Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear lessening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything, have like your own show. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I don't think you're talking about to
Speaker 1: say that. Um, your turkey talk did not inspire me,
Speaker 1: but I would love to be able to bottle Brittany's lap.
Speaker 1: You don't like that, y'all. Don't know what you brought
Speaker 1: up recently that I've been meaning to bring up with
Speaker 1: other people. Don't maybe think like a lot less of you.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's just saying that it's gonna happen sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just saying that. When he was guiding l Hunters,
Speaker 1: did dude like, there's turnover day, right, and new guys
Speaker 1: come in. Janice would look and and hope to get
Speaker 1: a signed to the person that looked like they were
Speaker 1: the highest tipper. That's what I was curious about. Look
Speaker 1: at their shoes or something. Because we were talking about
Speaker 1: tips in general, and we were talking about somewhere we
Speaker 1: were talking about where they were pooling tips. I said,
Speaker 1: I'd like that because you would like that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because when the new crew rolls in, you can you
Speaker 1: can't pick the guys out like they do the rolls in.
Speaker 1: It's like you were saying, save five thousand dollars over
Speaker 1: ten years by collecting metal scraps, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of the week he doesn't kill out and he
Speaker 1: tips his dude a thousand bucks, and you're like, how
Speaker 1: how did that happen? Sounds like a big tip. That's
Speaker 1: a giant tips you were saying. I thought you were
Speaker 1: saying the guy with the metal scraps would not tip. Well,
Speaker 1: well that's what you would think, right, So you're I'm
Speaker 1: saying you can't pick them out. The guy that was
Speaker 1: stripping down copper wire for ten years just to go
Speaker 1: on a hunt, you'd be like, I don't want him.
Speaker 1: And then it turned out that you could. You didn't
Speaker 1: really know because maybe he had stripped so much copper wire. Right.
Speaker 1: I grew up. This is the last I'll say about this. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can explain more. But I grew up with guys
Speaker 1: that were so ambitious, but not ambitious that rather get jobs.
Speaker 1: These guys one time went and hot wired some kind
Speaker 1: of piece of heavy equipment in order to load a
Speaker 1: spool of rubber coated copper cable into a truck and
Speaker 1: then spent days with a fire burning off the coating
Speaker 1: to sell them and like how much copper were talking
Speaker 1: about a giant spool pounds hundreds of pounds of copper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where some money, and had a campfire and just
Speaker 1: rather than like getting a job, I'm just working for yourself, man,
Speaker 1: But um yeah, some guys don't back up, so so
Speaker 1: I just I just felt to you, like knowing you,
Speaker 1: I felt like you would you would say uh, or
Speaker 1: the way I understood you to be before, before I
Speaker 1: found out how you really are, I would have pictured
Speaker 1: that you'd say like, uh, yeah. You know. The guys
Speaker 1: come in and I look and I try to find
Speaker 1: the one who's dreaming the most, the one that's hungryest
Speaker 1: for this hunt, because I want to team up with
Speaker 1: him and give him an experience, and by god, if
Speaker 1: I need to pay him to do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I need the guide's dreams of the client that you want.
Speaker 1: A guide probably change, you know, as you mature as
Speaker 1: a guide, it changes because like in the beginning, you're like,
Speaker 1: I want the guy that's never elk on it, and
Speaker 1: then he won't call me out on the fact that
Speaker 1: I've only hunted two weeks more than he. And then
Speaker 1: later you sort up probably get to the person that
Speaker 1: you're like, man, I wanted to do this is just
Speaker 1: gonna charge, gonna get up at three am. He wants
Speaker 1: to hunt the top of the mountain every day and
Speaker 1: hike three hours in the dark every day, like three
Speaker 1: hours in the dark back every day. And then I
Speaker 1: think right towards the end at least definitely happened with
Speaker 1: fishing for me, is that, Um, I like taking just
Speaker 1: newbies and beginners that just you know, you show them
Speaker 1: one bugle and elk and they're just like, wow, blew
Speaker 1: my mind. That was unbelievable, you know. Um And even
Speaker 1: if they weren't the best hunters, if they at least
Speaker 1: were just trying into it, and you know, that's how
Speaker 1: you wanted a guide, So that changes, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: but you are working at the end of the week.
Speaker 1: Sure it's nice to go to the bar with the
Speaker 1: big wall in your pocket. Yeah. What was a good
Speaker 1: tip for how long were these elk hunts? Five days?
Speaker 1: And what was a good tip at the time what
Speaker 1: the hunt cost? It was a bargain basement hunt. Man,
Speaker 1: it was cheap. It was like three thousand ish for
Speaker 1: our treat, maybe even a little bit less. And uh,
Speaker 1: but we hunted a lot of public land, you know,
Speaker 1: and you might run into other dudes, and then I think,
Speaker 1: like if you hunted out of the cabin for rifle,
Speaker 1: might have been thirty five thirty eight ish something like that.
Speaker 1: So good tip, A good tip. I think like everybody
Speaker 1: was stoked if you got two got it two to
Speaker 1: one and you were like fine to go walk out
Speaker 1: of there with two hundred bucks from each guy. You know,
Speaker 1: you felt like you were getting stiffed if it was
Speaker 1: they only give you a hunter for the whole week,
Speaker 1: you know, but every now and then you did get
Speaker 1: a dude the three down the k like he basically
Speaker 1: double because we're getting paid two hundred bucks a day
Speaker 1: and so he would double your wages for the week,
Speaker 1: which was sweet cash. Yeah, exactly cash. Yeah. Are you
Speaker 1: related to Mark Roscoe, the former governor? I am? Then
Speaker 1: your dad, Now that's my uncle, Yeah, my dad's oldest brother.
Speaker 1: So you're like politically connected. Oh yeah, no, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, how uh that was in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, Yeah, it was, so he was and he
Speaker 1: had two terms here and unfortunately can't bring the exact
Speaker 1: dates to you, but yeah, it was in that time
Speaker 1: for him. Uh and and having a back having your
Speaker 1: own do you own out do you own stone Glacier
Speaker 1: out right? No? No, I do not? You run it?
Speaker 1: What a how's it work? Um? Yeah? Like you like
Speaker 1: the explain to me? You tell me, I will explain
Speaker 1: it to you. Can we hear who you're talking to?
Speaker 1: Is it too early to no? Let's do no, let's
Speaker 1: let's do round tablets here. Pete Munich, Pete Munich has
Speaker 1: been out here before. Um talking goats. Yeah, because Pete
Speaker 1: runs Rocky You know how Janice has the Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: Squirrel Foundation. Pete Munich invented, right, you invented the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain go to lines once upun a time, which is
Speaker 1: the only got focused mountain goat focused. And you were
Speaker 1: inspired like you you had like a moment, like a
Speaker 1: like a epiphany. Uh. Yeah. I saw the Governor's tag
Speaker 1: Big Horn Tag in Montana get auctioned off that wild
Speaker 1: cheap Foundation one winner for five eighty thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: eight I didn't know what ever went that high? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we gotta return to that because that's something I
Speaker 1: want to talk about anyways, talk boy at. That money
Speaker 1: went back to the state of Montana for sheep management
Speaker 1: and conservation. And I love mountain goats and had previously
Speaker 1: hunted one and kind of inquired about our governor's tag
Speaker 1: Mountain goat Governor's tag, and then kind of started asking
Speaker 1: about volunteer opportunities and conservation efforts and that kind of
Speaker 1: a quiet answer. So the go To Alliance was formed?
Speaker 1: What what did the goat tag go for? That same year?
Speaker 1: The Montana Governor's Mountain Goat tag ranges from about fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty three thousand dollars. I don't know they had one.
Speaker 1: You never hear about that? Yeah, a lot most states do. See,
Speaker 1: all right, we're already digging a hole. Man. There's so
Speaker 1: much easily explained now, Okay, so Pete, you also work
Speaker 1: Peter or Pete, I see, just go But you also
Speaker 1: work for Stone was Yes, I do. It's like you're
Speaker 1: main because you don't make money off running the go
Speaker 1: to line. Um, then Kurt tell to tell all about
Speaker 1: what you got going out? Now, Okay, So, Um, I
Speaker 1: am the lead designer for Stone Glacier and I'm also
Speaker 1: one of the owners and the founder. I'm the founder
Speaker 1: one oh yep, one of yep. Yeah. We were in
Speaker 1: the room where you design packs. Yeah, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of it. You know, n I do right here. Um
Speaker 1: nice quiet space, you don't, you know, no distractions and
Speaker 1: uh have everything you need right here. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: started Stone Glacier back in two thousand twelve, and then
Speaker 1: this last year, you know, we're looking for growth, we're
Speaker 1: looking to expand in other markets, do lots of other things,
Speaker 1: and we found um the right people that wanted to
Speaker 1: be involved, and and so you know, it's given me
Speaker 1: the time to move back into the design primarily and
Speaker 1: focus on on you know, what I need to do
Speaker 1: to grow the company. You know, back in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: I was saying, went a little later now, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, there's no more room in his world
Speaker 1: for another micro brewery. Yeah, just a few. Yeah, look
Speaker 1: at both around declared market saturation. Yeah. But is it like,
Speaker 1: is it scary? Was it scary getting like starting a
Speaker 1: backpack company? No, it wasn't scary at all. Um. I
Speaker 1: think you know, financially, it wasn't scary, just because of
Speaker 1: the way that I went about it. Um, I wasn't
Speaker 1: looking to hit a home run. I wasn't looking to
Speaker 1: leverage my you know, my family's life savings. UM. I
Speaker 1: was just looking to bring a product to market that
Speaker 1: I thought was viable, that people would use. Uh and
Speaker 1: and so that was the only step was actually taking
Speaker 1: on myself. I talked to other companies, you know, nothing serious, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, they had their own programs going. They
Speaker 1: were doing their own thing, and so that that was
Speaker 1: the only option. And started very small, you know, a
Speaker 1: minimum run. And this was a side gig. This is
Speaker 1: not Kurt's full time job. Yes, yep, yep, yep, exactly.
Speaker 1: So uh, all time job, full time job, high alted
Speaker 1: electrician in Alaska. Yeah, that's why this room is plastered
Speaker 1: with stuffed doll sheet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanna use me up there? Is that just don't know
Speaker 1: us now how gonna use you up there? I was
Speaker 1: up there for Oh yeah, so you're stacking up doll rams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was trying you shot all these doll sheep yep, yep. Question.
Speaker 1: That's the brown that is a Montana big one. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the unlimited that is Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that a whole bunch. And then Brittany brothers,
Speaker 1: you've been on here a bunch of times? How many
Speaker 1: times been on here? Only two times? No? No No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I guess after the episodes too, So
Speaker 1: four times? Can you laugh for a minute? No, because
Speaker 1: the fella I'll just tell Brittany fella rode in last
Speaker 1: time you were on and and he was saying that
Speaker 1: he wished that he could bottle bottled Brittany's laughter. He
Speaker 1: provided full contact information. So I feel like you should
Speaker 1: chuckle for him. Now, Well, it's organic, right, Like I
Speaker 1: have to be prompted. I can't just like fake it otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, would be the fun in that? Um, what
Speaker 1: do you have to say? Did you want to get
Speaker 1: in a turkey the spring? No? I didn't. We went
Speaker 1: once with Janice and Helen and her boyfriend came into
Speaker 1: town and my boyfriend and the whole Patelis clan. And
Speaker 1: then another time my boyfriend and I went out east
Speaker 1: and were attacked by like the worst tick infecon infection.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't those ticks don't matter. Oh they sure
Speaker 1: as held. When you have two dogs that are crawling
Speaker 1: with hundreds of ticks, why would you bring dogs turkey
Speaker 1: hunt were hunting turkey's illegally under the bush. We were
Speaker 1: not hunting with dogs. They were hanging out in the
Speaker 1: camp or while we went in the morning. But then
Speaker 1: like during the day and it was like ninety degrees
Speaker 1: to during the day, so we're like hanging out and
Speaker 1: then they just like suddenly realized they were crawling with texts.
Speaker 1: The problem with those laugh The problem of those ticks
Speaker 1: is that when you pick them off you, you always
Speaker 1: leave the parts in you and the parts in you.
Speaker 1: It's like a bastard. But they don't don't really bite
Speaker 1: onto you for like another for like a day or so.
Speaker 1: But once they get on, you get in your weight,
Speaker 1: they get onto your belt anywhere, man, and then they
Speaker 1: grab on and you tear them off, and then you
Speaker 1: think you got them, and then it itches and swells
Speaker 1: and you gotta get a tweezer and a razor. Ticks
Speaker 1: off of myself and our pets growing up all the time,
Speaker 1: I've just never seen anything or experience anything like that.
Speaker 1: But these ticks don't carry lime, right, so it makes
Speaker 1: them cool with me. Okay, Well, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: it by mosquitoes. I'm not gonna go west. Still still
Speaker 1: better than Mosquito. They don't carry West now anyway, So
Speaker 1: next year, yeah, without the dogs and maybe no ticks.
Speaker 1: Good luck that kind of comes with the territory. So
Speaker 1: I want to talk about these these this Big Horn
Speaker 1: deal a little bit because what's interesting is that both
Speaker 1: Pete and Kurt have done the impossible and killed the
Speaker 1: Big Horn from a and this isn't gonna be anything
Speaker 1: the people listen killed the Big Horn from an unlimited unit. Um.
Speaker 1: But first I want back up, what at what point
Speaker 1: when you're doing high volta uh electrician work? Why why
Speaker 1: are you? Like? Man, what I really should be doing
Speaker 1: is is stitching backpacks? Why? You know what I mean? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: it was more on a necessity. I was. I was
Speaker 1: accessing or trying to access some areas in Alaska that
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you could if you can
Speaker 1: make one trip in and one trip out, then you've
Speaker 1: effectively doubled the range that you could cover. But if
Speaker 1: you had to make two trips out with you know,
Speaker 1: all the extra gear that you're carrying in an entire sheet.
Speaker 1: Do you mean hunting off the road system? No? This
Speaker 1: is all yeah, this is all flying you know, flying
Speaker 1: in a super cub drop off at a strip. And
Speaker 1: then what mountain range were you on chew gash In
Speaker 1: and the Laska Range alone? Well, yeah, I mean most
Speaker 1: of the time there. There was a couple of hunts
Speaker 1: I went with with good friends. But that's that's really
Speaker 1: where it started. That's where I learned that I or
Speaker 1: I was trying to learn how to sew because you
Speaker 1: wanted to make modifications I've gone through like you were
Speaker 1: trying to like dick around with your exist exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it was making a superpack well lighter, lighter,
Speaker 1: and just a little bit more function for specifically what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do, and but primarily it was weight.
Speaker 1: It was being able to take things out of existing
Speaker 1: packs and still be able to put them back together
Speaker 1: so they'll function. So, like, what would be an example
Speaker 1: what was it back? Like, what would be an example
Speaker 1: of a backpack that you started? Right? Were you? Like?
Speaker 1: What kind of pack would you buy that you'd want
Speaker 1: to dick with to make different? It was it was
Speaker 1: pretty much all of them at that point. Frames. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't carry any external frames. I went
Speaker 1: primarily with the internals um, you know I had some
Speaker 1: north face, had some arc terics, and a majority of
Speaker 1: the time it was removing things and still being able
Speaker 1: to put it back together so it would work. So
Speaker 1: you know, get rid of extra pockets, extra zippers, extra straps,
Speaker 1: move a strap down lower so you had more load compression. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, simple things like that. And you know, slowly, yes,
Speaker 1: I started ending up closer to what we have today.
Speaker 1: Um like a way as stripped down back pack, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, for sure, and being able to keep it modular.
Speaker 1: You know. Interesting enough, one of the first backpacks that
Speaker 1: is when I went up there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys have remember to ever use yet was the
Speaker 1: old Coleman external. Yeah. Well they had different packs that
Speaker 1: you could put on there, so now you could you know,
Speaker 1: at the time this was you know, yeah you said
Speaker 1: you didn't use external pa, No, but not like that,
Speaker 1: not like the true tubular external. So that this Coleman
Speaker 1: frame was, you know, a footprint that was very small
Speaker 1: and in in comparison to say, you know the Kelty
Speaker 1: or the Barneys, which are I mean good packs on
Speaker 1: that when we started using in Alaska. That when I
Speaker 1: first started hunt up there was the like the tubular Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the full on like pins with the for sure,
Speaker 1: the pins with the key, the key ring molders, the
Speaker 1: hold the pins in and ship like that. Well and
Speaker 1: still squeaky is all. Okay, they are squeaky, but I
Speaker 1: mean they're the go to if your hall and moose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know of anybody who you know, who would
Speaker 1: say much different, especially the guides and a lot of
Speaker 1: the guys that use them in Alaska. It's just bomber,
Speaker 1: you know. You throw a hind quarter on there, you
Speaker 1: have something to lash too. Um, It's just it's just
Speaker 1: a different animal than this, you know. And so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of where it all started as far as
Speaker 1: the sewing portion. And then so you bought a soul
Speaker 1: machine or hint doing it? Yeah, no, no, I bought
Speaker 1: a sewing machine and that that was quite the learning
Speaker 1: curve in itself, because you get what you pay for.
