Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. On
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm going to go over a quick recap
Speaker 1: of my recent Western Washington Roosevelt muzzle atter hunt, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a little bit about hook rot and
Speaker 1: just a general decline we're seeing in this area in
Speaker 1: our el chords, what we think the cause may be,
Speaker 1: and then what we can do moving forward.
Speaker 2: But first, like.
Speaker 1: All Cutting the Distance episodes, we're gonna take a few
Speaker 1: listener questions. If you have any questions for me or
Speaker 1: my guests, feel free to email them to us at
Speaker 1: CTD at Phelps game Calls dot com, send us a
Speaker 1: social message, and we'll do our best to get them
Speaker 1: on here. So our first question comes from Austin Smith.
Speaker 1: He wants to know what a strategy for late November
Speaker 1: archery bowl hunt would be. The elk are going to
Speaker 1: be quiet, the landscape severely limits glassing, it's snowing.
Speaker 2: Water is readily available.
Speaker 1: He thanks for input, he says, So, Austin, if I
Speaker 1: was you know, I was back when my early start
Speaker 1: to archery hunting. We had a late November early December
Speaker 1: archery hunt here and it was a lot different than
Speaker 1: the early season where I relied heavily on bugling, relied
Speaker 1: heavily on calling. I always tell people I still get
Speaker 1: this question a lot, even in my backyard, what calls
Speaker 1: should I use in November? And I tell everybody you
Speaker 1: should always have an external call, a cow call around,
Speaker 1: or a diaphragm around. But I typically will only use
Speaker 1: it if I need to stop them for a shot,
Speaker 1: or if I need to call to settle them down.
Speaker 1: So as far as calling goes, in my opinion, it
Speaker 1: can actually hurt your chance of success by putting them
Speaker 1: on alert looking in your direction. So once again, if
Speaker 1: I need to stop them for a shot, or if
Speaker 1: I need to calm or herd down, that maybe a
Speaker 1: ridge over or in the area, you can use it. Now,
Speaker 1: with that said, we have successfully called elk in during
Speaker 1: that late season, using some calf calls, cal call communication
Speaker 1: and whatnot, even some lost cow calls. But in my opinion,
Speaker 1: in those instances where it worked, I feel like the
Speaker 1: odds were still kind of stacked against us. So as
Speaker 1: far as a strategy on just you know how, I
Speaker 1: would hunt an area that one you can't see very
Speaker 1: good due to the landscape, so it's either flat or
Speaker 1: it's timbered. You know, vegetation's not helping you. I like
Speaker 1: to cover a lot of ground, but I like to
Speaker 1: be strategic on how I'm gonna cover that ground. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cover ridgetops if they're in the area, which I
Speaker 1: don't want to make the assumption this is flat. But
Speaker 1: if ridges are there, or passes or areas that you
Speaker 1: know elk are using, definitely go check those out. You're
Speaker 1: looking for sign, you know, and it's different sign than
Speaker 1: the rest. So we're no longer looking for rubs. We
Speaker 1: don't care where those were at two or three months ago.
Speaker 1: We don't necessarily care where you know, where they run
Speaker 1: it at. It's where they at now. So by this
Speaker 1: time November, a lot of your bigger bowls have broken
Speaker 1: off from the herd. They're still typically solo. So if
Speaker 1: you're in an area, you know a lot of November
Speaker 1: hunts allow you know, cows to be to be harvested
Speaker 1: or killed. It depends on what you're after. If you're
Speaker 1: in a bowl area only, I would much rather follow
Speaker 1: a solo track, you know, obviously if you can tell
Speaker 1: that it's a bowl. But those solo tracks are typically
Speaker 1: going to be your bull tracks, your herds are still
Speaker 1: going to be running together at that time. You know,
Speaker 1: scouting is going to pay off, you know, leading up
Speaker 1: to this November hunt. If you can put in time,
Speaker 1: you know, where they're at in early November, middle of November,
Speaker 1: they're probably still typically going to be there in late November,
Speaker 1: unless you're in a major migration, uh, you know type unit.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, then you're gonna find where
Speaker 1: those elka at and you're going to probably move down
Speaker 1: in elevation and in those same drainages, in those same
Speaker 1: ridge lines, those same areas.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're just gonna have to follow basically tracks
Speaker 1: on the ground, you know, scat where it's on the ground,
Speaker 1: and uh use that to your advantage, covering lots of ground,
Speaker 1: being very strategic as well as being strategic about where
Speaker 1: your wind's gonna end up. You don't necessarily want to,
Speaker 1: you know, just you know, uh, just run across the
Speaker 1: landscape and cover as much ground. You're trying to think
Speaker 1: if I go here, you know, can the are the
Speaker 1: oak gonna win me?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 1: Is it safer to go in the crick bottoms to
Speaker 1: try to pick up sign if you're on the ridgetops
Speaker 1: you should do it in the middle of the day,
Speaker 1: so maybe the thermals are pushing with you. You know,
Speaker 1: you'd be as smart, you know, hunter as you move through.
Speaker 1: But that's really it's a lot tough for Austin in
Speaker 1: my opinion. You know, it goes back to to your
Speaker 1: a lot of your rifle strategies where we're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of spot and stock, we're doing some ambushing, and
Speaker 1: we're doing some patterning with calling taking off the table.
Speaker 1: For me, it resorts back to to those typical, you know,
Speaker 1: methods of hunting. And you know, another great way is
Speaker 1: if you know they're frequenting an area, if you're a
Speaker 1: tree stand guy or a ground blind guy, if you're
Speaker 1: confident enough that their pattern is routine, it's very routine
Speaker 1: and it's predictable enough, you can definitely try to utilize
Speaker 1: some of those other methods. You know, is to hunt
Speaker 1: and be successful. So that's my best advice I've got
Speaker 1: for you there, Austin. Our next question comes from Zach McQuillan.
Speaker 1: A few years back, we had some conversations about hunting
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Elk, and he wanted to reach back out to
Speaker 1: me and ask a few questions so this year they
Speaker 1: decided to move from I'm not going to mention units
Speaker 1: from one unit to another unit, and they got to
Speaker 1: permit through a timber company, which is very typical around
Speaker 1: here in western Washington. Now we'll get into that in
Speaker 1: a little bit as I do a recap on my hunt.
