WEBVTT - Ep. 014 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:03.680 Hey, this is the Meat Eater podcast, recording out a Bozeman, Montana, 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:09.200 hometown of our guests, Randy Newburgh, who has been hosting 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:15.920 hunting TV programs for a long time. Wow, how long? Well? 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:18.479 I think, as my grandpa would say, Moby Dick was 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:23.880 a mint on back when I started. Actually, it's weird 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:26.920 to say, Steve, but I'm going into year eight. Okay, 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:32.479 so that's I'm not like Methuselah. But I guess you 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.199 could say I've been there, done that long eight years. 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:37.600 Long time to do anything. It is, especially I just 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:41.000 turned fifty and I'm gonna be fifty one in November, 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.199 and you know, I do these backpack hunts mostly, and 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:46.720 I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna live long enough 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.199 to do another eight years. It's just it grinds at me. 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:52.400 You guys know you do it. You're also talking to 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.600 uh that that leaves me to something about age that 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:00.240 that's interesting. But um, I want to point out to 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:04.880 our listeners that Randy, who's seen and done everything, was 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:09.880 just marveling. He was blown away by the quality of 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:12.200 the complete guy, the hunting, butcher and cooking wild game. 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:18.120 I was that would take most people a lifetime. You 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.479 hear those people and then you guys said, well, how 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:23.760 long do you think? I said three years? And you 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.480 guys looked at each other like, yep, so what So 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:28.520 if I'm reading what you're saying, right, Randy, you feel 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.399 like people are gonna get their money's worth. I don't 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:36.200 know why you're going to price it at giving it away. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:38.520 You're giving it away. You you should buy two of 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.160 them at that price. I mean, it's really I'm saying 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:43.880 you have and you have a background that has to 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:47.120 do with like you deal in people's money as a 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:49.600 c p A. Yeah, I get to disinherit the federal 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:53.320 treasury as a Randy thinks you ought to buy that book. 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.840 If if you don't buy that book, folks, you're not 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.520 gonna kill an elk next year. That's exactly right. I 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:00.960 can promise you that if you do kill one, you're 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:02.360 not gonna know how to take care of it out 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:05.200 in the field. And I was reading your honest your 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:09.000 piece about tuning up bows. Where did you come up 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:14.120 with all that stuff? Experience just told all about it. 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.320 He just wrote about it. I think you need to 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.640 make that like into a pocket guide. Yeah. Well, I 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:24.080 gotta say, you don't want to care. It's not like 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.760 it's I can't call it original content. I mean, yes, 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:28.880 I did put it down in my own words, but 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.920 like it's not like I picked up a piece of 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.760 wooden string and then I eventually learned how to make 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:36.959 a compound, and then like how to tune a compound, 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.720 you know, like all this stuff. Like yes, I've read 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.440 you know, hunting magazines and and you know, watch YouTube 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.120 videos and all this stuff since I was a little kid, 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:49.440 and so that's you know, how it came out. But 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.520 it's not like I made up how to you know, 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:55.280 get ready for archery season. Like gazillion guys will be like, yeah, yeah, 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.840 that's how I do it too. But wow, I was impressed. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:00.880 I was thumbing through the book and I'm just thinking, 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:06.240 you know what, this is a serious project. Just you 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.160 guys go into a lot of detail, a lot of things. 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:10.839 I'm afraid that no one will ever read. I don't 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:12.840 want you. I was half joking. I mean I like 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:14.239 to plug the book. I was half joking. But I 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:15.480 want to get you to think about age. When we 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.600 talk about like backpack hunting, how many years you think 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.079 you got left well, I always tell hunting as you 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.480 hunting out right. I told my wife I want to 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:28.040 backpack hunt and tell him sixty five and last long 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:35.240 it's like years doth wrong. I felle in November, so 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.800 fourteen fifteen seasons. But last year I packed out three 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.880 bulls on my back. And how many miles? Told you 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:49.560 packed bulls out about? Gosh, I'd be just a guest Steve. 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:56.240 I'm guessing combined all those trips thirty miles something like that. 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.600 But one of them was out of a canyon in there. 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.560 I don't and it was ugly. I mean, even though 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:07.680 it was only two miles each way. I remember saying, 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.320 I'm not doing there's different kinds of miles exactly. And 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.720 and my guest hunter had blown out his a c 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:18.320 L and before the hunt, and he told me, said, look, 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:21.640 I've been waiting for years to hunt Arizona. I'm deferring 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:26.320 surgery until after the hunt. Do you mind having a 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:30.280 guy hobbling along? I'm like, hey, whatever. So he went 0:04:30.279 --> 0:04:32.600 into it saying I'm not gonna pack all right, he 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.400 told me. I mean, and he's he was fifty five, 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.279 I think blew out his A c L playing basketball 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.159 down in Logan, Utah. And he shows up and he's 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.159 got a brace on his knee that looks like, you know, 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.000 Colonel Steve Austin of the six million Dollar Man. You're 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.520 too young to remember that. You know, you have no 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.760 idea what's shocking on about? All right, see again we're 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.960 aging ourselves, Sarah. But anyhow, he shoots this ball down 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.839 in the canyon really nice, but yeah, like a three 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.120 twenty bull. And I'll tell you, I want to interject, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.320 I've never met the guy. I bet that man did 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:07.360 not have a torn a c L. I started saying 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.960 that I would be like, on every hunt, I'll be like, yeah, 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:11.839 I got enough in me. I got enough in me 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:13.680 to get down in that candy to kill a bull, 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:19.600 no problem. Yeah, it's just that once that happens, you know, 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.280 So how hard can I can I hunt for how long? 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:28.960 I don't know. I I'm well, you get to a point, 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.359 and I've said this on a few episodes where you 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.120 realize that there are a lot fewer hunts in the 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.440 front windshield than what are in the rear view mirror, 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.479 and you enjoy every minute of every day of those 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.800 hunts as you see the sand drain and out of 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:51.560 your hour glass, and you start having this internal fear. Gosh, 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.760 oh man, my hip's hurting today. Is that gonna lay 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.719 me up from al cunning? Because you know that there's 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:03.359 a terminal point when you're hunting anything, let alone backpack 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:08.080 out cunning. So it's like, I'm definitely still just too 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:12.360 young and dumb to have those thoughts. I don't, are 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.240 you or you have to because like my brother is 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.000 a couple years older me. My brother is like he 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.240 started working out lifting weights, you know, and now I've 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.600 been I've been the only thing I'm thinking about's like 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.840 I'm married, I got three kids. Like, I'm not like 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:29.880 working out because I gonna be all like go down 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:31.360 to the beach, you know what I mean. It's like, no, 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:35.359 I'm like, I work out because all I'm that's the 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:37.359 thing I think about, not being able to get up 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:42.520 a hill. Right it's Oregon and smoked by Janice to 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.479 the hill way ahead of me, you know. The And 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.360 I hunt a lot of my guest hunters very younger 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.839 than I am, And I drive a desk for a 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.440 living half the year, and so I have to make 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.960 a serious point to get out and hike every day. 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.720 And I'm lucky here in Montana where I live. I'm 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.440 a mile from a four service trailhead, going to two 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:09.640 our hike every day, and mentally, I am in way 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:15.680 better shape to handle cold, terrible, miserable, ugly conditions than 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.680 I was when I was forty or thirty. I mean, 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.480 now I'll just put my head down, lean against the grade, 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:24.560 and I don't even think about if I gotta walk 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:26.760 all day. Oh well, I gotta walk all day, Whereas 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.680 when I was twenty eight, God, I had to walk 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.560 for another forty five minutes to get there. This sucks now, 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:36.720 don't even fathe me. It's like, hey man, I'm still hunting. 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.880 I got some buddies who are you know they're done, 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.880 They're they're cashed it in or whatever. And so mentally 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.440 is fine. I mean, I wish I had the mental 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.520 fortitude when I was twenty eight that I have today. 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.040 It just comes with age. One thing I think about 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.240 when I think about getting old and not being able 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.560 to hunt like I like to hunt, is I think 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:05.000 that me now would be able to smoke me when 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:10.000 I was twenty five. I think if I put myself 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:12.120 back to when I was twenty five, even though I'm 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:17.200 fifty now, I would agree. I would I was inefficient 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.240 in how I operated my how I walked, you know 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:24.880 how much gear I brought with it. I didn't need 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:30.080 all those things. I and just mentally, yeah, I could 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.679 walk myself into the ground today, whereas in I'd have 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:36.760 to ship and have a sandwich after two miles. I 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.240 had a guy there day telling me about a principle 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:41.520 and fitness that my brother used to joke or hat 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.840 and I used to has joked it people that are 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.040 bigging across fit, you just get good at doing CrossFit, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:49.800 you know, like it doesn't do anything for you. And 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:52.640 I'll sell this guy that he says it half jokingly. 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:54.920 But this guy was saying, there's his principle and fitness 0:08:54.960 --> 0:09:01.439 called like said, okay, So it's specific adaptations to imposed demands. 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.680 Because what I've often wondered about is you could have 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.160 people who are fit by any measure, ye okay, like, 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:12.800 but you take them out like, oh yeah, you really 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:14.520 ought to before we go on the mountains, you really 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:16.280 ought to like get in shape for oh no, I 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.560 just ran a half marathon Broye And you go out 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:24.400 and it's like they have never done anything. Ye, it's 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.800 such a specific thing that I really don't think you 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.840 can replicate the demand. I don't think you can replicate 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.360 the physical demands of mountain hunting doing anything that maybe 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.840 like mountaineering. Yeah, I would agree, And that's why, you know, 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:40.720 all my a lot of my buddies go to the gym. 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:43.560 I gotta be on the cardio, I gotta be working 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:48.360 on this me. I put pounds in a backpack and 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.880 I just hiked and walk because nothing replicates the uneven ground. 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.640 The Okay, I'm going up a grade and then down 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.640 a grade. I'm side Helen and whatever, and I just 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:04.199 I haven't found any any mechanical device that replicates it. 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:06.320 So you can just go hike anything you do, like 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.480 obviously anyway you can become stronger, you know, and all that. 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:11.400 It's like great, sure it's not gonna work against you, 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.400 but there's just something about, yeah, the uneven ground. And 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.560 I think another thing that really starts to throw people 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:22.400 is in addition to that stuff, and it is just 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:31.120 the physicality of it. There's all this layered stuff about cold, heat, boredom, um. 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:37.360 All they're just discomfort things, you know, uncertainties and when 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.880 you're changing food. When you're younger, you all of those 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.439 get to you, and now don't don't get to me 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.439 at all. Okay, throw my pack on. I'm usually hiking 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.720 up the hill. I'm in a very light merino wall 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.440 and I got some layers, and yeah it's cold, but 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.200 I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just got my 0:10:57.200 --> 0:10:59.000 head down and I gotta get to the ridge so 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:03.720 I can glasp before sun gets up. Where before my 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.400 mind would get distracted. Your mind gets distracted, you're not 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:11.080 focused on hunting, and you just start losing it. Your 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.440 edge is gone, and then you start getting cold, You 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.560 start sniveling, you start whinding, you start thinking about, oh, dude, 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:18.280 I could have been huddled up next to mom on 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:23.439 this morning. Why they get out of bed, youth visit 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:28.120 for Randy's wife. That's that's right. Yeah, there's a there's 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.160 a joke to that, if my wife listens to this. 