Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bog bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything. You're honest, zapp him with your
Speaker 1: far away out bugles sound. I feel like you've gotten
Speaker 1: worse at it over to yours. Hit it again because
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes they're like they're like they stir my soul.
Speaker 1: You have got worse over you. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: set the mood because you got you guys. Both two
Speaker 1: of our three guests both got out. Three of our three?
Speaker 1: Who else go? I shot one last weeks hunt with
Speaker 1: the Out Foundation, and that's cheating. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: good time. Were pretty Yeah, it was. I mean there
Speaker 1: was a day and a half we didn't see or
Speaker 1: hear elk, and then there was a morning where we
Speaker 1: saw him, heard a lot of elk. What was going on?
Speaker 1: What state we're in, Montana? Eastern Montana, so hunting just
Speaker 1: you know, they were coming up river bottom and some
Speaker 1: farmland and catching them up coming into the hills, picked
Speaker 1: him off, and I mean it was it was wild
Speaker 1: and crazy for about an hour and a half, calling them,
Speaker 1: were getting out in front of them, got out in
Speaker 1: front of him, and cow called him in. So there
Speaker 1: was twelve bulls buglin. So that just really got him
Speaker 1: to talk. It didn't actually get him to come over,
Speaker 1: but then I just kind of snuck in and was
Speaker 1: able to caw call him over the ridge to us. Okay,
Speaker 1: twelve bulls, Yeah, it was. There was a big herd
Speaker 1: going through and they were kind of navigating through. You know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of big herd. I mean there was a
Speaker 1: hundred elk easy really yeah, And I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of there's a bunch of different bulls
Speaker 1: with the harems, you know, of six or seven. And
Speaker 1: then my bowl was kind of following up the rear
Speaker 1: and I could hear him bugling off, and so we
Speaker 1: just waited till he got over out of sight, and
Speaker 1: then a cow called a couple of times. He responded
Speaker 1: right away, and then I could tell he was coming
Speaker 1: our way and I had found a pinch point that
Speaker 1: they all funneled through, and so we just waited there.
Speaker 1: Cow called one more time, he responded and crested the
Speaker 1: hill and came into forty yards. How far did you
Speaker 1: run after you hit him? He went a little way,
Speaker 1: so no excuses, didn't put the perfect shot on him,
Speaker 1: so hit him and ended up watching him go over
Speaker 1: the ridge a little bit, and then decided to back
Speaker 1: out for a couple hours and went back and he
Speaker 1: was dead there. So we made it a couple hundred yards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kept it real and Western Montana public land. We're
Speaker 1: using on X, sharing way points, checking out where the
Speaker 1: water is. I gotta look at intermittent streams to see
Speaker 1: where the water is going to be when I'm up
Speaker 1: in the mountain. Did my little now union there, I
Speaker 1: use a starry pin and get water. I don't like
Speaker 1: to carry water around, so check out those intermittent streams.
Speaker 1: Get down there a little drink that probably had to
Speaker 1: use on actually, just to figure out make sure he
Speaker 1: wasn't going from one private to the wrong private. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're definitely navigating boundaries, making sure I was on the
Speaker 1: right places there, and then also just being able to mark,
Speaker 1: you know, we're sharing way points where to be at
Speaker 1: certain times. What do you guys call that? This is
Speaker 1: kind of not off topic but a little tangent here,
Speaker 1: But what do you get? Because I was talking to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, I was telling me about don't
Speaker 1: talk about a definitely still on elkhn. But he was
Speaker 1: telling me about how his guiding season was in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, man, I had just the last
Speaker 1: week multiple like a half dozen magic circles. Now does
Speaker 1: that mean anything to you? When someone someone said they're
Speaker 1: out depend on the context, mane and they got into
Speaker 1: like the magic circle. No, I would be like I
Speaker 1: would say in that situation, I would say, um, would
Speaker 1: you happen to be referring to a honey hoole? Mm hm,
Speaker 1: which you wouldn't ask them if there were any wizards involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, if he was hunting mushrooms, I would think
Speaker 1: you found a bunch of ferry rings. Well, I've forgotten
Speaker 1: that we used that term back when I used to
Speaker 1: guide there. The magic circle. Yeah, it means like a
Speaker 1: honey hole. No fest, Yeah, that's what I was thinking,
Speaker 1: rot fest. Some people call it like I've heard it
Speaker 1: call a meatball. I've heard it called a god What
Speaker 1: did the guy from primos Um Jim Horn from those
Speaker 1: early Premos videos used to call it ud place where
Speaker 1: there was a lot of bugling elk activity. Sure, but
Speaker 1: it's so rare and it's so special that when you
Speaker 1: find yourself all a sudden there. Yeah, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: holy sh it, there are three d and sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: They're screaming, I don't have to talk, I don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything. I under stand here most likely wanting
Speaker 1: to come walk and buy me. And you feel like
Speaker 1: you're heavily use it heavily and use it for turks
Speaker 1: and unused it for out But that it just reminded
Speaker 1: me because it kind of sounds like you got yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did into that. We found them. They were migrating
Speaker 1: up and you know, what do you mean migrating. They're
Speaker 1: displaced by pressure. They're doing their daily like going to
Speaker 1: get water and food and sleeping. So they were down
Speaker 1: at night. They would come out to the fields and
Speaker 1: then you could hear them all night, you know, down
Speaker 1: in the hay fields, and then they would migrate up
Speaker 1: top into the hills and they'd go bed up on
Speaker 1: the north facing slopes and some on that property, some
Speaker 1: on the neighboring. But really what it was is we
Speaker 1: could hear them and there was two predominant ridges and
Speaker 1: a big creek in the middle, and so we kind
Speaker 1: of slowly went up at dark at first light, listened
Speaker 1: and we could till they were crossed, and when we
Speaker 1: got to that kind of cliff we could just see
Speaker 1: them all moving up. So we had to dive down
Speaker 1: in the creek and go get in there, try to
Speaker 1: get ahead of them summing past us at that point,
Speaker 1: and then I didn't call until I knew that last
Speaker 1: one was there. We just kept trying to sneak in
Speaker 1: get on him. Ended up having a rag goring at
Speaker 1: like fifty. It's two really nice bulls fighting at about ten.
Speaker 1: Couldn't get around them. The wind was bad. Luckily it
Speaker 1: was all coming down the drainage. And then the biggest
Speaker 1: bowl I saw. We had him at a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: and we're pinned down just some in some timber and
Speaker 1: big flat. Couldn't get across. So I just told the cameraman.
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, we can't do anything, just film him. Yep.
Speaker 1: They're filming that one for one of their videos. Yep,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be in it. Yep. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if that one's going TV or online, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: were filming for that one. So we got a couple
Speaker 1: of really nice bowls on camera. Just unfortunately, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: an opportunist and that. You know, I knew that bowl coming.
Speaker 1: He was fired up and ready to go, and I
Speaker 1: found the pinch point that he was going to go.
Speaker 1: So we just waited and we were ready for him. Nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a good hunt. It was fun. But I
Speaker 1: mean before that we had one bowl, no two bowls
Speaker 1: within a hundred fifty one within a hundred you know,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, it was tough hunting. They were
Speaker 1: kind of their normal patterns. They weren't really following the
Speaker 1: script there. So it was a lot of glassing, a
Speaker 1: lot of silent days, a couple of days where we
Speaker 1: didn't see elk, and then we ended up finding where
Speaker 1: they were. Do you have in your head? Uh, do
Speaker 1: you have in your head like the distance beyond which
Speaker 1: I will not shoot? Absolutely? I kind of do like
Speaker 1: a hard stop, and I think it. I think with elk,
Speaker 1: I think it moves that distance should be shorter or closer.
Speaker 1: They're tough animals and yeah, like oh over, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it it varies from everyone else, but everything's
Speaker 1: got to be perfect regardless. But fifty yards on milks
Speaker 1: a poke, I mean that's a good shot, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wound up having um. Yeah, in my head, like
Speaker 1: the like the non debatable distance beyond which you will
Speaker 1: not have been like, well wait and see, yeah, because
Speaker 1: they look big. Man, we're looking there. They we're looking
Speaker 1: at a spike standing there and I'm like, man, you
Speaker 1: could you know an arrow over there? I don't be ranged, frien.
Speaker 1: It's like seventy two and I'm like, well, a lot
Speaker 1: of people do. But that's a long distance for something
Speaker 1: that's aware of you and already looking over, especially when
Speaker 1: you're aware of you. Man, we'd learned, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about this on the podcast on Monday, but you know,
Speaker 1: we and we got to review it because we filmed it,
Speaker 1: you know. But the Steve the bullet stea shot really
Speaker 1: jumped the string. And it was because he was aware, right,
Speaker 1: he was tense stop because something was amiss. He was
Speaker 1: standing around long enough because he was still listening to
Speaker 1: a cat supposed cow over the hill, right, But like
Speaker 1: when he heard that arrow bow go off, man, he
Speaker 1: launched and we gotta yeah, there's a frame. There's a
Speaker 1: frame where you there's a tree that there's a The
Speaker 1: arrows passed in front of a ponderosa and the frame
Speaker 1: happened to catch the blur of the arrow, so you
Speaker 1: know where the arrow isn't a flight path, nothing is
Speaker 1: already on its way. Yeah, did you guys, cal call him?
Speaker 1: Stop him? Well, he's coming into coming then was hiding
Speaker 1: and I was, I mean after the shot, no before,
Speaker 1: so Eric and I were talking about this. My bowl
Speaker 1: was moving parallel to me, and I cal called him,
Speaker 1: and he turned and looked, and you know, we were
Speaker 1: wondering if that played into why I didn't hit exactly
Speaker 1: where I wanted to. I'm not using that as an excuse,
Speaker 1: but preferably as an equivalent of saying like, hey, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: which works really well too. Yeah yep, But but then
Speaker 1: they're looking at you and yeah, then they're like, he
Speaker 1: had no idea I was there. He was looking forward,
Speaker 1: and then when I caw called, you can see he
Speaker 1: looks right over on film. And then when I shot,
Speaker 1: obviously you can hear the string. Regardless how quite a
Speaker 1: bow is, they can hear something. And so do you
Speaker 1: feel like he jumped too? He he whirled a little bit. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean he turned, but I think I think what
Speaker 1: it was. I think he knew I was there when
Speaker 1: I cal called, and I think he wouldn't of And
Speaker 1: if he would have stopped, I would have had you
Speaker 1: know that, I had no idea if he would have stopped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he would have stopped. And at that point, he's moving,
Speaker 1: you know, he's not moving fast, but he's moving to
Speaker 1: go up and follow these other elk and I shot
Speaker 1: last year at one that was just very slowly walking,
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, there's no way if I'm just tracking him,
Speaker 1: I touched off. It was like yards, there's no way
Speaker 1: that I won't just smoke him right where I'm aiming.
Speaker 1: And I didn't do it. I mean I hit him
Speaker 1: way back, you know, straight, like just above the guts,
Speaker 1: no vitals, and I know you know, Eric and I
Speaker 1: were talking about that and not take his story, but
Speaker 1: he didn't calcoled stop. He was patient and it paid off. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that. Then then I got
Speaker 1: a head. You guys, tell who you are first, but no,
Speaker 1: if you can tell who you are or you just
Speaker 1: tell us about this, then tell you who you are.
Speaker 1: I'll just tell the story to start and then you'll
Speaker 1: tell us who you are. So here's a story coming
Speaker 1: from a from a just from a voice from the darkness,
Speaker 1: lone voice from the blackness. Yeah, last weekend I was
Speaker 1: out elk hunting with my brother in law. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: used to guide. Yes, I did full that in there
Speaker 1: because I used to guide over by where that was
Speaker 1: out rocking Mount An Elk Foundation Eastern Montana mostly elk,
Speaker 1: u mule deer, and elk. But yeah, I guided for
Speaker 1: a couple of seasons for elk hunting and in September,
Speaker 1: all of September that was a good time. Tiring though,
Speaker 1: seven days seven days when you got the long days
Speaker 1: where you're getting back to camp at tin eating, going
Speaker 1: to bed at eleven, get up at five am, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to serve you a big breakfast. After you
Speaker 1: ate it, I'm like, no, I cannot eat. I just
Speaker 1: ate it stuffed myself at eleven o'clock. I cannot eat.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it tires you. You guys would do seven
Speaker 1: day hunts, seven day hunts over this type of country
Speaker 1: eastern Montana, the breaks type stuff, Yellowstone River breaks, and
Speaker 1: you had hunters that could no problem make it through
Speaker 1: that or you have feel like the waning after halfway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could do it. When you're doing just one hunt
Speaker 1: is doable. But then you do one day arrest, and
Speaker 1: then another hunt seven days and one day arrest, seven
Speaker 1: more days, another day, arrest, seven days and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to get behind the computer again. That was fun,
Speaker 1: but longing when you started longing for your computer, if
Speaker 1: only the answer something, Yeah, those were the early days.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there I get in the circle. The
Speaker 1: circle of life wasn't magic circle of magic, magic circle.
Speaker 1: So we you're just n Joe blow public Land. Anytime
Speaker 1: Bick and the Harry, tons of people go up this
Speaker 1: trailhead tons of people. So yeah, everybody, That's why I
Speaker 1: went Thursday morning. I found him and then we kind
Speaker 1: of bumped a little bit. We figured they went into
Speaker 1: this other base and kind of worked around the other way,
Speaker 1: and sure enough we figured they were in that base,
Speaker 1: and so we went and made the trek up there
Speaker 1: about five miles and did a locate Friday afternoon, they responded, um,
Speaker 1: so we're like, okay, well, let's set up our camp.
Speaker 1: We actually went a little further and went over the ridge,
Speaker 1: set up camp, came back and by that time we
Speaker 1: bugled from the road. You guys on horseback or walking walking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: by that time we were on the road. It is
Speaker 1: a road though, but um it's a gated road. And
Speaker 1: there was one above a bugle, and there's response above
Speaker 1: response below in this big basin, like, oh sweet, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you. I wanted my brother in law to
Speaker 1: get one. So I'm like, go up after that when
Speaker 1: he's above the road, and we don't really want to
Speaker 1: go down there. That would not be fun. So he
Speaker 1: starts working in. I'm just so I start bugling. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't answer to a cow call, but they're answering your
Speaker 1: bugle something. Wow. Stick with what's working, thinking that you're
Speaker 1: gonna keep it talking. He's gonna slip in there, and
Speaker 1: so I'll keep him talking from four yards and you
Speaker 1: just slip in and see what you can get. We
Speaker 1: know he's probably got cows. He's chuckling, so he's got
Speaker 1: cows up there, But just slip in and get close.
