just got my
Speaker 1: head down and I gotta get to the ridge so
Speaker 1: I can glasp before sun gets up. Where before my
Speaker 1: mind would get distracted. Your mind gets distracted, you're not
Speaker 1: focused on hunting, and you just start losing it. Your
Speaker 1: edge is gone, and then you start getting cold, You
Speaker 1: start sniveling, you start whinding, you start thinking about, oh, dude,
Speaker 1: I could have been huddled up next to mom on
Speaker 1: this morning. Why they get out of bed, youth visit
Speaker 1: for Randy's wife. That's that's right. Yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a joke to that, if my wife listens to this.
Speaker 1: We We ran into Jack Llane at an airport one time. Again,
Speaker 1: you guys, he related to kind of man, I'm really
Speaker 1: aging myself and uh he he was like the original
Speaker 1: fitness expert on old broadcast. He surely not before Slim
Speaker 1: good buddy, Oh way before he was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was like the first guy. So he's like eighty
Speaker 1: five ninety years old, and he says, you know what
Speaker 1: you young people need to know. It takes discipline. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm going to take in notes here.
Speaker 1: He says, it takes a real man to get out
Speaker 1: of a hot bed with a warm woman and go
Speaker 1: and jump in a cold pool because he needs to exercise. Yeah, Mike, dude,
Speaker 1: you're not ainty years old. I guess maybe you know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. So, heyhow that's that's the inside
Speaker 1: joke about mama getting getting out of bed from mama.
Speaker 1: So now you so you were brought up in Minnesota though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: way up, way up north. So when did you start
Speaker 1: doing mountain hunts When I moved to Montana. I went
Speaker 1: to college in Reno, and uh, I knew just about
Speaker 1: nothing about western hunting while I lived in Nevada. You
Speaker 1: didn't hunt there? Yeah I did, but I was terrible
Speaker 1: at it. I tried to hunt everything like a hunted
Speaker 1: white tails. Um and then carrots had a platform, hang
Speaker 1: a platform over the tree. Yeah, there you go, And
Speaker 1: uh luckily stumbled into a few a few deer along
Speaker 1: the way while I was in Nevada. But when I
Speaker 1: moved to Montana, I just realized, you know what, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt elk on public land, you better figure
Speaker 1: it out, Randy, because they aren't standing next to the
Speaker 1: trailhead and it requires work. It's just as quick as
Speaker 1: you accept the fact that hunting elkom public land requires exertion,
Speaker 1: you get way better at it. It's like you go
Speaker 1: through this period of thinking there's an easy way, and
Speaker 1: you don't kill anything. I mean I hunted elk for
Speaker 1: six years and never fired a shot at an elk
Speaker 1: because I thought there was an easier way. People just
Speaker 1: haven't been smart enough to figure it out yet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And finally I'm like, you know what, well, there's an
Speaker 1: easier way. Well it's called cash, Yeah exactly. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean money solves a lot of you can buy. So
Speaker 1: that was the elk you were looking to purchase, right,
Speaker 1: And so after that, I'm like, all right, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. And I went in, slept on the
Speaker 1: mountain that night, next morning killed the ball. Like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: what year was at that was in? And uh, I
Speaker 1: think I've killed at least one bull every year since
Speaker 1: then just doing the same thing, and it was like
Speaker 1: the light came on. Randy quit thinking there's an easy
Speaker 1: way to do this. There are easier ways to do it,
Speaker 1: but public land bull elk hunting on general tags is
Speaker 1: not an easy endeavor. No, but you've made it that
Speaker 1: your thing, man. Yeah, by accident, almost because of where
Speaker 1: I live, because of the fact that when you get
Speaker 1: in the TV world, elk are sexy. I mean, what
Speaker 1: what sells better than a big bull out screaming in
Speaker 1: a camera, big white tail buck on the cover of magazine.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's probably true. Um, But I had a
Speaker 1: meeting with some magazine editors the other day and they're like,
Speaker 1: you just it's just a fact of like the best
Speaker 1: selling news stand Well they any cover you do, you
Speaker 1: can't beat that. It's gonna be the biggest bucks. You'll
Speaker 1: have an article inside the magazine condemning fence top fence
Speaker 1: deer operations, but the cover magazine is a fence. It's
Speaker 1: got it's a fence buck that you're never gonna run into,
Speaker 1: and then you'll sell new stand copies. Yeahs just it's
Speaker 1: just people like, yeah, answer your question, the white tail buck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So I kinda got into that, and you know,
Speaker 1: living in Montana, el coomes a big thing like it
Speaker 1: is in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado other places. And then in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties I started applying in all these western
Speaker 1: states and ginda going here, going there. Getting to hunt
Speaker 1: elk in a lot of different places and a lot
Speaker 1: of different environments made me a way better elk hunter
Speaker 1: because showing up in my backyard in Bozeman, Montana to
Speaker 1: hunt elk, you kind of know what they're doing. You're
Speaker 1: kind of doing the same thing every year. Oh it's
Speaker 1: for early November. This is where they're going to be.
Speaker 1: I show up in New Mexico and their season is,
Speaker 1: let's say, middle of October. Everything is different, so you
Speaker 1: really have to get your mind into a pattern and
Speaker 1: an idea of these are not the same animal I
Speaker 1: hunt at home, And like you guys know on TV,
Speaker 1: my my statement is I've got five days to figure
Speaker 1: it out, sort it out, and pack it out. I
Speaker 1: show up at a place I've never been and we've
Speaker 1: got dollars invested in an episode. I gotta find some elk.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter that the weather is crappy, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter there's a lot of hunting pressure on public land.
Speaker 1: I gotta figure it out, you know, sniveling and wine
Speaker 1: and isn't gonna do any good. I can't change the weather,
Speaker 1: I can't change the hunting pressure. So over the course
Speaker 1: of doing that and you become at least I feel
Speaker 1: I've become a much smarter elk hunter than I was.
Speaker 1: And people watch our show and say, Randy, come on,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? I never see this many outcomes
Speaker 1: public land, and I don't know what to tell him.
Speaker 1: It's just, you know, either we're lucky, which we do
Speaker 1: get lucky at times, but we really have a system
Speaker 1: of here's how we do it. We spend the first
Speaker 1: two days figuring it out, then we collect all the
Speaker 1: information we sorted out, and then we got about another
Speaker 1: two or three days to try and get one on
Speaker 1: the ground and pack them out. That's just it's that simple.
Speaker 1: That raises a whole bunch of questions I got for you.
Speaker 1: But let me start with the one that I already
Speaker 1: had in my head. I used to feel like this
Speaker 1: is even hard to put. Most hunters have like a
Speaker 1: thing they do, okay, so what other the Michigan like,
Speaker 1: Like what you did like the thing you did was
Speaker 1: we bow hunted deer, yeah, bohn white hills. Then you
Speaker 1: do other stuff in addition, So like if you're a
Speaker 1: guy to lives in Wisconsin, you might just like you
Speaker 1: like agricultural white tails. But every year you go on
Speaker 1: a destination hunt. But there's the thing that, like the
Speaker 1: main thing, like if you took it all the way,
Speaker 1: that thing would be left. Okay. I've often thought, like
Speaker 1: when you draw, like what your thing is like. For
Speaker 1: a long time, when I lived in Montana, my thing
Speaker 1: was like the Archie hunt again, Archie hunt public land
Speaker 1: for elk. That's like the thing I really wanted to
Speaker 1: be good at. Like if I could be good at
Speaker 1: one thing, it would have been that. All the are
Speaker 1: stuff I did was auxiliary. Now I travel enough, I
Speaker 1: don't really have a thing anymore. But I always wondered,
Speaker 1: does the auxiliary stuff enhance your ability to do the
Speaker 1: thing you're saying that it does? Oh yeah, and how
Speaker 1: is that though? Because you'll go somewhere I remember, like
Speaker 1: hunting elk in New Mexico. I remember just thinking, this
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with hunt elka Montana. This ain't
Speaker 1: where the elk would be. This isn't what they'd be doing,
Speaker 1: you know, And I never like I felt like it's
Speaker 1: like you're not training yourself, You're just on vacation. Before
Speaker 1: we get Randy's the answer to this. I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: a short break for our sponsors. And when I tell you, Steve,
Speaker 1: what really preps me good for Elk County, You're gonna
Speaker 1: crack up. My son and I fish walleye tournaments and
Speaker 1: you're you're already looking at me like, what the hell
Speaker 1: does this have to do with Elk cunning. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you fish a walleye tournament, or even if you go
Speaker 1: walleye fishing, and probably bass fishing the same thing. I
Speaker 1: don't bash bass fish, so I can't really say. But
Speaker 1: before you even go to the lake, you analyze, Okay,
Speaker 1: what time of year is it? All Right, it's June.
Speaker 1: The walleyes aren't gonna be up way shallow and they're
Speaker 1: not gonna be out on the d pumps. So right there,
Speaker 1: I've eliminated about the lake. All Right, what's the water temperature,
Speaker 1: what's the condition are the what are they doing? It's
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing with Elk. Elk do a
Speaker 1: different thing at a different time. Of the year based
Speaker 1: on certain needs food, escapement or survival, water and breeding.
Speaker 1: Same thing fish do. And what I found myself doing
Speaker 1: when I would fish walleye tournaments is I'd figure out
Speaker 1: one thing that worked, and I thought that would work
Speaker 1: every day, every place, all the time. And I'd catch
Speaker 1: fish one out of ten days, and boy, when I
Speaker 1: found him, I'd just thump him. But then the other
Speaker 1: nine days I'd struggle. That's how I fish yellow perch,
Speaker 1: same rig and still around the country, same rig, same depth.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I knocked the ship out of And so my
Speaker 1: son gets bored to tears just doing what his own
Speaker 1: man does. So he's out there experimenting all the time,
Speaker 1: and that little guy he's catching more fish than I am.
Speaker 1: And it starts driving home the point of you know what,
Speaker 1: if you always do what you always done, you're always
Speaker 1: gonna get what you always got. And elk hunting is
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. If I go to New
Speaker 1: Mexico and think I'm gonna hunt like I do in
Speaker 1: Montana just because it works in Montana, not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: So how does hunting in New Mexico educate you about Montana?
Speaker 1: Because it gets you the mindset that when you show up,
Speaker 1: the very first thing you have to do before you
Speaker 1: even get there is cross off all the places on
Speaker 1: your map where elk are not gonna be. Scouting is
Speaker 1: not about finding out elk. It's about eliminating where they're
Speaker 1: not going to be out right. So you look at
Speaker 1: my map when I start, anything that's within a mile
Speaker 1: of a motor i e. A trailer, a road crossed off,
Speaker 1: just don't even look there because I know other hunters
Speaker 1: are going to be there. And then I look at
Speaker 1: all right, what is the season of the year. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say it's the middle of October. All right, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the end of the rut. The bigger balls
Speaker 1: are going to be off somewhere looking for their serve
Speaker 1: fival locations. They're gonna be getting away from hunting pressure.
Speaker 1: They're gonna make a living down in a canyon or
Speaker 1: some other place, just like they do in Montana. But
Speaker 1: in Montana, they're gonna make a living in some really steep, nasty,
Speaker 1: blowdown jungle that has a little bit of food and
Speaker 1: a little bit of water nearby where they can not
Speaker 1: get shot for five weeks, just like yeah, or some small,
Speaker 1: little pocket, some steep place that you just aren't gonna
Speaker 1: think to look. In New Mexico, it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly canyons and and other terrain differences. So
Speaker 1: they're gonna he's gonna want to be down in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: he's gonna want be down into canyon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Montana already have a canyon country for the most point.
Speaker 1: And so it's not that the nuances of the landscape
Speaker 1: or how those out behave on that landscape teach me
Speaker 1: anything about how how to effectively hunt him in Montana.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that it forces you to analyze what
Speaker 1: is the season of the year, based on that he's
Speaker 1: into the year, what are public land elk doing at
Speaker 1: that time of year, and based on what they're doing,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do to make sure I find
Speaker 1: them as often as I can? And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's making sense, because most people will go out
Speaker 1: in the woods on a public land hunt and they
Speaker 1: want to think that a new gadget or a new
Speaker 1: call or a new blah blah blah is going to
Speaker 1: bring it elk to them. It's it very seldom does
Speaker 1: I mean it might, but you're really hoping on gambler's luck.
Speaker 1: If that's all you're thinking about, the people who and
Speaker 1: they're the reason. What did you guys say in Colorado?
Speaker 1: Probably what? The elk are killed by ten percent of
Speaker 1: the hunters. Yeah, and the reason being is those ten
Speaker 1: percent of guys have a system and they know what
Speaker 1: to expect when they show up. When they show up,
Speaker 1: they've already got a plan laid out, either on a
Speaker 1: map or in their mind. They've got three or four options,
Speaker 1: and they're not wandering around opening morning before daylight thinking well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that ridge would be the spot or No,
Speaker 1: They're going to Point A, and they go there, they
Speaker 1: don't see him. The afternoon, they're on Point B. They'll
Speaker 1: have six eight spots on their map to check out
Speaker 1: in a five day hunt, and two to three of
Speaker 1: those spots will have alk and they'll just, through a
Speaker 1: process of elimination, get there and when they find now,
Speaker 1: they'll kill one. I think elk are one of the
Speaker 1: easiest animals in the world to kill once you find them.