Speaker 1: You know. The first one I have is garbage and
Speaker 1: you just fought it right there. That's a jukie. Our
Speaker 1: singer is good. My mom runs a singer, don't be
Speaker 1: bad mouthed singer. That's when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: My mom, when I was looking at my mom sold
Speaker 1: our clothes. We wore homemade clothes a little. It sounds
Speaker 1: like kind of amish, Yeah, should we not? All we
Speaker 1: had a lot of homemade clothes and we hunted deer
Speaker 1: and homemade wool clothes. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, wool pants
Speaker 1: with elastic waste, you know, yeah, a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Times change, man. Oh but I had a follow up question.
Speaker 1: So like mains and singers, No, back to walking as
Speaker 1: far as you could and not had to make two
Speaker 1: trips out. Um, So you're just thinking, like, if I
Speaker 1: make it lighter, even if it's by this a couple
Speaker 1: of pounds, that will essentially just remove a whole trip. Yeah, yeah, obviously. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't work with just the pack because you're
Speaker 1: you're adding with with the with the sheep head and
Speaker 1: all the meat. You got like forty five pounds of
Speaker 1: meat the heads, Like thank god, I had eight quite
Speaker 1: a eight ounce pocket out of my pack. It doesn't matter, No,
Speaker 1: it does, it does in the end, Okay, So it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the entire I need to let you ask
Speaker 1: this question. No I did, I got it out. No,
Speaker 1: it's the entire it's the entire program, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's everything that you carry in the pack. It's the
Speaker 1: difference between going in on my first sheet point where
Speaker 1: you're sixty five pounds. Yeah yeah, I mean there's it's
Speaker 1: you know, a sleeping bag that weighs a pound and
Speaker 1: a half more than what I have, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: and so you go through your entire gear list, your tent,
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're stove, you get dialed in on
Speaker 1: your food. All of a sudden, you're looking at thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds going in. Now you're looking at thirty pounds
Speaker 1: difference coming out. And so even at my lightest weight,
Speaker 1: I was still looking in that hundred and ten hundred
Speaker 1: twenty pound range of one load coming out, you had
Speaker 1: thirty pounds on that. I'm not doing it. I know
Speaker 1: that there are guys that are doing but that and
Speaker 1: the dollars take care of That's it. That's it. So
Speaker 1: you know, at the end, when I decided I'd gone through,
Speaker 1: I'd gone through all the rest of my gear. Because
Speaker 1: you could, you could spend money and you could buy that.
Speaker 1: That's all you had to do is just pony up
Speaker 1: the cash and drop weight out of your pack. But
Speaker 1: once you got to the pack. You know what what
Speaker 1: you mean, like like that just buy lighter. Buying like
Speaker 1: a lighter stove is going to cost more than a
Speaker 1: big heavy stove. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so you got
Speaker 1: down two, you got down to let's say you're doing.
Speaker 1: You got down where you could do a nine day,
Speaker 1: ten day hunt. It varied, it varied, so you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at that you're looking at two pounds of
Speaker 1: food today. So it really depended on where you were
Speaker 1: going and what you were doing. Um and so you know,
Speaker 1: some of the areas you knew that there was only
Speaker 1: five days of hunting going this way out of the strip,
Speaker 1: there might be seven days going the other might be
Speaker 1: ten days. You know. You just all depended on the
Speaker 1: specific hunt. So the actual weight that you left the
Speaker 1: strip from that would vary and it would carry on.
Speaker 1: You might fly in with then just hang a bag,
Speaker 1: I don come back. You're gonna come back and you're
Speaker 1: gonna go the other way. And and then it also
Speaker 1: depended on the country. So when you go into certain spots,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's tight. You know, maybe there's only
Speaker 1: one canyon that they're in there. So now you're not
Speaker 1: going to carry a four pound spotting scope because you
Speaker 1: know that you can glass most of it up with
Speaker 1: your binoculars once you get there. You just knew a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the program than say, you know
Speaker 1: what we do when we just go out down the
Speaker 1: canyon here LK counting might be trying to look at
Speaker 1: something that's two miles away. So I think just the
Speaker 1: the entire program got more dialed in up there because
Speaker 1: you're going back to the same spots, so you kind
Speaker 1: of knew exactly what you needed and you'd start cutting
Speaker 1: those things out and you know, so that's that's where
Speaker 1: you ended up. You know, I can picture that you're
Speaker 1: saying when you uh, when you when you were out
Speaker 1: doing that kind of stuff you just mentioned because you
Speaker 1: mentioned spotting scopes. Um. I thing I like about Sheephunt
Speaker 1: is you can burn up the ground so quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're looking at this like black rock or is
Speaker 1: that that rich that Rick French made that movie? Yeah,
Speaker 1: black black white sheep. So you don't it's not like
Speaker 1: glass couzi or you're like, I know, I'm looking at tenam.
Speaker 1: I just can't mind it. You know, it's like, is
Speaker 1: there a white thing sitting there? No, let's move. It is.
Speaker 1: It is. But you know, it's amazing how much little
Speaker 1: things like they just the topography and then the little swales,
Speaker 1: a little cuts. They absolutely and light. I mean, you
Speaker 1: get up in you get up into that kind of
Speaker 1: shale country and you get a certain type of light
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day and things look, rocks
Speaker 1: look lighter, everything looks lighter. The sheep, you know, they're
Speaker 1: laying in this dark shale, so they you know, they
Speaker 1: don't look white like they're not all of them look
Speaker 1: white like this. You know, they're more of a dirty
Speaker 1: So you would think that they'd be super easy to find,
Speaker 1: but you know, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're standing in the middle of a great, big green
Speaker 1: patch and they just stand out from miles away. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're right on top of them. The worst thing to
Speaker 1: have to us hunting sheep one time is that snow
Speaker 1: is very frustrating. We we found sheep one time after
Speaker 1: it snowed by. Just eventually found some tracks with my
Speaker 1: spotting scope and started following the tracks with my spotting
Speaker 1: scope and eventually lost the tracks. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: where do you go from there? And never realized it's
Speaker 1: something staring at it. That's where they ended. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like they're not quite they're not snow white though, they're
Speaker 1: like yellow. But it was just like eventually the snow
Speaker 1: melts and we're back in business. That really that really
Speaker 1: feels like you're like not hunting real good anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that snow happens. No, that makes it tough, It makes
Speaker 1: it treacherous. What years was that you were that you're
Speaker 1: up there doing all this. Um, I moved up there
Speaker 1: and I guess it was nineties six and then moved
Speaker 1: back in two thousand ten. Yeah, back to him Montown,
Speaker 1: And that's when you started making packs. Did you just
Speaker 1: quit Electrician NG altogether? No, No, I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: ever quit. I think that's that's one of the keys
Speaker 1: to the business personally, because what do you mean, because
Speaker 1: I was able to make decisions that are best for
Speaker 1: the business, not best for me. You know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to put cash in my pocket. I was able
Speaker 1: to do mean, it was key that you kept having
Speaker 1: a different Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, And yeah, you
Speaker 1: know it was it was a really unique decision. But
Speaker 1: I didn't have to be in a spot where I
Speaker 1: was trying to pull extra out so my family had
Speaker 1: health insurance. And you know, especially when you're when you're smaller,
Speaker 1: and and I think it allowed, in my opinion, allowed
Speaker 1: the company to grow faster, you know, pose it. It's
Speaker 1: not my personality to try to go hit up an
Speaker 1: investor and take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in
Speaker 1: leverage everything I have. Um not that I didn't believe in,
Speaker 1: it was just not my personality and I would rather
Speaker 1: I believe that if I was building a good product,
Speaker 1: that it was going to grow itself. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't have to shove it down anybody's throat. And there
Speaker 1: was a process of going along. When you bring the
Speaker 1: first you you bring it to market, you get that
Speaker 1: feedback and you you slowly start to make those changes
Speaker 1: that take it from a good product to an exceptional product.
Speaker 1: And you need that time. You can't just come up
Speaker 1: with it. I mean some people do. I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: it way. I didn't. And I knew that it had
Speaker 1: room to expand and it needed to grow. You know
Speaker 1: what's different about them? And I've used the Brazilian packs,
Speaker 1: and I liked the Brazilian packs over the years, but
Speaker 1: it's like some packs you get and you're like, it's
Speaker 1: just like someone's like, I'm just gonna make a pack,
Speaker 1: like how people make packs. My key my secret sauce
Speaker 1: would be how I market my pack, right honest, gonna
Speaker 1: go take you know, whatever people like and make a
Speaker 1: version of that and try to sell it. It's like
Speaker 1: a very different pack. Yeah, I mean, you get it.
Speaker 1: You gotta mess with it for a minute, and then
Speaker 1: you go through like a day of a little bit
Speaker 1: frustrated and then all of a sudden you're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: ship that's why that's like that, And then that's a
Speaker 1: fun feeling to have over the course of a few
Speaker 1: days where you kind of go like I got it now,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, like your buddies like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: do this and you'll be loving You're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right because it's like really unique features and unique design.
Speaker 1: Is it kind of like solve problems that you didn't
Speaker 1: know we're there? But one of the biggest things is
Speaker 1: is uh that it's like they're so like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: tidy is that a word you guys using the backpack?
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna start but cleaning. Yeah, like clean
Speaker 1: tidy packs. Yeah. We were eating a real fancy dinner
Speaker 1: there night, and I told the smali a remember the wine.
Speaker 1: Just he had all these wine descriptions. I said, you
Speaker 1: need to start describing certain wines as rough and tumble wines.
Speaker 1: He wasn't using. He was using a lot of more
Speaker 1: effeminate terminology, but he out the other. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a tidy kind of like clean nothing, no ship
Speaker 1: snagging on brush kind of pack. Well that's because you
Speaker 1: put that on the lady. No bills and whistles, no
Speaker 1: ships snagging on brush packs. Yeah. Well, what I was
Speaker 1: really hoping to do for myself was to have a
Speaker 1: pack because at the time, you know, it's hunting in Alaska,
Speaker 1: is hunting sheep, doing a little about to moose hunting
Speaker 1: up there. And then I was coming back and I
Speaker 1: was hunting in Montana, yeah, you know when I could
Speaker 1: get Yeah, but that was before that, unfortunately, so I
Speaker 1: was still having a draw a tack at that point. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Well, they have to come back
Speaker 1: to hunt in Montana now, so you but that's only
Speaker 1: good for one year, right, that's a good question. I
Speaker 1: don't know, because I wasn't ever in that because I
Speaker 1: think there was like two different kinds, like one was
Speaker 1: just if you were. Yeah, I can't remember how they were,
Speaker 1: but anyways, didn't have that program. Yeah, they didn't have
Speaker 1: that program. So a long story short, I was looking for.
Speaker 1: I was just looking to build a pack that I
Speaker 1: could use everywhere, and you know, the same thing if
Speaker 1: I was going hiking, if I you know, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, so I could pack in all my gear
Speaker 1: just like you said, take it down and make it
Speaker 1: tidy and be able to day hunt out of it.
Speaker 1: Still pull my bow, keep it tight, you know, tight
Speaker 1: footprint on your back, and just try to hit that
Speaker 1: middle ground so that you always had it on. Because
Speaker 1: I didn't ever take my pack off, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's whether I was packing all my stuff in or
Speaker 1: whether I was actually hunting. Um, I always had it on.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to be functional. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: narrow on the pack so you can move. Didn't want
Speaker 1: it to be noisy, and just like you said, tidy,
Speaker 1: but then but then you can blow it up. But
Speaker 1: then you can blow it up. Always have people being like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand what you always gott in that pack.
Speaker 1: I'm like, lot's is nothing in that pack. But I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna get something and then go on some hell
Speaker 1: hike back to go get my pack and then hike
Speaker 1: all the way back up again to go fetch it.
Speaker 1: That's it. I was gonna have it with me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you have an empty pack, you know, and
Speaker 1: say you're hunting out, you can you know, you can
Speaker 1: get a lot out if you have your your friend
Speaker 1: with you, because yeah, that's why. More and more of
Speaker 1: the packs I like are the kinds that like have
Speaker 1: a lot of space that actually blow up big. But
Speaker 1: the key is making it that once you tuck it
Speaker 1: all into itself and sinch everything down, it's like you
Speaker 1: basically got like a board on your back almost, but
Speaker 1: it can blow out and be like a gigantic m
Speaker 1: haul in apparatus. And this thing too about packs is uh,
Speaker 1: I kind of always tell me because you know what
Speaker 1: you used to get in situations where you're gonna like
Speaker 1: leave your pack for a minute. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: never leave you know the pocalypse now, never get out
Speaker 1: of the boat. And I'm like, never leave your pack.
Speaker 1: People like they get to where they're gonna like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna make a shot from the ridge.
Speaker 1: So this is all leave our packs. I'm yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen. Then you're gonna get up on
Speaker 1: the bridge. You're gonna like, shoot, it's gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: wing it. It's gonna run off. You're gonna run over
Speaker 1: the next bridge and see what's going on. You're gonna
Speaker 1: see it, go over the next ridge and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, it's been dark for three hours. You don't
Speaker 1: know where you're at, no clue where your pack is.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like I do I now every time
Speaker 1: I think like, yeah, I leave my pack, I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: you will not leave your pack. Yeah, yeah, you're not
Speaker 1: gaining much in it, even if you're carrying all your gears.
Speaker 1: So now if you're at thirty five pounds, you know
Speaker 1: minus rife plus your minus, if you always have that
Speaker 1: with you, you hunt right to dark, you kick out
Speaker 1: a flat spot, you're going to sleep, and you wake
Speaker 1: up and you go when you compare that to try
Speaker 1: and to go back to camp, get back into a spot,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out where you're at, hiking in the dark,
Speaker 1: all that other ship, Mandy, you're just way ahead of
Speaker 1: the game. In my opinion that and that's what I
Speaker 1: always try to do. I'm not gonna say it always happens,
Speaker 1: you know, because sometimes it just doesn't make sense. But
Speaker 1: typically on longer hunts, it's everything goes with you every step,
Speaker 1: and then you know you can back out and throw
Speaker 1: a camp up. But I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: seen somebody leave their pack behind and have it work
Speaker 1: out to the time. Countless times I've seen, and myself
Speaker 1: included dropping packs, not once. I can't think of one
Speaker 1: time it was like, thank god, I've even like, he God,
Speaker 1: I didn't bring my backpack. I've even taking mine off
Speaker 1: and then like got away from it and then I
Speaker 1: thought about it, took away point. You know, it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: never leave your pack, Never leave your pack. So did
Speaker 1: already mentioned you guys both killed a thing in Unlimited
Speaker 1: you I wanna explain this now. Earlier I called Pete
Speaker 1: and said, hey, add up. How many big horn tags
Speaker 1: there are? Okay, state of Montana. How many big horn
Speaker 1: tags are available in this state of Montana lottery tags? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start even more bases in this Okay, this
Speaker 1: is for New Jersey cat ladies so they can understand
Speaker 1: we're talking about, Um, there's there's uh, this is this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna trim this up a little bit
Speaker 1: and say there's three types of hunting tags. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: need to jump in. When you don't like something, I
Speaker 1: to say, I'm trying to simplify it without two two
Speaker 1: types might be the most simple. Laders govern tas. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So you got There's the thing we call over the
Speaker 1: counter tags OTC tags. It's a kind of tag where
Speaker 1: if you're hunting deer in Wisconsin, Michigan, wherever, and you
Speaker 1: can go down to the gas station and buy a
Speaker 1: life anybody, anybody, any time, just go in, you buy
Speaker 1: your deer license. In that situation, the resource is strong
Speaker 1: enough to meet all of the demand, all of the
Speaker 1: demand on the resource. There's no restriction on allocation of opportunity.
Speaker 1: Anyone who wants to go can go. When you get
Speaker 1: a population of animals that has more demand than supply,
Speaker 1: you need to limit how many people are gonna get
Speaker 1: an opportunity to hunt. And you do this by having
Speaker 1: what we call limited draw tags lottery tags. And what
Speaker 1: they do is they find a democratic way to allocate
Speaker 1: the tags to all the people who wish they could go,
Speaker 1: and it generally works at you fill out the application
Speaker 1: and send in a little bit of money or sometimes
Speaker 1: a lot of money. The state um does a drawing,
Speaker 1: pulls names out of the hat, and then they hand
Speaker 1: out tags. And some tags are lottery draws, and it's like,
Speaker 1: if you fill out your materials, you'll probably get it, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you could be you could be almost guaranteed
Speaker 1: to get it because there's one hundred of them available
Speaker 1: and in most years only guys apply, so they're limiting,
Speaker 1: but it's easy to drop. The third kind of tag
Speaker 1: is like, I'm gonna do the third kind of A
Speaker 1: and the third kind of beat the third kind of A.
Speaker 1: The third kind of tag is awarded not democratic, but
Speaker 1: it's awarded to the highest bidder, okay, and there's very
Speaker 1: few of those in the country. The reason I bring
Speaker 1: that kind of and that's the thing that there's a
Speaker 1: thing called landowner tags. I am doing A and B three.
