Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Dirk Durham, and today I have my
Speaker 1: oldest friend in the house. He's my oldest friend, he's
Speaker 1: my best friend, and he's my brother in law. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Randy Wise.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for having me, Dirk. It should be entertaining. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I think it should. You're quite a character.
Speaker 1: Now. Some people that have followed some of the films
Speaker 1: I've been in over the years, hunting with different different folks.
Speaker 1: I was on a hunt with Trent from Born and
Speaker 1: Raised outdoors here a few years ago in Wyoming, and
Speaker 1: Randy came along with his goats. He had these pack
Speaker 1: goats and he joined the hunt and he was like
Speaker 1: kind of filled in as a cameraman and he like
Speaker 1: he said, He's like, I'm not a professional camera man,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna say, Andy, we could all tell
Speaker 1: by the shots you got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you taking notice. And for the record,
Speaker 2: I had no instruction or classes or even hey do
Speaker 2: this when this happens. I was just left in the
Speaker 2: dark and.
Speaker 1: I did what I could with what I had. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know absolutely, and we could tell t it's like,
Speaker 1: hey man, you want to run a camera And you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know sure. Like he's like, you're like, what
Speaker 1: do I do? And he's like, push the red button
Speaker 1: and hold the camera towards us. That was the insurrection
Speaker 1: and it turned out. But we had a We had
Speaker 1: a pretty good hunt, killed a couple of bulls. We
Speaker 1: used your goats to pack one bull out and cross
Speaker 1: the river there in Wyoming.
Speaker 2: It was it was fun. And then the other bull
Speaker 2: out in the river.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we we I shot a bull and it
Speaker 1: died in the river and we had to break that
Speaker 1: thing down in the dark in.
Speaker 2: The river, pack it out.
Speaker 1: It's probably the cleanest piece of meat we've ever had.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's all water under the bridge. Today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the misadventures of Randy Wise.
Speaker 2: Being Randy.
Speaker 1: We've been buddy since seventh grade, so if you can imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a lifetime of fun and goofy
Speaker 1: adventures and hunting trips and just you know, Any's family too,
Speaker 1: so there's all the whole family aspect of it. But
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to rewind to back in the
Speaker 1: olden days, if you will, and me and Randy were
Speaker 1: high school boys. I would say we were probably freshmen
Speaker 1: sophomores in high school. Yeah, maybe. And we went hunting.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, we went camping in the back country of Idaho.
Speaker 1: We're way back, one hundred miles from from the closest town.
Speaker 1: We're right off the Montana border in the Clearwater region
Speaker 1: of Idaho. It some of the most beautiful country you've
Speaker 1: ever seen. The deer were so tame that we would
Speaker 1: literally take a leak, we would urinate on the ground,
Speaker 1: and a mule deer would would come right up.
Speaker 2: They would come up and lick your your urinated dirt.
Speaker 1: They would come up and lick that dirt like immediately
Speaker 1: they sing while you're there. Yeah, why we were standing there.
Speaker 1: I have a picture of Randy standing there right after
Speaker 1: he peed, and there's a deer licking the pee right
Speaker 1: like one foot away from him. It's the craziest thing
Speaker 1: I've I've ever seen. But that that was kind of
Speaker 1: a cool trip. We were up there with my folks
Speaker 1: and Randy and I were like, we're not gonna camp
Speaker 1: at the truck with these old people, right, We're a
Speaker 1: teenagers now. We we want adventure. We're gonna go backpack.
Speaker 1: We're going to backpack into a cool place and and
Speaker 1: set up a tent and have a good time. So
Speaker 1: we we we backpacked down into this basin and it
Speaker 1: was pretty easy going, and you know, it's kind of steep,
Speaker 1: but no real trails. We get down we could see
Speaker 1: this big flat sp It was a big, beautiful grassy flat.
Speaker 2: It almost looked lake.
Speaker 1: It was a little lake. Yeah, and we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that looks like an awesome place to camp. So we
Speaker 1: get down there and that that grass turned out to
Speaker 1: be about waist high and full of mosquitoes.
Speaker 2: Remember the mosquitoes. They were so bad, the mosquitoes. And
Speaker 2: the brush was you know, looking down, you know, it
Speaker 2: didn't look nothing like that. We get down in there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's shoulder high. You can't see nothing anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's your that. This is Idaho. This is Idaho,
Speaker 1: one on one, Like it always looks good at a distance,
Speaker 1: but you get up close, you get into it, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that brush is over our head. The grass is wiste tall,
Speaker 1: and it's a marsh and it's like full of mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh god, we got to set up
Speaker 1: this tent, you know, and we had a few hours
Speaker 1: before it was going to be dark, but the mosquitoes
Speaker 1: were so bad. We got to get this tent set
Speaker 1: up and get in the tent. And I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, okay, you go look for firewood. I'm going
Speaker 1: to set this tent up. So I start setting ten
Speaker 1: up and you wander off and you come back and
Speaker 1: you have this worried look on your face, and you say,
Speaker 1: he said, you got to see this, that's all you said.
Speaker 2: You have to see you have to see this. But
Speaker 2: you got to rewind just a little bit back to
Speaker 2: the lake. Okay. So there we are, like you know,
Speaker 2: we're we're in the brush on the edge of the
Speaker 2: lake and we walk up into the waters just a
Speaker 2: little bit, if you remember, and we could see bear
Speaker 2: tracks in the mud and they were squished out like
Speaker 2: they're giant bear tracks. You remember that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, basically grizzly bear tracks.
Speaker 2: In our minds, yeah, in our minds. And I believe
Speaker 2: we're probably eighth graders. This is this is in our
Speaker 2: first two years of our Yeah, it's unclear. I know,
Speaker 2: we were young. We're pretty young, pretty young, and so
Speaker 2: this is like Brandy getting his first adventure with the
Speaker 2: Durham family, and that's how I remember it, you know.
Speaker 2: And so here we are, like, like Dirk said, back
Speaker 2: in the back country anyway, Yes, it's time to set
Speaker 2: up camp. And we went miles from his parents and
Speaker 2: we're kids, and there's this lake.
Speaker 1: We got cans of chili in, yeah, and like no
Speaker 1: sleeping pads and like this shitty little like yeah, two
Speaker 1: man pup tins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got nothing. And I don't even think we
Speaker 2: have a pistol. We have we had it. We did
Speaker 2: have a flashlight between us and.
Speaker 1: It's probably was one of those survival knives.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so we see this big pushed out bear
Speaker 2: tracks in the mud that go into the water of
Speaker 2: this little lake. And then we needed to hike up
Speaker 2: this Razor back ridge. Remember that big ridge that we
Speaker 2: were going up. And then we got into the brush
Speaker 2: and the huckleberries and we're like, we need to set
Speaker 2: up camp here. Yeah, you remember that. And it was
Speaker 2: on the main trail. There's the only trail on this
Speaker 2: Razor Back ridge.
Speaker 1: Right, And I tell Randy, I said, you go get
Speaker 1: firewood and stuff. I'm gonna start setting this tent up.
Speaker 1: So I start setting the tin up. He comes back
Speaker 1: and says, you got to see this. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what's up? So I walk over there to this huckleberry brush,
Speaker 1: and huckleberry brush is about waist high, you know, and thick.
Speaker 1: You can't hardly walk through it. And it's all broken
Speaker 1: down like it looks like a bear. It tore up.
Speaker 1: It's been just like wallowing and like tearing all this
Speaker 1: brush up, eating huckleberries. He just tore out this spot
Speaker 1: big enough. It looked like a couple of a bull
Speaker 1: elk had been fighting there. There was so much stuff
Speaker 1: torn up, and I'm like, and Randy doesn't say anything
Speaker 1: other than you got to look at this. And I
Speaker 1: go over there, I'm like, oh my god, we got
Speaker 1: to move our tent right now. It's a grizzly bear
Speaker 1: and he's been eating. We got to get out of here.
Speaker 2: Right This was an unintended consequence of Randy Shenanigan's Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the backstory is I want to take a leak,
Speaker 2: and I seen all these huckleberries and I thought, wouldn't
Speaker 2: it be fun to break all these up and put
Speaker 2: the idea into Camp's head and that there's a big
Speaker 2: bear and this is the only trail. So yes, there
Speaker 2: comes over. He evaluates the situation and correctly evaluates that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something in here eating and rummaging and foraging, and
Speaker 2: we should not camp.
Speaker 1: We're right on his trail.
Speaker 2: We should not camp here. Yeah, But what we didn't
Speaker 2: know is where we were. And we'd never been there before.
Speaker 2: And this trail had straight up this on the left side.
Speaker 2: You remember, you could look off it would it would
Speaker 2: be like a shoot in a snowmobiller's paradise, like an avalanche. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just straight off the left side of the canyon,
Speaker 2: and the right side kind of feathered out into the
Speaker 2: brush and the and the aspens and whatnot. You know.
Speaker 2: So we were on this only trail, Rocky And at
Speaker 2: this point, my unintended consequence was the fear that I
Speaker 2: instilled in camp.
Speaker 1: Oh. I was scared that.
Speaker 2: I am like, we gotta go. I run down.
Speaker 1: I grab the tent, I throw that thing together, I
Speaker 1: throw that tear it down, throw it in my pack
Speaker 1: and my pack.
Speaker 2: We have these backpacks.
Speaker 1: I think we got them at the Goodwill or somewhere.
Speaker 1: These old aluminum frames.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the luminium frame, the orange ones and the blue ones,
Speaker 2: and they were garbage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, you know, threw all of our nice
Speaker 1: heavyweight stuff under our packs and like, we got to
Speaker 1: get the hell out of here. And I start hiking
Speaker 1: like a madman. We got to get the hell out
Speaker 1: of this place.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't let up, and I was like more leisure
Speaker 2: like it's fine, I know fine.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: You going to get out of here? But now I'm
Speaker 2: hooked into this prank I've pulled and they can't go
Speaker 2: back on it, so I have to kind of live
Speaker 2: what I've started.
Speaker 1: And he can't let me know. Yeah, he can't let
Speaker 1: me know that he was him at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I'd bought it, so hrd, Yeah, he bought it.
Speaker 2: He hooked line and zincer and we're in the darkness,
Speaker 2: pitch black. There ain't a moon, I don't I don't
Speaker 2: remember stars or nothing. It's one of them pitch black nights.