Speaker 1: Once you find them, finding them as a hard part.
Speaker 1: And that's why you know, I do a lot of
Speaker 1: writing and blogging, and I tell people as crazy as
Speaker 1: it sounds, as simple as it is. You can't kill
Speaker 1: one if you can't find one. So quit worrying about
Speaker 1: all the techniques and tactics to kill one. Figure out
Speaker 1: how to find them, because once you find him, you'll
Speaker 1: kill them. Well, so what what's your way of finding them? A? Yeah? Again,
Speaker 1: it goes back to that whole seasonal thing. I break
Speaker 1: it down and think about seasons a lot, right. I
Speaker 1: break it down into five periods. It's early season, pre rut,
Speaker 1: peak rut, post rut, in late season. And if you
Speaker 1: gave me one time of the year to hunt and
Speaker 1: try to kill a big bull, it's gonna be late season.
Speaker 1: Let's just say, oh, bowl a bow, legal bowl, A
Speaker 1: legal bowl in Montana is a branchantler bull. I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna hunt him in the peak of the rut in
Speaker 1: September with a bowl. Other states it might be a
Speaker 1: different answer. But each of those five seasons, they have
Speaker 1: a different need. In the early season, you look at it, Okay,
Speaker 1: the bulls still aren't really with the cows. The mature bulls,
Speaker 1: they're still putting on the feedback. You compare that too
Speaker 1: late season, and now they don't really care about food.
Speaker 1: They don't care about cows. All they care about is
Speaker 1: getting through hunting season. And they've got these sanctuaries they
Speaker 1: go to, and they in their bachelor groups go their
Speaker 1: year after or year after year. And you said your
Speaker 1: name to your name in Montana, Yeah, I mean low
Speaker 1: down nasty dog here. As as a general rule, I
Speaker 1: tell people, and this is Newberg's first rule of el
Speaker 1: cunting is where where hunters go, elk don't. And so
Speaker 1: if it's a place hunters can easily get to or
Speaker 1: don't have to exert themselves to get to, don't expect
Speaker 1: late season elk to be there. Maybe some late season coles,
Speaker 1: but not late season bulls. And I will share information
Speaker 1: with people about my early season spots or my peak
Speaker 1: rut locations. Fine, everyone kind of knows where those are.
Speaker 1: But you're never gonna hear Randy Newburgh tell you where
Speaker 1: one of these sanctuaries are, because one they're hard to find.
Speaker 1: Two once you find them, you can go there every year,
Speaker 1: year after year after year in kill elk in that
Speaker 1: same spot. Because these bulls get old by living in
Speaker 1: these locations. To find spot, like what side of the the ground,
Speaker 1: what side of patch ground? Oh, maybe sixty acres that
Speaker 1: they will make a living in a sixty acre spot
Speaker 1: all the way through hunting season. In Montana, we got
Speaker 1: a five week rifle season. After the first shots, all
Speaker 1: hell breaks loose. The older bulls are in their bachelor groups,
Speaker 1: and they are going to the ugly, nasty places. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be places that are hard to approach because of
Speaker 1: wind or noise or other things. And even if you
Speaker 1: do approach it, there's gonna be a fast escape route. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's just I can almost look at a map
Speaker 1: now anymore with topal lines and say, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: out there. Okay, But how does that play into your
Speaker 1: idea that once you find them that they're easy to kill.
Speaker 1: He's protected by the wind, he's gotta go escape route.
Speaker 1: You just gotta wait him out. I think most people
Speaker 1: when they find it out get way too excited. I
Speaker 1: gotta go kill him. I finally found one, and they
Speaker 1: burst in there. They think, oh, over here, the winds
Speaker 1: blowing out of the south while you get over the
Speaker 1: other side of the drainage or on the other hillside,
Speaker 1: and it may be blown out of the east. And
Speaker 1: so before they even get there, they've already announced to
Speaker 1: the elk what's going on. And they see an elk
Speaker 1: bedded and they're afraid another hunter is gonna come shoot
Speaker 1: him as bed and I just wait him out, like
Speaker 1: how like what sit there until they stand up and
Speaker 1: offer me a shot, or I get to someplace that says,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm two yards away. I know he's down
Speaker 1: in there. He's gonna feed. I can see his tracks
Speaker 1: in the snow where he feeds every night. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let him feed up there, and I'll kill him. And
Speaker 1: I might have to wait until a half hour before
Speaker 1: the sun goes down, but if I wait, I'll kill him.
Speaker 1: I know I'm making this sound like everything you're saying,
Speaker 1: But I when I first started hunting elk, I made
Speaker 1: it way too complicated. I was looking for magic calls
Speaker 1: and you know, gizmos and all this stuff, and it
Speaker 1: it didn't work. I got a great anecdote about a
Speaker 1: late season big bull that was killed. Some guy finally
Speaker 1: killed him, but he was in gunnison, and I want
Speaker 1: to say, I can't remember if think it was. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was a tough to draw unit because
Speaker 1: I think as a story goes, I know there's he
Speaker 1: was about like a three sixties something bull, so pretty
Speaker 1: darn big for Colorado Dunnison Basin. And during the rut
Speaker 1: in September, this bull would rut on private land and
Speaker 1: it was like right adjacent to town, I want to say,
Speaker 1: it's right outside of Gunson, so everybody would see him.
Speaker 1: It's just a giant bull run around right around, and
Speaker 1: then like you know, rut would go by, rifle season
Speaker 1: would come around, and this bull would just disappear. Well, finally,
Speaker 1: one dude, it's just like literally glass and just like
Speaker 1: the same mountain that's been behind this bull forever, and
Speaker 1: like looking way high up in the alpine way above
Speaker 1: tree line, and there's like this little patch of willows
Speaker 1: and there's like a hundred yards away there's like five
Speaker 1: like dwarfed little wh or angleman spruce or you know
Speaker 1: whatever lives way up there, you know, this little like
Speaker 1: six foot trees. And gets out of spot and scope.
Speaker 1: He starts looking hard, and he thinks he can see
Speaker 1: tracks like connecting the two, you know. So he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start looking at that patch. He climbs up
Speaker 1: and gets a little bit closer, and sure enough, at
Speaker 1: like ten minutes before dark, up rises out of these
Speaker 1: five little spruce trees, this giant bowl, and he walks
Speaker 1: like a hundred yards over these little you know, dwarf
Speaker 1: tie alpine willows and he loses them in the dark.
Speaker 1: Next morning, he's like watching and like just as his
Speaker 1: cracking light, he just sees those antlers disappeared on his
Speaker 1: five little cruce. He went up there, waited him out,
Speaker 1: killed that bowl, and he said the pack job was
Speaker 1: just like something out of like a K two documentary,
Speaker 1: just like ice Acs is cramp on, just like scooting
Speaker 1: along the edge of this basin, you know, eleven plus
Speaker 1: thousand feet high. But yeah, I mean he's got him
Speaker 1: hanging on his wall now and right into We're hunting
Speaker 1: mule your a couple years ago in Colorado, it was
Speaker 1: into the don't know what season was. There had been
Speaker 1: a couple of seasons going on, and they're just like
Speaker 1: looking through my spot and scope looking for Mulder and
Speaker 1: just seeing a nice bull and be like you son
Speaker 1: up a bit. That's where you're that's where you hang out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've like a post ut situation. Yeah, I've had that
Speaker 1: happen a lot of times in Colorado. I mean, I
Speaker 1: try to go deer hunting there every two or three years,
Speaker 1: and I'll be looking in these little pockets for bucks
Speaker 1: and does, and I'll be like, just like you said,
Speaker 1: you sill be. But I know I could probably come
Speaker 1: back there year after year and find him or other
Speaker 1: bulls around there, and I just I don't know. I
Speaker 1: I try when I do seminars about elk hunting, and
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert by any means. I just have
Speaker 1: a lot of experience that doesn't necessarily make you an expert. Um.
Speaker 1: I try to tell people, think about what time of
Speaker 1: the year you're hunting, and what are the needs to
Speaker 1: elk has at that time of year in the peak rut.
Speaker 1: They don't care about food. You know, it's back there
Speaker 1: when I said the best way to kill a big
Speaker 1: bull is late season with the rifle. The other would
Speaker 1: be at a water hole in a hot climate in
Speaker 1: the middle of the day during peak rut. I've been
Speaker 1: lucky and drawn Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, Utah.
Speaker 1: I've drawn a lot of those tags for our treat.
Speaker 1: What happens is the bulls take their cows up to
Speaker 1: bed them in the morning and they usually stop and
Speaker 1: get some water somewhere along the way. And once they
Speaker 1: bed those bulls and they defend them from a few satellites,
Speaker 1: those bulls will sneak away from the cows about somewhere
Speaker 1: between noon and three o'clock and they will come out
Speaker 1: in broad daylight, get a quick drink, and head back
Speaker 1: up to those cows. I've seen it so many times
Speaker 1: that when I have those tags, now, I don't go
Speaker 1: back to camp and take a nap at noon. I'm
Speaker 1: sleeping at the water hole or I'm sitting like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be at home, because I like to take mind
Speaker 1: that I have from level of twelve up. But I
Speaker 1: think it's those sort of little tidbits that like in
Speaker 1: Montana you maybe never really thought about it, and then
Speaker 1: you went to a really hot climate where like it
Speaker 1: happens more often and you notice it and you go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe on a hot September day, this happens
Speaker 1: in Montana too, and so you know, yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: thing too. Like, uh, when I was two earlier about
Speaker 1: like Havin, you're like core activity, and then there's all
Speaker 1: the experiments we're kind of talk about ways in which
Speaker 1: you become educated in general. But I found at the
Speaker 1: same time that was our deal. I found that I
Speaker 1: don't respect, and I don't mean respect like in a
Speaker 1: way like you know, or let me use a different word.
Speaker 1: I don't admire the hunting prowess of people who have
Speaker 1: just figured out a thing. Yeah it's yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: would be like some dude like yeah, like in September
Speaker 1: he catches a ton of samon trolling in front of
Speaker 1: that river mouth. He's the man, and I was like yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, like anything could happen and that fistory
Speaker 1: or whatever like so I kind of admire like adaptability,
Speaker 1: you know, or all the people that they kill a
Speaker 1: buck every year and then they whoever owns the farm
Speaker 1: they're hunting on, sells the farm. They never hunt again.
Speaker 1: It's like one manute, he's like the dude. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh John Man. Every mopening day he gets his buck
Speaker 1: and it's like yeah, I was just like I have
Speaker 1: my little thing. So through traveling and experimenting, I find
Speaker 1: that like just adaptability in and of itself, it's valuable.
Speaker 1: Oh I I agree completely. I mean it makes you
Speaker 1: feel more comfortable because I used to feel very vulnerable
Speaker 1: when I first started hunting here, first started hunting out here,
Speaker 1: I felt very vulnerable, like, man, would we be screwed
Speaker 1: if somehow this trailhead were to gain popularity? M hm
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean we'll be done yea. And because
Speaker 1: let me know, as you park here there and they're there,
Speaker 1: and like if they were, what the hell that right?
Speaker 1: So I do like the kind of stuff you're saying,
Speaker 1: like go anywhere and having like a toolbox that you
Speaker 1: can you know. Yeah, I've just been lucky to get
Speaker 1: to hunt elk in so many places. You might not
Speaker 1: even be comfortable answers because it sounds like you're like
Speaker 1: tooting your own horn or whatever. But how like like
Speaker 1: how many states or what states have you killed? Public Land,
Speaker 1: alicon um Antana, Whyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada? Uh?
Speaker 1: Should have last year in Utah and two weeks people
Speaker 1: get to see, Yeah, I know how it is eighteen
Speaker 1: yards of bowls standing there and I'm at, you know,
Speaker 1: with my archery gear, thinking, come on, buddy, take one
Speaker 1: step and either the camera's got them or I don't
Speaker 1: have them. And so I could have added Utah to
Speaker 1: that list if not for a very lucky lucky bull
Speaker 1: last year. But so it was all like, do it
Speaker 1: on your own, right, That's that's still seven states, is it.
Speaker 1: I think that's okay. Yeah, you know, and for me,
Speaker 1: I don't really even think about it in terms of numbers.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, that's why I hesitated to ask you.
Speaker 1: I mean it speaks for itself. Yeah, it's just experiences.
Speaker 1: And you know, a classic example of a learning experience
Speaker 1: is I'm in New Mexico. It's archery season. I mean
Speaker 1: it's blistering hot. I go up high and everyone else
Speaker 1: is up high high, like what eight thousand trying to
Speaker 1: get in some ponderosa. And I got my spotting scope
Speaker 1: out on this rock and I'm looking down and I
Speaker 1: see all these elk out on the flats in these grasslands.