Speaker 1: A is a landowner tag where a guy owns a
Speaker 1: big gas chunk of land and it provides core vital
Speaker 1: habitat and so the rewards this individual for providing good
Speaker 1: while theife habitat by giving him some tags that he
Speaker 1: can do with as he wishes, and he can sell them,
Speaker 1: use them, give him to his nephew. Three B is
Speaker 1: a governor's tag that's sold to the general public. Highest bidder.
Speaker 1: Is everybody cool with this? STI permit governor's tags. What's
Speaker 1: what makes governor's tag so valuable is that many of
Speaker 1: them you can hunt all year anywhere that they issue tags.
Speaker 1: What do you mean all year? There's so like you
Speaker 1: buy the Arizona Governor's tag. Because here's the thing, was
Speaker 1: she It doesn't matter because he doesn't shed his horn.
Speaker 1: He's not like you know, so you could feasibly hone
Speaker 1: when you can hunt when no one's hounting. When she
Speaker 1: would she really if you draw like the if you
Speaker 1: get the governor's tag elk tag, you're not gonna go
Speaker 1: in May and shoot some bowl of six inch velvet
Speaker 1: stubs sticking out the top of his head. But what
Speaker 1: she was like? Why not? So they sweetened it up
Speaker 1: by letting you hunt year round, And they sweetened it
Speaker 1: up by ah, you tell them to get rid of
Speaker 1: that gun. I'm tell him to get rid of the guy, right,
Speaker 1: I wasn't pop it. It wasn't out he handed you see,
Speaker 1: he handed me gum. He was like, oh, you want
Speaker 1: some gum. I was like, no, dude, I don't want
Speaker 1: I don't want some to take your gun out. So, uh,
Speaker 1: where was that? We're talking about Governor's tex Governor's tag.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but so you can hunt anywhere in the state,
Speaker 1: but you can't hunt anywhere in the state. You can
Speaker 1: hunt anywhere in the state that hunting for that species
Speaker 1: is allowed in some form or another. I mean that
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, or glacier because now the highest selling
Speaker 1: Governor's tag in the country happens to be in Montana. Correct,
Speaker 1: And every year it go that always makes the news.
Speaker 1: Often times it goes to a guy who owns the
Speaker 1: chain of sandwich shops. Sandwich shops he likes. A man
Speaker 1: with a chain of sandwich shops like to buy the
Speaker 1: governor's tags. The guy that owns Jimmy John's right, the
Speaker 1: same guy. It's the same guy. He's bout some numbers.
Speaker 1: It is it limited to just Montana resident residents ever
Speaker 1: bought the Montana go Okay, and uh, it's always in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of between over three hundred thousand dollars every
Speaker 1: year is a little different. Um, but I think between
Speaker 1: two to five dollars. So with that kind of like timeline,
Speaker 1: what's the percentage of that person, Like, um, what's their
Speaker 1: success rate? These guys are these guys? Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: hunting them though they're trigger men. When a guy buys
Speaker 1: the governor tag, what he does he hires a whole posse.
Speaker 1: He hires a posse of of eager young fellers who
Speaker 1: go out and scour in this state. They scour the
Speaker 1: Missouri Breaks. So the biggest rocky mountain big horns in
Speaker 1: the world is the General's amis Johnny Street. The biggest
Speaker 1: rocky mountain big horns in the world come out of
Speaker 1: the Missouri Breaks. There's some tankers in Alberta. What's that
Speaker 1: area now, Bertha Line? But big, big ass. You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just stay you stand behind a big horn. Look at
Speaker 1: the way that scroll. I was going to ask you
Speaker 1: because we had a video YouTube. Are you telling Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan about like how big those hanging way below what
Speaker 1: I tossed you in the garage? That honest Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was picking up meat for the cookbook shoot that were
Speaker 1: actually in town doing this feat And he's like Hey,
Speaker 1: you haven't he used to, he's and he throws me
Speaker 1: a set of frozen You need to make a extra
Speaker 1: big pack for packing those time. So that's the governor's tax.
Speaker 1: Now when when it dude buys a governer's tag, This
Speaker 1: guy generally like, you're a trigger man. The guys of
Speaker 1: bibles are trigger man. They don't have time, right, They're
Speaker 1: not gonna go out and spend the whole summer out
Speaker 1: sweat is that they have all of the time in
Speaker 1: the world. No, they're not here. Not here. That's the difference.
Speaker 1: In Montana, you have to hunt within the rate. Well
Speaker 1: some seasons. Every state handles the governor's tax is in
Speaker 1: the general hunting season, just like everybody else who would
Speaker 1: draw the tags. Yeah, basically what they get here is
Speaker 1: they get to hunt any unit. So um and actually
Speaker 1: I don't believe that there's any area here that they
Speaker 1: can hunt that there isn't already I've never heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of exclusive access. And they don't have
Speaker 1: exclusive You can go to river Bridge where you want,
Speaker 1: and you can go to places that might only have
Speaker 1: that might only otherwise to give out one tag. But
Speaker 1: what so, I mean oftentimes a guy will buy a
Speaker 1: governor's tag because he already knows what he's going to
Speaker 1: be going after, because they'll get ten, twenty whatever. They'll
Speaker 1: hire glasses who will go out to the areas that
Speaker 1: everyone knows holds big, big horns. And these guys are like,
Speaker 1: these are real woodsmen. Those are the guys hunting the ramp.
Speaker 1: And they'll put together a dossier on every sheep they
Speaker 1: can find in the unit, and the guy will peruse
Speaker 1: the dossier. Come on, the detail of this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff would blow your mind. I've given you the version
Speaker 1: that doesn't make people that angry. So but so the incentive,
Speaker 1: like long story shirt, the incentive is that they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of money and then it goes back into conservation. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: there in lies the rup So okay, I wasn't getting
Speaker 1: all this not gonn get a little bit bar uh okay,
Speaker 1: let's up eighteen for you to Martin versus Waddel was
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court decision, and it was a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decision that settled a dispute between an oysterman got a
Speaker 1: commercial oyster harvester in the New Jersey meadow lands and
Speaker 1: a landowner who traced his ownership of the land to
Speaker 1: a land grant made by King George the Second to
Speaker 1: the Duke of Earl, I believe. And when King George
Speaker 1: the Second gave this land of the Duke of Earl,
Speaker 1: who passed along down the line to him, he gave
Speaker 1: him the land. And with the land came all the fishings, huntings,
Speaker 1: hawkings and foulings. Because in Europe, when you own the land,
Speaker 1: you own the animals. Now the guys out picking oysters.
Speaker 1: The guy says, you can't pick oysters. I own the
Speaker 1: oysters because I owned the land up against the water
Speaker 1: where you're picking oysters. Goes all the way to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decides, they say this, They say,
Speaker 1: because we have the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence stripped all of the rights of the sovereign,
Speaker 1: stripped all of the rights of the king, and gave
Speaker 1: it to the people. So by virtue of the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence, we are deciding that the animals in this
Speaker 1: country belong to the people, that you do not belong
Speaker 1: to the king, and the animals will be administered on
Speaker 1: the people's behalf by their state. And it was meant
Speaker 1: to be that we had a system of the democratic
Speaker 1: allocation of wildlife. Governor's tags are a perversion of the
Speaker 1: democratic allocation of wildlife because you're selling it to the
Speaker 1: highest bidder, lottery draws or democratic with your name in
Speaker 1: the hat. Everyone's at the same chance. However, here's where
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing where I don't agree or
Speaker 1: disagree because of that money is spent on the ground
Speaker 1: for big horn conservation and big horns are absent, Like
Speaker 1: we've done a lot for recovery. We don't even scratched
Speaker 1: the surface. I'm putting big horns back where they block,
Speaker 1: like elk absent from their historic range in this country.
Speaker 1: You would never get that because it seems like elk revery,
Speaker 1: but they're not there. Used to be elk in Michigan,
Speaker 1: you know, And I mean there's some number, but they
Speaker 1: used to. Like if you look at elk distribution in
Speaker 1: this country at the time of European contact is the
Speaker 1: whole damn country almost. So there's a lot of work
Speaker 1: to be done on big horns, and that's a big
Speaker 1: gass chunk of money every year. Maybe it's not fair.
Speaker 1: It's very very hot topic, hot contentious topic, and both
Speaker 1: sides are right my first years. They're both wrong first
Speaker 1: years guiding in Arizona. I can't remember. I think I
Speaker 1: was still scouting you because I didn't have the client
Speaker 1: with me. But I was going to hit the spot
Speaker 1: out that was like two hours almost from where our
Speaker 1: staying via truck and then um like side by side
Speaker 1: because the road was so rough, right, So get up
Speaker 1: trailer like thirty minutes, get to a rough road, plump
Speaker 1: side by side, and then run another hour and a
Speaker 1: half in the dark trying to get to this spot
Speaker 1: at daylight to see who was hanging around. So no, ELK,
Speaker 1: I think I was just going to check a water hole. You, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as I'm kind of closing it on the spot where
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to get huh yeah, down in this area.
Speaker 1: Can you add this on your story? Yeah, down in
Speaker 1: this area, you could take a bucket of water and
Speaker 1: dump it out on a road and the bullet come
Speaker 1: out and wallow in it. Yes, sometimes tell that story
Speaker 1: added in somehow weave it in. Yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they've ever actually made a wall by
Speaker 1: the thing that they had seen spots where there was
Speaker 1: like old tracks, maybe like the remnants of some wallowing
Speaker 1: in a road like in an old dry and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder what would happened, you're yeah, we just they
Speaker 1: happened to have whatever. You know, it was fifty gallons
Speaker 1: of water in the truck for whatever reason, probably to
Speaker 1: fill up the trailer, and they dropped six gallons into
Speaker 1: this mud hole and put a trail cam up in
Speaker 1: the tree and came back twenty four hours later and
Speaker 1: sure enough it's a dry place. You weaved it right in.
Speaker 1: So continued, But yeah, I'm buzzing down the road two hours,
Speaker 1: you know, through the darkness and trying to look at
Speaker 1: my GPS make sure I'm in the right spot, getting
Speaker 1: ready to start hiking, and uh, I kind of see
Speaker 1: like the flash of like where my lights might hit
Speaker 1: some other like tail lights or something. As I'm kind
Speaker 1: of getting closer from getting to park, and I think
Speaker 1: I had to park. Maybe it was like the end
Speaker 1: of the road, or I forget what the reason was
Speaker 1: why you had to stop there. But anyways, I'm pulling
Speaker 1: in and I come around one or more corner, and
Speaker 1: also I can see that there are trucks there, you know,
Speaker 1: and there's some people and they're awake too, must be hunters.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the only reason people would be out there,
Speaker 1: you know, awake at that time in the morning. And
Speaker 1: as I pull up, it's like the whole camp is like,
Speaker 1: who's that, you know, and they turned and I must
Speaker 1: have seen twenty headlamps turn in my direction and they're
Speaker 1: just shining up all these trucks and I'm like, holy ship,
Speaker 1: and I kind of got scared. So I'm like, what
Speaker 1: what what what? What? What? Why? Why are you guys
Speaker 1: all out here? It's party? And so I just kind
Speaker 1: of kept rolling, went on, did my scouting, and then
Speaker 1: later it didn't take long, you know, through who I
Speaker 1: was with, you know, there was some texting phone calls
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, do you guys have a guy
Speaker 1: down here this morning? And they're like, yeah, we've been
Speaker 1: on a big Bowl and we've got seventy trail cameras
Speaker 1: out um, you know, we got the guy coming in tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, I'm not gonna hang
Speaker 1: out here any longer. But there was a Governor's tag.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean, I'm not kidding. It was like
Speaker 1: twenty headlamps all turned at once, like who's rolling in
Speaker 1: there on our spot? On this big bowl that we've
Speaker 1: been looking for. So then what kind of tips do
Speaker 1: you think that those guys get you? Can you fill
Speaker 1: in some of the details on the dudes that find
Speaker 1: the rams for the governor's tag? Guys, have you been
Speaker 1: involved in that? No? I haven't. I haven't that interests you.
Speaker 1: Uh no, not not necessarily, but but not because I
Speaker 1: have anything against it. There's just you know, I'd rather
Speaker 1: be scouting for myself to um. Now, when you say
Speaker 1: you have nothing against it, what do you mean? I
Speaker 1: mean I don't have anything against it? But what do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? Well, I think it is something
Speaker 1: to be against it. It' no, I personally don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that it's a hot topic. You know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because just for the reasons we're talking about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: some people don't like the idea that that you can
Speaker 1: just go by what what what somebody else has to
Speaker 1: put in for. But you have the chance to go
Speaker 1: by it. I have the chance to go by it.
Speaker 1: You know, I could mortgage my house. I could do
Speaker 1: you know, any of those things and throw my name
Speaker 1: in the hat if it is that important to me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the fairness you're saying, you would mortgage your
Speaker 1: house to buy the Governor's not like you gotta bee.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I thinking about yeah, sweethearts to be
Speaker 1: talking about something thinking about no, But I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean we're all free, we're all free to raise our
Speaker 1: hand at those auctions. So so yeah, and I yeah,
Speaker 1: I see both sides of it. And it's different, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but if someone said, like, hey, you like to you're
Speaker 1: good at fine and cheap, would you like to do
Speaker 1: some scouting for me, you just uh wouldn't. I don't
Speaker 1: have time. I don't have time to go scout for
Speaker 1: myself these days, you know. So it's maybe it's just
Speaker 1: a different spot that. Yeah. And I've never never been
Speaker 1: approached to it, I'm not. But we do have several
Speaker 1: close friends that have been involved in the process. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: for sure. And you know you hear, you hear all
Speaker 1: different types of stories, you know, like you saying with
Speaker 1: you know ten twelve guys. Uh, the guys I know
Speaker 1: have been involved. Are you know a couple of guys
Speaker 1: out there bust in their ass to do scouting year round? Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say y're around. You know, they're typically not
Speaker 1: in those areas in the winters, but you know throughout
Speaker 1: the summers and and yeah, I mean, so somebody pays
Speaker 1: for it at the end, somebody's paying for them to
Speaker 1: be they are they are there. Those are like crackman,
Speaker 1: those are the crack commando hunters. Yeah, there's no woods
Speaker 1: in the Missouri River breaks there the brakes, you know,
Speaker 1: and you look at the history of the Montana Governor Tag.
Speaker 1: You know historically they weren't up here hunting the brakes.
Speaker 1: You know, back in the late or in the early
Speaker 1: and mid nineties, they were hunting Perma Paradise and they
Speaker 1: were hunting wrong. Absolutely, yeah, Scott and oh yeah, those
Speaker 1: guys and I want to say it, Scot, I might
Speaker 1: have it wrong. There was there was a guy who
Speaker 1: bought it two years in a row, chasing one ram
Speaker 1: or as the story goes, um somewhere in that nineties
Speaker 1: time frame out of Perma Paradise or one of those units.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a true mountain hunt. It's uh and
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, they're in the timber that
Speaker 1: that so so you know you have to take it
Speaker 1: all with a grain of salt because it's uh one unfair. No, No,
Speaker 1: absolutely take me to task if you just don't know
Speaker 1: that I described it the wrong way. No, No, absolutely not,
Speaker 1: because but I will say, in my opinion, I think
Speaker 1: that there's a vast difference between a governor tag in
Speaker 1: Montana with the guys I know that have been involved
Speaker 1: in the work and all the rest of it, in
Speaker 1: comparison to what you might describe where you have a
Speaker 1: twelve month season, um, you know in one of these
Speaker 1: other states and the boat shot in August when there
Speaker 1: isn't even a hunting season. So those are two different animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether one's right or whether one's wrong, I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: but those are that's that's a that's a different deal.
Speaker 1: Because these bodies do some of the Governor's sheep Desert
Speaker 1: sheep tags, yeah, down in Arizona. And these are some
Speaker 1: dudes that like to be out. They like to be
Speaker 1: out in the wood or not. They like to be
Speaker 1: on the desert and they like to be out the
Speaker 1: desert for months on end, and they like to look
Speaker 1: through b knoculars. That that's what these guys like to do.
Speaker 1: And they're they they're the ones that are hunting those sheets.
Speaker 1: It's just like the guy that's one point, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna let you change my mind about not to try
Speaker 1: to change my mind anything like. Those are the people
Speaker 1: that hunted the sheet for sure. Every now and then, though,
Speaker 1: I bet you must get somebody that actually wants to
Speaker 1: hunt on their own, and it doesn't some other guys
Speaker 1: do the leg where. Yeah, there's a good friend of our,
Speaker 1: Lorenzo from Go Hunt has the Idaho Big Horn Governor's
Speaker 1: tag this year and he's going d I y. Really, Yes,
Speaker 1: he's going to Hell's Canyon all on his own, really
Speaker 1: on the Governor's coolest guy ever. That's cool. But Steve,
Speaker 1: someone paid you to go scout for them to the
Speaker 1: Governor's tag, would you do it? Listen? Man? Uh, at
Speaker 1: the time that I would have been at the at
Speaker 1: a time, absolutely, but I wouldn't have been qualified. Like
Speaker 1: at the time that I would have jumped at the opportunity,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been Not that I'm qualified now, I
Speaker 1: can make it like some sort of argument now that
Speaker 1: I would be that I would be able to go
Speaker 1: scrape up some sheep and maybe find some sheep in
Speaker 1: a place that people hadn't known they were there. Whatever.