Speaker 2: And we're in the the flashlight and hiking up a
Speaker 2: single little game trail that's in the like the most
Speaker 2: backcountry Idaho Montana orderline country you can find. Like it's
Speaker 2: it's not a human There's there's nobody around, like like
Speaker 2: it's just us, and there's no trail. Yeah there and
Speaker 2: no like not like a horse trail. This is just
Speaker 2: like a game trail. There's no GPS, there's no ONYX,
Speaker 2: there's no nothing like. It's on us to find our
Speaker 2: way up this like very remote country. And you know,
Speaker 2: we we aren't worried about that, like for some reason,
Speaker 2: our our internal GPS systems are working fine. We know
Speaker 2: when you get up this ridge, we're in a camp
Speaker 2: on the top of the ridge line. We're in a
Speaker 2: white hike six seven miles to the left, whatever direction
Speaker 2: that was at the time, and then eventually we'll hit
Speaker 2: a road gets us back to your mom and pop. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: So we we climb up this thing and finally find
Speaker 1: a flat spot because it's steeper than the back your head.
Speaker 1: We finally find a flat spot. It's like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna sleep here, but I'm worried. I don't want
Speaker 1: to I don't want to sleep in a tent because
Speaker 1: I don't want to not be able to see a
Speaker 1: bear come get us. Yea, So we just kind of
Speaker 1: propped our our sleeping bags up against this old log
Speaker 1: and we build a little fire and we drift off
Speaker 1: into sleep somehow.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was very like I was that kind of like
Speaker 1: lucid sleep, you know, kind of like halfway in, halfway out,
Speaker 1: and I'm laying there and I can hear a noise
Speaker 1: coming down the trail. It's like I hear something coming
Speaker 1: down the trail and I hear like clippity clop of
Speaker 1: like hoof beats and like like like a little bell tinkering,
Speaker 1: and it's like an old miner with some mules going
Speaker 1: by us in the middle of the night. And the
Speaker 1: next day I'm like, Grandy, what's up. Did you see
Speaker 1: that that old miner and stuff? He's like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about?
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know how it is when you're half half lucid,
Speaker 1: if you're you're in and out of sleep. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure I dreamt it.
Speaker 2: We honestly were scared to death, both.
Speaker 1: Of us, but we didn't get eaten by this make
Speaker 1: believe grizzly bear. Yeah, even though that was kind of
Speaker 1: a weird dream to have about the old minor forty
Speaker 1: nine er coming down the hill, you never seen.
Speaker 2: That, no, But what I did see was we nested
Speaker 2: up against this log. It was full of red ants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those things woke up and the things were all
Speaker 1: over us, eating us alive.
Speaker 2: Our sleeping bags, they were all over us. We had
Speaker 2: wounds everywhere. Anyway, it was a miserable night, a sleepless night,
Speaker 2: you could say. Yeah. Next morning we're up and at him.
Speaker 2: We're first light.
Speaker 1: We get up. We're like, okay, we're getting the heck
Speaker 1: out of here. We hike back to my folks and like,
Speaker 1: I think we'll stay in camp these next day night.
Speaker 2: And Randy being on the prank, you know here, I'm like,
Speaker 2: now I'm kind of feeling like so Dirk immediately gets back.
Speaker 2: He tells his folk about the grizzly bears and the pond,
Speaker 2: the water and the trail and the huckleberries tore up.
Speaker 2: And now all of a sudden, my prank turned into
Speaker 2: I'm a liar, you know, and I don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to know. So I'm like, he just kept it to himself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just kevied to myself. I thought it was kind
Speaker 2: of funny. It blew out of proportion, and so I'm
Speaker 2: living with this thing inside me.
Speaker 1: How many years did you keep that? It was years,
Speaker 1: It was years, and it was years and finally adults
Speaker 1: I think finally told me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm like, you know, you know, remember that time,
Speaker 2: you know, and we're laughing and you know, having a
Speaker 2: beer or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I tore up all
Speaker 2: those huckleberries.
Speaker 1: Like what.
Speaker 2: I felt ashamed, but you know it was a fun
Speaker 2: joke at the time, but it kind of just got
Speaker 2: away from me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that kind of happens in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though I feel like in high school you did
Speaker 1: some of those little pranks too. I think you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you see that guy out there. He wants to kick yours.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why, I never said a thing about it,
Speaker 1: but we've always been good, Like he don't like me,
Speaker 1: that he hates you, he wants to beat you up.
Speaker 2: Remember that I may be guilty of some things like that,
Speaker 2: and I may I may be guilty of having girls
Speaker 2: write you love letters too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, there was some of those.
Speaker 2: Like I'm like, man, somebody's writing me a love letter?
Speaker 1: Who is?
Speaker 2: And You're like, huh wow, yeah you should ye for whatever.
Speaker 2: So you know, we're dumb kids. I was a dumb
Speaker 2: kid especially.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like that sets the tone
Speaker 1: of who Randy Wise is. He's kind of a joker,
Speaker 1: kind of a prankster, pretty funny. Uh loves to try
Speaker 1: to like get a reaction out of people, you know,
Speaker 1: will say and do things to try to get a
Speaker 1: funny reaction for fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all it's all for good intent, right and
Speaker 2: and yeah, hasn't always played out in my favor, but
Speaker 2: you know what, I can see myself in that. And
Speaker 2: then when somebody tells me something two years later, you
Speaker 2: know that they did to me, I think maybe it's
Speaker 2: a joke. But that's not always true too, which I
Speaker 2: think we're gonna talk about later in this podcast.
Speaker 1: Right right, we'll get we'll get to that. We'll get
Speaker 1: to that. So I wanted to kind of set the
Speaker 1: tone with that little story, and I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of shortly thereafter Randy and I decide we're gonna be
Speaker 1: bow hunters. We wanted to bowhunt. I got that got
Speaker 1: the bug the year before we started bowhunting, and Randy's like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I want to bowhunt too. So we worked
Speaker 1: really hard. We we you know, we didn't. We weren't
Speaker 1: just handed a bunch of money as kids, you know,
Speaker 1: back then, you know, we we just had to work
Speaker 1: and make our money and earn our way, which was
Speaker 1: good because you know, I feel like we hate Yeah,
Speaker 1: we worked. We worked in the hayfield. We worked, We
Speaker 1: worked at dairies. We did hard labor, laborious work putting
Speaker 1: up hay all summer, saving that money. And I bought
Speaker 1: my first bow and all the gear. Randy bought his
Speaker 1: first bow and all the gear, and we bought elk calls.
Speaker 1: We're like, all right, we're gonna learn how to use these.
Speaker 2: And that was the summer between eighth and ninth grade.
Speaker 1: No, it was freshman year and sophomore year we bought
Speaker 1: this stuff. So so the summer between then is so
Speaker 1: we were fifteen. Okay, you're a year older than me,
Speaker 1: so you must have been sixteen. But anyhow, we get
Speaker 1: this these calls, and we played with them and practiced them,
Speaker 1: and we kind of liked I think we both liked
Speaker 1: the same diaphragm. But then you had an external call.
Speaker 1: It was like one of those elk O E l
Speaker 1: k ink talk. It looked like two plastic almost like
Speaker 1: two plastic credit cards that were kind of melted and
Speaker 1: bent and had a rubber band in between them, and
Speaker 1: you could kind of blow on it, make it a
Speaker 1: little Wasn't.
Speaker 2: That a cow talk was a cow talker? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you had one of those, and you're like,
Speaker 1: you were pretty like like that calls. Yeah, You're like,
Speaker 1: I spent twelve dollars for this, Why I'm want to
Speaker 1: use it. I'm gonna call some milk in with that.
Speaker 2: That was three hours of labor.
Speaker 1: So fast forward. We practiced with their calls, We practiced
Speaker 1: with their bows all summer. We got really good shooting bows,
Speaker 1: got really good with our calls for for what we were
Speaker 1: I feel like we were both really naturally gifted it
Speaker 1: and picking up on calls and using them. And we
Speaker 1: get to opening day and our first spot we wanted
Speaker 1: to go to opening day, well, it rained the night
Speaker 1: before and it was just really brushy and thick, and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh man, we're gonna be soaking wet if
Speaker 1: we go this way. So let's go up to this
Speaker 1: other spot. So this farmer said, hey, you guys can
Speaker 1: hunt our place. So we get up and park by
Speaker 1: his house and walk over the hill and there's there's
Speaker 1: elk in the fields.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He's got these wheat fields that hadn't been harvested.
Speaker 2: Yet yeah, and.
Speaker 1: They were right there. We're like, wow, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: And the bowl was like bugling on his own and
Speaker 1: running around chasing cows.
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, how is this the one? How
Speaker 2: you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: How great is this? Well? Yeah, and I'm like I'm
Speaker 1: like I look down. I'm like, Ranny, I forgot my
Speaker 1: bugle tube. Oh yeah, And you're like, oh, I forgot
Speaker 1: my diaphragm. I'm like, that's okay. I said, give me
Speaker 1: your bugle tube. I'll call I'll call for you. And
Speaker 1: you're like, no, no, no, no, no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no, you'll you'll call it into yourself. Well,
Speaker 1: we give give me. He's like, I've got this elk
Speaker 1: talk thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there's a lot at that time, Dirk, we
Speaker 2: didn't understand about even calling out right, Like, we didn't
Speaker 2: know a lot about calling out.
Speaker 1: No, he never called it out ever before. This was
Speaker 1: the first time in history of our history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't know. There's a lot we didn't know.
Speaker 2: And we both wanted to we both wanted to be successful.
Speaker 2: And the whole forgetting the tube having reads and a
Speaker 2: cow talk on my end, it was very I don't
Speaker 2: even know it was a very pivotal moment. I feel
Speaker 2: like in our hunting relationship as early day hunting, you know,
Speaker 2: because we both wanted to do our own thing, but
Speaker 2: we didn't have a concept of working together necessarily. Right.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this, You wanted to do that. Right,
Speaker 1: We had our own mind on what should be done
Speaker 1: to kill these elk.
Speaker 2: In Yeah, we had differences. We all had our own opinions,
Speaker 2: and neither one of us knew what was right. But
Speaker 2: what we did know is we worked for the stuff
Speaker 2: we had and what we brought for that day, and
Speaker 2: we wanted to work that into the equation to each
Speaker 2: of our favors. And so there we were, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 1: So I start cal calling and I start bugling into
Speaker 1: my hand, like amusing my hand as like a tube
Speaker 1: with a glove on it. And it sounded it probably
Speaker 1: sounded like a hog squealing. Honestly, it sounded terrible. And
Speaker 1: then you you had your elk talk jabbed into the
Speaker 1: end of that tube and you were blowing on that thing,
Speaker 1: and it sounded just as terrible. It's sounded like somebody
Speaker 1: was killing a chihuahua or something.
Speaker 2: It was horrible, but just the same back in the
Speaker 2: eighties you could whistle and elk.
Speaker 1: These elk were unpressured.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that it was some exclusive ranch or something
Speaker 1: that nobody else got to hunt. Just nobody really bow
Speaker 1: hunted that area back then. It was just as everybody
Speaker 1: else went to the back country.
Speaker 2: It was amazing time. We were in the.