Speaker 1: That's kind of our strategy. So I kept him bugling,
Speaker 1: although the one below me was more responsive to all
Speaker 1: my bugles, so I just sat there and bugled. Well,
Speaker 1: sure enough he's working in. Here comes a bugle coming
Speaker 1: up out of the base, and I'm like, jeez, this
Speaker 1: one's gonna come right in. It must be a satellite bowl.
Speaker 1: But he bugles, and I think I'm about a hundred
Speaker 1: yards from him, and he must he somehow got by
Speaker 1: me without me seeing him, And anyway, he ended up
Speaker 1: coming around and he probably heard me and got close
Speaker 1: enough to be watching where the sound was coming from
Speaker 1: and got nervous. Um. But I kept bugling. My brother
Speaker 1: and I finally got close to that one. He said
Speaker 1: he got a thirty yard opportunity, but the bull came
Speaker 1: in and the wind shifted a little bit and kind
Speaker 1: of walked off the other way. So he's so close
Speaker 1: to that one. But I've been bugling for like every
Speaker 1: you know, every ten minutes at bugle do just do
Speaker 1: locate bugle, And this one just keeps responding. So I've
Speaker 1: been bugling for like an hour and a half now,
Speaker 1: and this one just you can tell he's like leaving
Speaker 1: his cows and like coming up halfway up the base
Speaker 1: and just I'm like, jeez, he's like moving. I think
Speaker 1: he's leaving his cows and coming up. So I knew,
Speaker 1: well I went up to the head of the drainage
Speaker 1: and seeing these wallows down there, so I went down
Speaker 1: to the wall. I was like, maybe he'll come up
Speaker 1: and get upset about this if I go into his
Speaker 1: bedroom and start bugle, and so I bugle there you
Speaker 1: can hear him responding. But then that's about the time
Speaker 1: I met up with my brother in Lawn. We were
Speaker 1: talking about He told me about his whole scoop getting
Speaker 1: close and everything. And while we're talking, I hear the
Speaker 1: bull buglin right in the wall is where I was.
Speaker 1: I'm like, he's like leaving his cows. He's he's pretty
Speaker 1: fired up. So anyway, we keep walking and we get
Speaker 1: a little bit around the base and I'm bugling again.
Speaker 1: He's responding. Now the other one. Ryan thought he spooked
Speaker 1: the other one, but he was still up there buglin
Speaker 1: right from the exact same spot. So my geez, go
Speaker 1: back there that I'm gonna go around here. We're in
Speaker 1: the circle. We're in the magic circle. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: So I just keep going around the basin on this
Speaker 1: road and I'm bugle and buglin. He's responding, and I
Speaker 1: get a little further he stops responding. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: and what's going on? He hasn't responded like three bugles.
Speaker 1: At that point, I'm thinking, man, do I need to
Speaker 1: go down here? I'm just kind of slowly moving along
Speaker 1: this road. What time is it now? Now it's about
Speaker 1: seven o'clock. We had started at like four thirty. Now
Speaker 1: it's about seven o'clock. I've been buggling at this guy
Speaker 1: for two and a half hours. And turns out he
Speaker 1: is about fed up and he's going to see who
Speaker 1: the hell is in his winds not blowing down to him. Um,
Speaker 1: it did when I was on that road. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: it it's kind of swirled down in there. The wind
Speaker 1: was still. It was actually kind of coming up still.
Speaker 1: You know, six o'clock, it's still coming up seven it
Speaker 1: starts to want to Yeah, oh sorry, I was mixed up,
Speaker 1: so yeah, pm to seven pm then, so I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking what do I need to do that better? And
Speaker 1: so I can't believe that I can't leave, But you
Speaker 1: have expecting other guys to show because all this racket potentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was, I potentially expected some guys to
Speaker 1: come up the road. Yeah, there's a lot of guys
Speaker 1: that going there. Um, so I'm thinking, well, he must
Speaker 1: have just went back to his cows whatever. And I'm
Speaker 1: just sitting down the road thinking about what I should
Speaker 1: do and all of a sudden, I see Tan coming through.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what, Oh my gosh, he's like sixty yards away,
Speaker 1: coming up the mountain just like this. And I and
Speaker 1: my range finder out earlier because I had that one
Speaker 1: bowl come in. Well, I put my belt strap around
Speaker 1: when I had my range finder from in my pocket.
Speaker 1: So I'm like doing one of those like, oh I
Speaker 1: did that again. I gotta get my range finder out
Speaker 1: from underneath my belts trap. Oh my gosh, she's coming in.
Speaker 1: So I'm getting nervous at this point, and I'm ranging. Okay,
Speaker 1: I get twenty thirty for you. Okay, this is close,
Speaker 1: Like wow, I love hunting the timber. This is actually doable.
Speaker 1: He could come into thirty. So he's coming up getting
Speaker 1: aero knocked. And by the time I get that aero knocked,
Speaker 1: he's at like thirty and he stops and I think
Speaker 1: he hears a little bit, and he's just sits there
Speaker 1: about twenty seconds. He's sitting there, and I'm just like
Speaker 1: I had I Usually i'm pretty calm, being a guide
Speaker 1: and everything, I'm pretty pretty calm and did but I
Speaker 1: was nervous at that point, and I started like because
Speaker 1: I had seen his rack. I'm like, this is a monster.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh no, he's gonna win me.
Speaker 1: And I felt the wind go fright on the back
Speaker 1: of my neck. I'm like, oh no, just like hyperventilating. No,
Speaker 1: but just this is one of those situations. Usually it
Speaker 1: goes all wrong downhill. You know, something happens and they
Speaker 1: blow out. Everything went right here. It's so thankful that
Speaker 1: everything went right. So he turns and starts coming up hill.
Speaker 1: He kind of does a little number. Felt the wind
Speaker 1: on your neck and which it wasn't him, but it
Speaker 1: was it was he was. This is a steep slope,
Speaker 1: so I think it was just floating over him and
Speaker 1: to the side. So he turns and he starts going
Speaker 1: through these gaps and I have a chance to draw.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, there's three gaps there. Please stop there, no, hope.
Speaker 1: He doesn't stop. He's moving up stopping that one. Please no.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh my goshould I calcols, colcol No, don't
Speaker 1: do it, don't do it. He doesn't doesn't know anything.
Speaker 1: He's pissed. And there's the third gap and he stops
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, that's thirty I like put it
Speaker 1: on his shoulder. Then my gosh, no, I gotta do
Speaker 1: further back. I gotta do further back. Get where that
Speaker 1: long is really big, like mid body where that long?
Speaker 1: Because I always shoot high, it seems like so sure enough,
Speaker 1: shoot boom. He starts trotting off. I looked at my vine.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yes, it's good. Like blood starts
Speaker 1: forming right mid body, Like okay, that's a good shot.
Speaker 1: I've gotta get his lungs. He trots about forty yards,
Speaker 1: It goes over this little rise and I hear a crash, crash, crash, crash.
Speaker 1: He made it like forty yards and just like six
Speaker 1: seconds he bloom, tumbled and was done. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hadn't, like yes, yelled out loud. You know, I
Speaker 1: couldn't do because it was like just a monster. I
Speaker 1: hadn't even come close to getting anything like that. And
Speaker 1: in public land archery so turned out to be a huge, mature,
Speaker 1: fully mature bowl. And I'm just stoked. Two pounds of
Speaker 1: meat came off of him. We get a meat processor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just enormous, to the point where we got all three
Speaker 1: quarters off and we still couldn't like him flipped over
Speaker 1: because he's on a step hillside. We got him tied
Speaker 1: off and we couldn't like jeez, we just like one am.
Speaker 1: We've been cutting on him for four hours, couldn't quite
Speaker 1: get him over even with one all the other quarters off.
Speaker 1: Guts out, big old, big old massive bowl. All right, man,
Speaker 1: it's so awesome and I just can't believe how it happened.
Speaker 1: Bugling this guy and he comes in like that. I
Speaker 1: I haven't had an experience like that in a long time.
Speaker 1: It's probably gonna change your hunting tactics a little bit
Speaker 1: yext here. It's like, man, if you just sit back
Speaker 1: and getting the magic circle and start bugling, getting his
Speaker 1: bedroom and bugle some more. Getting fired up. Take a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, so you don't know what can happen
Speaker 1: while you're bugling. So you never call called once. We
Speaker 1: did try it in the beginning and they just wouldn't
Speaker 1: respond to it. So I go, I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: the bugle. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's just ladies.
Speaker 1: He had ladies down there. I'm pretty sure he's chuckling.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, we would probably tell who you are, now, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can do that. My name is Eric stake. Fred,
Speaker 1: I'm the founder of on X. Okay, I'm Zack sand Out,
Speaker 1: So I'm the marketing coordinate project coordinator at on X
Speaker 1: and you've got mat Sital product owner for on X.
Speaker 1: I do a little bit everything, so, um, I guess
Speaker 1: I kind of like think of like the customer voice,
Speaker 1: but day to day operations is a lot of marketing strategy,
Speaker 1: go to market strategy, kind of product development. So product owner,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a term that software companies use,
Speaker 1: so overarching vision for the product. Got goah, got you?
Speaker 1: I would imply I would think that means that you
Speaker 1: see things through from beginning to end. Is that not true?
Speaker 1: Like who's the owner of this some things? Yeah? How
Speaker 1: long have all you guys been with on X starting
Speaker 1: I've been here, I've only been Yes, I'm coming up
Speaker 1: on three years, coming up on three years. I started
Speaker 1: right out of college as an intern and then just
Speaker 1: kind of way up through. Yep, that's cool, man, I'll
Speaker 1: be hinting eight years in January, which is stretching back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the old days. What do we at like nine years now?
Speaker 1: The first launch of the product. How many years did
Speaker 1: you Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. No,
Speaker 1: tell me, no, how many years had you mess with
Speaker 1: it before it became a thing. I had been messing
Speaker 1: with that GPS product for about a year, kind of
Speaker 1: figured it out late two thousand eight. And uh, it
Speaker 1: took me about a year to come up with figuring
Speaker 1: out how to get the data onto the chip. And
Speaker 1: that was the original garment product for a garmen. So
Speaker 1: what um, okay, marshby through this, because let let me
Speaker 1: let let's step back in the time when I was
Speaker 1: When I was a boy and when I would look
Speaker 1: for I would like scour for trapping permissions, ye, muskrat
Speaker 1: spots whatever. I would go down. Um, I'd go to
Speaker 1: the township the various townships around where I lived in
Speaker 1: western Michigan, so all the townships and all the counties,
Speaker 1: and I would go down there and get their tax
Speaker 1: record books and they would let you photo copy pages
Speaker 1: for fifty cents a piece or whatever, or you could
Speaker 1: just go and you could also go and buy a
Speaker 1: township plat book. I would hand that to my father
Speaker 1: and my father would um work the phones. I would
Speaker 1: mark for him where I wanted to be, and he
Speaker 1: would get on the phone. He would look up the
Speaker 1: name and he would work the phone until he found
Speaker 1: an in right, like, oh you know, it's a guy.
Speaker 1: It turns out that's a guy from Church's cousin and
Speaker 1: he had a really good success rate. So and that
Speaker 1: was something that Yeah, that was like a like a
Speaker 1: how eye level that was like high level land information
Speaker 1: at the time. That was like the most granular sort
Speaker 1: of piece of information. It was not easy to go get, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you had to really go like passive people well,
Speaker 1: like like someone who's like flipping and passive and half
Speaker 1: pass about shif they're not doing that. So enter when
Speaker 1: like when did people first started having GPS as to
Speaker 1: walk around with? And that was I mean the mapping
Speaker 1: GPS has come out in the early two thousands, thousand
Speaker 1: to two thousand three where they actually could put a
Speaker 1: map on them, but mid nineties for like just remember
Speaker 1: the garments where you could just like see your location
Speaker 1: and see your little The first one we touched was
Speaker 1: mid nineties and it was my brother. He was working
Speaker 1: he was doing a federal research project and had one,
Speaker 1: but it was before they fine tune them. They were
Speaker 1: still within twenty five ft or something like that. I
Speaker 1: remember one of them is this whole thing gonna catch on?
Speaker 1: We would mess around, you know, he had like check
Speaker 1: it out and check it back in because it was
Speaker 1: federal property. But it didn't have any kind of mapping
Speaker 1: stuff over. Yeah, I remember using the ones where with
Speaker 1: the black and white screen, black and gray screen whatever,
Speaker 1: and you just like you can mark your vehicle and
Speaker 1: then you can see where you walked, and then you
Speaker 1: just walk back on. That's all you can see. There's
Speaker 1: no other data except this like gray background. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: give you the arrow to point to a way point.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's through five valleys, it will
Speaker 1: point you as a crow flies directly to it. So
Speaker 1: what was like, what's the basic um my like plat
Speaker 1: book thing was just like a precursor to like that's
Speaker 1: at a time if you want to find out land
Speaker 1: ownership stuff at a detailed level, particularly want to apply
Speaker 1: to private land, that was like the way to do it.
Speaker 1: And then like but give me him me with like
Speaker 1: a rough sort of like GPS timeline, Like when based
Speaker 1: on on your guys memory, when was it the the
Speaker 1: GPSS became like you know, early adopters were using them,
Speaker 1: and how did it come to be that the what
Speaker 1: are the sort of year markers where all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you could get you know, basic map, like basic
Speaker 1: geographical features on it, and then all the other overlays.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that at all? Not so much, but
Speaker 1: I could, I kind of guess. I mean your early
Speaker 1: two thousand. I bet it's starting to catch on with
Speaker 1: early adopters with like, oh cool, at least I can
Speaker 1: mark where my truck is and I can easily go
Speaker 1: out for I can figure out my way back as
Speaker 1: long as I like mark my truck. So lots of
Speaker 1: people probably have those early gps is and like two thousand,
Speaker 1: hunters are starting to use them for that purpose. Then
Speaker 1: you get like the mapping gps is where they actually
Speaker 1: can have like a topo map on it, coming in
Speaker 1: two thousand three, two four, I'm not sure. I think
Speaker 1: Garman released a lot of their maps in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, yeah, but they had the hundred K topo
Speaker 1: and like two maybe, but some early adopters probably had it.