Speaker 1: So I like to wander around the through binoculars. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, at a time I would have jumped at it,
Speaker 1: but I would have been a shitty hire did later
Speaker 1: been like, I don't know why I did that? Do
Speaker 1: that job camp up there with his girlfriends some van
Speaker 1: so uh um no, So anyhow, that's that's uh three
Speaker 1: beat okay? How many? Okay? Drawing So so the Governor's tag,
Speaker 1: you buy that for a whole shipload of money. You
Speaker 1: get to go hunt if you want to draw a
Speaker 1: tag in the vicinity Air governors tag holders like the Hunt,
Speaker 1: meaning the best units in the country. You have about
Speaker 1: a percent of a percent. It's about one in a
Speaker 1: thousand less than that. Yeah, you know, we'd have to
Speaker 1: look up. I can tell that I haven't put in
Speaker 1: for fifteen years and I haven't drawn it yet. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah you are. You are less than one nineteen. I've
Speaker 1: been putting in for nineteen years. They've been doing bonus
Speaker 1: points for fourteen or whatever the hell is. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: right in the back of their eggs. You can look
Speaker 1: it up for each unit. But you know, I want
Speaker 1: to say a lot of them are in that you know,
Speaker 1: four tenths of a percent or five. But if you
Speaker 1: draw and in some tags get better. Like you know,
Speaker 1: we're just talking about rams too, because you can draw
Speaker 1: U take like my old girlfriend, you take first year
Speaker 1: she ever applied, But we're talking about rams. There are
Speaker 1: some units that have slightly better odds, and those tend
Speaker 1: to be units um that don't grow big gas ramp
Speaker 1: when you see even good odds and good odds. What
Speaker 1: we're referring to is a three to five percent draw.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's such a two to on some years,
Speaker 1: that would be the best odds you could find in
Speaker 1: Montana and chasing, and that would be the extremely good odds.
Speaker 1: And when those odds come up, it's usually because the
Speaker 1: weird fluke happen, so like a bunch of attention focuses
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Everyone then looks and goes like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: now that the results came out, I see that last
Speaker 1: year you had a two percent chance of drawing in
Speaker 1: this unit. I'm gonna try that next year and that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you and every other dude in the world is gonna
Speaker 1: see that, and then you're all gonna pounce on that unit.
Speaker 1: And then the next year you're gonna look in that
Speaker 1: unit had a point five percent chance of drawing because
Speaker 1: everybody saw that. It was a two percent. So you're
Speaker 1: not the longest short of it is, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: draw big horn tag. My brother drew big warntag. Very good.
Speaker 1: Um this year, No, no, no, A few years ago,
Speaker 1: a lot of years ago. We had fun though. Man,
Speaker 1: we had a great time. He drew down at um
Speaker 1: just outside of Gardener. Oh, very good. There's an unlimited
Speaker 1: unit across the road. Yeah, but he drew the cinembar
Speaker 1: mountain there. Uh so there's that you're not gonna draw one.
Speaker 1: If you do draw one, you're gonna get a ramp,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, Well if you show up and put in
Speaker 1: some time, you kill ramp. It was a hundred nineteen tags. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if we missed a unit on there,
Speaker 1: but it was just looking it up beforehand at success
Speaker 1: rate and so and this is this is off of it.
Speaker 1: This is off of just the tags issued, so that
Speaker 1: that's not even assuming everybody hunted. This state has a
Speaker 1: shipload of relative to all other states, Like this day
Speaker 1: has a shipload of tags. They gave out a hundred
Speaker 1: plus tags. Yeah, I think it. Well, this this has
Speaker 1: it at a hundred nineteen but I would say it's
Speaker 1: there within a couple of them. Does you say how
Speaker 1: many mugs applied for a hundred nineteen tags? M hm No,
Speaker 1: Well times of hungry right or more so, if you draw,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a high quality sheep hunt and if
Speaker 1: you put in your time like you will kill a sheep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But now keep in mind all this ship has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with anything. We're just laying the ground where
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of spots where there's a different system in place, and
Speaker 1: these are the famed in some circles. These are the
Speaker 1: famed unlimited units, and they're very remote areas in Montana
Speaker 1: where any where it's over the counter where any time
Speaker 1: to kind of over the colm, you gotta put it in.
Speaker 1: You gotta fill out the application and send it in.
Speaker 1: But anyone that wants can go. Try to get the
Speaker 1: sheet guaranteed draw guaranteed draw. You fill in your application,
Speaker 1: you can hunt sheep. Yes, the application may one, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's unlit by May one. You send in your thing,
Speaker 1: you can go. And theise are the most not the
Speaker 1: most yeah, like borderline, the most rugged areas in the state.
Speaker 1: I would argue outside of the state. I mean that's
Speaker 1: some of the earlier stuff in the lower for what
Speaker 1: they do to what they do to protect the herd
Speaker 1: is they put a mortality quota down where they're like,
Speaker 1: anybody that wants can come hunt. But once you boys
Speaker 1: kill what two once to get killed, it's over. So
Speaker 1: you gotta be calling because that's what if it was
Speaker 1: a draw hunt, they'd be given her unit per unit
Speaker 1: sheep can get killed. Yeah, and what's the cutoffs? Remember,
Speaker 1: like with bears and units like that, it used to
Speaker 1: be like seventy two hours buffer periods. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like yeah, and I feel like one of them is
Speaker 1: shorter than that. I think that that one out of
Speaker 1: gardeners twenty four. How often does it go over though
Speaker 1: pretty rarely. Every year is a little different. You hear
Speaker 1: about it happening more back in the day. I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot of stories of you know, in the night
Speaker 1: for satellite communications or yeah, because people wouldn't get word. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in some of the unlimited units, Uh, what makes
Speaker 1: them tricky is it the sheep aren't even there correct
Speaker 1: until the weather turns bad, So you could have the
Speaker 1: whole season pass and the weather never gets shitty enough,
Speaker 1: and the sheet like when we when when my brother
Speaker 1: drew a big horn tag, we're hunting sheet that are
Speaker 1: coming off lightning peak and you could hunt on open day.
Speaker 1: You could go there and cover every square inch of
Speaker 1: the unit. But they're literally like there are not cheap
Speaker 1: in the unit. Correct, And then one day there are
Speaker 1: sheep in the unit because they migrate down into the
Speaker 1: unit and then you go down there and there they are. Um.
Speaker 1: So some of the unlimited units are like that. But
Speaker 1: on the unlimited units to have or they have a
Speaker 1: mortality to there's some years that no one gets the two. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's it's very regular. So I mean last the quota
Speaker 1: never gets met. Last year com Yeah, last year five
Speaker 1: O two didn't didn't is what these specs say. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean half of them and and I think that
Speaker 1: that's pretty normal. That's pretty normal that half of them
Speaker 1: won't fill out. Yeah. Well, and you have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration that the season opens September. There's no weapons restrictions,
Speaker 1: so you know most people are hunting with a rifle
Speaker 1: and goes until the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So what is
Speaker 1: two and a half months and an unlimited numbers of
Speaker 1: people going there and they can't scrape up two ramps.
Speaker 1: They sold two d unlimited tags last year. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what the specs said. So did you you got one
Speaker 1: last year? That's it. I'm surprised if it's that low. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you got killed eight eight. So the success
Speaker 1: rate was, uh two point six seven, So two point
Speaker 1: six seven percent of the guys that throw in on
Speaker 1: the unlimited get yeah. Yeah, yeah, And I mean it's
Speaker 1: and that's that's pretty standard. Um, I you know though
Speaker 1: those numbers aren't. That's not dude. Yeah, that's a normal year.
Speaker 1: That's that's a normal year. And you know, and take
Speaker 1: all of these with a grain of salt because you
Speaker 1: you know, you you pull these off the fishing game websites.
Speaker 1: Ouf there's if we're off a tenth percent. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So now what year did you do this? Two? Did
Speaker 1: you try a lot of years before you got one?
Speaker 1: Two years? Did you guys get yours? Did you have
Speaker 1: you both gotten yours in the same location, different units? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So tell me what happened, like, like, give
Speaker 1: me the rundown on what happened when you did it?
Speaker 1: Your first year? Start with your first trip. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Well my first year, I had just got done Honey
Speaker 1: in Alaska, and um I took a RAM up there,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was a non resident. I wasn't a
Speaker 1: resident of Montana at that time, so I bought the
Speaker 1: I bought the the over the counter non resident tag
Speaker 1: for the unlimited units and I came down and I mean,
Speaker 1: you were non resident Montanas, non resident Montana at that time,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I came down and and just
Speaker 1: gave it everything. I had just flew down to Montana.
Speaker 1: Your with your up backpack that you made yourself, That's
Speaker 1: exactly what it was, and struck off into the mountains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: struck off into the mountains. And you know it's a
Speaker 1: by yourself. Yeah. Yeah, but it was an interesting story
Speaker 1: because it was it was before I don't know, it
Speaker 1: was a few days before the season started and I
Speaker 1: was trying to get on. Yeah yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: the more I learned about it there that rarely happens. Really,
Speaker 1: did you sure hear about it? Yeah, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you hear the same stories where you have
Speaker 1: to be their opening day and be on a RAM
Speaker 1: or you'll never fill it. Well, I mean the data
Speaker 1: tells you that that's just not the case. So but regardless,
Speaker 1: So I'm standing in the parking lot, I'm getting all
Speaker 1: my stuff together, and I'm in this trailhead and there's
Speaker 1: a guy kind of getting his stuff together. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's hiking or what he's doing. And then
Speaker 1: Allison a rifle case comes out and we're starting from
Speaker 1: the same trailhead and there's only you know, there aren't
Speaker 1: a ton of them throughout, you know, these units, because
Speaker 1: you're going into the wilderness. And so I figured, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go talk to the wilderness with the capital W. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's readily designated wilderness. Yes, their tooth wilderness. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so I just said, well, I better go chat with
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah. It's like four days in you take
Speaker 1: different routes, you're both standing on the same mountain. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I went in and talk to him. He was a
Speaker 1: really nice guy and he said, yeah, this is my
Speaker 1: seventh year of doing this, and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's awesome. You've got some stamina on this. It's
Speaker 1: in the back of my head I'm thinking he hadn't no,
Speaker 1: he hadn't killed no, you know, you know, well, it's
Speaker 1: like kind of quison. How long are you going for?
Speaker 1: He's uh, six seven days, you know each time, and
Speaker 1: and and so I'm thinking you must be looking for
Speaker 1: something pretty special. So I asked him, I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, how many how many legal rams you ever seen?
Speaker 1: You know, you pass over some I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: some information so that you know, Bootleather, like, why did
Speaker 1: you want to come do this? Um, had you read
Speaker 1: about it? Well? I grew up here, you know, so
Speaker 1: I had always known if about it, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But you know, at the time, it just wasn't as
Speaker 1: compelling because I grew up in the western part of
Speaker 1: the state at the time when that's where all the
Speaker 1: Governor Acts were coming out of. I mean, they're shooting
Speaker 1: one ninety plus rams out of multiple units out of
Speaker 1: the west, and you weren't going to take your name
Speaker 1: out of that hat because the odds back then we're
Speaker 1: you know, we're better than they are now. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say what they were. I don't remember, but you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go for one of the yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: then they were right out your back door, you know.
Speaker 1: We go and take pictures of him during the winter,
Speaker 1: So you had this, yeah, this kind of attachment to
Speaker 1: it opposed to driving halfway across the state into unknown. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but I was talking to the guy and I
Speaker 1: was asking, you know, how many legal rams he had seen,
Speaker 1: and he said, I've never seen one, and so you
Speaker 1: know that. Then like I shook his hand and good luck.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'm gonna go this way if you're
Speaker 1: going that way, and kind of walked back to my truck,
Speaker 1: and it's thinking, well, what do I do now? You
Speaker 1: know this this dude sounds like he's put some time
Speaker 1: in here, and and it was pretty much the way
Speaker 1: my trip went. You know, I I covered a lot
Speaker 1: of miles back in I don't know, spent five or
Speaker 1: six days. Someone laid some way point was but a
Speaker 1: pre way point. But if someone lays them like hey
Speaker 1: check here, check here, check their No, because I didn't
Speaker 1: at the time, I didn't know anybody who had ever
Speaker 1: hunted it. I've never you know, I've never talked to anybody.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I didn't have any information. And it was
Speaker 1: before these days where information, yeah, and misinformation, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of misinformation, which is kind of one of
Speaker 1: the reasons you know that we're talking about specifically what
Speaker 1: it is, because I feeled a few questions on that
Speaker 1: and um, but yeah, I went in, went in, and
Speaker 1: I didn't turn up USh sheep ushep. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not certain that where you're seeing sheep trails carved
Speaker 1: into the screen. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you can feel
Speaker 1: like you're where they sometimes there, yep, yep, you see sign,
Speaker 1: you see sign, but you know you kind of walk
Speaker 1: out of there. How many days did you do it?
Speaker 1: I'm trying five or six days. It wasn't super long,
Speaker 1: and um, and then I had to go back to Alaska.
Speaker 1: So you know after after that though, was at that
Speaker 1: point in time, were you like, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: like a sheep guy, Like I'm gonna be like a
Speaker 1: sheep dude who hunt sheep? Um? I not necessarily. I
Speaker 1: think it was just something that was really really enjoyable.
Speaker 1: And I knew that within the next few years that
Speaker 1: we were going to be moving back to Montana. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my my my time in Alaska was limited and saw
Speaker 1: I was looking for other opportunities and had the time
Speaker 1: and thought, well, I'm gonna, you know, go start to
Speaker 1: get my feet wet and but then after that I
Speaker 1: found out you're gonna have to figure out a lot
Speaker 1: more than this. This is what it's going to be,
Speaker 1: dude from the trailhead No, no, no, no, I didn't.
Speaker 1: But the sea it didn't get closed and there wasn't
Speaker 1: a ram taking the first part. No, not that season,
Speaker 1: if I remember right, And um no I didn't how
Speaker 1: many rams were in there? Ah, that's that's a I
Speaker 1: don't know. If they're killing two, there's got to be, like,
Speaker 1: there's guy to be a substantial number of male, substantial
Speaker 1: number of ramps. They can't I mean, if they are
Speaker 1: openly the idea that two are going to die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're very they're very conservative with those populations. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: I I really couldn't speak to that. That's a tough one,
Speaker 1: and I think it's tough for everybody too, because some
Speaker 1: of it's, like you said, some of his migratory, So
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're gonna get coming into some
Speaker 1: of those units. So now you you might be making
Speaker 1: judgments off populations that you don't have access to except
Speaker 1: there they're during the winter or um or maybe they're
Speaker 1: not all migrating. That way, you have some of the
Speaker 1: sheep that actually don't live in the unit. Going the
Speaker 1: other way, that might be just on the fringes of
Speaker 1: the unit. You know, you have some sheep that are
Speaker 1: you know, quote transplant sheep that have been transplanted by
Speaker 1: one way or another. And then you have um, um,
Speaker 1: you know, these historical herds that have been there since
Speaker 1: whenever you start of time. So you have all of
Speaker 1: these different factors. And I think that's what makes it
Speaker 1: interesting is that it's not just one population. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of different things going on, and all of these
Speaker 1: units are much different when you go into them, and um,
Speaker 1: you know. But that that's that's what makes it cool.
Speaker 1: But I think it's also it's also you know, notable
Speaker 1: to be able to say that it's not a free
Speaker 1: sheep you know, it's not, you know, just just because
Speaker 1: it's the only open tag and I believe, but I
Speaker 1: know it's the only open sheep tag in the lower
Speaker 1: forty eight Canada. You don't need a guide, you know, Alaska,
Speaker 1: you need a guide, so pretty much in North America
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, if you're not a resident of last yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean it's open to non resident aliens. You
Speaker 1: can come in here. From any country and buy that
Speaker 1: tag the same way. So there's really no restrictions on
Speaker 1: that portion. So it makes it a very unique thing
Speaker 1: that way. But in the same respect, it's, um it's
Speaker 1: not very successful. So what happened the second time you went?
Speaker 1: The second time I went? Yeah, yeah, completely different out
Speaker 1: of that. But UM yeah, I just changed my whole
Speaker 1: program about everything that I was going to do. And
Speaker 1: is the only thing I did know, no different unit
Speaker 1: right next to it, and what you do differently, UM,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot more time glassing. I um like
Speaker 1: valley floors are from big Glass and two's it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a little bit of everything, you know, because
Speaker 1: it just depends on where you can see from. UM
Speaker 1: and I just tried to spend as much time as
Speaker 1: I could that. That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's there's no trick. There's no
Speaker 1: that's I mean, if there was a trick, if the
Speaker 1: historical data, the historical kill data was always accurate and
Speaker 1: guys kept going back there there, there wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: sheep unit staying open for two and a half months.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's I think that's the cool thing.