Speaker 1: Front country, uh close to close to home, and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody really messed with these elk, just because people thought
Speaker 1: we got to go to the mountains. So we start
Speaker 1: calling to these elk, and the bull starts bugling his
Speaker 1: head off and running around and chasing these cows around,
Speaker 1: and Randy kind of angles his way up and he
Speaker 1: gets to the edge of that field. Before me, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of stuck in this pin down in this like
Speaker 1: open spot down the bottom of this draw. But he
Speaker 1: kind of took a different line and had a more cover,
Speaker 1: and he got to the edge of that field, and
Speaker 1: that bowl had kind of walked off and pushed his
Speaker 1: cows off away, you know, probably a couple hundred yards,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I see Randy and he
Speaker 1: bends over and he puts he kind of hunches over
Speaker 1: and he puts his bow over his head. He goes,
Speaker 1: he goes, does this weird trot thing across the field
Speaker 1: with the bow over his hand and head or his head,
Speaker 1: like it's an elk you're emulating. That looked like an elk.
Speaker 1: And this this wheat was tall. It was like probably
Speaker 1: waste hime. And you go bouncing across this field and
Speaker 1: then just you know, you get out there like one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards and just disappear into the wheat.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's never going to work. And I
Speaker 1: look over and that bull had stopped and seen you
Speaker 1: and just made a bee line, just ran right charged me.
Speaker 1: He charged in, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I'm like, and he just stops.
Speaker 1: I'm like, and I see the bull kind of fidget around.
Speaker 1: I'm like, and then he kind of did it again.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is going on? And then pretty soon
Speaker 1: he turned around and trotted back to his cows, round
Speaker 1: him up and took off, And I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: heck happened?
Speaker 2: Randy?
Speaker 1: What why did you shoot that thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So on my end of it, my perspective was
Speaker 2: exactly that, except I remember a calf following the bowl
Speaker 2: and there was a draw before the ridge eyes up
Speaker 2: on top of a ridge in this so Idos has
Speaker 2: rolling wheat fields. We're not Midwest flat Landers where we
Speaker 2: have rolling ridges between out in our fields. Right. So
Speaker 2: I'm up on the say, the high point of the ridge,
Speaker 2: and so playing with the elk originally, and I'm down
Speaker 2: in the timber on a fence line, calling Dirk calling
Speaker 2: on his end the elk all run. There's let's call
Speaker 2: it a twenty five head. Heard a couple of bulls
Speaker 2: a little five point which is the herd bowl, and
Speaker 2: they're one hundred and fifty yards from me, down on
Speaker 2: Dirk's end of the field, and me and Dirk went
Speaker 2: separate ways, and I end up belly crawling and fight
Speaker 2: my way through this terrible brush that we deal with
Speaker 2: all the time where we're from. And I get on
Speaker 2: the fence line and as I break through this brush,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm cow calling and bugling as best I can
Speaker 2: with these kind of half assed calls that I got
Speaker 2: on my arsenal. And the bowl would work from Dirk's
Speaker 2: end of this hundred and fifty fie yard field down
Speaker 2: to my end. And I remember that bowl coming probably
Speaker 2: fifteen yards from me, but I can't even lift my bowl,
Speaker 2: let alone draw back. I'm like in dead broken brush.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's terrible brush in there, Like I
Speaker 2: can barely get through it. Dirk Bugle's bowl runs down
Speaker 2: one hundred fifty yards where the elk are the herd,
Speaker 2: and I get out cross the fence line, and I think,
Speaker 2: all right, the herd spook does not coming my way again,
Speaker 2: and I need to cross this wheat field and work
Speaker 2: my way over to the south east corner of the field.
Speaker 2: Get back into the timber. Yeah, get back into the timber.
Speaker 2: And I do know the country. We've been there, you know,
Speaker 2: we know that we know the area. There's there's a
Speaker 2: power line road through there, or power line that cuts
Speaker 2: through the timber where the power line utility is cut
Speaker 2: back for eazem and whatnot. So my thoughts are I
Speaker 2: need to cross his open wheatfield and get to that
Speaker 2: power line road, and Dirk's t goanna get a chance
Speaker 2: to hunt and bogle and shoot this bowl. But when
Speaker 2: they spook or whatever he shoots or whatever happens, they're
Speaker 2: going to have to go out that ind because I've
Speaker 2: already basically ruined this end of the field. So that's
Speaker 2: their only exit out that way. So I want to
Speaker 2: kind of be in position to flank them. So yeah,
Speaker 2: like Dirk said, I get out in the field. I
Speaker 2: put my bow over my head because I have no cover,
Speaker 2: and I'm cow calling and I'm hunkering down like I'm
Speaker 2: some kind of elk. And that bowl sees me, and
Speaker 2: he charges me, and there's a calf that follows me,
Speaker 2: or follows him, and I lose sight of the bowl,
Speaker 2: but I can still see the calf, and the calf stops,
Speaker 2: and I have no cover. I'm in a wheat field.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, I'm twenty yarder approximately
Speaker 2: to this bowl for the first time in my life
Speaker 2: as this teenage kid, to my first shot at an elk,
Speaker 2: and I'm scared to death. I'm honestly, I'm scared to death.
Speaker 2: My adrenaline is pumping, my heart's beating. You know, I've
Speaker 2: already this thing's already came in on me. And he
Speaker 2: was a mad bull. Remember he was mad as hell. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was a Yeah, he was a mad bull.
Speaker 1: And well he's seen you, he's seen that other bull
Speaker 1: over there. Yeah, and then he disappeared and then come
Speaker 1: to kill you.
Speaker 2: And he come in and I was scared to death.
Speaker 2: And I remember shooting that thing or shooting at that thing,
Speaker 2: and I watched my arrow shoot underneath it's his brisket
Speaker 2: like between it right right in that corner between his
Speaker 2: front leg. You know. It just shot through the grass,
Speaker 2: the wheat field, and he rolled and turned and ran off,
Speaker 2: you know, and gosh what at a time the adrenaline
Speaker 2: was pumping. I was obviously, you know, broken hearted. I
Speaker 2: didn't get it, didn't kill him, you know, but he
Speaker 2: ran off. Helped me out here. What happened next? Like
Speaker 2: he so he ran off your direction and got the herd,
Speaker 2: and I think they headed out that power line.
Speaker 1: I was trying to flank him from h Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was over at that point. But the next day,
Speaker 1: I mean every day this this this was a Saturday
Speaker 1: or something, but but every day we'd go back out
Speaker 1: there chasing things around him. And I think it was
Speaker 1: a week later maybe we were back out there, and
Speaker 1: we didn't like, we weren't in the teamwork. We were
Speaker 1: like kind of every man for himself thing. We hadn't
Speaker 1: figured out teamwork, like we I want to do it
Speaker 1: like this, and you're like, I want to do it
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're just like.
Speaker 1: Okay, well cool, well I'm gonna do this. You're gonna
Speaker 1: do it. We're gonna try to get these elk.
Speaker 2: Both of us.
Speaker 1: Are going to try our own little stories. But then
Speaker 1: one day we split up and I drop you off
Speaker 1: and you kind of went in that same area, and
Speaker 1: my brother and I we drove around, way around and
Speaker 1: come in from a different side. O.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: I'll say, Randy, I think you might be the only
Speaker 1: person I know that has shot every single arrow in
Speaker 1: his quiver at an elk and not got an elk
Speaker 1: at a different elk, at different helk in the same day,
Speaker 1: in the same day, right, and not and not got one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about the heydays of the eighties when
Speaker 2: when you could whistle or bugle or whatever, like, they
Speaker 2: had had zero hunting pressure on archery or calling in
Speaker 2: where we lived, and it was so easy to call
Speaker 2: an elk. But in my defense, I would get so
Speaker 2: wound up my heart would pump a thousand miles an hour,
Speaker 2: my adrenaline with a pump a thousand my hour. I
Speaker 2: had one of them powermag bows. It was one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten pounds of pull back because I thought that's
Speaker 2: what you needed, and that's what they sold me. And
Speaker 2: you know, like so like one hundred and ten pound bow?
Speaker 2: Was it one hundred and ten bout? What was it? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it was no, this is no exaggeration, like it
Speaker 2: was ridiculous. You know.
Speaker 1: You know, you got guys shooting eighty pound bows today
Speaker 1: and most people shoot about seventy and you got Camaines
Speaker 1: pulling on a hundred pound bow. But this is no bullshit.
Speaker 1: Randy had one hundred and ten pound bow. And I
Speaker 1: remember you told me the story when you went into
Speaker 1: the bow shop and to buy a bow and there
Speaker 1: was a bow landing there and the guy said, hey,
Speaker 1: don't even attempt to draw that. And he's like, I've
Speaker 1: only seen one other person draw it and you and
Speaker 1: you picked it up and pulled it back like twice,
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 2: Was nothing like fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like, what the hell right, and you
Speaker 1: put there like, well, I want one of those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like that's at that time, you know, pounded equal
Speaker 2: speed right and performance right, and so the if you
Speaker 2: could man up and get a certain pound bow, you're
Speaker 2: automatically at an advantage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and an overdraw you gotta have an overdraw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to have an overdrawn your bow that way,
Speaker 1: you're just shooting the lightning fast.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. You know. Yeah at that time, you know,
Speaker 2: I had what I thought was the catsw oh, yeah
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: I was jealous. Was all I had was an eighty
Speaker 1: pound bowl with bow with sixty five percent let off.
Speaker 1: And I was a little jealous.
Speaker 2: And I can't remember really any of my friends be
Speaker 2: all to pull out. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't pull it, yeah, and it made me so
Speaker 1: pissed off. I was just like, I'm like, give me
Speaker 1: that thing, and I would try to pull it like
Speaker 1: this is this is bullshit, Like how how can you
Speaker 1: pull this bow? Like it's you know, not to brag
Speaker 1: up Randy, but he kind of had superhuman strength. He's
Speaker 1: got this superhuman grip and superhuman strength, and I've never
Speaker 1: seen anything like it. Yeah, anyway, but anyway, back back
Speaker 1: there to it.
Speaker 2: So I had this this this bow I had. You know,
Speaker 2: we worked hard, like he said, and we anyway, I
Speaker 2: didn't know why I couldn't hit a freaking elk Like
Speaker 2: that same day he's talking about him and his brother
Speaker 2: went this way, I went this way. I'm hunting solo
Speaker 2: and I have these bults, Like I have a bull
Speaker 2: come in twenty yards, I can't hit it. I missed
Speaker 2: the one that I was pretending to be a both
Speaker 2: with my bow upside down my head. He came at
Speaker 2: twenty yards. I couldn't hit it, multiple times, time after
Speaker 2: time through that course of art first few years, Like
Speaker 2: I couldn't freaking hit one, and I don't. I didn't
Speaker 2: know what was wrong, Like I honestly couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 2: pinpoint it. I was so frustrated. I was disheartened. I
Speaker 2: was so far from hitting elk. I never even wounded one,
Speaker 2: Like it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: What was the pivot? What was the pivoting point? Like,
Speaker 1: when did you figure out what you were doing wrong?