Speaker 1: But then like two thousand six, two thousand seven, I
Speaker 1: remember getting my first like d K you got a
Speaker 1: new GPS with the color screen, hundred K topo came
Speaker 1: with it nationwide and then it's like, oh cool, that's
Speaker 1: pretty sweet. I can at least use the topography to
Speaker 1: figure out where I'm at, and so I'd use it
Speaker 1: for that. And then uh, there's and then they're now
Speaker 1: they have these mapping GPS is, so then there's people
Speaker 1: making maps for them and kind of third parties making
Speaker 1: maps for the garments. And that's where I actually looked
Speaker 1: up online how to make a map for a garment
Speaker 1: GPS unit. Like why, Like what was going on? What
Speaker 1: were you wondering about? I had the man, there's so
Speaker 1: many things that so many times I've been out there
Speaker 1: where I'm using a Ford Service map or at BLM
Speaker 1: map and I don't quite know exactly where I'm at.
Speaker 1: Usually pretty good about figuring out I'm on this road
Speaker 1: or this road, but sometimes I take the wrong road
Speaker 1: and I'd waste two hours in my day, Like gosh,
Speaker 1: I just made a mistake and I went down that
Speaker 1: ridge and I should have gone down state on this ridge,
Speaker 1: and I waste two hours of my day or whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's valuable time. So I had many experiences like that,
Speaker 1: So I was I was thinking of I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I let's see late two, I had a certain experience
Speaker 1: where I was using Google Earth. There was one time
Speaker 1: I remember I was using I had like studied it
Speaker 1: all from home, Like, okay, I looked at all the
Speaker 1: air imagery using Google Earth. I'm gonna go try to
Speaker 1: hunt these elk where they're coming off private going onto public.
Speaker 1: And I went out there, had studied it all, and
Speaker 1: I went out there and I still couldn't. There's like
Speaker 1: the fans and another fans, and my gosh, I still
Speaker 1: don't know where the boundary is. Even though I've done
Speaker 1: all this research at home. I need this with me
Speaker 1: out here. I've got this garment with these maps, why
Speaker 1: don't they have like boundary information on them? So that
Speaker 1: was probably an experience in two thousand seven. So then
Speaker 1: I started googling learning a little bit more about it.
Speaker 1: And you went and typed up how to make a
Speaker 1: garment topo map? Yeah, I mean, and then there's this
Speaker 1: website that shows here's how we make these touple maps.
Speaker 1: And all they didn't do was put the public land
Speaker 1: information underneath. All I had to do is figure out
Speaker 1: how to put the public land data underneath it. So
Speaker 1: I go to work, and what were you doing for
Speaker 1: a living at that time. I graduated from mechanical engineering
Speaker 1: at Montana State in late two thousand six, and I
Speaker 1: was doing in Missoula. I had moved to Missoula, Montana,
Speaker 1: and UM was doing h v A C design heating,
Speaker 1: ventilation and plumbing design for supermarkets. There you go. So
Speaker 1: that was more inspiring for me to try to start
Speaker 1: my own company. I left you some brain space to
Speaker 1: start messing around with evenings. I was just messing around.
Speaker 1: I started a few websites and was really passionate about
Speaker 1: helping people get outdoors and saw I had a vision
Speaker 1: for just like recreation information like on Google Earth, like
Speaker 1: more widespread rather than having to get like one map
Speaker 1: here and there, just nationwide recreation information. It's messing around.
Speaker 1: There's a website called rec plan dot com that I
Speaker 1: had a long time ago, and m Miller's dot com
Speaker 1: and I started a few websites. Learned a lot about SCO.
Speaker 1: What was on the websites you started rec plan dot
Speaker 1: com like recreation Plan. Not too many people know about
Speaker 1: these but massive failures. But then were you just using
Speaker 1: your own money for this stuff? Yeah? I mean it
Speaker 1: didn't take much to ten bucks to get a website
Speaker 1: domain name and ten bucks a month. The host. What
Speaker 1: were you hoping rec plan was going to be? It
Speaker 1: was the I was like putting trailhead data and recreation
Speaker 1: site data on like Google Earth. So you were in there,
Speaker 1: you were heading in the direction you went, yeah, you
Speaker 1: weren't like, yeah, it was all about I was passionate
Speaker 1: about organizing recreation information. So then I figure out, wow,
Speaker 1: I should make maps for these Garment GPS units. You
Speaker 1: can do it. Here's the showing you how to do
Speaker 1: that right there. Okay, when when you do this in
Speaker 1: part ship with it doesn't need to be in partnership
Speaker 1: with Garment, or you're just saying like, here's a platform
Speaker 1: and you can produce a product that's usable on the platform,
Speaker 1: or does it need to be that you need to
Speaker 1: be in bed with them in some way? I hope
Speaker 1: it didn't need to be. There's making an ap to
Speaker 1: run on Android. Yea. They allowed third party mapping up
Speaker 1: for their hardware, so there was instructions on how to
Speaker 1: do that online and went in figured out how to
Speaker 1: get all the topo data from the government. They showed
Speaker 1: you how to do that, and then they just didn't
Speaker 1: have all Like I had to figure out all the
Speaker 1: where to get all the public lands data from the
Speaker 1: BLM and for a service. So I went and did that,
Speaker 1: and those were the first maps. They only had the
Speaker 1: color coded public land data underneath all that topo and
Speaker 1: roads and rivers and lakes and streams. That was the
Speaker 1: first map. Then right after I long, so what did
Speaker 1: you start with though? Just start with the whole damn state?
Speaker 1: Started with? Yeah, creating a whole state Montana, I'm in
Speaker 1: Colorado were the first products I launched. Once I figured
Speaker 1: it all out, that was like mid two thousand and
Speaker 1: then I was able to crank out how many hours
Speaker 1: did you have to do by that point that was evenings. Um,
Speaker 1: I probably had six hundred hours into it. I mean
Speaker 1: I did a lot with those other websites and messing
Speaker 1: around I made. I had a website km lers dot
Speaker 1: com and I would what was that one k m
Speaker 1: L e r s dot com. Km L files the
Speaker 1: file you create for So I create these files for
Speaker 1: people for their hunting areas. I just do small pieces
Speaker 1: of like boutique specific. Hey I want I want to
Speaker 1: load this onto my GPS. I go get this one
Speaker 1: specific hunting area for people and get the public land
Speaker 1: boundaries and send it to them to load onto their
Speaker 1: GPS and load into Google as one off. You're doing
Speaker 1: this as one off. What do you charge people for that?
Speaker 1: Pretty much nothing? I mean like twenty bucks for that
Speaker 1: type of filets. Yeah, and I'd make I just was
Speaker 1: doing some prairie dog guiding at the time. That was
Speaker 1: the two thousand nine Praye Dog Got by Day. I'd
Speaker 1: make make visi prairie dog maps on Google Earth and
Speaker 1: send them prairie dog locations. So yeah, really, so you're
Speaker 1: mapping out So that's so so mapping just random things
Speaker 1: and helping people get out to ours. So people would
Speaker 1: go onto your website in place in order. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: sell various things on the website, had little products through
Speaker 1: by through PayPal type things. What are the kind of
Speaker 1: products all digital products products. I would basically say custom,
Speaker 1: you'd make a product for their custom GPX file for
Speaker 1: GPS for your boundaries. And are you getting any government
Speaker 1: people or anything? Is that mostly recreate like mostly hunters? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's mostly recreation. Then that was very few sales. I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking just like m v P type style
Speaker 1: stuff where you're proven out that you can actually sell
Speaker 1: this thing to customers, and at this time, how many
Speaker 1: other people are out messing around with putting property ownership
Speaker 1: information into GPS things. This is like a crowded field.
Speaker 1: It's not a crowded field. There's a ton of guys.
Speaker 1: I later learned that people are like in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: I was making these maps for my buddies and they
Speaker 1: told me to make a business out of it, and
Speaker 1: I never did. So I've heard those stories, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot of people out there. Actually,
Speaker 1: government workers were making these maps probably two thousand five
Speaker 1: to two thousand nine. There. They were making these maps
Speaker 1: and you were, but nobody else was commercializing it. There's
Speaker 1: one other guy in North Dakota who was probably doing
Speaker 1: the was like so close in the exact same timeline.
Speaker 1: It's really funny. He was doing the exact same thing
Speaker 1: I was. And were you compiling all the layers? Are
Speaker 1: just putting the ownership layer on top of something. I
Speaker 1: was getting all the topo data from the government and
Speaker 1: using like us GS geographical features, roads had the water courses,
Speaker 1: and you're just laying the ownership layer a on it,
Speaker 1: ye underneath it, and where you were finding that all
Speaker 1: of that stuff was at that time, was all of
Speaker 1: that ownership information online or you needed to going and
Speaker 1: digitized like like paper files. And so that was Remember
Speaker 1: that's just the public lands at the time. So there's
Speaker 1: it's just gonna say private and this is BLM, this
Speaker 1: is for service, this is private. It was white and
Speaker 1: you know white color. You hadn't got into like the
Speaker 1: tax record materials yet, right, you were just into like
Speaker 1: go or no, go yep. That's like late two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: this binary public private, Oh no, But what you were doing,
Speaker 1: uh BLM. It was basically the concept was here's a
Speaker 1: BLM map, but it's digital, so you could see your
Speaker 1: location on your BLM map or your for service map.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the vision. If I could just
Speaker 1: see my location on this BLM map, I'd haven't made. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'll tell the story. Their day with me and one
Speaker 1: of my old girlfriends. One time we're hiking. We thought
Speaker 1: we were hiking in Montana because we're on there, you know,
Speaker 1: like crazy, the bitter Root borders between the Idaho Panhandle.
Speaker 1: You know, it's even a famous story with a sense
Speaker 1: of people in there to map out the range divide.
Speaker 1: They got all screwed up and it's supposed that border
Speaker 1: is supposed to follow the range divide, but the years
Speaker 1: wild wildly ye, So for you know, we're up there
Speaker 1: for a few days, backpacking around. At one point we
Speaker 1: hit a lake and there's a sign hanging on the lake,
Speaker 1: like you hit the trail as a lake signs saying
Speaker 1: what lake it was? Came up? What lake it was now?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, looking at my map, I'm like, if
Speaker 1: I got I don't know, this lake must be a
Speaker 1: brand new lake and eventually find it over in Idaho.
Speaker 1: We must take it a wildly wrong turn at something
Speaker 1: because we're not even in the state. But lake, yeah,
Speaker 1: we found it. We had veered off into the wrong state,
Speaker 1: you know. So yeah, I got the going to different
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different sources. There's a nationwide public
Speaker 1: lands data set that you could get at the time,
Speaker 1: but then you can go to the end of it
Speaker 1: the state bl M offices. I found that the state
Speaker 1: BLM offices were a little more accurate than this nationwide
Speaker 1: um public lands data set, So I'd go get Montana's
Speaker 1: BLM statewide public Lands set, and that's what I used
Speaker 1: to put underneath that topo map and create the Montana
Speaker 1: product Colorado, Wyoming with the first three I launched with.
Speaker 1: So is that okay? So? So when did when did
Speaker 1: you come up with the Because when did you come
Speaker 1: up with like a company name and stuff? Does that
Speaker 1: already happen or not happened yet? Uh? Man, that probably
Speaker 1: hadn't happened. It's right as the time I'm creating this,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Okay, how am I going to market this?
Speaker 1: And I had learned a lot over the failed websites.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot about search engine optimization. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna use Google to I don't have to pay anything.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make sure I show up when people
Speaker 1: search for hunting maps as sure as hell. Want to
Speaker 1: be the first one that shows up. If it's like
Speaker 1: Montana hunting maps or Wyoming hunting maps, I want to
Speaker 1: be there. So that's when I came up with hunting
Speaker 1: GPS maps dot com stupid simple just say what is
Speaker 1: get fancy? Like these guys like to do. Were you
Speaker 1: married at that point? I got married in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: So was she buying into this whole thing? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: I didn't make money for a whole year there in
Speaker 1: her well, only a year. Yeah, I was. That was
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. I guided that that year and for
Speaker 1: dogs came back to THEB. A C. Firm and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't know. It was it was like fall guiding
Speaker 1: for Elkins. They're like, yeah, you can't really take a
Speaker 1: month off anymore like that. And then I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start my thing. I'm gonna try to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to make some money online. And that's
Speaker 1: really what it was, like. I just want to make
Speaker 1: like year online not having to do much and now
Speaker 1: here still working some went wrong, build a big old
Speaker 1: company and not still somehow word and so then yeah,
Speaker 1: so hunting, hunting, GPS, maps dot com and you come
Speaker 1: up with three products and then every more year. We
Speaker 1: know this is right at September two thousand nine and
Speaker 1: still no employees, still no employees, and you've got three states,
Speaker 1: three states, and right away in Colorado Wyoming. Why did
Speaker 1: you pick those states? I knew the opportunity there was
Speaker 1: the most and it was the most fitting product. Is
Speaker 1: it the most what you mean? You know Wyoming there's
Speaker 1: so much opportunity for people to come into Wyoming and
Speaker 1: get tags. Well, I guess compared to I guess white
Speaker 1: tail in the East, but this was I knew this
Speaker 1: was more Western type focus where you got the feeling
Speaker 1: maps in force. Here. Yeah, because at the time you're
Speaker 1: doing you're you're thinking public, you're thinking about publicly. I
Speaker 1: can see where when I'm at relative to public land
Speaker 1: boundaries nice and easier. All I gotta do is stay
Speaker 1: on this color coded piece of land and stay off
Speaker 1: the white the private. It's easy. It makes it really easy.
Speaker 1: And when you put it up for sale, you put
Speaker 1: it up for sale. Originally was it just micro SD
Speaker 1: cards or you're selling Mike Rusty cards? And then a
Speaker 1: download version where you could download it that same year.