Speaker 1: About it is that they just do what they do
Speaker 1: and you gotta figure it out that year. So um,
Speaker 1: probably then then that's that's what makes the population sustainable
Speaker 1: the unsustainable as it almost self manages. So what happened?
Speaker 1: So what happened? Uh? So I went days vote, I
Speaker 1: was I carved. I was gonna stay in for thirteen. Um,
Speaker 1: I think I ended up staying for twelve I believe
Speaker 1: twelve eleven or twelve and so, and then it was
Speaker 1: what had to been eleven because I ended up getting
Speaker 1: a ram on the tenth day. And yeah, ironically enough,
Speaker 1: as I was working through, you know, kind of my
Speaker 1: plan how I was going to work through the different
Speaker 1: drainages that I was hunting. I had spent a day
Speaker 1: and a half glass in this one area because this
Speaker 1: big country and it takes a lot of time to
Speaker 1: cover it, and there's a lot of timber, so it's um,
Speaker 1: you can sit there all day and you know, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden something appears, so they have to be
Speaker 1: very patient. And I had moved one drainage down, looked
Speaker 1: back to where I had just spent the last day
Speaker 1: and a half, and there he was, and it was
Speaker 1: right at dark and so I tried to get whatever
Speaker 1: sleep I could that night, and then got everything loaded
Speaker 1: in my pack well before daylight so I could make
Speaker 1: it back over to the glassing spot and try to
Speaker 1: pick him up again for ast thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: And I did and made it over there, and I
Speaker 1: found him, found him that morning, and he was feeding
Speaker 1: out in the slope, pretty exposed by all by all standards,
Speaker 1: kind of where where they were hanging out. But I
Speaker 1: knew the sun was going to be moving around on him,
Speaker 1: and so he dug a bed right there on that
Speaker 1: right just up out of where he was he was feeding.
Speaker 1: And so I waited about another hour, hour and a half,
Speaker 1: and sure enough sun came back around. As soon as
Speaker 1: the sun got on him, he picked up and went
Speaker 1: down into the timber yep. And so he kicked out
Speaker 1: a bed and and didn't use it for long, No,
Speaker 1: not for long at all, textbook sheet moves. As soon
Speaker 1: as the direct sunlight got on, let me move, you
Speaker 1: don't like it. And and so then it was probably
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, and it took me the rest
Speaker 1: of the day to get over to the other side,
Speaker 1: got up above him, found the bed that he was
Speaker 1: in that I had put him to bed in and
Speaker 1: he wasn't there, and this was probably not you mean,
Speaker 1: not the one in the timber, but the one the
Speaker 1: second bed. So you saw him going to the timber
Speaker 1: laid out yet, so I'm going to bed and then
Speaker 1: I was able to pick that one up, and so
Speaker 1: I knew he had to be in the area. But
Speaker 1: I just you know, I had kept working up and
Speaker 1: down this this rock spine, trying to pick up anything,
Speaker 1: figure out where he went, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he just popped out in this little avalanche shoot and
Speaker 1: it was about three three and fifty yards and the
Speaker 1: wind was the thermals were just howling, and I mean
Speaker 1: probably and he just came out and walked straight across.
Speaker 1: It was probably twenty yards open. I never had a shot,
Speaker 1: and he disappeared into the timber on the other side,
Speaker 1: and I just, I mean, it was it was, and
Speaker 1: it was timber kind of forever out there. There was
Speaker 1: no big opening. So you feel like he had picked
Speaker 1: you up at that point or no, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna feed that timber though, it's not. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. But there was definitely enough grass that can
Speaker 1: travel in the timber two though, Oh I just could
Speaker 1: go to usware. Yeah, yeah. And so I spent the
Speaker 1: rest right until dark trying to find him. And I
Speaker 1: had moved down this rock spine and got my spotting
Speaker 1: scope out, and I found him and he was bedded
Speaker 1: behind this big pine and he had just tucked in
Speaker 1: just right. I couldn't see him until I got into
Speaker 1: the right vantage point and there he was, and had
Speaker 1: had my one shot kind of through the one area,
Speaker 1: and I fel well, this is the only opportunity I'm
Speaker 1: going to have, so so you know, but it was
Speaker 1: a great solid dress. You're on rock, laid down at
Speaker 1: all the time in the world, work through it. But
Speaker 1: there's a horn requirement there, there is, Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I have a three quarter curl. Yeah, it's half curl.
Speaker 1: How do you know it's it's it's from the base
Speaker 1: that everybody should look at the rigs, right, don't take
Speaker 1: my word for it, but it's from the base of
Speaker 1: the front base of the horn through any portion of
Speaker 1: the eye back. And they write that differently depending on
Speaker 1: the unit, right, like some of the some of the
Speaker 1: that I don't know about, don't know, yeah that I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I mean I'm not saying from one unlimited unit,
Speaker 1: but is that the same as it is for for
Speaker 1: limited units? I believe so, Yeah, it's always thought it
Speaker 1: was the corner of the eye three quarter curel okay,
Speaker 1: looking at him sideways away in a circle. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you and and did, and you had to figure that out.
Speaker 1: I haven't had a chain in the night before you saw.
Speaker 1: I had. I had looked enough and as soon as
Speaker 1: I you know, it was it was coming back up,
Speaker 1: you know, coming off at that bottom, and I could,
Speaker 1: I could see the horn coming back up, so that
Speaker 1: it's a pretty was he by himself? Yeah? How do
Speaker 1: they determine that then, because isn't it for doll sheep?
Speaker 1: It has to be all the full girl for dolls. Well,
Speaker 1: there's three things like in Alaska's three things that make
Speaker 1: a doll legal full curl. So you're looking at him
Speaker 1: on the side, he's got three circle or you count
Speaker 1: eight annually, so eight girlth rings, or he's broomed now
Speaker 1: it's he's broken off both of his lamb tips completely.
Speaker 1: So so I guess how do you deter like, why
Speaker 1: is it different in one state and different than the other.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to do with like how old they Well,
Speaker 1: there's units in Idaho they used to have horn restrictions
Speaker 1: and now they don't have horn restrictions. Is that just
Speaker 1: because there's more Well what I heard was this, and
Speaker 1: this is just like a dude who used to guide.
Speaker 1: They're telling me and lots of you don't all the
Speaker 1: motivations right, Like a lot of times there's rules in
Speaker 1: place and and people have ideas about it, but without
Speaker 1: really digging into you don't know like why really did
Speaker 1: it beat? But a guy explained this to me and
Speaker 1: some of the Frank Church. There's like a unit in
Speaker 1: the Frank Church in Idaho that I think went no
Speaker 1: horn restrictions because I think there was some cases in
Speaker 1: which um people were not identifying rams properly and then
Speaker 1: due to the remoteness of the area, felt that rather
Speaker 1: than going in reporting, they just kept hunting. So they
Speaker 1: to take that to remove the obligation of a person
Speaker 1: have to make a prisoners maybe never hunted chap before,
Speaker 1: maybe not never hunt cheap again without putting that situation
Speaker 1: where they need to be able to judge the legality
Speaker 1: of that ram. They got rid of that requirement in
Speaker 1: that area and they just said, it's just up to
Speaker 1: the hunter's discretion. You're allowed to ram and and not
Speaker 1: made it to wear people. At one time, we were
Speaker 1: sitting and checking a ram. Were you there? We were
Speaker 1: checking a doll ram in Alaska one time, and while
Speaker 1: I was there, I saw three illegal rams. I got
Speaker 1: there and there was a guy checking an illegal ram
Speaker 1: not knowing it was illegal. There was an illegal rams
Speaker 1: sitting there that they had just confiscated from a guy,
Speaker 1: and Awarden came in with another illegal ramp that he
Speaker 1: had just taken from a guy that was trying to
Speaker 1: hide it from him. So I saw four rams during
Speaker 1: my visit, mine being one of them, and the other
Speaker 1: three were people bringing rams in and then saying I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's not full curl. H. I had a friend one
Speaker 1: time that had one held and he got it back
Speaker 1: and in the end they said, it's fifteen sixteenth curl.
Speaker 1: We'll let you keep me Listen. There is nothing more
Speaker 1: stressful in life. I'm talking even when your wife, like
Speaker 1: her water breaks. Nothing more stressful in life than the
Speaker 1: minutes that passed between you touching that trigger on a
Speaker 1: sheet and you're getting up to that sheet. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how much you look. It's just like it's not fun.
Speaker 1: Uh half curlers legal? No, three quarters I'm sorry when
Speaker 1: I'm saying three quarter curl legal. So he's I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the sheep right now by himself. So if he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have shown up, or if you just not looked there,
Speaker 1: I might still be hunting up. Have you ever gone back?
Speaker 1: Have you done it again? No? Well you're out for
Speaker 1: seven years, so I get you kill Yes, I get
Speaker 1: I get my tag back next year. So you never
Speaker 1: get to really get that good at it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a few guys who have got good at it.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, I got I was read a book about
Speaker 1: there's like a book about the unlimited un you know,
Speaker 1: there's a book about big Horns. There's a big section
Speaker 1: in about the unlimited units. And there's some guys who
Speaker 1: are kind of had like some legendary status they'd got
Speaker 1: to yeah you know or whatever. Yeah, there are people
Speaker 1: that will go for a hat trick, try to get
Speaker 1: one from each district. So not what, so what happened
Speaker 1: you got one on your first attempt? Absolutely not? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If we got to the end of
Speaker 1: Kurt story there you're sitting. Yeah, I got it, you
Speaker 1: got it. It's more. I think the night of camping
Speaker 1: after you shot the sheep is the best part of
Speaker 1: the story, so I think you should hear about that
Speaker 1: through the sheep went for a role. Yeah, the sheep
Speaker 1: went for a role, ended up you know, finding it.
Speaker 1: They're dark, and ended up just kicking out a flat
Speaker 1: spot behind a tree. Just and but you know, it
Speaker 1: was interesting because you had focused on it for so long,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure lots of people have experienced things like
Speaker 1: that where I couldn't sleep, you know, I was just
Speaker 1: so you're so excited, but but not in this excited yeah,
Speaker 1: where where you want to like jump around and not
Speaker 1: like you want publishers clearing out. No, no, no, kind
Speaker 1: of like kind of like it's just hard to take
Speaker 1: it all in. Yeah. I threw up within an hour
Speaker 1: of shooting on I puked. I don't know what balances
Speaker 1: were going on in me, but water wouldn't stand down. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very similar. This is heavy, heavy, grizzly bear country
Speaker 1: and now you're camping with a dead hand of it,
Speaker 1: with a dead an Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: but it happened. It was all right at dark, so I,
Speaker 1: you know, other than you know, taking care of the
Speaker 1: general cleaning of it. You know, I hadn't started any
Speaker 1: butchering or anything. But you know, from there it was
Speaker 1: just because there were so many griz in the area.
Speaker 1: Is back to the whole thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Being able to make one trip, you know, that makes
Speaker 1: a big difference to not have to leave it behind,
Speaker 1: not have to figure out here in the wilderness. You
Speaker 1: have to sling it well. And you can't keep and
Speaker 1: cap the skull. Yeah, you have to take everything out
Speaker 1: and that that's a load. You can't skin the head.
Speaker 1: You can't skin the head. No, yeah, what's the thinking
Speaker 1: on that. That's a good question. I can only speculate
Speaker 1: because they don't they don't publish it in their eggs
Speaker 1: or anything. But my guests would would be that they
Speaker 1: can validate it's only forty eight hours old. You have
Speaker 1: to check it in four Yeah, I got it. Allows
Speaker 1: them to make some determination, absolutely, Yeah, you have you know,
Speaker 1: the eyes. You know, there's a lot of forensics that
Speaker 1: they can put together. It's not somebody's walking over into
Speaker 1: the next unit, you know, showing up three days later
Speaker 1: and saying hey, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure. Well then
Speaker 1: it took me the better part of two days to
Speaker 1: get to your yep. Yeah, yeah, I was just barely
Speaker 1: under the limit. But yeah, I mean it's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very unique experience. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to going back again. It's up again next year. Yeah
Speaker 1: you're gonna go oh yeah, no brainer. Those three people
Speaker 1: you think that were they hunted it last year? What
Speaker 1: do you think the average number of days put in?
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: they calculate that, because I was never quizzed on how
Speaker 1: many days that I spent. I don't know. If you were,
Speaker 1: I could take an educated guess at it, I would
Speaker 1: say seventy of the people that buy the tag go hunting.
Speaker 1: Oh you think so, I think so. Yeah. I haven't
Speaker 1: dabbled in this at all, but I feel like that's
Speaker 1: got to be high. Well only just from areas, just
Speaker 1: some units where I know, like even limited drawing units
Speaker 1: where you do look at like participation rates. Um, i'd
Speaker 1: be I don't know, I could be, I would be.
Speaker 1: I would be a little bit surprised A seven people
Speaker 1: put in some time of the people that do go home,
Speaker 1: No opinion somewhere in there of the people that I
Speaker 1: like to believe that these are pretty serious people that
Speaker 1: are investing in their time and they want to talk
Speaker 1: to anyone who's done it, who was like not an
Speaker 1: accomplished from well, I think people do try to go
Speaker 1: get their toes wet and very quickly decide this is
Speaker 1: not for them and this is not fun. And I
Speaker 1: think there are people like that that buy the tag
Speaker 1: and pretty quickly throw the towel in um. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, the guys filling tags and the guys
Speaker 1: doing it year after year pretty hardcore about it. There's
Speaker 1: a pretty hardcore scene that goes out and does it.
Speaker 1: And I would argue puts in seven to fifteen days
Speaker 1: looking steep and still not fine and cheap, and you
Speaker 1: have to I mean, if if the success rates only
Speaker 1: less than three, you know you're gonna have to put
Speaker 1: in some time. Think you're gonna have to go your way,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to have a lot of things all
Speaker 1: come together. It's night. You can be the best at
Speaker 1: dude in the world, but if you if if you're
Speaker 1: not in the right place at the right time, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. So I think that that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of the interesting part is that it is. It's just
Speaker 1: a lot of time. So it's not like something you
Speaker 1: would like go out every weekend and go do like
Speaker 1: you need like a big chunk of time, like five
Speaker 1: to seven days you want to be serious about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's you guys are riven. The nature of the
Speaker 1: country wouldn't work do like weekends if you're not gonna
Speaker 1: go out for a couple of hours after work. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of yeah, a lot of the
Speaker 1: sheep country. You know, it takes better than a day
Speaker 1: to access, and you know, while there are trails into
Speaker 1: this country, you're you're not spending a majority of your
Speaker 1: time on them. Um or if you are, you're probably
Speaker 1: not seeing sheep. Yeah, So how many times did you
Speaker 1: try before you got one? I killed a rim on
Speaker 1: my fourth year, So I met Kurt in two twelve
Speaker 1: and never knew anything about unlimited sheep hunting, but very
Speaker 1: quickly got the bug just from talking with Kurt Um.
Speaker 1: The next year or two thousand thirteen, was the first
Speaker 1: year I bought a tag, and I would argue I
Speaker 1: had better intel than were you guys. Were you guys.
Speaker 1: Were you guys working on backpacks together at the time? Ye? Were?
Speaker 1: I was working at SNAs at the time, and when
Speaker 1: Kurt brought Stone Glacier to market for a short time there,
Speaker 1: SNAs was the exclusive retailer. I was the marketing director
Speaker 1: of SAS and met Kurt and shot some product videos
Speaker 1: and photos with him and learned up on his backpack
Speaker 1: company that he was starting, and pretty quick there was
Speaker 1: building him in my garage after work to help Kurt
Speaker 1: chore is done. Yea. So that's where my involvement with
Speaker 1: Stone Glacier began, just kind of after hours, lending a
Speaker 1: helping hand when Kurt wasn't able to get everything done.
Speaker 1: But anyways, two thousand twelve met two bought my first
Speaker 1: unlimited tag. And what I was saying is I would
Speaker 1: argue that I had some of the better intel of
Speaker 1: unlimited cheap hunters. Kurt had done a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: homework that he was generous enough to share with me,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I went into it with a
Speaker 1: lot of information, which in hindsight really doesn't mean a
Speaker 1: whole lot, Is that right? See? I thought it was
Speaker 1: like when I've because I've thought about this and you know,
Speaker 1: a good bit over the years, and like, I don't
Speaker 1: know why, because because some stuff is this way, maybe
Speaker 1: I wished it was this way. I thought I was
Speaker 1: like once you know what's up. But it's just different
Speaker 1: all the time. So the most valuable piece of advice
Speaker 1: Kurt gave me, beyond the maps, beyond the spreadsheets, beyond
Speaker 1: every little piece of advice he gave me, the most
Speaker 1: valuable thing that ever stuck to me was don't go
Speaker 1: chasing dead cheep. I like that because you get some
Speaker 1: information that there's been five there's been five rams killed
Speaker 1: there in the last twelve years, it's got to be
Speaker 1: the spot. Don't go chasing that cheap. He's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: And that there's a lot of truth. That there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth because you're saying if that was the case, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd all the seasons would all close in a couple
Speaker 1: of days, correct, And it's just not. And the other
Speaker 1: factor that you need to take into consideration is these
Speaker 1: are timber rams. These sheep live a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: their life in the trees, so visibility is so low.