Speaker 1: Grab my GPS and my map. I'm like, ship that's
Speaker 1: being lamp. So I go down there and there's some
Speaker 1: guys camp there, and I'm like, you guys hunting these
Speaker 1: elk out here? Oh no, you'll never be able to
Speaker 1: get up on them. I mean, you can't call that man. Well,
Speaker 1: I grew up spotting stock hunting in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways in the big woods of Minnesota. As weird as
Speaker 1: that sounds, you know, you're trying to find someplace where
Speaker 1: a buck is hanging out, and you're trying to see
Speaker 1: him before he sees you, because if he sees you first,
Speaker 1: one big jump and he's gone still n yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: much still hunting. So I'm thinking, you know what, those
Speaker 1: elk got a bed somewhere out there. I go out
Speaker 1: there and I get to looking around. I can see
Speaker 1: where they're bedding. Wherever there's a break in the terrain,
Speaker 1: just a rock pile like six ft, you know, dropping
Speaker 1: a rock. They're bedding right up against those rocks for
Speaker 1: shade or are sad. I go out there and within
Speaker 1: a day I arrow one of those bulls of that
Speaker 1: like two yards and we come packing. Yeah, we come
Speaker 1: packing it out and the guys we walked past their camp,
Speaker 1: They're like, where the hell did you get that out there?
Speaker 1: And I could have shot other bulls on that trip.
Speaker 1: Every time I've went back to that spot and been
Speaker 1: lucky enough to draw those elk have figured out no
Speaker 1: hunters want to come out here because it's about a
Speaker 1: three mile hike, it's hot, there's no shade, but there's
Speaker 1: no hunters either. So elk will go where they're They're
Speaker 1: kind of like this fluid animal that moves in response
Speaker 1: to pressure, kind of like water. I mean, you push
Speaker 1: against the water balloon and the water moves to a
Speaker 1: different spot in the balloon. It's kind of how these
Speaker 1: elk are. And so every year I hope I draw
Speaker 1: that tag because it's so consistent that I go to
Speaker 1: that trailhead I walk out there, no one's gonna be there,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be out there. So it's just one
Speaker 1: of those things. Though, if you have enough experiences and
Speaker 1: go to enough different places, you kind of have those
Speaker 1: discovery movements and say, and what's funny is like if
Speaker 1: someone tells you, like, just describe that hunt, but put
Speaker 1: an antelope in there, and they're like, oh, yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: we'll go after those antelope way out there in the flats.
Speaker 1: But then someone puts an elk out in that same
Speaker 1: country and I can't kill those things. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think we on TV have a tendency
Speaker 1: to maybe create some narrow mindedness among hunters from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of what works or or how wide you're thinking
Speaker 1: should be. I mean, these are smart animals. They've figured
Speaker 1: it out. They've somehow. You know, a bowl that lives
Speaker 1: six years on public land, he's no dummy, Just like
Speaker 1: a white tail that lives past three years in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: there's no dummy. And uh don't don't discount some of
Speaker 1: the things they will do to stay alive. They just
Speaker 1: haven't figured out how to stay alive. That spot you're
Speaker 1: talking about always says you know if you go there.
Speaker 1: Um to me, man like my most valuable possessions in life, idols,
Speaker 1: just handful of things, just like reliable things. And you
Speaker 1: know you really rarely have more than a half dozen.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking just one piece. I mean, just
Speaker 1: like the things that work and now and then for
Speaker 1: whatever reason you just scratch them. Yeah you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Or you haven't done it so long and
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like a thing anymore. But it's like
Speaker 1: knowing like the junk that works and stuff goes away
Speaker 1: like I used to be, because it feels like stuff changes,
Speaker 1: like I one of my things like that I counted
Speaker 1: by my things, like the ability that we would pound
Speaker 1: steelhead at the sixth Street damn in downtown Grand Rappers, Michigan. Right,
Speaker 1: I haven't done it forever the day. They haven't changed
Speaker 1: the damn they haven't changed the river. The steelhead are
Speaker 1: still there. But I feel like somehow if I went back,
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't be able to do it. I like
Speaker 1: lost it as my thing, you know. It's just I
Speaker 1: haven't done it so long. I almost feel like telling people.
Speaker 1: I recently had this thing where I had a friend
Speaker 1: move to a place I used to live, and I'm imploring,
Speaker 1: I'm begging him to go sit a certain avalanche slide
Speaker 1: to see if a bear came out, because I hadn't
Speaker 1: hunted in a decade. And he goes out and said,
Speaker 1: I went up, there's all snowy. I'm like, no, you're
Speaker 1: not listening. I'm saying, dude, it doesn't matter. The shoot
Speaker 1: will be fine. I don't care how much snow. You
Speaker 1: gotta wait through, park your damn car, walk up there
Speaker 1: and look, you know, And he thinks I'm trying to
Speaker 1: help him out. I'm just trying to know, like do
Speaker 1: I still I'm like, do I still have a thing
Speaker 1: or not? Here? And I'm telling like, you go this
Speaker 1: one time, you know, and he goes up called back,
Speaker 1: I'm like, never go there again. That I just needed
Speaker 1: to know that I still have that little thing. It
Speaker 1: works in these little places. I am a big advocate
Speaker 1: for conservation, but and a lot of people know. I
Speaker 1: sit on the board of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. One
Speaker 1: other people came to me and said, Randy, would you
Speaker 1: auction off your GPS with all your ways and you
Speaker 1: talking about Yeah, you talk about mixed emotions because you
Speaker 1: know I didn't do it. No, I I haven't and uh,
Speaker 1: you would have done it, but you lost your GPS
Speaker 1: so you couldn't. I found that GPS. Yeah, Joanna saw
Speaker 1: me a couple of months ago. I was in panic
Speaker 1: mode my GPS with all of this cherished hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd lost it. I'd been on muscrat trapping and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find the damn thing. Well, I have these customs
Speaker 1: heat covers made, and I put it somewhere where I
Speaker 1: wouldn't forget where I put it, and that's where I was.
Speaker 1: I found it in May sometimes but so you can
Speaker 1: auction it off, No, I have never got I will
Speaker 1: someday auction it off. But it kind of like what
Speaker 1: you were saying, Steve about, you know, in respect for
Speaker 1: people who are adaptable or whatever. I respect people who
Speaker 1: want to go out and figure it out, who who
Speaker 1: want to take the journey rather than be led to
Speaker 1: the destination and say here he is, shoot him. I
Speaker 1: mean the guy who just racks his brain and works
Speaker 1: and goes out before work or whatever on the weekends,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's skimped for time, but somehow he
Speaker 1: shoots a bowl every year. That guy's got my respect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like that guy. I always like, I always want
Speaker 1: to help that guy out. Me too. And I always
Speaker 1: want to help out the guy with his kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but dude, he and his kid, And I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what I would do? But um, yeah, man.
Speaker 1: The thing about auction off it's just like, like you said,
Speaker 1: you're proponent of conservation. Um. It just brings up a
Speaker 1: thing that I think about all the time is when
Speaker 1: people talk about the need for hunter recruitment, the only
Speaker 1: will of that, the thinking goes that for hunting to
Speaker 1: survive politically. I mean, I'm not telling you that, I'm
Speaker 1: just for listeners that for hunting to survive in today's
Speaker 1: political climate, we need to have we need to have healthy,
Speaker 1: robust numbers, right. Um. But a thing that critics of
Speaker 1: that say, including many friends of mine who critics of
Speaker 1: the idea of hunter recruitment. We'll be like, well, why
Speaker 1: would you want to increase the likelihood of someone being
Speaker 1: in your spot? And when I get asked by people,
Speaker 1: and often will give talks, and the thing that always
Speaker 1: comes up when I give a talk because people be like,
Speaker 1: what can we be doing? Or why are hunter numbers
Speaker 1: staging that? Or why does the average hunter get older?
Speaker 1: So you know what, what what do you see from
Speaker 1: the people you meet? I'm like, you know what, Inspiring
Speaker 1: people to want to go is not a problem, right,
Speaker 1: There's plenty of motivation out there. The cost, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's there's not a lot of people. There aren't
Speaker 1: tons of people who want to hunt but can't because
Speaker 1: the cost. They're not hung as they don't have a
Speaker 1: good spot, and a lot of people aren't willing to
Speaker 1: just make the sacrifices necessary to find good spots. I
Speaker 1: found I take people out, take them on amazing trips,
Speaker 1: and then they are going to replicate that amazing trip
Speaker 1: unless they do tons of hard work to find their
Speaker 1: own stuff. And that's it for him. And when it
Speaker 1: comes down to it, so like I like, so if
Speaker 1: I was consistent with what I'm saying, I would give
Speaker 1: up all my spots. True, you would, because I would
Speaker 1: be able to make a handful of people. But it's
Speaker 1: just not something I'm willing to do. And some people,
Speaker 1: like you know, my older brother, he just thinks that
Speaker 1: all this talk is just ridiculous. And I've listened to
Speaker 1: some of your podcasts where the topics come up, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of torn between. I'm I'm all about making
Speaker 1: sure opportunity exists, but not handing it to him. I
Speaker 1: think the worst thing you can do for a prospective
Speaker 1: hunter is to hand them something that just show them
Speaker 1: the easy way. Oh well, that's all there is to that,
Speaker 1: and you've cheated him out of the entire experience of
Speaker 1: what hunting really is. In my mind, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the value that people when people say hunting recruitment,
Speaker 1: that's not what I think of. You know, bring him
Speaker 1: on out that, bringing them out there, make sure they
Speaker 1: kill something the first day. Now, you know, let them
Speaker 1: get a little called, let them, you know, maybe feel
Speaker 1: a little lost, let them have to work, and that's
Speaker 1: the part that is going to make them a hunter
Speaker 1: for the long term. It was if it's easy there's
Speaker 1: no reward in it. Yeah, I don't want to make
Speaker 1: new hunters just for the sake of doing it. No,
Speaker 1: if you told me if I signed some treaty with
Speaker 1: the non hunting public, he said, we'll never mess with you. Okay,
Speaker 1: in perpetuity, you will not be messed with politically or environmentally.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, Okay, I'll just be the only that
Speaker 1: honestly want to be the only guy that hunts. Is
Speaker 1: long is you're telling me you're not gonna mess with
Speaker 1: the habits at, You're not gonna mess with the hunting rights.
Speaker 1: You know That's fine. I'll just be the guy I'll take.
Speaker 1: I'll take that job. I've heard you talk about your
Speaker 1: brother's opinion on this and growing up in Michigan. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it was a little bit like where I grew
Speaker 1: up in Minnesota, where everybody hunting fish, everybody, well, every household. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I did not know anyone who really ate
Speaker 1: beef growing up until I went off to college. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how much beef, chicken, and pork got standing. Oh, definitely,
Speaker 1: we ate all kinds like we ate. There was all around.
Speaker 1: Domestic meat was there, but they everybody hunted, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like it wasn't like a subsistence area. But and
Speaker 1: so the point I'm getting to is, because some people
Speaker 1: grow up in that environment where you just work your
Speaker 1: butt off and you hunt and your fish and you
Speaker 1: trap and you do all those kind of things, you
Speaker 1: encounter experiences that shape inform you, so you don't need
Speaker 1: to be quote unquote recruited as a hunter. Everybody I
Speaker 1: grew up with they were going to be hunters because
Speaker 1: we came from a society of hunters. That was our identity.
Speaker 1: That you weren't, Oh, I'm a carpenter and then I'm
Speaker 1: a hunter. It was the reverse. No, I'm a hunter.
Speaker 1: Just who you were if if you were a young kid,
Speaker 1: you looked up to the guys who were hunters in
Speaker 1: your community, or fishermen or trappers or whatever. And so
Speaker 1: I I think a lot of quote unquote problems we
Speaker 1: we attribute to hunting recruitment are just the environment or
Speaker 1: atmosphere in which we're trying to bring them into it.
Speaker 1: You know, trying to bring someone who's only exposed to
Speaker 1: nature or to the natural world for one day out
Speaker 1: of a year. You're not gonna convert them to being
Speaker 1: a hunter, like we think of a hunter, you have
Speaker 1: to put in the effort in the work to immerse
Speaker 1: them to a level where they understand all the other
Speaker 1: parts of hunting. Yeah. I thought about that because I've
Speaker 1: been um befuddled at times by taking people out on
Speaker 1: that one day a year thing, you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I took you on this, like we flew up with
Speaker 1: like a caribou hunt. Surely you'll now be a hunter
Speaker 1: and then ay, there's never hunt again. Yeah, I don't understand, dude.
Speaker 1: But then we're talking. It's not long ago. I feel like,
Speaker 1: but if someone took me sailing, they're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you want to come sailing for a day? Like why not?
Speaker 1: Later they're like, I can't believe he never became a sailor.
Speaker 1: I think, no, dude, I just thought to be interested
Speaker 1: to go sailing over day. We went sailing. That's great.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you regret going sailing? No? I want
Speaker 1: to like be a sailor. No, it's fun. You know.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look at that way
Speaker 1: like I look at it, like do you self defined
Speaker 1: as a hunter or not? I do, And that's you know,
Speaker 1: most people don't look at the world that way what
Speaker 1: people ask me. I think we were doing an interview
Speaker 1: with you guys, I think, and someone said, Randy, introduce yourself. Randy,
Speaker 1: I'm Randy Newberg. Hunter. It's just that's who I am. Yeah, professionally,
Speaker 1: I'm a c p A and everything else. But everyone
Speaker 1: who knows me, all the people I hang out with,
Speaker 1: their hunters, and we look at the world through a
Speaker 1: lens that is so much different than everybody else. And
Speaker 1: I used to think that I was the same as
Speaker 1: everybody else. But after you have enough of these life experiences,
Speaker 1: interacting with enough people who don't hunt or see the
Speaker 1: world differently, you realize that hunting gives you a vision
Speaker 1: of the world like nothing else. Yeah, I mean, nothing
Speaker 1: I can think of compares to the vision of the
Speaker 1: natural world you get if you are a hunter. I
Speaker 1: don't you mentioned trapping a couple of times. Before we
Speaker 1: get into trapping too far, let's just take a quick break. So, Randy,
Speaker 1: you mentioned trapping a couple of times, and now you
Speaker 1: mentioned that a hunter looks at the world way that
Speaker 1: no one else looks at it. I'll tell you that
Speaker 1: when I'm driving down a road and I drive over
Speaker 1: a bridge, I know what you're saying, and I look
Speaker 1: off the bridge, no one is looking at what I'm
Speaker 1: looking at or not. No one, very few individuals will
Speaker 1: select few individuals are looking off the bridge that way exactly.