Speaker 1: That same year, ye, it was originally. Originally I created
Speaker 1: the download version. There's instructions on how to do that.
Speaker 1: Then I had to figure out how you could actually
Speaker 1: put it on an SD card and like lock it
Speaker 1: down to that device. So that was the big when
Speaker 1: I realized, oh wow, it's stupid simple. You just get
Speaker 1: this chip. I can sell them at retail and you
Speaker 1: plug it into a garment and it works. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that can be a business. That makes it easy.
Speaker 1: So I had the Micrusty cards and then you can
Speaker 1: do the download version where you loaded into garments map
Speaker 1: source at the time or base camp base camp, and
Speaker 1: then you can download different areas. What are you used
Speaker 1: to be called for those base Camp map source. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't such things as smartphones, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: such a thing as an ap yet, so you didn't
Speaker 1: need to think about that. Thousand nine they had iPhones first.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't have but it wasn't really in
Speaker 1: the It wasn't at that time. You weren't thinking about
Speaker 1: putting it out a phone. I'm not at all had
Speaker 1: my flip phone and I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know about it, and it wasn't something
Speaker 1: that could be was the lorm in the business back then?
Speaker 1: Who else is making jeep handheld GPS garming. Lorentz was
Speaker 1: a big Magellan I remember them. They always wanted us
Speaker 1: to make products for them, but we we could see
Speaker 1: the writing on the walls as far as like, no,
Speaker 1: you guys don't have a lot of markets, so we're
Speaker 1: not going to spend much time build an app for
Speaker 1: Magellan and Magellan Lorentz. So you still like when you
Speaker 1: go and throw the product up and you're selling the
Speaker 1: three states. No employees. You put it out there, and
Speaker 1: what happened? You started selling them, start selling them a
Speaker 1: hunter Bucks. I'm taking phone calls and I'm working sixteen
Speaker 1: hours a day, Like, oh taking a phone call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll make it, make a sale hunter Bucks. Like the
Speaker 1: ching this is awesome on the website. People are buying
Speaker 1: through papal on the website, it's like, oh sweet, was
Speaker 1: it wild this season? Ha? Yeah, oh yeah, I just
Speaker 1: launched it in the season and I think that first
Speaker 1: season made about sixty dollars. Well, there you go, your
Speaker 1: ten over gold. This is gonna be big. I told
Speaker 1: my wife this is this is like an idea that's
Speaker 1: going to be big. This is a million dollar idea.
Speaker 1: Did you have a lot of money into it at
Speaker 1: that point, No, like, no loans and stuff. Invest really
Speaker 1: much in marketing except free for free ways of marketing,
Speaker 1: search engine marketing. Um, she did a little with Google AdWords,
Speaker 1: but not much at the time. And your wife was like,
Speaker 1: at this point, she's like believing it. So it was
Speaker 1: it tense or not tense? No, she's supportive, but it's
Speaker 1: a little tense with I guess other family members like,
Speaker 1: when you're gonna get a real job, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Like Jens supporting you basically been about a
Speaker 1: year I was gonna be a firefighter. I was don't work.
Speaker 1: I'm going to fight a prep thing, just trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what I wanted to do because it wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna be h back. It wasn't going to be h back. No.
Speaker 1: So I always feel like our families let us down.
Speaker 1: Like where the fen You never heard the story. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: my whole families are just going, yeah, go you got this.
Speaker 1: You know what? I I gotta counter that because I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. Um My old man was a firm
Speaker 1: believerman was a very firm believer. He said. He used
Speaker 1: to pound it into our heads and were kids. He says,
Speaker 1: you're gonna spend one third year life work, and he's
Speaker 1: off by a fair bit, but he said, you're gonna
Speaker 1: spill one. You're just spill one third year life work,
Speaker 1: and you have to find something that you want to do.
Speaker 1: Zero pressure ever about any benchmarks of any traditional benchmarks
Speaker 1: of what success might look like in terms of fiscal
Speaker 1: or financial reward. Ever pounded that in about you have
Speaker 1: to do something you want to do. And then even
Speaker 1: when I picked something that was like seemingly impossible from
Speaker 1: where I was, because then it had never met a
Speaker 1: writer super supportive. I published like one thing in Field
Speaker 1: and Stream, and I'd walk into a bait shop, mam
Speaker 1: out man and be like, you guys know what you're
Speaker 1: talking to Yeah, early on, man, so I know that
Speaker 1: I can't say that I ever like you know, and
Speaker 1: definitely never got any heat for my wife, right, you
Speaker 1: need to be nice. Yeah, I'm glad you're proving me wrong.
Speaker 1: Have you had people? Have you had people beating you
Speaker 1: down when you were out guiding, when people calling you up,
Speaker 1: being like that's not a real job. Yeah, you're hearing
Speaker 1: it from your pop um. But now I was pretty supportive.
Speaker 1: But think we can go down rabbit hole here. But
Speaker 1: I think it's because guiding was better than where I
Speaker 1: had been, And so he was like, all right, in
Speaker 1: the right direction, you know. But no, I remember stopping
Speaker 1: My brother and I had a very similar experience where
Speaker 1: we were driving from Michigan. We always stopped at my
Speaker 1: aunt uncles in Iowa, and uh, just stop overnight, you know,
Speaker 1: have dinner and keep driving the next day and both
Speaker 1: of us had like the talk from our uncle. It
Speaker 1: was just like from an uncle, what the hell is
Speaker 1: he care? Sounds like that's fun, But where are you
Speaker 1: gonna start, like, you know, being a member of your
Speaker 1: community and you know from an uncle. Yeah, that's a meddling.
Speaker 1: That's a meddling. Own pretty old school conservative, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that is that partisan? Being a meddler? About having
Speaker 1: a real job, that's not partisan. It doesn't matter. Um,
Speaker 1: you're bringing that up because we're having a conversation the
Speaker 1: other day about what was it that we were just starting,
Speaker 1: Like how some things become part of the Yeah, like why,
Speaker 1: Like dietary restrictions are restrictions that right? Like yeah, gluten
Speaker 1: intolerance tends to strike people on the left side of
Speaker 1: the spectrum. It's like a weird it's like a partisan disease. Um,
Speaker 1: we've talked about that in the past. So no pressure. No,
Speaker 1: one's like when you're gonna put your life together and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, I have a feeling that there's a
Speaker 1: business to be made and doing this. No, he is
Speaker 1: getting pressure from that, but not from your from your family,
Speaker 1: your immediate fam It's coming from your in laws. Wife
Speaker 1: was a little. That'd be hard. That'd be hard to
Speaker 1: deal with. The in laws are hitting you through your wife,
Speaker 1: are hitting your direct? That's direct. Yeah. Was it like
Speaker 1: it was barbed No? No, but it was present. What
Speaker 1: are you thinking about? What are you gonna do when
Speaker 1: you get it? I don't know if it's when you
Speaker 1: get Right now, I'm taking a call because I got
Speaker 1: a feeling this is a hundred bucks before that. But yeah, thankfully, No,
Speaker 1: my wife was really supportive and she always has been.
Speaker 1: So that's part of part of the success. I'll stick
Speaker 1: with her now. So for season you're blown away. You
Speaker 1: sell sixty bucks for those awesome take it down the
Speaker 1: wholesale sports shields and Billings Montana. Personally, yeah, like, hey
Speaker 1: check this out, man. You know Attle Package. Hey, you
Speaker 1: should have these brochures here and you could sell some
Speaker 1: more garments if you just sell it with this chip.
Speaker 1: Hunters love it and the guys like the hunting. Those
Speaker 1: guys got it, like oh yeah, and you're doing this personally,
Speaker 1: travel around, I like all this American elbow Greek ship.
Speaker 1: Let go to the retail stores and talk to those
Speaker 1: guys and just walk in, go to the counter. What
Speaker 1: do you guys think of this had it in like
Speaker 1: some really just all it was a little clamshell case
Speaker 1: and I printed out on my printer and cut out
Speaker 1: the logo hunting GPS maps like stick. It was scotch tape.
Speaker 1: We still have some of the original I would sell.
Speaker 1: I'd sell them the guys like that. It would be
Speaker 1: this little cutout. So how many would a sporting good
Speaker 1: store take? UM? So they did say they'd take you know,
Speaker 1: six to start, take six, like sweet, and you're doing
Speaker 1: like traditional I don't even what what is traditional, like retail,
Speaker 1: wholesale whatever, Marco. Yeah, yeah, I did, like thirty points,
Speaker 1: just kind of follow what's normal at the time. I
Speaker 1: was selling them for a hundred and twenty when when
Speaker 1: I started it was chip. So you start out by
Speaker 1: just going to UM, but you're not getting national accounts.
Speaker 1: You're going to sell to a specific zoo Montana, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you guys think. They're like, oh, this is awesome,
Speaker 1: I'll take six. Yeah, take six and see how it
Speaker 1: works and they pay you out of the cash register,
Speaker 1: right Yeah. But then they have some of the stores
Speaker 1: have the ability to get local goods, so they could
Speaker 1: just like, oh yeah, I read a little invoice and
Speaker 1: and pay you it's more of a check but not
Speaker 1: other cash register. But then went to shields and billings
Speaker 1: and the guys like didn't you just stop by two
Speaker 1: weeks ago? Like what are you talking about? The guy
Speaker 1: from North Dakota had come over and just two weeks
Speaker 1: before I went over there like September two nine. Have
Speaker 1: you ever gonna have a cup of coffee with that guy?
Speaker 1: I've talked to him on the phone. What's his tape?
Speaker 1: Nature of the conversation? Um, that was a couple of
Speaker 1: years in. It's finally like, hey, just hey, what do
Speaker 1: you think about working together a little bit more? And
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, this is just a cash cash cow
Speaker 1: for me. I'm loving it. He was saying it was
Speaker 1: a cash He's got a cash cow. He's in his house,
Speaker 1: working from his house, and his families helping him out.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he was having a good time and you
Speaker 1: were thinking of collaborating and he said no interest. Did
Speaker 1: he stay in the bis? Yeah, he's still in the BISS.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard much about him for a while, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he called him to say, hey, man, let's yeah, see
Speaker 1: if we get like Wilburn Nor right point where We're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: should we just he's doing some cool stuff, let's just
Speaker 1: join up or see if we can buy him out.
Speaker 1: I have him joined our team, see if he was
Speaker 1: interested in actually joining like legit coming over to his
Speaker 1: will and being part of our team. And was he
Speaker 1: he was fine, Yeah, he was getting North Dakota is
Speaker 1: happy with He wasn't gonna move, So I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can do it like long
Speaker 1: distance anyway. That was just an interesting anecdote and exact
Speaker 1: same time. So I mean, no, I wasn't here, but
Speaker 1: here checked this out and the shields guy ended up
Speaker 1: buying some from Mellen got it in there, and that's
Speaker 1: a great way to That's how a lot of the
Speaker 1: sales started. It's just word of mouth. People come into
Speaker 1: retail him handed out a brochure. So what was the
Speaker 1: first time he had to go get a what was
Speaker 1: the first employee went hard Um. That was probably two thousand.
Speaker 1: That was July, right before the other season, right before
Speaker 1: the next fall season. Had a friend named Rob Hart
Speaker 1: who what's uh kind of in and out of like
Speaker 1: his PhD I believe at the crist School. What was
Speaker 1: he doing a PhD in chemistry, chemistry. That was you
Speaker 1: were buddies. Then Rob Hyres Matt just a couple of
Speaker 1: months later. That was the beginning of you hired Rob
Speaker 1: to do what just operations and help with phone calls,
Speaker 1: customer service, basic business development, sales operations, and he bailed.
Speaker 1: I was going to focus on the product. He bailed
Speaker 1: on his PhD plans he did. He was a little
Speaker 1: bit there's something going on there and decided yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: join you, and he hired you, and then Eric did
Speaker 1: yeah for what So you're employee three. Yeah, So at
Speaker 1: that time everything just described. We were pretty much all
Speaker 1: doing full time. So we were on the phone. I
Speaker 1: spent the first year on the phone probably like ten
Speaker 1: to twelve customer service and traveling trade shows. I mean
Speaker 1: we started expanding, driving around the country, stopping at every
Speaker 1: sporting good store, just called walking in, giving him a
Speaker 1: product demo, building tutorials, building the website. So you're employee
Speaker 1: number three, yep, employee number three. Yeah, and you came in.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you guys were all like, your job
Speaker 1: is this, and my job's at you're all doing all
Speaker 1: hands on deck. Yeah, at that time, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much all hands on deck, and I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in the first year on the phone, just
Speaker 1: a lot of customer support. So people being like, I
Speaker 1: bought this thing and it doesn't work. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I can't get it download. The download product was a
Speaker 1: chore um getting people's anti virus software to accept download. Uh.
Speaker 1: People didn't know how to download a file to their
Speaker 1: computer in two thousand eleven. Uh. They didn't know when
Speaker 1: they saved it, what folder it went to. They didn't
Speaker 1: know how to do every step. I remember, you think
Speaker 1: we've been doing this since we were kids, But it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was only it wasn't that I remember pulling. I
Speaker 1: remember being so angry. Yeah, and just down the old
Speaker 1: just messing around on whatever the the pre base camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how do I unlock it? Because you know, we
Speaker 1: wanted to capacity of your device, get something and spend
Speaker 1: all this time and then fill your unit up. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to do another thing, man, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to have to go through that all again. So
Speaker 1: we were on the phone all day. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take screenshots of each step right out written instructions.
Speaker 1: Then we had those like written tutorials you could like
Speaker 1: follow step by step, and then we'd be like with
Speaker 1: the purchase, you know, they would get sent the email
Speaker 1: with those instructions, they'd call it. We'd be like, did
Speaker 1: you read the instructions? They're like no, walcome through it.
Speaker 1: And then we got to like I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: written's okay, but I'm gonna make a video, so they like,
Speaker 1: do a video. Some people want to watch a video version,
Speaker 1: but it's just we were trying to do what we
Speaker 1: thought was best and help the customers really was our focus.
Speaker 1: Everybody the feedback was so great. We were just trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to make it easier for them to
Speaker 1: get the maps on their phone, and they were just
Speaker 1: spreading the word. He just kind of ads so yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I mean right away people are like, hey, what about Utah?
Speaker 1: What about Oregon? You guys in Idaho. Early by early
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, I had like pretty much all the
Speaker 1: western states done. I was just cranking them out. But
Speaker 1: we didn't hit Alaska for quite a while, right big file. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people weren't really asking too much about Alaska. Steward just
Speaker 1: kind of follow the demand, just kind of listen to
Speaker 1: what they're asking for, and you knew the eleven Western
Speaker 1: states we're going to be the big ones with they
Speaker 1: all the public land, so crank those out. At what
Speaker 1: point did you start getting like what point where national
Speaker 1: chains starting to buy this stuff? Um? Right in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, we found I met a guy at a
Speaker 1: trade show early to the two thousand ten who had
Speaker 1: a connection with wholesale sports or now sportsmen to sports
Speaker 1: and warehouse and kind of went Sportsman's wholesale back to
Speaker 1: Sportsman's you know, so it was wholesale at the time,
Speaker 1: and um, he got me connected up there and we
Speaker 1: got him in retail and mid two thousand ten and
Speaker 1: the wholesale sports, Yeah, it's pretty quick. They had good
Speaker 1: feedback from their store and Missoula and some of the
Speaker 1: other stores that were able to get them locally, and um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they were all about it. We got pamphlets
Speaker 1: and Cabela's all over the West and they're recommending it
Speaker 1: and we're just trying to keep up and are at
Speaker 1: this point are other people I know your body in
Speaker 1: North Dakota. What is it like, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: story of becoming sort of the dominant, Like, like, how
Speaker 1: did it come to be that you had like the
Speaker 1: dominant brand associated with the product, because I mean I
Speaker 1: had is it getting more crowded? Less crowded as in
Speaker 1: these ye know, it's just like surrounding yourself with really
Speaker 1: smart people like no, no, no, I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: like like how did how did you wind up? I
Speaker 1: don't know if you want to use the word wind
Speaker 1: but but what is going on at the time? Are
Speaker 1: there like competitors popping up and dropping off NonStop? We're
Speaker 1: dominating the search results for one hunting maps. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't liked, wasn't becoming crowded. No, it wasn't at all.
Speaker 1: And we're the ones getting into these retail stores nationwide
Speaker 1: with two thousand twelve, I think we got calls. So
Speaker 1: we made the retail play and then we did the
Speaker 1: search engine marketing, which those are the two plays that
Speaker 1: helped us dominate getting into retail and dominate the search
Speaker 1: engine marketing. So no one's going to catch you there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We really attacked the the digital marketing side of it too,
Speaker 1: you know, building our email list and building up the
Speaker 1: website for SEO and you know, having the customer newsletter, map, updates, emails, um,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff to tutorials. So we kind of
Speaker 1: attacked the brand side too and really reinvested, reinvested, I
Speaker 1: would say, most of the money back into the company.
Speaker 1: Two thousand twelve. That marketing really starts. Matt and Rob
Speaker 1: leading the marketing side, and I'm more on product, working
Speaker 1: with the g I S team to get all the data.
Speaker 1: So we had Holly at that point, right after hiring Matt,
Speaker 1: we had Holly who's still with us. UM. She's the
Speaker 1: g I S Manager, So she's leading the Jazz team
Speaker 1: getting all this data and compiling it and making landownership accurate.
Speaker 1: So expanding into other states, yeah, those next question is what, um,
Speaker 1: what were the paths towards expanding the product all around
Speaker 1: the country, And what was the path towards getting out
Speaker 1: of just public private but getting into like who owns what? Yeah,
Speaker 1: right away in two thousand late two thousand nine, right
Speaker 1: after I launched the product, then I see this Montana cadastral, Like,
Speaker 1: holy go, just holy cow, this is awesome. They got
Speaker 1: Montana had the whole statewide data set digitally and you
Speaker 1: just download it all the landownership data. So I go, oh, dude,
Speaker 1: just add that underneath. November November two thousand nine, I
Speaker 1: had downloaded the Montana and figured out way to shove
Speaker 1: that under as a layer as well, so you got
Speaker 1: private lands and public lands. But there you get into
Speaker 1: the thing where you're dealing with something that's change is constantly.
Speaker 1: Because at first, like your initial products like it's twenty
Speaker 1: years from now that ship is gonna be like basically
Speaker 1: right forrest there was land tends to State Forests land.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, hey, this is cool. We can with
Speaker 1: this type of product instead of like a paper map,
Speaker 1: we can actually update this like every year everybody's gonna
Speaker 1: want to update the hunting district. We had hunting district boundaries,
Speaker 1: and there we started having all the walk ins, like
Speaker 1: we need to update this every year. So we were
Speaker 1: in that mentality of like, this is cool because you
Speaker 1: you saw it as something that was gonna need gonna
Speaker 1: be updated every year, especially the land ownership data. As
Speaker 1: soon as I saw that and it's like, oh sweet,
Speaker 1: I'll download it once a year and right before hunting season,
Speaker 1: well update it. What was the first point in time
Speaker 1: that someone came in, like one of the big players,
Speaker 1: one of the big you know, g I s or
Speaker 1: GPS players or whatever. I mean you had to started
Speaker 1: getting people coming and trying to buy the company. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: that was even late two thousand and leve Oven Trimble
Speaker 1: Outdoors came by and made an offer, so they had
Speaker 1: the Cabella. They were napps app space back then. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trimble Outdoors, like two thousand eleven that was t r
Speaker 1: E M b l E t r R I M.
Speaker 1: Trimble was that they had a great app there a
Speaker 1: little before the times. Like it's almost like Hunters hadn't
Speaker 1: adopted smartphones at the time. They did a great, great
Speaker 1: app out there and just wrong timing. I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little too early. Yeah, So when someone wanted like
Speaker 1: what was your when someone wanted to come by, like
Speaker 1: they come and make an offer on the company, were
Speaker 1: they saying like and you're going to come to or
Speaker 1: were they just want Yeah it was and it wasn't
Speaker 1: you sign a two year employment agreement type thing and
Speaker 1: you were you considering it? Uh? Yeah? But then it
Speaker 1: was like wait, all that for that money. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: how much we're growing, Like we'll be making that in
Speaker 1: two years, We'll be making that money, So why would
Speaker 1: I do that right now? What was the what was
Speaker 1: like the early growth like in percentages. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: It has like doubling and tripling. It's like quadrupling tripling.
Speaker 1: Then it just goes down to like doubling every year
Speaker 1: after about three years. I'd say, but yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: quadrupling doubling in the first three years, and then it
Speaker 1: gets to doubling as you sign those national accounts Cabellas
Speaker 1: and Sportsmen, so you get that big jump the next year,
Speaker 1: and then then you just keep getting more growth, but
Speaker 1: not that big four x growth. So there's like so
Speaker 1: many sporting and stores. I was just thinking of the
Speaker 1: land ownership datas talk about Montana. Montana has the state
Speaker 1: wide cadastral data sets actually made it easy, sweet down
Speaker 1: a little, the whole stated standardized. Then I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. Got the PLAT data. You're basically putting
Speaker 1: your PLAT books statewide into the product. Super sweet. Let's
Speaker 1: go do that elsewhere. And I started looking around and
Speaker 1: other states you can only go county by county, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they're charging like ten thousand dollars to get their
Speaker 1: PLAT data to get that county. So it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: who's charging that county? County is charging thousands and thousands,
Speaker 1: five thousand, ten thousands to get the data for what purpose?
Speaker 1: How's it not public data? It's it's public, but for
Speaker 1: commercial Don't they knew it was valuable? I think oil
Speaker 1: and gas companies at the time, we're trying it to
Speaker 1: go knock on doors. But there's other insurance companies that
Speaker 1: buy it, so there's already a marketable price set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they knew it was valuable, and they figured they'd make
Speaker 1: some money on it. I guess, I don't know, somewhere
Speaker 1: free somewhere a thousand bucks on or ten thousand bucks?
Speaker 1: Were you going and paying the ones that were ten grand?
Speaker 1: Because you had to do it? We wouldn't do ten grand,
Speaker 1: but do we do a thousand? We do? Go to Washington.
Speaker 1: Is this it's got what eighty three counties or something?
Speaker 1: Fifty six counties? Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty typical. So five or six years ago, you know,
Speaker 1: we get a lot of feedback. Why don't you have
Speaker 1: my county? A lot of it was well, at that time,
Speaker 1: we couldn't afford it. Um. We had to prove out,
Speaker 1: you know, could we sell enough memberships in that state
Speaker 1: to reinvest the money to buy that last county or
Speaker 1: two that costs or some of the counties just don't
Speaker 1: even have it available. And that's still still the case
Speaker 1: right now. If they're more rural counties, they just still
Speaker 1: have Here, we got these plat books, but we don't
Speaker 1: have it digitized. So did you have to get into
Speaker 1: the process of digitizing some of this stuff. We never did.
Speaker 1: We just we saw the we would just expand other
Speaker 1: states rather than spend time digitizing a county that wasn't
Speaker 1: digitized already. So what's so, so let's say them in
Speaker 1: Colorado there's might be holes in it. Yeah, there's I
Speaker 1: don't know. Colorado probably still has one or two counties
Speaker 1: that maybe in eastern Colorado, southeast core owner. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of counties there, and I go to look and
Speaker 1: I might not find a landowner, the landowner names. You
Speaker 1: might have parcel boundaries or you might not have You
Speaker 1: just have public private, just as private in public camp
Speaker 1: And when people see that, are they pissed they didn't
Speaker 1: get what they paid for? Well, we try to make
Speaker 1: it clear, like here's our coverage map. You should know
Speaker 1: what you're getting before you buy it. I got you.
Speaker 1: But yeah, some people say, hey, you don't have my county, Like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll work on it a time. I don't really care
Speaker 1: who owns it if like the personal no, you know, right,
Speaker 1: I just want to know like the same things, but
Speaker 1: like what you want to know. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: it's like am I cool or am I not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was on Yanni's property there day looking at his property.
Speaker 1: His name's up there. Get your name all updated. My
Speaker 1: wife's passed for some reason, her name didn't come there.
Speaker 1: We all this together. Oh yeah, they have these primary owners,
Speaker 1: second airy owner and all these fields that we got
Speaker 1: to try to standardize. And the GIS team does all
Speaker 1: that and makes it all look good, which is you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think about it. But county to county it's different,
Speaker 1: and you've got to like standardize the attributes and it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff that they really should overres. So so
Speaker 1: how full Now you've you've got all the states? Have
Speaker 1: you hit one for? Like Hawaii is a hot seller?
Speaker 1: Not a hot seller, But what's the hottest selling state
Speaker 1: and what's the shittiest selling state? Matt knows all that
Speaker 1: Rhode Island they're not buying a lot because roll down,
Speaker 1: they don't care who owns it, not buying a lot um,
Speaker 1: who's hot? Colorado gonna be hot or not hot? Top five? Yeah, Montana,
Speaker 1: really Colorado, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Well there, you're just talking
Speaker 1: hunter numbers. Minnesota, Yeah, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. There, it's just there.
Speaker 1: You just got this. New York is really strong, Washington
Speaker 1: is pretty good. It's like top ten, it's five and
Speaker 1: five to the kind of Midwest East Versts Western hunting. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then uh so you filled out the whole fill
Speaker 1: out the whole country, yep, private, public, and then at
Speaker 1: this okay, like let's talk about right now. Mhm, right
Speaker 1: now you can you can use this the feed in
Speaker 1: the chronology. But okay, where are where are we in
Speaker 1: the chronology right now? We're still EARLI eleven twelve, Okay,
Speaker 1: so buying this thing? No, okay, So that's okay. So
Speaker 1: what other market group is starting to bet? Get curious?
Speaker 1: I mean even early on we're talking to a rural
Speaker 1: real estate agents there, like this has just changed the
Speaker 1: game for me. We're talking and I mean shopping for
Speaker 1: home my real he runs, he runs on their home
Speaker 1: everywhere he goes. He's walking around the thing I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's so, and so here's your property line. You go
Speaker 1: talk to that guy. People are using it for work everywhere.
Speaker 1: Utility companies were calling like, hey, we need this. Firefighting companies,
Speaker 1: the firefighters, the urban and BLM firefighters, the Force Service firefighters.
Speaker 1: They're needing to contact landowners sometimes to get permission to
Speaker 1: go be able to firefight on their their land. So
Speaker 1: like this is a godsend. We can look them right
Speaker 1: up and get permission and get out there and get
Speaker 1: ahead of the fire. So all kinds of game wardens.
Speaker 1: They simplified life that So yeah, that is like division,
Speaker 1: like nobody's done like a complete picture of landownership for
Speaker 1: the United States. Like keep it current, keep it accurate,
Speaker 1: keep it complete. And we're gonna go do that. And
Speaker 1: that's gonna be valuable to a lot of different people.
Speaker 1: And it is. Although we have it branded to a
Speaker 1: hunt this whole time, we would love we have. We
Speaker 1: have a ton of people using it for other things.
Speaker 1: But what are the percentages? I mean, yeah, definitely, and
Speaker 1: is the fish market anything. People are using it for fishing,
Speaker 1: but they likely they like behind it, find it through
Speaker 1: hunting their other passion, and then they use it for fishing,
Speaker 1: and then they use it for their work or whatever.
Speaker 1: But they're maybe finding it through their hunting passion or referral.
Speaker 1: Some people might just be a firefighter and they hear
Speaker 1: from other firefighters and they they're not a hunter, and
Speaker 1: they buy it. What year wasn't when you got your
Speaker 1: first office? That was two thousand and eleven. Matt was
Speaker 1: Matt was working from his house in Boeman and Bozeman.
Speaker 1: Holly was working from my house. Rob was working from
Speaker 1: his house. So but then late mid two thousand and
Speaker 1: eleven we got an office in Missoula, same office. We
Speaker 1: we expanded it, but we're in the same location. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that boy now in Missoula. So then big milestone. So
Speaker 1: ten eleven, people are even saying, hey, can can you
Speaker 1: get this on my iPhone? So like, oh jeez, people
Speaker 1: are calling saying that, like, let's start looking into that.