Speaker 1: Not only are there next to no sheep in there.
Speaker 1: The few sheep that are in there are extremely hard
Speaker 1: to find because they're spending so much time in the trees.
Speaker 1: So I started in two thousand thirteen and I dove
Speaker 1: head first into it, and I went on a big rip,
Speaker 1: big week long expedition, and I think I went in
Speaker 1: like five days before season opened. And on night one,
Speaker 1: I had scouted quite a bit that summer. I think
Speaker 1: I had done three different backpacking trips that summer into
Speaker 1: the bare Tooths, never seen a sheep, just scouted country.
Speaker 1: Night one, hiking in, I saw like eight nine sheep
Speaker 1: and a piece of g I just thought I had
Speaker 1: it figured out. None of them were legal rams. It
Speaker 1: was a family band using lambs and a couple of
Speaker 1: young you know, two or three year old ram banana heads.
Speaker 1: But we call him and I was like, well, there's
Speaker 1: gotta be his big brother coming up behind him. So
Speaker 1: I camped with him. I camped with them that night,
Speaker 1: I spent the next morning with him. Was like, there's
Speaker 1: no big brother here. And as much as I wanted
Speaker 1: to hang out with those sheep, because you're you're looking
Speaker 1: at the easter bunny, I mean, you have found an animal.
Speaker 1: You are not supposed to have found. So it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating animal to spend time with and to look at.
Speaker 1: And as much as I wanted to sit there and
Speaker 1: stay with those sheep, it was like, there's nothing to
Speaker 1: shoot here, keep moving. Never saw another sheep a week,
Speaker 1: So that was my year one. Actually this is a
Speaker 1: whole another story. But what, okay would it work? When
Speaker 1: does season end after Thanksgiving? So you still not into
Speaker 1: the ruck? Well, it matters. Some of these districts are
Speaker 1: very unique. There are migratory areas and some of the
Speaker 1: unlimited areas that with the right snowstorm and with the
Speaker 1: right day on the calendar, things might be a little
Speaker 1: easier than normal. And what I was going to suggest
Speaker 1: is whatever like to wait for him? No, that's tactic
Speaker 1: to wait for rams to find us late. That is
Speaker 1: the tail end of the season when the rams might
Speaker 1: be starting to think about rut. That absolutely is a
Speaker 1: tactic that people use, and I think they've viewed successfully.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's tough. It depends on where you're at
Speaker 1: there because you know, some of some of that writting,
Speaker 1: you know, they move up to winter, so now you
Speaker 1: now you're at you know has been blown off. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, the different herds do different things in there, alright.
Speaker 1: So some like on day three of that first year camped,
Speaker 1: I was camped on a really cool spot, kind of
Speaker 1: perched on a cliff, a very steep spot with a
Speaker 1: big drop off below us, and I was had a
Speaker 1: great view and I was posted up there for about
Speaker 1: a day and a half half and out comes a
Speaker 1: humongous black bear way below me. I has a big bear.
Speaker 1: And then I'm like, guh, it's feeding on something. It's
Speaker 1: like messing with something and digging and feeding on something.
Speaker 1: And I put the spotting scope on. It is eating
Speaker 1: a mountain goat. Yeah, And I don't know if he
Speaker 1: killed the mountain goat of the mountain goat fell and died,
Speaker 1: but he is consuming a large, dead white animal down
Speaker 1: below me. I'm like, that's a big bear and I
Speaker 1: love mountain goest. That's not cool that he's eating this
Speaker 1: mount goat. So like had it out for this bear.
Speaker 1: And a couple of days of not seeing sheep, you
Speaker 1: get burnt out quick, you lose. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the stamina required this, the endurance, the mental endurance of
Speaker 1: not seeing an animal day after day after day. It's
Speaker 1: exhausting and it's very discouraging. And so it's bear showed
Speaker 1: up like that'll work. Bear season to open until the
Speaker 1: same day that sheep season open. Long story short, I
Speaker 1: watched this bear the next day going to another drainage.
Speaker 1: I was in the next drainage a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: and here's this big, giant bear again. And so I
Speaker 1: wound up shooting this bear. It was the worst decision
Speaker 1: in my life. I now had to pack a black
Speaker 1: bear out of the Beartooth Wilderness. It was it was
Speaker 1: a psychotic movie. Oh yeah, which is a damn shame
Speaker 1: because I had just gotten into the best sheep habitat
Speaker 1: that I had touched that whole week and I had
Speaker 1: to put a bunch of bear meat on my back
Speaker 1: and walk out. So that was year one and that
Speaker 1: was a very humbling experience and pretty discouraging. UM did
Speaker 1: it year after year. Did not see a legal ram
Speaker 1: until summer scouting of my third year. And I don't know, Hi,
Speaker 1: fact can speak for Curt here, but I've when I
Speaker 1: found a legal ram. You you like you are looking
Speaker 1: at Santa Claus. I can't I can't even begin to
Speaker 1: explain to you, Like the feeling of seeing an animal
Speaker 1: that you are I'm not supposed to have found. So
Speaker 1: it's a really cool thing and it's super addicting. So
Speaker 1: I found a sheep summer scouting, and uh, I had
Speaker 1: my plan, and so, you know, three or four days
Speaker 1: before season, was heading back in to the general area
Speaker 1: where I had seen this ram during the summer and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything. Season opened opening day. I'm hiking
Speaker 1: up into a drainage and as I'm coming over this
Speaker 1: big saddle, I run it. Here come three hunters towards me,
Speaker 1: and I realized that's they've got a mountain goat on
Speaker 1: their back, their goat hunters, and they filled a tag
Speaker 1: on opening day and I should talking great goat, congratulations. Hey,
Speaker 1: what are the odds you've seen some sheep more legal ram?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we saw one this morning. Like, you gotta
Speaker 1: be kidding me. You saw you saw I rama this morning?
Speaker 1: So they're like and I and I grilled him. I
Speaker 1: was like, let me be like, let's talk in detail
Speaker 1: about what you saw and where and exactly what it was.
Speaker 1: And they were very confident that they had seen a
Speaker 1: legal ram. So I climbed the highest peak to my
Speaker 1: right in that saddle. From that saddle, I went feet
Speaker 1: up to the tippy top of the peak and I
Speaker 1: sat down, and I said that was eight am. The
Speaker 1: in the morning, seven eight am, I ran into those
Speaker 1: people get up on top of the peak. I sat
Speaker 1: there all day. I was like, I know he's somewhere.
Speaker 1: He didn't vaporize. I sat there all day, and thirty
Speaker 1: minutes before dark, this ram comes loping through the saddle
Speaker 1: where I had talked to the goat hunters like full run.
Speaker 1: He looked scared. I you know, hunter, it's opening day.
Speaker 1: There's some traffic there, pack trains coming through some of
Speaker 1: these drainages, there's some commotion compared to a normal day.
Speaker 1: This ram just comes running through long a story. I
Speaker 1: sort of camped on that it wasn't opening day. I
Speaker 1: apologized this was prior opening day because I spent a
Speaker 1: day and a half with the sheep, not able to
Speaker 1: shoot him yet. So that's what it is. Goat season
Speaker 1: opens before unlimited season, so these goat hunters filled the
Speaker 1: tag call it September twelve. I can't shoot this sheep
Speaker 1: until September. So I find him, put him to bed.
Speaker 1: I lived with him for I didn't leave him for
Speaker 1: you know, I lost sight of him throughout the day
Speaker 1: and stuff. But I spent the better part of two
Speaker 1: days with the sheep. You know, the night of September.
Speaker 1: Next next morning is opening day. The sheep beds three
Speaker 1: yards from my tent, just me and the rim. That's it.
Speaker 1: And he's three yards away from my tent. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's great, son's gonna come up. I'm gonna go dump
Speaker 1: this thing, and I'm I'm going to get this room. Well,
Speaker 1: that night, a horrible blizzard blew in. Hardcore snowstorm came
Speaker 1: in and uh, really nasty weather. And so I got
Speaker 1: up in the dark and I was like, I don't care,
Speaker 1: it's nasty out. I know where that sheep was sleeping.
Speaker 1: He's got to be somewhere close to there. Even if
Speaker 1: he moved, he's somewhere over there. So I go out
Speaker 1: in the dark and I got soaking wet and really cold.
Speaker 1: Sun came up. Sheep's gone. In hindsight, that sheep definitely
Speaker 1: high tailed it down into the timber when that weather
Speaker 1: blew in. I looked and looked for him that morning,
Speaker 1: and as hypothermia began to set in and as more
Speaker 1: bad weather began to blow in. I I've quickly realised
Speaker 1: I had to leave. It's like I can't, I can't
Speaker 1: stay up here in this state. So I hiked out.
Speaker 1: I went home, I did a load of laundry, slept
Speaker 1: in my bed, and I came right back and I
Speaker 1: hiked back in and I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: looking for that sheep. I never saw him again. So
Speaker 1: are you glassing up all kinds of elkinship when this
Speaker 1: is going on? Or is it not like that place
Speaker 1: is pretty void of life? Grizzly bears, A lot of
Speaker 1: grizzly bears. You see a lot of grizzly bears. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you see goats, but no, there's I've seen one. In
Speaker 1: my four years of hunting in there, I've seen one
Speaker 1: elk heerd, a couple of mule deer, a couple of goats,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of bears in a couple of sheep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what year was that? That was my third season.
Speaker 1: And see, that's like I'm getting I'm dialing this in
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm starting to regularly see sheep. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling a little more confident about it. And then uh,
Speaker 1: year four is almost repeat opening day found a ram
Speaker 1: weather blue in lost lost ram bad weather blue in.
Speaker 1: It was like absolute repeat. I went home, I walked
Speaker 1: out of there, hiked all the way out to let
Speaker 1: the weather. You know, you get these forty eight I
Speaker 1: think you can sit in your time forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: You can hike for ten hours and get out of here.
Speaker 1: What happens just like this wet shitty snow. You think
Speaker 1: like like I got three days of this two days again,
Speaker 1: it's all side. Yeah. So I went home. Whether whether
Speaker 1: the storm did some laundry went back in there, um
Speaker 1: turned up. No, I didn't turn up sheep. I camped
Speaker 1: next moek. My tactic throughout my four years of funting,
Speaker 1: which I still think is the most productive way to
Speaker 1: do it is to get to the highest point you can.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that's exactly Curt style, but that's
Speaker 1: how I hunted the unlimited is I would go to
Speaker 1: the tippy top of stuff and I would post up,
Speaker 1: and I would spend whole days sitting on mountaintops where
Speaker 1: I could just see everything, and then you turn around
Speaker 1: and you could see everything over there. So just keeping
Speaker 1: visibility in your favor. And something I didn't wasn't good
Speaker 1: at before I was hunted sheep and was uh, you know,
Speaker 1: talking with Curt about sheep hunting a lot was the sun?
Speaker 1: How important it is to plan your day around the sun,
Speaker 1: to work with it. Work with the sun, don't work
Speaker 1: against it. Always planning your whole day around I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be glass into the west in the morning, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be glass into the east at sunset. And this is
Speaker 1: this is a tricky thing, man, because if you're up
Speaker 1: in a glass and tip and you got sixty degrees
Speaker 1: and stuff you want to look at when the sun
Speaker 1: is bad for one of where you're look in one
Speaker 1: direction everything is shadowed, and you look at another direction
Speaker 1: and everything is just glowing nice. It's like you gotta
Speaker 1: make a decision where like I'm gonna ignore the shadowed
Speaker 1: ship as good as I know it seems, and as
Speaker 1: much as there's probably animals over there, I'm gonna ignore
Speaker 1: that and just glass and stuff with the sun is
Speaker 1: really working for me. But it takes like that takes
Speaker 1: discipline because proofs of you waste your time staring to
Speaker 1: that shitty stuff. We meanwhile, the good side, they like
Speaker 1: the animals glow. Oh yeah, when the sun hits them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta put everything in your favor and using the
Speaker 1: sun to your advantage while glassing is certainly a good
Speaker 1: place to start, because then he said, they start moving
Speaker 1: to once the sun hits them, right. Yeah, A big
Speaker 1: horn sheep on average, I don't think likes to lay
Speaker 1: out bed, particularly in direct sunlight. I think like if
Speaker 1: a sheep beds in the morning in the in a shady,
Speaker 1: nice little spot, and at thirty eleven AM and the
Speaker 1: sun gets up a little higher and the sun direct
Speaker 1: sunlight is hitting that sheep more often than now, he's
Speaker 1: gonna get up and he's gonna go find a second
Speaker 1: bed for the day. He might move yeah yards into
Speaker 1: the timber. Yeah, he might move on the other side
Speaker 1: of his tree. Gone. Yeah. So uh anyways, went back
Speaker 1: in and turned up a ram right at first light,
Speaker 1: same ram, No no different sheep. And uh do you
Speaker 1: like you're like Joe unlimited? Now no gum. Now Jim
Speaker 1: turned up some sheep right at first light, made a
Speaker 1: quick move on him and moved in tight on him,
Speaker 1: and he pegged me. He I wound up being within
Speaker 1: a hundred yards of this ram, bumped him. Oh and
Speaker 1: he had he was bug eyed staring straight at me
Speaker 1: when I shot him. Oh that's one you got, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got him, got you? Mm hmm. So now you
Speaker 1: got seven years seven years. Well, I drew a permit
Speaker 1: in Alaska, so I'm going to sheep hunting next month.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Drew gotch catch permit. So I'm going doll
Speaker 1: sheep hunting in August. Yeah, get one of these white
Speaker 1: ones hopefully. Yeah. Man, so but that one. Because you
Speaker 1: don't have a relative up there, you gotta right, you
Speaker 1: gotta hire a guy. Correct. Yeah, that'll be fun though,
Speaker 1: it'll be awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be a really fun trip.
Speaker 1: Fly in No, it's a hike in only it's a state.
Speaker 1: It's the state at state Park. It's Upper Eagle River,
Speaker 1: which is uh, you start at the nature Center. I
Speaker 1: think I'll have to connect you with my brother. Man,
Speaker 1: guys need resources, and for sure I'm going up on Monday.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah, so maybe we go get lunch with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but whatever, you know, stuffs living. When you live in Anchor,
Speaker 1: do you find a lot of dudes have a lot
Speaker 1: of dead ship in your garage throughout the fall? Man?
Speaker 1: Because that's this is like having a house thera. People
Speaker 1: are like, hey, man, I use your freezer. The amount
Speaker 1: of what's funny about his house the amount of bear spray,
Speaker 1: A lot of milk crates of bear spray. Because everyone
Speaker 1: flies to Alaska. Then they're always like somehow wind up
Speaker 1: sleeping in his house or storing ship in his house
Speaker 1: and he has like crates of pepper spray. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: good man, those are good stories. Is it worth it? Like?
Speaker 1: Is it too hard? Are you interested in going? I'm
Speaker 1: not like asking because I'm not asking you like take me,
Speaker 1: but um, is that not interesting? Is it just like
Speaker 1: too hard to be? Like, Okay, I'll throw in with
Speaker 1: a body of mine. Is the kind of thing you
Speaker 1: kind of gotta be doing it for yourself. I was
Speaker 1: not really into solo hunting when I started this whole endeavor.
Speaker 1: I in fact didn't like it, and it was something
Speaker 1: you have to get comfortable with because you find out
Speaker 1: really quickly it's very hard to find somebody to join
Speaker 1: you in the middle of the elk rut on a
Speaker 1: two percent hunt. On a two percent hunt, yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you had some sweet tag like like I like
Speaker 1: to jump in when friends draw like bitch and tag
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, we're going there. Is gonna ship run
Speaker 1: around everwhere We're gonna shot a big old one. Let's go.
Speaker 1: But to have it be like now, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: see anything anything. You like to come. There's lots of
Speaker 1: barrass you just like to come and watch me not
Speaker 1: get anything. It does interest me. I think I will
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, it does interest me. I've got a
Speaker 1: couple of good friends who are giving it hell several
Speaker 1: years into it now, and it doesn't interest me because
Speaker 1: we have to do it again for seven years. You
Speaker 1: can try again and it's really exciting because Kurt gets
Speaker 1: his tag back next year, So you'd be loving now.
Speaker 1: Is it helpful? Um? If someone did want to go
Speaker 1: and like I'd like to go and just glass up
Speaker 1: with you, is that helpers? It just want to be
Speaker 1: not helpful because then you've got to deal with too
Speaker 1: many people's attitudes. More eyes. Yeah, I mean it's more
Speaker 1: eyes the split, yeah exactly. Yeah, I've I've never been
Speaker 1: in that situation. I can't really speak to it, but
Speaker 1: I would have to think if you have somebody that's
Speaker 1: like minded, that wants to spend the time and they
Speaker 1: want to pound glass, yeah, and that they don't get antsy,
Speaker 1: their patient. They know the program. But if you want
Speaker 1: to go along and think that, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: running gun and elk during you know, the September on
Speaker 1: the chase that it's not it's not, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just a lot of misery and miles and then sitting
Speaker 1: for long periods of time. It's a nasty place, man,
Speaker 1: it is it is. You know, you're just And then
Speaker 1: there are lots of different ways that people can go
Speaker 1: about it. I know guys have been successful many different ways.