Speaker 1: And just like when I drive through a value, I'm
Speaker 1: looking up the mountains like I do not see what
Speaker 1: all the people see. I think that I have. I
Speaker 1: think that hunting in some way makes it very difficult
Speaker 1: to look at the natural world with passivity. Completely agree.
Speaker 1: It's like you're looking at it sort of in a way,
Speaker 1: and it sounds egotistical, but you're looking at it the
Speaker 1: way like, well, how does this like pertain to me
Speaker 1: in some way? Like where are the animals? Or what's
Speaker 1: up with that spot? And it's I can I can
Speaker 1: only see it that way if I go on vacation.
Speaker 1: We just went on family vacation in Hawaii. The whole
Speaker 1: time I'm looking at those hills being like, no, what
Speaker 1: would have fella fine up there? This bone arrow? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I can't not see things that way.
Speaker 1: I can't. My wife has just been baffled by my
Speaker 1: inability to just sit on the beach. I am the
Speaker 1: same way my wife will say, is that all you
Speaker 1: think about. Yeah, I don't think about one thing when
Speaker 1: when we're doing whatever. You know, we might be driving
Speaker 1: down the road and I'm like, on our way home,
Speaker 1: I want to stop there, kind of like you're saying
Speaker 1: about the bridge, because at that culvert right there, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure I could trap a muskrat. That's what I
Speaker 1: was getting out, And I said, like driving over bridge,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, so I grew up trapping in Michigan. You
Speaker 1: grew up trapping to Minnesota. Yeah, a lot of the
Speaker 1: I don't know, fift I needed a little little bit
Speaker 1: of groundworker. Like when you're trapping, you Romans called a
Speaker 1: trap line, and no one just sets a trap, like
Speaker 1: you're on a trap line, and your trap line might
Speaker 1: be six what we call sets or locations where you
Speaker 1: have a trap set, or in the case of a
Speaker 1: mink long liner, you might have two D three hundred
Speaker 1: traps out or what you call sets. So when I
Speaker 1: was trapping, fifty percent of my sets that I would
Speaker 1: make would be on public rightways of bridges for mink
Speaker 1: and muskrat, mink, muskrat, raccoon. So like I divided trapping
Speaker 1: up in my head, water trapping, land trapping, so land
Speaker 1: trapping you trapped love it was early like we'd land
Speaker 1: we'd start land trapping. I don't member where. I can't
Speaker 1: remember that. When I would do it, I'd start land
Speaker 1: trapping October ten, UM, and you'd have twenty days of
Speaker 1: land trapping before water trapping open up. During land trapping,
Speaker 1: I would target red fox, but um, I would get
Speaker 1: gray fox, and I would get raccoons that weren't that
Speaker 1: valuable because raccoons hadn't come into prime quite yet. Um.
Speaker 1: And then November one, I would start water trapping Zone two.
Speaker 1: When I started water trapping zone too, I would set
Speaker 1: tons of public rightaways where you are climbing into it.
Speaker 1: You don't, you're it's not public land. You had permission
Speaker 1: on the land. You could park your car on the
Speaker 1: bridge or parking car on the side of the road
Speaker 1: and sort of skirt down the bridge abutment abutment, get
Speaker 1: down the river and then make your set below the
Speaker 1: high water mark. Yeah. So you just learned the same way.
Speaker 1: Now as a hunter, I look at like a like
Speaker 1: a brushy strip between two corn fields in a certain way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: driving over bridges, I had a way of I would
Speaker 1: just be able to assess it so quickly, whether it
Speaker 1: was interesting to me or not. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people ask me, well, how has trapping helped you as
Speaker 1: someone who hunts, because you you still trapped? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, be honest, you came with me one day
Speaker 1: last year. I just sent all the muskrats to the Canada,
Speaker 1: to the fur auction and they sold them last two
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Um, what was your average for large? It's
Speaker 1: terrible this year. There's an article in the New York
Speaker 1: Times yesterday about how first coming back, no, they could
Speaker 1: say an anfort. Thanks to Putin, the Russian are trying
Speaker 1: to invade everything in Eastern Europe. So it's at least
Speaker 1: for a guy who's a muskrat mink guy like I am.
Speaker 1: Two years ago, I got twelve bucks a piece for
Speaker 1: a double XL muskrat. This year they were This year
Speaker 1: they were five bucks apiece. I mean premium winner skins.
Speaker 1: But you know, two weeks out of my winter I
Speaker 1: get to go on goof around, catch three muskrats, a
Speaker 1: few minks and raccoon, dozen't beaver, and it's just you
Speaker 1: catch three d scraps we always called scraps. You catch
Speaker 1: three hundred scrats and two weeks. Oh easy, if I
Speaker 1: if I didn't have taxis and to worry about, I
Speaker 1: could catch a thousand on them in two weeks. It's
Speaker 1: it's crazy what I trapped. Um. I tried a lot
Speaker 1: of muskrats, but I trapped fox kyle and incidental. That
Speaker 1: would be raccoon, possum, skunk on dry land possum in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I didn't know that we didn't
Speaker 1: have them in Minnesota. I didn't know that. I bet
Speaker 1: they do. Now there's two things. There's two animals that
Speaker 1: are traditionally southern that have been really expanding the range
Speaker 1: northern and that all he has to do with climate change.
Speaker 1: I don't think it has to do with just just
Speaker 1: slow adaptability. Raccoons well, several have alinas seemed to move
Speaker 1: northward all the time. A possums are moving northward, So yeah,
Speaker 1: you get death up. Incidentally, then I would trap muskrat, mink, beaver, raccoon,
Speaker 1: and then you were allowed, depending where you were, one
Speaker 1: or two river otters. And I would really work hard
Speaker 1: to get my otters. But I wouldn't sell my honors
Speaker 1: into the firm market. I'd sell them into the taxidermy trade, huh,
Speaker 1: because they were a novelty item, right, So like when
Speaker 1: I was trappling to Michigan, a bobcat in Michigan was
Speaker 1: worth fifteen bucks. Text terms could be hun here right
Speaker 1: now like good Western as they call them, Lynx cad
Speaker 1: even though it's not a Canadian lynx. You know, a
Speaker 1: really good colored spotted belly five six hundred bucks. Taxidermist
Speaker 1: will still pay you a hunterbucks for him, so it
Speaker 1: would vary, you know, back then when in my here
Speaker 1: coyotes are just coming in. Remember the first two kyles
Speaker 1: I remembers. I sold him in taxi Dervis, okay, because
Speaker 1: people were still kind of like wow, okay, and like
Speaker 1: people weren't as tied in then as they are now,
Speaker 1: just like pre Internet, somewhat pre internet, so it's like
Speaker 1: what you had access to, Like I always argue now
Speaker 1: that the souvenirs are obsolete. Can can I stop you there?
Speaker 1: You said somewhat pre internet when you were trapping, because
Speaker 1: remember I had an email and no well way pret
Speaker 1: when I started trapping. Okay, when I quit trapping, there
Speaker 1: was a university email thing, okay, because I was gonna
Speaker 1: say the Internet for me when I was trapping growing up,
Speaker 1: al Gore hadn't even graduated from college to invent the Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to clarify the point. I set my first
Speaker 1: trap called my First Muskrat, ten years old, way pre
Speaker 1: in that. But I was thinking when I quit trapping
Speaker 1: at twenty two years of age, there was at the
Speaker 1: college I went through, there was some kind of university
Speaker 1: email thing and people were just starting to mess around.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but at that time when I sold those
Speaker 1: two kyos is. Around that time, I was saying that
Speaker 1: people used to have where you could go into a
Speaker 1: tax nurvis and they're like a provincial bunch. You know,
Speaker 1: you're going to a tax's be like, here's a Kyle,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't occur to them that there's guys out
Speaker 1: west and stacks are kind of like Kyle stacked up
Speaker 1: every which way. They're begging someone to take off their
Speaker 1: hands and be like, holy sh it, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: buy that kyote off you. So you know, it was
Speaker 1: like that at the time, and as a site hose
Speaker 1: and say like souvenirs are going obo sleet like people
Speaker 1: were like, well, I went to France, you know, I
Speaker 1: bought this bottle of wine, but dude, buy that bottle
Speaker 1: of Safeway. Man, you know, I mean, like I could
Speaker 1: go and leid, but there's nothing I can't unless you
Speaker 1: find something out in the woods. There's nothing you can't
Speaker 1: give someone they just can't get. So it's like weird
Speaker 1: now to buy people like you go to Hawaii and
Speaker 1: buy a Seashell necklace. It's just weird because like I
Speaker 1: go to Seashell Necklaces dot Com. But we also gonna
Speaker 1: bring up like, I mean, that was really about trapping.
Speaker 1: It's you so you're ten years older I, which means
Speaker 1: you hit the fur boom. I missed the fur boom.
Speaker 1: Fur boom definitions vary. It's largely accepted that like the
Speaker 1: Great American fur boom, Yeah, I hit it perfect. Some
Speaker 1: people fudge you by a year or more. But for
Speaker 1: there's just this this explosion of good fortune for firm
Speaker 1: markets having to political, economical fashion. Yeah, commodities, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a hedge against commodities. It's when the dollar is
Speaker 1: going one way first can be going another and all
Speaker 1: those things in fur together. But everything exploded right for
Speaker 1: prices for for like anything with hair fur on it
Speaker 1: skyrocketed in value right overnight, and every Tom, Dick and
Speaker 1: Harry in the world went out. For sure. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: How many people in my little town of Big Falls
Speaker 1: trap You gotta figure just adjusting for inflation. Yeah, muskrats,
Speaker 1: it was like the era of the six dollar muskrat.
Speaker 1: But we're talking in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, my first year in college, I came home
Speaker 1: for Christmas break in, me and my uncle, uncle and
Speaker 1: I we got six hundred muskrats in a week. And
Speaker 1: what what's up traffic? What kind of cover? Like? What
Speaker 1: kind of have with that up? In these beaver flotage
Speaker 1: is in northern Minnesota, you north of Highway to you
Speaker 1: were allowed to cut the tops off there there are
Speaker 1: rat houses, and so you'd cut it off, put a
Speaker 1: couple of traps and there put the lid back on,
Speaker 1: patch it all up. You'd have your trap on a
Speaker 1: long wire. So when you walk by, the muskrat got
Speaker 1: in your trap, and you knew because he went down
Speaker 1: the hole into the water, pulled the pull the wire
Speaker 1: up against the hut. He can't molest the hut. Oh really? Okay?
Speaker 1: In southern Minnesota at that time, you couldn't. I think
Speaker 1: you can now, But we would go do that and
Speaker 1: one guy would just walk around these beaver flowagees and
Speaker 1: pull the muskrats out of the traps, put the traps
Speaker 1: back in, and the other guy would sit out of
Speaker 1: fire and skin muskrats because if if it was twenty below,
Speaker 1: you know, if you didn't skin them right away, they
Speaker 1: were hard. Oh yeah, you weren't gonna get them skin
Speaker 1: And so at that point in time, to be a
Speaker 1: college freshman and come home and get five six bucks
Speaker 1: for muskrats and you're half of them, is you know,
Speaker 1: three hundred. I went back to college for winter semester. Man,
Speaker 1: it was Domino's and high quality beer that semester. It was.
Speaker 1: It's just how it was. I came back spring break
Speaker 1: of that college year and we caught a hundred in
Speaker 1: a week, and we were catching them so fast Minnesota. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like a lot of my buddies, we were catching
Speaker 1: so many we didn't have time to skin them all.
Speaker 1: And the fur buyer would come and we'd have them
Speaker 1: laying in the basement of my uncle's house, stacked up
Speaker 1: literally like firewood. And the guy would say twenty bucks
Speaker 1: apiece in the round. In other words, you didn't have
Speaker 1: to skin them anything. He didn't size them. It was
Speaker 1: just twenty bucks apiece. Take them and he'd just sit
Speaker 1: there and slap his twenty dollar bills on the table.
Speaker 1: And we were just I mean, we thought we had
Speaker 1: really hit the lottery. Yeah, first sold in three ways
Speaker 1: you sell it. During the fur boom, trappers got interested
Speaker 1: in trapping faster than they could learn their trade. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of people out for a quick dollar and
Speaker 1: they were interested in sort of the discipline art of
Speaker 1: being a trapper, and they would sell a lot of
Speaker 1: fur round and round means on the animal. So fur
Speaker 1: buyers like, I mean, add a layer out of this.