Speaker 1: So you get to permit to access and beyond on
Speaker 1: these timber companies properties. So he was saying that they
Speaker 1: scouted pretty much the entire area and realize that ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of it is thin and re brought. And
Speaker 1: so for those of you that don't know what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, is on industrial tree farms. Typically they go
Speaker 1: in and plant the trees at a very close proximity,
Speaker 1: and it's almost the survival of the toughest. Whichever trees
Speaker 1: kind of take off the faster. They go in there
Speaker 1: and do conifer releases, or they will thin or commercially
Speaker 1: thin these these timber patches, and it happens at all
Speaker 1: different ages. You can do it when the trees are
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get my dates wrong. I'm not
Speaker 1: a forester by any means, but you can do it,
Speaker 1: let's say fifteen years and a lot of times that
Speaker 1: timber has no value. They will slash it and then
Speaker 1: leave it on the ground, which basically you leave your
Speaker 1: coniferous trees to come up, and then you've cut out
Speaker 1: you know, thirty to forty percent or whatever that appropriate
Speaker 1: number is to give those trees that are still standing
Speaker 1: the best chance to grow, grow faster and be ready
Speaker 1: for harvest. And so what he's saying is, when it's
Speaker 1: ninety five percent thin and it's reprod it's a lot
Speaker 1: of that slash pile. So you basically cut out every
Speaker 1: other tree. But then by doing that you've left basically
Speaker 1: just a jackstrawed mess of crunchy sticks timber, small timber.
Speaker 2: On the ground.
Speaker 1: And so his question for us is how would you
Speaker 1: tactically hunt this type of train for what he calls
Speaker 1: the elusive Roosevelt elk? And I would agree with him.
Speaker 1: More time that goes on, the more elusive these Roosevelt
Speaker 1: elk are becoming, how would you hunt that? The one
Speaker 1: disadvantage we have is, for some reason, elk seem to
Speaker 1: like that ground just as much as anywhere else. At
Speaker 1: times they will go in there, they will live in there,
Speaker 1: they will feed in there. They don't get presented with
Speaker 1: as many problems as humans do being in there. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to go in there making a ton
Speaker 1: of noise. We'll never sneak up or get close to anything.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot of work to climb and crawl
Speaker 1: our way through that stuff. But elk seem to have
Speaker 1: no problem. You know, some of that those jack furs
Speaker 1: and reprod they still have some brush established, and you
Speaker 1: open that up to a little bit of light. There's
Speaker 1: good feet in there. It's tough. I would say, during
Speaker 1: the rut, you can make it work. You make that
Speaker 1: elk working there, even though you're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: some movement. The nice thing about archery elk is elk
Speaker 1: expect you to make noise, so you can get away
Speaker 1: with a little bit more noise than they can. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to locate them in the middle of that,
Speaker 1: because in my opinion, you're not necessarily gonna be able
Speaker 1: to sneak in on them unless they think in elk's
Speaker 1: coming at them. The other thing is if you're ninety
Speaker 1: five percent thin, which seems to be a pretty high number,
Speaker 1: but you know, if it is truly that high, I
Speaker 1: would go look at where are there elk in that
Speaker 1: other five percent? Are there roads through this system? A
Speaker 1: lot of times they won't thin and cut across the roads.
Speaker 1: Can I use these roads in Roosevelt Country to use
Speaker 1: my setups and and you know, use that as my
Speaker 1: shooting lane to get close a lot of times? You
Speaker 1: know in this western Washington Western Oregon industrial timberlands, there
Speaker 1: are roads cut everywhere because these timber companies want to
Speaker 1: log it is efficiently and quickly and cheap as possible
Speaker 1: in order to to maximize their profits. So can you
Speaker 1: use these road systems to get in close? You know
Speaker 1: we do this still on reprad or jackferds that that
Speaker 1: aren't slashed to get close. You know that a lot
Speaker 1: of time that is our approach is using an old
Speaker 1: road bed, an old cat road, and old skid a road,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, to get close. So use those
Speaker 1: to your advantage. But you know, if you're not in
Speaker 1: the rut and able to call those bulls through that
Speaker 1: a little bit, it's going to be real tough. I
Speaker 1: tend to stay out of those things because it's difficult
Speaker 1: to sneak in and it's still sometimes difficult to get
Speaker 1: a shot because those trees are you know, only fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, they've got a lot of brush. The ones
Speaker 1: that are standing have a lot of low lying, you know, limbs,
Speaker 1: and so I typically stay away from that. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if that was a great answer, Zach, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of my best advice is can you hunt
Speaker 1: around it?
Speaker 2: Can you hunt the roads through it?
Speaker 1: And worst case scenario, if you've got to go into it,
Speaker 1: by all means you can make it work. But it
Speaker 1: definitely helps when they're ready and you can call in
Speaker 1: the call back. Our third question today comes from Ryan
Speaker 1: Jeffries his questions on the smell of elk. Anybody that's
Speaker 1: been out there, you know what the smell elk is.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times when they're rutting it,
Speaker 1: it's very pungent and a very strong odor. But they
Speaker 1: typically will always smell like a barnyard is the best
Speaker 1: way I can describe it. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: get that, you know, cattle mixed with horrorse kind of
Speaker 1: mixed with just that barnyard stench. And so his question is,
Speaker 1: if you can smell them, how fresh is that odor?
Speaker 1: He's walked into areas with fresh signed many times and
Speaker 1: experienced a strong elk odor associated with these spots, especially
Speaker 1: where beds are found. I also routinely catch a whiff
Speaker 1: of elk odor carried by the wind when scouting or hunting.
Speaker 1: Just curious how fresh the smell may be or how
Speaker 1: long that odor can linger in the area. And so
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not a scientist. I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about that, you know, the scent or whatnot. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what my experience is from just hunting and
Speaker 1: the amount of times I've ran into that smell or
Speaker 1: smell them and then ultimately ran, you know, either into
Speaker 1: the elk or you know, found them very close by.
Speaker 1: And it depends on the weather. If it has rained
Speaker 1: a lot and you can still smell them, I would
Speaker 1: say that's a hotter sign. That means those elk have
Speaker 1: been there more recently. When when it's hot and dry out.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, it seems like that urine or
Speaker 1: whatever you know, is making that scent. A lot of
Speaker 1: times it seems to be the urine that is in
Speaker 1: their beds. You know, whether it's a cow or a
Speaker 1: ble that can last for two, three, four days. You know,
Speaker 1: we we've did a lot of testing, whether you know,
Speaker 1: we've snuck up or been right behind elk. They've urinated
Speaker 1: in their bed. They've got urine in there. It's a
Speaker 1: very very strong, it's more pungent. But you can go
Speaker 1: buy a bed three, four, five, six, seven days later
Speaker 1: if it's continued to be warm and there's no longer
Speaker 1: signs of wet urine in the bed, and you can
Speaker 1: kick the dust, you can smell it. You can and
Speaker 1: you can still smell elk, and you will get whips
Speaker 1: of that as you go through these areas. So I
Speaker 1: would say weather plays a big, big factor. But a
Speaker 1: lot of times I always assume, and you have to
Speaker 1: be a little bit you know, smart about it. But
Speaker 1: if I smell elk right where I'm at on this
Speaker 1: last time muzzle or hunting, we smelled elk a few times,
Speaker 1: I instantly what is the wind doing right now? Is
Speaker 1: because typically you need to go into that wind direction
Speaker 1: a little bit to either one figure out where the
Speaker 1: elk signs coming from, whether it's coming off of you know, beds,
Speaker 1: or if it's coming off the real elk. And it's
Speaker 1: a safe play, right if you smell elk or signs
Speaker 1: of elk, you put your nose to the wind, and
Speaker 1: go that direction because that's where the scent is coming from. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of a of a.
Speaker 1: Of a skill, an experience that comes in some of us.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I do it right all the time,
Speaker 1: but some people that have been out there a whole
Speaker 1: lot can start to smell the difference between live elk,
Speaker 1: like an elk, an actual elk. The live elk, the
Speaker 1: smell that comes off of them is sometimes different than
Speaker 1: the urine and stuff that comes out of their bed.
Speaker 1: It doesn't always match up. And so one thing you
Speaker 1: need to try to figure out is do you have
Speaker 1: live elk? If possible? If not, you're you're approaching beds
Speaker 1: or bedding areas or areas where they may have just
Speaker 1: fed through. That's the other thing I'd like to talk
Speaker 1: about when when smelling the elk, they is it are
Speaker 1: they there?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Did they travel through there? That they lay there? Is
Speaker 1: the wind carrying where they're at?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: And and you know, or did they cross through here?
Speaker 1: So there's there's all of this stuff, and now we're
Speaker 1: trying to look for tracks, like there's a track, you know,
Speaker 1: are the tracks letting me know are those elk there?
Speaker 1: Did they travel through here where they at, and so
Speaker 1: you just you just want to become a more educated
Speaker 1: elk hunter. When you start to smell elk, we always
Speaker 1: slow down. We always assume, you know, elk are going
Speaker 1: to be around the next corner. We're we're trying to
Speaker 1: you know, we're always playing the wind, but now we're
Speaker 1: playing the wind a little bit different. Do we want to,
Speaker 1: you know, walk into the scent? Do we want to
Speaker 1: circle the scent? Another thing we will do at times
Speaker 1: if we're not really familiar with the area, we'll pull out,
Speaker 1: you know, on X and try to decide if those
Speaker 1: elk if that sense coming from this way, if we
Speaker 1: think they're that way, we make an educated guest and
Speaker 1: we try to play an area that's on the map.
Speaker 1: You know, are they betted in this flat just over
Speaker 1: the ridge?
Speaker 2: They did? They feed through here.
Speaker 1: In the morning, and they may be over there. We're
Speaker 1: trying to just be educated hunters so that we don't
Speaker 1: screw up. I take every one of these opportunities as is,
Speaker 1: you know, the last hunt of the year or the
Speaker 1: hunt where we're going to be successful. So I'm probably
Speaker 1: overly cautious at times, but we're playing that scent or
Speaker 1: us picking up that scent is the hottest information we've got.
Speaker 1: It's a hot sign. It's a hot and we go
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Now. As far as like.
Speaker 1: Answering your exact question on how fresh it is or
Speaker 1: how they've been there, it just depends. And like I say,
Speaker 1: I always end up kind of defaulting to if I
Speaker 1: can smell elk, they've been there very recently, you know,
Speaker 1: especially if I'm not digging in beds, I'm just walking
Speaker 1: along the trail and maybe we've seen a little bit
Speaker 1: of fresh sign. As we've got in the timber, we're
Speaker 1: on high alert and we're playing that like an elk.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing like you're using. From the
Speaker 1: time I get out of the truck and my feet
Speaker 1: are on the ground, I'm picking apart every bit of sign.
Speaker 1: You know, is there any elk sign in here? Was
Speaker 1: there elk sign from two weeks ago? Has there ever
Speaker 1: been an elk in this piece of timber in my life?
Speaker 2: You know, you're you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to look at all of that, and it kind
Speaker 1: of all adds into what you think is going on
Speaker 1: as you hunt through timber. You know, the best if
Speaker 1: you're on somewhat fresh tracks. You know, a day or
Speaker 1: two or it's rained and tracks are washed out, but
Speaker 1: you're back on fresh tracks and you smell elk, Like,
Speaker 1: that's got a very high probability of there being elk,
Speaker 1: you know somewhere around me, versus there's really no good
Speaker 1: good sign. But maybe you're in a patch of timber
Speaker 1: that leads between a great bedding area and a great
Speaker 1: feed area. You're like, well, they might just be going
Speaker 1: through here. You're putting all that together. So I don't
Speaker 1: have a great answer for either, Ryan, but I just
Speaker 1: play any scent or odor from elk is being extremely
Speaker 1: fresh and going with that. So we appreciate those questions
Speaker 1: from you guys. Once again, you have any questions for
Speaker 1: me or my guests, feel free to email them to
Speaker 1: us at CTD at Phelps Gamecalls dot com and we'll
Speaker 1: do our best to get those on the podcast here.
Speaker 1: So now I'm gonna do a little recap. We've tried
Speaker 1: to do these recaps on all of our hunts and
Speaker 1: a lot of times.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not a.
Speaker 1: Great storyteller, but I feel like a lot of information
Speaker 1: can be learned and gained, and I always like to
Speaker 1: take just as much. I like to learn just as
Speaker 1: much from my failures as well, and so if I
Speaker 1: can pass some of those on to you, I'd like
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: And we'll get into.
Speaker 1: One here on the on the third morning of our
Speaker 1: hunt that you know, my setup wasn't great and I
Speaker 1: went in there a little bit, you know, over over
Speaker 1: confident that I had a muzzloader in my hand and
Speaker 1: no longer had my bow, and it came back to
Speaker 1: bite me. But we'll get into that at all, get
Speaker 1: into it here in a little bit after we go
Speaker 1: through the first part. So for those of you that
Speaker 1: don't know I used to hunt, I grew up hunting
Speaker 1: Western Washington in my backyard. I grew up in what
Speaker 1: I would consider maybe the best elki hunting anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. Now, with that said, I'm basing that on
Speaker 1: quantity we had. We had a crazy density of elk,
Speaker 1: especially after they made it three pointed better in this area.
Speaker 1: It just seems like we had never ending elk to hunt.
Speaker 1: I can remember growing up. I would I would ride
Speaker 1: by legal bull after legal bul trying to get to
Speaker 1: better bulls that I had scouted and whatnot. So I
Speaker 1: came from an area where it was. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it was easy, but elk were plentiful. I
Speaker 1: haven't been back here since two thousand and thirteen, was
Speaker 1: the last time I had a tag in Western Washington,
Speaker 1: I think, or at least that I hunted in Western Washington.
Speaker 1: I came back in twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen and
Speaker 1: helped some buddies on some muzzleoer hunts, and then I've
Speaker 1: did some special hunts on the East Side. But aside
Speaker 1: from that, like hunting around home, I haven't haven't jumped
Speaker 1: in the woods with with a tag in my hand.
Speaker 1: And I had started to hear reports. You know, there's
Speaker 1: there been a lot of you know, there ain't any
Speaker 1: there aren't any elk left.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: It seemed like we had bounced back from hoof rot,
Speaker 1: but things are way worse, Like people aren't even buying
Speaker 1: tags around here because you know, there aren't any elk left.
Speaker 1: And so for me that was a bummer, you know,
Speaker 1: And then there's a little bit of overconfidence that like, oh,
Speaker 1: you guys don't know what you're doing, Like I can
Speaker 1: scout better than you, I can hunt harder than you.
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 1: I can hunt better than you know, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: I think there was a little.
Speaker 1: Bit of a I didn't believe them because when we
Speaker 1: left it was so good. But with that said, I decided,
Speaker 1: rather than hunt locally to my house, I was going
Speaker 1: to go back out to the east end of the county.
Speaker 1: My county that I live in is very, very diverse.
Speaker 1: The west side industrial timberlands. The east side butts up
Speaker 1: against the Cascades, and so I love hunting in the mountains.
Speaker 1: I don't like some of this lowland industrial timberland stuff
Speaker 1: where it's very very.
Speaker 2: Competitive.
Speaker 1: As far as the hunting, I like the mountains where
Speaker 1: it's like I can let my legs get me away
Speaker 1: from people, I can get higher, I can get up earlier,
Speaker 1: I can hunt it right, and typically it's me versus
Speaker 1: the elk instead of me versus you know, hunter ABC
Speaker 1: and the elk. So we went out there, but one
Speaker 1: thing I was very surprised. The last time I was
Speaker 1: up there, we had killed a bowl off of a road.
Speaker 1: It's nobody hardly ever goes out this road. It's it's overlooked.
Speaker 1: Everybody hunts around it. But this road on this mountain
Speaker 1: is pretty dang good. And last time we were there
Speaker 1: we killed a great six by seven Roosevelt, you know,
Speaker 1: right out of the road, and there's always been signed there.
Speaker 1: We hike up there about five miles. First off, I
Speaker 1: want to a reminder to people that these road systems
Speaker 1: can change a whole lot in eight to ten years.
Speaker 1: It was ten times more difficult because all the brush
Speaker 1: had grown up. We were basically dodging and weaving and
Speaker 1: ducking brush for an entire five miles. But we walked
Speaker 1: all the way out this road, bugled a few times
Speaker 1: the night before just to try to locate, and nothing.
Speaker 1: So it was a defeating walk back. That was kind
Speaker 1: of our plan A to get away from people. So
Speaker 1: Plan B was to go back into the same area
Speaker 1: where I had killed my big bowl in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: hoping that the elk that used to be around there
Speaker 1: were still there. One of the reasons we didn't go
Speaker 1: there first is it seemed like shortly after I had
Speaker 1: killed that bowl and muzzloader seasons were opened up to
Speaker 1: all units, the area kind of got overran with camps
Speaker 1: and hunters and it just wasn't the quality hunt I
Speaker 1: was looking for. We went up there nobody around at all.
Speaker 1: So we left early that morning, just throughout our sleeping
Speaker 1: bags on the ground, jumped up in the morning, loaded
Speaker 1: everything up, and then we were on the trail going in.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of sign though down low we
Speaker 1: would typically get into elk sign and so I was
Speaker 1: going in with the headlamps.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Man, there's not a lot of sign, but thankfully about
Speaker 1: a mile and a half in we were able to
Speaker 1: cut some tracks. Was moving through there and started to
Speaker 1: pick up scent, just like we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: and it looked like the tracks were very fresh picking
Speaker 1: up scent, so were I was just talking to Tyler,
Speaker 1: who's one of our employees and was kind of filming
Speaker 1: this hunt for me. I was just getting ready. I
Speaker 1: had turned around to tell him, like, stand in my
Speaker 1: hip pocket. I think, you know, it could happen anywhere
Speaker 1: in here. And as I was talking to him, he
Speaker 1: was looking over my shoulder the direction we were going,
Speaker 1: and he spotted a cow feeding up into the open.
Speaker 1: We were up there about two miles or so and
Speaker 1: range it and she's about one hundred and forty, which
Speaker 1: for me was very confident. And so we're watching cow
Speaker 1: after cow and I think there's one calf in the
Speaker 1: group of nine cows, and then finally the bold bugles
Speaker 1: behind them and follows them up. I always talk about
Speaker 1: my mistakes, and typically I should be smarter than this,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why I wasn't. I rest on
Speaker 1: my pack one hundred and he ends up stopping at
Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty six yards a shot. I'm
Speaker 1: very comfortable with with my muzzle order, and my brain
Speaker 1: has a little malfunction. We talk about this a lot
Speaker 1: archery hunting, like I shoot my bowl a lot more
Speaker 1: than I shoot my gun, and it becomes instinct. But
Speaker 1: on muzzleloader, I don't know why. And I still can't
Speaker 1: explain my peep site, my bead, everything went down to
Speaker 1: sit right on the heart of the bowl, a third,
Speaker 1: you know, a third up its body.
Speaker 2: As I squeezed the trigger.
Speaker 1: Well my gun, I didn't side it in high at
Speaker 1: one hundred so that we would be on. I sided
Speaker 1: on dead on at one hundred and at one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five yards, my gun is going to drop,
Speaker 1: you know, eight to eight to ten inches at that range.
Speaker 1: I'm not shooting a crazy load. We didn't go through
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of development. I didn't want to shoot.
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily shoot long range on a gun that
Speaker 1: I have that's capable, so you know, on the video
Speaker 1: we get to watch and I splashed the dirt that
Speaker 1: looks about two to three inches below his brisket. I'm
Speaker 1: very thankful we didn't touch him and it actually went low.
Speaker 1: But it was very defeating. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: great five point bowl, you know, very healthy, very good
Speaker 1: five and just completely missed and botched it. The more
Speaker 1: depressing thing maybe than missing. Don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: wasn't real happy with the miss. But we spent me
Speaker 1: and Tyler spent the rest of the day hiking and
Speaker 1: hiking some more without anybody around us, no boot tracks,
Speaker 1: multiple different areas we would you know, hit a trail,
Speaker 1: run the ridge lines because in some of this different
Speaker 1: pincho stuff that's very very steep, we would rent the
Speaker 1: ridge lines, try to cut tracks and just couldn't cut tracks.
Speaker 1: And areas that always held elk, some of my best areas,
Speaker 1: we would run them nothing. And this isn't a point
Speaker 1: to say that we hiked a long ways or look
Speaker 1: how much effort we did. It was more to show
Speaker 1: that there weren't elk aside from the one herd. We
Speaker 1: did a little over seventeen miles on that first day
Speaker 1: and cut one set of fresh elk tracks the entire day,
Speaker 1: and that's the herd that I'm missed.
Speaker 2: The bowl out of rinse and repeat.
Speaker 1: So we've now got two days, and we've got a
Speaker 1: nine point seven mile day in and a seventeen and
Speaker 1: some odd mile day day three. I change up my plan. I,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, I don't like combat hunting. My
Speaker 1: goal was to let's go look at an area that
Speaker 1: usually has more elk but more people. I just want
Speaker 1: to see if they're elk there, if the sign's still there,
Speaker 1: go there. Put in an eleven mile day and nothing,
Speaker 1: not a single elk track, lots of people, And so
Speaker 1: I make the decision that after that day, we're going
Speaker 1: to head home and we're going to hunt more local.
Speaker 2: If we can.
Speaker 1: My dad had texted me he had missed a bowl
Speaker 1: on opening morning, got rushed a little bit, and so
Speaker 1: I had a pretty hot tip on where I should
Speaker 1: be able to get into legal bulls, and so we
Speaker 1: headed home. But I want to recap that different pincho
Speaker 1: a little bit there's an old burn on the Yackle
Speaker 1: way back. I can't even get the dates right, early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds that burnt the top of the Gifford pincho
Speaker 1: off and that was where all the deer and elk
Speaker 1: have fed. And I believe over these last ten years
Speaker 1: we're starting to finally get that like final growing growth,
Speaker 1: where a lot of their food sources are done the
Speaker 1: trees that the brush is kind of choking up their feed,
Speaker 1: and what we're seeing is we're seeing less and less
Speaker 1: elk in that country. I put a number on it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to use this number in both locations about
Speaker 1: the high country and the low country. I would bet
Speaker 1: we've seen a seventy to seventy five percent reduction in
Speaker 1: our elk numbers compared to what I used to be
Speaker 1: able to see up there, compared to what's up there.
Speaker 1: I'm not an environmentalist at all. I grow up in
Speaker 1: the middle of you know, industrial timberlands. My family have
Speaker 1: all made their livings off of logging, and I think
Speaker 1: that may be one of the things that we're running
Speaker 1: into up there, is where the Gifford Pinchot and whatnot
Speaker 1: have always been logged. I would say the forest logs
Speaker 1: a little bit more strategically, but they would always log
Speaker 1: at sixty seventy year cycles. And what that does is
Speaker 1: clear cutting opens up new growth, new food, new brush
Speaker 1: sources for elk, elk or browsers. They need to have
Speaker 1: that brush and they need to have it staged out
Speaker 1: in a way that when one clear cut, the jackpirs
Speaker 1: grow up, the brush goes away, they can move to
Speaker 1: the next one. And right now, aside from doing some
Speaker 1: fire brake cutting along some of these roads, we are
Speaker 1: logging hardly anything up there, especially not clearcutting. We're doing
Speaker 1: some thinning, but my understanding is they try to set
Speaker 1: out units and it gets shut down in courts. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's special interest groups, there's environmental groups that are
Speaker 1: shutting down the logging of these National Forest Service and
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it's ultimately hurting the elk and the
Speaker 1: deer as they've relied on that for many many years
Speaker 1: in that area as their food sources. And now with
Speaker 1: the high Country also compounding that, there's just not enough
Speaker 1: food to sustain you know, life up there. I guess
Speaker 1: as far as elkreds and even deer concern, the other
Speaker 1: major issue they have up. There are cats right now.
Speaker 1: We think we have problems down here in the lowlands
Speaker 1: with cats. The high country is just overloaded with cats
Speaker 1: and cats cleaning up damages. Like I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: herd had nine cows in it, and we had one
Speaker 1: successful calf to that entire herd. So when you're getting
Speaker 1: recruitment it just barely over ten percent. It's just not
Speaker 1: going to be sustainable to keep those populations growing. You're
Speaker 1: barely able to maintain. If you assume that those cows
Speaker 1: are all going to be gone by ten years, you're
Speaker 1: basically replacing one cow per year, and so basically you're
Speaker 1: not growing. You're just barely trying to hang on to
Speaker 1: your population. And we all have to assume that as
Speaker 1: elk numbers go down, the cats are going to even
Speaker 1: do more damage to those elk that are left. It's
Speaker 1: just a compounding issue. But so we left the high Country.
Speaker 1: We came back down to what I would consider my
Speaker 1: local grounds here in pl and I meet up with
Speaker 1: my dad on that next morning. He's and I decided
Speaker 1: to just kind of play defense. Like Dad, your bowl,
Speaker 1: you go hunt it. We'll just kind of walk the
Speaker 1: walk the other edge and just kind of see if
Speaker 1: you do kick something up, we'll be over there. So
Speaker 1: we get through it. A few fresh elk tracks in there,
Speaker 1: probably from the day that he had missed a couple
Speaker 1: of days prior. And it's a great, great piece of timber.
Speaker 1: It's one of those piece of timbers you can look
Speaker 1: one hundred, one hundred and fifty yards through, got good
Speaker 1: trails in there, so we're able to move really, really
Speaker 1: quietly and just perfect.
Speaker 2: So we're making our way through.
Speaker 1: There, we're finishing our loop, he's finishing his, and we
Speaker 1: get to a spot where we can hear some brush
Speaker 1: rustling around, rattling around here off the trail, And this
Speaker 1: is where it's very important. I should have been paying
Speaker 1: more attention to how everything laid out in this patch
Speaker 1: of timber, because at the point where we hear the
Speaker 1: elk rattling around, your your instinct is to go in
Speaker 1: there and try to get a view of where they're at.
Speaker 1: But if I would have paid attention prior, and I'll
Speaker 1: get to this after as I left this setup, it
Speaker 1: was way way better on anywhere else I could have
Speaker 1: went besides where I was. But regardless, we go in,
Speaker 1: we go into this piece of timber about forty yards
Speaker 1: and anybody that's ever you know, got into a fringe
Speaker 1: or a road break, you know, they call it that
Speaker 1: shade line where where there's no shade where the sun
Speaker 1: can hit you always got this wall of brush. So
Speaker 1: we kind of get through there real quietly. We can
Speaker 1: still hear the elk up there, breaking brush, So we
Speaker 1: just do a little bit of cow calf sequence calling
Speaker 1: kind of a cow back to a calf, half back
Speaker 1: to a cow, and we get a bowld of bugle
Speaker 1: up in there as well as here in the brush
Speaker 1: russeller realm, and then we get a bowl to bugle
Speaker 1: back to our left as well as we're calling, and
Speaker 1: you can hear. It's one of those things where you
Speaker 1: feel like you should be able to see the elk,
Speaker 1: but it's so thick and so brushy. But I had
Speaker 1: a few lanes to the right of this pile of
Speaker 1: brush and to the left, which is probably eighty yards
Speaker 1: up the hill, and just as is I would love liked,
Speaker 1: I've got a cow comes to my shooting lane at
Speaker 1: like seventy yards wide open, and the second cow comes through.
Speaker 1: When the third cow comes through, well, why this is happening?
Speaker 1: I can see a cow and a calf that are
Speaker 1: walking down this shooting lane towards us. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is great. That bowl was with him. He's going
Speaker 1: to cross. But I gave myself no ability to shoot
Speaker 1: to the left or right of the shooting lane. And guess,
Speaker 1: just like I should have expected, no surprise when that
Speaker 1: bowl comes through the shooting lane, he's running behind the
Speaker 1: next cow that comes across. He shoots across that in
Speaker 1: a second, and I had no shot. We sit there
Speaker 1: for a little bit. I don't know where my dad's at.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know where the elk are at. He claims
Speaker 1: he didn't walk up the spur road that was above him.
Speaker 1: But ultimately these elk wind us and bust out, and
Speaker 1: they don't win me or Tyler, my camera guy. They
Speaker 1: win something else or something else isn't right because we
Speaker 1: have the wind perfect the whole entire time. But when
Speaker 1: I back out of this timber, I'm frustrated with myself.
Speaker 1: I'm like, gosh, dang, I wish I think would have
Speaker 1: just walked through there. I'd had a great shot. As
Speaker 1: I moved just ten yards down the trail I was
Speaker 1: walking on before I pushed myself into this brush. I
Speaker 1: could have seen all of those elk in the wide
Speaker 1: open the entire time, and so it was just being
Speaker 1: you know, not thinking about my setup, not thinking about
Speaker 1: how this lays out, and if these elk do come out,
Speaker 1: where I'm gonna be able to shoot, and the same thing.
Speaker 1: If I would have been ten yards back down the road,
Speaker 1: I probably could have seen. But I decided to nose
Speaker 1: in right in this you know, little draw where it
Speaker 1: was brushy, and I did it to myself, so that
Speaker 1: legal bowl kind of ended.
Speaker 2: Up getting away.
Speaker 1: We chased them around a little bit, caught back up
Speaker 1: to them twice, but ultimately could never never make that happen.
Speaker 1: So we spent the next three days around home hunting
Speaker 1: every patch of timber that that we you know, either
Speaker 1: had a hot lead or a warm lead or you
Speaker 1: know spots where I used to hunt. And it was dismal.
Speaker 1: It was it was extremely bad. We had it was
Speaker 1: pouring down rain, which most people don't like for hunting
Speaker 1: the timber around here. I absolutely love. I can sneak in,
Speaker 1: I can be quiet.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: We didn't see an elk for those three days, aside
Speaker 1: from some down low, you know, actually near my house,
Speaker 1: and we could tell that somewhere we're hoof frauded in
Speaker 1: this herd. You know, we probably had sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the elk in this herd limping, and I didn't really
Speaker 1: you know, we got permission to hunt this piece, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'd rather go try to find something
Speaker 1: up in the hills or something that's not not have
Speaker 1: any issues. And then ultimately the last day rolled around,
Speaker 1: I was I was able to spot these elk kind
Speaker 1: of staging to get back into this piece of private
Speaker 1: so I knew they should be back that morning. They
Speaker 1: were going to come down, you know, in the in
Speaker 1: the farmers field and kind of hang out there for
Speaker 1: the night. So we get out there the next morning.
Speaker 1: We're able to it's very very foggy on Friday morning.
Speaker 1: We can spot just silhouettes, barely silhouettes. It probably you know,
Speaker 1: four hundred yards away out in the field. And so
Speaker 1: we make a move, come down a road that I
Speaker 1: have some property on and one of the guys I
Speaker 1: graduated with had property on. We were able to access
Speaker 1: into this area through there. And you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of times these private land hunts, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: they're just as much shooting an elk as it is
Speaker 1: hunting an elk. So I'm not trying to claim but
Speaker 1: this is a little different.
Speaker 2: These elk had.
Speaker 1: Pushed out to the middle of the field in the
Speaker 1: far end kind of, and with a muzzle order, you
Speaker 1: can't just you know, shoot across the field like like
Speaker 1: you normally would. So I get to the first fence
Speaker 1: and I'm ranging things. I'm like, all right, two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty yards three hundred yards, you know, the elk
Speaker 1: were split between two fifty or three hundred, and I
Speaker 1: had another fence row about one hundred and twenty yards away.
Speaker 1: I'm like, a right, if I can get to that,
Speaker 1: I should have a good shot. The only problem is
Speaker 1: it was a balance of getting daylight. It was shooting
Speaker 1: light well before I could actually shoot due to the
Speaker 1: fog and the clouds. It was the ground was saturated
Speaker 1: and wet, and yet I didn't know how well they
Speaker 1: could see through the fog because I couldn't actually see
Speaker 1: him with my naked eyes. I could only see him
Speaker 1: with the binoculars kind of looking through the fog. And
Speaker 1: so I make the decision that I'm just going to
Speaker 1: kind of belly crawl or knee crawl or low crawl
Speaker 1: when I can, and try to get as close to
Speaker 1: that next fence fence row as I can. After some
Speaker 1: three or four stops getting out there, we were able
Speaker 1: to get to that fence. There was a bigger bowl
Speaker 1: out there with the herd. They were actually still running
Speaker 1: pretty good here on October thirteenth. It was Friday the thirteenth.
Speaker 1: The bull that I wanted to kill anyways, the one
Speaker 1: with a little bit of hoof frat had a drop
Speaker 1: kind of his mainbeam drops off of his ear, and
Speaker 1: then he had three eye guards kind of coming up.
Speaker 1: We were able to get within He was the last
Speaker 1: bowl in the herd. It was him and two spikes
Speaker 1: at the back, and then the herd bull was kind
Speaker 1: of pushing cows around. I was able to get within
Speaker 1: about one hundred and forty five yards of him, get
Speaker 1: a great rest, and was able to take that bowl.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was it was a difficult hunt. I
Speaker 1: would have just assumed do it up on public. But
Speaker 1: you know, some of these elk with hoof rat, you know,
Speaker 1: we we still don't know how they spread or how
Speaker 1: it works, and so at times we're all more than
Speaker 1: willing to take one of these out in hopes that
Speaker 1: or that it prevents the spread of this. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of my my muzzled or hunting a rap.
Speaker 1: They were still bugling, you know, in the high country.
Speaker 1: They were still buggling around home, which a lot of
Speaker 1: times when you get into that, you know that that
Speaker 1: third point of October October tenth, they typically start to
Speaker 1: be quiet. But we still had some pretty good bugling,
Speaker 1: even for our resident elk. But that was that was
Speaker 1: the recap on that. And so I want to I
Speaker 1: want to roll into hoof fraud a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are listening may not know
Speaker 1: exactly what hoof fraud is uh and where it comes from.
Speaker 1: And I don't claim to be a biologist. I'm working
Speaker 1: with cal here at Meat Eater. It's been very important.
Speaker 1: It's been a sensitive topic and important to me that
Speaker 1: we try to figure it out. I know doctor Wilde
Speaker 1: over at Washington State University is doing research on it.
Speaker 1: They're now collecting hoofs from you know, any elk that
Speaker 1: that shows to have signs of hoof frought. But there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of speculation, you know, and some people
Speaker 1: may be mad at me for saying speculation, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, there are there are strains
Speaker 1: of hoof frot within cattle. There are supposedly up to
Speaker 1: forty strains of hoof frot within the elk, And don't
Speaker 1: don't take these all verbatim or or for you know,
Speaker 1: the ultimate truth. I'm just passing on you know what
Speaker 1: I know. But what ultimately happened about thirty years and
Speaker 1: we were kind of the epicenter of this hoof fraught.
Speaker 1: We started to notice our elk were limping and we
Speaker 1: would kill these elk that would have Basically what happens
Speaker 1: is their hoof will start to get extended, it will
Speaker 1: grow long in brittle. A lot of times, even if
Speaker 1: you think of like an elf shoot, some of these
Speaker 1: elks hoofs have started to curl up and under themselves
Speaker 1: and they get very long, brittle. They ultimately break them off,
Speaker 1: and then this infection or absess, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, will then go up the leg. We've killed
Speaker 1: some of them that are almost all the way up
Speaker 1: to their knee basically walking and hobbling around on it.
Speaker 1: And the sad part is we tried to everybody know
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, but nobody seemed to care. When it
Speaker 1: was just you know, Western Washington, Roosevelt elk. A lot
Speaker 1: of US locals got very concerned. We talked about it,
Speaker 1: but nothing was really done. Now what we have are
Speaker 1: elk and Oregon that are also infected with it, elk
Speaker 1: that are in Idaho that have confirmed cases, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's very disturbing to think that this may take
Speaker 1: off and where does a spread stop. So I think
Speaker 1: everybody should become aware of it. Everybody should get involved.
Speaker 1: It's not just a Roosevelt thing. It's not it's able
Speaker 1: to go Roosevelt Rockies, and it's just it's it's it's
Speaker 1: the most disheartening thing ever to see a herd of
Speaker 1: elk out in the field and seventy of them or
Speaker 1: you know, seventy percent of them limping.
Speaker 2: It just sucks.
Speaker 1: You know, we had a herd here just in my
Speaker 1: yard at my house.
Speaker 2: It was snowing.
Speaker 1: I went out just to look at their tracks, and
Speaker 1: you could have you would have thought somebody had shot
Speaker 1: in elk and what we should be tracking them because
Speaker 1: there's blood and in their track as they go along.
Speaker 1: Like I say, there's a lot of speculation, you know,
Speaker 1: Some people like to blame you know, timberlands and their
Speaker 1: their spraying and how it may affect the immune system
Speaker 1: of elk that's now allowed to catch it. Some people
Speaker 1: may say it's it's you know, I I don't claim
Speaker 1: to know if it's bacterial or virus or how any
Speaker 1: of that stuff works. It's just it's disheartening and and
Speaker 1: I've got my fingers crossed that doctor Wilde in the
Speaker 1: WSU staff can kind of figure this out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Washington Department of Fishing Wildlife has a has a great
Speaker 1: couple websites and pages on how fraud if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more. But I encourage everybody to get involved.
Speaker 1: Urge Rocking Mountain Elk Foundation to get involved. It's something
Speaker 1: I think, you know, nobody cares intil it's in their backyard,
Speaker 1: but I think it's something that all elk hunters and
Speaker 1: everybody that that you know has a love for the
Speaker 1: animal should care about. We talked about earlier elk populations
Speaker 1: in western Washington. We grew up in an area that
Speaker 1: was probably some of the most dense elk you know,
Speaker 1: populations anywhere, and we are well below carrying capacity, well
Speaker 1: well below I don't know what the solution is. I
Speaker 1: always hate proposing that we take away opportunity, but at
Speaker 1: some point, if we can't get a plan in place
Speaker 1: to manage predators, which the Fish and Wildlife Commission has
Speaker 1: ultimately said they want to take away from all of us,
Speaker 1: regardless of you know, we don't even have hounds, we
Speaker 1: don't have baiting. But if we can't hunt them at all,
Speaker 1: we're going to be really really hamstrung on how we're
Speaker 1: going to deal with this. In my opinion, the way
Speaker 1: to get it back is to take out more cats,
Speaker 1: take out more bears, take out more coyotes, things that
Speaker 1: attack you know, the calves and can put a dent
Speaker 1: into them. We need to have more recruitment as far
Speaker 1: as calves, and we really need to you know, hunt
Speaker 1: predators more than we are, especially since we have the
Speaker 1: ability to hunt with hounds and bait taken away from us.
Speaker 1: So that's my opinion. It comes down to a predator issue.
Speaker 1: But at some point, if we can't like us as hunters,
Speaker 1: may need to look at are we over harvesting? I
Speaker 1: know it, So what nobody wants to hear. Do we
Speaker 1: need to look at shorter seasons? But in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the resource itself and the health of the resource is
Speaker 1: more important than my ability to hunt. And I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people will say, well, you're fortunate you
Speaker 1: get to hunt out of state and go to where
Speaker 1: there are I agree, I am very fortunate, But regardless,
Speaker 1: I think it's important that we give this elkert.
Speaker 2: A chance to come back.
Speaker 1: Another thing that's not going to be very liked is
Speaker 1: I don't think there should be any cow tags given
Speaker 1: in an area that's well below capacity. It doesn't take
Speaker 1: a biologist or a scientist to understand that you rebuild
Speaker 1: your herd through the cows. So with that said, I
Speaker 1: think one of the ways we can make a difference.
Speaker 1: Hunters are very Sometimes we're not lazy in the sense
Speaker 1: that we get after it down the mountain, but I
Speaker 1: think hunters are very They don't like the idea of
Speaker 1: getting involved in right now. I think we need to
Speaker 1: be as involved as ever. And that's not just for
Speaker 1: Washington State residence. That's for everybody, know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: the Hell Organization or like we just formed a new
Speaker 1: coalition for wildlife in Washington. We need to get involved
Speaker 1: because you know, we've got a commission meeting here in
Speaker 1: Washington the twenty six to the twenty eight, where they're
Speaker 1: talking about and voting on whether we're gonna hunt predators
Speaker 1: at all, whether coyotes, whether cats, whether bears, cougars, any
Speaker 1: of that stuff is hunted at all, like whether they're
Speaker 1: gonna take it off the table. So we got to
Speaker 1: get very involved. I encourage anybody in state or out
Speaker 1: of state, jump on our WDFW website and send our
Speaker 1: commissioners well thought out, you know, a message or or
Speaker 1: a note on on why you feel that that's a
Speaker 1: mistake and why they need to get back to the
Speaker 1: North American model for wildlife. But I appreciate all of
Speaker 1: you joining in. That was my twenty two twenty three
Speaker 1: Musli or El Cunning recap. Yeah, it was a tough one,
Speaker 1: very fortunate to kill a ball, not exactly the way
Speaker 1: I wanted. But enjoy all of you guys, uh you know,
Speaker 1: sending your questions, keep sending them to us until next time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, cutting the distance, and good luck to
Speaker 1: everybody out there in their fall pursuits.