Speaker 2: Well, I was whitetail hunting, and I've been white tail
Speaker 2: hunting on the ground. I had two we'll call them brothers,
Speaker 2: white tail nice five byce coming in.
Speaker 1: We're in ten point to the eastern folks.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And and it's cattle country on the verge
Speaker 2: of a huge canyon, right it's it's this canyon is
Speaker 2: known to everybody, all the locals. Is literally a hell
Speaker 2: and so I'm hunting the top of that where it
Speaker 2: comes out on top. It's kind of prairie land on top,
Speaker 2: and there's a coupond there and we we hate derk
Speaker 2: and I hate for everybody. We knew, all the farmers.
Speaker 2: They let us have permission to hunt everybody. We had
Speaker 2: special rights to some of this private land because of
Speaker 2: all our effortin right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this worked our butts off for these farmers.
Speaker 2: Farmers. Yeah, they freaking loved us, you know that.
Speaker 1: One guy's like, if you want to shoot an milk,
Speaker 1: you have to shoot two though, Like no, no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, no, you have to shoot two of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They they literally encourage us to thin the herd.
Speaker 2: They wanted these elk off their property, so their food. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The pivotal point for me killing something with my bow
Speaker 2: was I was whitetail hating. I always enjoyed elk haning
Speaker 2: in the morning because they were very active. They they
Speaker 2: called a lot back in those days, but not so
Speaker 2: much in the evening for my taste. And I honestly,
Speaker 2: I didn't care to hunt elk in the evening as
Speaker 2: much as I did whitetail because the white tail in
Speaker 2: that country, there's some beautiful bucks, and I really wanted
Speaker 2: to get one of these big bucks with my bow.
Speaker 2: And I'd got busted a few times on the ground
Speaker 2: where they came in out of this big canyon to
Speaker 2: this cow pond, and so I decided to build a
Speaker 2: tree stand, you know. So it was like noon, two
Speaker 2: o'clock in the afternoon. It took me a couple hours,
Speaker 2: and I built. I had a little Mechita screw gun,
Speaker 2: and I built me a tree stand out of two
Speaker 2: by fours and climbed up in it, and I had
Speaker 2: a burl sack kind of blind around it to block
Speaker 2: my motion. And so there sweat is hot. It was
Speaker 2: very hot, you know. I remember the heat. And I
Speaker 2: get up in that thing and it's like two o'clock
Speaker 2: and I have to wait till like seven thirty. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I got five hours roughly before the last
Speaker 2: thirty minutes when actually White Hill come out, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting there and two three hours later, here
Speaker 2: comes a combined like it just happens to be. It
Speaker 2: just happens to be, you know, time to harvest. And
Speaker 2: so about every forty minutes this combine would go by
Speaker 2: two or three times before dark set in. He had
Speaker 2: come swathen by and wave at me and my tree stand.
Speaker 2: I'm on them. I'm on the on the cattle side
Speaker 2: of this fence line, and you know, I'm a high
Speaker 2: with this guy and he's eat, He's gotten the eat,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? You know?
Speaker 2: And so as it. You know, we're in the last
Speaker 2: half hour daylight and I'm glass and I can see
Speaker 2: the deer coming out, but they're they're three hundred yards away,
Speaker 2: you know. And I'm like this, this guy in the combine,
Speaker 2: it's got everything fouled up where I'm at. They're not
Speaker 2: coming into this cowpond and they're gonna come in out
Speaker 2: down here, and I need to make a decision. Am
Speaker 2: I going to go try and sneak this fence line
Speaker 2: that has brushed on the bob wire and try and
Speaker 2: get in a position to shoot one of these deer
Speaker 2: because I'm literally deer hunting.
Speaker 1: But I have I have.
Speaker 2: An ELK tag, you know, so I'm gonna move in
Speaker 2: on these deer. I take one look back down to
Speaker 2: this canyon that's literally a hell hole, and there's a
Speaker 2: hurd ELK thirty yards from me coming out of this
Speaker 2: canyon on this trail to this cowpond, and the lead
Speaker 2: out comes up and let's call my feet twelve to
Speaker 2: fourteen feet off the ground, off this homemade tree stand thing,
Speaker 2: and she comes in. She's at seven yards or less.
Speaker 2: Like it's a down it's a downward shot for me.
Speaker 2: Pretty steep angle, pretty steep angle, straight, you know, it's
Speaker 2: pretty down right, And she knows something's up, like I
Speaker 2: can tell. She's alert. She knows something's up. But I'm
Speaker 2: not calling. I'm silent, you know, I'm I'm white tail hut.
Speaker 2: And where we're at it's it's bowls or cows. And
Speaker 2: I have this I have to reach over with my
Speaker 2: burlac sac covering to get my bow over the top
Speaker 2: of it to be able to shoot straight down at her.
Speaker 2: And right before I pull the trigger, well, it's like
Speaker 2: I always do. I don't know. Let me say I've
Speaker 2: shot at fifteen olcause this time haven't hit one yet,
Speaker 2: you know, it was ridiculous back in the those days.
Speaker 2: And right before I squeeze on my release, I notice
Speaker 2: I'm not looking through my peep site like I ain't
Speaker 2: I see my pins right, you know, and my pins
Speaker 2: on the elk, but my peep sites clear off to
Speaker 2: the right side of my face. I don't even care
Speaker 2: where that thing's.
Speaker 1: Out, not even close, not even close.
Speaker 2: And it dawned on me at that time. That's why
Speaker 2: I missed all those previous elk because of the excitement
Speaker 2: of the moment. I mean, like, this is a cow,
Speaker 2: like she's the lead cow, and my heart's beating a
Speaker 2: thousand miles an hour, right, And because I've missed so
Speaker 2: many now I'm frustrated. I'm angry with myself and all
Speaker 2: this stuff's going on emotionally inside of me. And but
Speaker 2: but probably because I had the screen of this camouflage
Speaker 2: burlap sack and I'm in a tree stand that like,
Speaker 2: I have a few extra seconds before I pull the trigger,
Speaker 2: and I, for some reason I realized I'm not looking
Speaker 2: through that peep site, so I pulled the peep site
Speaker 2: in I'm like, oh man, that's where I've been going wrong.
Speaker 2: And I shoot that cow, which you know, that's the
Speaker 2: extended story. I did get the cow. It was great,
Speaker 2: she dropped in her tracks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, dude, that's it's tough to hear that. Like, yea,
Speaker 1: but some people go there like for even further, you know,
Speaker 1: years and years, Like they don't diagnose their their issue.
Speaker 1: They black out, they do whatever they're not. They just
Speaker 1: get so caught up in excitement, excited in the moment
Speaker 1: they forget their shot process. So that was cool that
Speaker 1: you were able to finally catch yourself in that moment
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, I see what I've been doing, right,
Speaker 1: that's what I've been missing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So unfortunately for me, you know, I I realize that,
Speaker 2: but that's probably eight years after I started bow hunting
Speaker 2: or some We're in there and Dirk been killing out
Speaker 2: the whole time, you know, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Like just like, I'm like, what the hell's going on?
Speaker 1: You know, and.
Speaker 2: Dirk's just knocking tag after tag, you know, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the hell's wrong with me?
Speaker 1: Anyway, you had a pretty good run with a with
Speaker 1: a tree stand hunting. Yeah, like another time you shot
Speaker 1: a spike bowl out of a tree stand by a pond.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1: A lesson you wanted to you know, early season, hot
Speaker 1: season places where you elk need not a lot of water,
Speaker 1: but there's cow ponds or there's ponds around. It's a
Speaker 1: great place to put a tree stand. You shot a
Speaker 1: spike that had a broken skull. Yes, that was That
Speaker 1: was always crazy. I always like to tell that story
Speaker 1: to people when they're talking about weird stuff they found
Speaker 1: in the woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was. That was inner and so as you said,
Speaker 2: you know, so after that, I kind of got on
Speaker 2: into the tree stand el cunning for a little while,
Speaker 2: and I had a purple tree stand. I put on
Speaker 2: the same pack frame we.
Speaker 1: Talked screw screw two by four. Yeah, into the tree
Speaker 1: with you, Pakita.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went all out and bought me one of
Speaker 2: these portable tree stands. Job. It wasn't a self climber.
Speaker 2: It was when you had to you know, screw in
Speaker 2: peg deal.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was a screwing pig tree stand guy. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I screw in, put my stand up and the same
Speaker 2: pack frame we talked about about me pranking, prank, being
Speaker 2: prankster down in the back country, you know, the same
Speaker 2: same darn thing, same backpack. You know. It's like, I
Speaker 2: leave my backpack at the bottom of my tree because
Speaker 2: while I'm up in the tree, and I'm only fifteen
Speaker 2: feet up because I'm over a pond, it's thirty seven
Speaker 2: yards across the furthest point from from me. It's five
Speaker 2: twenty in the afternoon. I remember it like yesterday. Bear
Speaker 2: comes in on the same trail that I hiked in
Speaker 2: and I could tell he sniffing my trail and he's
Speaker 2: sniffing to me, and he sniff all the way to
Speaker 2: the base of my tree and he rattles the buckles
Speaker 2: and stuff on my little backpack. Oh really, yeah, and
Speaker 2: it scared it. It startled him, and he pounced off,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of reminded me of like a meal
Speaker 2: deer the way he left out through the tall grass,
Speaker 2: kind of bounced down there. And so he bounced on
Speaker 2: out of there. And then I sat there for another
Speaker 2: two hours. It was in the seven o'clock range now,
Speaker 2: and I thought, man, so why I'm here is because
Speaker 2: I seen twenty five head and some bulls here the
Speaker 2: day before. Yeah, of elk. So I decided I'm going
Speaker 2: to set up here and try and you know, I
Speaker 2: know they're here. I know they come out just before dark,
Speaker 2: and so I want to get things fired up just
Speaker 2: a tad bit earlier because I'm hunting now. So I
Speaker 2: decided to do some calling from this tree stand and
Speaker 2: two two and a half hours after I've been in
Speaker 2: this tree stand, I do some cow caols and bugle,
Speaker 2: and I'm not kidding at all. Forty yards across from me,
Speaker 2: a spike gets up out of the brush. He been
Speaker 2: betted down there the whole time, the whole time I
Speaker 2: climbed the tree, the whole time I set up my
Speaker 2: tree stand.
Speaker 1: The bear, the whole deal.
Speaker 2: He been betted down with inside of me that I
Speaker 2: couldn't see because he was betted down in the brush
Speaker 2: and whatnot. He stands up and he circles over, and
Speaker 2: this to me was the first time I ever passed
Speaker 2: up And Ok, he's a spike bowl and I knew
Speaker 2: there was a nice bowl there because I'd seen him
Speaker 2: the night before, so I decided not to shoot him.
Speaker 2: He's at thirty seven yards. He's bellied deep in this
Speaker 2: cow pond, and he gets out of the pond. He
Speaker 2: circles around. He literally gets in the same trail that
Speaker 2: that bear walked in, and he followed that bear's trail
Speaker 2: in my trail all the way up to the buckles.
Speaker 2: He's seven feet below my heels in this tree stand.
Speaker 2: Like I can see his fuzzy little elk corn, you know,
Speaker 2: he hadn't rubbed his velvet is the first two days
Speaker 2: of season, late August, and yeah, I passed him up
Speaker 2: and then he turns, wrinkles my back, back turns and
Speaker 2: he walks back and he circles back around and gets
Speaker 2: bellied deep in the pond again. And he's at thirty
Speaker 2: seventy yards. I him with my range fire. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm shooting him. You had, you had your chance to
Speaker 2: get away, and so I shoot him and my arrow goes,
Speaker 2: you know, passed through, which I'm like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: super excited he passed through. And he runs forty yards
Speaker 2: and piles up that. Yeah, he had he he had
Speaker 2: spikes and his right side and his whole skull plate
Speaker 2: between the spikes were broken, and he would I don't
Speaker 2: think unimate through the winter honestly, because he had rott
Speaker 2: in his head and brain like he had.
Speaker 1: He had seat down inside there inside the brain hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something broke him. I don't know how is he
Speaker 2: not dead? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know you see a ton of bulls with broken
Speaker 1: pedicles and weird antler configurations and weird like like the
Speaker 1: pedicle and the complete wrong spot on their head. But
Speaker 1: I wonder do they reheal after all that and then
Speaker 1: just like they make it.
Speaker 2: I think this is a different deal though, because you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking about clear out on a brown tying and
Speaker 2: above to the whale tails or whatever something.
Speaker 1: But but they're they're like the pedicle right, it's like
Speaker 1: in the wrong spot on their melon, right on their skull.
Speaker 1: It's not in the right spot.
Speaker 2: His skull cap between his eyes were broken, like where
Speaker 2: it stitched together. Yeah, how did that happen? I have
Speaker 2: no idea. I always wonder that. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe who knows.
Speaker 1: But there's there's the road in a highway close by,
Speaker 1: you know, within a mile or two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it could have happened. The shootures in the
Speaker 2: skull was broken. Didn't you say it had maggots? It hadn't.
Speaker 2: He had an infection in maggots down inside of his
Speaker 2: skull plate. And there's no way he would have lived
Speaker 2: through the winter. So I got him, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and he was good. Yeah. I got my wife's uncle,
Speaker 2: uncle Fred, come come out and help help me pack
Speaker 2: him out. You know, we got him. And anyway, that
Speaker 2: was there was another you know, early time elk killing
Speaker 2: for me. That I realized my pins and yards. That's
Speaker 2: the first Elk I had ever effectively used the rangefinder on.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know what year that was two thousand,
Speaker 2: ninety nine or two thousand. Yeah, it was pretty Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Remember you had your little shanty up there at that time,
Speaker 1: in your little cabin. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I bought that ninety nine, so it was ninetey two thousand.
Speaker 2: I think it was that first sure you had that place. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so twenty five years ago. Whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, spikes are in trouble sometimes. You know, people
Speaker 1: are probably gonna scoff like I would never shoot a spike,
Speaker 1: But man, I've shot I've shot a ton of spikes.
Speaker 1: I know you have to. You know, sometimes you know
Speaker 1: it it's well, most of the time it's not about
Speaker 1: some majored out big rack that's gonna score x y Z.
Speaker 1: It's just about like filling the freezer, bringing home an Elk.
Speaker 2: Well, our priority is meeting the freezer. Yeah, And like
Speaker 2: I said, that's the first that's the only time we
Speaker 2: passed up a shot and I end up killing him anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But like for those twenty minutes until he got back
Speaker 2: into where I killed him, I was like I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have passed him.
Speaker 1: I know there's we had enough time to reflect and
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I shouldn't.
Speaker 2: We need we need to eat before we decide anything else. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's really the heart and soul of what why
Speaker 2: I all kind is I know you two is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we all want to kill big bulls. We all want
Speaker 2: to have the trophy role. But if it you know,
Speaker 2: if you're not fifteen miles in the back country, which
Speaker 2: is a different conversation altogether, It'd be hard for me
Speaker 2: to shoot a spike if I'm fifteen miles back in somewhere.
Speaker 2: But typical weekend warrior hunting, if it's brown it down, it's.
Speaker 1: Well, I always it's funny because people I've been there,
Speaker 1: We've you and I've been there. We've all been there.
Speaker 1: Like you get into some damn hell hole and you're like,
Speaker 1: do not shoot anything except for a giant ball, Like
Speaker 1: it's got to be like a three fifty bull or
Speaker 1: we're not going to kill it in here. But I
Speaker 1: feel like that's the wrong attitude. You should be like,
Speaker 1: do not kill anything but a spike or a calf
Speaker 1: because a spike or a calf is can be a
Speaker 1: lot easier to get out. Then they're so good to
Speaker 1: eat three fifty to be hard to pack out a
Speaker 1: place like that. Yeah, and to your point, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: so good to eat. I love spikes, they're so they're
Speaker 1: so naive.
Speaker 2: I would take a spike over a cow.
Speaker 1: Oh. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I've shot multiple cows, and I've learned a lot
Speaker 2: with cow killing. And I have learned that if they
Speaker 2: have a really black mane versus a lighter ten mane,
Speaker 2: the darker black mans are so much tender. There's so
Speaker 2: much a young cow. It's a younger cow. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: I've learned that because I also hunt Washington and I
Speaker 2: get cow tags right. And you know, I've shot say,
Speaker 2: we'll call it ten year, ten out of ten years, right,
Speaker 2: elk of cows.
Speaker 1: You've experimented, Yeah, And I've shot.
Speaker 2: You know, the the ones that I believe were lead
Speaker 2: cows versus the other cows. And if you can shoot
Speaker 2: a cow that has a really dark mane, from my experience,
Speaker 2: that will be the best to one on the table. Okay.
Speaker 2: I have a really dark Maine, dark Maine, Okay. So
Speaker 2: as they get older, they fade, the sun beats them down,
Speaker 2: they get bleached out a little bit, and that's I'll
Speaker 2: take that to the bank. And I believe that firmly
Speaker 2: because I feel like I've proved that to myself. So
Speaker 2: you guys all do what you want to do. But
Speaker 2: if you got a cow tag, shoot the dark main one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want good food. I shot a cow
Speaker 1: in Oregon. I had a sled Springs tag in Oregon
Speaker 1: when I lived in Oregon for I lived there for
Speaker 1: like five years or so. Back in my former life,
Speaker 1: I like to call it. Back in my former career
Speaker 1: when I worked slinging tires of lesh one. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and I put in, I drew. I had some points.
Speaker 1: I drew sled Springs back when it was easy to
Speaker 1: draw as a resident. And one of the local ranchers said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you can come out. He's like, he's the one that
Speaker 1: encouraged me. He's like, hey, you need to draw this
Speaker 1: tag and you can come out. We got tons out.
Speaker 1: Like I'm like, and I don't want to really not
Speaker 1: into it. He's like, no, put in for the tag
Speaker 1: gets tag. You can come out, you can hunt here,
Speaker 1: you can stay here, you know, just like beyond beyond,
Speaker 1: you know, generous with its. Yeah, I'm like okay. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, whatever, okay, I guess I'll put in
Speaker 1: for it. And the guys at work are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you needed to put in. That's that's a really good
Speaker 1: There's a ton of elk that that's the one that's
Speaker 1: the people would kill to go there.
Speaker 2: It's like a ten thousand acre place.
Speaker 1: So I draw this tag. I go out there and
Speaker 1: I hunt opening weekend and I seen that. I mean
Speaker 1: there's elk everywhere, hundreds. It would be a herd of
Speaker 1: four hundred elk. I'm like, oh my god, there's too
Speaker 1: many elk. But they weren't really bugling too much. But
Speaker 1: so I have a week off and later on I
Speaker 1: go and I chase these elk around, and I there
Speaker 1: were so many bowls and so many elk. Like when
Speaker 1: I would bugle, you might as well take your bugle
Speaker 1: too and throw it away. They didn't give a shit,
Speaker 1: like it meant nothing to the elk. There there was
Speaker 1: fourteen bulls bugling at all times. There's there's just too much.
Speaker 1: I was just one another voice. Nobody give a shit.
Speaker 1: So I had to start, you know, spot stock, you know,
Speaker 1: crawl in, you know, try to get a shot. Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 1: open his Ponderosa Pine. And he had a team of
Speaker 1: laborers there that would clear the land. He was the
Speaker 1: landowner was like paranoid for fire danger, so he limbed
Speaker 1: every tree to like six feet, took all the limbs off,
Speaker 1: every tree to six feet, took all the limbs, put
Speaker 1: them in piles, burned them.
Speaker 2: Every winter.
Speaker 1: Like this place, I could not find a freaking stick
Speaker 1: to rub a tree with. Like it was literally there
Speaker 1: was no sticks on the ground because the fire danger
Speaker 1: they were worried about.
Speaker 2: So it's so open.
Speaker 1: So time after time after time, I see a big
Speaker 1: bull and a big bull with a herd. You know,
Speaker 1: there's multiple bulls, you know, probably fourteen, fifteen, twenty bulls
Speaker 1: in this herd of four hundred cows. And you do
Speaker 1: like you would crawl and creep and just like get
Speaker 1: as close and you would. I would be like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in within range, and then something stupid freaking cows.
Speaker 2: There's so many eyes it would pick me off.
Speaker 1: So I had a ten day hunt. I'd hunted out there.
Speaker 1: I hunted my little heart out. I had some opportunities
Speaker 1: on some smaller bulls, but man, I really wanted it.
Speaker 1: I wanted a herd bowl. You know, I really wanted
Speaker 1: and things weren't like giants. These were not like, you know,
Speaker 1: three fifty type poles. These were like, you know, like
Speaker 1: but the biggest boll I saw was probably like a
Speaker 1: three twenty bowl.
Speaker 2: But I hunted all week.
Speaker 1: And just got my ass handed to me, you know.
Speaker 1: On the last day, you know, and I and I
Speaker 1: you know, some people probably turn their nose up to this.
Speaker 1: But on the last day, I'm heading back. It just
Speaker 1: had just gotten schooled again and I just pissed off.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm out, I'm going home.
Speaker 1: And I'm driving back to the to the ranch house
Speaker 1: to get my crap and load up my stuff and leave.
Speaker 1: And there's these three cows lay next to the road
Speaker 1: cow elk and I'm like, huh, I pull over. I
Speaker 1: got a rattle in diesel truck. And it's like running
Speaker 1: around around. Yeah, And I stop and look at him.
Speaker 1: They don't pay me, no mine, So I get out
Speaker 1: stand there my range finders zap them like fifty fifty
Speaker 1: four yards. I'm like, they're not even looking at me.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, huh, open up the back door, grab
Speaker 1: my bow, walk over the side of the road, get
Speaker 1: off the road because I shoot from the road. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to be legal. So I get
Speaker 1: to fifty yards of my zap again and they're still
Speaker 1: looking out there. They're just kind of chewing. They could
Speaker 1: not paying attention, like they don't care. And finally I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: if that want, if they would stand up, I might
Speaker 1: shoot that one. I might shoot that biggest one. So
Speaker 1: I start like I start, I start making eat calls
Speaker 1: with my mouth yea, And finally they they stand up.
Speaker 1: In this one in the middle, I wanted to shoot.
Speaker 1: She started get up, but she kind of like she
Speaker 1: kind of like had a struggle. I kind of goot
Speaker 1: up like like kind of hurt, like she's like this
Speaker 1: old cow right. I have my bow drawn back, put
Speaker 1: my fifty yard ten I shoot, and I see my arrow.
Speaker 1: It's like it's all in slow motion. I see my
Speaker 1: arrow go high. You see it higher than her back,
Speaker 1: and then it just disappears. And I don't hear a noise.
Speaker 1: I don't hear nothing. There's no reaction. She don't even
Speaker 1: batter ear or she won't even blink. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: how could I How did I miss? I'm like that
Speaker 1: felt such like such a good release. So I grab
Speaker 1: another row, put it on there, and I start, I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, Like, if if I didn't hit it
Speaker 1: on that shot, I have no business shooting again because
Speaker 1: that was like the perfect shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then so.
Speaker 1: I just know I stop. I'm like, okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to shoot again. And I look and she kind
Speaker 1: of like she starts looking around with her head like
Speaker 1: something's something's wrong, Like she she's looking around like, hey,
Speaker 1: what what's going on here? And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: her her knees get wobbly and she tips over dead
Speaker 1: like this is like thirty like not even thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: She tips over feet in the air, dead Like I've
Speaker 1: never seen an elk die with an arrow hit that
Speaker 1: fast in my life. So I get over there and
Speaker 1: it and it'd shot and it had passed through and
Speaker 1: the arrow was like twenty yards on the other side
Speaker 1: of her and the other elk, you know, the other
Speaker 1: COWSI ran off.
Speaker 2: But anyway, we loaded this thing.
Speaker 1: Up with a tractor. I mean, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: even embarrassed even and metting this whole story, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, for all the all the folks out there
Speaker 1: suffering and packing mean, I mean, you know, at least
Speaker 1: every now and then you get an easy one, right,
Speaker 1: and so skin this thing out. You know, the arrow
Speaker 1: hadn't even hit a rib, right, it would just a miracle.
Speaker 1: It just went through between two ribs on both sides,
Speaker 1: in and out and anyway, just it was a perfect
Speaker 1: capstone to that hunt. I got even with them, damn elky,
Speaker 1: I got me a cow, like screwing me over a
Speaker 1: whole week. I got me a cow. I got even.
Speaker 1: But back to your point, I can't remember. I wish
Speaker 1: I could. I didn't even get a picture, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how old. I don't know what her main
Speaker 1: looked like, but I will say like her ivories were
Speaker 1: like worn off to nothing, Like they were tiny and black,
Speaker 1: hardly nothing. And it was the toughest elk I've ever
Speaker 1: een in my tires. Absolutely, it was like the worst.
Speaker 1: I mean, it tasted fine, it wasn't gamy, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it was tough, like backstraps. You had to like bring
Speaker 1: a beef stroke or you had to make elks strogan
Speaker 1: off out of them.
Speaker 2: They were just oh like trying to cows are deceiving,
Speaker 2: you know, and me hunting. So I've been blessed to
Speaker 2: have basically two cow kill permits in Washington State for
Speaker 2: ten plus years, but probably fifteen years. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I have to do some math on that. But so
Speaker 2: me and my son Ryan have both literally killed elk
Speaker 2: multiple years. And so it's taken away from my mountain
Speaker 2: hunting of Idaho and bowl hunting, et cetera, because I'm
Speaker 2: a mean like I said earlier, and we get these
Speaker 2: it's fun. Yeah, we get these cow tags. But I've
Speaker 2: absolutely in my own world, between I mean, his amount
Speaker 2: of kills and my amount of kills, proven that if
Speaker 2: you can kill a cow, which is cow only for
Speaker 2: this situation, if you've proven that you've killed the darker,
Speaker 2: blacker maned cows, they're so they're so good. We've we've
Speaker 2: missed early on. We've shot some of the browner, tanner
Speaker 2: colored mans. You can't chew them like you're talking about.
Speaker 2: They're they're like an old bowl. They don't have that
Speaker 2: rut flavor. But they're tough. They're tough. They're tough man.
Speaker 2: They've been around for a long time, you know. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I a soon that I identified that, I'm like,
Speaker 2: don't shoot that one. Shoot that one, you.
Speaker 1: Know, burger meat and slow cracker, right, and I don't
Speaker 1: like that. I love Backstride, I love Elksteak, I love
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But you know, anyway, tweet his own for you guys
Speaker 2: out here listening to this in randy Land, which is
Speaker 2: where I live, shoot the ones with the black Mans.
Speaker 1: Write that down right right that down well, Now, in
Speaker 1: randy Land, it's not always been blue skies, tweety birds,
Speaker 1: lollipop all that, like, you know, it's not. It hasn't
Speaker 1: been all this like great like like lucky opportunities and
Speaker 1: like all this stuff. There has been some unlucky things happened.
Speaker 2: I know too.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna start on one. Now, back to
Speaker 1: your tree stand hunting. Yes, you were back trying to
Speaker 1: kill a white tailed deer.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, on.
Speaker 1: Out of a tree. And he had a he had
Speaker 1: a hunting partner at the time, and yeah, tell us
Speaker 1: about this, and this is a place you and I
Speaker 1: had for years had seen big bucks. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm a little jealous. I was like, bastard,
Speaker 1: You're going in there and get kill one of.
Speaker 2: Those big bucks. Yeah, all right, I know I know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about and there I was, and I've
Speaker 2: so I've targeted, like I said earlier, white tail in
Speaker 2: the evening out of tree stands, I'll hunting in the morning,
Speaker 2: white tail hunting in the evening. So I'd had a
Speaker 2: tree stand set up where I'd seen some very like,
Speaker 2: very beautiful bucks white tails, and I'm like, yes, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get one. So every time I sit in that stand,
Speaker 2: I see they don't seem to come out where I'm at.
Speaker 2: They're on this other ridge. And so I've decided I'll
Speaker 2: put my buddy in this stand that I already had established,
Speaker 2: and I'll pack frameman put up my own tree stand.
Speaker 2: And so this country's super steep, like it's ridiculously steep.
Speaker 2: So there's a big bowlpline Ponderosa Pine to the layperson. Yes,
Speaker 2: And so the game trail is at the upper elevation
Speaker 2: and this tree is below downhill of it, and so
Speaker 2: and it's at a slight angle. This tree is leaning
Speaker 2: because of the canyon country, et cetera. And so I
Speaker 2: put in this screw in footpags, you know, to climb
Speaker 2: up this tree. And I I get up there, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to consider this part of this podcast the
Speaker 2: safety talk for all you people who take for granted
Speaker 2: safety or don't consider safety now right, I'm here to
Speaker 2: tell you need to think about it. And and this
Speaker 2: is a real situation. So I'm higher in this tree,
Speaker 2: which the base of the tree you can't get your
Speaker 2: hands around the base of it, like you can't get
Speaker 2: your hands around half of it. It's a giant Pondurosa bulpine.
Speaker 2: And it's real dry country. It's a dry hair. And
Speaker 2: when you go up these huge trees, they are one
Speaker 2: hundred plus feet tall, you need to go up a
Speaker 2: certain I needed to go up a certain elevation to
Speaker 2: get straight across from the game trail, like to have
Speaker 2: literally a horizontal shot straight to the deer as it
Speaker 2: comes through this trail. I'm thirty feet in the air
Speaker 2: because this tree base is below the trail. Right. It's steep, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's steep country. Is like very steep country. And there's
Speaker 2: no limbs on these trees. Tell thirty feet up. They're
Speaker 2: huge trees. And well, so a buddy of mine, which
Speaker 2: I had a tree stand set up, we'll call it
Speaker 2: a one hundred yards away roughly. I had already had
Speaker 2: a tree stand there and it was over a watering hole,
Speaker 2: the only water you can find between there and the river,
Speaker 2: which is eight hundred yards downhill. So I'm like, you
Speaker 2: go here. I'm gonna go put up this portable tree
Speaker 2: stand here, and between the two of us, one of
Speaker 2: us is gonna get any giant white tail because there's
Speaker 2: a beautiful bucks here. So I get up that I'm
Speaker 2: I screwing my pigs. I climb up the tree and
Speaker 2: I have some five fifty cord and I'm hoisting up
Speaker 2: my portable tree stand from the ground and I'm straddling
Speaker 2: a four inch limb, which is the first limb thirty
Speaker 2: feet up from the ground on a sixty grade. Right,
Speaker 2: It's it's like a cow's face, cow's face, and I
Speaker 2: just I get my backpack that has this purple tree
Speaker 2: stwn and I set it on the next limb to
Speaker 2: my right, and I'm straddling this four inch limb, huge
Speaker 2: limb like you'd never suspect, right, And I set this
Speaker 2: up there, and I start taking these little bungee cords
Speaker 2: off of this tree stand on the backpack to unhook
Speaker 2: it so I can set up my trees down. And
Speaker 2: I have all these little screw and pick that I
Speaker 2: got up to this elevation and I'm literally if you
Speaker 2: look to your left, it's level to where I need
Speaker 2: to shoot this white tail that I think is going
Speaker 2: to come out at right, and it's earlier in the evening.
Speaker 2: So as soon as I start unbuckling these bunging cords
Speaker 2: from my tree stand the one I'm on, which is
Speaker 2: the first limb from the ground that I'm straddling, I
Speaker 2: hear this big and it shears off at the bait
Speaker 2: at the at the tree and I fall thirty feet.
Speaker 2: But because of the angles and everything, I thank god,
Speaker 2: I don't gut myself on my tree pegs.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, on the way, you know.
Speaker 2: So I fall to the ground thirty feet. When I
Speaker 2: hit the ground, I'm I'm fifteen feet from a property
Speaker 2: line where there's some fence line. You know, where we're from,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of different fence you know, there's a
Speaker 2: private properties and whatnot, and I have permissions to hunt
Speaker 2: there and et cetera. But there's a barb wire fence.
Speaker 2: It's a foresharing barbire fence. And I pile up in
Speaker 2: a pile of rocks literally like it's it's decomposed granite
Speaker 2: stone that I land in, and my heel is facing
Speaker 2: me like my leg is shattered. I can see my
Speaker 2: boot prints. My whole entire boot is looking at me
Speaker 2: from below, like not up, but down behind my kneecap
Speaker 2: like it's literally piled up. My back is in extreme pain.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm broken, like this is a safety situation here, right,
Speaker 2: there's a life it's a life critical situation. So I'm
Speaker 2: piled up. We do have two way radios between me
Speaker 2: and my hunting partner, and you know, I know, I'm
Speaker 2: I know without a doubt that my leg is entirely destroyed.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the other extents of my injuries are.
Speaker 2: And I get on this two way radio. I get
Speaker 2: my pack off, this pack frame that fell with me,
Speaker 2: with the tree stand that fell with me, and I
Speaker 2: dig this stuff out. I get on this two way
Speaker 2: radio and I called to him. I'm like, hey, I've fallen.
Speaker 2: I need help. This is emergency, right, That's all I that,
Speaker 2: you know. And in the meantime, I can feel my
Speaker 2: boot swelling, my foot inside my boot swelling like like
Speaker 2: it's it's bad, and and I I kind of army
Speaker 2: crawl to this fence I know I need to elevate.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been me medically trained. I was in
Speaker 2: the military. I know that. Like it's almost it's kind
Speaker 2: of weird, but it's almost like, I know my leg's
Speaker 2: screwed up and I need to just elevate it, and
Speaker 2: then I need to assess my other critical life components, right,
Speaker 2: And so I get to a fence line and I
Speaker 2: flip my leg up over the bottom rung of this
Speaker 2: bob wire fence and I can just feel the bones
Speaker 2: grinding and pouncing in there, and it just it's just
Speaker 2: like a j off the backside. It just flops off
Speaker 2: the back. My leg is destroyed, my ankle is destroyed,
Speaker 2: and my back has severe pain. And so I'm I'm
Speaker 2: in a bind, right and he's not answering right. So
Speaker 2: the message I'm telling you guys right now is you
Speaker 2: guys need to pick a hunting partner that you trust
Speaker 2: and you can have accountability for and you know he's
Speaker 2: got your back. Yeah, you know. And I hate to
Speaker 2: say that, but my hunting partner did not have my back,
Speaker 2: and you know he knows who he is. It it
Speaker 2: it wasn't relevant at the time. So anyway, moving on,
Speaker 2: I'm broken. It's two hours, three hours before dark. And
Speaker 2: not only if my radio didn't work, I could holler
Speaker 2: and he could hear me. We're not that far far. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're not that far apart. And but he's not responding,
Speaker 2: no response, and I'm on my own, and so I
Speaker 2: lay there. I get myself in position. I do leave
Speaker 2: my boot on because I think from my military training
Speaker 2: that apply pressure, and you know your boots are playing
Speaker 2: my boot. My boot in itself is applying basically a splint.
Speaker 2: Even though the heel was facing me, I balanced it
Speaker 2: and it would flop back and forth over this bob
Speaker 2: wire strand and I got it to where my body
Speaker 2: is downhill of this bob wire fence and my my
Speaker 2: head and chest is downhill and so everything's elevated. And
Speaker 2: I know that's the best condition I have, and as
Speaker 2: long as I don't have internal bleeding or external bleeding,
Speaker 2: which I had no idea of, right because I literally
Speaker 2: couldn't move. I like I moved enough to get myself
Speaker 2: in that situation, but it was like it was like
Speaker 2: I give up after that, right, you know, this is
Speaker 2: this is as far as I can go. End My
Speaker 2: back end up was broken in two places, and my
Speaker 2: leg and ankle was shattered and destroyed. So I lay
Speaker 2: there for two hours plus and I'm hollering. I'm on
Speaker 2: my mic I'm trying to get support, and he's not come,
Speaker 2: you know, And this is the guy we're like, we're
Speaker 2: good friends and anyway, eight people amblent. He comes to
Speaker 2: me after dark, surprised I'm alive. He's kind of chaotic,
Speaker 2: and you know, not everybody deals with trauma the same.
Speaker 2: He's he's out of sorts and he's gonna drive to town,
Speaker 2: which is an hour and a half away. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: go to these people's houses. And I'm kind of you know,
Speaker 2: I've had enough time to think, Yeah, you know, you
Speaker 2: know what needs to be done. Yeah, you hiked it
Speaker 2: this this house that's over here, and you use their phone,
Speaker 2: you call for ambulance. So we get that going. He
Speaker 2: does that, The ambulance comes. It takes eight people to
Speaker 2: pack me out out of this countryside. It's nasty, right,
Speaker 2: so I'm on a stretcher. I get packed out. We
Speaker 2: go in there in cheat room. They is a small town,
Speaker 2: Idaho hospital. They send me to a bigger hospital and
Speaker 2: another town another fifty miles away. So anyway, we get
Speaker 2: fixed up. Years go by. This kind of reminds me
Speaker 2: of this prank I pulled on you. Yeah, right years
Speaker 2: ago by, and you know, everything's good and we've been
Speaker 2: friends this whole time. And then he tells me, he
Speaker 2: confides in me that he heard me fall and when
Speaker 2: he was in my stand that I set up for
Speaker 2: him and put him on, he got queasy and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of sicked himself. He thought I died immediately, and
Speaker 2: then he heard me squalling like a well, he called
Speaker 2: me like a little woman. You know, He's like, I
Speaker 2: heard you crying like a little woman out there in
Speaker 2: the woods. You know, like he's some tough guy, but
Speaker 2: I'm the one out there in pain. Yeah. That he
Speaker 2: left everything right, you know, And so anyway, we discontinue
Speaker 2: our friendship after that. He left me there hoping that
Speaker 2: I was dead by dark, and it was. It was
Speaker 2: an hour after dark before you come to check on me.
Speaker 2: And so lessons learned is you know, you guys that
Speaker 2: that you hunt with and your brothers in the mountains,
Speaker 2: and you guys need to really understand, you know, there's
Speaker 2: there's hunting advantages where you trust each other for hunting
Speaker 2: events and calling events and who's the shooter and all
Speaker 2: this stuff, But there's actually a safety aspect that really
Speaker 2: should be considered. Base you trust your life with this person. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't think about it because there's not
Speaker 2: an injury. But these people that you're with, they need
Speaker 2: you need to trust them with your life, and you
Speaker 2: need to kind of vet them. I would say, I
Speaker 2: feel like that you guys should talk about that before
Speaker 2: you go hunting. How are you going to handle this
Speaker 2: situation if this happens, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: You know, if you cut yourself or wound yourself or
Speaker 2: cut an artery or you know, trip on a broadhead
Speaker 2: goes through your your you're you know, whatever the situation is,
Speaker 2: you guys that are out there hunting should discuss safety
Speaker 2: protocols and how to respond to him.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes, And I think that's very overlooked.
Speaker 2: Like we all will talk about like what your expectations
Speaker 2: for hunting.
Speaker 1: We always kind of talk about that, like oh I
Speaker 1: want this, I want to do that, and who's going
Speaker 1: to do this, who's gonna that, But we don't talk
Speaker 1: about the whole safety aspect enough, Like, hey, man, if
Speaker 1: something bad happens. This is, you know, our plan maybe whatever.
Speaker 2: I would have never guessed in a million years that
Speaker 2: this guy would have seized up because he got sick himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah right. He seems like a pretty I know him.
Speaker 2: I would have never thought that, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 2: I don't I don't really, I literally don't hold it
Speaker 2: him against him. But he wasn't there for me, right,
Speaker 2: you know. And and because of that, you know, we
Speaker 2: went separate ways, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking about people having their your back, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: also I've had Yeah, and now there's there's When I
Speaker 1: started off, I said, this is the Misadventures of Randy,
Speaker 1: So it's not just adventures, but there's been some misadventures too.
Speaker 2: And then his next story.
Speaker 1: And we're we're over an hour right now, but thank
Speaker 1: you all for listening, and I'm gonna I gotta get
Speaker 1: this story out because it's one of my favorite Andy stories.
Speaker 1: You were you were late season cow hunting. You had
Speaker 1: some of your your buddies from work on your crew
Speaker 1: hunting with you, and you get it. You shoot this
Speaker 1: elk and what happens this is yeah again, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it can happen to anybody, it's gonna happen, tory.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, And out of all this, I'm a survivor.
Speaker 2: So there I was, like Dirk said, he you know,
Speaker 2: he kind of told you we're we're at But I
Speaker 2: did shoot an elk.
Speaker 1: You guys were had the boat into this place. You
Speaker 1: got to guess use a boat to get to this
Speaker 1: place to shoot this elk?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, we we We were on a lake, north Idaho.
Speaker 2: It was in late November, hunt snow, sleet, kind of cold, misery, wet,
Speaker 2: foggy environment, and I I saw hurdle. I had a tag,
Speaker 2: the shot was good. I took it, It dropped and
Speaker 2: we went after it. That's the summary. Since we're late
Speaker 2: in this, so we hike hundreds of yards let's call
Speaker 2: it five hundred yards up up the mountain. And they
Speaker 2: had marked the tim and had brushed the lower brush
Speaker 2: for a future clear cut for this winter. So this's November.
Speaker 2: A lot of times in Idaho they timber fall in
Speaker 2: in the winter months when there's you can't excuse me,
Speaker 2: you can't haul logs because the roads aren't quite froze up,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So things have been cut, Timber been cut,
Speaker 2: timber been cut well the brush. The brush had been
Speaker 2: cut to get to the timber. The logs hadn't been
Speaker 2: dropped yet. So I shoot this cow. There's three others
Speaker 2: with me. We boat it up into this canyon country
Speaker 2: and we are hunting up way up in there, and
Speaker 2: life is good, like success. I'm the only one with
Speaker 2: the tag. It's a special draw thing. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Get my elk. It drops. We hike way up in there,
Speaker 2: and honestly, we have to drag it down this huge
Speaker 2: We have to drag it down this mountain and we
Speaker 2: have to get it down to the boat, and we
Speaker 2: have to load it on the boat, and then we
Speaker 2: have to boat for miles down to the boat ramp
Speaker 2: and we have to load it on the boat ramp,
Speaker 2: and then we have to drive miles and miles take
Speaker 2: it back to even the local town, which is still
Speaker 2: an hour plus from the normal town that we live in,
Speaker 2: right right, so we're way back in there. Well, well,
Speaker 2: we get to the elk. We got the elk. That
Speaker 2: ring's good and it's just snowing now. It's just coming down.
Speaker 2: It's slick. It's I don't know what the grade is
Speaker 2: on the hill, but it's plus steep. It's it's plus
Speaker 2: foury degrees, you know, it's it's steep, and it's slippery,
Speaker 2: and it's wet, and it's miserable. And I'm on the
Speaker 2: downhill side of this elk, and we've all decided instead
Speaker 2: it because it's just a downhill slippery drag, we'll just
Speaker 2: drag it down, get it on this boat, and we'll
Speaker 2: take it out hole. And so I'm on the downhill
Speaker 2: of the elk, pulling on the rear leg and it's
Speaker 2: just so cold and so slippery that I lose my
Speaker 2: grip on it and I fall backwards downhill onto the ground.
Speaker 2: So if you know, you guys need to need to
Speaker 2: picture an angle pulling and falling downhill. It's it's it's
Speaker 2: it's quite a drop. It's very awkward. Yeah, even though
Speaker 2: you're not far from the ground, it's still a considerable fall. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I fall and I get up and something's not right.
Speaker 2: I literally have an eight foch eight foot pine branch
Speaker 2: hanging out of my butttalks somewhere. You've been impaled. I
Speaker 2: was impaled. Yeah, I was impaled by something that was
Speaker 2: brushed by loggers. And so they have an angled, sharp
Speaker 2: inch and a half inch and a quarter you know
Speaker 2: branch that that impaled me. And I didn't know how what.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what the extremness of it was at
Speaker 2: the time because it happened so fast. And I got
Speaker 2: these three other guys who were trying to work this
Speaker 2: out down and I immediately stand up from this fall
Speaker 2: and I'm like, whoa, stop. Everybody's the top right and
Speaker 2: I have this thing penetrating me. But we're so far back.
Speaker 2: Like you know, they always say never like, never pull
Speaker 2: out if you're impaled.
Speaker 1: That's what they say.
Speaker 2: That's what they say. That's what they say. But they
Speaker 2: weren't in a place like this, and agree. I was
Speaker 2: military trained, like I know that. You know, if you
Speaker 2: get something stuck in your eye, put a DICKSI cup
Speaker 2: over and secured. This is not the same. This is
Speaker 2: an eight foot pine branch that is impaled me and
Speaker 2: I don't and I don't know how deep it is.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an inch. I don't know
Speaker 2: how deep it is. I can't tell.
Speaker 1: It just hurts.
Speaker 2: And I stopped the show. Stop dragging the elk. Everybody, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 2: Something's wrong. I'm hurt. And I'm on my feet and
Speaker 2: this thing is stick it out of the back of
Speaker 2: me like a peacock tail, and I don't know what,
Speaker 2: you know, my instincts are draw it out right, so
Speaker 2: because to see how, I don't know if it tore
Speaker 2: through my butt, cheek or my leg or whatever. I
Speaker 2: really don't know. It's pitch black. We're by the time
Speaker 2: this we're wailing into the evening gets dark at four
Speaker 2: thirty five o'clock this time of year, and so I
Speaker 2: grab the base of it where it's touching my flesh,
Speaker 2: and I draw it out and it's like twelve thirteen inches.
Speaker 2: It went inside me and it went between my ass
Speaker 2: and my tail bone, which I didn't know at the time,
Speaker 2: but it's up into my guts, and still I didn't
Speaker 2: know what was going on. I call over one of
Speaker 2: my my hunting buddies here and without humility, have to
Speaker 2: drop my drawers and say, what's the injury? Yeah, what
Speaker 2: what are we going? I don't see it. I don't
Speaker 2: know what the heck's going on. I'm like, what's the injury?
Speaker 2: And he's like, oh my god, Oh, we need to
Speaker 2: get you to the hospital. Oh my you know you're
Speaker 2: gonna die. That's that's his impression of what he sees.
Speaker 2: You're good, yeah, and we're we're so far from civilization. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is not convenient, and it is steep as steep
Speaker 2: as a cow's face. And they decide as a team
Speaker 2: that to keep me from going to shock, they should
Speaker 2: feed me alcohol. This is once you got back to
Speaker 2: the boat. No, no, they had in their back back.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're they're already celebrating a big hunt, you know,
Speaker 2: and we hadn't drink any yet, but they're ready, you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're backwoods fellas, and they're they're ready to party.
Speaker 2: You know, they're ready to celebrate. And so to keep
Speaker 2: you from going to shock, they decided to give me alcohol, which,
Speaker 2: to whoever's listening to this is, do not do this.
Speaker 2: Do not drink alcohol if you've been injured in the
Speaker 2: back country. This isn't a Western movie, right, yeah, this
Speaker 2: ain't poor poor you know, pull the bullet out old
Speaker 2: Colt forty five and dump the powder on you, and
Speaker 2: you know, set it on fire to catterize.
Speaker 1: This is not what it is, right, So don't do this.
Speaker 1: But this is what.
Speaker 2: Randy agreed to. I don't blame them. This is the
Speaker 2: nobody had, Nobody made me do it, nobody knew, right,
Speaker 2: And so you know, we start drinking. They're gonna they're
Speaker 2: gonna like keep me from going to shock by giving
Speaker 2: me alcohol. So me and one other guy, and because
Speaker 2: of the alcohol, my mind changes from survival mode to
Speaker 2: when you get this elkout mode, like you know, which
Speaker 2: is odd, it's weird. Yeah, this is weird.
Speaker 1: Now you got a potential like catastrophic injury. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: but you're like, we gotta get this elkout.
Speaker 2: Still, Guys, when you get this elk out, and it
Speaker 2: just so happens the boat that I have borrowed, the
Speaker 2: friend of mine who owned this boat was in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: He trusted me with the boat, right, So I didn't
Speaker 2: have a boat to send the I couldn't go to
Speaker 2: the hospital and let these guys go recover this elk
Speaker 2: the next day. Right, That's how I thought of it.
Speaker 2: And because I was, you know, unfortunately intoxicated at this point,
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, you bob, you're helping me out. These
Speaker 2: other two guys are gonna continue to drag this helk out.
Speaker 2: We're getting this helk out tonight and I won't accept
Speaker 2: anything other. Yeah, right, this is what we're doing. Right,
Speaker 2: So my butt's buckered, like I don't want to spill
Speaker 2: a drop of blood. My butts bluckered. We get it out.
Speaker 2: We go to the boat ramp, we load the boat,
Speaker 2: We drive the town. We go to the local emergency room,
Speaker 2: which just by coincidence, my wife is a nurse there.
Speaker 2: And what the on call er doctor says to do,
Speaker 2: she just happens to disagree with. Oh, which I give
Speaker 2: my wife my life in this situation. She refused to
Speaker 2: let them do what they wanted to do to me.
Speaker 2: They wanted to sew up the wound. So if you
Speaker 2: can imagine what happened is I had a plug of
Speaker 2: five layers of clothing that was missing, like a muzzleloader
Speaker 2: patch inside me. Oh yeah, thirteen inches. And so she
Speaker 2: didn't know that. Nobody knew that. And when I got home,
Speaker 2: I literally took a shower first, and I had her
Speaker 2: inspect my wound because she's a nurse. Which that's a
Speaker 2: lot of humility. Yeah, which remind everybody listening, is that's
Speaker 2: below my tailbone, but above my butt, that that little
Speaker 2: chunk of skin is where this inch and a quarter
Speaker 2: branch went in thirteen inches right up into my guts.
Speaker 2: And well that happened. I lost material from layers of clothing.
Speaker 1: You know, not to mention pieces of branch, yes, and bark,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I go home. I tell my wife I'm hurt,
Speaker 2: and I get in the shower and I'm rinsing things
Speaker 2: and I got pine needles and I got blood and
Speaker 2: I got everything going on, and I'm like, honey, I
Speaker 2: think I got a problem. We go to the er.
Speaker 2: The doctor says, oh my god, we need to sew
Speaker 2: this up. She says, no way, this needs you need
Speaker 2: to dig stuff out. Yeah, exactly. So we get ship quack. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so she love her, Thank you mama. She opposes the
Speaker 2: on call surgeon decision, and we get another ambulance who
Speaker 2: drives me an hour plus to a larger hospital who
Speaker 2: evaluates the situation and the next day does surgery. And
Speaker 2: I'm in the hospital for over a week. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a bad deal.
Speaker 1: So but talk about got your back. Those guys they
Speaker 1: got you out of it and that's what matters. And
Speaker 1: they got you drunk. Now here's the here's the kicker
Speaker 1: about the be the drinking like you couldn't have anesthesia
Speaker 1: because of drinking the alcohol.
Speaker 2: My god, they wouldn't give me. I was so thirsty
Speaker 2: in the emergency room. I wanted to water. They I
Speaker 2: wanted to like they're giving me drops from a ring
Speaker 2: drag just to give you know, they would not give
Speaker 2: me nothing. So back to the being alcohol affected, they
Speaker 2: will give you nothing. And maybe not even with alcohol,
Speaker 2: they will give you nothing before surgery, which was the
Speaker 2: next day.
Speaker 1: So, man, what an incredible story from from people who
Speaker 1: failed you to people who had your back, to back
Speaker 1: in the olden days when we had a lot of
Speaker 1: fun and did some some crazy stuff. And these are
Speaker 1: just some of the like some of our stories that
Speaker 1: we've had in the in the in the Elk woods
Speaker 1: and and in the in the years that we've known
Speaker 1: each other. You know, we didn't even talk about the
Speaker 1: time we found a dead guy. But I think that'll be.
Speaker 2: For another time. That's a whole nother story. That's a
Speaker 2: whole other story.
Speaker 1: And if we try to fit it in now, it's
Speaker 1: not even gonna He's not just a dead guy.
Speaker 2: He was a murderer.
Speaker 1: He was a murderer. But uh, we're gonna have We're
Speaker 1: gonna we'll have that story again at a later time.
Speaker 1: But uh, anyway, Randy, thanks so much again for coming
Speaker 1: on here. It's people, Ranny is family. Not only not
Speaker 1: only from being family from the marriage connection him his
Speaker 1: wife and my wife are sisters. But I mean, we've
Speaker 1: we've been together through thick and through thin. We've had
Speaker 1: each other's backs, like since seventh grade. And I can
Speaker 1: only hope that that the other folks out there have
Speaker 1: had somebody, a good friend like Randy to to be
Speaker 1: able to lean on and can fight in and and
Speaker 1: and go through all their their highs and lows of life.
Speaker 1: So appreciate you coming on here, Appreciate your friendship, and
Speaker 1: I look forward to the next adventure.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it was fun. More adventures to come. They
Speaker 2: never end right, especially with me, They never uh yeah anytime.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks for being on here, and we'll
Speaker 1: catch everybody on the flip flop yep.