Speaker 1: So I start looking into that, and by we'd figured
Speaker 1: out I was really passionate about like the Googlers layering system,
Speaker 1: and I wanted that type of system in an app
Speaker 1: where you could turn on and off layers and be
Speaker 1: able to customize your map and be able to make
Speaker 1: smart decisions based on turning on and off different data sets.
Speaker 1: A geek out on that stuff. I probably shouldn't, but
Speaker 1: it worked out for people people like that. I know
Speaker 1: hunters who are serious about getting out there and being successful.
Speaker 1: They they're all about the layering. So figured out how
Speaker 1: to make that happen. And in two thousand July two thirteen,
Speaker 1: we launched the io s app I believe you called
Speaker 1: it on X Hunt. At that time we had rebranded
Speaker 1: our umbrella company to on X and had the Asian
Speaker 1: for like, hey, this is going to be useful for
Speaker 1: all these different markets. We got fishermen using it. We
Speaker 1: need an umbrella company that then you can have hunt
Speaker 1: and all these other activities for apps underneath it. And
Speaker 1: so who came up with on X. We actually all
Speaker 1: sat down at a table. The whole company at the
Speaker 1: time was like ten people like late and we sat
Speaker 1: down and we're like, okay, so what do we want what?
Speaker 1: We had all these ideas listed out and still have
Speaker 1: the dat of brainstorming. Out of brainstorming, it's like what's
Speaker 1: a what's the thing on a map that man? What's
Speaker 1: the spot? Like we're helping people get to what they
Speaker 1: get to their target? What is it will x X
Speaker 1: marks of spot right, and what are we doing. We're
Speaker 1: helping people get there and put you on. We helped
Speaker 1: put you on your target on X on x map x.
Speaker 1: And then there goes hunting GPS, Maps dot com and
Speaker 1: we kept that up with two more three, but keep
Speaker 1: the searching. It's so funny, man. It's like such a
Speaker 1: clumsy name. I remember so many times. It's like talking
Speaker 1: to people it's called honey dot com, you know, And
Speaker 1: we struggled to day with the naming over the years.
Speaker 1: I'll admit that, you know, it was probably like it
Speaker 1: was probably a good thing, but it's probably like the
Speaker 1: right thing, right, Maps dot com. Yeah, well, it's just
Speaker 1: the right thing at the right time. The search engine
Speaker 1: not that wave. When you put those words in your
Speaker 1: in your U r L, you get a lot of
Speaker 1: bonus from you know, search engines. That's why I put
Speaker 1: them in there, right, Hunting, maps, GPS. Well, as soon
Speaker 1: as the companies figure out the dang battery, there won't
Speaker 1: be any more GPS users. I feel like I used
Speaker 1: I used the microsds a lot of situations because um
Speaker 1: I can put lithiums, I can put three lithiums lithium
Speaker 1: batteries in a garment GPS and get days of use
Speaker 1: out of it. It's submersible. It can be outing around
Speaker 1: the build water in the back of my boat. I
Speaker 1: can save pluck that thing out of there, put it
Speaker 1: in airplane mode and use it wherever for four days.
Speaker 1: But the thing is in some conditions, phones are just
Speaker 1: kind of vulnerable. Man, They're not like that. Four or
Speaker 1: five days. He runs airplane. That's what I did last week,
Speaker 1: and I was getting to two days. Yeah, okay, that's
Speaker 1: how often you're using the screen. And but you're if
Speaker 1: you're out on like an eight or nine day trip.
Speaker 1: There are thing is you got to carry external batteries
Speaker 1: When I can just put six lithium batteries my backpack.
Speaker 1: It's like, I've been through this and I've thought through
Speaker 1: it a great deal. It's listen, the user experience of
Speaker 1: the product is insurpassable on a smartphone. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: are situations you look at it's like so nice, right,
Speaker 1: it's way ahead of the air imagery. You got the
Speaker 1: big screen. Everything about it just looks everything about it,
Speaker 1: everything about what's nice about the big screens. You're finally
Speaker 1: like almost feeling like you're looking at an actual map.
Speaker 1: Like we still for every shoot we do, we have
Speaker 1: a giant paper map because we like to lay it
Speaker 1: out and be able to look at it and and
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, this is everything at once. And that's
Speaker 1: one thing that especially, I mean, I'm still rocking like
Speaker 1: a sixty two s garment right teeny tiny screen compared
Speaker 1: to Steve's Oregon or so that was better, but now
Speaker 1: this is even better. You're like, I'm like finally feeling
Speaker 1: comfortable enough and I'm like I'm getting enough um context
Speaker 1: around right where I'm at that I'm like, because the
Speaker 1: zoom function is not incremental. If you're doing it on
Speaker 1: a garment, you can like click up right and you
Speaker 1: pass by the scale that you're after, and it's hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of like can get where you sort of like,
Speaker 1: have you contextualize yourself? Detail fades away? Yes, but you
Speaker 1: can on a smartphone, you can contextualize yourself in a
Speaker 1: broader contextual area than you can when you're using GPS.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling you in terms of not quite knowing
Speaker 1: where you're going, having a big breadth of space available
Speaker 1: to you when you didn't plan ahead to like get
Speaker 1: all your downloads right in destructibility and then just being
Speaker 1: able to run batteries for a long time. There's still
Speaker 1: something to be said for for a very small subset
Speaker 1: of individuals who are like people who are knocking, run
Speaker 1: on very long trips, and very hanging on. There's like
Speaker 1: it still has a home. You guys must know, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the technology is coming right there where our
Speaker 1: phone last a week? No, because they won't do it.
Speaker 1: There's been expose s on this, that's the week. The battery,
Speaker 1: this is some this is something the cold. I'm not
Speaker 1: a I'm not a conspiracy dude. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean for years I run the other
Speaker 1: direction from conspiracy theory. I don't believe in bigfoot nothing.
Speaker 1: But but people go get a new phone because they're bad.
Speaker 1: We went to shift on them. That's valuable to phone companies, right.
Speaker 1: I feel this is beyond. This is beyond like conspiracy.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like it is a conspiracy because the
Speaker 1: conspiracy is more than two people agreeing to do something.
Speaker 1: But you can still there's engineered obsolescence. There's engineered obsolescence
Speaker 1: and phone batteries. But if you make them last like
Speaker 1: seven days. They'll still probably after two years. That's true.
Speaker 1: Well then you're like, I still got three days on there.
Speaker 1: My wife phone, she can't get through lunch. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know it's dialed. And the other thing about it
Speaker 1: is the layering system is really nice, really nice you
Speaker 1: know to go tagle, but you wind up seeing how
Speaker 1: your brain works. Because I spent so many years looking
Speaker 1: at USGS quadrangles, I can like like that was always
Speaker 1: the map of choice for paper ma apps. You're when
Speaker 1: you're younger, starting out doing like expedition type stuff, it's
Speaker 1: like USG s quads and you get to where there's
Speaker 1: something that happens when when when you get to where
Speaker 1: you've started a landscape on a map and you go
Speaker 1: to the actual landscape, and there's always a moment when
Speaker 1: you sit, when you hit the ground and you have
Speaker 1: this moment of like, oh so that's what this looks like,
Speaker 1: right and you I don't know that you can get
Speaker 1: good enough at maps. I don't think you can ever
Speaker 1: get good enough at maps to look at those and
Speaker 1: then get to the place and not have oh so
Speaker 1: that's what this is like feeling. I don't think that
Speaker 1: that skill level exists. But what does happen over time
Speaker 1: is you get to where you can look at it.
Speaker 1: You can look at the ground in a general sense,
Speaker 1: and then they they meld in your mind to become
Speaker 1: sort of one and the same. And once you get
Speaker 1: a sense of the visual scale and what you're looking at,
Speaker 1: you can look at a quad, and a quad really
Speaker 1: makes ends point being. Now for me, if I'm looking
Speaker 1: at if I'm on on X on the smartphone and
Speaker 1: I look like I can, I get more out of
Speaker 1: looking at the top old lines. I get more out
Speaker 1: of looking at that than I do the aerial imagery.
Speaker 1: The aerial imagery ones up being more confusing to me
Speaker 1: than the very detailed fort you had to have near
Speaker 1: day all time. We we I think we shared on
Speaker 1: X whether we actually shared waypoints or not, but we
Speaker 1: had multiple phones out with other hunters that we were
Speaker 1: running into because we were in a hard to draw unit, right,
Speaker 1: Which is the weird thing about hard to draw units
Speaker 1: is that nobody's secretive. Everybody's like, yeah, I will ever
Speaker 1: be back here again. Here's everything I know. You look
Speaker 1: at all my waypoints. The first guy your owner hasn't
Speaker 1: even tagged out yet, and he looks at He's like,
Speaker 1: you want to know what's going on. But it was
Speaker 1: interesting that everybody else that we ran into was they
Speaker 1: would pull up and they were looking at imagery and
Speaker 1: they weren't looking at maps. And I had to request
Speaker 1: from different times to be like, do you mind you know?
Speaker 1: Hit a couple of times, I want to see what
Speaker 1: it looks like on the map, you know, and see
Speaker 1: because it doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense unless you had that old yellow,
Speaker 1: yellow and green. My brother like years ago, he had
Speaker 1: that ship where you had the two maps and then
Speaker 1: that glass piece you slid around and it gave it
Speaker 1: a three dimensional quality. Don't you should look into that?
Speaker 1: You should make a little music. I think something you
Speaker 1: don't need to have the on X Museum. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be like the history of how hunters have used it.
Speaker 1: But you never seen those. There's two maps and an
Speaker 1: eye piece, a magnifying eye piece on a stand and
Speaker 1: put your head down looking at everything pops up into
Speaker 1: three D. It gives you a three dimensional few. But
Speaker 1: when you're running this aerial imagery, you can drop thousand
Speaker 1: feet and that there could be a thousand foot incline,
Speaker 1: you definitely have the need unless the sun was in
Speaker 1: the right position. I use the topo when I'm new
Speaker 1: to an area. Yeah you gotta see the contours and yeah,
Speaker 1: see what you're dealing with. This is propt way off
Speaker 1: what you want to talk about. This important. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking of, like in early years, how how I realized, like, man,
Speaker 1: if I get my way points from my garment and
Speaker 1: put them on Google Earth, I can learn an area
Speaker 1: so much faster, Like oh wow, it's that one spot
Speaker 1: seems like it's so far, but all I gotta do.
Speaker 1: I could come from this angle and like wow, it's
Speaker 1: just like right there. But you think if you really
Speaker 1: learn all the intricacies from like this road comes over
Speaker 1: here and this trail comes in here, like oh wow,
Speaker 1: studying that, I can get there easily if I just
Speaker 1: go around and then I come up this trail here,
Speaker 1: and then I can get to that spot where that
Speaker 1: bully ran or whatever. I think it's a much more
Speaker 1: sophisticated understanding. Here's the art. Thing you look at like
Speaker 1: a like a steep slope. Now you can look at
Speaker 1: all the aerial imagery in the world. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: see little benches where elk are gonna like to lay up.
Speaker 1: But you can see parks. Yeah, well yeah, that's okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta have the both. Okay, here, Yeah, there's the park,
Speaker 1: there's the beach, the park on blacktailed Deer. When you're
Speaker 1: trying to find musk eggs, you will not find a
Speaker 1: muskeg on the top of the map, even if it's
Speaker 1: got the vegetation colored in, You'll never find muskegs. You
Speaker 1: find muskegs all day long, just little open patches. Well
Speaker 1: they're actually uh dead lakes. Muskeg patches are like extinct lakes.
Speaker 1: But um, you can find those all days long with
Speaker 1: aerial imagery. So it really depends. If I'm hunting up
Speaker 1: in like coastal rainforest and I had to switch, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, I don't give a sh about the elevation.
Speaker 1: I just want to know where the patches are open patches.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one doesn't replace the other. But do you
Speaker 1: get what I'm saying. That's want to make sure the
Speaker 1: point is clear on something. Do you get what I'm
Speaker 1: saying about that? No matter how much you do, do
Speaker 1: you remember when we flew into that prop lake hunt
Speaker 1: moose up on the north shope of the Brooks Change.
Speaker 1: I had it in my head exactly what that looked like,
Speaker 1: Like I could in my mind walk around and then
Speaker 1: I landed on that lake. I'm like, that's what I've
Speaker 1: been looking at. Do you know what I'm saying? This
Speaker 1: is resonate with you at all. Yeah, but I'm guessing
Speaker 1: because you like your experiences, put of of of picture
Speaker 1: into your head that that you know, you just overlaid
Speaker 1: onto the map right Like You're like, oh, we're going
Speaker 1: hunting moose. So you who would think that we would
Speaker 1: land in a place where you're like, like the nearest
Speaker 1: moose habitat seems like it's miles and miles away. We're
Speaker 1: like up, yet we were dropped there to hunt moose, right,
Speaker 1: So you had a picture painted and it just didn't
Speaker 1: match up. Where's all the lily pads? Totally? Um? But yeah,
Speaker 1: the ah ha moments man of early GPS USE and
Speaker 1: then of early on x Use, It's just so many
Speaker 1: mind blowing moments of being in the woods and just
Speaker 1: being like, oh no, ship, Like these two parks are
Speaker 1: that close to each other where I could just like
Speaker 1: hop through the timber like fifty yards and I'd be
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'm connecting you know, one park,
Speaker 1: and you like you realize that it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: probably actually like a very subtle old drainage, you know
Speaker 1: that's just connected in parks. You know, you can actually
Speaker 1: work it all the way up, you know. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and the way like yeah, like muskeg
Speaker 1: patches that linked together, just exploring country, just like I
Speaker 1: U see the same thing on Google Earth. I'd be like, park,
Speaker 1: never been there, get that pin into my GPS and
Speaker 1: walk in a straight line there, and then I'd figure
Speaker 1: out like the easy way to get there, right. But
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it was just like new Country
Speaker 1: every time I went into the woods, New Country, New Country.
Speaker 1: We're down in This is a little off topic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's only kind of off topic. Actually, we're down
Speaker 1: South America in the jungle, and these guys fish a
Speaker 1: lot of ox Bowl lakes and they kind of know,
Speaker 1: I mean they've been you know, hundreds of years, thousands
Speaker 1: of years there. Family has been subsistence hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: in these areas and they fish these ox Bowl lakes.
Speaker 1: But when guys started going down with drones with cameras
Speaker 1: on them. Americans coming down drones and cameras, and they
Speaker 1: take those drones up both the jungle canopy. They started
Speaker 1: finding ox Bowl Lakes. They didn't know we're there off
Speaker 1: because they were never they're not on Google Earth. They're
Speaker 1: sitting there looking at the monitor being like, oh my god. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just gotta watch a quarter mile in that direction
Speaker 1: and yet to go on an extra hundred yards. We
Speaker 1: know about some other leg that no one's ever fished before,
Speaker 1: full of fish. Yeah, so it's a funny realization. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We have stories of landowners who are now you know,
Speaker 1: they're the third generation or whatever, and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: Grandpa always told me that was our land right there,
Speaker 1: actually land, I better go take those nodress passing signs after.
Speaker 1: We have guys that are landowners that are really great
Speaker 1: like that, I gotta go take those signs off they
Speaker 1: had posted. They didn't know. They didn't know. I thought
Speaker 1: it was sometimes like they weren't paying taxes on it.
Speaker 1: I guess because you're getting a big tax bill for
Speaker 1: a bunch of land. Just thought that's what it did.
Speaker 1: Someone were like, I didn't know we had that forty
Speaker 1: straight over there. I thought that was so and so's
Speaker 1: or they found land they did, they didn't think No
Speaker 1: thought it was a neighbors and it was actually there. Well,
Speaker 1: I that's what I'd like. I'd like to some like
Speaker 1: some bit up to see I didn't know I owned.
Speaker 1: I don't know I own that whole mountain. Um, So
Speaker 1: where are we in chronology? Go ahead? Because fences, you know,
Speaker 1: in eastern Montana and everywhere around the west, fences were
Speaker 1: built a hundred years ago, and they weren't built necessarily
Speaker 1: on the property lines, and so they just kind of
Speaker 1: became the communal property boundary. You can ring your cattle
Speaker 1: up to here, I get the other side, and and
Speaker 1: this is where it was. But do you feel that
Speaker 1: you got Do you feel that your stuff is good enough? Um?
Speaker 1: The other day we had a thing where the fence
Speaker 1: was lying to us. Okay, is this is your stuff
Speaker 1: good enough? Where if you if something doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: make sense, would you personally I'm not saying you're advising
Speaker 1: people to do this, but if you personally like, here's
Speaker 1: the fence, which I normally would have acted like, well,
Speaker 1: that's obviously the border, but in fact it's seventy yards off?
Speaker 1: Is the technology such you would you be like instinctively
Speaker 1: like the fence is wrong, this is right. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, most cases that data is going to
Speaker 1: be more accurate than like a fence line, But there's
Speaker 1: enough cases where that data is a little bit shifted
Speaker 1: to thirty ft two hundred feet that I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that soft feet is could be just off.
Speaker 1: But the angle of the property line, like if the fence,
Speaker 1: if you know, the property line is going and I
Speaker 1: need you that way perpendicular, but the fence line is crooked, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the fence lines off, But as far as
Speaker 1: where that property line could be, it could you know
Speaker 1: the straight line? You know, it could be within ten
Speaker 1: feet either way, you know, So I don't I wouldn't
Speaker 1: shoot an animal ten feet across the property line, but
Speaker 1: it's probably going this way and you're at a thirty
Speaker 1: degree angle, and you're like, oh, I can park and
Speaker 1: access this land, you know, but because seventy yards I
Speaker 1: definitely do that. Ye. But we have a ton of
Speaker 1: stories of people like I never knew where my pens were.
Speaker 1: I went out and went to the corner and started
Speaker 1: moving some dirt around and boom, it was right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes it's like right on. Most of the
Speaker 1: time it's right on. I found a lot of enough
Speaker 1: times it's can be thirty yards off, so I would say, no,
Speaker 1: you can walk right up on the panem and you're
Speaker 1: gonna get within five or ten ft. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's spot on for my four pins to check on. Uh. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the chronology a little bit. But I want
Speaker 1: to get to two things. I want to get to
Speaker 1: the future, because like, you're done now the whole damn country.
Speaker 1: So there's that Ye does it? Do you go global?
Speaker 1: What is it? And to like what happened where? And
Speaker 1: I know this because I read a press release, So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I heard secret information. You guys took
Speaker 1: on like a like a partner in order to do something.
Speaker 1: So you're kicking ass just making it all go on
Speaker 1: your own. What happened? We got big visions to dominate
Speaker 1: the hunting market. We've got big visions to do a
Speaker 1: lot more in outdoor recreation and help more and more
Speaker 1: people get outdoors and have a great experience. Can give me,
Speaker 1: for instance, because I know that company guys always get
Speaker 1: like company guys always get where they won't want to
Speaker 1: tell you what you're talking about. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I pressured a company guy this morning and I got
Speaker 1: some info out of them. He was talking about testing
Speaker 1: new products, and eventually squeezed out of him what it was.
Speaker 1: So what would be a give me for instance? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it sort of like in the same vein or
Speaker 1: is it like you're gonna come out with a bootline.
Speaker 1: Definitely in the same vein of creating an awesome location
Speaker 1: experience and revolutionizing how mapping is done. So kind of
Speaker 1: going off yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if we were
Speaker 1: able to finally show like this is definitely a public
Speaker 1: road and this is private road. But that's that's that
Speaker 1: winds up being like complicated because it's history right like us, Like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to. I mean, we need to make that
Speaker 1: easier for hunters. That's one thing I don't like about
Speaker 1: the product. Like I can scout everything else, but if
Speaker 1: I'm going to a new area, sometimes you can't quite
Speaker 1: determine if you can actually get to that piece, if
Speaker 1: that road goes to that public land, if it's actually
Speaker 1: not gated off or not but some people have been
Speaker 1: working on that because I was amazed when I called,
Speaker 1: I think it's Montana d n r C right the
Speaker 1: controls the state lands, and they had like in each office,
Speaker 1: they had a person that I could talk to and
Speaker 1: I could we I had my uh, guys, it's here
Speaker 1: open and we literally just went one after another, and
Speaker 1: the guy was like no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it was all knows that day, but like he
Speaker 1: knew whether or not there was a he thought he knew.
Speaker 1: Because what we're finding now is people think they know,
Speaker 1: but you don't know because it's just passed down. He's
Speaker 1: not actually looked up from the legal records. So that's
Speaker 1: that's that. That's that fight that we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the High Loans some ranch fight is he would say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's private road, but other people are like, no, man,
Speaker 1: it might have been gated since nineteen seventy six, but
Speaker 1: it was illegitimately gated in nineteen seventy six or what
Speaker 1: have you. You know, but this guy's work on behalf
Speaker 1: of the state. And I was talking, Oh, I got you,
Speaker 1: but even then even it could have bad info. Will
Speaker 1: work with those agencies and we can actually say here's
Speaker 1: our landlocked public lands. You have regional field offices where
Speaker 1: you do have those experts, now tell us is it
Speaker 1: or isn't it landlocked? And can you and we talked
Speaker 1: about yesterday like the Eastmans go to look in looking
Speaker 1: to those eastments and so you might even be done
Speaker 1: like a research function, because is it fair to say
Speaker 1: that like at a point, what you've done is you've taken.
Speaker 1: You haven't gone out and created information. You've taken information,
Speaker 1: compiled it, made it usable, searchable, approachable, purchasable. I have
Speaker 1: created GPS accurate, complete picture of landing or ship. That's
Speaker 1: one of the big things that we did was take
Speaker 1: this public lands data, look at the private when we
Speaker 1: talked about that yesterday, look at the private parcel data,
Speaker 1: mess them together and is there a conflict? And usually
Speaker 1: those boundaries don't match up. The public lands data is
Speaker 1: like a little shifted off out of parcel data. So
Speaker 1: we because the PARCELTA has done by a county, we
Speaker 1: assume the parcel data is more accurate, and then we'll
Speaker 1: match those boundaries up to that parcel data and then
Speaker 1: we'll actually look through and look for these like timber
Speaker 1: companies that allow access to g S. Team will do
Speaker 1: all this research on nature conservancy, all these organizations that
Speaker 1: potentially might allow access. And now so they've we've created
Speaker 1: this data set where it's like it highlights these places
Speaker 1: where you should potentially have access, anything that's a government agency, county.
Speaker 1: So you've gotten into like interpretation. So we actually have
Speaker 1: this algorithm that goes through and pulls out all these
Speaker 1: owner names that we think likely give people access, including
Speaker 1: city government's count anything, anything going by a government. Because
Speaker 1: you're a taxpayer, you may have a right to be
Speaker 1: on that. They might have regulation, but we're gonna highlight
Speaker 1: that as here's city government, here's county government, here's BLM,
Speaker 1: here's forest service. They you might have a right to
Speaker 1: be on that property. Yeah. I remember one time going
Speaker 1: to a uh small government agency at the township level
Speaker 1: and pointing out a piece of land on the platte book,
Speaker 1: And remember the township commissioner telling me, I can't tell
Speaker 1: you you can go there, but I can't tell you
Speaker 1: you can't go there. We just talked about earlier. We went.
Speaker 1: We took that as a green light. Just like it's
Speaker 1: illegal decorn across, it's not illegal and it's not legal, yes, exactly. Uh,
Speaker 1: anything else? Any other future things people don't know about.
Speaker 1: Oh man, no one's on your No one's on your heels. Right,
Speaker 1: there's other apps out there, really scary ones. Are there's
Speaker 1: something really good that I should know about? Nope? Nope. Honestly,
Speaker 1: we're looking no matter what you're hunting, we want to
Speaker 1: have a product that will do something to help you
Speaker 1: improve your time in the field and make it more efficient.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of folks are hunting two days.
Speaker 1: We don't want you wasting time, whether it's finding access,
Speaker 1: finding where your trails or where your true stand is,
Speaker 1: your game cams, asking permission, or getting into these future
Speaker 1: endeavors and being able to pattern animals and organize your
Speaker 1: data or your experiences. So we're just looking to constantly
Speaker 1: improve people's days in the field. You're not looking to
Speaker 1: get into a social app? Are you no social app?
Speaker 1: Social media type? Because you know these new things, I like,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's not not gonna work. These new
Speaker 1: things like you go and you catch a fish and
Speaker 1: you make drop pins that I caught a fish here
Speaker 1: for public consumption. Yeah, dude, those people got it all wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't want to they're not giving away what you're telling
Speaker 1: I keep looking at it. There's a guy work with
Speaker 1: the keys sending me things about these things. But I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: is like the guys I know about are gonna be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll look at everybody else that's I'm not
Speaker 1: putting my stuff, but sure if he wants to tell
Speaker 1: me that. But you do have your group, so there's
Speaker 1: a community aspect as far as you have your group.
Speaker 1: So well, that's what one thing we want to do
Speaker 1: is you can create your groups for certain things, certain activities.
Speaker 1: And imagine you have this hundred sixty acre piece and
Speaker 1: Wisconsin or whatever, and you've got all your tree stand locations,
Speaker 1: You've got all your trail, You've got all your trails
Speaker 1: that go in the way you want them to go
Speaker 1: into the tree stands, and you can say this is
Speaker 1: my group. I got a new guy coming in. He
Speaker 1: just came in at midnight, but I need him to
Speaker 1: get to that tree stand in the dark. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: share this data and then I'm gonna let him take
Speaker 1: his app like this augmented reality style and just make
Speaker 1: sure he stays on that trail when he's walking in
Speaker 1: to that tree stand. He doesn't even have to do this.
Speaker 1: Bob's gonna be here, Dog's gonna be there, coming this way,
Speaker 1: look that direction. Coordinate all that augmented reality. Yeah reality,
Speaker 1: So that would be that there would be like, uh,
Speaker 1: it would look like a fake. Like you see the lion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's holding it up and he's seeing this line. That's
Speaker 1: all he has to do is like he doesn't He's
Speaker 1: looking at a photo before he's taking the photo through
Speaker 1: his lens and there's a line. Yeah, there's a line,
Speaker 1: and he just has to like if he goes off,
Speaker 1: it's not going to show the line anymore. And he
Speaker 1: goes back there and you can see the line. So
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to know how to navigate even a map.
Speaker 1: This makes navigation totally stupid simple when you can do that,
Speaker 1: and it's like okay, it's you're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: out and four aim in the dark. I know you've
Speaker 1: never been there, but all you gotta do just make
Speaker 1: sure I'm staying on that line. You're not gonna answer this, honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask anyway. Um, and you guys can ance this.
Speaker 1: Do you ever lay in bed at night and think,
Speaker 1: what have I done? Because what have I done? Because
Speaker 1: I'm slowly destroying woodsmanship. When I think about those future
Speaker 1: visions of like Matt, when I think of maps, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean when our kids when they think of maps,
Speaker 1: they're not going to think of like this paper map
Speaker 1: and they're not going to have that. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: make navigation simple. It's gonna be stupid simple. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's gonna it's gonna destroy woodsmanship, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think we can still pass that on
Speaker 1: to our kids, Like, Okay, now I'm gonna take your
Speaker 1: phone away from you. You make sure you can get
Speaker 1: back to the truck, because in case there's an apocalyptic scenario,
Speaker 1: you might need to know how to do this. The
Speaker 1: other day, I was out when I was out on
Speaker 1: Yanni's property looking around. We're just looking around for red
Speaker 1: squirrels and I have my boy with me, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out you know, Yanni's like, uh, his
Speaker 1: you know, his vast acreage, right, and my kids get annoyed.
Speaker 1: They're old enough not to know when you're paying attention
Speaker 1: to him or not paying attention to him. And he
Speaker 1: was registering some confusion because here we are, we're out
Speaker 1: looking for pine squirrels. But Dad's dicking with his phone
Speaker 1: and I keep him like he's like looking at me,
Speaker 1: and I'm keeping it listen. I just trying to figure out.
Speaker 1: I don't want to stray over around the neighbor's place,
Speaker 1: you know, And I've never been up there before. And
Speaker 1: he was kind of having like are we doing this
Speaker 1: or not doing it? Like what are you doing work?
Speaker 1: What is it? You know? And maybe like I had
Speaker 1: this like funny feeling that I wouldn't have had in
Speaker 1: another situation. But again, there I am choosing to do it,
Speaker 1: and and like, you know, you're gonna go in that direction,
Speaker 1: but I do. I am. I am aware of there's
Speaker 1: a lot being gained, there's a lot of being gained,
Speaker 1: but there's always something being lost. But then here's the
Speaker 1: other part, the flip side when I look at it,
Speaker 1: the flip side is I like to have more information
Speaker 1: because it increases my understanding of the natural world. We
Speaker 1: use fish finders. There's a point in time I've even
Speaker 1: hear people say, oh my god, you guys and your
Speaker 1: fish finders. Okay, when I first when we first bought
Speaker 1: a place, in Southeast Alaska fish shack. We were using
Speaker 1: old nautical charts, which gave you really it had just
Speaker 1: basically like soundings, okay, and my understanding of the contours
Speaker 1: of the of the surrounding ocean, what worked and didn't
Speaker 1: work fishing, was based on just these really shitty little
Speaker 1: sounding marks. So later when technology came in and we
Speaker 1: started getting basically there, we used of the sudden, you
Speaker 1: guys are ever get into um like good marine art,
Speaker 1: marine charts, there's no ownership issue, but like great marine
Speaker 1: charts on a GPS unit to have like all the
Speaker 1: bath metric data, all of a sudden, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's why there's hell of it here, or here would
Speaker 1: be a great place to go and try to catch
Speaker 1: a yellow eye. Or I bet you salmon come pension
Speaker 1: through here when they're moving here to there. So the
Speaker 1: old timer will be like, oh, you whatever, can't you
Speaker 1: know this and that? And you're cheating it's a big crutch.
Speaker 1: But you'd also be like, but listen, I now have
Speaker 1: this like much more nuanced understanding of like what's going
Speaker 1: on and things that used to see mysterious and strange
Speaker 1: and and and like ship luck now kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense to me, and I understand what the ocean does
Speaker 1: now better. So is it that I lost something or
Speaker 1: did I gain something through technology? Right? I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer. I do you gained something? And I think
Speaker 1: the argument against because I heard it too as soon
Speaker 1: as I got my GPS, and I think I was
Speaker 1: the first one in hunting camp to have one. None
Speaker 1: of the other guys did. And yeah, I just got
Speaker 1: shit about, you know, cheating this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: But what I realized quickly is that like once you
Speaker 1: located that new park and you went to that new
Speaker 1: park two or three times using your GPS, the next
Speaker 1: time you don't bring it out again, and so then
Speaker 1: you're you know, learning it all, you know, and taking
Speaker 1: in the trail and the surrounding topography, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the tree you didn't notice earlier when you were
Speaker 1: looking downt your GPS, that is a tree that you
Speaker 1: can sort of remember your trail by. But like, eventually
Speaker 1: you still come to the same understanding of that landscape.
Speaker 1: It's just a little bit faster. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that necessarily takes away from woodmanship skills, and it
Speaker 1: kind of makes you expand, it helps you jump outside
Speaker 1: of your immediate comfort zone and gives you the confidence
Speaker 1: to go check out new places, which adds your understanding
Speaker 1: and appreciation for fort en. What it doesn't do for people,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna probably stay the same for a
Speaker 1: long time, is it doesn't increase the stamina of your
Speaker 1: legs and make you want to walk any farther. And
Speaker 1: so you know, like that's the big thing that gets
Speaker 1: more people into the woods deeper. So no matter how
Speaker 1: much you can know and how much is supposedly opens
Speaker 1: up like you gotta walk. They're working on a product,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people, a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: used to just be like, this is my spot and
Speaker 1: this is that's all I do. Because I know this, people,
Speaker 1: you expand your horizon and be like, oh, I'm confident
Speaker 1: now to actually go drip up a lot of access
Speaker 1: and probably dispersed some hunters out to other properties or
Speaker 1: pieces they weren't access Definitely dispersed everybody just went to
Speaker 1: the same trailhead because it was marked. Here's the trailhead.
Speaker 1: It now like actually park a mile down the road
Speaker 1: where the fourth service touches the road and hiking up
Speaker 1: this ridge on an unmarked trail unmarked trailhead and cut
Speaker 1: everybody off an hour, you know, get in there an
Speaker 1: hour earlier, and then people walking up the trailer or whatever.
Speaker 1: But other ways to to use it. So more and
Speaker 1: more people parked alongside the highway during hunting season, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's one on the interstage going over the
Speaker 1: bat pass. There's a guy and we'll I mean we'll
Speaker 1: hear it from you know, our customers. There's folks who
Speaker 1: you know, they have all this equity, all this time
Speaker 1: spent where they found these honey holes or access sites,
Speaker 1: and then where everything that's wrong with hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: we open this up to everyone else. But as you said,
Speaker 1: you still have to hike up the mountain. You still
Speaker 1: have to a good shot on me, you have to
Speaker 1: find the animal. I mean, you still have to get
Speaker 1: it done. But what's funny is we get these guys
Speaker 1: saying we're the worst thing for hunting, and we're opening
Speaker 1: up all this opportunity for everyone else, and then we
Speaker 1: look and most likely not always, they have our products
Speaker 1: when they're using it. The other guy. Yeah, absolutely, But
Speaker 1: I occupied this, like I occupy that, or in every
Speaker 1: aspect of life, I like see both sides of stuff
Speaker 1: crippling degree. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean they spent
Speaker 1: time they learned it. You know, I would be frustrated
Speaker 1: as well, but it is satisfied. You know. Animal hunting,
Speaker 1: I went and hunted a place I had never been
Speaker 1: found a couple of pieces of state section that my
Speaker 1: cousin actually found because of our product. But I would
Speaker 1: have drove by it. I would have never looked at
Speaker 1: it and ended up having a couple of goats on
Speaker 1: there and hunted for a morning and shot one. Never
Speaker 1: been there, you know, might not ever go back, but
Speaker 1: that's experience, you guys. Silicing wedding ring, Yeah, good man,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get de gloved. No, you know that's
Speaker 1: what it's called when you bring off your hand your
Speaker 1: skin gloves A great word, isn't it. That's not why
Speaker 1: you wear it during hunting season. Yeah, to prevent just
Speaker 1: you don't want to get de gloved or you don't
Speaker 1: want to have a clicking noise when you grab something metallic. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not for you. A little bit of both shooting
Speaker 1: the gun. I do a lot of bird hunting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your ring made out of? Nor? I'm married? I'm married? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's going on there? Any prospects early. We'll put a
Speaker 1: plug in for you right now, man, we we'll we'll,
Speaker 1: we'll put it a plug in. I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of plugs. I don't know if man, they ever comes
Speaker 1: of it. You want to put a plug in for yourself?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have a girlfriend at the moment. Okay,
Speaker 1: well let us know zax on Instagram. Z Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a plug because we just give your phone on it
Speaker 1: where you tend to hang out. Let's see what rolls.
Speaker 1: Love to hear that it worked. No one that hasn't
Speaker 1: worked for they can find me there and fall maybe not.
Speaker 1: I't traveling a lot there, so, um, what's your wedding
Speaker 1: man of it's a deep glover. It's got gold and platinum. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's all right. Uh it's a good idea though. When
Speaker 1: you grab your bow click, I've got a tungsten one
Speaker 1: because for a regular season, don't wear that. When you
Speaker 1: burn your hand or get deep glove. They got to
Speaker 1: use the uh they got vice gript to snap it off.
Speaker 1: You have to crush it off, yeah, because it doesn't
Speaker 1: can't cut it with a drum telling you what, maybe
Speaker 1: I won't put it back on. This is like my
Speaker 1: my mission life. Two missions in life. One get people
Speaker 1: to switch to these, to get people to have kids,
Speaker 1: to keep their guns locked up and keep tuggar locks
Speaker 1: on them, save your finger skin. You got young kids
Speaker 1: six and two and one coming in the next two weeks,
Speaker 1: and you got to kids five, five and three, five
Speaker 1: and three, and I'm guessing you've got none. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: anything anyone wants to add. This has been a great conversation. Man.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I've been I've been watching it all,
Speaker 1: like watching all but not you know, I mean, just
Speaker 1: like catching little like if you're someone's watching the movie
Speaker 1: and you pass through the room now and then you
Speaker 1: start getting kind of like a basic layout of what's
Speaker 1: going on in the movie, but there's a lot you missed.
Speaker 1: It's filling in all those holes. So we took on
Speaker 1: those investors, which we found great partners in growing the
Speaker 1: company and for the World Domination World Domination, it's it's
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to go big. We see a huge
Speaker 1: opportunity in the outdoor recreation space and a lot of
Speaker 1: potential there. So if you're doing something in a city,
Speaker 1: you know you're used Google restaurant streets directions. But if
Speaker 1: you're going in the outdoors like camping, hunting, fishing, yep,
Speaker 1: it'll be all X checking your properties anything there where
Speaker 1: Google maps ins on X begins like that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like that, but then I don't know if you want
Speaker 1: to have their name in there. Yeah, it's just because
Speaker 1: someday you might be buying those guys. That's true. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: any uh, final thoughts, oh man, just thanks to all
Speaker 1: our customers, and thanks to you guys for your support
Speaker 1: and really appreciate what you guys do. Excited for our
Speaker 1: partnership coming up. Yeah, man, going forward. I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this earlier with the final thoughts
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh man, we gotta think something. But honestly,
Speaker 1: for me, it's like you knew that a conclud but
Speaker 1: for me this is this is surreal because you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up watching your show and everything to be
Speaker 1: sitting here talking about it. I grew up using on
Speaker 1: X and it's great and just seeing where we've come.
Speaker 1: Really not to play off erics, but it is our customers.
Speaker 1: You know, we get their feedback positive and negative, but
Speaker 1: we have what ten customer service folks working in there,
Speaker 1: taking parcel ayres answering questions all that, you know, different
Speaker 1: ideas for features, whatever. But we listened to them all.
Speaker 1: We appreciate them all, even the bad ones, and it
Speaker 1: just helps us make it. You know, they're the boots
Speaker 1: on the ground for us. Has a customer ever had
Speaker 1: an idea? You're like, wow, that's a great idea. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I don't. I haven't had my specifically, I
Speaker 1: want to use this on my smartphone and make it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean it's been great and looking forward to
Speaker 1: the years to come. What employee number were you? I
Speaker 1: was forty six, so we got one two and forty six?
Speaker 1: Yeah three? Oh sorry, one one, three, forty six and
Speaker 1: now we're what a hundred right now? You any concluders
Speaker 1: in the brand speaking to new CEO? That's information? Yeah, awesome,
Speaker 1: new CEO excited? Any concluders concluders? Yeah, you guys kind
Speaker 1: of nailed the customer that was mine. But we've just
Speaker 1: been super customer focused since the beginning. But I think
Speaker 1: the one thing I've learned is just, um, how kind
Speaker 1: of precious our time is outdoor? So back to like,
Speaker 1: are we taking away from the Woodsman ships. But you
Speaker 1: know everybody has such a busy life now with kids
Speaker 1: and families, and you go through different stages of your life.
Speaker 1: When I was in grad school, I could go hunting
Speaker 1: every day, every night, just check out of town and
Speaker 1: have a lot of time. But now as you have
Speaker 1: a family, times more precious. So just using our using
Speaker 1: a tool or something like this just to to really
Speaker 1: maximize your time in the field. We've just um I
Speaker 1: had a lot of success and helping people. You only
Speaker 1: have so many vacation days a year. You got to
Speaker 1: balance on between family vacations and going hunting and just
Speaker 1: helping people get out there. Have that kind of twenty
Speaker 1: years of knowledge and twenty minutes kind of like our
Speaker 1: internal slogan like I can go anywhere new gives people
Speaker 1: a knowledge to go to a new states, apply for
Speaker 1: new states, go explore, and U feel confident, have fun
Speaker 1: in the field, not feel that pressure that they're gonna
Speaker 1: be trespassing or have a landowner confront them or get
Speaker 1: in trouble from a game warden. You know, people are
Speaker 1: going out hunting to enjoy, spend time with their family
Speaker 1: and friends. So just super proud to have a product
Speaker 1: that helps people really enjoy their time in the field.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it would be fun to work at a
Speaker 1: place like that. Man. Yeah, yeah, we love hearing the stories.
Speaker 1: Keep them coming, I mean what keeps us going. Our
Speaker 1: team goes really hard to make these products for people
Speaker 1: and and we we get stories where you guys are like,
Speaker 1: h I would never had this experience if I hadn't
Speaker 1: had that product, and it just keeps us going hard
Speaker 1: and we love it, so keep them coming. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We actually have like every two weeks, we have a
Speaker 1: company get together and we read positive and negative every
Speaker 1: two weeks from a customer that we'll get in what's
Speaker 1: gonna do. Yeah. Yeah, We've enjoyed just reading the ones
Speaker 1: since we started working with you guys that we've got
Speaker 1: and then we just send them through our Slack channel
Speaker 1: where all our employees can see them and they read them.
Speaker 1: So you guys send them to us, and we just
Speaker 1: sent them straight to everyone working on the product. I've
Speaker 1: got an idea because this is your concluder. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm at home and I'm on on X, I'm like, Damn,
Speaker 1: that spot looks sweet. Should like to go check out
Speaker 1: that spot? Look at that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: what I need from you guys is like an app
Speaker 1: that sort of replaces me at work for a few
Speaker 1: hours and then at home so that I have that
Speaker 1: time work. Yeah uh no, thank you guys for coming by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you guys. We appreciate it. That was fun, man.
Speaker 1: You guys have to come back more off in all
Speaker 1: the word like neighbors. Yeah. Absolutely, definitely, we can talk
Speaker 1: about maps. That was fun. Yeah, and I want to
Speaker 1: I gotta. We gotta interview nineties seven more employees. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I gotta talk to our GS team and learn about
Speaker 1: all the stuff they do. It's really cool. I got
Speaker 1: a ton more questions, so parts it out all right,
Speaker 1: Thanks Stevie.