Speaker 1: There's three ways of self fur. There's three ways of
Speaker 1: selfur meaning in the round. I got two many ideas
Speaker 1: going once here. There's two ways that you actually sell fur.
Speaker 1: A fur buyer, like a country fur buyer, or a
Speaker 1: fur auction. During the fur boom, you had country for
Speaker 1: buyers just like a guy buying for oms garage. He's
Speaker 1: selling to the auctions, and the same trappers can basically
Speaker 1: selling those auctions as well. But to sell an auction
Speaker 1: you gotta sell it fleshed and dried. That's hard. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's harder to learn how to flesh beaver than
Speaker 1: it is the trap of beaver. During the fur boom,
Speaker 1: guys will go out and trap, and just every night
Speaker 1: on their way home from trapping, go to the country
Speaker 1: fur buyer and sell fur in the round to the
Speaker 1: fur buyer. Or you could skin it, which is the
Speaker 1: easy part, and sell it green. Yeah, I sold all
Speaker 1: my raccoons, all my beaver green skinned but not fleshed
Speaker 1: and stretched. But I could sell them at a small
Speaker 1: auction that way because I could just freeze him a
Speaker 1: big chest freezer. So during the fur but yet at
Speaker 1: guys that didn't know what end of a knife was sharp,
Speaker 1: but they were trapping and selling the fur buyers in
Speaker 1: the round. But you're walking and selling red fox in
Speaker 1: the round for sixty bucks. It was crazy. But again
Speaker 1: remember we're talking about right, and you take those dollars
Speaker 1: for inflation. I remember having a couple hundred bucks in
Speaker 1: two my senior year in high school. That fall, I
Speaker 1: got fifty some mink before school, just running a trap
Speaker 1: line on my way to school, and I think I
Speaker 1: averaged like twenty four bucks a mink that's male female
Speaker 1: in the round. No, I I mean, because they're quick
Speaker 1: to skin and and dry and stretch, but actually come
Speaker 1: off clean like a mink. You don't have the flesh
Speaker 1: from two. Now that's the it's easy. And I just
Speaker 1: think about that now. I'm like, man, if I could
Speaker 1: get whatever dollars was in two, if I could get
Speaker 1: that today, I'd have to get out out or TV
Speaker 1: because I'd be trapping man all day long. But you're
Speaker 1: you're in a way, you were getting screwed. Because what
Speaker 1: I wanna say was when I came in four, I
Speaker 1: was coming in on the euphoria of the fir boom,
Speaker 1: but without the prices. There was a lot of information
Speaker 1: out there. There's a lot of traps use traps out there,
Speaker 1: but I had missed it by a couple of years.
Speaker 1: So but I came into a time when people there
Speaker 1: were still affort because it hadn't gone totally bad yet.
Speaker 1: We would get and I was ten, I couldn't really
Speaker 1: started in the earlier. The first day ever set traps
Speaker 1: was I set traps at midnight on November one. By
Speaker 1: seven am on November one, It's like I have an
Speaker 1: alibi for that day, dude, I could think exactly where
Speaker 1: it was. By seven am, we had three muskrats. I
Speaker 1: think we had nine traps. We had three muskrats. Two
Speaker 1: were caught. One was caught in front of Joe Babcox
Speaker 1: house in a one ten conno bear. One was caught
Speaker 1: in front of this this Foster family's house on North
Speaker 1: Lake one ten conno bear. And we caught one on
Speaker 1: the north trending side of Crazy Mary's Point in a
Speaker 1: number one single long spring traps that under a stump.
Speaker 1: We're a bank then entered. I could tell you every
Speaker 1: damn detail of that day, and we sold those muskrats
Speaker 1: for I think our big ones that year. We caught
Speaker 1: twenty the first year, and my old man lent it,
Speaker 1: lent us the money like I have older half brother.
Speaker 1: He gave a six number one, He gave a six
Speaker 1: number one long spring Victor long Springs. Then what we
Speaker 1: did is our old man lent us money. He drew
Speaker 1: up a little contract, even on a yellow legal paper,
Speaker 1: and lent us enough money to buy one dozen Northwoods
Speaker 1: one ten conno bears, And we caught our first year
Speaker 1: trap in twenty muskrats. One smallish raccoon and made enough
Speaker 1: to not only pay for the conno bears we bought,
Speaker 1: but to go buy a bunch of more connobaris. And
Speaker 1: I was off running because at the time, if you
Speaker 1: called a buck mink, a buck makers worth twice as
Speaker 1: much as a female. And it's even then minks held
Speaker 1: because you would get forty bucks for mink. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: it's it was crazy. And I remember my two brothers
Speaker 1: one time late in the year, I like quit, I
Speaker 1: pulled out of our trap and collect to touch at
Speaker 1: my two bars. I can remember what someone's going out
Speaker 1: of school. But anyways, they went to set some more
Speaker 1: muskrat ponds and I didn't participate, and they came home
Speaker 1: and picked up two mink out of muskrat sets. Remember
Speaker 1: the dudes walking through with for forty bucks a piece
Speaker 1: and being blown away. I remember night six, I shot
Speaker 1: of mink with a thirty two special, took his head
Speaker 1: off and board a groove down the center of his back,
Speaker 1: and we took it to it for by her name,
Speaker 1: the Abe Sallessina, and Abe Sallessina offered me like four
Speaker 1: dollars for that, making my old man cursing him out,
Speaker 1: really because he thought you were getting a bad treatment,
Speaker 1: he said, I'd invite you to sell that mink for
Speaker 1: more somewhere else than the dude bottle being right and
Speaker 1: want to take to make so I was missing a part.
Speaker 1: So now here you are what you said. You're twenty
Speaker 1: two and last time you trapped. So I trapped from
Speaker 1: the time I was ten to the time was twenty two,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was taken. I was still into it.
Speaker 1: I was paying. I remember paying a guy named Mark
Speaker 1: June who later became like a video white tail guy.
Speaker 1: I remember paying Mark June two fifty bucks for a
Speaker 1: day's lessons in trapping Red Suburbia, Red Fox. So do
Speaker 1: you miss it? Oh? Yeah, But I still said every
Speaker 1: I still set traps because I still I like. I
Speaker 1: eventually settled into the thing I like to do is
Speaker 1: trapped beaver through the ice. I love it. It became
Speaker 1: my thing. I liked everything about it. I liked. We
Speaker 1: would go out and out in the ice December January
Speaker 1: with a push broom and push brooms, snow away on
Speaker 1: the ice looking for bubble trails, exhale trails and take
Speaker 1: axes and chain sauce and ship and get down through
Speaker 1: that ice and stringing snares and stringing three thirties and
Speaker 1: I loved every minute of it. I like falling through
Speaker 1: the ice. It's like I liked everything about it. Man,
Speaker 1: And I still now will trap. I trap to beaver
Speaker 1: to spring. I'll still trap it, and I'll send it
Speaker 1: and get a tan and I'll haven't made it into stuff.
Speaker 1: So I got. I trapped my own hat, I trapped
Speaker 1: my own mittens. I got some stuff getting made right now.
Speaker 1: I got a beaver that my brothers haven't made into
Speaker 1: a hat for his wife. So I'm still in the
Speaker 1: fur business. But I'm just in person. I'm into personal use.
Speaker 1: And then I eat the beaver meat. I like beaver
Speaker 1: meat well, but I'm not into trap. I'm not trapping
Speaker 1: numbers like I used to out after a beaver. And
Speaker 1: I know some people are listening to this and probably thinking, man,
Speaker 1: these guys, they're off their rock here talking about trapping.
Speaker 1: But if you've trapped, you understand the excitement of ain't
Speaker 1: in bed at night thinking, oh that one that set,
Speaker 1: that last set I made tonight, that's gonna catch one
Speaker 1: in the morning, and you almost can't get to sleep
Speaker 1: at night. You can't it's worse than opening the night
Speaker 1: before opening day of deer season. I could never sleep
Speaker 1: between seven because we'd go out and set at midnight.
Speaker 1: Because we live in a high competition area. Okay, we'd
Speaker 1: said our pre we picked like what's the premos spot,
Speaker 1: and we'd set start set midnight and we set like
Speaker 1: even even up into whatever age. When I quit trapping,
Speaker 1: I was still set traps from midnight through the dawn
Speaker 1: up to dark. Wow. And I would get a lot
Speaker 1: of sets out. I would punch in usually more than
Speaker 1: seventys wowe for mixed bag from otter to scraps. It
Speaker 1: was never that competitive for me. I mean, everyone kind
Speaker 1: of okay, Randy's gonna be out here to be out there.
Speaker 1: It was no one bothered. But before we get done
Speaker 1: there and get too far, I'll just get started on
Speaker 1: talking to we We could be honest is in here
Speaker 1: and looking at us like, man, these guys can really
Speaker 1: spin it out. But I want to. I want to
Speaker 1: just before you make it, if I want to say
Speaker 1: one last thing about the people think you're off the
Speaker 1: rock about trapping. Yeah, I remember making the observation and
Speaker 1: I'll stay by this today. The most skilled outdoors and
Speaker 1: are trappers, no doubt. And here's how I'll prove it.
Speaker 1: If you fish, there's people out there who just fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right now, anyone hunts knows how to fish. Correct, anyone
Speaker 1: that traps knows how to hunting fish. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's just like you know what I mean, It's just
Speaker 1: a thing. You're better a trappers, better than everybody else.
Speaker 1: You know more bits of And I have to talk
Speaker 1: about I like, I remember I made this point before
Speaker 1: about guys who want lions with hounds. People be like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, what's the challenge and shooting line out of
Speaker 1: a tree. And then I met some houndsman who hunt lions,
Speaker 1: and I realized that guy holds more bits of information
Speaker 1: in his head. Right, if you can somehow quantify information
Speaker 1: way we have digitally, right and add up how many
Speaker 1: bits of hunting information does a guy who shoots white
Speaker 1: tails out his father in law's farm in Wisconsin? How
Speaker 1: many bits of information are in his head? And how
Speaker 1: many bits are in a houndsman's head? He has gigabyte
Speaker 1: upon gigabyte more information in his head. Yeah, I a trapper,
Speaker 1: A good trapper. You can't when you talk about read
Speaker 1: and sign the ability to read sign and it's just
Speaker 1: in space awareness and having a landscape map in your head.
Speaker 1: You can't get closer to it than a hardcore trapping.
Speaker 1: The anticipation that the trapping requires, as far as anticipation
Speaker 1: of what that animal is going to do, just makes
Speaker 1: you think an experiments so much more than hunting does.
Speaker 1: Because trapping, they are stepping within and you know a
Speaker 1: two inch area, you got you, guys, I need him
Speaker 1: to step right here, okay, archers, Yeah, forty yards is
Speaker 1: good enough to circle forty yards? Yeah, which means the
Speaker 1: eight yards circle circle with an eight yard diameter, and
Speaker 1: it's talk about a circle that's an inch and three quarters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the most some archers who are just badass woodsman,
Speaker 1: but try to get that to a two inch circle.
Speaker 1: And the benefit is with archer, you need to be
Speaker 1: there when it happens. With trapping, you don't need to
Speaker 1: be there when it happens. Yeah. I want to get
Speaker 1: to this point, Steve So, I read your book about
Speaker 1: your bison hunt in Alaska. I mean I knew you
Speaker 1: back when you did your show on Travel Channel and
Speaker 1: and uh I lucked out. I drew a free range
Speaker 1: bison tag in Montana. For it was January two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: I said, all right, I gotta go find a good
Speaker 1: bison book. I read your book, and you are either
Speaker 1: a stark raving nut or one hell of an author
Speaker 1: that makes that hunt and the danger involved seemed way
Speaker 1: greater than it is, or you just have a death wish.
Speaker 1: I read that and I said, this guy is he
Speaker 1: owes the world the tragedy if this is how he
Speaker 1: conducts himself out in the wild all the time? Was
Speaker 1: it is this just like a really good piece of writing,
Speaker 1: or was it really that wild? It was one of
Speaker 1: It was like the most intense ten days that I've
Speaker 1: spent hunting. It's some of the most intense reading I've
Speaker 1: ever But here's the thing. Here, here's I'll take a
Speaker 1: couple of things. It's like, that's a different kind of hunt.
Speaker 1: Like the Copper River hunt is a difficult hunt, and
Speaker 1: it used to be much more difficult because at the
Speaker 1: time I drew it, all the land along that river
Speaker 1: was inaccessible because it's tribal land. Now they have a
Speaker 1: set access feed for people that draw that tag. At
Speaker 1: the time I drew it, there was no such thing.
Speaker 1: So you have this river, and there's herds of animals
Speaker 1: that migrate a good distance forty miles. They ca up
Speaker 1: by these glaciers in the wrangles, and they wenter down
Speaker 1: on these gravel flats, these willow flats along the Copper River,
Speaker 1: and there's really nearly distribution. It's a humongous area, maybe
Speaker 1: a hundred animals, and it's spread out over a ton
Speaker 1: of ground. And at the time, you could not hunt
Speaker 1: the river corridor. All the huntable land you can find
Speaker 1: down below high watermark. Okay, on a gravel flat, does
Speaker 1: blow high watermark and kill it there, Okay, as long
Speaker 1: as it didn't go up. If it walked up, you're screwed.
Speaker 1: Or you could get past the buffer along the river
Speaker 1: by wading up a tributary stream to get in, because
Speaker 1: then you're fine. You're blow high watermark to get into
Speaker 1: the hunting area. The year I drew tag, they gave
Speaker 1: out twenty four permits. Four guys killed an animal. The
Speaker 1: seasons eight months long. They find that most people don't
Speaker 1: show up. Once you find out, they send you a letter.
Speaker 1: After you draw the tag, they send you a letter.
Speaker 1: They used to this is two thousand four. They send
Speaker 1: you letters saying like, Okay, I drew the tag, but
Speaker 1: basically you're screwed because there's serious land ownership issues. You
Speaker 1: have to understand what you're getting into. It's like there's
Speaker 1: major access issues. There's a lot of barriers to this.
Speaker 1: I went, and the minute I drew it, I sold
Speaker 1: the story of this before going, I sold the story
Speaker 1: of this to a magazine outside magazine. I was a
Speaker 1: writer and at the time I lived a very hand
Speaker 1: of mouth existence. So I'm doing a story that will
Speaker 1: offset my costs in doing this. So I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: like four thousand bucks to do the story, the hunt,
Speaker 1: all everything is gonna cost a lot. I had to
Speaker 1: do it. So I find out and people say like, well,
Speaker 1: why did you write like a book? Like why did
Speaker 1: you write your book? There's two reasons. There's the there's
Speaker 1: the not the real reason, but there's like this like
Speaker 1: reality reason that oftentimes has to do with with money, right,
Speaker 1: and it just is pragmatic. I guess, like, well, because
Speaker 1: I was gonna write an article about it, you know,
Speaker 1: and I sold the thing, why did you really do it? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in Buffalo. I only write about what
Speaker 1: I'm interested in. I got in as a story chronicles.
Speaker 1: My interest in Buffalo spawned was spawned by me finding
Speaker 1: a buffalo skull in the Madison Range in a weird
Speaker 1: place like nine tho feet above sea level the mountains.
Speaker 1: I went up having a genetic line extracted from it
Speaker 1: head at Radio Carpon dated like the book tells this
Speaker 1: big story of Buffalo and in America. But the minute
Speaker 1: I found at skull, I was like, Man, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: write a book about these animals. I just don't know
Speaker 1: what the storyline is gonna be. And then I drew
Speaker 1: that tag. So I had a lot riding on finding
Speaker 1: a buffalo and killing and I got into situations doing
Speaker 1: that that we're in and in I chronicle all this
Speaker 1: like very detailed way, and like, yeah, when I was
Speaker 1: doing that book, you know, because some people just fabricate
Speaker 1: whole cloth and then publishers get in trouble and writers
Speaker 1: get in trouble. So when I wrote that book, they
Speaker 1: made a big point like I had to go over
Speaker 1: everything on maps, provide names for people for them to call.
Speaker 1: They just like wanted to know. But I could take
Speaker 1: you up there right now and walk you through it,
Speaker 1: and once you see what I'm talking about It would
Speaker 1: all make sense in that you're confined. In my case,
Speaker 1: you're confined to either being in the Dadina, Nadina or
Speaker 1: Chettilina River. You're not gonna get to Anals river. The
Speaker 1: only way to get to Anals rivers is wait till
Speaker 1: it freezes, which is like the other guys that kill
Speaker 1: buffalo or hunting off snow machines going up the frozen river,
Speaker 1: wait till the river freezes, and they're killing them in
Speaker 1: the winter when the bad weather has pushed them down
Speaker 1: into the willows. The letter I got from fishing game
Speaker 1: that says you're screwed points out successful hunters on his hunt,
Speaker 1: and that's why they give you eight months to start
Speaker 1: September one, and you have eight months. The reason they
Speaker 1: give you that it's because the river freezes. They say.
Speaker 1: Most guys that killed buffalo and this hunt do it
Speaker 1: off snow machines when the animals are pushed down in
Speaker 1: the river flats. But you should be aware that river
Speaker 1: hasn't frozen in three years. Okay, they hadn't been killing
Speaker 1: any buffalo off that hunt. When I first drew the tag,
Speaker 1: I was like sweet. I talked to my brother, I
Speaker 1: got a brother in anchorage. He's got friends and snow machines.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go up in march, and we're gonna go up.
Speaker 1: You got your low daylight, but you just basically cruise
Speaker 1: the river up and down, up and down until they're
Speaker 1: you just standing in a non on the hunkle willow
Speaker 1: out on a willow island. It got where it just
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be. And so I got this idea that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have friends bring me down. We're gonna hunt together.
Speaker 1: And I'm at first like, oh fine, one on the river.
Speaker 1: So I get my brother, two of our buddies who
Speaker 1: are avid rafters, and we get down and there's three
Speaker 1: main river areas we have identified as being areas where
Speaker 1: they've been killed in the past. We passed one past
Speaker 1: the other, get to the third and have seen like
Speaker 1: a set of tracks. These guys have jobs. They're not
Speaker 1: starving like you. They're like, sorry, dude, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: guess our only option here is that you'll leave me
Speaker 1: here and you know, like cell phones and ship like
Speaker 1: that's not going on. You'll leave me here and you'll
Speaker 1: come back and get me like a week over week
Speaker 1: now on a Sunday, and I'll be backed down here.
Speaker 1: I have no way of getting up or down the river.
Speaker 1: I'm on the Copper River at the mouth of a tributary,
Speaker 1: and I got a little patch of ground I'm looking at.
Speaker 1: You're not doing ship because I can't even leave the
Speaker 1: little island I'm on because I'll be on off land
Speaker 1: and I know I'm gonna write about this, so I
Speaker 1: can't do like a wink and nod, right, I could
Speaker 1: get checked into or I'm also very vulnerable because I
Speaker 1: can't have a dead animal land somewhere. I can't have
Speaker 1: it land. You know. At that point, it's like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to just start. I'm just gonna have to
Speaker 1: put waiters on and wade up this cold ass river
Speaker 1: by I sell and if I find one. And I
Speaker 1: did shoot a one thousand pound animal that I need
Speaker 1: to then move by myself down to where I can
Speaker 1: get it into my body's raft next week, and there
Speaker 1: begins like a whole set of problems. So you had
Speaker 1: invited me, and so like, yeah, it was like it's
Speaker 1: not replicable, but it's like it all it seems weird,
Speaker 1: like the ship that I had to go through. But
Speaker 1: when you start factoring in like all these decisions, and
Speaker 1: I'm constantly being egged on by a couple of things.
Speaker 1: The rareness of drawn the tag. They've now they've since
Speaker 1: made it retroactively once in a lifetime. Once you draw
Speaker 1: a buffalo tag in Alaska, and there's some gravy hunts,
Speaker 1: it's like the Delta junction hunts are basically shooting buffalo
Speaker 1: out of oat fields once you draw a tag. And
Speaker 1: it proved me once left that once you draw it,
Speaker 1: you cannot draw it again. I'm not talking successfully harvest.
Speaker 1: Once you probably can't draw it. So I'm now in capable,
Speaker 1: and I was correct. It was once literally once in
Speaker 1: lifetime hunt. And I knew that I wanted to write
Speaker 1: my damn article and I wanted to then write my book,
Speaker 1: and the way to do that was to kill that buffalo.
Speaker 1: Because and just before that, I read you leave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had called that summer and said, hey, we should
Speaker 1: go to southeast Alaska and do a sick of blacktail hunt.
Speaker 1: And then you and Dan came down with limes, I think,
Speaker 1: and we had to cancel that hunt. And then I
Speaker 1: read a bunch of other hunts. Yeah, and I read
Speaker 1: that over the course of that fall, I'm reading the
Speaker 1: book and I'm like, if this guy takes this many
Speaker 1: risks just to write a freaking story, I'm really glad
Speaker 1: he got lines to these and I'm not up in
Speaker 1: the alpine of Prince of Wales Island trying to survive
Speaker 1: with this crazy ass because i mean, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: do you say, what the hell was I thinking? No, No,
Speaker 1: because as a real it was just one of those
Speaker 1: great it was just one of those great hunts. And
Speaker 1: I'll say this man's we had a conversation this, you know,
Speaker 1: on this podcast. We had a conversation about um, you know,
Speaker 1: like the way how how filming or writing effects the experience.
Speaker 1: It's becoming separable for me now though, because I've been
Speaker 1: gifted the ability to do things and go places and
Speaker 1: have experiences um that I just simply would not have
Speaker 1: ever had were it not for you know, writing and filming,
Speaker 1: because it's just I simply wouldn't have had the money
Speaker 1: in time, you know, I have, Yeah, I got lime,
Speaker 1: not filming, but I've had a lot of other problems
Speaker 1: and like small problems, large problems, dangerous situations did in
Speaker 1: large part I just was egged into those situations somehow
Speaker 1: by one by my desired hunt. Cause I got friends
Speaker 1: have never stepped foot near filming and never stepped footing
Speaker 1: near right and they get in all kinds of situations.
Speaker 1: Does tend to I'd be lying if I said it
Speaker 1: does tend to add a second layer of motivation. It does.
Speaker 1: I feel the things and stay out doing them because, um,
Speaker 1: I'm almost wish it wasn't true, but it's true. I
Speaker 1: may have um watching my buddies and I wasn't as
Speaker 1: experienced in the out of doors in two thousand four. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's to the two thousand four hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: standing on that bank in a strange place in Alaska,
Speaker 1: watch my bodies, so like see you and like there's
Speaker 1: you know, yea grizzlies, so a wolf read up from camp.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, there would have been a strong thing
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, you know, it's just not the
Speaker 1: right year. Yeah, But I was like, no way, man,
Speaker 1: Because as much as I'm a dedicated hunter, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm I'm like a dedicated writer. Yeah. And I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in Alaska. I locked out. My
Speaker 1: grandparents lived there. I got three uncles who lived there,
Speaker 1: and I go to some crazy places in Alaska and
Speaker 1: the risks, just Alaska itself has inherent risks like no
Speaker 1: other place. And then you are there alone and anyone
Speaker 1: who has been on a free range bison hunt like
Speaker 1: you and I have, and you tip one of them over,
Speaker 1: You walk up to it and say, what in the
Speaker 1: f am I gonna do here? Seeing one at Yellowstone
Speaker 1: Park or seeing one at the you know, the local
Speaker 1: bison farm does not do it justice too. When that
Speaker 1: thing's laying on the ground, it's cold, you're wet, and
Speaker 1: all you have is a knife, and you add all
Speaker 1: those together, and you did this in Alaska. I was
Speaker 1: just like no freaking night this day. The day I
Speaker 1: killed that one, I was camped on a ridge. It
Speaker 1: was like a ridge, but basically at the top of
Speaker 1: a canyon, like the plateau above a canyon. You know,
Speaker 1: it seemed like a ridge, but I actually didn't drop
Speaker 1: off the other side. But uh, I was. It's snowed.
Speaker 1: I was sleeping under a little red tart red on
Speaker 1: top still round bottom. I had that tark strung up
Speaker 1: and I was actually burning buffalo chips because they had wallowed.
Speaker 1: They had wallowed in that area of summer, and I
Speaker 1: had a little mound of them stacked up under my thing.
Speaker 1: I just had a tarp, sleeping bag, buffalo chips backpack
Speaker 1: and um woke up in the morning it was all
Speaker 1: like wet snow had fallen and I was gonna light
Speaker 1: us start my alcohol stove to make some coffee. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'd better take a look down in
Speaker 1: the canyon, you know, um, before I start my sofa.
Speaker 1: And I just grabbed my rifle and peered over and
Speaker 1: just like there was the freaking herd of him coming down,
Speaker 1: maybe because the snow just single foul. And um, there's
Speaker 1: a big cow and they're up towards the top and
Speaker 1: there was wet snow, and I shot her with a
Speaker 1: I'm left hand, I shot the right hand and three
Speaker 1: h mag I borrowed from a body of mine, and
Speaker 1: that thing started going down that wet snow. It's a
Speaker 1: long drop, very steep pitch, and when it hit a
Speaker 1: stand of aspens or poplars, you know, I mean, it shattered.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins, man,
Speaker 1: but just like smash and just stuffed flying everywhere. And
Speaker 1: I went down and that thing was so entangled in
Speaker 1: trees I couldn't lift its head up. I remember I
Speaker 1: just started. I was like, I was just gonna try
Speaker 1: to get a back leg off that thing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I eventually dragged the back leg away, and then I
Speaker 1: cut a little gate to try to get some guts
Speaker 1: out of it. It was just it for three days. Wow.
Speaker 1: For three days I cut and carried, and that didn't
Speaker 1: even get it down to where I needed to get
Speaker 1: it to. I cutn't carry just to get it down
Speaker 1: to the tributary. So of all of the crazy things
Speaker 1: that writing and filming has maybe pushed you a little
Speaker 1: further than you otherwise would have you look back, is
Speaker 1: that one of the defining ones that you say, you
Speaker 1: know what, There's nothing else I could have done in
Speaker 1: my ordinary life that would have given me this experience,
Speaker 1: this sense of reward, this sense of accomplishment. It was
Speaker 1: four There's four trips that made I guess. There's there's
Speaker 1: four trips that made I feel like you're interviewing meet Mandy.