Speaker 1: But you know, typically you're not gonna go, you know,
Speaker 1: jump one up out of the timber and packs it's
Speaker 1: pack stock helpful. No, you can't take a worse in
Speaker 1: to this stuff. No, it's it's been it's been done. Um.
Speaker 1: But advantage no, now, I mean some of the country
Speaker 1: you can't. Some of the units can't even get the
Speaker 1: biggest advantage you can give yourself as time, the more
Speaker 1: time you just have to clock. You have to go
Speaker 1: punch the clock. Yeah. Now, how often does it happen? Um,
Speaker 1: the day one, you know, different ends of the unit whatever,
Speaker 1: like day one? By am I am? Do you guys
Speaker 1: are about do you guys get them? You hear about
Speaker 1: the old war store. I mean, there's there's stories of
Speaker 1: that happening, and I've never heard of it happening in
Speaker 1: recent years, but it has happened. It's definitely happened where
Speaker 1: opening day three sheep get shot and then there's still
Speaker 1: a twenty four a grace period where you can legally
Speaker 1: harvest a sheep within the next two days. So I'm
Speaker 1: with you. So give me um, give me like a
Speaker 1: give me a big stone glacier. Sales pitch man, you
Speaker 1: ever done that before? I got our general manager, right, Harry,
Speaker 1: So catch up popsicle to a lady in white gloves, Bud.
Speaker 1: That's a fact. That's a line from Tommy Boy. If
Speaker 1: nobody else picked up, I got a good sales pitch.
Speaker 1: Sales pitch. You know. I had seen him around a bunch.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, another backpack and hunting backpack. You know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. But I hadn't really like I had
Speaker 1: touched him in Schnais, I think, and you know, farted
Speaker 1: around a little bit with him, and even I think
Speaker 1: I even had one Pete had shown me how do
Speaker 1: you use it? I carried around a little bit. But
Speaker 1: don't you tell everybody how we met um. How did
Speaker 1: we mean? We met in a bar right and we
Speaker 1: met a yoga class. I like that man. Kurt gave
Speaker 1: me a yoga pass for Christmas. One year I was
Speaker 1: doing some yoga. I walk in. This guy's got a
Speaker 1: meet you love it. I've been there six times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the best. I like it a lot, so I
Speaker 1: wanted me to go last. There's a guy with a
Speaker 1: meat eater shirt on. I'm like, hey, you hunt. He's
Speaker 1: like yeah. In fact, I produced this television show called
Speaker 1: meat Eater Cool. That was pre uh the first time
Speaker 1: I saw you podcast with Randal and we went out
Speaker 1: to dinner and head beers. We went turkey hunting in
Speaker 1: the morning. Before that podcast, We've had some great turkey hunts.
Speaker 1: I'm a real redneck turkey hunter. Just kill him. I
Speaker 1: just get the turkey killed. And Janice is such an
Speaker 1: artsy turkey hunter. It's got to be this beautiful setup
Speaker 1: and I'm just just shoot the bird. Anyways. Sorry, doesn't
Speaker 1: serve me right. Talking about big old sales. Pitch yeah,
Speaker 1: act like, can I tell you story? The following story
Speaker 1: to the yoga class, and I'm like, oh sweet, yeah,
Speaker 1: good to meet you. If I see here again, don't
Speaker 1: see Pete, don't see pe, don't see p because one pass,
Speaker 1: don't I think the guy is a stingy crisis. He
Speaker 1: was chasing something else. Those in that class that was
Speaker 1: and uh, he's like, yeah, work out for me. Not
Speaker 1: doing yoga anymore. I remember it a little differently. Stretch. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm there quite often. Still haven't seen you? They call
Speaker 1: me yoga yoga, but no, I got like a lot
Speaker 1: of good it does you all crippled up all the time,
Speaker 1: blowing your knees out all the time. I tell you,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go back in now that this
Speaker 1: knee is gonna be scoped and fixed. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to flex stability that I have in my left in
Speaker 1: my right knee, my right side pigeon is gonna go
Speaker 1: to it in the next level. Can you I can
Speaker 1: bend over now, I can bend over and palms flat
Speaker 1: on the ground and he's locked. Yeah, that's impressive. That's
Speaker 1: good that I can't even touch my toes bend as
Speaker 1: I am. Um so anyhow here I am. I'm like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: just think about getting a pack. Pack. What do you
Speaker 1: think I should get? Oh? We got you probably don't
Speaker 1: get this. I got the special sales pitch from Kurt
Speaker 1: at the now the old show room. Why can't I
Speaker 1: have the sale? Why? Why don't you give me the
Speaker 1: sales pitch? Because he doesn't hang around. He doesn't hang
Speaker 1: around in the show down here at the juke, he's stitching.
Speaker 1: But uh, I was just about to go backpack hunt
Speaker 1: with your brother or Lama hunting, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: like like backpack yeah, light, no, ladies and gentlemen. He's
Speaker 1: not mean hunting llamas. He means hunting with llamas as
Speaker 1: pack animals at Lama. Yeah, I've at Lama, but you
Speaker 1: were not hunting lamas. It was like in a It
Speaker 1: was in she could have been a house cat. You've
Speaker 1: had alpaca tastes like very tender be taste like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was it like all super cooked or was it like
Speaker 1: a steak? It was like a steak. Oh see I
Speaker 1: hadn't didn't get that. Yeah, I know. It was like
Speaker 1: very um yeah, like presented like a steak. It was
Speaker 1: like very tender back maybe I know. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: a good place you hunt. Lama's giving my brothers, so
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Are you giving a sales pitch or
Speaker 1: not trying. And I was getting ready to go hunt
Speaker 1: with your brother and I had the solo and I'm
Speaker 1: in there and I'm like, yeah, I'm telling curtain be.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I don't know, man, only these packs
Speaker 1: like gonna be big enough because we're going in for
Speaker 1: six nights seven nights, maybe, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: I need a little bit bigger pack. And uh curts like,
Speaker 1: oh no, you don't. I did fourteen days in the
Speaker 1: limited ship unit with this pack and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: showing me please, and uh, yeah, so you showed me
Speaker 1: how to run basically the what do you guys call
Speaker 1: like the load sack, know, not the load shell, but
Speaker 1: what's the sack that goes between the pack drive back.
Speaker 1: He's like, you just take this, put your food in here.
Speaker 1: So this is this is it basically looks like a
Speaker 1: very a tidy game bag that's water resistant. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you can slip it basically between the pack in your frame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the whole bag will kind of move away and
Speaker 1: move away. Yeah. And then you just showed me. Then
Speaker 1: he just said, yeah, you just walk into the woods
Speaker 1: and then when you get to your spot, you're gonna
Speaker 1: hunt the best part about what I liked about this
Speaker 1: system is that you just pull that out, pull out
Speaker 1: your cord, throw it up in a tree. Now if
Speaker 1: you've got your food hung and you just send you
Speaker 1: down your backpack, you got a extra tidy pack now
Speaker 1: and off you go. I was like, man, that's the ship.
Speaker 1: So I was going to I was gonna start just
Speaker 1: like adding attachments and extra bags and you know this,
Speaker 1: that and the other. And instead I walked into the
Speaker 1: woods lighter on that trip, you know, because of that
Speaker 1: pack in that system, and uh, I was sold. Liked it. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: And it works so slick man. I mean the whole
Speaker 1: time I was hunting when we talked about this earlier,
Speaker 1: but I had the capability to carry a quarter out
Speaker 1: had we gotten something. But while I'm hunting, I felt
Speaker 1: like I have a little daypack on, you know the
Speaker 1: ways nothing you kind of like forget it's there in
Speaker 1: your own pack. Did you use do you guys put
Speaker 1: the white hangbags? Do you use those? Do you not
Speaker 1: use them? I use them. I do not connect them
Speaker 1: to the backpack. You just you just use it as
Speaker 1: a I used them to organize my things. You don't
Speaker 1: you don't hang it inside there. I do not. I
Speaker 1: find myself kind of like liking the hanging in there.
Speaker 1: But I was curious if you guys did, because like
Speaker 1: I got, like, you know, put a couple of extra
Speaker 1: shells and ship like ship you might you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can just like reach in here. Oh, I
Speaker 1: use a bunch of them. I'm very organized in my
Speaker 1: backpack and have a little kits and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've more often than not pulling them out and throwing
Speaker 1: them in. I just like I like having where I
Speaker 1: could even the dark, it's right there. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: know when I put my hand in and I drag
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah. Johanna touched quickly on the ability to
Speaker 1: carry a quarter out and our load shelf feature and
Speaker 1: the ability to carry something between a frame and a bag.
Speaker 1: And that's worth talking about for a second, which is
Speaker 1: the physics behind why carrying something in a load shelf configuration.
Speaker 1: I keeping heavy stuff close to your back is the
Speaker 1: smartest way to carry heavy stuff off a mountain. And
Speaker 1: Kurt's taking done some cool experiments and we've got them
Speaker 1: all on our website. Um to where the lateral forces
Speaker 1: that the pack is going to affect on you are
Speaker 1: much smaller. When the heavy load is vertically oriented up
Speaker 1: and down, you're back close to your center of gravity
Speaker 1: rather than moving away from your center of gravity. So
Speaker 1: you can't change gravity hundred pounds, the hundred pounds, the
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, you can change the forces that that weight
Speaker 1: is going to put on your body was waving back
Speaker 1: and forth around. Yeah, the closer you can keep the
Speaker 1: heavy stuff to your back, the better it is. We're
Speaker 1: about lower higher, conventional wisdom is lower. Yeah, well, it
Speaker 1: it changes because it all depends on the center gravity
Speaker 1: of the body. Right, So, uh, take for example, in
Speaker 1: a in a standard pack, if if you if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, you're working off of that that
Speaker 1: general fulcrum angle. You know, well just just that just
Speaker 1: that leverage, that the angle that it comes up, so
Speaker 1: that the farther you move it away from your back,
Speaker 1: the more leverage that's gonna happen. But the point that
Speaker 1: you're gonna work from is the center gravity of your
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere in your hips. That's that's that's the fulcrum.
Speaker 1: That's where it's you know, moving you back and forth.
Speaker 1: So you can move the load higher and achieve the
Speaker 1: same vertical amount of leverage as as if it was
Speaker 1: as if it was lower. But the problem is is
Speaker 1: now your lateral you know, you're left or right. Now
Speaker 1: you've increased that leverage going that way. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's this there's this uh, this this medium where you
Speaker 1: where you try to get it close enough to offset
Speaker 1: both leverage. And what we've found is when you draw
Speaker 1: it out out on autocat and you figure out the
Speaker 1: density of the meat and you figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: the density generally of of the gear that you're carrying,
Speaker 1: and you start moving it around and you're gonna get
Speaker 1: you're gonna get a center of gravity of your pack
Speaker 1: at some point. So you move it here, it might
Speaker 1: move up, it might move down. So the key is
Speaker 1: being able to get it the most in line obviously
Speaker 1: with your your center avenue, you know, which is generally
Speaker 1: going to be in the center of your hips and
Speaker 1: so I know one ever put a quarter in right
Speaker 1: side up. Yeah, Yeah, that's that's that's a great example
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, because it's in it's physically in the
Speaker 1: same spot vertically, but you know, now you're left or
Speaker 1: right front to back, you know, being able to control it,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that that's that's kind of the concept behind it,
Speaker 1: is just being able to increase stability and any advantage
Speaker 1: that you can get. You know, if you're only packing
Speaker 1: it a few hundred yards to your truck, obviously it
Speaker 1: doesn't make that big difference. But if you're under that
Speaker 1: same load for for two days, you have to manage
Speaker 1: the meat. So now you have to be able to
Speaker 1: get out, especially in sheep hunting, if you're in the
Speaker 1: Northwest territories, you know, you're even earlier in the year
Speaker 1: in Alaska, you're in early August. You don't know what
Speaker 1: kind of weather you're going to have, so you can't
Speaker 1: just leave it in a ball of me You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to, you know, get it out, get some air
Speaker 1: on it, get it cool, try to get it on ice,
Speaker 1: if there's a glacier round, whatever, whatever you can do
Speaker 1: to take care of the meat. So now being able
Speaker 1: to manage it and keep it clean and then be
Speaker 1: able to repack it. So if you just end up
Speaker 1: with a you know, a ball of meat in the
Speaker 1: middle of your pack with all the rest of your gear,
Speaker 1: there's just there's a whole another level of dynamics. You
Speaker 1: need to start to work with. That's the thing you love.
Speaker 1: People don't realize how much And that was kind of
Speaker 1: hot days August September. How much you're messing with that stuff.
Speaker 1: You have to be on it all the time, airing
Speaker 1: it out, putting the shade, taking it out of the shade,
Speaker 1: putting your bag. You can't like throw it in a
Speaker 1: garbage bag and put in your backpack and then like,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna two days later and be like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's it too and you could lose it quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like keeping an eye getting the heat out of it,
Speaker 1: you know, quickly after you right after you take it,
Speaker 1: so you know, um, so yeah, that's that's kind of
Speaker 1: the concept behind it is twofold, you know. One of
Speaker 1: it is is an easier way to manage. To me,
Speaker 1: once you have it, keep it as clean and then
Speaker 1: and and you don't keep as much of it easy
Speaker 1: canbviously not lose anything. And then being able to have
Speaker 1: it in the most comfortable spot. So are are you
Speaker 1: h are you digging the backpack business like do most years?
Speaker 1: You you know, go and sell more packs than you
Speaker 1: did the year before and stuff like that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I I dig it a lot like it you're in
Speaker 1: its stay. Oh yeah, yeah, it's just started making all
Speaker 1: kinds of all this ship too. Oh you never know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a lot more time to work
Speaker 1: on stuff like that right now. Yeah, I might do
Speaker 1: fanny packs us. I mean, but you're not kidding about
Speaker 1: making other stuff. I'm not kidding about that. No, No,
Speaker 1: they make some other thing. What would you go make?
Speaker 1: Uh like what completely out of pack? But like what
Speaker 1: class of like yeah, like what would be like mountain
Speaker 1: hunting gear? Okay, yeah, mountain and gear? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: things that go along with it and naturally go along
Speaker 1: with it, the stuff that you pull out of your pack,
Speaker 1: you know, like a new kind of claw hammer. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna see that's that's a lot of work. So
Speaker 1: it'll stay in like like high quality mountain ye yeah
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, I mean that that's the fun part
Speaker 1: about it. But give me a like, okay, here, I
Speaker 1: put it this way. What would be something that you'd
Speaker 1: be like say it finished his sense? You know, Steve,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if down the road I made
Speaker 1: a blank five that made a piece of gear that
Speaker 1: you're gonna be carrying in our back in in a
Speaker 1: stone glacier back something that I might toe around in
Speaker 1: my path. There is a lot of cool stuff on
Speaker 1: the drawing board. Yeah, yeah, that's fun. Yeah, it is fun.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's the best part of the business
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned. Britain, how do you cut
Speaker 1: your leg up so bad? Chicken wire? Fence fence, chicken wire.
Speaker 1: I guess you're trying to restrain some chickens. No, my
Speaker 1: my might have a little five month old puppy that
Speaker 1: likes to get. You're trying to keep it, trying to
Speaker 1: keep it out of the garden. You got including thoughts, pretty,
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to go first,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't got ship, I got nothing. All
Speaker 1: my questions are answered. I was gonna say, it's easy
Speaker 1: for Kurt to uh go sheep on in September and
Speaker 1: the middle of the raw in good Elk country here
Speaker 1: because he's already got a whole corner of his man
Speaker 1: cave here. They're not even on the wall. Um was
Speaker 1: just how many other five? Anymore? Five? Here's probably more others.
Speaker 1: Just beautiful six point bowls and anybody would be happy with.
Speaker 1: So once you've a mass knees and you're like, whatever,
Speaker 1: elk milk going cheap. I don't care if I see
Speaker 1: the animals anymore. I hadn't old client once tell me
Speaker 1: after we kill the six point bull those maybe he's
Speaker 1: big as the smallest one that I'm looking at here,
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, he can never have too many
Speaker 1: six point bulls. I agree with that. Six points or
Speaker 1: six point right, Yeah, I think, like, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I got mutely bucks. I feel like you can't just
Speaker 1: there's no I can see that like you'd say you can't,
Speaker 1: like for instance, for instance, like I went must cox
Speaker 1: on no desire at all to go Muskoxn. But I'm saying, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that people find they're kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of guys find their thing, you know, like how many
Speaker 1: how many buck Racks be caught up hanging in Doug
Speaker 1: Durn's in the Buckman juice room. Twenty's not all his?