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.680 We We ran into Jack Llane at an airport one time. Again, 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:40.640 you guys, he related to kind of man, I'm really 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:45.920 aging myself and uh he he was like the original 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.040 fitness expert on old broadcast. He surely not before Slim 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.160 good buddy, Oh way before he was like, I mean, 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.559 he was like the first guy. So he's like eighty 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.439 five ninety years old, and he says, you know what 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.800 you young people need to know. It takes discipline. And 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:05.640 I'm like, okay, I'm going to take in notes here. 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:08.719 He says, it takes a real man to get out 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.160 of a hot bed with a warm woman and go 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:17.199 and jump in a cold pool because he needs to exercise. Yeah, Mike, dude, 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.480 you're not ainty years old. I guess maybe you know 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.880 what you're talking about. So, heyhow that's that's the inside 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.160 joke about mama getting getting out of bed from mama. 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.320 So now you so you were brought up in Minnesota though, Yeah, 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:31.800 way up, way up north. So when did you start 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.160 doing mountain hunts When I moved to Montana. I went 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.600 to college in Reno, and uh, I knew just about 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.760 nothing about western hunting while I lived in Nevada. You 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.160 didn't hunt there? Yeah I did, but I was terrible 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.160 at it. I tried to hunt everything like a hunted 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:52.559 white tails. Um and then carrots had a platform, hang 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.679 a platform over the tree. Yeah, there you go, And 0:12:55.880 --> 0:13:00.520 uh luckily stumbled into a few a few deer along 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.320 the way while I was in Nevada. But when I 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.959 moved to Montana, I just realized, you know what, if 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.880 you're gonna hunt elk on public land, you better figure 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.880 it out, Randy, because they aren't standing next to the 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:16.600 trailhead and it requires work. It's just as quick as 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:22.239 you accept the fact that hunting elkom public land requires exertion, 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.200 you get way better at it. It's like you go 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.240 through this period of thinking there's an easy way, and 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.320 you don't kill anything. I mean I hunted elk for 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:35.000 six years and never fired a shot at an elk 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.280 because I thought there was an easier way. People just 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:40.840 haven't been smart enough to figure it out yet. Yeah. 0:13:40.880 --> 0:13:43.880 And finally I'm like, you know what, well, there's an 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:47.440 easier way. Well it's called cash, Yeah exactly. Yeah, I 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:51.280 mean money solves a lot of you can buy. So 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:53.600 that was the elk you were looking to purchase, right, 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.560 And so after that, I'm like, all right, that's what 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.080 I'm gonna do. And I went in, slept on the 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:05.640 mountain that night, next morning killed the ball. Like, holy cow, 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:10.840 what year was at that was in? And uh, I 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.160 think I've killed at least one bull every year since 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.800 then just doing the same thing, and it was like 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:20.640 the light came on. Randy quit thinking there's an easy 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.960 way to do this. There are easier ways to do it, 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.520 but public land bull elk hunting on general tags is 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.640 not an easy endeavor. No, but you've made it that 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:38.800 your thing, man. Yeah, by accident, almost because of where 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.560 I live, because of the fact that when you get 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:47.320 in the TV world, elk are sexy. I mean, what 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:49.600 what sells better than a big bull out screaming in 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.200 a camera, big white tail buck on the cover of magazine. 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.200 Well that's that's probably true. Um, But I had a 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:58.360 meeting with some magazine editors the other day and they're like, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.640 you just it's just a fact of like the best 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:07.160 selling news stand Well they any cover you do, you 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:09.560 can't beat that. It's gonna be the biggest bucks. You'll 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.720 have an article inside the magazine condemning fence top fence 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:19.160 deer operations, but the cover magazine is a fence. It's 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.840 got it's a fence buck that you're never gonna run into, 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.360 and then you'll sell new stand copies. Yeahs just it's 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:30.760 just people like, yeah, answer your question, the white tail buck. Yeah, 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:35.520 all right, So I kinda got into that, and you know, 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:40.120 living in Montana, el coomes a big thing like it 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.720 is in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado other places. And then in 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.040 the mid nineties I started applying in all these western 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:52.720 states and ginda going here, going there. Getting to hunt 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.120 elk in a lot of different places and a lot 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:58.320 of different environments made me a way better elk hunter 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:02.840 because showing up in my backyard in Bozeman, Montana to 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:05.360 hunt elk, you kind of know what they're doing. You're 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.040 kind of doing the same thing every year. Oh it's 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:10.040 for early November. This is where they're going to be. 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.360 I show up in New Mexico and their season is, 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:18.200 let's say, middle of October. Everything is different, so you 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:22.400 really have to get your mind into a pattern and 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:26.000 an idea of these are not the same animal I 0:16:26.080 --> 0:16:29.600 hunt at home, And like you guys know on TV, 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.200 my my statement is I've got five days to figure 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:37.040 it out, sort it out, and pack it out. I 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.360 show up at a place I've never been and we've 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:44.400 got dollars invested in an episode. I gotta find some elk. 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:46.880 And it doesn't matter that the weather is crappy, it 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.480 doesn't matter there's a lot of hunting pressure on public land. 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:52.840 I gotta figure it out, you know, sniveling and wine 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.200 and isn't gonna do any good. I can't change the weather, 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.960 I can't change the hunting pressure. So over the course 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.880 of doing that and you become at least I feel 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:05.760 I've become a much smarter elk hunter than I was. 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.600 And people watch our show and say, Randy, come on, 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.000 what's going on here? I never see this many outcomes 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.760 public land, and I don't know what to tell him. 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.119 It's just, you know, either we're lucky, which we do 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.120 get lucky at times, but we really have a system 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:24.800 of here's how we do it. We spend the first 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:28.720 two days figuring it out, then we collect all the 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.760 information we sorted out, and then we got about another 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:33.280 two or three days to try and get one on 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.440 the ground and pack them out. That's just it's that simple. 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:38.679 That raises a whole bunch of questions I got for you. 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.280 But let me start with the one that I already 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:47.320 had in my head. I used to feel like this 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.680 is even hard to put. Most hunters have like a 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:54.320 thing they do, okay, so what other the Michigan like, 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.679 Like what you did like the thing you did was 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.639 we bow hunted deer, yeah, bohn white hills. Then you 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.760 do other stuff in addition, So like if you're a 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:05.679 guy to lives in Wisconsin, you might just like you 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.960 like agricultural white tails. But every year you go on 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.840 a destination hunt. But there's the thing that, like the 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:14.840 main thing, like if you took it all the way, 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:19.679 that thing would be left. Okay. I've often thought, like 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.720 when you draw, like what your thing is like. For 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.119 a long time, when I lived in Montana, my thing 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.680 was like the Archie hunt again, Archie hunt public land 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:29.240 for elk. That's like the thing I really wanted to 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:30.679 be good at. Like if I could be good at 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:32.399 one thing, it would have been that. All the are 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:36.520 stuff I did was auxiliary. Now I travel enough, I 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.440 don't really have a thing anymore. But I always wondered, 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:45.880 does the auxiliary stuff enhance your ability to do the 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.960 thing you're saying that it does? Oh yeah, and how 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.280 is that though? Because you'll go somewhere I remember, like 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.880 hunting elk in New Mexico. I remember just thinking, this 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.000 has nothing to do with hunt elka Montana. This ain't 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:03.440 where the elk would be. This isn't what they'd be doing, 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:06.920 you know, And I never like I felt like it's 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:11.560 like you're not training yourself, You're just on vacation. Before 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:14.040 we get Randy's the answer to this. I'm gonna take 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:18.280 a short break for our sponsors. And when I tell you, Steve, 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.960 what really preps me good for Elk County, You're gonna 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:26.960 crack up. My son and I fish walleye tournaments and 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:28.880 you're you're already looking at me like, what the hell 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.160 does this have to do with Elk cunning. Yeah, when 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:33.960 you fish a walleye tournament, or even if you go 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:37.000 walleye fishing, and probably bass fishing the same thing. I 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:40.919 don't bash bass fish, so I can't really say. But 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:44.400 before you even go to the lake, you analyze, Okay, 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:46.960 what time of year is it? All Right, it's June. 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.320 The walleyes aren't gonna be up way shallow and they're 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:51.440 not gonna be out on the d pumps. So right there, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:57.639 I've eliminated about the lake. All Right, what's the water temperature, 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:01.840 what's the condition are the what are they doing? It's 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.280 kind of the same thing with Elk. Elk do a 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.040 different thing at a different time. Of the year based 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:14.520 on certain needs food, escapement or survival, water and breeding. 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:18.280 Same thing fish do. And what I found myself doing 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.840 when I would fish walleye tournaments is I'd figure out 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:23.680 one thing that worked, and I thought that would work 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.440 every day, every place, all the time. And I'd catch 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:28.720 fish one out of ten days, and boy, when I 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.240 found him, I'd just thump him. But then the other 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.680 nine days I'd struggle. That's how I fish yellow perch, 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:41.199 same rig and still around the country, same rig, same depth. 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:46.640 Sometimes I knocked the ship out of And so my 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:50.160 son gets bored to tears just doing what his own 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.760 man does. So he's out there experimenting all the time, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.360 and that little guy he's catching more fish than I am. 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.920 And it starts driving home the point of you know what, 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:01.240 if you always do what you always done, you're always 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.040 gonna get what you always got. And elk hunting is 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.800 kind of the same thing. If I go to New 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:08.760 Mexico and think I'm gonna hunt like I do in 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:12.840 Montana just because it works in Montana, not gonna happen. 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:17.080 So how does hunting in New Mexico educate you about Montana? 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.800 Because it gets you the mindset that when you show up, 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:22.919 the very first thing you have to do before you 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.600 even get there is cross off all the places on 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.600 your map where elk are not gonna be. Scouting is 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.120 not about finding out elk. It's about eliminating where they're 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.200 not going to be out right. So you look at 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.480 my map when I start, anything that's within a mile 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.200 of a motor i e. A trailer, a road crossed off, 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.000 just don't even look there because I know other hunters 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.119 are going to be there. And then I look at 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.600 all right, what is the season of the year. Okay, 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.119 let's say it's the middle of October. All right, it's 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.800 kind of the end of the rut. The bigger balls 0:21:57.880 --> 0:21:59.920 are going to be off somewhere looking for their serve 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:03.040 fival locations. They're gonna be getting away from hunting pressure. 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:05.480 They're gonna make a living down in a canyon or 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.520 some other place, just like they do in Montana. But 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.040 in Montana, they're gonna make a living in some really steep, nasty, 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.480 blowdown jungle that has a little bit of food and 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.199 a little bit of water nearby where they can not 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:22.240 get shot for five weeks, just like yeah, or some small, 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:25.240 little pocket, some steep place that you just aren't gonna 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.360 think to look. In New Mexico, it's the same thing, 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.919 but it's mostly canyons and and other terrain differences. So 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:35.520 they're gonna he's gonna want to be down in New Mexico, 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:38.280 he's gonna want be down into canyon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:40.600 Montana already have a canyon country for the most point. 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:45.520 And so it's not that the nuances of the landscape 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:48.520 or how those out behave on that landscape teach me 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:52.760 anything about how how to effectively hunt him in Montana. 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.919 It's the fact that it forces you to analyze what 0:22:57.160 --> 0:23:00.119 is the season of the year, based on that he's 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.200 into the year, what are public land elk doing at 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.480 that time of year, and based on what they're doing, 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:09.240 what am I gonna do to make sure I find 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:14.040 them as often as I can? And I don't know 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:19.399 if that's making sense, because most people will go out 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.640 in the woods on a public land hunt and they 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:24.840 want to think that a new gadget or a new 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:27.960 call or a new blah blah blah is going to 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:32.320 bring it elk to them. It's it very seldom does 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:36.480 I mean it might, but you're really hoping on gambler's luck. 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:40.040 If that's all you're thinking about, the people who and 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:42.280 they're the reason. What did you guys say in Colorado? 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:45.600 Probably what? The elk are killed by ten percent of 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.720 the hunters. Yeah, and the reason being is those ten 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:51.919 percent of guys have a system and they know what 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:55.480 to expect when they show up. When they show up, 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:57.760 they've already got a plan laid out, either on a 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:00.760 map or in their mind. They've got three or four options, 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:05.160 and they're not wandering around opening morning before daylight thinking well, 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:09.240 I wonder if that ridge would be the spot or No, 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:12.879 They're going to Point A, and they go there, they 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:16.040 don't see him. The afternoon, they're on Point B. They'll 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:18.880 have six eight spots on their map to check out 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:21.639 in a five day hunt, and two to three of 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.359 those spots will have alk and they'll just, through a 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:27.560 process of elimination, get there and when they find now, 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:30.159 they'll kill one. I think elk are one of the 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:33.000 easiest animals in the world to kill once you find them. 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:35.520 Once you find them, finding them as a hard part. 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:38.800 And that's why you know, I do a lot of 0:24:38.800 --> 0:24:42.520 writing and blogging, and I tell people as crazy as 0:24:42.560 --> 0:24:45.000 it sounds, as simple as it is. You can't kill 0:24:45.000 --> 0:24:48.159 one if you can't find one. So quit worrying about 0:24:48.160 --> 0:24:51.280 all the techniques and tactics to kill one. Figure out 0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:53.760 how to find them, because once you find him, you'll 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:58.800 kill them. Well, so what what's your way of finding them? A? Yeah? Again, 0:24:59.240 --> 0:25:02.000 it goes back to that whole seasonal thing. I break 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:04.119 it down and think about seasons a lot, right. I 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:07.720 break it down into five periods. It's early season, pre rut, 0:25:08.119 --> 0:25:11.399 peak rut, post rut, in late season. And if you 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:13.480 gave me one time of the year to hunt and 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:16.040 try to kill a big bull, it's gonna be late season. 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:19.879 Let's just say, oh, bowl a bow, legal bowl, A 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:23.359 legal bowl in Montana is a branchantler bull. I'm probably 0:25:23.400 --> 0:25:24.800 gonna hunt him in the peak of the rut in 0:25:24.800 --> 0:25:28.639 September with a bowl. Other states it might be a 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:33.560 different answer. But each of those five seasons, they have 0:25:33.640 --> 0:25:37.520 a different need. In the early season, you look at it, Okay, 0:25:37.560 --> 0:25:40.520 the bulls still aren't really with the cows. The mature bulls, 0:25:40.720 --> 0:25:44.560 they're still putting on the feedback. You compare that too 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:48.639 late season, and now they don't really care about food. 0:25:48.800 --> 0:25:51.919 They don't care about cows. All they care about is 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:56.040 getting through hunting season. And they've got these sanctuaries they 0:25:56.040 --> 0:25:59.080 go to, and they in their bachelor groups go their 0:25:59.320 --> 0:26:04.040 year after or year after year. And you said your 0:26:04.080 --> 0:26:07.320 name to your name in Montana, Yeah, I mean low 0:26:07.400 --> 0:26:10.679 down nasty dog here. As as a general rule, I 0:26:10.720 --> 0:26:13.320 tell people, and this is Newberg's first rule of el 0:26:13.400 --> 0:26:18.480 cunting is where where hunters go, elk don't. And so 0:26:18.840 --> 0:26:21.560 if it's a place hunters can easily get to or 0:26:21.680 --> 0:26:24.720 don't have to exert themselves to get to, don't expect 0:26:24.800 --> 0:26:28.119 late season elk to be there. Maybe some late season coles, 0:26:28.119 --> 0:26:32.640 but not late season bulls. And I will share information 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:36.480 with people about my early season spots or my peak 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:41.360 rut locations. Fine, everyone kind of knows where those are. 0:26:42.000 --> 0:26:45.200 But you're never gonna hear Randy Newburgh tell you where 0:26:45.240 --> 0:26:48.480 one of these sanctuaries are, because one they're hard to find. 0:26:48.520 --> 0:26:50.720 Two once you find them, you can go there every year, 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:53.800 year after year after year in kill elk in that 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:57.840 same spot. Because these bulls get old by living in 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:00.920 these locations. To find spot, like what side of the the ground, 0:27:01.080 --> 0:27:07.680 what side of patch ground? Oh, maybe sixty acres that 0:27:07.880 --> 0:27:10.840 they will make a living in a sixty acre spot 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:13.000 all the way through hunting season. In Montana, we got 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:16.200 a five week rifle season. After the first shots, all 0:27:16.240 --> 0:27:20.240 hell breaks loose. The older bulls are in their bachelor groups, 0:27:20.280 --> 0:27:23.560 and they are going to the ugly, nasty places. They're 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:27.320 gonna be places that are hard to approach because of 0:27:27.359 --> 0:27:30.480 wind or noise or other things. And even if you 0:27:30.480 --> 0:27:34.280 do approach it, there's gonna be a fast escape route. Yeah. 0:27:34.480 --> 0:27:37.600 And it's just I can almost look at a map 0:27:37.640 --> 0:27:40.960 now anymore with topal lines and say, there's gonna be 0:27:40.960 --> 0:27:43.439 out there. Okay, But how does that play into your 0:27:43.440 --> 0:27:45.359 idea that once you find them that they're easy to kill. 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:48.320 He's protected by the wind, he's gotta go escape route. 0:27:49.040 --> 0:27:51.720 You just gotta wait him out. I think most people 0:27:51.720 --> 0:27:54.720 when they find it out get way too excited. I 0:27:54.720 --> 0:27:57.080 gotta go kill him. I finally found one, and they 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:00.320 burst in there. They think, oh, over here, the winds 0:28:00.320 --> 0:28:02.240 blowing out of the south while you get over the 0:28:02.240 --> 0:28:04.639 other side of the drainage or on the other hillside, 0:28:04.680 --> 0:28:06.719 and it may be blown out of the east. And 0:28:06.760 --> 0:28:09.440 so before they even get there, they've already announced to 0:28:09.440 --> 0:28:12.560 the elk what's going on. And they see an elk 0:28:12.640 --> 0:28:14.800 bedded and they're afraid another hunter is gonna come shoot 0:28:14.840 --> 0:28:19.000 him as bed and I just wait him out, like 0:28:19.040 --> 0:28:22.520 how like what sit there until they stand up and 0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:25.480 offer me a shot, or I get to someplace that says, 0:28:25.480 --> 0:28:29.920 all right, I'm two yards away. I know he's down 0:28:29.960 --> 0:28:32.399 in there. He's gonna feed. I can see his tracks 0:28:32.440 --> 0:28:34.600 in the snow where he feeds every night. I'm gonna 0:28:34.640 --> 0:28:36.159 let him feed up there, and I'll kill him. And 0:28:36.200 --> 0:28:38.160 I might have to wait until a half hour before 0:28:38.200 --> 0:28:43.040 the sun goes down, but if I wait, I'll kill him. 0:28:43.160 --> 0:28:47.000 I know I'm making this sound like everything you're saying, 0:28:47.600 --> 0:28:51.840 But I when I first started hunting elk, I made 0:28:51.840 --> 0:28:55.400 it way too complicated. I was looking for magic calls 0:28:55.520 --> 0:29:00.720 and you know, gizmos and all this stuff, and it 0:29:00.720 --> 0:29:04.560 it didn't work. I got a great anecdote about a 0:29:04.640 --> 0:29:08.040 late season big bull that was killed. Some guy finally 0:29:08.120 --> 0:29:10.360 killed him, but he was in gunnison, and I want 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:12.160 to say, I can't remember if think it was. I 0:29:12.200 --> 0:29:13.960 don't think it was a tough to draw unit because 0:29:14.360 --> 0:29:17.600 I think as a story goes, I know there's he 0:29:17.680 --> 0:29:19.920 was about like a three sixties something bull, so pretty 0:29:20.040 --> 0:29:23.960 darn big for Colorado Dunnison Basin. And during the rut 0:29:23.960 --> 0:29:26.680 in September, this bull would rut on private land and 0:29:26.720 --> 0:29:29.760 it was like right adjacent to town, I want to say, 0:29:29.760 --> 0:29:32.200 it's right outside of Gunson, so everybody would see him. 0:29:32.200 --> 0:29:34.800 It's just a giant bull run around right around, and 0:29:34.840 --> 0:29:38.680 then like you know, rut would go by, rifle season 0:29:38.680 --> 0:29:42.280 would come around, and this bull would just disappear. Well, finally, 0:29:42.360 --> 0:29:44.560 one dude, it's just like literally glass and just like 0:29:44.720 --> 0:29:47.800 the same mountain that's been behind this bull forever, and 0:29:47.840 --> 0:29:51.120 like looking way high up in the alpine way above 0:29:51.160 --> 0:29:53.920 tree line, and there's like this little patch of willows 0:29:54.600 --> 0:29:57.280 and there's like a hundred yards away there's like five 0:29:57.880 --> 0:30:01.560 like dwarfed little wh or angleman spruce or you know 0:30:01.600 --> 0:30:03.640 whatever lives way up there, you know, this little like 0:30:03.680 --> 0:30:06.320 six foot trees. And gets out of spot and scope. 0:30:06.320 --> 0:30:08.480 He starts looking hard, and he thinks he can see 0:30:08.560 --> 0:30:11.880 tracks like connecting the two, you know. So he's like, 0:30:11.920 --> 0:30:13.920 I'm gonna start looking at that patch. He climbs up 0:30:13.920 --> 0:30:16.800 and gets a little bit closer, and sure enough, at 0:30:16.840 --> 0:30:20.600 like ten minutes before dark, up rises out of these 0:30:20.640 --> 0:30:24.040 five little spruce trees, this giant bowl, and he walks 0:30:24.080 --> 0:30:26.480 like a hundred yards over these little you know, dwarf 0:30:26.520 --> 0:30:29.560 tie alpine willows and he loses them in the dark. 0:30:30.120 --> 0:30:32.640 Next morning, he's like watching and like just as his 0:30:32.760 --> 0:30:35.760 cracking light, he just sees those antlers disappeared on his 0:30:35.800 --> 0:30:39.400 five little cruce. He went up there, waited him out, 0:30:39.760 --> 0:30:42.040 killed that bowl, and he said the pack job was 0:30:42.120 --> 0:30:45.240 just like something out of like a K two documentary, 0:30:45.560 --> 0:30:48.840 just like ice Acs is cramp on, just like scooting 0:30:48.880 --> 0:30:51.880 along the edge of this basin, you know, eleven plus 0:30:51.920 --> 0:30:55.040 thousand feet high. But yeah, I mean he's got him 0:30:55.040 --> 0:30:59.320 hanging on his wall now and right into We're hunting 0:31:00.080 --> 0:31:02.160 mule your a couple years ago in Colorado, it was 0:31:02.320 --> 0:31:04.720 into the don't know what season was. There had been 0:31:04.760 --> 0:31:07.240 a couple of seasons going on, and they're just like 0:31:07.240 --> 0:31:10.400 looking through my spot and scope looking for Mulder and 0:31:10.520 --> 0:31:12.520 just seeing a nice bull and be like you son 0:31:12.560 --> 0:31:16.480 up a bit. That's where you're that's where you hang out. Yeah, 0:31:16.960 --> 0:31:20.080 I've like a post ut situation. Yeah, I've had that 0:31:20.080 --> 0:31:22.720 happen a lot of times in Colorado. I mean, I 0:31:22.880 --> 0:31:25.240 try to go deer hunting there every two or three years, 0:31:25.840 --> 0:31:28.320 and I'll be looking in these little pockets for bucks 0:31:28.320 --> 0:31:31.280 and does, and I'll be like, just like you said, 0:31:31.560 --> 0:31:36.200 you sill be. But I know I could probably come 0:31:36.200 --> 0:31:38.560 back there year after year and find him or other 0:31:38.560 --> 0:31:42.120 bulls around there, and I just I don't know. I 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:44.400 I try when I do seminars about elk hunting, and 0:31:44.440 --> 0:31:47.160 I'm not an expert by any means. I just have 0:31:47.240 --> 0:31:50.600 a lot of experience that doesn't necessarily make you an expert. Um. 0:31:50.880 --> 0:31:54.719 I try to tell people, think about what time of 0:31:54.720 --> 0:31:57.320 the year you're hunting, and what are the needs to 0:31:57.400 --> 0:32:00.880 elk has at that time of year in the peak rut. 0:32:01.120 --> 0:32:05.400 They don't care about food. You know, it's back there 0:32:05.440 --> 0:32:07.360 when I said the best way to kill a big 0:32:07.360 --> 0:32:10.240 bull is late season with the rifle. The other would 0:32:10.320 --> 0:32:14.960 be at a water hole in a hot climate in 0:32:15.000 --> 0:32:18.160 the middle of the day during peak rut. I've been 0:32:18.240 --> 0:32:21.760 lucky and drawn Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, Utah. 0:32:22.000 --> 0:32:24.080 I've drawn a lot of those tags for our treat. 0:32:25.400 --> 0:32:28.480 What happens is the bulls take their cows up to 0:32:28.600 --> 0:32:31.280 bed them in the morning and they usually stop and 0:32:31.280 --> 0:32:34.880 get some water somewhere along the way. And once they 0:32:34.960 --> 0:32:38.360 bed those bulls and they defend them from a few satellites, 0:32:38.760 --> 0:32:41.920 those bulls will sneak away from the cows about somewhere 0:32:41.920 --> 0:32:44.920 between noon and three o'clock and they will come out 0:32:44.960 --> 0:32:47.520 in broad daylight, get a quick drink, and head back 0:32:47.600 --> 0:32:50.680 up to those cows. I've seen it so many times 0:32:51.320 --> 0:32:53.640 that when I have those tags, now, I don't go 0:32:53.720 --> 0:32:57.960 back to camp and take a nap at noon. I'm 0:32:57.960 --> 0:33:00.200 sleeping at the water hole or I'm sitting like I 0:33:00.200 --> 0:33:03.560 wouldn't be at home, because I like to take mind 0:33:03.600 --> 0:33:08.520 that I have from level of twelve up. But I 0:33:08.520 --> 0:33:10.800 think it's those sort of little tidbits that like in 0:33:10.880 --> 0:33:14.240 Montana you maybe never really thought about it, and then 0:33:14.240 --> 0:33:16.440 you went to a really hot climate where like it 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:19.040 happens more often and you notice it and you go, well, 0:33:19.160 --> 0:33:22.440 you know, maybe on a hot September day, this happens 0:33:22.440 --> 0:33:25.920 in Montana too, and so you know, yeah, that's the 0:33:25.920 --> 0:33:28.440 thing too. Like, uh, when I was two earlier about 0:33:28.440 --> 0:33:30.960 like Havin, you're like core activity, and then there's all 0:33:31.000 --> 0:33:33.120 the experiments we're kind of talk about ways in which 0:33:33.160 --> 0:33:35.920 you become educated in general. But I found at the 0:33:35.960 --> 0:33:38.160 same time that was our deal. I found that I 0:33:38.200 --> 0:33:41.160 don't respect, and I don't mean respect like in a 0:33:41.160 --> 0:33:44.960 way like you know, or let me use a different word. 0:33:45.560 --> 0:33:50.560 I don't admire the hunting prowess of people who have 0:33:50.680 --> 0:33:56.640 just figured out a thing. Yeah it's yeah, like you know, 0:33:56.640 --> 0:33:59.440 would be like some dude like yeah, like in September 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:04.200 he catches a ton of samon trolling in front of 0:34:04.200 --> 0:34:07.560 that river mouth. He's the man, and I was like yeah, 0:34:07.640 --> 0:34:10.960 but you know, like anything could happen and that fistory 0:34:11.000 --> 0:34:14.480 or whatever like so I kind of admire like adaptability, 0:34:14.840 --> 0:34:16.840 you know, or all the people that they kill a 0:34:16.840 --> 0:34:20.239 buck every year and then they whoever owns the farm 0:34:20.239 --> 0:34:22.840 they're hunting on, sells the farm. They never hunt again. 0:34:23.280 --> 0:34:25.080 It's like one manute, he's like the dude. They're like, yeah, 0:34:25.080 --> 0:34:27.479 oh John Man. Every mopening day he gets his buck 0:34:27.640 --> 0:34:29.239 and it's like yeah, I was just like I have 0:34:29.320 --> 0:34:33.520 my little thing. So through traveling and experimenting, I find 0:34:33.560 --> 0:34:39.280 that like just adaptability in and of itself, it's valuable. 0:34:39.400 --> 0:34:41.600 Oh I I agree completely. I mean it makes you 0:34:41.640 --> 0:34:44.440 feel more comfortable because I used to feel very vulnerable 0:34:44.840 --> 0:34:47.680 when I first started hunting here, first started hunting out here, 0:34:48.200 --> 0:34:51.719 I felt very vulnerable, like, man, would we be screwed 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:56.480 if somehow this trailhead were to gain popularity? M hm 0:34:57.120 --> 0:34:59.799 oh yeah, I mean we'll be done yea. And because 0:35:00.040 --> 0:35:03.239 let me know, as you park here there and they're there, 0:35:03.719 --> 0:35:06.839 and like if they were, what the hell that right? 0:35:06.880 --> 0:35:09.000 So I do like the kind of stuff you're saying, 0:35:09.040 --> 0:35:12.920 like go anywhere and having like a toolbox that you 0:35:12.920 --> 0:35:17.640 can you know. Yeah, I've just been lucky to get 0:35:17.640 --> 0:35:20.040 to hunt elk in so many places. You might not 0:35:20.040 --> 0:35:22.239 even be comfortable answers because it sounds like you're like 0:35:22.880 --> 0:35:25.480 tooting your own horn or whatever. But how like like 0:35:25.560 --> 0:35:27.799 how many states or what states have you killed? Public Land, 0:35:27.800 --> 0:35:37.400 alicon um Antana, Whyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada? Uh? 0:35:37.680 --> 0:35:40.160 Should have last year in Utah and two weeks people 0:35:40.400 --> 0:35:43.520 get to see, Yeah, I know how it is eighteen 0:35:43.600 --> 0:35:46.520 yards of bowls standing there and I'm at, you know, 0:35:46.680 --> 0:35:49.799 with my archery gear, thinking, come on, buddy, take one 0:35:49.840 --> 0:35:54.320 step and either the camera's got them or I don't 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:57.640 have them. And so I could have added Utah to 0:35:57.680 --> 0:36:00.839 that list if not for a very lucky lucky bull 0:36:01.000 --> 0:36:04.040 last year. But so it was all like, do it 0:36:04.200 --> 0:36:08.640 on your own, right, That's that's still seven states, is it. 0:36:09.040 --> 0:36:14.120 I think that's okay. Yeah, you know, and for me, 0:36:14.200 --> 0:36:17.400 I don't really even think about it in terms of numbers. 0:36:17.480 --> 0:36:19.719 It's like, no, no, that's why I hesitated to ask you. 0:36:20.040 --> 0:36:22.960 I mean it speaks for itself. Yeah, it's just experiences. 0:36:23.040 --> 0:36:26.319 And you know, a classic example of a learning experience 0:36:26.400 --> 0:36:29.520 is I'm in New Mexico. It's archery season. I mean 0:36:29.560 --> 0:36:33.919 it's blistering hot. I go up high and everyone else 0:36:34.000 --> 0:36:37.759 is up high high, like what eight thousand trying to 0:36:37.760 --> 0:36:41.560 get in some ponderosa. And I got my spotting scope 0:36:41.560 --> 0:36:43.400 out on this rock and I'm looking down and I 0:36:43.440 --> 0:36:46.279 see all these elk out on the flats in these grasslands. 0:36:47.080 --> 0:36:49.640 Grab my GPS and my map. I'm like, ship that's 0:36:49.680 --> 0:36:52.759 being lamp. So I go down there and there's some 0:36:52.840 --> 0:36:56.879 guys camp there, and I'm like, you guys hunting these 0:36:56.880 --> 0:37:00.400 elk out here? Oh no, you'll never be able to 0:37:00.400 --> 0:37:03.400 get up on them. I mean, you can't call that man. Well, 0:37:03.960 --> 0:37:06.960 I grew up spotting stock hunting in a lot of 0:37:06.960 --> 0:37:09.799 ways in the big woods of Minnesota. As weird as 0:37:09.840 --> 0:37:13.799 that sounds, you know, you're trying to find someplace where 0:37:13.800 --> 0:37:15.759 a buck is hanging out, and you're trying to see 0:37:15.840 --> 0:37:18.320 him before he sees you, because if he sees you first, 0:37:19.200 --> 0:37:23.720 one big jump and he's gone still n yeah, pretty 0:37:23.800 --> 0:37:26.880 much still hunting. So I'm thinking, you know what, those 0:37:26.920 --> 0:37:29.879 elk got a bed somewhere out there. I go out 0:37:29.920 --> 0:37:32.680 there and I get to looking around. I can see 0:37:32.719 --> 0:37:35.320 where they're bedding. Wherever there's a break in the terrain, 0:37:35.440 --> 0:37:39.520 just a rock pile like six ft, you know, dropping 0:37:39.560 --> 0:37:43.480 a rock. They're bedding right up against those rocks for 0:37:43.600 --> 0:37:47.480 shade or are sad. I go out there and within 0:37:47.800 --> 0:37:51.200 a day I arrow one of those bulls of that 0:37:51.640 --> 0:37:55.759 like two yards and we come packing. Yeah, we come 0:37:55.760 --> 0:37:58.040 packing it out and the guys we walked past their camp, 0:37:58.080 --> 0:38:01.879 They're like, where the hell did you get that out there? 0:38:02.560 --> 0:38:04.960 And I could have shot other bulls on that trip. 0:38:05.560 --> 0:38:07.759 Every time I've went back to that spot and been 0:38:07.840 --> 0:38:11.520 lucky enough to draw those elk have figured out no 0:38:11.640 --> 0:38:15.000 hunters want to come out here because it's about a 0:38:15.000 --> 0:38:20.200 three mile hike, it's hot, there's no shade, but there's 0:38:20.239 --> 0:38:23.839 no hunters either. So elk will go where they're They're 0:38:23.880 --> 0:38:28.360 kind of like this fluid animal that moves in response 0:38:28.400 --> 0:38:31.239 to pressure, kind of like water. I mean, you push 0:38:31.280 --> 0:38:33.560 against the water balloon and the water moves to a 0:38:33.560 --> 0:38:36.520 different spot in the balloon. It's kind of how these 0:38:36.520 --> 0:38:39.480 elk are. And so every year I hope I draw 0:38:39.520 --> 0:38:42.560 that tag because it's so consistent that I go to 0:38:42.640 --> 0:38:45.439 that trailhead I walk out there, no one's gonna be there, 0:38:45.600 --> 0:38:49.120 and they're gonna be out there. So it's just one 0:38:49.160 --> 0:38:51.600 of those things. Though, if you have enough experiences and 0:38:51.719 --> 0:38:54.600 go to enough different places, you kind of have those 0:38:54.680 --> 0:38:59.000 discovery movements and say, and what's funny is like if 0:38:59.000 --> 0:39:02.359 someone tells you, like, just describe that hunt, but put 0:39:02.360 --> 0:39:04.319 an antelope in there, and they're like, oh, yeah, for sure, 0:39:04.360 --> 0:39:06.400 we'll go after those antelope way out there in the flats. 0:39:06.400 --> 0:39:08.040 But then someone puts an elk out in that same 0:39:08.040 --> 0:39:11.960 country and I can't kill those things. Yeah, And I 0:39:12.000 --> 0:39:14.680 don't know. I think we on TV have a tendency 0:39:14.840 --> 0:39:20.600 to maybe create some narrow mindedness among hunters from the 0:39:20.600 --> 0:39:24.240 standpoint of what works or or how wide you're thinking 0:39:24.280 --> 0:39:29.840 should be. I mean, these are smart animals. They've figured 0:39:29.880 --> 0:39:32.440 it out. They've somehow. You know, a bowl that lives 0:39:32.560 --> 0:39:36.840 six years on public land, he's no dummy, Just like 0:39:36.880 --> 0:39:40.120 a white tail that lives past three years in the Midwest, 0:39:40.600 --> 0:39:45.680 there's no dummy. And uh don't don't discount some of 0:39:45.719 --> 0:39:49.400 the things they will do to stay alive. They just 0:39:49.440 --> 0:39:52.000 haven't figured out how to stay alive. That spot you're 0:39:52.040 --> 0:39:53.960 talking about always says you know if you go there. 0:39:55.480 --> 0:40:00.480 Um to me, man like my most valuable possessions in life, idols, 0:40:00.560 --> 0:40:08.200 just handful of things, just like reliable things. And you 0:40:08.280 --> 0:40:12.520 know you really rarely have more than a half dozen. 0:40:13.840 --> 0:40:15.799 And I'm not talking just one piece. I mean, just 0:40:15.840 --> 0:40:18.920 like the things that work and now and then for 0:40:18.960 --> 0:40:22.040 whatever reason you just scratch them. Yeah you know what 0:40:22.040 --> 0:40:24.400 I mean. Or you haven't done it so long and 0:40:24.440 --> 0:40:26.680 it doesn't feel like a thing anymore. But it's like 0:40:27.160 --> 0:40:30.720 knowing like the junk that works and stuff goes away 0:40:30.760 --> 0:40:34.600 like I used to be, because it feels like stuff changes, 0:40:34.719 --> 0:40:36.760 like I one of my things like that I counted 0:40:36.760 --> 0:40:38.880 by my things, like the ability that we would pound 0:40:39.520 --> 0:40:44.759 steelhead at the sixth Street damn in downtown Grand Rappers, Michigan. Right, 0:40:45.560 --> 0:40:47.919 I haven't done it forever the day. They haven't changed 0:40:47.920 --> 0:40:50.040 the damn they haven't changed the river. The steelhead are 0:40:50.040 --> 0:40:53.000 still there. But I feel like somehow if I went back, 0:40:53.040 --> 0:40:55.080 like I wouldn't be able to do it. I like 0:40:55.360 --> 0:40:59.000 lost it as my thing, you know. It's just I 0:40:59.040 --> 0:41:01.360 haven't done it so long. I almost feel like telling people. 0:41:01.800 --> 0:41:03.359 I recently had this thing where I had a friend 0:41:03.440 --> 0:41:08.520 move to a place I used to live, and I'm imploring, 0:41:08.719 --> 0:41:13.920 I'm begging him to go sit a certain avalanche slide 0:41:14.560 --> 0:41:16.839 to see if a bear came out, because I hadn't 0:41:16.880 --> 0:41:20.000 hunted in a decade. And he goes out and said, 0:41:20.040 --> 0:41:22.160 I went up, there's all snowy. I'm like, no, you're 0:41:22.160 --> 0:41:25.480 not listening. I'm saying, dude, it doesn't matter. The shoot 0:41:25.520 --> 0:41:27.279 will be fine. I don't care how much snow. You 0:41:27.320 --> 0:41:30.799 gotta wait through, park your damn car, walk up there 0:41:30.840 --> 0:41:33.120 and look, you know, And he thinks I'm trying to 0:41:33.160 --> 0:41:34.600 help him out. I'm just trying to know, like do 0:41:34.680 --> 0:41:37.080 I still I'm like, do I still have a thing 0:41:37.160 --> 0:41:39.319 or not? Here? And I'm telling like, you go this 0:41:39.400 --> 0:41:42.279 one time, you know, and he goes up called back, 0:41:43.120 --> 0:41:46.840 I'm like, never go there again. That I just needed 0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:49.920 to know that I still have that little thing. It 0:41:50.000 --> 0:41:54.920 works in these little places. I am a big advocate 0:41:54.960 --> 0:41:58.640 for conservation, but and a lot of people know. I 0:41:58.640 --> 0:42:01.279 sit on the board of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. One 0:42:01.320 --> 0:42:03.759 other people came to me and said, Randy, would you 0:42:03.800 --> 0:42:10.440 auction off your GPS with all your ways and you 0:42:10.560 --> 0:42:15.040 talking about Yeah, you talk about mixed emotions because you 0:42:15.080 --> 0:42:19.200 know I didn't do it. No, I I haven't and uh, 0:42:19.480 --> 0:42:21.440 you would have done it, but you lost your GPS 0:42:21.520 --> 0:42:25.520 so you couldn't. I found that GPS. Yeah, Joanna saw 0:42:25.600 --> 0:42:27.400 me a couple of months ago. I was in panic 0:42:27.440 --> 0:42:34.280 mode my GPS with all of this cherished hard. Yeah, 0:42:34.640 --> 0:42:37.359 I'd lost it. I'd been on muscrat trapping and I 0:42:37.360 --> 0:42:41.600 couldn't find the damn thing. Well, I have these customs 0:42:41.640 --> 0:42:45.239 heat covers made, and I put it somewhere where I 0:42:45.239 --> 0:42:48.880 wouldn't forget where I put it, and that's where I was. 0:42:49.000 --> 0:42:53.560 I found it in May sometimes but so you can 0:42:53.600 --> 0:42:56.759 auction it off, No, I have never got I will 0:42:56.840 --> 0:43:00.560 someday auction it off. But it kind of like what 0:43:00.680 --> 0:43:03.520 you were saying, Steve about, you know, in respect for 0:43:03.719 --> 0:43:08.960 people who are adaptable or whatever. I respect people who 0:43:09.040 --> 0:43:12.480 want to go out and figure it out, who who 0:43:12.560 --> 0:43:15.160 want to take the journey rather than be led to 0:43:15.200 --> 0:43:17.960 the destination and say here he is, shoot him. I 0:43:18.000 --> 0:43:21.280 mean the guy who just racks his brain and works 0:43:21.320 --> 0:43:25.279 and goes out before work or whatever on the weekends, 0:43:25.280 --> 0:43:27.560 and you know, he's skimped for time, but somehow he 0:43:27.560 --> 0:43:31.439 shoots a bowl every year. That guy's got my respect. Yeah. 0:43:31.440 --> 0:43:33.279 I like that guy. I always like, I always want 0:43:33.280 --> 0:43:35.400 to help that guy out. Me too. And I always 0:43:35.440 --> 0:43:37.919 want to help out the guy with his kid. Yeah, 0:43:38.040 --> 0:43:39.520 but dude, he and his kid, And I was like, hey, 0:43:39.560 --> 0:43:43.200 you know what I would do? But um, yeah, man. 0:43:43.320 --> 0:43:48.600 The thing about auction off it's just like, like you said, 0:43:48.640 --> 0:43:53.520 you're proponent of conservation. Um. It just brings up a 0:43:53.560 --> 0:43:56.600 thing that I think about all the time is when 0:43:56.600 --> 0:43:59.799 people talk about the need for hunter recruitment, the only 0:43:59.840 --> 0:44:03.960 will of that, the thinking goes that for hunting to 0:44:04.040 --> 0:44:06.919 survive politically. I mean, I'm not telling you that, I'm 0:44:06.960 --> 0:44:10.720 just for listeners that for hunting to survive in today's 0:44:10.760 --> 0:44:13.880 political climate, we need to have we need to have healthy, 0:44:14.000 --> 0:44:21.080 robust numbers, right. Um. But a thing that critics of 0:44:21.120 --> 0:44:24.840 that say, including many friends of mine who critics of 0:44:24.960 --> 0:44:27.640 the idea of hunter recruitment. We'll be like, well, why 0:44:27.640 --> 0:44:30.200 would you want to increase the likelihood of someone being 0:44:30.239 --> 0:44:36.560 in your spot? And when I get asked by people, 0:44:36.880 --> 0:44:39.080 and often will give talks, and the thing that always 0:44:39.080 --> 0:44:41.799 comes up when I give a talk because people be like, 0:44:41.840 --> 0:44:44.520 what can we be doing? Or why are hunter numbers 0:44:44.520 --> 0:44:46.800 staging that? Or why does the average hunter get older? 0:44:46.920 --> 0:44:49.839 So you know what, what what do you see from 0:44:49.880 --> 0:44:53.520 the people you meet? I'm like, you know what, Inspiring 0:44:53.560 --> 0:44:56.160 people to want to go is not a problem, right, 0:44:56.239 --> 0:44:59.560 There's plenty of motivation out there. The cost, I don't 0:44:59.560 --> 0:45:01.440 think it's there's not a lot of people. There aren't 0:45:01.480 --> 0:45:03.680 tons of people who want to hunt but can't because 0:45:03.760 --> 0:45:06.840 the cost. They're not hung as they don't have a 0:45:06.840 --> 0:45:11.200 good spot, and a lot of people aren't willing to 0:45:11.239 --> 0:45:14.200 just make the sacrifices necessary to find good spots. I 0:45:14.360 --> 0:45:17.440 found I take people out, take them on amazing trips, 0:45:18.160 --> 0:45:22.719 and then they are going to replicate that amazing trip 0:45:23.160 --> 0:45:24.879 unless they do tons of hard work to find their 0:45:24.880 --> 0:45:27.759 own stuff. And that's it for him. And when it 0:45:27.760 --> 0:45:29.839 comes down to it, so like I like, so if 0:45:29.880 --> 0:45:32.359 I was consistent with what I'm saying, I would give 0:45:32.440 --> 0:45:36.879 up all my spots. True, you would, because I would 0:45:36.880 --> 0:45:40.239 be able to make a handful of people. But it's 0:45:40.239 --> 0:45:43.240 just not something I'm willing to do. And some people, 0:45:43.280 --> 0:45:46.200 like you know, my older brother, he just thinks that 0:45:46.360 --> 0:45:52.480 all this talk is just ridiculous. And I've listened to 0:45:53.000 --> 0:45:56.200 some of your podcasts where the topics come up, and 0:45:56.239 --> 0:46:00.680 I'm kind of torn between. I'm I'm all about making 0:46:00.719 --> 0:46:05.239 sure opportunity exists, but not handing it to him. I 0:46:05.280 --> 0:46:08.600 think the worst thing you can do for a prospective 0:46:08.640 --> 0:46:13.440 hunter is to hand them something that just show them 0:46:13.480 --> 0:46:16.239 the easy way. Oh well, that's all there is to that, 0:46:16.400 --> 0:46:18.640 and you've cheated him out of the entire experience of 0:46:18.680 --> 0:46:23.239 what hunting really is. In my mind, I don't think 0:46:23.280 --> 0:46:28.719 that's the value that people when people say hunting recruitment, 0:46:28.960 --> 0:46:31.080 that's not what I think of. You know, bring him 0:46:31.120 --> 0:46:32.920 on out that, bringing them out there, make sure they 0:46:33.000 --> 0:46:36.000 kill something the first day. Now, you know, let them 0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:38.719 get a little called, let them, you know, maybe feel 0:46:38.719 --> 0:46:41.680 a little lost, let them have to work, and that's 0:46:41.800 --> 0:46:43.880 the part that is going to make them a hunter 0:46:44.280 --> 0:46:46.960 for the long term. It was if it's easy there's 0:46:47.000 --> 0:46:49.560 no reward in it. Yeah, I don't want to make 0:46:49.920 --> 0:46:52.120 new hunters just for the sake of doing it. No, 0:46:52.440 --> 0:46:55.279 if you told me if I signed some treaty with 0:46:55.400 --> 0:47:01.440 the non hunting public, he said, we'll never mess with you. Okay, 0:47:01.480 --> 0:47:07.160 in perpetuity, you will not be messed with politically or environmentally. 0:47:09.120 --> 0:47:11.080 I'll be like, Okay, I'll just be the only that 0:47:11.200 --> 0:47:14.200 honestly want to be the only guy that hunts. Is 0:47:14.320 --> 0:47:17.080 long is you're telling me you're not gonna mess with 0:47:17.120 --> 0:47:19.319 the habits at, You're not gonna mess with the hunting rights. 0:47:19.840 --> 0:47:23.279 You know That's fine. I'll just be the guy I'll take. 0:47:23.480 --> 0:47:27.359 I'll take that job. I've heard you talk about your 0:47:27.360 --> 0:47:32.319 brother's opinion on this and growing up in Michigan. I'm 0:47:32.360 --> 0:47:33.960 assuming it was a little bit like where I grew 0:47:34.040 --> 0:47:40.319 up in Minnesota, where everybody hunting fish, everybody, well, every household. Yeah, 0:47:40.360 --> 0:47:44.200 I mean I did not know anyone who really ate 0:47:44.239 --> 0:47:48.560 beef growing up until I went off to college. I 0:47:48.600 --> 0:47:53.360 didn't realize how much beef, chicken, and pork got standing. Oh, definitely, 0:47:53.400 --> 0:47:56.040 we ate all kinds like we ate. There was all around. 0:47:56.080 --> 0:47:59.160 Domestic meat was there, but they everybody hunted, but it 0:47:59.239 --> 0:48:03.839 wasn't like it wasn't like a subsistence area. But and 0:48:03.920 --> 0:48:08.640 so the point I'm getting to is, because some people 0:48:08.719 --> 0:48:11.719 grow up in that environment where you just work your 0:48:11.760 --> 0:48:13.680 butt off and you hunt and your fish and you 0:48:13.760 --> 0:48:16.880 trap and you do all those kind of things, you 0:48:18.520 --> 0:48:21.799 encounter experiences that shape inform you, so you don't need 0:48:21.840 --> 0:48:26.480 to be quote unquote recruited as a hunter. Everybody I 0:48:26.520 --> 0:48:29.120 grew up with they were going to be hunters because 0:48:29.160 --> 0:48:32.440 we came from a society of hunters. That was our identity. 0:48:32.600 --> 0:48:37.719 That you weren't, Oh, I'm a carpenter and then I'm 0:48:37.719 --> 0:48:40.120 a hunter. It was the reverse. No, I'm a hunter. 0:48:40.920 --> 0:48:44.040 Just who you were if if you were a young kid, 0:48:44.640 --> 0:48:47.040 you looked up to the guys who were hunters in 0:48:47.040 --> 0:48:50.880 your community, or fishermen or trappers or whatever. And so 0:48:51.000 --> 0:48:55.800 I I think a lot of quote unquote problems we 0:48:55.800 --> 0:48:59.840 we attribute to hunting recruitment are just the environment or 0:48:59.840 --> 0:49:02.440 atmosphere in which we're trying to bring them into it. 0:49:03.320 --> 0:49:07.560 You know, trying to bring someone who's only exposed to 0:49:07.680 --> 0:49:10.919 nature or to the natural world for one day out 0:49:10.960 --> 0:49:16.200 of a year. You're not gonna convert them to being 0:49:16.360 --> 0:49:19.440 a hunter, like we think of a hunter, you have 0:49:19.640 --> 0:49:22.520 to put in the effort in the work to immerse 0:49:22.640 --> 0:49:24.719 them to a level where they understand all the other 0:49:24.760 --> 0:49:29.520 parts of hunting. Yeah. I thought about that because I've 0:49:29.560 --> 0:49:37.640 been um befuddled at times by taking people out on 0:49:37.680 --> 0:49:41.399 that one day a year thing, you know, like, Okay, 0:49:41.400 --> 0:49:43.160 I took you on this, like we flew up with 0:49:43.400 --> 0:49:47.080 like a caribou hunt. Surely you'll now be a hunter 0:49:48.120 --> 0:49:51.680 and then ay, there's never hunt again. Yeah, I don't understand, dude. 0:49:52.239 --> 0:49:54.319 But then we're talking. It's not long ago. I feel like, 0:49:54.360 --> 0:49:56.719 but if someone took me sailing, they're like, hey, man, 0:49:56.840 --> 0:49:59.840 you want to come sailing for a day? Like why not? 0:50:01.400 --> 0:50:03.680 Later they're like, I can't believe he never became a sailor. 0:50:05.080 --> 0:50:06.920 I think, no, dude, I just thought to be interested 0:50:06.960 --> 0:50:08.959 to go sailing over day. We went sailing. That's great. 0:50:10.000 --> 0:50:12.600 I mean, do you regret going sailing? No? I want 0:50:12.600 --> 0:50:17.400 to like be a sailor. No, it's fun. You know. 0:50:17.480 --> 0:50:18.759 I think a lot of people look at that way 0:50:18.800 --> 0:50:21.759 like I look at it, like do you self defined 0:50:21.800 --> 0:50:24.840 as a hunter or not? I do, And that's you know, 0:50:25.280 --> 0:50:27.759 most people don't look at the world that way what 0:50:27.920 --> 0:50:31.080 people ask me. I think we were doing an interview 0:50:31.120 --> 0:50:35.920 with you guys, I think, and someone said, Randy, introduce yourself. Randy, 0:50:36.080 --> 0:50:41.640 I'm Randy Newberg. Hunter. It's just that's who I am. Yeah, professionally, 0:50:41.680 --> 0:50:45.320 I'm a c p A and everything else. But everyone 0:50:45.360 --> 0:50:48.200 who knows me, all the people I hang out with, 0:50:48.719 --> 0:50:52.400 their hunters, and we look at the world through a 0:50:52.520 --> 0:50:54.920 lens that is so much different than everybody else. And 0:50:54.960 --> 0:50:59.600 I used to think that I was the same as 0:50:59.640 --> 0:51:03.240 everybody else. But after you have enough of these life experiences, 0:51:03.640 --> 0:51:06.160 interacting with enough people who don't hunt or see the 0:51:06.160 --> 0:51:10.200 world differently, you realize that hunting gives you a vision 0:51:10.200 --> 0:51:13.840 of the world like nothing else. Yeah, I mean, nothing 0:51:13.920 --> 0:51:16.960 I can think of compares to the vision of the 0:51:17.080 --> 0:51:20.080 natural world you get if you are a hunter. I 0:51:20.120 --> 0:51:24.799 don't you mentioned trapping a couple of times. Before we 0:51:24.840 --> 0:51:28.800 get into trapping too far, let's just take a quick break. So, Randy, 0:51:28.840 --> 0:51:32.200 you mentioned trapping a couple of times, and now you 0:51:32.239 --> 0:51:35.239 mentioned that a hunter looks at the world way that 0:51:35.280 --> 0:51:37.799 no one else looks at it. I'll tell you that 0:51:38.600 --> 0:51:42.839 when I'm driving down a road and I drive over 0:51:42.880 --> 0:51:45.879 a bridge, I know what you're saying, and I look 0:51:45.920 --> 0:51:51.600 off the bridge, no one is looking at what I'm 0:51:51.600 --> 0:51:55.520 looking at or not. No one, very few individuals will 0:51:55.600 --> 0:52:00.600 select few individuals are looking off the bridge that way exactly. 0:52:00.920 --> 0:52:03.200 And just like when I drive through a value, I'm 0:52:03.239 --> 0:52:08.919 looking up the mountains like I do not see what 0:52:09.640 --> 0:52:12.960 all the people see. I think that I have. I 0:52:13.000 --> 0:52:16.080 think that hunting in some way makes it very difficult 0:52:16.640 --> 0:52:21.280 to look at the natural world with passivity. Completely agree. 0:52:21.719 --> 0:52:25.560 It's like you're looking at it sort of in a way, 0:52:25.560 --> 0:52:27.640 and it sounds egotistical, but you're looking at it the 0:52:27.640 --> 0:52:30.759 way like, well, how does this like pertain to me 0:52:32.640 --> 0:52:35.399 in some way? Like where are the animals? Or what's 0:52:35.520 --> 0:52:37.279 up with that spot? And it's I can I can 0:52:37.360 --> 0:52:39.320 only see it that way if I go on vacation. 0:52:40.440 --> 0:52:43.040 We just went on family vacation in Hawaii. The whole 0:52:43.080 --> 0:52:47.040 time I'm looking at those hills being like, no, what 0:52:47.080 --> 0:52:49.600 would have fella fine up there? This bone arrow? You know? 0:52:49.600 --> 0:52:52.560 I mean, like, I can't not see things that way. 0:52:52.600 --> 0:52:56.080 I can't. My wife has just been baffled by my 0:52:56.160 --> 0:52:59.160 inability to just sit on the beach. I am the 0:52:59.200 --> 0:53:01.799 same way my wife will say, is that all you 0:53:01.840 --> 0:53:06.600 think about. Yeah, I don't think about one thing when 0:53:06.600 --> 0:53:10.640 when we're doing whatever. You know, we might be driving 0:53:10.680 --> 0:53:13.879 down the road and I'm like, on our way home, 0:53:13.920 --> 0:53:15.960 I want to stop there, kind of like you're saying 0:53:15.960 --> 0:53:18.719 about the bridge, because at that culvert right there, I'm 0:53:18.760 --> 0:53:21.400 pretty sure I could trap a muskrat. That's what I 0:53:21.400 --> 0:53:23.080 was getting out, And I said, like driving over bridge, 0:53:23.120 --> 0:53:26.239 Like yeah, so I grew up trapping in Michigan. You 0:53:26.239 --> 0:53:28.600 grew up trapping to Minnesota. Yeah, a lot of the 0:53:29.680 --> 0:53:34.880 I don't know, fift I needed a little little bit 0:53:34.920 --> 0:53:37.040 of groundworker. Like when you're trapping, you Romans called a 0:53:37.040 --> 0:53:39.680 trap line, and no one just sets a trap, like 0:53:39.719 --> 0:53:41.319 you're on a trap line, and your trap line might 0:53:41.320 --> 0:53:44.480 be six what we call sets or locations where you 0:53:44.480 --> 0:53:47.320 have a trap set, or in the case of a 0:53:47.400 --> 0:53:50.640 mink long liner, you might have two D three hundred 0:53:51.000 --> 0:53:55.640 traps out or what you call sets. So when I 0:53:55.680 --> 0:54:00.360 was trapping, fifty percent of my sets that I would 0:54:00.400 --> 0:54:06.480 make would be on public rightways of bridges for mink 0:54:06.520 --> 0:54:12.720 and muskrat, mink, muskrat, raccoon. So like I divided trapping 0:54:12.800 --> 0:54:15.279 up in my head, water trapping, land trapping, so land 0:54:15.280 --> 0:54:18.799 trapping you trapped love it was early like we'd land 0:54:18.800 --> 0:54:20.600 we'd start land trapping. I don't member where. I can't 0:54:20.600 --> 0:54:22.319 remember that. When I would do it, I'd start land 0:54:22.320 --> 0:54:26.840 trapping October ten, UM, and you'd have twenty days of 0:54:26.920 --> 0:54:30.400 land trapping before water trapping open up. During land trapping, 0:54:30.440 --> 0:54:35.960 I would target red fox, but um, I would get 0:54:36.000 --> 0:54:39.960 gray fox, and I would get raccoons that weren't that 0:54:40.080 --> 0:54:45.840 valuable because raccoons hadn't come into prime quite yet. Um. 0:54:45.920 --> 0:54:50.280 And then November one, I would start water trapping Zone two. 0:54:50.480 --> 0:54:52.840 When I started water trapping zone too, I would set 0:54:52.960 --> 0:54:58.200 tons of public rightaways where you are climbing into it. 0:54:58.280 --> 0:55:00.640 You don't, you're it's not public land. You had permission 0:55:00.680 --> 0:55:03.000 on the land. You could park your car on the 0:55:03.040 --> 0:55:04.759 bridge or parking car on the side of the road 0:55:06.680 --> 0:55:10.399 and sort of skirt down the bridge abutment abutment, get 0:55:10.440 --> 0:55:13.080 down the river and then make your set below the 0:55:13.160 --> 0:55:17.440 high water mark. Yeah. So you just learned the same way. 0:55:17.560 --> 0:55:19.880 Now as a hunter, I look at like a like 0:55:19.920 --> 0:55:23.399 a brushy strip between two corn fields in a certain way. Yeah, 0:55:23.480 --> 0:55:25.680 driving over bridges, I had a way of I would 0:55:25.719 --> 0:55:28.880 just be able to assess it so quickly, whether it 0:55:28.920 --> 0:55:32.080 was interesting to me or not. And a lot of 0:55:32.160 --> 0:55:34.799 people ask me, well, how has trapping helped you as 0:55:34.840 --> 0:55:38.720 someone who hunts, because you you still trapped? Oh yeah, 0:55:38.760 --> 0:55:40.759 I mean, be honest, you came with me one day 0:55:40.840 --> 0:55:45.080 last year. I just sent all the muskrats to the Canada, 0:55:45.120 --> 0:55:47.879 to the fur auction and they sold them last two 0:55:47.920 --> 0:55:51.480 weeks ago. Um, what was your average for large? It's 0:55:51.600 --> 0:55:54.239 terrible this year. There's an article in the New York 0:55:54.239 --> 0:55:56.960 Times yesterday about how first coming back, no, they could 0:55:56.960 --> 0:56:00.680 say an anfort. Thanks to Putin, the Russian are trying 0:56:00.719 --> 0:56:04.239 to invade everything in Eastern Europe. So it's at least 0:56:04.280 --> 0:56:08.360 for a guy who's a muskrat mink guy like I am. 0:56:08.400 --> 0:56:11.400 Two years ago, I got twelve bucks a piece for 0:56:11.440 --> 0:56:15.680 a double XL muskrat. This year they were This year 0:56:15.680 --> 0:56:20.080 they were five bucks apiece. I mean premium winner skins. 0:56:21.000 --> 0:56:24.680 But you know, two weeks out of my winter I 0:56:24.719 --> 0:56:27.319 get to go on goof around, catch three muskrats, a 0:56:27.320 --> 0:56:32.480 few minks and raccoon, dozen't beaver, and it's just you 0:56:32.640 --> 0:56:35.719 catch three d scraps we always called scraps. You catch 0:56:35.760 --> 0:56:38.560 three hundred scrats and two weeks. Oh easy, if I 0:56:38.560 --> 0:56:41.160 if I didn't have taxis and to worry about, I 0:56:41.200 --> 0:56:43.960 could catch a thousand on them in two weeks. It's 0:56:44.880 --> 0:56:50.200 it's crazy what I trapped. Um. I tried a lot 0:56:50.200 --> 0:56:56.319 of muskrats, but I trapped fox kyle and incidental. That 0:56:56.360 --> 0:57:01.000 would be raccoon, possum, skunk on dry land possum in Michigan. 0:57:01.320 --> 0:57:03.479 Are you kidding me? I didn't know that we didn't 0:57:03.480 --> 0:57:05.200 have them in Minnesota. I didn't know that. I bet 0:57:05.200 --> 0:57:08.319 they do. Now there's two things. There's two animals that 0:57:08.320 --> 0:57:10.919 are traditionally southern that have been really expanding the range 0:57:11.000 --> 0:57:12.799 northern and that all he has to do with climate change. 0:57:12.800 --> 0:57:14.759 I don't think it has to do with just just 0:57:14.880 --> 0:57:21.440 slow adaptability. Raccoons well, several have alinas seemed to move 0:57:21.560 --> 0:57:25.920 northward all the time. A possums are moving northward, So yeah, 0:57:25.960 --> 0:57:30.800 you get death up. Incidentally, then I would trap muskrat, mink, beaver, raccoon, 0:57:31.080 --> 0:57:32.880 and then you were allowed, depending where you were, one 0:57:32.960 --> 0:57:35.640 or two river otters. And I would really work hard 0:57:35.720 --> 0:57:39.160 to get my otters. But I wouldn't sell my honors 0:57:39.200 --> 0:57:43.680 into the firm market. I'd sell them into the taxidermy trade, huh, 0:57:44.000 --> 0:57:47.919 because they were a novelty item, right, So like when 0:57:47.920 --> 0:57:50.040 I was trappling to Michigan, a bobcat in Michigan was 0:57:50.080 --> 0:57:54.480 worth fifteen bucks. Text terms could be hun here right 0:57:54.480 --> 0:57:57.320 now like good Western as they call them, Lynx cad 0:57:57.440 --> 0:58:00.160 even though it's not a Canadian lynx. You know, a 0:58:00.360 --> 0:58:07.000 really good colored spotted belly five six hundred bucks. Taxidermist 0:58:07.040 --> 0:58:09.280 will still pay you a hunterbucks for him, so it 0:58:09.280 --> 0:58:12.720 would vary, you know, back then when in my here 0:58:12.800 --> 0:58:15.800 coyotes are just coming in. Remember the first two kyles 0:58:15.840 --> 0:58:18.320 I remembers. I sold him in taxi Dervis, okay, because 0:58:18.320 --> 0:58:20.680 people were still kind of like wow, okay, and like 0:58:20.960 --> 0:58:23.040 people weren't as tied in then as they are now, 0:58:23.640 --> 0:58:26.760 just like pre Internet, somewhat pre internet, so it's like 0:58:26.920 --> 0:58:29.680 what you had access to, Like I always argue now 0:58:30.000 --> 0:58:33.480 that the souvenirs are obsolete. Can can I stop you there? 0:58:33.520 --> 0:58:36.479 You said somewhat pre internet when you were trapping, because 0:58:36.480 --> 0:58:38.680 remember I had an email and no well way pret 0:58:38.760 --> 0:58:41.520 when I started trapping. Okay, when I quit trapping, there 0:58:41.560 --> 0:58:44.880 was a university email thing, okay, because I was gonna 0:58:44.920 --> 0:58:48.640 say the Internet for me when I was trapping growing up, 0:58:49.320 --> 0:58:54.560 al Gore hadn't even graduated from college to invent the Internet. Yeah, 0:58:54.560 --> 0:58:56.080 I want to clarify the point. I set my first 0:58:56.120 --> 0:58:59.760 trap called my First Muskrat, ten years old, way pre 0:58:59.840 --> 0:59:02.160 in that. But I was thinking when I quit trapping 0:59:02.840 --> 0:59:06.200 at twenty two years of age, there was at the 0:59:06.240 --> 0:59:09.320 college I went through, there was some kind of university 0:59:09.840 --> 0:59:12.160 email thing and people were just starting to mess around. 0:59:12.280 --> 0:59:16.200 So yeah, but at that time when I sold those 0:59:16.200 --> 0:59:18.360 two kyos is. Around that time, I was saying that 0:59:18.400 --> 0:59:22.280 people used to have where you could go into a 0:59:22.360 --> 0:59:25.120 tax nurvis and they're like a provincial bunch. You know, 0:59:25.400 --> 0:59:27.120 you're going to a tax's be like, here's a Kyle, 0:59:27.200 --> 0:59:29.240 and it wouldn't occur to them that there's guys out 0:59:29.280 --> 0:59:32.720 west and stacks are kind of like Kyle stacked up 0:59:32.760 --> 0:59:35.120 every which way. They're begging someone to take off their 0:59:35.160 --> 0:59:36.800 hands and be like, holy sh it, you know, I'll 0:59:36.840 --> 0:59:39.400 buy that kyote off you. So you know, it was 0:59:39.480 --> 0:59:42.000 like that at the time, and as a site hose 0:59:42.040 --> 0:59:44.439 and say like souvenirs are going obo sleet like people 0:59:44.440 --> 0:59:47.360 were like, well, I went to France, you know, I 0:59:47.360 --> 0:59:52.760 bought this bottle of wine, but dude, buy that bottle 0:59:52.760 --> 0:59:54.720 of Safeway. Man, you know, I mean, like I could 0:59:54.720 --> 0:59:57.160 go and leid, but there's nothing I can't unless you 0:59:57.280 --> 1:00:00.000 find something out in the woods. There's nothing you can't 1:00:00.040 --> 1:00:02.360 give someone they just can't get. So it's like weird 1:00:02.440 --> 1:00:04.760 now to buy people like you go to Hawaii and 1:00:04.760 --> 1:00:07.440 buy a Seashell necklace. It's just weird because like I 1:00:07.520 --> 1:00:12.280 go to Seashell Necklaces dot Com. But we also gonna 1:00:12.280 --> 1:00:14.040 bring up like, I mean, that was really about trapping. 1:00:14.080 --> 1:00:19.240 It's you so you're ten years older I, which means 1:00:19.680 --> 1:00:23.800 you hit the fur boom. I missed the fur boom. 1:00:24.000 --> 1:00:29.880 Fur boom definitions vary. It's largely accepted that like the 1:00:30.120 --> 1:00:37.840 Great American fur boom, Yeah, I hit it perfect. Some 1:00:37.880 --> 1:00:39.840 people fudge you by a year or more. But for 1:00:40.080 --> 1:00:44.960 there's just this this explosion of good fortune for firm 1:00:45.040 --> 1:00:52.360 markets having to political, economical fashion. Yeah, commodities, it's a 1:00:52.520 --> 1:00:56.240 it's a hedge against commodities. It's when the dollar is 1:00:56.280 --> 1:00:59.080 going one way first can be going another and all 1:00:59.120 --> 1:01:04.040 those things in fur together. But everything exploded right for 1:01:04.360 --> 1:01:07.560 prices for for like anything with hair fur on it 1:01:08.520 --> 1:01:12.880 skyrocketed in value right overnight, and every Tom, Dick and 1:01:12.920 --> 1:01:18.920 Harry in the world went out. For sure. It was unbelievable. 1:01:18.960 --> 1:01:21.200 How many people in my little town of Big Falls 1:01:21.320 --> 1:01:27.840 trap You gotta figure just adjusting for inflation. Yeah, muskrats, 1:01:28.000 --> 1:01:30.920 it was like the era of the six dollar muskrat. 1:01:31.000 --> 1:01:34.480 But we're talking in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, in nineteen 1:01:34.600 --> 1:01:37.800 eighty four, my first year in college, I came home 1:01:37.840 --> 1:01:41.040 for Christmas break in, me and my uncle, uncle and 1:01:41.080 --> 1:01:44.960 I we got six hundred muskrats in a week. And 1:01:45.600 --> 1:01:48.520 what what's up traffic? What kind of cover? Like? What 1:01:48.600 --> 1:01:50.640 kind of have with that up? In these beaver flotage 1:01:50.680 --> 1:01:53.800 is in northern Minnesota, you north of Highway to you 1:01:53.840 --> 1:01:56.160 were allowed to cut the tops off there there are 1:01:56.200 --> 1:01:59.280 rat houses, and so you'd cut it off, put a 1:01:59.360 --> 1:02:01.240 couple of traps and there put the lid back on, 1:02:01.680 --> 1:02:04.480 patch it all up. You'd have your trap on a 1:02:04.560 --> 1:02:08.000 long wire. So when you walk by, the muskrat got 1:02:08.000 --> 1:02:10.000 in your trap, and you knew because he went down 1:02:10.040 --> 1:02:12.640 the hole into the water, pulled the pull the wire 1:02:12.720 --> 1:02:17.440 up against the hut. He can't molest the hut. Oh really? Okay? 1:02:17.480 --> 1:02:19.960 In southern Minnesota at that time, you couldn't. I think 1:02:20.000 --> 1:02:23.000 you can now, But we would go do that and 1:02:23.320 --> 1:02:28.160 one guy would just walk around these beaver flowagees and 1:02:28.280 --> 1:02:30.680 pull the muskrats out of the traps, put the traps 1:02:30.720 --> 1:02:32.320 back in, and the other guy would sit out of 1:02:32.360 --> 1:02:36.440 fire and skin muskrats because if if it was twenty below, 1:02:36.560 --> 1:02:38.560 you know, if you didn't skin them right away, they 1:02:38.560 --> 1:02:41.280 were hard. Oh yeah, you weren't gonna get them skin 1:02:41.440 --> 1:02:44.360 And so at that point in time, to be a 1:02:44.400 --> 1:02:48.840 college freshman and come home and get five six bucks 1:02:48.880 --> 1:02:51.640 for muskrats and you're half of them, is you know, 1:02:51.800 --> 1:02:56.600 three hundred. I went back to college for winter semester. Man, 1:02:56.640 --> 1:03:00.400 it was Domino's and high quality beer that semester. It was. 1:03:01.160 --> 1:03:03.480 It's just how it was. I came back spring break 1:03:03.520 --> 1:03:07.120 of that college year and we caught a hundred in 1:03:07.120 --> 1:03:11.240 a week, and we were catching them so fast Minnesota. Yeah, 1:03:11.280 --> 1:03:13.480 And like a lot of my buddies, we were catching 1:03:13.520 --> 1:03:15.240 so many we didn't have time to skin them all. 1:03:15.440 --> 1:03:18.080 And the fur buyer would come and we'd have them 1:03:18.160 --> 1:03:21.480 laying in the basement of my uncle's house, stacked up 1:03:21.760 --> 1:03:25.280 literally like firewood. And the guy would say twenty bucks 1:03:25.280 --> 1:03:27.360 apiece in the round. In other words, you didn't have 1:03:27.400 --> 1:03:29.800 to skin them anything. He didn't size them. It was 1:03:29.840 --> 1:03:33.280 just twenty bucks apiece. Take them and he'd just sit 1:03:33.360 --> 1:03:35.760 there and slap his twenty dollar bills on the table. 1:03:35.840 --> 1:03:38.520 And we were just I mean, we thought we had 1:03:38.560 --> 1:03:42.160 really hit the lottery. Yeah, first sold in three ways 1:03:42.360 --> 1:03:48.240 you sell it. During the fur boom, trappers got interested 1:03:48.280 --> 1:03:52.120 in trapping faster than they could learn their trade. There's 1:03:52.120 --> 1:03:53.760 a lot of people out for a quick dollar and 1:03:53.800 --> 1:03:56.760 they were interested in sort of the discipline art of 1:03:56.800 --> 1:03:58.960 being a trapper, and they would sell a lot of 1:03:59.000 --> 1:04:03.640 fur round and round means on the animal. So fur 1:04:03.720 --> 1:04:07.360 buyers like, I mean, add a layer out of this. 1:04:07.400 --> 1:04:10.040 There's three ways of self fur. There's three ways of 1:04:10.040 --> 1:04:15.080 selfur meaning in the round. I got two many ideas 1:04:15.120 --> 1:04:18.320 going once here. There's two ways that you actually sell fur. 1:04:18.560 --> 1:04:21.560 A fur buyer, like a country fur buyer, or a 1:04:21.600 --> 1:04:25.360 fur auction. During the fur boom, you had country for 1:04:25.600 --> 1:04:29.560 buyers just like a guy buying for oms garage. He's 1:04:29.560 --> 1:04:32.880 selling to the auctions, and the same trappers can basically 1:04:32.880 --> 1:04:36.280 selling those auctions as well. But to sell an auction 1:04:36.320 --> 1:04:40.439 you gotta sell it fleshed and dried. That's hard. It's 1:04:40.480 --> 1:04:42.920 it's it's harder to learn how to flesh beaver than 1:04:42.960 --> 1:04:45.200 it is the trap of beaver. During the fur boom, 1:04:45.200 --> 1:04:47.680 guys will go out and trap, and just every night 1:04:47.720 --> 1:04:50.160 on their way home from trapping, go to the country 1:04:50.160 --> 1:04:53.920 fur buyer and sell fur in the round to the 1:04:53.920 --> 1:04:57.600 fur buyer. Or you could skin it, which is the 1:04:57.640 --> 1:05:01.320 easy part, and sell it green. Yeah, I sold all 1:05:01.320 --> 1:05:06.000 my raccoons, all my beaver green skinned but not fleshed 1:05:06.000 --> 1:05:09.080 and stretched. But I could sell them at a small 1:05:09.120 --> 1:05:11.040 auction that way because I could just freeze him a 1:05:11.080 --> 1:05:15.560 big chest freezer. So during the fur but yet at 1:05:15.640 --> 1:05:17.720 guys that didn't know what end of a knife was sharp, 1:05:18.280 --> 1:05:20.720 but they were trapping and selling the fur buyers in 1:05:20.800 --> 1:05:23.760 the round. But you're walking and selling red fox in 1:05:23.800 --> 1:05:26.560 the round for sixty bucks. It was crazy. But again 1:05:26.600 --> 1:05:30.560 remember we're talking about right, and you take those dollars 1:05:30.560 --> 1:05:35.400 for inflation. I remember having a couple hundred bucks in 1:05:36.480 --> 1:05:39.120 two my senior year in high school. That fall, I 1:05:39.160 --> 1:05:43.000 got fifty some mink before school, just running a trap 1:05:43.040 --> 1:05:45.640 line on my way to school, and I think I 1:05:45.680 --> 1:05:49.280 averaged like twenty four bucks a mink that's male female 1:05:49.560 --> 1:05:52.200 in the round. No, I I mean, because they're quick 1:05:52.240 --> 1:05:56.280 to skin and and dry and stretch, but actually come 1:05:56.320 --> 1:05:58.240 off clean like a mink. You don't have the flesh 1:05:58.280 --> 1:06:01.880 from two. Now that's the it's easy. And I just 1:06:02.120 --> 1:06:04.760 think about that now. I'm like, man, if I could 1:06:04.760 --> 1:06:08.560 get whatever dollars was in two, if I could get 1:06:08.600 --> 1:06:11.360 that today, I'd have to get out out or TV 1:06:12.160 --> 1:06:14.720 because I'd be trapping man all day long. But you're 1:06:14.800 --> 1:06:16.720 you're in a way, you were getting screwed. Because what 1:06:16.720 --> 1:06:18.960 I wanna say was when I came in four, I 1:06:19.040 --> 1:06:24.040 was coming in on the euphoria of the fir boom, 1:06:24.080 --> 1:06:29.440 but without the prices. There was a lot of information 1:06:29.480 --> 1:06:32.520 out there. There's a lot of traps use traps out there, 1:06:32.800 --> 1:06:34.560 but I had missed it by a couple of years. 1:06:35.400 --> 1:06:37.320 So but I came into a time when people there 1:06:37.320 --> 1:06:40.480 were still affort because it hadn't gone totally bad yet. 1:06:40.840 --> 1:06:44.240 We would get and I was ten, I couldn't really 1:06:44.240 --> 1:06:47.520 started in the earlier. The first day ever set traps 1:06:47.680 --> 1:06:53.960 was I set traps at midnight on November one. By 1:06:54.040 --> 1:06:57.400 seven am on November one, It's like I have an 1:06:57.400 --> 1:06:59.400 alibi for that day, dude, I could think exactly where 1:06:59.400 --> 1:07:03.480 it was. By seven am, we had three muskrats. I 1:07:03.520 --> 1:07:08.240 think we had nine traps. We had three muskrats. Two 1:07:08.360 --> 1:07:11.680 were caught. One was caught in front of Joe Babcox 1:07:11.760 --> 1:07:14.360 house in a one ten conno bear. One was caught 1:07:14.400 --> 1:07:18.600 in front of this this Foster family's house on North 1:07:18.680 --> 1:07:22.160 Lake one ten conno bear. And we caught one on 1:07:22.320 --> 1:07:26.600 the north trending side of Crazy Mary's Point in a 1:07:26.720 --> 1:07:29.400 number one single long spring traps that under a stump. 1:07:29.560 --> 1:07:33.000 We're a bank then entered. I could tell you every 1:07:33.160 --> 1:07:38.800 damn detail of that day, and we sold those muskrats 1:07:38.800 --> 1:07:40.800 for I think our big ones that year. We caught 1:07:40.840 --> 1:07:44.200 twenty the first year, and my old man lent it, 1:07:44.360 --> 1:07:47.040 lent us the money like I have older half brother. 1:07:47.120 --> 1:07:50.760 He gave a six number one, He gave a six 1:07:50.840 --> 1:07:54.160 number one long spring Victor long Springs. Then what we 1:07:54.200 --> 1:07:57.600 did is our old man lent us money. He drew 1:07:57.640 --> 1:08:00.280 up a little contract, even on a yellow legal paper, 1:08:00.720 --> 1:08:03.919 and lent us enough money to buy one dozen Northwoods 1:08:03.960 --> 1:08:08.200 one ten conno bears, And we caught our first year 1:08:08.240 --> 1:08:15.640 trap in twenty muskrats. One smallish raccoon and made enough 1:08:15.720 --> 1:08:18.040 to not only pay for the conno bears we bought, 1:08:18.040 --> 1:08:19.800 but to go buy a bunch of more connobaris. And 1:08:19.920 --> 1:08:23.439 I was off running because at the time, if you 1:08:23.520 --> 1:08:25.640 called a buck mink, a buck makers worth twice as 1:08:25.680 --> 1:08:30.479 much as a female. And it's even then minks held 1:08:31.000 --> 1:08:34.400 because you would get forty bucks for mink. Yeah, oh 1:08:34.400 --> 1:08:36.839 it's it was crazy. And I remember my two brothers 1:08:36.960 --> 1:08:39.840 one time late in the year, I like quit, I 1:08:39.960 --> 1:08:41.760 pulled out of our trap and collect to touch at 1:08:41.800 --> 1:08:43.400 my two bars. I can remember what someone's going out 1:08:43.400 --> 1:08:45.679 of school. But anyways, they went to set some more 1:08:45.800 --> 1:08:48.760 muskrat ponds and I didn't participate, and they came home 1:08:48.800 --> 1:08:51.840 and picked up two mink out of muskrat sets. Remember 1:08:51.880 --> 1:08:54.519 the dudes walking through with for forty bucks a piece 1:08:54.560 --> 1:09:00.280 and being blown away. I remember night six, I shot 1:09:00.280 --> 1:09:03.519 of mink with a thirty two special, took his head 1:09:03.560 --> 1:09:06.840 off and board a groove down the center of his back, 1:09:07.840 --> 1:09:09.320 and we took it to it for by her name, 1:09:09.360 --> 1:09:12.599 the Abe Sallessina, and Abe Sallessina offered me like four 1:09:12.640 --> 1:09:15.160 dollars for that, making my old man cursing him out, 1:09:16.200 --> 1:09:19.000 really because he thought you were getting a bad treatment, 1:09:20.040 --> 1:09:21.600 he said, I'd invite you to sell that mink for 1:09:21.680 --> 1:09:23.840 more somewhere else than the dude bottle being right and 1:09:23.920 --> 1:09:27.120 want to take to make so I was missing a part. 1:09:27.240 --> 1:09:30.880 So now here you are what you said. You're twenty 1:09:30.880 --> 1:09:33.200 two and last time you trapped. So I trapped from 1:09:33.160 --> 1:09:34.880 the time I was ten to the time was twenty two, 1:09:34.920 --> 1:09:38.519 and I thought I was taken. I was still into it. 1:09:38.600 --> 1:09:41.439 I was paying. I remember paying a guy named Mark 1:09:41.560 --> 1:09:44.320 June who later became like a video white tail guy. 1:09:44.360 --> 1:09:47.280 I remember paying Mark June two fifty bucks for a 1:09:47.479 --> 1:09:54.280 day's lessons in trapping Red Suburbia, Red Fox. So do 1:09:54.320 --> 1:09:57.040 you miss it? Oh? Yeah, But I still said every 1:09:57.120 --> 1:10:00.280 I still set traps because I still I like. I 1:10:00.320 --> 1:10:02.160 eventually settled into the thing I like to do is 1:10:02.160 --> 1:10:05.240 trapped beaver through the ice. I love it. It became 1:10:05.280 --> 1:10:08.880 my thing. I liked everything about it. I liked. We 1:10:08.920 --> 1:10:12.840 would go out and out in the ice December January 1:10:13.000 --> 1:10:17.040 with a push broom and push brooms, snow away on 1:10:17.080 --> 1:10:21.679 the ice looking for bubble trails, exhale trails and take 1:10:21.720 --> 1:10:24.080 axes and chain sauce and ship and get down through 1:10:24.080 --> 1:10:27.920 that ice and stringing snares and stringing three thirties and 1:10:28.000 --> 1:10:30.519 I loved every minute of it. I like falling through 1:10:30.520 --> 1:10:32.760 the ice. It's like I liked everything about it. Man, 1:10:33.200 --> 1:10:35.479 And I still now will trap. I trap to beaver 1:10:35.560 --> 1:10:37.960 to spring. I'll still trap it, and I'll send it 1:10:38.000 --> 1:10:39.960 and get a tan and I'll haven't made it into stuff. 1:10:40.280 --> 1:10:42.400 So I got. I trapped my own hat, I trapped 1:10:42.439 --> 1:10:45.120 my own mittens. I got some stuff getting made right now. 1:10:45.680 --> 1:10:47.960 I got a beaver that my brothers haven't made into 1:10:48.000 --> 1:10:50.240 a hat for his wife. So I'm still in the 1:10:50.280 --> 1:10:52.880 fur business. But I'm just in person. I'm into personal use. 1:10:53.760 --> 1:10:55.800 And then I eat the beaver meat. I like beaver 1:10:55.880 --> 1:10:58.599 meat well, but I'm not into trap. I'm not trapping 1:10:58.680 --> 1:11:01.599 numbers like I used to out after a beaver. And 1:11:01.720 --> 1:11:06.559 I know some people are listening to this and probably thinking, man, 1:11:06.640 --> 1:11:10.160 these guys, they're off their rock here talking about trapping. 1:11:10.600 --> 1:11:16.920 But if you've trapped, you understand the excitement of ain't 1:11:16.920 --> 1:11:20.000 in bed at night thinking, oh that one that set, 1:11:20.120 --> 1:11:22.960 that last set I made tonight, that's gonna catch one 1:11:23.000 --> 1:11:25.719 in the morning, and you almost can't get to sleep 1:11:25.760 --> 1:11:28.880 at night. You can't it's worse than opening the night 1:11:28.880 --> 1:11:31.960 before opening day of deer season. I could never sleep 1:11:32.560 --> 1:11:35.160 between seven because we'd go out and set at midnight. 1:11:37.960 --> 1:11:40.400 Because we live in a high competition area. Okay, we'd 1:11:40.400 --> 1:11:43.200 said our pre we picked like what's the premos spot, 1:11:44.040 --> 1:11:48.320 and we'd set start set midnight and we set like 1:11:48.760 --> 1:11:52.639 even even up into whatever age. When I quit trapping, 1:11:52.680 --> 1:11:57.719 I was still set traps from midnight through the dawn 1:11:58.040 --> 1:12:01.080 up to dark. Wow. And I would get a lot 1:12:01.120 --> 1:12:04.200 of sets out. I would punch in usually more than 1:12:04.240 --> 1:12:10.680 seventys wowe for mixed bag from otter to scraps. It 1:12:10.800 --> 1:12:13.400 was never that competitive for me. I mean, everyone kind 1:12:13.400 --> 1:12:16.960 of okay, Randy's gonna be out here to be out there. 1:12:17.040 --> 1:12:21.080 It was no one bothered. But before we get done 1:12:21.160 --> 1:12:23.200 there and get too far, I'll just get started on 1:12:23.280 --> 1:12:26.519 talking to we We could be honest is in here 1:12:26.520 --> 1:12:28.799 and looking at us like, man, these guys can really 1:12:28.840 --> 1:12:30.960 spin it out. But I want to. I want to 1:12:31.000 --> 1:12:32.280 just before you make it, if I want to say 1:12:32.280 --> 1:12:34.120 one last thing about the people think you're off the 1:12:34.200 --> 1:12:36.960 rock about trapping. Yeah, I remember making the observation and 1:12:37.000 --> 1:12:40.080 I'll stay by this today. The most skilled outdoors and 1:12:40.080 --> 1:12:42.439 are trappers, no doubt. And here's how I'll prove it. 1:12:44.120 --> 1:12:48.479 If you fish, there's people out there who just fish. Yeah, 1:12:48.720 --> 1:12:55.960 right now, anyone hunts knows how to fish. Correct, anyone 1:12:56.000 --> 1:12:58.920 that traps knows how to hunting fish. That's exactly right. 1:12:59.080 --> 1:13:00.840 It's just like you know what I mean, It's just 1:13:00.880 --> 1:13:05.040 a thing. You're better a trappers, better than everybody else. 1:13:06.000 --> 1:13:08.880 You know more bits of And I have to talk 1:13:08.920 --> 1:13:11.160 about I like, I remember I made this point before 1:13:11.160 --> 1:13:14.320 about guys who want lions with hounds. People be like, 1:13:14.360 --> 1:13:16.640 oh yeah, what's the challenge and shooting line out of 1:13:16.640 --> 1:13:19.439 a tree. And then I met some houndsman who hunt lions, 1:13:19.960 --> 1:13:23.080 and I realized that guy holds more bits of information 1:13:23.120 --> 1:13:27.160 in his head. Right, if you can somehow quantify information 1:13:27.200 --> 1:13:30.639 way we have digitally, right and add up how many 1:13:30.720 --> 1:13:34.320 bits of hunting information does a guy who shoots white 1:13:34.320 --> 1:13:37.240 tails out his father in law's farm in Wisconsin? How 1:13:37.240 --> 1:13:39.880 many bits of information are in his head? And how 1:13:39.880 --> 1:13:44.160 many bits are in a houndsman's head? He has gigabyte 1:13:44.280 --> 1:13:48.960 upon gigabyte more information in his head. Yeah, I a trapper, 1:13:49.560 --> 1:13:54.519 A good trapper. You can't when you talk about read 1:13:54.560 --> 1:13:58.720 and sign the ability to read sign and it's just 1:13:59.040 --> 1:14:04.640 in space awareness and having a landscape map in your head. 1:14:04.960 --> 1:14:07.439 You can't get closer to it than a hardcore trapping. 1:14:08.000 --> 1:14:12.400 The anticipation that the trapping requires, as far as anticipation 1:14:12.479 --> 1:14:16.280 of what that animal is going to do, just makes 1:14:16.360 --> 1:14:19.639 you think an experiments so much more than hunting does. 1:14:19.920 --> 1:14:24.320 Because trapping, they are stepping within and you know a 1:14:24.360 --> 1:14:26.680 two inch area, you got you, guys, I need him 1:14:26.680 --> 1:14:31.120 to step right here, okay, archers, Yeah, forty yards is 1:14:31.120 --> 1:14:33.880 good enough to circle forty yards? Yeah, which means the 1:14:33.960 --> 1:14:37.160 eight yards circle circle with an eight yard diameter, and 1:14:37.200 --> 1:14:39.639 it's talk about a circle that's an inch and three quarters. Yeah, 1:14:39.680 --> 1:14:43.080 and the most some archers who are just badass woodsman, 1:14:43.240 --> 1:14:46.519 but try to get that to a two inch circle. 1:14:46.720 --> 1:14:49.040 And the benefit is with archer, you need to be 1:14:49.080 --> 1:14:52.240 there when it happens. With trapping, you don't need to 1:14:52.280 --> 1:14:54.920 be there when it happens. Yeah. I want to get 1:14:55.000 --> 1:14:58.600 to this point, Steve So, I read your book about 1:14:58.640 --> 1:15:03.479 your bison hunt in Alaska. I mean I knew you 1:15:03.600 --> 1:15:07.280 back when you did your show on Travel Channel and 1:15:07.280 --> 1:15:09.960 and uh I lucked out. I drew a free range 1:15:10.000 --> 1:15:14.160 bison tag in Montana. For it was January two thousand thirteen. 1:15:14.200 --> 1:15:16.280 I said, all right, I gotta go find a good 1:15:16.280 --> 1:15:20.880 bison book. I read your book, and you are either 1:15:21.439 --> 1:15:26.280 a stark raving nut or one hell of an author 1:15:26.320 --> 1:15:30.559 that makes that hunt and the danger involved seemed way 1:15:30.640 --> 1:15:33.599 greater than it is, or you just have a death wish. 1:15:34.320 --> 1:15:37.559 I read that and I said, this guy is he 1:15:37.640 --> 1:15:40.599 owes the world the tragedy if this is how he 1:15:40.680 --> 1:15:43.960 conducts himself out in the wild all the time? Was 1:15:44.040 --> 1:15:47.439 it is this just like a really good piece of writing, 1:15:47.600 --> 1:15:50.800 or was it really that wild? It was one of 1:15:50.880 --> 1:15:55.639 It was like the most intense ten days that I've 1:15:55.640 --> 1:15:59.599 spent hunting. It's some of the most intense reading I've 1:15:59.600 --> 1:16:02.000 ever But here's the thing. Here, here's I'll take a 1:16:02.040 --> 1:16:05.719 couple of things. It's like, that's a different kind of hunt. 1:16:05.920 --> 1:16:08.960 Like the Copper River hunt is a difficult hunt, and 1:16:08.960 --> 1:16:13.040 it used to be much more difficult because at the 1:16:13.080 --> 1:16:17.040 time I drew it, all the land along that river 1:16:17.640 --> 1:16:22.639 was inaccessible because it's tribal land. Now they have a 1:16:22.720 --> 1:16:26.439 set access feed for people that draw that tag. At 1:16:26.439 --> 1:16:28.000 the time I drew it, there was no such thing. 1:16:29.040 --> 1:16:34.679 So you have this river, and there's herds of animals 1:16:34.680 --> 1:16:37.160 that migrate a good distance forty miles. They ca up 1:16:37.200 --> 1:16:41.160 by these glaciers in the wrangles, and they wenter down 1:16:41.160 --> 1:16:44.559 on these gravel flats, these willow flats along the Copper River, 1:16:45.240 --> 1:16:48.960 and there's really nearly distribution. It's a humongous area, maybe 1:16:48.960 --> 1:16:51.200 a hundred animals, and it's spread out over a ton 1:16:51.200 --> 1:16:53.880 of ground. And at the time, you could not hunt 1:16:54.520 --> 1:16:59.920 the river corridor. All the huntable land you can find 1:17:00.120 --> 1:17:03.960 down below high watermark. Okay, on a gravel flat, does 1:17:04.000 --> 1:17:06.840 blow high watermark and kill it there, Okay, as long 1:17:06.880 --> 1:17:09.719 as it didn't go up. If it walked up, you're screwed. 1:17:11.439 --> 1:17:15.160 Or you could get past the buffer along the river 1:17:15.400 --> 1:17:20.000 by wading up a tributary stream to get in, because 1:17:20.000 --> 1:17:22.719 then you're fine. You're blow high watermark to get into 1:17:22.720 --> 1:17:27.240 the hunting area. The year I drew tag, they gave 1:17:27.240 --> 1:17:31.280 out twenty four permits. Four guys killed an animal. The 1:17:31.320 --> 1:17:35.040 seasons eight months long. They find that most people don't 1:17:35.080 --> 1:17:39.360 show up. Once you find out, they send you a letter. 1:17:39.439 --> 1:17:41.439 After you draw the tag, they send you a letter. 1:17:41.479 --> 1:17:44.679 They used to this is two thousand four. They send 1:17:44.720 --> 1:17:48.040 you letters saying like, Okay, I drew the tag, but 1:17:48.120 --> 1:17:52.720 basically you're screwed because there's serious land ownership issues. You 1:17:52.760 --> 1:17:55.280 have to understand what you're getting into. It's like there's 1:17:55.479 --> 1:17:58.040 major access issues. There's a lot of barriers to this. 1:17:59.800 --> 1:18:04.440 I went, and the minute I drew it, I sold 1:18:04.800 --> 1:18:08.400 the story of this before going, I sold the story 1:18:08.400 --> 1:18:11.040 of this to a magazine outside magazine. I was a 1:18:11.080 --> 1:18:14.599 writer and at the time I lived a very hand 1:18:14.640 --> 1:18:17.800 of mouth existence. So I'm doing a story that will 1:18:17.840 --> 1:18:21.160 offset my costs in doing this. So I'm gonna get 1:18:21.200 --> 1:18:24.920 like four thousand bucks to do the story, the hunt, 1:18:24.960 --> 1:18:29.439 all everything is gonna cost a lot. I had to 1:18:31.680 --> 1:18:33.720 do it. So I find out and people say like, well, 1:18:33.720 --> 1:18:36.000 why did you write like a book? Like why did 1:18:36.040 --> 1:18:41.840 you write your book? There's two reasons. There's the there's 1:18:41.880 --> 1:18:44.479 the not the real reason, but there's like this like 1:18:44.600 --> 1:18:49.280 reality reason that oftentimes has to do with with money, right, 1:18:49.280 --> 1:18:52.280 and it just is pragmatic. I guess, like, well, because 1:18:52.320 --> 1:18:54.360 I was gonna write an article about it, you know, 1:18:54.520 --> 1:18:56.400 and I sold the thing, why did you really do it? Well, 1:18:56.400 --> 1:18:58.400 I'm very interested in Buffalo. I only write about what 1:18:58.439 --> 1:19:01.320 I'm interested in. I got in as a story chronicles. 1:19:01.360 --> 1:19:06.160 My interest in Buffalo spawned was spawned by me finding 1:19:06.160 --> 1:19:09.880 a buffalo skull in the Madison Range in a weird 1:19:09.880 --> 1:19:12.160 place like nine tho feet above sea level the mountains. 1:19:12.720 --> 1:19:14.840 I went up having a genetic line extracted from it 1:19:14.920 --> 1:19:16.880 head at Radio Carpon dated like the book tells this 1:19:17.000 --> 1:19:19.800 big story of Buffalo and in America. But the minute 1:19:19.800 --> 1:19:21.840 I found at skull, I was like, Man, I'm gonna 1:19:21.840 --> 1:19:23.479 write a book about these animals. I just don't know 1:19:23.520 --> 1:19:25.639 what the storyline is gonna be. And then I drew 1:19:25.680 --> 1:19:31.519 that tag. So I had a lot riding on finding 1:19:31.520 --> 1:19:37.839 a buffalo and killing and I got into situations doing 1:19:37.920 --> 1:19:41.960 that that we're in and in I chronicle all this 1:19:42.200 --> 1:19:45.280 like very detailed way, and like, yeah, when I was 1:19:45.320 --> 1:19:48.320 doing that book, you know, because some people just fabricate 1:19:48.360 --> 1:19:52.040 whole cloth and then publishers get in trouble and writers 1:19:52.040 --> 1:19:54.559 get in trouble. So when I wrote that book, they 1:19:54.560 --> 1:19:56.479 made a big point like I had to go over 1:19:56.520 --> 1:19:59.800 everything on maps, provide names for people for them to call. 1:20:00.240 --> 1:20:03.000 They just like wanted to know. But I could take 1:20:03.040 --> 1:20:04.439 you up there right now and walk you through it, 1:20:04.439 --> 1:20:06.639 and once you see what I'm talking about It would 1:20:06.640 --> 1:20:11.759 all make sense in that you're confined. In my case, 1:20:13.000 --> 1:20:16.600 you're confined to either being in the Dadina, Nadina or 1:20:16.640 --> 1:20:21.640 Chettilina River. You're not gonna get to Anals river. The 1:20:21.680 --> 1:20:23.280 only way to get to Anals rivers is wait till 1:20:23.280 --> 1:20:25.320 it freezes, which is like the other guys that kill 1:20:25.360 --> 1:20:28.559 buffalo or hunting off snow machines going up the frozen river, 1:20:28.600 --> 1:20:32.160 wait till the river freezes, and they're killing them in 1:20:32.200 --> 1:20:34.479 the winter when the bad weather has pushed them down 1:20:34.560 --> 1:20:38.160 into the willows. The letter I got from fishing game 1:20:38.200 --> 1:20:43.080 that says you're screwed points out successful hunters on his hunt, 1:20:43.080 --> 1:20:44.479 and that's why they give you eight months to start 1:20:44.560 --> 1:20:47.280 September one, and you have eight months. The reason they 1:20:47.280 --> 1:20:49.599 give you that it's because the river freezes. They say. 1:20:49.720 --> 1:20:51.600 Most guys that killed buffalo and this hunt do it 1:20:51.600 --> 1:20:53.720 off snow machines when the animals are pushed down in 1:20:53.800 --> 1:20:56.920 the river flats. But you should be aware that river 1:20:56.960 --> 1:21:01.960 hasn't frozen in three years. Okay, they hadn't been killing 1:21:01.960 --> 1:21:06.360 any buffalo off that hunt. When I first drew the tag, 1:21:06.400 --> 1:21:08.160 I was like sweet. I talked to my brother, I 1:21:08.200 --> 1:21:10.719 got a brother in anchorage. He's got friends and snow machines. 1:21:10.800 --> 1:21:14.040 I'm gonna go up in march, and we're gonna go up. 1:21:14.120 --> 1:21:17.000 You got your low daylight, but you just basically cruise 1:21:17.080 --> 1:21:18.880 the river up and down, up and down until they're 1:21:18.880 --> 1:21:21.599 you just standing in a non on the hunkle willow 1:21:22.760 --> 1:21:26.559 out on a willow island. It got where it just 1:21:26.880 --> 1:21:29.920 wasn't gonna be. And so I got this idea that 1:21:29.960 --> 1:21:33.240 I'm gonna have friends bring me down. We're gonna hunt together. 1:21:34.040 --> 1:21:36.200 And I'm at first like, oh fine, one on the river. 1:21:36.400 --> 1:21:38.120 So I get my brother, two of our buddies who 1:21:38.160 --> 1:21:42.880 are avid rafters, and we get down and there's three 1:21:42.960 --> 1:21:45.479 main river areas we have identified as being areas where 1:21:45.479 --> 1:21:49.080 they've been killed in the past. We passed one past 1:21:49.160 --> 1:21:51.519 the other, get to the third and have seen like 1:21:51.600 --> 1:21:57.160 a set of tracks. These guys have jobs. They're not 1:21:57.240 --> 1:22:00.800 starving like you. They're like, sorry, dude, I'm like, I 1:22:00.840 --> 1:22:05.240 guess our only option here is that you'll leave me 1:22:05.320 --> 1:22:10.400 here and you know, like cell phones and ship like 1:22:10.479 --> 1:22:13.320 that's not going on. You'll leave me here and you'll 1:22:13.360 --> 1:22:18.320 come back and get me like a week over week 1:22:18.439 --> 1:22:20.719 now on a Sunday, and I'll be backed down here. 1:22:22.280 --> 1:22:24.000 I have no way of getting up or down the river. 1:22:24.439 --> 1:22:28.200 I'm on the Copper River at the mouth of a tributary, 1:22:28.720 --> 1:22:30.760 and I got a little patch of ground I'm looking at. 1:22:32.800 --> 1:22:36.200 You're not doing ship because I can't even leave the 1:22:36.240 --> 1:22:40.439 little island I'm on because I'll be on off land 1:22:40.920 --> 1:22:42.320 and I know I'm gonna write about this, so I 1:22:42.360 --> 1:22:44.439 can't do like a wink and nod, right, I could 1:22:44.439 --> 1:22:47.519 get checked into or I'm also very vulnerable because I 1:22:47.560 --> 1:22:49.519 can't have a dead animal land somewhere. I can't have 1:22:49.560 --> 1:22:53.360 it land. You know. At that point, it's like I'm 1:22:53.400 --> 1:22:55.720 gonna have to just start. I'm just gonna have to 1:22:55.720 --> 1:22:59.360 put waiters on and wade up this cold ass river 1:22:59.680 --> 1:23:02.120 by I sell and if I find one. And I 1:23:02.200 --> 1:23:06.479 did shoot a one thousand pound animal that I need 1:23:06.520 --> 1:23:11.960 to then move by myself down to where I can 1:23:12.000 --> 1:23:14.320 get it into my body's raft next week, and there 1:23:14.400 --> 1:23:18.559 begins like a whole set of problems. So you had 1:23:18.640 --> 1:23:22.000 invited me, and so like, yeah, it was like it's 1:23:22.000 --> 1:23:25.639 not replicable, but it's like it all it seems weird, 1:23:26.000 --> 1:23:27.439 like the ship that I had to go through. But 1:23:27.479 --> 1:23:29.640 when you start factoring in like all these decisions, and 1:23:29.640 --> 1:23:34.240 I'm constantly being egged on by a couple of things. 1:23:35.840 --> 1:23:39.559 The rareness of drawn the tag. They've now they've since 1:23:39.600 --> 1:23:44.479 made it retroactively once in a lifetime. Once you draw 1:23:45.120 --> 1:23:48.160 a buffalo tag in Alaska, and there's some gravy hunts, 1:23:48.360 --> 1:23:51.280 it's like the Delta junction hunts are basically shooting buffalo 1:23:51.760 --> 1:23:55.320 out of oat fields once you draw a tag. And 1:23:55.320 --> 1:23:57.040 it proved me once left that once you draw it, 1:23:57.120 --> 1:23:59.799 you cannot draw it again. I'm not talking successfully harvest. 1:24:00.040 --> 1:24:02.320 Once you probably can't draw it. So I'm now in capable, 1:24:02.320 --> 1:24:04.280 and I was correct. It was once literally once in 1:24:04.320 --> 1:24:07.120 lifetime hunt. And I knew that I wanted to write 1:24:07.120 --> 1:24:10.000 my damn article and I wanted to then write my book, 1:24:10.200 --> 1:24:12.040 and the way to do that was to kill that buffalo. 1:24:13.800 --> 1:24:20.080 Because and just before that, I read you leave. Yeah, 1:24:21.160 --> 1:24:24.479 you had called that summer and said, hey, we should 1:24:24.479 --> 1:24:28.160 go to southeast Alaska and do a sick of blacktail hunt. 1:24:28.600 --> 1:24:31.639 And then you and Dan came down with limes, I think, 1:24:32.000 --> 1:24:34.920 and we had to cancel that hunt. And then I 1:24:34.960 --> 1:24:38.080 read a bunch of other hunts. Yeah, and I read 1:24:38.160 --> 1:24:41.120 that over the course of that fall, I'm reading the 1:24:41.160 --> 1:24:45.559 book and I'm like, if this guy takes this many 1:24:45.680 --> 1:24:49.639 risks just to write a freaking story, I'm really glad 1:24:49.720 --> 1:24:52.400 he got lines to these and I'm not up in 1:24:52.439 --> 1:24:55.839 the alpine of Prince of Wales Island trying to survive 1:24:55.960 --> 1:25:01.160 with this crazy ass because i mean, looking back on it, 1:25:01.920 --> 1:25:04.760 do you say, what the hell was I thinking? No, No, 1:25:06.360 --> 1:25:08.920 because as a real it was just one of those 1:25:09.000 --> 1:25:12.960 great it was just one of those great hunts. And 1:25:13.280 --> 1:25:17.000 I'll say this man's we had a conversation this, you know, 1:25:17.040 --> 1:25:22.160 on this podcast. We had a conversation about um, you know, 1:25:22.160 --> 1:25:28.520 like the way how how filming or writing effects the experience. 1:25:30.160 --> 1:25:34.240 It's becoming separable for me now though, because I've been 1:25:34.600 --> 1:25:40.200 gifted the ability to do things and go places and 1:25:40.240 --> 1:25:45.760 have experiences um that I just simply would not have 1:25:45.960 --> 1:25:52.960 ever had were it not for you know, writing and filming, 1:25:53.720 --> 1:25:56.200 because it's just I simply wouldn't have had the money 1:25:56.200 --> 1:26:01.559 in time, you know, I have, Yeah, I got lime, 1:26:01.680 --> 1:26:04.759 not filming, but I've had a lot of other problems 1:26:04.760 --> 1:26:09.559 and like small problems, large problems, dangerous situations did in 1:26:09.720 --> 1:26:13.360 large part I just was egged into those situations somehow 1:26:13.479 --> 1:26:15.360 by one by my desired hunt. Cause I got friends 1:26:15.360 --> 1:26:17.599 have never stepped foot near filming and never stepped footing 1:26:17.600 --> 1:26:20.440 near right and they get in all kinds of situations. 1:26:20.840 --> 1:26:24.320 Does tend to I'd be lying if I said it 1:26:24.439 --> 1:26:29.679 does tend to add a second layer of motivation. It does. 1:26:30.680 --> 1:26:35.160 I feel the things and stay out doing them because, um, 1:26:36.080 --> 1:26:40.320 I'm almost wish it wasn't true, but it's true. I 1:26:40.520 --> 1:26:45.320 may have um watching my buddies and I wasn't as 1:26:45.360 --> 1:26:52.280 experienced in the out of doors in two thousand four. Um, 1:26:52.360 --> 1:26:54.800 I think it's to the two thousand four hunt. Yeah, 1:26:55.120 --> 1:26:58.720 standing on that bank in a strange place in Alaska, 1:26:59.400 --> 1:27:04.400 watch my bodies, so like see you and like there's 1:27:04.560 --> 1:27:08.360 you know, yea grizzlies, so a wolf read up from camp. 1:27:08.439 --> 1:27:12.080 It's like, yeah, there would have been a strong thing 1:27:12.080 --> 1:27:15.200 to be like, hey, you know, it's just not the 1:27:15.320 --> 1:27:18.160 right year. Yeah, But I was like, no way, man, 1:27:18.200 --> 1:27:20.280 Because as much as I'm a dedicated hunter, I guess 1:27:20.280 --> 1:27:23.599 I'm I'm like a dedicated writer. Yeah. And I've spent 1:27:23.640 --> 1:27:25.559 a lot of time in Alaska. I locked out. My 1:27:25.560 --> 1:27:27.880 grandparents lived there. I got three uncles who lived there, 1:27:28.640 --> 1:27:31.880 and I go to some crazy places in Alaska and 1:27:32.240 --> 1:27:37.000 the risks, just Alaska itself has inherent risks like no 1:27:37.120 --> 1:27:42.080 other place. And then you are there alone and anyone 1:27:42.280 --> 1:27:45.680 who has been on a free range bison hunt like 1:27:45.760 --> 1:27:48.679 you and I have, and you tip one of them over, 1:27:49.080 --> 1:27:51.719 You walk up to it and say, what in the 1:27:51.840 --> 1:27:56.280 f am I gonna do here? Seeing one at Yellowstone 1:27:56.320 --> 1:27:59.360 Park or seeing one at the you know, the local 1:27:59.479 --> 1:28:03.400 bison farm does not do it justice too. When that 1:28:03.520 --> 1:28:07.519 thing's laying on the ground, it's cold, you're wet, and 1:28:07.560 --> 1:28:11.439 all you have is a knife, and you add all 1:28:11.479 --> 1:28:14.400 those together, and you did this in Alaska. I was 1:28:14.479 --> 1:28:17.240 just like no freaking night this day. The day I 1:28:17.320 --> 1:28:19.479 killed that one, I was camped on a ridge. It 1:28:19.560 --> 1:28:22.640 was like a ridge, but basically at the top of 1:28:22.640 --> 1:28:26.280 a canyon, like the plateau above a canyon. You know, 1:28:26.360 --> 1:28:28.360 it seemed like a ridge, but I actually didn't drop 1:28:28.400 --> 1:28:32.040 off the other side. But uh, I was. It's snowed. 1:28:33.240 --> 1:28:35.200 I was sleeping under a little red tart red on 1:28:35.240 --> 1:28:37.960 top still round bottom. I had that tark strung up 1:28:37.960 --> 1:28:41.240 and I was actually burning buffalo chips because they had wallowed. 1:28:41.400 --> 1:28:43.240 They had wallowed in that area of summer, and I 1:28:43.280 --> 1:28:45.639 had a little mound of them stacked up under my thing. 1:28:45.680 --> 1:28:48.599 I just had a tarp, sleeping bag, buffalo chips backpack 1:28:49.520 --> 1:28:52.280 and um woke up in the morning it was all 1:28:52.360 --> 1:28:56.120 like wet snow had fallen and I was gonna light 1:28:56.200 --> 1:29:00.760 us start my alcohol stove to make some coffee. I 1:29:00.840 --> 1:29:02.640 was like, well, I'd better take a look down in 1:29:02.640 --> 1:29:07.040 the canyon, you know, um, before I start my sofa. 1:29:07.960 --> 1:29:10.040 And I just grabbed my rifle and peered over and 1:29:10.120 --> 1:29:12.479 just like there was the freaking herd of him coming down, 1:29:12.520 --> 1:29:16.000 maybe because the snow just single foul. And um, there's 1:29:16.040 --> 1:29:18.760 a big cow and they're up towards the top and 1:29:18.760 --> 1:29:22.400 there was wet snow, and I shot her with a 1:29:22.840 --> 1:29:24.479 I'm left hand, I shot the right hand and three 1:29:24.520 --> 1:29:27.720 h mag I borrowed from a body of mine, and 1:29:27.800 --> 1:29:31.559 that thing started going down that wet snow. It's a 1:29:31.640 --> 1:29:35.960 long drop, very steep pitch, and when it hit a 1:29:36.120 --> 1:29:41.000 stand of aspens or poplars, you know, I mean, it shattered. 1:29:41.800 --> 1:29:46.160 I mean it was like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins, man, 1:29:46.439 --> 1:29:51.040 but just like smash and just stuffed flying everywhere. And 1:29:51.040 --> 1:29:54.600 I went down and that thing was so entangled in 1:29:54.760 --> 1:29:59.760 trees I couldn't lift its head up. I remember I 1:29:59.840 --> 1:30:02.160 just started. I was like, I was just gonna try 1:30:02.160 --> 1:30:05.040 to get a back leg off that thing. Yeah, And 1:30:05.080 --> 1:30:09.240 I eventually dragged the back leg away, and then I 1:30:09.320 --> 1:30:11.360 cut a little gate to try to get some guts 1:30:11.360 --> 1:30:16.280 out of it. It was just it for three days. Wow. 1:30:16.439 --> 1:30:20.040 For three days I cut and carried, and that didn't 1:30:20.040 --> 1:30:21.479 even get it down to where I needed to get 1:30:21.479 --> 1:30:23.040 it to. I cutn't carry just to get it down 1:30:23.040 --> 1:30:27.799 to the tributary. So of all of the crazy things 1:30:27.840 --> 1:30:32.280 that writing and filming has maybe pushed you a little 1:30:32.320 --> 1:30:36.360 further than you otherwise would have you look back, is 1:30:36.400 --> 1:30:40.320 that one of the defining ones that you say, you 1:30:40.320 --> 1:30:42.400 know what, There's nothing else I could have done in 1:30:42.439 --> 1:30:45.280 my ordinary life that would have given me this experience, 1:30:45.760 --> 1:30:49.960 this sense of reward, this sense of accomplishment. It was 1:30:50.040 --> 1:30:56.280 four There's four trips that made I guess. There's there's 1:30:56.280 --> 1:30:58.360 four trips that made I feel like you're interviewing meet Mandy. 1:30:58.439 --> 1:31:03.040 But there's there's four trips that I'm just curious. Yeah, 1:31:03.240 --> 1:31:06.120 there's four trips that made me like who When I 1:31:06.160 --> 1:31:10.519 think of like who I am? Um? As a hunt 1:31:10.520 --> 1:31:12.000 of the fortress and made me who I am? That's 1:31:12.000 --> 1:31:16.200 one of them? All four we're in Alaska. Uh. The 1:31:16.240 --> 1:31:19.600 first was the first carribo hunt I went on on 1:31:19.640 --> 1:31:22.439 the north slope of the Brooks Range, just like pickup 1:31:22.479 --> 1:31:25.160 truck canoes. Me and my brothers just had no idea 1:31:25.160 --> 1:31:29.240 what we're getting into. The second was the first time 1:31:30.280 --> 1:31:33.800 we went on a very unsuccessful doll sheep hunt. Just 1:31:34.160 --> 1:31:38.720 park truck across the river, start hiking nine days, saw 1:31:38.800 --> 1:31:44.160 one ram about three miles away that was sub legal. Um. 1:31:44.320 --> 1:31:47.960 The third was a successful sheep hunt we went on 1:31:48.040 --> 1:31:51.599 where we mean we killed two rams the self guided wall, 1:31:51.680 --> 1:31:55.240 you know, and in that buffalo hunt are the ones 1:31:55.280 --> 1:31:57.479 that like, if I could give everything else, if I 1:31:57.479 --> 1:31:58.920 had to keep forward and give the rest of the way, 1:31:58.920 --> 1:32:02.400 I'd keep those four. No doubt, We'll all quit interviewing you. 1:32:02.600 --> 1:32:08.559 I'm I'm overstepping here, But I'm just curious because now 1:32:08.560 --> 1:32:12.360 that I reflect back on having hunted for thirty eight 1:32:12.439 --> 1:32:16.960 years and tagged along with my grandfather and my dad 1:32:17.200 --> 1:32:22.040 even before that, I look back and there's just certain 1:32:22.200 --> 1:32:26.800 events that I'm like, you know what, no other activity 1:32:26.840 --> 1:32:29.800 that I could have done in my life outside of 1:32:29.840 --> 1:32:33.200 being a hunter would have exposed me to that would 1:32:33.240 --> 1:32:35.880 have allowed me to walk away with that perspective. Maybe 1:32:35.880 --> 1:32:41.040 that confidence maybe pushed myself to that edge of saying, 1:32:41.080 --> 1:32:44.919 what the f am I doing here? But then somehow 1:32:44.960 --> 1:32:48.400 being able to pull out of that. Uh. And I've 1:32:48.439 --> 1:32:50.599 not been in combat, so I'm just you know, I'm 1:32:50.760 --> 1:32:53.360 I'm not trying to equate hunting to what it's like 1:32:53.439 --> 1:32:56.000 to be I haven't got a shoot at you or anything. 1:32:56.040 --> 1:33:00.880 But of hobbies and activities or passion in life, I 1:33:00.920 --> 1:33:04.200 can't think of anything that would have given me those 1:33:04.240 --> 1:33:07.880 experiences of you know, I could probably listen a handful 1:33:07.920 --> 1:33:10.760 of them like you do. And so now when you 1:33:10.800 --> 1:33:12.960 get to be fifty, you reflect back on that and 1:33:12.960 --> 1:33:17.200 you're like, well, ship is am I just kind of 1:33:17.240 --> 1:33:19.679 out to pasture? Now? Am I done with those really 1:33:19.720 --> 1:33:23.240 cool experiences? Or do I got more of them ahead 1:33:23.280 --> 1:33:25.639 of me? And you're kind of getting this reflective mode 1:33:25.680 --> 1:33:28.280 at that point, and then then you start interviewing the 1:33:28.320 --> 1:33:31.200 host of the show because you feel like you're a statesman. 1:33:31.800 --> 1:33:35.160 Those challenges and tough things that happened to you and 1:33:35.200 --> 1:33:37.720 the discomfort and the like rewards and all that that 1:33:37.840 --> 1:33:41.599 makes a special caliber of person. I like, oh, man 1:33:41.680 --> 1:33:43.559 Or people. I hang out all man Or people. But 1:33:43.560 --> 1:33:46.720 when it comes to like being comfortable around people in 1:33:46.840 --> 1:33:50.599 bad situations, like being confronged people in the outdoors, Guys 1:33:50.640 --> 1:33:56.400 that have been through the military, mountaineers and big game 1:33:56.439 --> 1:34:03.320 hunters tend to be like people that I just like 1:34:03.600 --> 1:34:08.720 feel comfortable around that I feel like like reliable. Do 1:34:08.760 --> 1:34:10.400 you mean, like when you're with people and just people, 1:34:10.400 --> 1:34:12.559 you gotta take care of people to not only take 1:34:12.600 --> 1:34:14.360 care of themselves, but take care of everybody else. I 1:34:14.360 --> 1:34:16.320 remember a guy talking a most the people he fished with, 1:34:16.920 --> 1:34:19.200 and he said, Steve, you gotta wait in line just 1:34:19.240 --> 1:34:22.720 to wash a dish. I mean, I mean like the 1:34:22.800 --> 1:34:25.080 doozy hangs out with, Like if you want to wash dishes, 1:34:25.120 --> 1:34:28.240 get in line, buddy. Everybody wants to wash them dishes. 1:34:28.439 --> 1:34:33.920 It's like that level of just like attacking problems. You know, 1:34:34.040 --> 1:34:38.040 there's not many things in life to give. I'm sure 1:34:38.040 --> 1:34:42.840 there's more than I'm naming, but lifetime exposure to those 1:34:42.880 --> 1:34:45.000 things seems to make the kind of guys that you 1:34:45.080 --> 1:34:47.160 gotta get in line if you want to wash a dish. Yeah, 1:34:47.400 --> 1:34:51.760 And maybe I'm biased because just about everyone I hang 1:34:51.760 --> 1:34:55.479 out with as a hunter, and so I can sit 1:34:55.520 --> 1:34:57.960 here and share these kind of experiences with them, and 1:34:58.120 --> 1:35:01.880 I can have this very wow. Yeah, I get that 1:35:01.960 --> 1:35:06.479 to its greatest detail. And when I'm in the field 1:35:06.520 --> 1:35:10.479 with them, I'm very comfortable around them. There's some people 1:35:10.640 --> 1:35:13.920 where if you gave him a butter knife, I'm so uncomfortable. 1:35:13.960 --> 1:35:15.519 I think this guy's gonna figure out how to cut 1:35:15.520 --> 1:35:17.679 his thumb off of a butter knife. You know. There's 1:35:17.760 --> 1:35:19.400 just some of those people where you're like, I gotta 1:35:19.439 --> 1:35:21.320 get the hell out of here. I'm not gonna have 1:35:21.360 --> 1:35:23.800 any fun if I'm with a guy like this. And 1:35:23.920 --> 1:35:27.120 usually they don't have the background of the three types 1:35:27.160 --> 1:35:29.720 that you mentioned, the military, of the mountaineers, or big 1:35:29.760 --> 1:35:34.320 game hunners, and maybe there's a couple other sl For me, 1:35:34.439 --> 1:35:37.400 it's just yeah, That's why I asked a question of 1:35:38.400 --> 1:35:41.439 how profound that hunt was. That's a situation I'm in 1:35:41.520 --> 1:35:45.160 now is you know, I got kids and my wife. 1:35:45.160 --> 1:35:48.360 I had this ongoing debate where I expose them to 1:35:48.800 --> 1:35:51.320 I'm not negligent anyway, but I expose themto what we 1:35:51.560 --> 1:35:55.720 might be regarded as dangers by a big segment of 1:35:55.720 --> 1:35:58.640 the oh yeah, population right. To me, it seems like 1:35:58.800 --> 1:36:01.680 very pedestrian, not dangerous at all. But some people might 1:36:01.760 --> 1:36:06.280 regard activities that I expose my kid kids to kids too, 1:36:06.720 --> 1:36:10.040 as being like not age appropriate or being a little 1:36:10.040 --> 1:36:12.519 bit dangerous. And I'm always like, yeah, okay, that's a 1:36:12.560 --> 1:36:14.760 little bit dangerous, like he might cut his finger. But 1:36:14.800 --> 1:36:17.240 they always point out we're having this conversation your day, 1:36:17.320 --> 1:36:19.519 someone's like everybody keeps talking about my kid cuting his 1:36:19.560 --> 1:36:21.120 finger with his knife. I always cut my fingers with 1:36:21.160 --> 1:36:23.760 my knife when I was a kid, So it's like, who, dude, 1:36:23.880 --> 1:36:26.200 like one how like, let's not act like that's the 1:36:26.360 --> 1:36:28.680 end bad. Yeah, it's like that's just a given, you 1:36:28.760 --> 1:36:30.920 go cut his finger. But I always like, okay, let's 1:36:30.920 --> 1:36:33.400 deprive him of the dangerous stuff. But at what at 1:36:33.439 --> 1:36:36.639 what danger does that come out of danger? I think 1:36:36.720 --> 1:36:38.880 because later on it's like you went up with a 1:36:38.920 --> 1:36:41.439 helpless person and there's other ways to get there. It's like, 1:36:42.000 --> 1:36:43.639 you know, I don't know if there's like some Bible 1:36:43.640 --> 1:36:46.960 pass like there's many ways to get to whatever, there's 1:36:47.000 --> 1:36:49.439 other ways to get there. I'm not saying like if 1:36:49.479 --> 1:36:51.080 you don't hunt and fishing your kids you're gonna have 1:36:51.080 --> 1:36:53.439 crappy kids. Because's certainly not the case, because you can 1:36:53.439 --> 1:36:57.880 get there a bazillion ways. But from my exposure, my 1:36:57.960 --> 1:37:01.960 experience where I come from the way to get there 1:37:02.000 --> 1:37:04.840 that I understand, the way to get there that I 1:37:04.880 --> 1:37:08.120 can present to my children is very much that way. 1:37:08.160 --> 1:37:14.160 Because them watching me right isn't gonna get them there, true, 1:37:14.640 --> 1:37:17.840 it's just not. Then watch me record podcast isn't gonna 1:37:17.840 --> 1:37:21.040 get them there? Okay, then watch me flay fish. It's 1:37:21.040 --> 1:37:23.160 hard to explain. I feel as all that might really 1:37:23.240 --> 1:37:25.120 my son felt a lot of danger when you'd see 1:37:25.160 --> 1:37:28.920 me balance in the debts and the credits. It's like, Dad, 1:37:29.040 --> 1:37:31.599 the way you really handled that that advocates you are 1:37:31.640 --> 1:37:34.840 the Charlie Daniels of the advocaust. Dad, Man, I feel 1:37:34.840 --> 1:37:39.560 comforted now you've taught me the life lessons. But yeah, um, 1:37:39.600 --> 1:37:42.719 and it's a false in some ways. You might regard 1:37:42.760 --> 1:37:47.760 it as the false world now because um, in my mind, 1:37:47.800 --> 1:37:51.840 the nature of subsistence has changed for people to live 1:37:53.200 --> 1:37:56.360 anywhere else side of small handful locations around the world. 1:37:56.520 --> 1:37:59.519 The nature of like subsistence hunting and fishing. You know, 1:37:59.560 --> 1:38:01.880 it's not like I always say, like I'm gonna beat fine, dude, 1:38:02.000 --> 1:38:03.439 you can take hunted fishing way from me on that. 1:38:03.520 --> 1:38:05.400 I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna start right. You know. 1:38:05.479 --> 1:38:07.280 It's like reality TV, like if they don't get this, 1:38:07.400 --> 1:38:12.240 they'll die. Right, It's just not true. But I guess 1:38:12.280 --> 1:38:15.880 I've just in some way opted that I believe in. 1:38:16.000 --> 1:38:21.040 Elements of that subsistence lifestyle, right still pertain, all right 1:38:21.320 --> 1:38:23.880 in the main risk of imminent starvation isn't there, But 1:38:23.960 --> 1:38:30.640 there are tremendous risks of like character, um fortitude, understand 1:38:31.200 --> 1:38:35.600 how do you use stuff? How do you use physical objects? Yeah, 1:38:35.400 --> 1:38:39.280 my son went to college back in New York, and 1:38:39.760 --> 1:38:42.160 I wondered, Man, how is he going to fit in 1:38:42.240 --> 1:38:45.799 back there? He's coming from Montana we did hunt, fish, 1:38:46.120 --> 1:38:48.559 you know, shoot whatever, and he's going to an Ivy 1:38:48.600 --> 1:38:51.639 League school that's kind of well, it's known to be 1:38:51.840 --> 1:38:57.439 not like Montana. Yeah, and so I'm worried that. Okay, 1:38:57.520 --> 1:38:59.600 he goes there, How's he gonna fit in? How's he 1:38:59.640 --> 1:39:05.840 gonna cope with the different environment and the things he 1:39:06.120 --> 1:39:09.679 learned in the coping skills that he brought from hunting 1:39:09.720 --> 1:39:14.680 and fishing and understanding how a natural world works. He 1:39:14.800 --> 1:39:18.600 blew through it with no problem. I was so impressed 1:39:18.640 --> 1:39:22.920 with how adaptable, so much would he learned as a 1:39:23.000 --> 1:39:27.599 hunter fisherman shooting, cutting his finger with a knife when 1:39:27.600 --> 1:39:30.240 he's six, you know, shoot your eye out. I mean 1:39:30.280 --> 1:39:32.120 he had to be begun when he had like five. 1:39:32.840 --> 1:39:35.360 But he was in a whole group of people that 1:39:35.439 --> 1:39:39.200 were not exposed to that, and he kind of emerged 1:39:39.240 --> 1:39:43.599 from that not just unscathed, but almost like a leader 1:39:43.640 --> 1:39:47.960 that they looked to because would look at like the 1:39:48.360 --> 1:39:51.960 woods upbringing and say, oh, they might miss out on 1:39:52.040 --> 1:39:55.400 some sort of social you know, aspect that they're gonna 1:39:55.439 --> 1:39:57.160 get more if you grow up in a big city 1:39:57.200 --> 1:39:59.720 like New York. But that's not the case. It's like 1:40:00.080 --> 1:40:03.520 you still have to have all those relationships and communicate 1:40:03.560 --> 1:40:05.400 with people and work through all that, and you're probably 1:40:05.400 --> 1:40:07.760 gonna learn it because of the hardships and even a 1:40:07.960 --> 1:40:10.120 better way, in a stronger way, where like you're saying, 1:40:10.200 --> 1:40:12.599 he went there to that Ivy League school and people 1:40:12.640 --> 1:40:16.760 are like, wow, this dude, Like yeah, strong and just 1:40:16.840 --> 1:40:20.560 his perspective of ability to look at a more complex 1:40:20.640 --> 1:40:24.040 problem and not needed to be sanitized down to little 1:40:24.080 --> 1:40:28.400 compartments of you know, oh, well, this is a historical question, no, 1:40:28.600 --> 1:40:31.320 he I think hunters a general rule of people who 1:40:31.439 --> 1:40:33.840 understand the natural world can stand back and look at 1:40:33.840 --> 1:40:37.800 a bigger, more complicated problem with multiple variables like you 1:40:37.840 --> 1:40:42.120 see in the natural world, and other people struggle with that. 1:40:42.880 --> 1:40:46.839 And I didn't really give it much that until watching 1:40:46.920 --> 1:40:49.559 him go through that process and watching some other kids 1:40:49.640 --> 1:40:52.720 his friends go through and do it similar things in 1:40:52.720 --> 1:40:55.880 different places, and I we'd have the discussions of how 1:40:55.960 --> 1:41:00.479 you fitting in there? Fine, what what do you mean? Like, well, 1:41:00.720 --> 1:41:03.439 you're the one walking around with camouflage boots on an 1:41:03.479 --> 1:41:06.760 IVY League campus and everyone else's you know whatever, you 1:41:06.840 --> 1:41:09.920 got your mad bomber beaver fur hat on and your 1:41:09.960 --> 1:41:15.400 chopper mints. I don't care. I'm warm even able to 1:41:16.560 --> 1:41:21.320 put everything in just a very simple solution, very pragmatic, 1:41:21.360 --> 1:41:27.080 And so this whole idea that we got it kind 1:41:27.080 --> 1:41:29.880 of coddle everybody, you know. Back to your point of 1:41:30.320 --> 1:41:34.960 what is the future danger of removing all the dangers today? 1:41:35.280 --> 1:41:38.080 I think we end up with kids, or they become 1:41:38.120 --> 1:41:42.280 adults that can't handle a lot of things that maybe 1:41:42.520 --> 1:41:45.479 some of us just take for granted. I remember being 1:41:45.479 --> 1:41:49.759 out with I bought this this sit on top kayak 1:41:50.320 --> 1:41:52.360 called the Big two in a kayak, very stable sit 1:41:52.439 --> 1:41:57.240 on top fishing kayak um And you know, I bought 1:41:57.240 --> 1:42:00.160 it very much. Minded out fishing my boy when the 1:42:00.200 --> 1:42:01.760 seattle are there's a lot of water around there. I 1:42:01.800 --> 1:42:03.080 just wanted something that I could get in the water 1:42:04.000 --> 1:42:07.160 and the whole time, like sit on top the whole time, 1:42:07.200 --> 1:42:10.280 Like what if the kid falls in the water in 1:42:10.320 --> 1:42:13.360 the winter, And I was like, all my thinking was like, 1:42:13.439 --> 1:42:15.760 how he's gonna not fall in the water. And we 1:42:15.800 --> 1:42:18.080 go out like I'm bundled up. You know, he's got 1:42:18.200 --> 1:42:19.559 Obviously I don't let the kid in near your boat 1:42:19.560 --> 1:42:23.639 with I life jacket on. Um we get on the water. 1:42:23.760 --> 1:42:30.120 I mean it's you know, January February, Pacific Northwest. And 1:42:30.160 --> 1:42:32.439 he was offended by later accused him of just basically 1:42:32.520 --> 1:42:36.120 jumping out of the kayak. He just like all of 1:42:36.160 --> 1:42:38.000 a sudden, he's in there, and then he's in the water. 1:42:38.120 --> 1:42:40.000 He like, look, it seemed to me that he did 1:42:40.040 --> 1:42:43.960 some kind of barrel roll out of his seat into 1:42:43.960 --> 1:42:46.040 the water. He fell very much. He did not want 1:42:46.080 --> 1:42:49.600 to be in that water, and like like he's just 1:42:49.720 --> 1:42:53.000 there and then he's floating in the water, you know, 1:42:54.840 --> 1:42:56.800 And I hauled him out of there, and like, at 1:42:56.800 --> 1:43:00.960 first my mind is just racing, you know, won the 1:43:00.960 --> 1:43:05.439 wrath of his mother. Yeah, but sure, I mean I 1:43:05.479 --> 1:43:07.040 didn't have him out of the water five seconds. I 1:43:07.040 --> 1:43:10.320 was glad he fell in. Yeah him, because I'm kind 1:43:10.320 --> 1:43:15.400 of like one falling out of the boat too. If 1:43:15.400 --> 1:43:17.960 a dude falls out of a boat in really cold weather, 1:43:18.160 --> 1:43:21.479 here's what you do. We're gonna run through it right now, 1:43:21.680 --> 1:43:26.120 so you understand like the situation we're in, right yea, 1:43:26.600 --> 1:43:29.080 And yeah, now I look at it like the one 1:43:29.080 --> 1:43:30.600 thing I didn't want to have and fall out of 1:43:30.600 --> 1:43:32.760 the boat. Now, when I think of like highlights of 1:43:32.800 --> 1:43:36.439 the last year, I'm like, man, you know it sounds perverse. 1:43:36.479 --> 1:43:39.800 I'm like, it was great when Jimmy fell out of 1:43:39.840 --> 1:43:41.920 that boat, because like, look how much content we got 1:43:41.960 --> 1:43:46.519 out of that, Like life's content, you know, revery like 1:43:46.520 --> 1:43:49.040 anard time we were down in Baja fishing and then 1:43:49.160 --> 1:43:51.439 I went out in the dark to fish, and I 1:43:51.479 --> 1:43:53.719 told him a thousand times and like stay here, Daddy's 1:43:53.720 --> 1:43:58.760 gonna walk out in the dark. Don't move, you know 1:43:58.720 --> 1:44:00.160 that I was going on to get a better as 1:44:00.520 --> 1:44:03.840 I come up something's gone and look he's like rolling 1:44:03.840 --> 1:44:06.840 around the tide. I read out and grab him. That's 1:44:06.840 --> 1:44:09.479 just kind of like drag him up them in the shower. 1:44:09.600 --> 1:44:13.040 I was like, why in the world, you know? But um, yeah, 1:44:13.280 --> 1:44:14.920 I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm kind of glad because 1:44:14.920 --> 1:44:17.200 at something I feel like it's adding layers out there. 1:44:17.640 --> 1:44:20.559 It is. I I mean, I think about the stuff 1:44:20.560 --> 1:44:25.040 that I did. My parents would have been in jail 1:44:26.000 --> 1:44:29.240 and we would have been in Foster home in today's 1:44:29.240 --> 1:44:32.880 world and actually dangerous about in my podcast that we 1:44:32.880 --> 1:44:35.479 were talking about last week, I tried to me and 1:44:35.520 --> 1:44:37.280 my cousins tried to build a bomb to blow up 1:44:37.320 --> 1:44:39.559 train bridge when or eight years old. I mean, you 1:44:39.640 --> 1:44:43.360 think about doing that now, But it's one of I learned. 1:44:43.760 --> 1:44:47.400 So yeah, I learned so much about how you can 1:44:47.439 --> 1:44:50.120 saw a shotgun shell in half and pull the wad 1:44:50.160 --> 1:44:52.559 out and dump the powder and a paint can. And 1:44:52.680 --> 1:44:56.439 I mean, and that if you didn't direct the force 1:44:56.520 --> 1:44:58.439 a certain direction on they did was blow a scour 1:44:58.479 --> 1:45:01.120 hole out between the two railroad ted. I mean, but 1:45:01.560 --> 1:45:07.160 the stuff that we did was so valuable as I 1:45:07.200 --> 1:45:09.000 got older in life, and maybe it's because of the 1:45:09.000 --> 1:45:11.240 path I chose later in life. It was valuable. Maybe 1:45:11.280 --> 1:45:12.640 if I hadn't done all that stuff, I would have 1:45:12.720 --> 1:45:15.320 taken a different path than people would have said. Maybe 1:45:15.320 --> 1:45:17.280 that knucklehead grew up in that little town there. He 1:45:17.320 --> 1:45:19.519 doesn't know his asked from third base, but how to 1:45:19.520 --> 1:45:24.439 blow up railroad? But anyhow, all right, so let's uh, 1:45:24.800 --> 1:45:29.080 you mentioned it, plug it you've been working on a 1:45:29.080 --> 1:45:32.280 podcast deal larging conservation is I'll let you tell me. Yeah, 1:45:32.400 --> 1:45:35.599 and it's it's thanks to your friends here at zero 1:45:35.640 --> 1:45:39.720 point zero. Uh, we were on a bear hunt last year. 1:45:39.920 --> 1:45:43.479 Janice and Dan were filming me and we talked about 1:45:43.600 --> 1:45:45.920 all kinds of things. That's got us a hunt to 1:45:45.960 --> 1:45:48.080 eat T shirt infamy. There you go, what do you 1:45:48.080 --> 1:45:53.040 call them the Latin? Yeah? That that magnate hunt. You 1:45:53.040 --> 1:45:56.160 gotta hunt of eat T shirt? I do? Thanks? Yeah, 1:45:56.240 --> 1:46:00.400 did you give it to him? Yeah? Yeah? That good 1:46:00.400 --> 1:46:02.920 plug here there. He's not gonna send you one. You 1:46:02.920 --> 1:46:09.920 gotta go to hunting dot com. Yeah. I mean they're like, 1:46:10.120 --> 1:46:13.920 you need a podcast, buddy. You you're just like spouting 1:46:13.960 --> 1:46:17.320 off all the time. You're blowing and carrying on, you know, 1:46:17.640 --> 1:46:21.200 with no one. Yeah, you know, just nothing but a 1:46:21.240 --> 1:46:25.080 few seals and you know, to two poor camera guys, 1:46:25.720 --> 1:46:29.240 and uh so it took us the last part of 1:46:29.240 --> 1:46:31.320 a year to decide we're going to do this. And 1:46:31.400 --> 1:46:35.480 so thanks to these guys, we have the other podcast 1:46:35.560 --> 1:46:39.479 at zero points zero producers called hunt Talk Radio I e. 1:46:39.720 --> 1:46:43.799 Raindy Newberg, Gun Filtered and it's just me and friends 1:46:43.880 --> 1:46:49.560 talking about hunting, fishing, growing up, conservation, a lot of politics, 1:46:49.880 --> 1:46:53.519 and probably we got into marital advice at one time. 1:46:53.560 --> 1:46:57.040 Didn't know you know, you know we we we end 1:46:57.080 --> 1:47:00.280 these podcasts where you get to have a concluding thought, Yeah, 1:47:00.880 --> 1:47:03.559 give me some marriage not that I needed, but give 1:47:03.920 --> 1:47:06.760 the listeners marital advice as you're concluding. OK. I don't 1:47:06.760 --> 1:47:09.400 like to dictate your concluding thought. No, if you see fit, 1:47:10.240 --> 1:47:12.919 every camera guy I have is like in his twenties, 1:47:12.960 --> 1:47:16.479 early thirties, he's getting in this, you know, thinking of 1:47:16.520 --> 1:47:19.760 getting married, like Dan, isn't Dan getting married? All right? 1:47:20.680 --> 1:47:23.479 And so there are I'm gonna wear the pants in 1:47:23.560 --> 1:47:25.960 my house and I just about driving the ditch. When 1:47:26.000 --> 1:47:28.200 I hear him say that, I'm like, yeah, right, And 1:47:28.439 --> 1:47:30.559 sooner or later it's like, all right, you've been married 1:47:30.600 --> 1:47:33.160 twenty six years, Randy, give me one piece of advice. 1:47:33.200 --> 1:47:35.320 So this will be the concluding thought. Yeah, I'm gonna 1:47:35.320 --> 1:47:41.080 do marriage advice from mine. Okay, if you want a long, 1:47:41.680 --> 1:47:46.240 happy marriage, be more interested in peace than you are justice. 1:47:47.840 --> 1:47:52.120 You don't have to be right. Being right is expensive, 1:47:52.560 --> 1:47:57.080 financially expensive, emotionally expensive. And you don't get hunting fish 1:47:57.200 --> 1:48:00.920 nearly as much as the guys who let let them 1:48:00.920 --> 1:48:03.919 be right half more than half the time they're right anyhow, 1:48:04.040 --> 1:48:08.280 So you know what are Yeah, it's not about this 1:48:08.360 --> 1:48:12.320 whole idea of justice. I'm right, she's wrong. You'll regret 1:48:12.360 --> 1:48:15.679 saying that I proved you that I actually was. Yeah. 1:48:15.720 --> 1:48:17.800 I mean, anyone who's been married more than about a 1:48:17.840 --> 1:48:21.120 month has been down that path. Yeah, and so I 1:48:21.240 --> 1:48:25.400 just tell everyone be more interested in peace than you 1:48:25.560 --> 1:48:28.639 are justice, and all will be well. I have three 1:48:28.640 --> 1:48:32.519 pieces of barrel advice I tried doing quick said a 1:48:32.600 --> 1:48:37.960 very strong precedent um. When you meet a man or 1:48:38.000 --> 1:48:43.320 a lady, live the life that you want to live. 1:48:43.400 --> 1:48:50.760 Ten years into your marriage will not earned back. You 1:48:50.760 --> 1:48:54.800 don't get freedoms exactly. The news doesn't get looser. You 1:48:54.840 --> 1:48:58.800 guys who would start dating a girl and they're all infatuated, 1:49:00.080 --> 1:49:04.960 and you know it's like Thanksgiving at their parents and 1:49:05.160 --> 1:49:06.960 you know, instead of doing whatever, and then a couple 1:49:06.960 --> 1:49:08.360 of years down the road they're like, well, you know, 1:49:08.400 --> 1:49:10.640 I actually usually on Thanksgiving, I'm usually you know, we 1:49:10.720 --> 1:49:13.000 usually fish steelhead around. Thanksgivings are kind of coming into 1:49:13.000 --> 1:49:15.160 the rivers. It's like that, you don't you go we 1:49:15.240 --> 1:49:17.680 go to Mike MoMA's every year for Thanksgiving. But yeah, well, 1:49:17.680 --> 1:49:23.639 I mean normally it's like live it, you know from 1:49:23.720 --> 1:49:26.559 the start. Yeah, it's much you're talking about dragging yourself 1:49:26.560 --> 1:49:31.679 away from mama. Drag even at its most difficult point, 1:49:33.640 --> 1:49:36.360 at its most difficult point in the beginning, find it 1:49:36.439 --> 1:49:40.280 in yourself to drag yourself away from mama. See piece 1:49:40.280 --> 1:49:44.360 of Marral. Advice I have is uh, how long you've 1:49:44.360 --> 1:49:47.080 been married to you? My anniversary is coming up. Well 1:49:47.120 --> 1:49:50.679 I know that mean one year now. I got married 1:49:50.720 --> 1:49:54.519 two thousand eight. Okay, so you're seven years in. Yeah. 1:49:54.960 --> 1:49:57.439 I'm giving advice, not from like having with you know, 1:49:57.600 --> 1:50:04.800 weathered time. I'm just like, okay, just observations. Um, you 1:50:04.760 --> 1:50:07.960 always here. It's like cliche pick your battles, oh for sure. 1:50:08.280 --> 1:50:10.960 It's like there's just some stuff like, for instance, issues 1:50:11.000 --> 1:50:16.240 with my kids, like like what they're doing, when who's 1:50:16.240 --> 1:50:20.760 gonna where for holidays? You know what I mean, Like 1:50:20.800 --> 1:50:23.880 what their clothes are, like what time we're supposed to 1:50:23.880 --> 1:50:27.000 get up or what time they gotta be Just like, okay, yeah, 1:50:27.000 --> 1:50:29.200 that's just static. Just like and I'm not I'm not 1:50:29.200 --> 1:50:31.800 saying that just the kids. But there's many issues, like 1:50:31.880 --> 1:50:35.120 many matters of of how our house is structure, how 1:50:35.120 --> 1:50:38.719 our time is structured, matters of our social life. Okay, 1:50:38.920 --> 1:50:40.760 there's just a lot of stuff like when you're gonna 1:50:40.760 --> 1:50:43.000 be working, when you're not gonna be working. Um that 1:50:43.040 --> 1:50:48.080 I'm just like, okay, you know we're gonna be moving, Okay, 1:50:48.200 --> 1:50:50.240 So like the house we're gonna live in. I know 1:50:50.280 --> 1:50:52.320 I have some input on this, but not a ton 1:50:53.680 --> 1:50:58.280 um drum rolls. Number three, number three? How can I that? Remember? 1:50:58.360 --> 1:51:02.840 Number three? Oh? Read the works of Cormac McCarthy. He 1:51:02.880 --> 1:51:05.679 never talks about marriage. But read the works of Cormac 1:51:05.760 --> 1:51:10.519 McCarthy and try to decipher his moral code, which is 1:51:10.560 --> 1:51:15.840 consistent throughout his works, And then and and read them 1:51:15.840 --> 1:51:19.120 and internalized Cormate McCarthy's moral code, and you'll have a 1:51:19.120 --> 1:51:23.200 better marriage. Huh. I'll have to read that it's you're 1:51:23.240 --> 1:51:26.680 saying a huge you're making a huge commitment for yourself. Well, like, 1:51:26.920 --> 1:51:30.840 is it? It's not, it's not. Well, I just just 1:51:30.880 --> 1:51:35.160 wrote many books, but start with the Border trilogy. Oh no, 1:51:36.320 --> 1:51:38.400 and I'll sum them up because also the way I've 1:51:38.400 --> 1:51:41.880 interpreted the works cars. But there's a morality there where 1:51:41.960 --> 1:51:46.879 a lot of people want to live in a world 1:51:47.120 --> 1:51:54.000 that existed before they made the decisions that they've made. Okay, yeah, 1:51:54.479 --> 1:51:57.040 did you go like, oh, but you're still trying. It's 1:51:57.040 --> 1:51:58.400 like I see it all the time. I have to 1:51:58.400 --> 1:52:01.240 reading Corn McCarthy like, oh no, no, buddy, you're trying 1:52:01.280 --> 1:52:04.639 to live the life that that that existed before you 1:52:04.800 --> 1:52:07.679 made a very willful decision to take a certain path here, 1:52:08.800 --> 1:52:11.760 abandon the notion that that that you like, abandoned the 1:52:11.800 --> 1:52:14.080 idea that you're somehow going to get out of the 1:52:14.160 --> 1:52:17.360 situation you're in, kids, whatever. It's like, you're here now. 1:52:18.280 --> 1:52:20.680 There is the life outside of this. Stop pretending that 1:52:20.720 --> 1:52:25.719 there is. Yeh, yeah, that's how long you've been married. 1:52:25.760 --> 1:52:27.360 You could have a concluding thought. It doesn't have to 1:52:27.400 --> 1:52:31.160 be about marriage. Now. I'll give them about marriage. I 1:52:31.160 --> 1:52:34.240 think twelve years, two thousand three, So I got a 1:52:34.280 --> 1:52:39.400 couple under my belt. They've all been great. Um, this 1:52:39.439 --> 1:52:43.840 piece of vice actually came from another fishing client of mine. 1:52:44.000 --> 1:52:47.320 I think I got it her a few times her her, Yeah, 1:52:47.600 --> 1:52:51.639 and she'd been a in a long, long marriage and um, 1:52:51.720 --> 1:52:54.960 she basically got dumbed for the you know, the secretary. 1:52:55.040 --> 1:52:58.400 It's something along those lines, and not the fishing guy. 1:52:58.560 --> 1:53:01.639 She not the fishing guy. She didn't she didn't see 1:53:01.680 --> 1:53:04.840 it coming, and it really beat her up. And so 1:53:04.880 --> 1:53:08.360 she went on. She embarked on this you know, like 1:53:09.200 --> 1:53:11.120 it was it was a pole, but it was like 1:53:11.320 --> 1:53:13.240 a journey. But there was like this poll that she 1:53:13.320 --> 1:53:16.360 constantly kept up with, and she kept tallies and notes, 1:53:16.439 --> 1:53:19.080 and when she saw old couples, she always went to 1:53:19.160 --> 1:53:21.479 him and said, hey, what's what was What's like, what's 1:53:21.520 --> 1:53:24.360 the secret? What's your one little tip or whatever? And 1:53:24.439 --> 1:53:26.679 what she came away from with it all the number 1:53:26.720 --> 1:53:30.639 one one word that people always said. And everybody's like, oh, 1:53:30.680 --> 1:53:33.439 it's love, you know, It's like, well, love is bullshit. 1:53:33.640 --> 1:53:35.599 You know a lot of times love just does not 1:53:35.880 --> 1:53:40.080 have that lasting powers. What does is commitment. And I 1:53:40.120 --> 1:53:43.800 always try to remember that, well, I'm committing, you know, 1:53:43.880 --> 1:53:45.320 and I believe, and I have to believe that my 1:53:45.360 --> 1:53:48.080 wife is also committed to me and that always, you know, 1:53:48.200 --> 1:53:51.000 no no problems getting too hard times Ronnie Bain, who 1:53:51.000 --> 1:53:55.280 has no shortage of wise observations. I was talking to 1:53:55.439 --> 1:53:58.000 an old man one time that was speaking of his 1:53:58.040 --> 1:54:02.040 wife and the only and said, you know, ron I 1:54:02.040 --> 1:54:05.559 wouldn't give you ten cents for another one just like her, 1:54:05.960 --> 1:54:09.760 but I wouldn't take a million dollars for And there's 1:54:09.800 --> 1:54:14.360 sort of like a fatalistic sort of thing there. It's 1:54:14.400 --> 1:54:20.160 just like that's what I got. Well, I think any 1:54:20.200 --> 1:54:22.360 of us would get to hunt, travel as much as 1:54:22.400 --> 1:54:25.080 we do. I gotta have something figured out. And I 1:54:25.120 --> 1:54:26.920 think that's why a lot of people ask me for 1:54:27.000 --> 1:54:29.760 maritle and that I'm giving an elk cutting seminar, and 1:54:29.840 --> 1:54:32.840 someone will raise your hand, how does your life wife 1:54:32.880 --> 1:54:35.360 let you hunt so much? And so I got it. 1:54:35.480 --> 1:54:38.280 I feel like I'm going into this doctor field discussion 1:54:38.360 --> 1:54:40.800 there or something, and I tell him the best deal 1:54:40.840 --> 1:54:43.320 I ever made in my marriage was when we built 1:54:43.320 --> 1:54:46.720 our last house in two thousand and four. I told 1:54:46.720 --> 1:54:51.320 my wife, you can take of the cost of the 1:54:51.360 --> 1:54:55.160 house and add it to furnishings whatever you want. I 1:54:55.200 --> 1:54:58.000 don't care. I don't care what color, what size, but 1:54:58.960 --> 1:55:01.120 I don't never want to hear it. Budget discussion about 1:55:01.200 --> 1:55:04.440 hunting over again, and she jumped on that like a 1:55:04.560 --> 1:55:08.040 rat out of Cheetoh man, she was on it, And 1:55:08.640 --> 1:55:13.240 so hunt a lot. But here's the thing, though, I 1:55:13.320 --> 1:55:15.880 love being married, like, oh me too. I love seeing 1:55:15.920 --> 1:55:17.920 my wife. I love being married, I love having my kids. 1:55:18.000 --> 1:55:21.160 I like to hunting fish. It's like, so, yeah, there's 1:55:21.320 --> 1:55:23.760 and I'm not saying that all everything that I'm arguing 1:55:23.880 --> 1:55:26.080 is I'm behalf of me out hunting fish more. But 1:55:26.120 --> 1:55:28.080 I think that, like we're saying there, there's certain lessons 1:55:28.080 --> 1:55:30.120 to be found hunting and fishing, and there's certain things 1:55:30.240 --> 1:55:33.240 where you know, that's just like something that's important to me, 1:55:33.280 --> 1:55:34.920 and I've found a way to have it be that 1:55:35.000 --> 1:55:39.000 it's just like an integral part of the household. Even 1:55:39.000 --> 1:55:43.280 though my wife, you know, familiar with sympathetic tords. But 1:55:43.560 --> 1:55:46.760 what never does it self identifies the avid angler? Yeah, 1:55:46.880 --> 1:55:50.000 you know, doesn't hunt like will certainly fish, but doesn't. 1:55:50.720 --> 1:55:53.080 If you got these ten things she is fishing with, 1:55:53.200 --> 1:55:58.600 fisher woman wouldn't make the list. Oh gosh, I'm sorry 1:55:58.600 --> 1:56:02.880 to keep adding tang entel. Everybody had a concluding thoughts. 1:56:05.320 --> 1:56:08.080 This is the longest we've talked, the lost we've ever 1:56:08.120 --> 1:56:11.040 had to actually talk. Oh really, man, I'm sorry, No, no, 1:56:11.080 --> 1:56:13.080 I mean you and me. Oh yeah, you and I. 1:56:13.160 --> 1:56:16.720 We had a long phone conversation whatever. Remember, But yeah, 1:56:16.840 --> 1:56:19.560 it's it's good. Hopefully we'll get to do it over 1:56:20.320 --> 1:56:23.920 camp fire and a fresh backstrap someday. Well we're all 1:56:23.920 --> 1:56:26.800 sick from something. Yeah, I don't know. You guys come 1:56:26.840 --> 1:56:30.200 down with more food born ailments. I just telling my 1:56:30.240 --> 1:56:32.880 wife about some of the things you guys eat, because 1:56:33.120 --> 1:56:34.920 she asked me what I was doing with that bear 1:56:35.000 --> 1:56:36.840 I shot this year, and I told them you, Oh, 1:56:36.960 --> 1:56:40.880 Janice wants these hawks in this She's like, aren't those 1:56:41.000 --> 1:56:43.760 guys that get sick every time they cook something? And 1:56:43.800 --> 1:56:46.520 I'm like yeah, She's like, and you said you were 1:56:46.520 --> 1:56:51.800 going to go hunting with him sometime maybe, so yeah, 1:56:51.840 --> 1:56:53.600 you only need anything that comes out of a package. 1:56:53.680 --> 1:56:57.720 But well, guys, thanks for having me. Great. I appreciate 1:56:57.800 --> 1:57:00.480 all you guys do for hunting, and in the the 1:57:00.560 --> 1:57:03.200 message you guys are getting out there is so need 1:57:03.320 --> 1:57:06.280 nude and so valuable not just to hunting, but how 1:57:06.400 --> 1:57:10.440 hunting can expand its boundaries to a bigger discussion in society. 1:57:10.800 --> 1:57:13.200 So as I want the last usually I'll say like, 1:57:13.240 --> 1:57:16.280 thanks for listening, but let plug the plug the podcasting 1:57:17.440 --> 1:57:21.720 Hunt Talk podcast Randy Newburgh Unfiltered and can go to 1:57:21.760 --> 1:57:24.720 iTunes and get it produced by zero point zero. Thanks 1:57:24.720 --> 1:57:27.560 for letting me plug it in, Steve tune In. Thanks, 1:57:27.560 --> 1:57:28.680 everybody appreciate it.