Speaker 1: But there's there's four trips that I'm just curious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's four trips that made me like who When I
Speaker 1: think of like who I am? Um? As a hunt
Speaker 1: of the fortress and made me who I am? That's
Speaker 1: one of them? All four we're in Alaska. Uh. The
Speaker 1: first was the first carribo hunt I went on on
Speaker 1: the north slope of the Brooks Range, just like pickup
Speaker 1: truck canoes. Me and my brothers just had no idea
Speaker 1: what we're getting into. The second was the first time
Speaker 1: we went on a very unsuccessful doll sheep hunt. Just
Speaker 1: park truck across the river, start hiking nine days, saw
Speaker 1: one ram about three miles away that was sub legal. Um.
Speaker 1: The third was a successful sheep hunt we went on
Speaker 1: where we mean we killed two rams the self guided wall,
Speaker 1: you know, and in that buffalo hunt are the ones
Speaker 1: that like, if I could give everything else, if I
Speaker 1: had to keep forward and give the rest of the way,
Speaker 1: I'd keep those four. No doubt, We'll all quit interviewing you.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm overstepping here, But I'm just curious because now
Speaker 1: that I reflect back on having hunted for thirty eight
Speaker 1: years and tagged along with my grandfather and my dad
Speaker 1: even before that, I look back and there's just certain
Speaker 1: events that I'm like, you know what, no other activity
Speaker 1: that I could have done in my life outside of
Speaker 1: being a hunter would have exposed me to that would
Speaker 1: have allowed me to walk away with that perspective. Maybe
Speaker 1: that confidence maybe pushed myself to that edge of saying,
Speaker 1: what the f am I doing here? But then somehow
Speaker 1: being able to pull out of that. Uh. And I've
Speaker 1: not been in combat, so I'm just you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to equate hunting to what it's like
Speaker 1: to be I haven't got a shoot at you or anything.
Speaker 1: But of hobbies and activities or passion in life, I
Speaker 1: can't think of anything that would have given me those
Speaker 1: experiences of you know, I could probably listen a handful
Speaker 1: of them like you do. And so now when you
Speaker 1: get to be fifty, you reflect back on that and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, ship is am I just kind of
Speaker 1: out to pasture? Now? Am I done with those really
Speaker 1: cool experiences? Or do I got more of them ahead
Speaker 1: of me? And you're kind of getting this reflective mode
Speaker 1: at that point, and then then you start interviewing the
Speaker 1: host of the show because you feel like you're a statesman.
Speaker 1: Those challenges and tough things that happened to you and
Speaker 1: the discomfort and the like rewards and all that that
Speaker 1: makes a special caliber of person. I like, oh, man
Speaker 1: Or people. I hang out all man Or people. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to like being comfortable around people in
Speaker 1: bad situations, like being confronged people in the outdoors, Guys
Speaker 1: that have been through the military, mountaineers and big game
Speaker 1: hunters tend to be like people that I just like
Speaker 1: feel comfortable around that I feel like like reliable. Do
Speaker 1: you mean, like when you're with people and just people,
Speaker 1: you gotta take care of people to not only take
Speaker 1: care of themselves, but take care of everybody else. I
Speaker 1: remember a guy talking a most the people he fished with,
Speaker 1: and he said, Steve, you gotta wait in line just
Speaker 1: to wash a dish. I mean, I mean like the
Speaker 1: doozy hangs out with, Like if you want to wash dishes,
Speaker 1: get in line, buddy. Everybody wants to wash them dishes.
Speaker 1: It's like that level of just like attacking problems. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not many things in life to give. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's more than I'm naming, but lifetime exposure to those
Speaker 1: things seems to make the kind of guys that you
Speaker 1: gotta get in line if you want to wash a dish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And maybe I'm biased because just about everyone I hang
Speaker 1: out with as a hunter, and so I can sit
Speaker 1: here and share these kind of experiences with them, and
Speaker 1: I can have this very wow. Yeah, I get that
Speaker 1: to its greatest detail. And when I'm in the field
Speaker 1: with them, I'm very comfortable around them. There's some people
Speaker 1: where if you gave him a butter knife, I'm so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I think this guy's gonna figure out how to cut
Speaker 1: his thumb off of a butter knife. You know. There's
Speaker 1: just some of those people where you're like, I gotta
Speaker 1: get the hell out of here. I'm not gonna have
Speaker 1: any fun if I'm with a guy like this. And
Speaker 1: usually they don't have the background of the three types
Speaker 1: that you mentioned, the military, of the mountaineers, or big
Speaker 1: game hunners, and maybe there's a couple other sl For me,
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, That's why I asked a question of
Speaker 1: how profound that hunt was. That's a situation I'm in
Speaker 1: now is you know, I got kids and my wife.
Speaker 1: I had this ongoing debate where I expose them to
Speaker 1: I'm not negligent anyway, but I expose themto what we
Speaker 1: might be regarded as dangers by a big segment of
Speaker 1: the oh yeah, population right. To me, it seems like
Speaker 1: very pedestrian, not dangerous at all. But some people might
Speaker 1: regard activities that I expose my kid kids to kids too,
Speaker 1: as being like not age appropriate or being a little
Speaker 1: bit dangerous. And I'm always like, yeah, okay, that's a
Speaker 1: little bit dangerous, like he might cut his finger. But
Speaker 1: they always point out we're having this conversation your day,
Speaker 1: someone's like everybody keeps talking about my kid cuting his
Speaker 1: finger with his knife. I always cut my fingers with
Speaker 1: my knife when I was a kid, So it's like, who, dude,
Speaker 1: like one how like, let's not act like that's the
Speaker 1: end bad. Yeah, it's like that's just a given, you
Speaker 1: go cut his finger. But I always like, okay, let's
Speaker 1: deprive him of the dangerous stuff. But at what at
Speaker 1: what danger does that come out of danger? I think
Speaker 1: because later on it's like you went up with a
Speaker 1: helpless person and there's other ways to get there. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if there's like some Bible
Speaker 1: pass like there's many ways to get to whatever, there's
Speaker 1: other ways to get there. I'm not saying like if
Speaker 1: you don't hunt and fishing your kids you're gonna have
Speaker 1: crappy kids. Because's certainly not the case, because you can
Speaker 1: get there a bazillion ways. But from my exposure, my
Speaker 1: experience where I come from the way to get there
Speaker 1: that I understand, the way to get there that I
Speaker 1: can present to my children is very much that way.
Speaker 1: Because them watching me right isn't gonna get them there, true,
Speaker 1: it's just not. Then watch me record podcast isn't gonna
Speaker 1: get them there? Okay, then watch me flay fish. It's
Speaker 1: hard to explain. I feel as all that might really
Speaker 1: my son felt a lot of danger when you'd see
Speaker 1: me balance in the debts and the credits. It's like, Dad,
Speaker 1: the way you really handled that that advocates you are
Speaker 1: the Charlie Daniels of the advocaust. Dad, Man, I feel
Speaker 1: comforted now you've taught me the life lessons. But yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and it's a false in some ways. You might regard
Speaker 1: it as the false world now because um, in my mind,
Speaker 1: the nature of subsistence has changed for people to live
Speaker 1: anywhere else side of small handful locations around the world.
Speaker 1: The nature of like subsistence hunting and fishing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like I always say, like I'm gonna beat fine, dude,
Speaker 1: you can take hunted fishing way from me on that.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna start right. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like reality TV, like if they don't get this,
Speaker 1: they'll die. Right, It's just not true. But I guess
Speaker 1: I've just in some way opted that I believe in.
Speaker 1: Elements of that subsistence lifestyle, right still pertain, all right
Speaker 1: in the main risk of imminent starvation isn't there, But
Speaker 1: there are tremendous risks of like character, um fortitude, understand
Speaker 1: how do you use stuff? How do you use physical objects? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my son went to college back in New York, and
Speaker 1: I wondered, Man, how is he going to fit in
Speaker 1: back there? He's coming from Montana we did hunt, fish,
Speaker 1: you know, shoot whatever, and he's going to an Ivy
Speaker 1: League school that's kind of well, it's known to be
Speaker 1: not like Montana. Yeah, and so I'm worried that. Okay,
Speaker 1: he goes there, How's he gonna fit in? How's he
Speaker 1: gonna cope with the different environment and the things he
Speaker 1: learned in the coping skills that he brought from hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing and understanding how a natural world works. He
Speaker 1: blew through it with no problem. I was so impressed
Speaker 1: with how adaptable, so much would he learned as a
Speaker 1: hunter fisherman shooting, cutting his finger with a knife when
Speaker 1: he's six, you know, shoot your eye out. I mean
Speaker 1: he had to be begun when he had like five.
Speaker 1: But he was in a whole group of people that
Speaker 1: were not exposed to that, and he kind of emerged
Speaker 1: from that not just unscathed, but almost like a leader
Speaker 1: that they looked to because would look at like the
Speaker 1: woods upbringing and say, oh, they might miss out on
Speaker 1: some sort of social you know, aspect that they're gonna
Speaker 1: get more if you grow up in a big city
Speaker 1: like New York. But that's not the case. It's like
Speaker 1: you still have to have all those relationships and communicate
Speaker 1: with people and work through all that, and you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna learn it because of the hardships and even a
Speaker 1: better way, in a stronger way, where like you're saying,
Speaker 1: he went there to that Ivy League school and people
Speaker 1: are like, wow, this dude, Like yeah, strong and just
Speaker 1: his perspective of ability to look at a more complex
Speaker 1: problem and not needed to be sanitized down to little
Speaker 1: compartments of you know, oh, well, this is a historical question, no,
Speaker 1: he I think hunters a general rule of people who
Speaker 1: understand the natural world can stand back and look at
Speaker 1: a bigger, more complicated problem with multiple variables like you
Speaker 1: see in the natural world, and other people struggle with that.
Speaker 1: And I didn't really give it much that until watching
Speaker 1: him go through that process and watching some other kids
Speaker 1: his friends go through and do it similar things in
Speaker 1: different places, and I we'd have the discussions of how
Speaker 1: you fitting in there? Fine, what what do you mean? Like, well,
Speaker 1: you're the one walking around with camouflage boots on an
Speaker 1: IVY League campus and everyone else's you know whatever, you
Speaker 1: got your mad bomber beaver fur hat on and your
Speaker 1: chopper mints. I don't care. I'm warm even able to
Speaker 1: put everything in just a very simple solution, very pragmatic,
Speaker 1: And so this whole idea that we got it kind
Speaker 1: of coddle everybody, you know. Back to your point of
Speaker 1: what is the future danger of removing all the dangers today?
Speaker 1: I think we end up with kids, or they become
Speaker 1: adults that can't handle a lot of things that maybe
Speaker 1: some of us just take for granted. I remember being
Speaker 1: out with I bought this this sit on top kayak
Speaker 1: called the Big two in a kayak, very stable sit
Speaker 1: on top fishing kayak um And you know, I bought
Speaker 1: it very much. Minded out fishing my boy when the
Speaker 1: seattle are there's a lot of water around there. I
Speaker 1: just wanted something that I could get in the water
Speaker 1: and the whole time, like sit on top the whole time,
Speaker 1: Like what if the kid falls in the water in
Speaker 1: the winter, And I was like, all my thinking was like,
Speaker 1: how he's gonna not fall in the water. And we
Speaker 1: go out like I'm bundled up. You know, he's got
Speaker 1: Obviously I don't let the kid in near your boat
Speaker 1: with I life jacket on. Um we get on the water.
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, January February, Pacific Northwest. And
Speaker 1: he was offended by later accused him of just basically
Speaker 1: jumping out of the kayak. He just like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he's in there, and then he's in the water.
Speaker 1: He like, look, it seemed to me that he did
Speaker 1: some kind of barrel roll out of his seat into
Speaker 1: the water. He fell very much. He did not want
Speaker 1: to be in that water, and like like he's just
Speaker 1: there and then he's floating in the water, you know,
Speaker 1: And I hauled him out of there, and like, at
Speaker 1: first my mind is just racing, you know, won the
Speaker 1: wrath of his mother. Yeah, but sure, I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't have him out of the water five seconds. I
Speaker 1: was glad he fell in. Yeah him, because I'm kind
Speaker 1: of like one falling out of the boat too. If
Speaker 1: a dude falls out of a boat in really cold weather,
Speaker 1: here's what you do. We're gonna run through it right now,
Speaker 1: so you understand like the situation we're in, right yea,
Speaker 1: And yeah, now I look at it like the one
Speaker 1: thing I didn't want to have and fall out of
Speaker 1: the boat. Now, when I think of like highlights of
Speaker 1: the last year, I'm like, man, you know it sounds perverse.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it was great when Jimmy fell out of
Speaker 1: that boat, because like, look how much content we got
Speaker 1: out of that, Like life's content, you know, revery like
Speaker 1: anard time we were down in Baja fishing and then
Speaker 1: I went out in the dark to fish, and I
Speaker 1: told him a thousand times and like stay here, Daddy's
Speaker 1: gonna walk out in the dark. Don't move, you know
Speaker 1: that I was going on to get a better as
Speaker 1: I come up something's gone and look he's like rolling
Speaker 1: around the tide. I read out and grab him. That's
Speaker 1: just kind of like drag him up them in the shower.
Speaker 1: I was like, why in the world, you know? But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm kind of glad because
Speaker 1: at something I feel like it's adding layers out there.
Speaker 1: It is. I I mean, I think about the stuff
Speaker 1: that I did. My parents would have been in jail
Speaker 1: and we would have been in Foster home in today's
Speaker 1: world and actually dangerous about in my podcast that we
Speaker 1: were talking about last week, I tried to me and
Speaker 1: my cousins tried to build a bomb to blow up
Speaker 1: train bridge when or eight years old. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think about doing that now, But it's one of I learned.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I learned so much about how you can
Speaker 1: saw a shotgun shell in half and pull the wad
Speaker 1: out and dump the powder and a paint can. And
Speaker 1: I mean, and that if you didn't direct the force
Speaker 1: a certain direction on they did was blow a scour
Speaker 1: hole out between the two railroad ted. I mean, but
Speaker 1: the stuff that we did was so valuable as I
Speaker 1: got older in life, and maybe it's because of the
Speaker 1: path I chose later in life. It was valuable. Maybe
Speaker 1: if I hadn't done all that stuff, I would have
Speaker 1: taken a different path than people would have said. Maybe
Speaker 1: that knucklehead grew up in that little town there. He
Speaker 1: doesn't know his asked from third base, but how to
Speaker 1: blow up railroad? But anyhow, all right, so let's uh,
Speaker 1: you mentioned it, plug it you've been working on a
Speaker 1: podcast deal larging conservation is I'll let you tell me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's thanks to your friends here at zero
Speaker 1: point zero. Uh, we were on a bear hunt last year.
Speaker 1: Janice and Dan were filming me and we talked about
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. That's got us a hunt to
Speaker 1: eat T shirt infamy. There you go, what do you
Speaker 1: call them the Latin? Yeah? That that magnate hunt. You
Speaker 1: gotta hunt of eat T shirt? I do? Thanks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you give it to him? Yeah? Yeah? That good
Speaker 1: plug here there. He's not gonna send you one. You
Speaker 1: gotta go to hunting dot com. Yeah. I mean they're like,
Speaker 1: you need a podcast, buddy. You you're just like spouting
Speaker 1: off all the time. You're blowing and carrying on, you know,
Speaker 1: with no one. Yeah, you know, just nothing but a
Speaker 1: few seals and you know, to two poor camera guys,
Speaker 1: and uh so it took us the last part of
Speaker 1: a year to decide we're going to do this. And
Speaker 1: so thanks to these guys, we have the other podcast
Speaker 1: at zero points zero producers called hunt Talk Radio I e.
Speaker 1: Raindy Newberg, Gun Filtered and it's just me and friends
Speaker 1: talking about hunting, fishing, growing up, conservation, a lot of politics,
Speaker 1: and probably we got into marital advice at one time.
Speaker 1: Didn't know you know, you know we we we end
Speaker 1: these podcasts where you get to have a concluding thought, Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me some marriage not that I needed, but give
Speaker 1: the listeners marital advice as you're concluding. OK. I don't
Speaker 1: like to dictate your concluding thought. No, if you see fit,
Speaker 1: every camera guy I have is like in his twenties,
Speaker 1: early thirties, he's getting in this, you know, thinking of
Speaker 1: getting married, like Dan, isn't Dan getting married? All right?
Speaker 1: And so there are I'm gonna wear the pants in
Speaker 1: my house and I just about driving the ditch. When
Speaker 1: I hear him say that, I'm like, yeah, right, And
Speaker 1: sooner or later it's like, all right, you've been married
Speaker 1: twenty six years, Randy, give me one piece of advice.
Speaker 1: So this will be the concluding thought. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do marriage advice from mine. Okay, if you want a long,
Speaker 1: happy marriage, be more interested in peace than you are justice.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be right. Being right is expensive,
Speaker 1: financially expensive, emotionally expensive. And you don't get hunting fish
Speaker 1: nearly as much as the guys who let let them
Speaker 1: be right half more than half the time they're right anyhow,
Speaker 1: So you know what are Yeah, it's not about this
Speaker 1: whole idea of justice. I'm right, she's wrong. You'll regret
Speaker 1: saying that I proved you that I actually was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who's been married more than about a
Speaker 1: month has been down that path. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: just tell everyone be more interested in peace than you
Speaker 1: are justice, and all will be well. I have three
Speaker 1: pieces of barrel advice I tried doing quick said a
Speaker 1: very strong precedent um. When you meet a man or
Speaker 1: a lady, live the life that you want to live.
Speaker 1: Ten years into your marriage will not earned back. You
Speaker 1: don't get freedoms exactly. The news doesn't get looser. You
Speaker 1: guys who would start dating a girl and they're all infatuated,
Speaker 1: and you know it's like Thanksgiving at their parents and
Speaker 1: you know, instead of doing whatever, and then a couple
Speaker 1: of years down the road they're like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I actually usually on Thanksgiving, I'm usually you know, we
Speaker 1: usually fish steelhead around. Thanksgivings are kind of coming into
Speaker 1: the rivers. It's like that, you don't you go we
Speaker 1: go to Mike MoMA's every year for Thanksgiving. But yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean normally it's like live it, you know from
Speaker 1: the start. Yeah, it's much you're talking about dragging yourself
Speaker 1: away from mama. Drag even at its most difficult point,
Speaker 1: at its most difficult point in the beginning, find it
Speaker 1: in yourself to drag yourself away from mama. See piece
Speaker 1: of Marral. Advice I have is uh, how long you've
Speaker 1: been married to you? My anniversary is coming up. Well
Speaker 1: I know that mean one year now. I got married
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Okay, so you're seven years in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm giving advice, not from like having with you know,
Speaker 1: weathered time. I'm just like, okay, just observations. Um, you
Speaker 1: always here. It's like cliche pick your battles, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: It's like there's just some stuff like, for instance, issues
Speaker 1: with my kids, like like what they're doing, when who's
Speaker 1: gonna where for holidays? You know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: what their clothes are, like what time we're supposed to
Speaker 1: get up or what time they gotta be Just like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just static. Just like and I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that just the kids. But there's many issues, like
Speaker 1: many matters of of how our house is structure, how
Speaker 1: our time is structured, matters of our social life. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of stuff like when you're gonna
Speaker 1: be working, when you're not gonna be working. Um that
Speaker 1: I'm just like, okay, you know we're gonna be moving, Okay,
Speaker 1: So like the house we're gonna live in. I know
Speaker 1: I have some input on this, but not a ton
Speaker 1: um drum rolls. Number three, number three? How can I that? Remember?
Speaker 1: Number three? Oh? Read the works of Cormac McCarthy. He
Speaker 1: never talks about marriage. But read the works of Cormac
Speaker 1: McCarthy and try to decipher his moral code, which is
Speaker 1: consistent throughout his works, And then and and read them
Speaker 1: and internalized Cormate McCarthy's moral code, and you'll have a
Speaker 1: better marriage. Huh. I'll have to read that it's you're
Speaker 1: saying a huge you're making a huge commitment for yourself. Well, like,
Speaker 1: is it? It's not, it's not. Well, I just just
Speaker 1: wrote many books, but start with the Border trilogy. Oh no,
Speaker 1: and I'll sum them up because also the way I've
Speaker 1: interpreted the works cars. But there's a morality there where
Speaker 1: a lot of people want to live in a world
Speaker 1: that existed before they made the decisions that they've made. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: did you go like, oh, but you're still trying. It's
Speaker 1: like I see it all the time. I have to
Speaker 1: reading Corn McCarthy like, oh no, no, buddy, you're trying
Speaker 1: to live the life that that that existed before you
Speaker 1: made a very willful decision to take a certain path here,
Speaker 1: abandon the notion that that that you like, abandoned the
Speaker 1: idea that you're somehow going to get out of the
Speaker 1: situation you're in, kids, whatever. It's like, you're here now.
Speaker 1: There is the life outside of this. Stop pretending that
Speaker 1: there is. Yeh, yeah, that's how long you've been married.
Speaker 1: You could have a concluding thought. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be about marriage. Now. I'll give them about marriage. I
Speaker 1: think twelve years, two thousand three, So I got a
Speaker 1: couple under my belt. They've all been great. Um, this
Speaker 1: piece of vice actually came from another fishing client of mine.
Speaker 1: I think I got it her a few times her her, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she'd been a in a long, long marriage and um,
Speaker 1: she basically got dumbed for the you know, the secretary.
Speaker 1: It's something along those lines, and not the fishing guy.
Speaker 1: She not the fishing guy. She didn't she didn't see
Speaker 1: it coming, and it really beat her up. And so
Speaker 1: she went on. She embarked on this you know, like
Speaker 1: it was it was a pole, but it was like
Speaker 1: a journey. But there was like this poll that she
Speaker 1: constantly kept up with, and she kept tallies and notes,
Speaker 1: and when she saw old couples, she always went to
Speaker 1: him and said, hey, what's what was What's like, what's
Speaker 1: the secret? What's your one little tip or whatever? And
Speaker 1: what she came away from with it all the number
Speaker 1: one one word that people always said. And everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's love, you know, It's like, well, love is bullshit.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times love just does not
Speaker 1: have that lasting powers. What does is commitment. And I
Speaker 1: always try to remember that, well, I'm committing, you know,
Speaker 1: and I believe, and I have to believe that my
Speaker 1: wife is also committed to me and that always, you know,
Speaker 1: no no problems getting too hard times Ronnie Bain, who
Speaker 1: has no shortage of wise observations. I was talking to
Speaker 1: an old man one time that was speaking of his
Speaker 1: wife and the only and said, you know, ron I
Speaker 1: wouldn't give you ten cents for another one just like her,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't take a million dollars for And there's
Speaker 1: sort of like a fatalistic sort of thing there. It's
Speaker 1: just like that's what I got. Well, I think any
Speaker 1: of us would get to hunt, travel as much as
Speaker 1: we do. I gotta have something figured out. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why a lot of people ask me for
Speaker 1: maritle and that I'm giving an elk cutting seminar, and
Speaker 1: someone will raise your hand, how does your life wife
Speaker 1: let you hunt so much? And so I got it.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going into this doctor field discussion
Speaker 1: there or something, and I tell him the best deal
Speaker 1: I ever made in my marriage was when we built
Speaker 1: our last house in two thousand and four. I told
Speaker 1: my wife, you can take of the cost of the
Speaker 1: house and add it to furnishings whatever you want. I
Speaker 1: don't care. I don't care what color, what size, but
Speaker 1: I don't never want to hear it. Budget discussion about
Speaker 1: hunting over again, and she jumped on that like a
Speaker 1: rat out of Cheetoh man, she was on it, And
Speaker 1: so hunt a lot. But here's the thing, though, I
Speaker 1: love being married, like, oh me too. I love seeing
Speaker 1: my wife. I love being married, I love having my kids.
Speaker 1: I like to hunting fish. It's like, so, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that all everything that I'm arguing
Speaker 1: is I'm behalf of me out hunting fish more. But
Speaker 1: I think that, like we're saying there, there's certain lessons
Speaker 1: to be found hunting and fishing, and there's certain things
Speaker 1: where you know, that's just like something that's important to me,
Speaker 1: and I've found a way to have it be that
Speaker 1: it's just like an integral part of the household. Even
Speaker 1: though my wife, you know, familiar with sympathetic tords. But
Speaker 1: what never does it self identifies the avid angler? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, doesn't hunt like will certainly fish, but doesn't.
Speaker 1: If you got these ten things she is fishing with,
Speaker 1: fisher woman wouldn't make the list. Oh gosh, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to keep adding tang entel. Everybody had a concluding thoughts.
Speaker 1: This is the longest we've talked, the lost we've ever
Speaker 1: had to actually talk. Oh really, man, I'm sorry, No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean you and me. Oh yeah, you and I.
Speaker 1: We had a long phone conversation whatever. Remember, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's good. Hopefully we'll get to do it over
Speaker 1: camp fire and a fresh backstrap someday. Well we're all
Speaker 1: sick from something. Yeah, I don't know. You guys come
Speaker 1: down with more food born ailments. I just telling my
Speaker 1: wife about some of the things you guys eat, because
Speaker 1: she asked me what I was doing with that bear
Speaker 1: I shot this year, and I told them you, Oh,
Speaker 1: Janice wants these hawks in this She's like, aren't those
Speaker 1: guys that get sick every time they cook something? And
Speaker 1: I'm like yeah, She's like, and you said you were
Speaker 1: going to go hunting with him sometime maybe, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you only need anything that comes out of a package.
Speaker 1: But well, guys, thanks for having me. Great. I appreciate
Speaker 1: all you guys do for hunting, and in the the
Speaker 1: message you guys are getting out there is so need
Speaker 1: nude and so valuable not just to hunting, but how
Speaker 1: hunting can expand its boundaries to a bigger discussion in society.
Speaker 1: So as I want the last usually I'll say like,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, but let plug the plug the podcasting
Speaker 1: Hunt Talk podcast Randy Newburgh Unfiltered and can go to
Speaker 1: iTunes and get it produced by zero point zero. Thanks
Speaker 1: for letting me plug it in, Steve tune In. Thanks,
Speaker 1: everybody appreciate it.