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know it's not He's not like,
Speaker 1: oh you know, two more and I'm done. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just not how he looks at it. What was
Speaker 1: your concluding thought? That was it? You can't have too
Speaker 1: many big old can have too many six points and
Speaker 1: that's how you get to go unlimit sheep points after
Speaker 1: even mask and you have to give up some you know. Now,
Speaker 1: what's up? So your wife doesn't like you have You
Speaker 1: can't put antlers and whatnot up in your living room? No,
Speaker 1: I could. I like having everything right here. Just I
Speaker 1: like my space. Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I like about my wife. Yeah. I put anything anywhere
Speaker 1: I want. People are always like, oh, I can't put
Speaker 1: it in the bedroom. It's it's like, dude, I don't
Speaker 1: say i'd go get a new wife, but my wife,
Speaker 1: My wife doesn't mess any about stuff like that. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying yours does. You just like to keep
Speaker 1: it all tidy. I like my space and I come
Speaker 1: down here. That's what I want to as a fan
Speaker 1: of Buffalo too, I take it because I see two
Speaker 1: pieces of art Buffalo on them. Yeah. Actually my sister
Speaker 1: painted that one for me. Yeah, back in the day.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know I like about you most Kurt
Speaker 1: is it? Uh you keep everything real neat I have
Speaker 1: a real problem like with neatness means that I like it.
Speaker 1: I like it too much. I like it too much.
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem keeping neat. I just like
Speaker 1: I like it so much that it becomes a thing
Speaker 1: in and of itself. It's like there's a great functional
Speaker 1: quality to neatness, right, But for me, neatness is an
Speaker 1: end in itself. Do you understand what I'm saying. That's
Speaker 1: when it becomes a problem. Yeah, Well a four and
Speaker 1: a six year old take care of that, and two
Speaker 1: four and seven so they did, Like we have a
Speaker 1: fish and check. And my brother who likes stuff neat too,
Speaker 1: He's like when he closes his eyes and pictures it
Speaker 1: in the future, he pictures a coast guard station like
Speaker 1: that neat you know, yeah, I like that, but this
Speaker 1: this room doesn't make Matt. Matt's trick to neatness, though,
Speaker 1: is to get rid of all your ship, he says.
Speaker 1: He goes, when I shut the door in my house,
Speaker 1: I like, it's not like I'm walking into a gymnasium.
Speaker 1: So his need is is just to expunge the house
Speaker 1: of all items. So it's like his house is like
Speaker 1: about as empty as a house could be, because that
Speaker 1: means it's like there's nothing too straighten up because he
Speaker 1: got rid of it all, you know, just like stripped.
Speaker 1: He lives a monastic, like a fairly monastic life, he
Speaker 1: commented on liking my house, but he lives nine hours
Speaker 1: away from his wife. They have separate homes that are
Speaker 1: nine hours apart. Wow. When they hang out, it's like
Speaker 1: they're like like a dating couple having a good old time,
Speaker 1: good stuff. Yeah, and it's not like they're they're not
Speaker 1: about it. They're not about it, like, oh, we're just
Speaker 1: trying to get through this right, And then it'll be
Speaker 1: that they're like just very fine with that. Him having
Speaker 1: his very neat house without even having her ship. Well,
Speaker 1: I figured out it was well like when you guys
Speaker 1: first asked me to be on this particular podcast and
Speaker 1: you said you were going to talk about she hunting
Speaker 1: the whole time, I was like, I don't really have
Speaker 1: anything to contribute, which I didn't have much, But but
Speaker 1: what I will say is that I think you guys.
Speaker 1: I went into it thinking like, I don't think I
Speaker 1: could ever do is she hunt or would ever want
Speaker 1: to do in I think you guys your enthusiasm definitely
Speaker 1: changed my mind. I'm not going to do it, but
Speaker 1: you're like that she would have a hard time shooting
Speaker 1: a bull elk because they're too majestic. Oh my, she
Speaker 1: has a thing of like the majestic quality. I don't know,
Speaker 1: and majestic you should see him up close once they're dead.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing. Yeah, I don't know. It's like
Speaker 1: I feel like and I've just never I've never had
Speaker 1: the opportunity, so I can't say, like, what would happen
Speaker 1: like in the moment, you know, it's hard. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to say it now sitting here, but it's another
Speaker 1: to say it like actually in the moment. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like I feel like if I saw one,
Speaker 1: I would just be like like last to see last season, Um,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend I went hunting in for meal and the
Speaker 1: Missouri breaks and I had an opportunity at like a
Speaker 1: huge um and I like, I was just like my
Speaker 1: boyfriend was like, are you gonna just what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Like my jaw was on the floor. So it's weird
Speaker 1: to me because that seems like a patriarchal perspective. But
Speaker 1: to have a woman say that she grants a male
Speaker 1: animal a higher majestic score, that's entirely possibly and a
Speaker 1: female seems like I like it because it's unexpected. I
Speaker 1: would just expect to have I would visualize that as
Speaker 1: like this, like very like patriarchal view of animals. I
Speaker 1: don't know. The male is more he's the he's the
Speaker 1: special one. Well, he's more like spectacular. I mean he
Speaker 1: has these incredibly huge, you know antlers that you know,
Speaker 1: took him a long time to throw those. No, he
Speaker 1: grows a few. I don't know. I mean it's just
Speaker 1: like there's something more like majestic to the way that
Speaker 1: they look. But I don't know it has it has
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't I can't explain it. I
Speaker 1: can't explain that was a good one. Uh you anything
Speaker 1: you don't want to add? Well, I don't you ever
Speaker 1: get shocked messed around with high volted electricity. I guess
Speaker 1: you don't get any chances to have it. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a one shot deal. You're combine the
Speaker 1: two somehow high voltage packs into like tie fashion and
Speaker 1: like make fancy packs with like glow in the dark. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: with your specific tools. Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: tough one to go. You know, people will spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on their recreation. They really won't spend
Speaker 1: it on their work necessarily, so yeah, but it would
Speaker 1: be fun. I mean, you're not gonna make like a
Speaker 1: super up tool kit for I don't think so compete
Speaker 1: with Lows and home depot. Yea, um, never been shocked.
Speaker 1: You got anything you want to add that you didn't
Speaker 1: get a chance to, Like you were wishing had come up,
Speaker 1: but it never came up. No, uh no, I mean
Speaker 1: I just appreciate you guys having us on and it's
Speaker 1: been a lot of fun, learned, a lot came up.
Speaker 1: I hope you can sell a whole shipload of packs. Man,
Speaker 1: Well thank you. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: hammering on it. And I think you guys need to
Speaker 1: start to marketing campaigns. One would be tidy. Two would
Speaker 1: be we kill unlimited rams. Just have a sign says
Speaker 1: that yeah, non guided we killed non guided unlimited rams. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's funny that that's that. That would
Speaker 1: be My only closing comment on that is is that
Speaker 1: the the unlimited cheap hunt is Uh, people are pretty
Speaker 1: tight with the information and the guys who go in
Speaker 1: there and spend the amount of time, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you own it. You can earn it and so. But
Speaker 1: in in the same respect, you can have all the
Speaker 1: information in the world from guys have been successful and
Speaker 1: go in there and you know, not not see anything,
Speaker 1: but you know it kind of reminds me of fight
Speaker 1: club or something. You know. Number one rule, right, first,
Speaker 1: number one first rule, do not talk about Sorry, but
Speaker 1: you haven't done anything bad because you guys haven't even
Speaker 1: named like a train now range um. But that's a
Speaker 1: question I have is do you feel like it could
Speaker 1: be a possibility that you might get your tag back
Speaker 1: next year and then you can haunt every year until
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, I'm over on them to sheep
Speaker 1: hunting and not kill another ram. Well, there's only a
Speaker 1: two point five seven percent chance that I you know
Speaker 1: that I take. I mean, obviously you're a positive thinking
Speaker 1: person because you're gonna go in there and try and
Speaker 1: every time you walk in there you're thinking, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill one. But like that's a realistic possibility you could
Speaker 1: hunt another twenty years and not kill another sheep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and I think it depends on you, know, how
Speaker 1: you where you hunt, what you want to do. Do
Speaker 1: you want to spend more time exploring it? Do you
Speaker 1: want to. It's not that this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: And it might sound silly to say, but it almost
Speaker 1: be disappointed if you walked in there and only spent
Speaker 1: three days after waiting seven years and you got one. You,
Speaker 1: I mean, you wouldn't turn it down. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to, But there is there. There's a lot to
Speaker 1: being able to look up at that and and and say,
Speaker 1: you know, I invested a lot of times. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of good memories went along with it. That
Speaker 1: might be the representation of it right now, but really
Speaker 1: what was special was just the stuff that I got
Speaker 1: to experience where you know, how you grew back there,
Speaker 1: how you overcame things that that you didn't think maybe
Speaker 1: you would. You know those times when you haven't seen
Speaker 1: anything for nine days and you start the question why
Speaker 1: am I here? You know, you spending time with my
Speaker 1: family right now, I haven't seen anything for nine days,
Speaker 1: and then the tenth day something's there. It's like it
Speaker 1: just happens like that. So you know all of those
Speaker 1: things that you start to grow, and then you start
Speaker 1: to apply that to say LK hunting, where you're seeing
Speaker 1: many elk in comparison, and and it changes your your
Speaker 1: perception of hunting. I think is probably the most positive
Speaker 1: thing that's done for me, because you pay more attention to,
Speaker 1: you know, all the little things that happened imposed it
Speaker 1: just you know, the big things and something standing in
Speaker 1: front of you. So because some days there aren't no
Speaker 1: big things, yeah, many days, most days yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're you know, after nine days of being by yourself,
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen very long. You are very often you
Speaker 1: start to run out of things to even think about.
Speaker 1: Most people, most people, it's an interesting people will never
Speaker 1: ever happen. Bring a book or three, Yeah, bring a book.
Speaker 1: Work with the Sun. That was a ringer of a
Speaker 1: closing thought right there, Because do you have any final
Speaker 1: thing you want to add? Man, things that didn't come
Speaker 1: up that you wish you'd got to talk about. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about a big old posts were just
Speaker 1: caught in our shrimp pop. But I'm not gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that right now. Ok it was actually my buddy shrimps.
Speaker 1: I am so confused about. Okay, we got big I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of a cat son. You want to talk about
Speaker 1: something that never had you guys, think unlimited sheep hunt.
Speaker 1: It's like seeing sand Claus. Yeah, getting octopus to shrimp pots,
Speaker 1: just like you know, you pull a lot of shrimp pots,
Speaker 1: not get oxoputs. Go out the other day and I
Speaker 1: boaded over to my like a buddy of mine was
Speaker 1: out pulling shrimp pots and he was kind of mad
Speaker 1: that I wasn't coming to help him, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to go because it's it's a very difficult area
Speaker 1: to take a skiff too. And I go over there
Speaker 1: and he already he had eight and the water he
Speaker 1: already pulled six. He's kind of pissed. I'm not really pissed,
Speaker 1: but he's annoyed. Um, hook it up, pull a pot,
Speaker 1: big old pusts man. Yeah, he's in my freezer right now.
Speaker 1: I was all geared up to talk about that. So
Speaker 1: tell me how you're gonna cook it, because we did
Speaker 1: that a couple of times in Alaska and we never
Speaker 1: really got it figured out. Yeah, it was really good.
Speaker 1: It just was you had to you had to work
Speaker 1: at it. There's a couple of ways people do it. Um.
Speaker 1: One way as you take a switch like I know
Speaker 1: that one chef likes to use the apple switch stick
Speaker 1: and beat the snot out of it or uh in Japan.
Speaker 1: They'll take a bucket and they'll have salt Corse salt
Speaker 1: in the bucket and put in the bottom of a
Speaker 1: five gallon bucket with a bunch of very coarse salt.
Speaker 1: Punch it. No, just put it in the bottom and
Speaker 1: just start punching the legs and punching the legs and
Speaker 1: working around and punch and punch and punch. You're saying
Speaker 1: this is to kill it, to kill it, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: figured that. Yeah, to kill you way lower than you
Speaker 1: think it would because the brains to tenderize it crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you just you ever watch Gero Dreams of Sushiyah.
Speaker 1: There's a scene in there where someone's tenorizing just beating
Speaker 1: in the bible bucket, uh my mentor in all things, uh,
Speaker 1: all things salt water um par boils them. So thirty
Speaker 1: minute he gets no beating at all, he gets pissedly
Speaker 1: say parbo he rolled, he'd like to say roll boil.
Speaker 1: He roll boils them the arms for thirty minutes and
Speaker 1: then the kind of this outside skin kind of comes off.
Speaker 1: You scrape it off. Then he packs in to dry
Speaker 1: Brian four to one. Then he smokes it, then he
Speaker 1: jars it and it is the best ship on the planet. Man.
Speaker 1: My closing thought is, man, is that puss sound good? Man?
Speaker 1: I want some Oxtrobus for dinner now. Umm. Would just
Speaker 1: be at tune. Encourage people to try new things and
Speaker 1: collect as many experiences as you can. And if unlimited
Speaker 1: Cheap Hunting is one of those things, go for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only guys out there trying to kill ten sheet.
Speaker 1: Just know what you're getting into. Just know what you're
Speaker 1: signing up for in the realities of it, and it's
Speaker 1: the most rewarding thing. Oh yeah, that getting out there
Speaker 1: and doing stuff thing is so important if we're just
Speaker 1: getting like general life ship, because when you're laying there dying,
Speaker 1: we got a couple of minutes, you're not gonna be like, Man,
Speaker 1: am I glad I didn't do that unlimited Cheap Hunt Right,
Speaker 1: It's just not gonna be what you say when you die,
Speaker 1: unless you're dying on the cheating you whatever you say,
Speaker 1: I'm not answering. I'm done talking, okay. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the time for because what if
Speaker 1: he wants to tell us a story himself, who we're
Speaker 1: gonna possibly go in and hang out with positives and decent.
Speaker 1: He miss You guys know Jim Pozwits one of Montana's
Speaker 1: greatest conservationists. Well, he's a national figure. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: national figure. But he did most his work. He's very yeah,
Speaker 1: but very influential cons You could you could say that
Speaker 1: he you know, not single handily, but he certainly spearheaded
Speaker 1: the effort that kept the Yellstun River from being damned. There,
Speaker 1: helped keep it the longest free flowing river in the country.
Speaker 1: But I was hanging with him the other morning talking, uh,
Speaker 1: doing some recording of some other stuff. Sorry to something, Well,
Speaker 1: I've messed something up. The longest freestone river in the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight not the country, copy um and Jim,
Speaker 1: I think it's eighty two this year, and drew a
Speaker 1: goat tag I think second or third time. He's like,
Speaker 1: I've already killed, I think he said. And he's killed too.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm already killed two, don't need to kill
Speaker 1: a third one. But he says, I'm not giving this
Speaker 1: one back so someone else can go kill. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give this got a pass go up there, that's going
Speaker 1: to get to live another year. Right, But because of
Speaker 1: his health, he also cannot make it up to go.
Speaker 1: And it's the first time I asked him the first
Speaker 1: time the health is keeping you off of hunt? He said, yep,
Speaker 1: I said, ship if I'm eighty two and I get
Speaker 1: to say that this this year's the first year, the
Speaker 1: first time not going up on the mountain because of
Speaker 1: my health, Like it'll be a good life, right. He
Speaker 1: added to that to say that, he said, like, that's
Speaker 1: all cool, I'm happy with it. Whatnot? He says, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of he says, I hope you know when the
Speaker 1: time comes or when there's that moment I think you
Speaker 1: can all kind of get when I'm getting at here,
Speaker 1: He's like, I hope to see what that goat is seeing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a beautiful stout. He's a good thinker.
Speaker 1: I know I wasn't say anything, but uh, sorry, Jim,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking. I'm channeling Jim Posits, so I'm not
Speaker 1: actually saying Jim Posits was talking about. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's an elderly man and a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: he was out hunting and near his home in Helena
Speaker 1: and he's climbing up to a place to to hunt
Speaker 1: Elco place where he knows the outcome through and ship
Speaker 1: I got myself in the situations in earlier. Okay, before
Speaker 1: I tell you this, I'll tell you some other thing now.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Poter Roosevelt, So Roosevelt um has his famous quote
Speaker 1: where a guy said, like, so earlier, I talked about
Speaker 1: how it came to be that the wild animals belong
Speaker 1: to the people. Um, you know, Roosevelt was, I want
Speaker 1: to be conservative and conserved wildlife. And so someone once
Speaker 1: said that Roosevelt like, if it belongs to us and
Speaker 1: it's ours, why can't we just go get it all?
Speaker 1: And he said, it doesn't just belong to you, it
Speaker 1: belongs to those Americans. Ill in the womb of time.
Speaker 1: What a line so posits is uh going up the hunt,
Speaker 1: and he becomes aware of a father and two kids
Speaker 1: behind him and on the trail, and the father is
Speaker 1: holding the kids back because he's reluctant to allow his
Speaker 1: kids to come smoking up past some old man. And
Speaker 1: Jim realizes that they're like purposefully plodding along out of
Speaker 1: out of deference, and he says that he turns and
Speaker 1: talks to says, I want you to go ahead, and
Speaker 1: he says and he's telling the story. He talks about
Speaker 1: um them passing him, and there are three generations worth
Speaker 1: of those people that we're in Roosevelt's womb of time out,
Speaker 1: sharing the resource. He's a profound dude man. That sounds
Speaker 1: like it. He's got some real s angers, all right.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining h