Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast.
Speaker 2: You can't predict anything.
Speaker 1: The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 1: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
Speaker 1: for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
Speaker 1: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T L I t
Speaker 1: E dot com. Is being a master fly tire a thing?
Speaker 1: Or is that just a description?
Speaker 2: That's just a stupid description.
Speaker 3: It's not like.
Speaker 4: Exactly, like somebody probably just labeled you that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: One time I got a labeled it was like one
Speaker 2: of the top five tires in the world. And the
Speaker 2: ironic part was that was only time for like three years.
Speaker 2: So it's not something that I wanted that label with
Speaker 2: because it causes a lot of haters. Oh really, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: they're like, uh, like to me, fishing is fishing, but
Speaker 2: in fly fishing you have a lot of pretentious motherfuckers that.
Speaker 1: Are you recording, phill, Yes, I am recording that.
Speaker 3: I have cameras, but we've got it. Yeah, we're good.
Speaker 5: God, he's saying.
Speaker 3: It people saying this is greeting and tying that we
Speaker 3: are Actually we're.
Speaker 1: Joined today by one of the top five fly tires.
Speaker 1: Please out, top five in the world, the entire world,
Speaker 1: the entire world, one of the top five. SANTAO, welcome. Thanks.
Speaker 1: What do you trying to say that off air? Not
Speaker 1: he's trying to say it off air because he's saying
Speaker 1: it with a certain eye roll. I want to hear more,
Speaker 1: honest eye roll.
Speaker 5: I want to hear more about what you're getting that.
Speaker 1: Well, the uh.
Speaker 2: At the advent of social media, you have a lot
Speaker 2: of people that are on there more or less just
Speaker 2: for the insta fame.
Speaker 1: Non be talking about haters next, But what's your Instagram handle?
Speaker 1: Probably about five.
Speaker 2: Out of the ten people that you'll see posts on
Speaker 2: there don't even fucking fish. They just post flies just
Speaker 2: for the likes. And you would say, you could look
Speaker 2: at them and there'll be like these super colorful flies
Speaker 2: that I don't know what the hell they mimic, but
Speaker 2: they pretty much. It's for artsy and it is a
Speaker 2: form of the fly tying. Fly fishing industry is some
Speaker 2: people will just tie just for the tranquil aspect of
Speaker 2: it and for the mental health. But the vast majority
Speaker 2: of don't even tie the are fish that you see
Speaker 2: post up on there and then.
Speaker 1: So there's a so there's a social media. Uh, let
Speaker 1: me say something else too. The start of this thing
Speaker 1: is we have them described here as a master fly tire,
Speaker 1: but also a master sergeant. So you are a master
Speaker 1: like indisputably that's master sergeant in the US Army. Yes,
Speaker 1: questionably a master fly tire. Questionably lower lowercase m uppercase
Speaker 1: M in the military, lowercase M. As a fly tire,
Speaker 1: like you're not a certified master fly tire.
Speaker 2: No, that is just labels that will people give for
Speaker 2: whatever reason. People like the label everything. And in the
Speaker 2: fly fishing world like you got these master casters, master tires, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 2: To me's fishing is fishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what you want to know? The most
Speaker 1: annoying thing fly fishermen.
Speaker 2: Do what catch and release everything.
Speaker 1: No, No, that is a bottom. I'm glad. I wish
Speaker 1: everybody did that because that's more fish for me to eat.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: The most annoying thing they do is they have taken
Speaker 1: certain fish and they've broken their name down to letters
Speaker 1: GT so giant Travaldi becomes a GT. Why is a
Speaker 1: bluegill not a BG? It's like it doesn't mean it,
Speaker 1: or like a yellow perch. Oh, you know I was
Speaker 1: out for yps LB's yps.
Speaker 3: You know what, Debbie, why are you not hitting strike indicator?
Speaker 1: So obvious?
Speaker 3: That's just like he was.
Speaker 5: He was attacking pretentious carp fly fishman the other day.
Speaker 1: Which I totally agree I was doing that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were talking about how stupid.
Speaker 1: Listen, I fly fish this summer more than more than
Speaker 1: any person in America. Really, not how much I fly
Speaker 1: didn't see you do it, That's how much I fly
Speaker 1: fished this summer more than any other American master angler.
Speaker 4: I bet the uh at the spot up there, I
Speaker 4: mean I have hours, probably two.
Speaker 1: Into it. Oh then me and Yannie fly fish went
Speaker 1: fish and cutthroats on the I'm not gonna say like
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk greater. Do you tell about it?
Speaker 1: I have never seen anything like uh this lake we
Speaker 1: rode horses up to in Wyoming. I have never ever
Speaker 1: in my life seen cutthroat fishing like that. Nice fishing,
Speaker 1: crazy cut Bonneville.
Speaker 3: Now you're giving away where you.
Speaker 1: Were, dude, Like unbelievable unbelievable big black spots. What does
Speaker 1: that means? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry the fish.
Speaker 4: Did you release him?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: We killed three?
Speaker 3: How big we talking?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Probably eighteen on the top end?
Speaker 3: Sweet?
Speaker 1: Probably eighteen on the top end, and you'd look for him,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh, so much fun man, Maybe maybe like
Speaker 1: fly fish because I'd kind of outgrown it, but it
Speaker 1: made me kind of love it again.
Speaker 4: Man, well you had fun with all the times you
Speaker 4: went fishing with me.
Speaker 3: Did you abbreviate cutthroat or do you call them cuts?
Speaker 1: Gantt their giant c cts? Uh, get back to the
Speaker 1: arts and joke. So so in the fly tying world,
Speaker 1: there is there's a social media element to the fly
Speaker 1: tying world, and there are fly tires that don't fish.
Speaker 1: They're just in the craftsmanship. Yep, the artistry.
Speaker 2: Yes, so uh like you got. You get a mix
Speaker 2: of people that will try to showcase their flies that
Speaker 2: do a lot of fishing. They showcase a lot of
Speaker 2: different guide flies, and you have other ones that will
Speaker 2: just explain that a guide fly guy fly is like
Speaker 2: basically fly that's really easy to tie that will catch
Speaker 2: sand wan warm and an egg or a midge or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: You bust them out and clients are gonna lose them.
Speaker 2: Then you have other ones that will tie, like these
Speaker 2: super intricate flies. I have like a ton of material,
Speaker 2: a lot of different wild colors, and so there's a
Speaker 2: there's a big difference flies that have been known historically
Speaker 2: to catch fish for decades in some cases even hundreds
Speaker 2: a year, like the Royal Coachman for example. Then you
Speaker 2: have these other funky wild color flies that people that
Speaker 2: are into fly fishing per se. They'll look at them
Speaker 2: and they see all these wonderful colors and they hit
Speaker 2: the like button. So that's that's disparity between two. And
Speaker 2: like my heartache with it is that you have a
Speaker 2: lot of new people that have no idea what the
Speaker 2: hell they're doing when it comes to fly tie or fishing.
Speaker 2: And they'll see some of these flies and they these
Speaker 2: some of these individuals have like pretty large accounts, and
Speaker 2: they think that's actually a fly that they should be
Speaker 2: fishing with or learning how to tie. In reality, they're
Speaker 2: they're totally wasting their time.
Speaker 1: But so do you like tying? You like tye and
Speaker 1: stuff that can be fish.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what my pretty much my account is based
Speaker 2: off of flies that actually work.
Speaker 1: This is the most amazing This is probably I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't you know, I'm not like a hobbyist, but
Speaker 1: this is probably the most amazing fly I've ever held
Speaker 1: in my life.
Speaker 3: That thing's awesome.
Speaker 2: It works, maybe, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is unbelievable the artistry and then the the
Speaker 1: life that's in this thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So a lot of these are tum And do you
Speaker 3: feel like that would catch a fish?
Speaker 1: Steve catch a lot of fish.
Speaker 2: It feels like when I said that, I'd catch a
Speaker 2: lot of kinds of fish.
Speaker 3: But does a fly like that earn you a master title?
Speaker 3: Or do you have to tie specific flies in order
Speaker 3: to be a master?
Speaker 2: No, basically there's there's really no criteria. Like, to me,
Speaker 2: that's a stupid label master tire I.
Speaker 7: Put it in the script. You guys can blame me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, like I wouldn't even come close to Like,
Speaker 2: you have people that have been time for like forty
Speaker 2: fifty years that have set the foundation for everybody else
Speaker 2: that is starting or has just started in the last ten,
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen years, And they're the ones that came
Speaker 2: up with the innovations using different type of materials, where
Speaker 2: it was like using deer hair at one point in history,
Speaker 2: or parts of a pheasant or a muskrat or whatever
Speaker 2: the case may be. It wasn't me, It wasn't like
Speaker 2: anybody in this generation. Those guys are the master tires.
Speaker 2: They are the ones that you know, wrote the books
Speaker 2: that showed people that you could use hair from a
Speaker 2: lama and catch fish with it. None of us are
Speaker 2: very innovative nowadays. I mean there were people that will
Speaker 2: label themselves as such. But those folks that from forty seventy,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years ago, they're the master tires.
Speaker 5: Is there some specific old school tires that you emulate
Speaker 5: or like, really you're into them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, more or less because of their personalities versus and
Speaker 2: a lot of cases. Also, you know, their flies are exceptional.
Speaker 2: But one of the local guys there, Kelly Gallup, he's
Speaker 2: the one that came up with a lot of these
Speaker 2: for flies here, like this sex Dungeon, the mini sex Dungeon,
Speaker 2: him and his crazy fucking names. But they actually work
Speaker 2: and they catch a lot of fish. And then other
Speaker 2: guys like Pat Dorsey out of Colorado that fishes a
Speaker 2: lot of tail waters and basically mimic. All his his
Speaker 2: guide flies off of what the fish are eating there
Speaker 2: and they work like crazy. That one Boxer as like
Speaker 2: a bunch of twenty four to twenty six is that
Speaker 2: are flies that Pat designed and they work. So those
Speaker 2: are just a few of the guys that that I
Speaker 2: have looked up to over the years, and they really
Speaker 2: want to know what they're talking about. And two also
Speaker 2: they catch a lot of fish, so it's not like
Speaker 2: they're just coming up with crazy shit that don't work.
Speaker 2: The stuff that they they put in their books and
Speaker 2: stuff that they talk about all or proven patterns that
Speaker 2: work everywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna cover off on your life history
Speaker 1: a bit, but just just to just to tee it up.
Speaker 1: Then we got to touch on a couple of things.
Speaker 1: You were born in Vietnam in Vietnam and then grew
Speaker 1: up in Pennsylvania, but you spent some number of months
Speaker 1: in uh In, not in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Now, I for like the first almost a year and
Speaker 2: a half of my life, I lived in a refuge
Speaker 2: camp in Malaysia. So my dad was in the military
Speaker 2: in the Vietnam and as part of the South Vietnamese army.
Speaker 2: If we would have got caught or he would have
Speaker 2: got caught, he probably would have been executed yep. And
Speaker 2: so as after the fall of Saigan, the North Vietnamese
Speaker 2: and the Communist started, you know, sweeping down further south.
Speaker 2: And the town that I was born is called Baklu,
Speaker 2: which is all the very southern point of Vietnam. So
Speaker 2: that gave us a couple of years, but eventually they
Speaker 2: would have came through there anyways, and so.
Speaker 1: We gave you extra years, yeah, because they.
Speaker 2: Were still working from from what they renamed the Ho
Speaker 2: Chi Min city on the way moving down to the
Speaker 2: southern point of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: And it was not like you turned like post nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. Yeah, yeah, they were still fighting their way
Speaker 1: south or just moving there.
Speaker 2: Just moving their way south and basically implementing communism, and
Speaker 2: like every single town on that got it.
Speaker 1: So they weren't encountering like resistance all the way.
Speaker 2: So now now I see, Yeah, basically, I mean I
Speaker 2: was the opposite of most kids that I grew up
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. I came from a very well to do
Speaker 2: family and my grandfather pretty much owned the entire like port,
Speaker 2: so he got all the royalties of the ships and
Speaker 2: stuff coming in. I had pretty much everything that a
Speaker 2: kid could want growing up in Vietnam and then to
Speaker 2: baby basically know and and my this was my parents.
Speaker 2: I was so young. I had no idea this shit.
Speaker 2: But what they told me was that all that was
Speaker 2: gonna be taken away. And also at the same time,
Speaker 2: my father run the risk of being executed. So we
Speaker 2: literally left in a banana boat. I mean we fled
Speaker 2: out of there in a boat and landed on the shore.
Speaker 1: Talk about bad luck, an actual banana boat.
Speaker 2: We left there and went to the refuge camp in
Speaker 2: palal Badong, which is about the size of four football fields,
Speaker 2: but it housed that any given time about ten thousand refugees.
Speaker 2: So it was packed like sardines in there. And that's
Speaker 2: a sour subject of itself because I refused eat sardines
Speaker 2: because that's what we had. But we were given as
Speaker 2: far as a canas gardines and a vaga ris like
Speaker 2: every day who ran the camp on the Malaysian government
Speaker 2: they ran, yeah, I mean totally off subject well as
Speaker 2: well similar to the subject, but on the trip there
Speaker 2: where while we were on the boat, they suffered probably
Speaker 2: about thirty five percent casualties from dysentery and other diseases
Speaker 2: and so like as a at that time, I think
Speaker 2: I was four and a half and I was seeing
Speaker 2: like babies and people just being thrown overboard as they died,
Speaker 2: and that that like left an imprint in my head
Speaker 2: for a long time, because I started having nightmares when
Speaker 2: I was a teenager. Basically just waking up and.
Speaker 3: Well, also being able to avoid disease at four and
Speaker 3: a half years old, it seems like a minor miracle.
Speaker 2: The whole family made it, so that was a minor
Speaker 2: miracle in itself there. But there was a lot of
Speaker 2: people that died and they just like chucked them overboard.
Speaker 2: And it was actually Thay pirates that saved our asses
Speaker 2: because the tire ship was out of way and so
Speaker 2: we were getting raided and everybody was like swallowing all
Speaker 2: their jewelry and all that stuff because that's what they
Speaker 2: were going to set their their future on. But in
Speaker 2: exchange for basically pillaging the boat, they gave us water
Speaker 2: and then we made it the rest of the way
Speaker 2: of the Malaysia.
Speaker 1: What year were you born.
Speaker 2: I was born in seventy four.
Speaker 1: You're forty nine, yep, fifty in.
Speaker 4: March what was the island called again.
Speaker 2: Palau Bedung p u l a u b I d
Speaker 2: o ng. Then you guys spent how many months at
Speaker 2: the eighteen months there and then uh from there to US. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the US wasn't my parents' first choice because we had
Speaker 2: no family over in the US. We had family in Europe,
Speaker 2: Australia and other places, and so they they applied for
Speaker 2: political asylum and all those other countries and they all
Speaker 2: told us the fuck off, and the US was the
Speaker 2: only one that said yes. And that's how and then
Speaker 2: it was a men in Knite family. That's how I
Speaker 2: end up in Pennsylvania, was a Mena Nite family from
Speaker 2: this church called Grafdale Mennonite Church that end up basically
Speaker 2: picking our family name out of some refugee book and
Speaker 2: then sponsored as and helped us with the paperwork to
Speaker 2: get to the US. And we started off in like Oakland,
Speaker 2: California for the first I think it was almost a
Speaker 2: year there living in there in the city. And then
Speaker 2: eventually they got us to Pennsylvania where they helped my
Speaker 2: parents settle and find work and whatnot.
Speaker 3: The manner of speaking for The Mennonites didn't rub off
Speaker 3: on you.
Speaker 2: I think the military soury of those beliefs that I
Speaker 2: might have had grown up, you know, but they did
Speaker 2: lay a pretty good foundation because it's basically you learned
Speaker 2: to appreciate things a little bit more coming from that
Speaker 2: type of culture. I mean, we went to their churches
Speaker 2: for a little bit, but they allowed us the freedom
Speaker 2: to basically, you know, worship how we saw failed.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, that's amazing.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: Art my mom and dad's church when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, they had sponsored some South Vietnamese refugees who'd
Speaker 1: been in the military and for I don't know where
Speaker 1: they went, but they came in. They stayed there and
Speaker 1: my dad and him with ice fish together, which he
Speaker 1: had to have thought was the wildest thing in the world,
Speaker 1: right to like all of a sudden come to the
Speaker 1: US and like instantly be ice fishing. But but they
Speaker 1: just I don't know. I'd love to find out what
Speaker 1: happened to that family. Are we still actually I was
Speaker 1: probably four or five years old or you stay in touch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we still stay in touch with them. My mom
Speaker 2: is still very close to them, so they she still
Speaker 2: lives like twenty minutes away from where they are.
Speaker 5: Were you guys near Lancaster?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Really yeah yeah, Lancaster County.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, hang tight, I'm gonna talk about some stuff.
Speaker 1: If you've got any comments, feel free, okay. I mean
Speaker 1: as a master fly tire.
Speaker 5: Or a master sergeant or.
Speaker 1: A master Yeah you can. You can weigh in as
Speaker 1: a sergeant or a fly tire as you see fit. Oh,
Speaker 1: one thing, what was it? I gotta replug it. I
Speaker 1: got to replug it. Where is it? If you have
Speaker 1: an event planned, if you had an event plan in
Speaker 1: northern Michigan and you need a my Buddy's bar. My
Speaker 1: buddy has a new business. He has a camper trailer
Speaker 1: rigged out like a bar. So if you're having an event, wedding, whatever,
Speaker 1: and you want a bar, there's no change of money.
Speaker 1: Like when you hire his services. You buy the booze.
Speaker 1: He picks up the booze, pulls the bar up all
Speaker 1: the mixers custom cocktails at your event. So your guests
Speaker 1: just walk up to the camper trailer full bar back there.
Speaker 7: Love it.
Speaker 8: He's gotta he's gotta do like a tiki bar version
Speaker 8: of that, and then we'll do like a meat Eater podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll send them some forest for foods garnishes first
Speaker 4: bar too.
Speaker 1: You better be serious, you don't know that. Roamingnomi dot com,
Speaker 1: Roaming n O m I so, roaming Northern Michigan dot
Speaker 1: com packages prices, phone numbers and all. Matt Droz very
Speaker 1: dear friend of mine from growing up. A lot of hunting,
Speaker 1: a lot of fishing, a lot of drinking, a lot
Speaker 1: of drinking, a lot of drinking. Sure h, too much drinking.
Speaker 1: What else we got? Oh? Season twelve announcement, So a
Speaker 1: bunch of new mediater episodes premiering. When is this?
Speaker 7: It launches on October twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, premiering October twelve. So you go find them. Go
Speaker 1: to our meat Eater website or our me eater YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: So the website or the YouTube channel October twelve, bunch
Speaker 1: of new episodes. We have the episode coming up of
Speaker 1: hunting black Bears in a wet suit, all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: Big mule Deer, Big Out, lots of cool episodes, Big Squirrels.
Speaker 1: October twelve on the met eater website and on the
Speaker 1: meat Eater YouTube channel. Brand new episodes. You can catch
Speaker 1: them first. There also have a live tour coming up
Speaker 1: in early December. We don't have all the dates yet,
Speaker 1: starting like the first week of December. Like we're gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a bus tour. We're gonna do I
Speaker 1: don't know, like ten cities in thirteen days or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 7: He love those live tours.
Speaker 4: We're gonna be like Tails from the tour bus.
Speaker 1: Tails the tour bus, big trivia component to the tour.
Speaker 1: Spencer is Spencer Newhart has to go to all tour dates.
Speaker 5: Is he driving the bus.
Speaker 1: He's driving the bus. He's driving the bus. So it's
Speaker 1: gonna be We're yeah, we're doing a live tour over
Speaker 1: damn place, uh in a bus, which is I kind
Speaker 1: of like the idea of this bus thing in the
Speaker 1: tour bus spinal tap. So stay tuned for that. You
Speaker 1: better buy some tickets, man, better buy some tickets. Got
Speaker 1: a new calendar. I't called me Eater's dirty doesn't so
Speaker 1: it just so happens.
Speaker 7: Oh it's coming soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, picture that. You make twelve seasons of a show
Speaker 1: and then you got twelve months in a year. At
Speaker 1: some point someone's going to be like, I got an idea,
Speaker 1: so this year calendar every year. Every month you follow me?
Speaker 1: Every month is a year? Eh, yeah, it's genius.
Speaker 3: A facial expression twelve twelve smirks of Steve twelve years.
Speaker 1: Twelve years of the show captured in twelve months, So
Speaker 1: like January is I don't know what the hell two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve years ago.
Speaker 7: You can see Steve age ever so slightly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a lot, dude, No, no, no.
Speaker 4: I don't think a lot, just twelve years smirks.
Speaker 1: So check that out. Also, Oh, Phelps on Phelps Unleashed.
Speaker 2: Why is this?
Speaker 1: Say, don't read this.
Speaker 8: Because I put the whole description in it and it
Speaker 8: takes a long time to read all of it.
Speaker 7: Those are just some highlights, Oh that you can.
Speaker 1: Hit well, Phelps's bugle tube is is improved. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna skim through it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, Jason Phelps, who comes on the show often host
Speaker 1: of Cutting the Distance, founder of Phelps Game Calls, has
Speaker 1: a new generation of the Unleashed Bugle Tube. I didn't
Speaker 1: think that there was a problem with the old one,
Speaker 1: but apparently never satisfied. So basically, people that had the
Speaker 1: Unleashed tube had various comments about it, and Jason being
Speaker 1: the obsessive that he is is going on and address
Speaker 1: various condoms. Comments. One, the new version recycled plastic. That's cool, Uh,
Speaker 1: guys had some people had a problem with the mouthpiece,
Speaker 1: So now you can remove the mouthpiece, meaning your tube
Speaker 1: comes with a mouthpiece on it. But some people like
Speaker 1: the smaller aperture. So now when you get it, you
Speaker 1: either like the mouthpiece, which I think the mouthpiece is great.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you wouldn't like it, but some
Speaker 1: people don't want the mouthpieces just blow straight into the tube.
Speaker 1: Comes with the easy bugler and the flared mouthpieces. It's lighter,
Speaker 1: so twelve point five hours, twenty inches in length, so
Speaker 1: V two version two, he says, it gets the same
Speaker 1: exact sound in a little bit smaller package. They dress
Speaker 1: the whole thing and neoprene reduced noises from touching on
Speaker 1: brush and adaptable. So a complete calling system for any
Speaker 1: calling style with one purchase two comes equipped with a
Speaker 1: flared mouthpiece for diaphragm calling. Earlier, when I was talking
Speaker 1: about people not liking the mouthpiece, that's what I meant,
Speaker 1: meaning there's a read piece that goes on it too.
Speaker 1: If you don't like using diaphragm calls. You can use
Speaker 1: the red mounted on the bugle tube, or you can
Speaker 1: pull or read off put the flared mouthpiece on it
Speaker 1: if fits over your mouth better, or if you want
Speaker 1: to go ultra lightweight. I suppose a fellow could just
Speaker 1: pull the freaking the flared mouthpiece off as well and
Speaker 1: run it that way outstanding back pressure for no articulation,
Speaker 1: devastating bugles, mind bending screams. Who writes this copy? Is
Speaker 1: this Ukraine?
Speaker 7: Nope, let's think about it.
Speaker 1: Devastating bugles love it? Just knock them over dead with
Speaker 1: a mind bending screams. You bend their mind and devastate
Speaker 1: them thunderous chuckles and grunts. I'm sold.
Speaker 5: We need a sound effect there.
Speaker 1: The Unleash V two is a new standard that all
Speaker 1: beagles will be measured against. Now I gave a buddy
Speaker 1: my want to borrow. I let my buddy borrow one. Um,
Speaker 1: he went on. But he's got nothing to gain from this.
Speaker 1: He went out the way that text me how wonderful
Speaker 1: it was, and they killed a bowl. He said it
Speaker 1: was the ship and bitching.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the new V two is out. Uh, here's
Speaker 1: a lengthy one. This is interesting. A lot of the
Speaker 1: news is full of uh, A lot of uproar going
Speaker 1: on around refuges. Okay's covered as fair a bit wildlife
Speaker 1: refuges in lead ammo. Okay, So certain refuges, you have
Speaker 1: states that are getting rid of that, that are banning
Speaker 1: lead ammo, banning lead sinkers, fish and sinkers, switching those
Speaker 1: over with sinkers that when you bite them, you hear
Speaker 1: your teeth crack.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a thing now where certain wildlife refuges are
Speaker 1: looking to ban or have they implemented it cal or
Speaker 1: not implemented it yet, it's a plan to implement a
Speaker 1: ban on led AMMO in wildlife refuges.
Speaker 3: I think that there's probably some that always have had
Speaker 3: for sure in the regulations. But you know, because one
Speaker 3: of the interesting things, right when you bring up refuge it,
Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of people go like, well, migratory birds, right,
Speaker 3: And for how many years now has it been illegal
Speaker 3: to use anything but non toxic ammunition for migratory birds.
Speaker 1: Since when I was a little boy, A long.
Speaker 3: Time, right. So I had to go through each one
Speaker 3: of these and make sure that there was big game
Speaker 3: hunting as a you know, legal means of recreation on
Speaker 3: each one of these things, and you can't hunt white
Speaker 3: till the year or you know, blackwater refugees on here
Speaker 3: for SIKA and so yeah, you would have to switch over.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think in some regulations it's just straight
Speaker 3: up non toxic across the board, got it? Which is
Speaker 3: kind of an interesting thing, right, because we always complain
Speaker 3: about how complicated regulations are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but neither here nor there. So the US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service looking to add or there's a proposal
Speaker 1: or new rule going into place to ban traditional ammunition
Speaker 1: which we call that ammunition on eight national wildlife refuges,
Speaker 1: including Blackwater, chink fatigue. Don't even how to pronounce that?
Speaker 1: One Eastern neck, eerie, great thicket, Patuxent, How do you
Speaker 1: say that? Any?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: Close enough for me?
Speaker 1: Patux At Research Refuge, Rachel Carson Refuge, Wallops Island. UH.
Speaker 1: The NSSF n SSF National Shooting Sports Foundation UH shared
Speaker 1: a letter that they had written to Martha Williams, and
Speaker 1: Martha Williams has been on the on the show as
Speaker 1: a guest. Because Martha Williams, who heads the US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service, used to head Montana's State Fishing Game Agency.
Speaker 1: So in that capacity. Martha Williams was on the show before.
Speaker 1: We have not had her on in her current capacity,
Speaker 1: but would love to have around and talk about some
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Note to krind you get that krinn it,
Speaker 1: so that'd be interesting. So the NSSF Shared a Letter
Speaker 1: is sort of an open letter challenging, challenging some of
Speaker 1: the assumptions within the led band tackling. First goes on
Speaker 1: like any like any good compliment sandwich. It congratulates the
Speaker 1: US Fish and Wildlife Service for expanding hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: opportunities on the refuge system and then gets into the
Speaker 1: meat of it, and it's lays out this interesting argument
Speaker 1: that the so the US Fish and Wildlife Service is
Speaker 1: tasked with protecting wildlife populations, okay, and because there is
Speaker 1: a lack of any evidence that lead contamination from ammunition
Speaker 1: is having any population level impacts on wildlife, there's no
Speaker 1: sound reason to ban lead ammunition. Meaning bald eagles are
Speaker 1: it's commonly pointed to bald eagles like a bald eagle
Speaker 1: can get onto a carcass. Anyone wants to argue the
Speaker 1: truth of this is just wasting their time, like this
Speaker 1: is a thing that can happen. A bald eagle can
Speaker 1: get onto a deer carcass, is someone killed with land ammunition.
Speaker 1: The bald eagle can eat that lead ammunition, and the
Speaker 1: bald eagle can die from lead toxicity. It's just like,
Speaker 1: this is not a debatable point. That is a thing
Speaker 1: that happens. And there is a.
Speaker 5: Very few bald eagles around at one point because of
Speaker 5: not because of lead, not because of lead, because of
Speaker 5: dt T.
Speaker 10: But now the eagles are back.
Speaker 1: To bring this full circle, partially full circle, we just
Speaker 1: mentioned the Rachel Carson refuge. Rachel Carson wrote if you've
Speaker 1: heard people over the years mentioned the book Silent Spring.
Speaker 1: Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring about the
Speaker 1: devastating effects of DDT on birds. It was so it
Speaker 1: was a insecticide. Is that correct? Prolific use insecticidey an insecticide.
Speaker 1: If you watch old movies that they like to have
Speaker 1: the thing where they're spreading DDT and kids are playing
Speaker 1: in the clouds as it goes down the road. Rachel
Speaker 1: Carson Silent Spring made the case of how DDT was
Speaker 1: devastating to birds. DDT gets into a bird system, how
Speaker 1: it would impact the bird is the bird. It would,
Speaker 1: for some weird reason I have never studied up on,
Speaker 1: would cause the bird's shell to get very thin. The
Speaker 1: bird incubating its own egg would crack its own egg.
Speaker 1: The shells got so thin that a bird would crack
Speaker 1: its egg trying to incubate it. And this devastated a
Speaker 1: bunch of raptors, eagles, peregrine falcons, osprays, all these other
Speaker 1: birds got devastated from DDT DDT. This is like DDT
Speaker 1: was having a absolute population level impact on birds. DDT
Speaker 1: was band. Since then, bald eagles have recovered so much
Speaker 1: that they were They're one of the very few species
Speaker 1: to ever come off the Endangered Species List. I think
Speaker 1: two percent of things that go on the ESA come
Speaker 1: off because of recovery they recovered. However, a baal to
Speaker 1: youle can eat lead ammo and it can die. A
Speaker 1: bald eagle can hit a wind turbine and it can die.
Speaker 1: A bald eagle can get hit by your car and
Speaker 1: it can die.
Speaker 3: A ball these strand barber wire fence a ball you.
Speaker 1: Can hit a three strand barberier fence and die. No no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. One of the things that can kill
Speaker 1: a bald eagle is lead toxicity. So the argument here is,
Speaker 1: without being able to point to any population level impacts
Speaker 1: of lead AMMO, how can you ban lead AMMO in
Speaker 1: protection of wildlife populations? And this letter makes this case.
Speaker 1: This letter also points to a couple of things like
Speaker 1: this recurring and you see this all over the place,
Speaker 1: This recurring idea that there is a lead toxicity element
Speaker 1: to humans from eating harvested game, which is completely unsubstantiated.
Speaker 1: The only time they've ever gone to this they went
Speaker 1: into North Dakota and tested a bunch of hunters for lead,
Speaker 1: and the hunters all had lower lead than people that
Speaker 1: live in cities. The reason people in cities have high
Speaker 1: lead is because up until the eighties, they were putting
Speaker 1: lead in fuel and that was a soluble lead. So
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go through the whole letter, but it's
Speaker 1: really compelling, but it's like it's this thing where if
Speaker 1: you want this is this thing that happens so much
Speaker 1: in anything contentious, anything political, is if you're pushing for
Speaker 1: a thing that you want to be true, like you're
Speaker 1: sort of pursuing in a gen that you have, and
Speaker 1: you welcome, you welcome information, but then you wind up
Speaker 1: welcoming like somewhat suspect information if it helps make your point.
Speaker 1: And I think that the issue here, the reason we
Speaker 1: keep talking about this is the issue here is as
Speaker 1: management agencies, states, whatever try to mandate a move away
Speaker 1: from LED ammunition, I think it's important, like at least
Speaker 1: tell people the truth. Stop acting like there's a human
Speaker 1: health concern when no one has been able to substantiate it.
Speaker 1: Don't act like there's a population level bald eagle concern
Speaker 1: when nothing substantiates it. If your argument is that if
Speaker 1: you kill a deer with leed amo and leave it out,
Speaker 1: you could kill a bald eagle, have that be that right?
Speaker 3: And people make commutigate this, which this is one of
Speaker 3: the there's some things in here that I don't like
Speaker 3: the way it's written, and there's some things that they
Speaker 3: included that I do like.
Speaker 1: But tell me some of the ones. Tell me tell
Speaker 1: me a highlight of each of those.
Speaker 3: So population level effect, right, And we've covered this many times,
Speaker 3: so it'll just be really brief. Right, they are talking
Speaker 3: about bald eagles and and most of the and it
Speaker 3: seems like all these refuges are in Bald Eagle territory,
Speaker 3: and that's the raptor of concern. But if you had
Speaker 3: a refuge system in an area that overlapped with condor populations,
Speaker 3: a condor death could have a population level effect, and
Speaker 3: then it would be necessary to take further precautions, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because a condor is a population, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: The other piece of this is you can mitigate that
Speaker 3: raptor eating off your gut pile by removing the guts
Speaker 3: from the field or by burying the guts on site.
Speaker 3: So this weekend, and I apologized to some of the
Speaker 3: folks I know, but lead kills really well. And I
Speaker 3: went out and shot a bunch of upland birds with
Speaker 3: seven and a half shot lead, and I made the
Speaker 3: decision to package up, even though I was like way
Speaker 3: the hell out on BLM ground. I made the decision
Speaker 3: to remove all the guts and the carcasses from the field.
Speaker 1: So if you're in the heat, you're gutting birds, you're
Speaker 1: gutting into a bag and just throwing the bag into
Speaker 1: your game bag.
Speaker 3: Which eventually became a really horrible, disgusting bag. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's not gonna go kill something I didn't intend to kill.
Speaker 3: So I did like the fact that they provided a
Speaker 3: good alternative, like a common so it's alternative.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then this letter from the NSSFY they applaud
Speaker 1: education efforts. They don't they're not chastising people that are
Speaker 1: making non toxic AMMO. They don't use the word non toxic.
Speaker 1: They're not chastising manufacturers of They're sort of pointing to
Speaker 1: they're sort of applauding the free market economy or the choice,
Speaker 1: but pointing out that I would not have guessed this,
Speaker 1: some of the percentages on some of the percentages on
Speaker 1: use of AMMO. Where's this stuff?
Speaker 5: Oh the one percent of were you looking at the
Speaker 5: rifle ammo?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Where that too?
Speaker 1: That copper is one percent of center fire ammo used? Yep.
Speaker 1: My social circle, like my social circle, which includes people
Speaker 1: that that use copper for a handful of reasons, some
Speaker 1: performance issues, some lead issues. I would it reminds me
Speaker 1: of one when I have a skewed sample size in
Speaker 1: my social circle. I say, we're doing the kids trivia
Speaker 1: and and my younger kid had to guess what percentage
Speaker 1: of kids went fishing during the pandemic, and he thought
Speaker 1: that ninety percent of kids went fishing during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: like he had.
Speaker 5: A very skin biases it, Like that's all I did.
Speaker 3: That's a friends here.
Speaker 2: It is non non lead.
Speaker 5: Center fire rifle ammunition makes up the smallest share of
Speaker 5: the market and is approximately one percent of all ammunition produced.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but produced, so that that includes all target sure.
Speaker 5: I mean when you're buying a ace of cheap two two.
Speaker 10: Three, I'm gonna, you know, just go do some shoot.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make this. I'm gonna make this relevant to
Speaker 1: our guests. Watch this. When you time flies are using
Speaker 1: non toxic Could you ever tie a fly with lead?
Speaker 2: One of the most common means to weigh down to.
Speaker 1: Fly is using lead reps, and you're still using it.
Speaker 2: I use it partially. They have the alternative where it's
Speaker 2: stainless steel to also wait, but and some some patterns,
Speaker 2: the lead works way better. Let a flip shot.
Speaker 1: He's like, lead till I'm dead? Is that what you're
Speaker 1: trying to tell me?
Speaker 2: And then also wait with the split shots.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: It also wraps really nice.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does, it does. I would view I would
Speaker 1: imagine that. I would imagine that the amount of you
Speaker 1: see fishing get rolled into this I I do not
Speaker 1: see this being fishing this problem, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a very few states to help all lead weights.
Speaker 2: I mean New York was one of them. I went
Speaker 2: out there for some lake run salmon and I was
Speaker 2: missing some weights, so I went to the local tackle
Speaker 2: shop to get some, and all they had was the alternate.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the hell? I had no idea kind
Speaker 2: of like blindsided me that I couldn't get lead weights.
Speaker 1: I get the leads. So just for folks, listen, when
Speaker 1: we started talking about lead split shot, it's a different thing.
Speaker 1: Lead split shot is not. There's different ways that lead
Speaker 1: gets introduced into to wildlife center fire like deer Okay,
Speaker 1: deer hunting, that's introduced because you shoot the deer and
Speaker 1: you got the deer and your bullet fragments and is
Speaker 1: led around. You leave the guts whatever. Later on you
Speaker 1: throw the bones in the ditch, stuff eats that they
Speaker 1: ingest lead unintentionally, split shot and steal shot or sorry
Speaker 1: back when you could use lead to hunt ducks. In
Speaker 1: split shot, you have it can enter an animal by
Speaker 1: an animal could get hit by a chunk of that
Speaker 1: lead and not be lethal. Then it has lead in it,
Speaker 1: but they pick it up as grit so or they
Speaker 1: pick it up they just see something shiny and different
Speaker 1: and they're down there feeding and they ingest it. So
Speaker 1: the lead sinker thing is that they're just intentionally ingesting it.
Speaker 1: It's not getting like blasted into something. It's being picked up,
Speaker 1: not eaten along with flesh. Is that clear?
Speaker 5: And I think a lot of time, a lot of
Speaker 5: times they're just picking it up as they're feeding on
Speaker 5: the bike.
Speaker 2: It just happens to end up and.
Speaker 1: Happens oh yep, got it as straining through the bottom.
Speaker 1: But I just, man, uh, I just feel that the
Speaker 1: fishing thing has to be just like almost a non issue.
Speaker 5: I think there's places where there's a carpet of leadhead
Speaker 5: jigs on the bottom of certain places.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I can name a few.
Speaker 1: I could go there, But I mean I could name
Speaker 1: one Lincott home that's got about forty pounds in my leg.
Speaker 5: But you know what I think is interesting about this
Speaker 5: is the NSF nss F is weighing in on something
Speaker 5: from the Wildlife Service, this agenda, But that agenda had
Speaker 5: to come from outside.
Speaker 1: You think it's being imposed on the Wildlife Service.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. No, it might be you know,
Speaker 1: like the stuff in Alaska with them trying to with
Speaker 1: them trying to subvert Alaska's ability to manage its wildlife. Right,
Speaker 1: that came from on high for sure. That came from like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist generally speaking, but
Speaker 1: I believe that that was driven by donors. That that
Speaker 1: was driven by Now, when you see something in politics,
Speaker 1: it's so like, what do you remember when who the
Speaker 1: hell was it that got elected for mayor New York?
Speaker 1: And right away he goes after the Central Park horse
Speaker 1: carriage rides. Oh yeah, de Blasio wins to become mayor
Speaker 1: of New York and his first thing is Central Park
Speaker 1: carriage rides. He's sort of like, this has to be
Speaker 1: from a donor. It's so out there and so outside
Speaker 1: of the concerns of voters and so outside of what
Speaker 1: your mandate must have been when you were elected that
Speaker 1: there's no way this wasn't a quid pro quo from
Speaker 1: a donor.
Speaker 2: Class.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't even really.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the city is like what, Yeah.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm thinking right now. I don't really understand,
Speaker 4: like what like he just didn't like the horse that.
Speaker 1: They were mean to the horses in Central Park, Meaning
Speaker 1: it was so outside of anyone's concern, It was so
Speaker 1: outside of the campaig and you get it, and you're
Speaker 1: like that is like I don't know this for sure,
Speaker 1: but that is satisfying a particular donor who made a
Speaker 1: deal like.
Speaker 4: Set the horses free. Kind of Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Mean I don't know, cal Do you know of like
Speaker 5: outside forces that were pushing this agenda or is it just.
Speaker 3: I mean, the the lead free thing has been around
Speaker 3: for a really long time. The refuge system has certainly
Speaker 3: like a lot more traffic, right like think of like
Speaker 3: the bird watching community and refuges, So there could certainly
Speaker 3: be some lobbying from from different groups there for sure,
Speaker 3: you know. I I do think about like the where
Speaker 3: we were hunting seek a deer, Like think of the
Speaker 3: amount of copper in you know, like a fifty col
Speaker 3: Muzzleoderu Sabbot or whatever or the equivalent like twelve gage.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a the chunk of that's a big
Speaker 3: chunk of copper. Like that's not just falling out of
Speaker 3: the sky, that's we're digging that out of the ground
Speaker 3: there too.
Speaker 1: That's the thing to have cost, right. So that's the
Speaker 1: point this letter raises, is that lead as comes from
Speaker 1: recycled car batteries. Lead ammunition comes from recycled car batteries.
Speaker 1: And it points up just the tooling and sourcing. Meaning
Speaker 1: if all you know, it's a little bit like uh, extremes,
Speaker 1: if all states right now were to somehow miraculously say
Speaker 1: that you couldn't use lead ammunition, there's no way they
Speaker 1: would ever satisfy. It would take a long time for
Speaker 1: the demand to be said.
Speaker 4: A hard time to find any bullets.
Speaker 1: The letter is a little punchy, says the service's unsubstantiated
Speaker 1: statement of possible risk to hunters due to the use
Speaker 1: of lead component ammunition to harvest game is very concerning,
Speaker 1: and it goes on to it goes on to attack
Speaker 1: this this thing that came out years ago. I remember
Speaker 1: when it came out, was like X rays of deer
Speaker 1: showing how many, how much, how much lead fragmentation.
Speaker 5: From the wound channel.
Speaker 1: But then it goes on to say that they never
Speaker 1: substantiated this leg fragmentation. Their jack, it's a jacketed AMMO,
Speaker 1: and all they're doing is showing that something showed up
Speaker 1: on an X ray, but no biopsy to show what
Speaker 1: or no digging around to show what it was. It
Speaker 1: was on the x ray, and then the study was
Speaker 1: only done with one specific kind of ammunition and then
Speaker 1: extrap so they do a study with one specific lead
Speaker 1: ammunition and loaded in a certain way out of a
Speaker 1: seven mili remmag and then they take what is there
Speaker 1: and then extrapulate out that all harvested venison has blank right,
Speaker 1: even though there's this huge variation and how people harvest
Speaker 1: venison and all the ammunitions used. But the statistic came
Speaker 1: from a study in which only one type of ammunition
Speaker 1: was used.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, sometimes you know I've shot I
Speaker 4: have a seven meg. Sometimes, you know, you shoot a
Speaker 4: certain bullet out of there and the thing blows up,
Speaker 4: you know, and it lead everywhere. Other times, just yeap,
Speaker 4: clean a whistle.
Speaker 1: If I punched Brody ten times and gave them seven
Speaker 1: black eyes.
Speaker 2: A lot of lead money, would you.
Speaker 1: Be able to say all punches seventy percent of all
Speaker 1: punches result in the black eye. I might have talked
Speaker 1: about this for too long, but again I just want
Speaker 1: to continue to make a clear man. If you as
Speaker 1: an individual, Like if you, as an individual, don't like
Speaker 1: the idea of the of that you leave your gut
Speaker 1: pile out. You know, if you're using certain if you're
Speaker 1: using that ammunition and you leave your gut pile out,
Speaker 1: there is a chance that you will kill a raptor.
Speaker 1: Bear that in mind and behave accordingly, you might decide
Speaker 1: that you don't care about I think that most people
Speaker 1: thinking about it, like that gut pile right there, Like
Speaker 1: that gut pile that I'm walking away from right now
Speaker 1: has a chance of killing a rat, like it actually
Speaker 1: killing a raptor.
Speaker 4: No one ever, really, not a lot of people think.
Speaker 1: No of that. No, you have that in the back
Speaker 1: of your head, and have that in the back of
Speaker 1: your head. If more people had that in the back
Speaker 1: of their head. This speaking of cause and you know,
Speaker 1: causal relationships, I'm just going to go out on a
Speaker 1: limit and say, hypothetically true, if more people had that
Speaker 1: in the back of their head, we might not be
Speaker 1: talking about ammunition bands right now. I don't know is
Speaker 1: that a wild statement.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a wild statement. We'd certainly because
Speaker 3: you know, there's a statement in this that I would
Speaker 3: follow in the list of things that I don't really
Speaker 3: like the way it was written into this letter. There's
Speaker 3: a really specific study on falcons eating lead paint off
Speaker 3: of water towers where these falcons nested, And in this
Speaker 3: letter it kind of says like, all birds land on
Speaker 3: water towers and build nests on water towers and eat
Speaker 3: lead off of water towers. But if you talk to
Speaker 3: the bird people, they're like, it's not all birds. There's
Speaker 3: two super smart birds out there, falcons and vultures that
Speaker 3: have a lot of free time because they are very
Speaker 3: smart and very efficient at what they do, and they
Speaker 3: mess around a lot and consequently getting a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: Got it. Do you know we have a great horned
Speaker 1: owl roost.
Speaker 3: Under our saw the picture that awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he lives in the He lives in the eve supports.
Speaker 5: Must You don't ever see skunks or raccoons or anything
Speaker 5: wandering around.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 3: It's a fun parallel here for our guest is the
Speaker 3: fact that the millinery trade was one of the things
Speaker 3: that absolutely decimated all types of birds, mostly pretty birds,
Speaker 3: all across the world. Uh and fly tying has its
Speaker 3: hands in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of blood on your hands. Buddy, it's
Speaker 1: a long letter. Oh Phil hit us with the fish
Speaker 1: and lures song. He'll appreciate this, son, Am I saying
Speaker 1: your name right? Son? This is one of the best
Speaker 1: songs ever written. It really is. This guy is the
Speaker 1: weird al of fishing.
Speaker 3: Email here, which was a niche we had?
Speaker 1: You've had You've had how many hours to get this
Speaker 1: thing scored?
Speaker 3: Only kind of little Jimmy Buffett vibe.
Speaker 2: Baby, this was not what I was respecting.
Speaker 1: Love fishing.
Speaker 11: I love to cast them while I'm drinking a course
Speaker 11: for a while on the rocks and drinking the doors. Clever,
Speaker 11: little mechanic, cold works of all.
Speaker 1: I love fishing.
Speaker 2: Scott wouldn't want any fewer. I'm a better fisher man
Speaker 2: than you are.
Speaker 11: When I'm at the morning good store, I love loading
Speaker 11: up my call.
Speaker 3: This guy who's like I can rhyme anything.
Speaker 1: Give yeah, just gonna cover it, tremble hook. Sometimes your
Speaker 1: lime gets not in some blooded some skitter on top
Speaker 1: of the water. Look at that big mass. I'm glad
Speaker 1: that I caught her. This guy's got a Rhydey dictionary.
Speaker 1: It's like Eminem. I think Eminem stole all his ship
Speaker 1: and this guy.
Speaker 2: Some of the red all.
Speaker 11: Kinds of exotic coups as your boating paddle.
Speaker 1: The solo is amazing, love.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine him doing that with one hand while
Speaker 3: he's recording here.
Speaker 11: I would be poor, so so effective. I think I
Speaker 11: could catch fishing the sewer design.
Speaker 2: Little These are real crooners joining.
Speaker 1: That professional mass fishing.
Speaker 3: I can see some success, like doing the old folks homes,
Speaker 3: like in around like something.
Speaker 1: He's from buying Falls Michigan the Artist.
Speaker 5: Uh oh, your buddy should get him to tour around
Speaker 5: with the barge.
Speaker 7: For a like three time Cola.
Speaker 1: George Peter Block, Junior Boying Falls, Michigan's the Artist. Unbelievable artistry.
Speaker 1: You think those flys are cool? That song.
Speaker 5: That's Grammy material, That's just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna give this ship up now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're gonna like you're like, I went into
Speaker 1: the wrong business. I should have been a songwriter. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's die back in, walk me through getting from well,
Speaker 1: let me let me let me do a quick recap. Uh,
Speaker 1: just because people might so blown away by that song.
Speaker 4: It's hard to focus.
Speaker 1: Your father fought, Your father fought for the n R no.
Speaker 2: How's it go in our the South Vietnamese Army h
Speaker 2: N r v N r v N was it?
Speaker 1: No, no, no no.
Speaker 2: The n v A was the the opposite opposition A
Speaker 2: r v N. I guess I know.
Speaker 1: Southamese Army got South Vietnamese Army.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You were born the year before the US pulled out
Speaker 1: of Vietnam. Yes, US pulls out of Vietnam. Your family
Speaker 1: was from the south of Vietnam. The Communists came from
Speaker 1: the north. Your father saw the writing on the wall
Speaker 1: that he would wind up in a re education camp
Speaker 1: or wind up executed. Yep, you guys, flee, have a
Speaker 1: treacherous journey to Malaysia. Correct, apply for asylum all over
Speaker 1: the world, and get asylum in the US. Correct. But
Speaker 1: here's what part of a little curious about. Uh did
Speaker 1: you did your father Like did your father have colleagues, friends,
Speaker 1: whatever that he met from the US military or was
Speaker 1: he not working hand in hand with the US military
Speaker 1: during the war. Uh?
Speaker 2: He did prior to the actual official US involvement. I
Speaker 2: don't know, like all the details of it, but I
Speaker 2: know like in the fifties he had worked with some
Speaker 2: of the initial advisors that came over to the Vietnam
Speaker 2: and then from my recollections, I believe it was some
Speaker 2: of them that helped get.
Speaker 1: Us got okay. So that's what I wanted to jump to,
Speaker 1: is how you at this point you're in Malaysia and
Speaker 1: you're how old?
Speaker 2: Uh got there? I was about four and a half.
Speaker 1: Okay, fly tie and not on your mind?
Speaker 2: I was staring at with sardines.
Speaker 1: Sardines on your mind? And then you come to the
Speaker 1: US and what happens like like, how did you get accepted?
Speaker 1: You get your asylum, gets accepted, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: what a plane shows up? How does that work? You're
Speaker 1: in a you're in a refugee camp in Malaysia, Like
Speaker 1: how does it you get a letter saying you've been
Speaker 1: given asylum in the US?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 1: Then then what uh?
Speaker 2: Like I said it was, I don't know like all
Speaker 2: the details, but that Menna knit family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: helped us with the paperwork and then eventually got us
Speaker 2: onto the plane where we end up landing in California
Speaker 2: and then was there for a couple of years while
Speaker 2: I guess with getting our green cards and all that
Speaker 2: other stuff.
Speaker 1: And then how many family members, five total.
Speaker 2: My brother was born in the refuge camp, so I
Speaker 2: got a younger brother, a younger sister, and mom and dad. Okay,
Speaker 2: and then eventually that that Men and Night community got
Speaker 2: us over to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and helped my parents find
Speaker 2: work and whatnot out there.
Speaker 1: And how what in the world did you get like,
Speaker 1: how did you ever even get introduced to fishing?
Speaker 2: Well? When I was when I was a young kid,
Speaker 2: basically being an immigrant, I didn't have all the luxuries
Speaker 2: of most other kids where parents spoil them with toys
Speaker 2: or whatnot. So here was poor. We were poor shit,
Speaker 2: and so we were playing like with sticks or hand
Speaker 2: me downs and whatnot. And then my first fishing round
Speaker 2: was like some old Shakespeare spitting a rod that my
Speaker 2: neighbor couldn't sell from a garad sale and he gave
Speaker 2: it to me.
Speaker 1: You know, you're into the real bottom end tackle, one
Speaker 1: of the shit that doesn't sell out a garage sale.
Speaker 1: Like when you go to a garage sale and you
Speaker 1: look at the rod and choose not to buy that rod.
Speaker 1: That's a rough rod.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I recall, we had like thirty pound
Speaker 2: test line on it. I know the difference between four
Speaker 2: pound test line and eighty pound test line. Back then,
Speaker 2: all I knew was that I could use it to
Speaker 2: catch fish.
Speaker 1: And then the guy gives it to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he gave it to me. And then where I
Speaker 2: grew up there, there was a small creek that runs
Speaker 2: through the area. It was only gosh, maybe half a
Speaker 2: mile from my house. It runs through the little community
Speaker 2: park there and h Connostova River and in there everything
Speaker 2: from car up to all sorts of panfish and smallmouth
Speaker 2: pass and the homeline yards, and so that's where I
Speaker 2: pretty much spent most of my my child who was
Speaker 2: just basically fishing there that that creek.
Speaker 1: Were you self taught?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Were there other Vietnamese dudes running around or was it
Speaker 1: just your family?
Speaker 2: I think we were the only minorities in the whole town, Right.
Speaker 1: Did you guys feel some pressure on that or were
Speaker 1: people pretty accepting?
Speaker 2: People are very accepting.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, they probably knew the history too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like Pennsylvania gets a bad rep because of like the
Speaker 2: Lester right, because of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but everywhere in
Speaker 2: between it is very very conservative. And that's how that
Speaker 2: that community was a very conservative community. And then the kids,
Speaker 2: they pretty much everybody just took them in. So there
Speaker 2: were a couple of kids there that went to the
Speaker 2: same school, most of them were on the older side.
Speaker 2: And then a lot of them helped me out too
Speaker 2: by basically just showing me some of the ropes.
Speaker 1: Do you this has enough to do with time flies
Speaker 1: or fishing, but do you feel when you were growing
Speaker 1: up and and and you were young and Vietnam was
Speaker 1: still fresh for people, what did you encounter like a
Speaker 1: feeling did you encounter among Americans? A like like a
Speaker 1: guilt for withdrawing Vietnam? Like when people met your dad, Okay,
Speaker 1: people meet your dad, and your dad served in the
Speaker 1: South Vietnamese Army, was there sort of an implied like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I'm sorry, no that thing.
Speaker 2: No not maybe if I had growing up somewhere else,
Speaker 2: But like I said, the area I grew up in,
Speaker 2: it was very conservative. People kept their opinions themselves. They
Speaker 2: pretty much left you alone, unless you know they you
Speaker 2: got involved in their business.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: So people had opinions, they kept it themselves. So I
Speaker 2: really didn't experience it any of that. If if my
Speaker 2: parents did, they shielded us from it.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So growing up, growing up, going through school, well, I
Speaker 2: mean I really resaw.
Speaker 1: That got it. But you were the only Vietnamese kid around.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And were you raised around people who weren't
Speaker 1: Mennonite too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like this, Uh, they're actually the very small
Speaker 2: minority there. There's uh Menonites, there's there's Amish, and then
Speaker 2: there's obviously all the other Christian non denominations and whatnot.
Speaker 2: So the school I went to, I mean I think
Speaker 2: there was maybe ten twelve minorities all together with the
Speaker 2: class of about a thousand, So it was predominantly Caucasian area.
Speaker 2: And I really didn't have any friends growing up there
Speaker 2: were other minorities. It was all the kids that I
Speaker 2: ran around with were all the Caucasian kids.
Speaker 1: And they these were kids that grew up hunting, fishing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's probably one of the reasons why I listened
Speaker 2: to country music. Also, very confused.
Speaker 1: Did your folks have any sense of did your folks
Speaker 1: have any sense of fishing as a as a sort
Speaker 1: of recreational pastime.
Speaker 2: They didn't care as long as I was bringing fish home.
Speaker 1: Oh so they liked the fish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like my culture, they we don't waste anything and
Speaker 2: I catch a fish, they ate it. So I didn't
Speaker 2: know the difference between what was a good any fish
Speaker 2: and what was.
Speaker 1: A horrible mudfish.
Speaker 2: If I caught it, I brought it home. I mean,
Speaker 2: like a lot of fishermen out there is like they catch,
Speaker 2: they keep everything they catch, the conservation and none of
Speaker 2: that shit was really in the back of my mind
Speaker 2: as a kid. I mean, I brought carp home, and
Speaker 2: then it was finally my mom was like, don't bring
Speaker 2: this shit on anymore because.
Speaker 1: She got picky.
Speaker 2: She got picky because it's so hard to clean because
Speaker 2: there's so many bones in it. All I saw was
Speaker 2: just a big fat fished everybody.
Speaker 1: So let's say you brought a carp home. How would
Speaker 1: she prepared it when you were a kid? What were
Speaker 1: you eating?
Speaker 2: I think it was basically drowned in a lot of
Speaker 2: fish sauce and other seasonings to actually get rid of
Speaker 2: some of the mud taste at it. From my recollection,
Speaker 2: I only recall eating it a handful of times, and
Speaker 2: then she complained about it, and I never kept the
Speaker 2: carp again.
Speaker 1: So what if you brought a bluegill back or a
Speaker 1: small off pass back the way we prepared was.
Speaker 2: A little bit diff where generally American culture they'll filay
Speaker 2: the fish, you just eat the flats, and then with
Speaker 2: a lot of the Asian cultures, they'll got to take
Speaker 2: the gills out and whatnot, cut the fins off, and
Speaker 2: then they'll either broil or defried the entire fish after
Speaker 2: the scales are obviously removed. The like probably one of
Speaker 2: the tastiest part is the crispy skin.
Speaker 1: No, uh, you were getting introduced to American style food though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean at home almost everything was still
Speaker 2: Vietnamese food. But we were getting the slow introduction because
Speaker 2: like as a poor kid, I got foods the meal tickets,
Speaker 2: so all my lunches were the basically cafeteria food, and
Speaker 2: that's vast majority of the introduction I had to American food,
Speaker 2: where I thought that slop was like great, yeah.
Speaker 3: Like Salisbury.
Speaker 8: What'd your mom do with the her mom and or
Speaker 8: dad do with like the squirrels and deer and other
Speaker 8: stuff because he was hunting in a lot.
Speaker 2: You're un small game too, Yeah, I mean, uh, it
Speaker 2: was very very different being forty nine years old and
Speaker 2: when I grew up where I was riding my little
Speaker 2: bike with a shotgun on my shoulder for five miles
Speaker 2: next down to go hunting, and nobody would think any different.
Speaker 2: And I mean there were times where I rode my
Speaker 2: bike by the sheriff, like we had one sheriff in
Speaker 2: the town and waved him good luck.
Speaker 5: Were you were you self taught on the hunting thing too,
Speaker 5: or do you have buddies you ran around with?
Speaker 1: Or I started basically just.
Speaker 2: Squirrels were the first thing that we shot, yep. And
Speaker 2: I didn't have a weapon at that point, like a
Speaker 2: rifle or a shotgun, so neighbors let me won yep.
Speaker 1: That's how it went.
Speaker 2: Back then teach me how to use it. So I
Speaker 2: kind of figured how to use it on my own.
Speaker 2: I mean I took it out to the back of
Speaker 2: a farm they had gave me some twenty two rounds
Speaker 2: and figured out how to use a rifle. Common sense
Speaker 2: was a big thing too, like, you know, this thing's
Speaker 2: gonna fire a bullet. Might want to aim in a
Speaker 2: place where I'm not gonna kill myself. So I figured
Speaker 2: out how to use it. And then as time went
Speaker 2: by and some of the other caliber weapons and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Then I was taught by either the friends or their
Speaker 2: dads and whatnot. But my first my first rifle I
Speaker 2: shot was the twenty two and that was self taught
Speaker 2: and the same day with a shotgun. They handed me
Speaker 2: a shotgun, this twenty gage shotgun, I don't remember what brand,
Speaker 2: and just put the round here and pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1: Did your siblings get into it?
Speaker 2: Now? They're like one eighty of me. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you pictured, you were just like you were.
Speaker 1: You were just obsessed as a kid. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: universal in the family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you met me and my siblings, you would
Speaker 2: think I was adopted.
Speaker 1: Because of what they're into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their total opposite is I mean, they're your your
Speaker 2: typical nine to five professional CPAs and finance And even
Speaker 2: when I mean I started off down that route when
Speaker 2: I finished college and then went and worked out for
Speaker 2: RCA own by Thompson Multimedia when I was an engineer,
Speaker 2: and but in the back of my mind, I was
Speaker 2: always just looking forward to getting off work so I
Speaker 2: could go fishing or go a hundred. It was a
Speaker 2: means to do what I wanted to do. Where both
Speaker 2: my brother and sister, you know, that's that's their career
Speaker 2: and that's what they enjoy. To me, working has always
Speaker 2: be been a means and tellten until I joined the military.
Speaker 1: That was yeah what, Uh you went to college first?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to college first. And then uh those
Speaker 2: years where they're kind of boring, was more or less
Speaker 2: just focuses on study. And then where'd you go to school? Lehigh?
Speaker 2: And then uh from there we uh just went to work.
Speaker 2: And then it provided an astronomical amount of money for
Speaker 2: a kid that my age, that had nothing before.
Speaker 1: So did you have a lot of pressure from your
Speaker 1: folks to go to school? Oh?
Speaker 2: God, yeah, like if we didn't get like they were
Speaker 2: into the whole American dream thing and all that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean the stereo type for most Asian families. If
Speaker 2: you're not a doctor, you're not a lawyer, you're not
Speaker 2: my kid. So, uh, there's always been a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2: They always guild us with the fact that you know,
Speaker 2: we gave up everything to give you guys a better life,
Speaker 2: and they would give trip the shit out of us.
Speaker 4: Doesn't fall into that category.
Speaker 2: Uh no, but it does play big part into turning
Speaker 2: me into who I am today. Because of the upbringing
Speaker 2: I had and the rules and the strictness that my
Speaker 2: parents had and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of the overrule the strictness.
Speaker 2: Basically, eat everything you have on your plate. So I
Speaker 2: was raised never the waste food.
Speaker 1: Because you guys knew starvation man.
Speaker 2: And so even to this day, even I do not
Speaker 2: like what is before what's in front of me, I
Speaker 2: will force myself to finish it. And sometimes it gets
Speaker 2: me pretty difficult, like and where my travel is going
Speaker 2: through Europe or some of these trying some of these
Speaker 2: local cuisines that I was just like, I would still
Speaker 2: force myself to eat it. And then so that's basically
Speaker 2: Appreciate what you have is another one because you never
Speaker 2: know when it's gonna be all taken away. So basically
Speaker 2: try not to take anything for granted. Yeah, like always
Speaker 2: just live in that moment per se. Uh. My first
Speaker 2: time coming here to Montana several years ago, I always
Speaker 2: like envisioned what Montana was like, and it was that
Speaker 2: way because my first experience with Montana wasn'm Bozeman. It
Speaker 2: was going up the Twin Bridges and then floating the
Speaker 2: Smith River and then saw on the beauty that Lewis
Speaker 2: and Clark National Forest had being surrounded by nature and
Speaker 2: the river and you're just with that small group of people,
Speaker 2: not massive crowds. So what I had picture of Montana
Speaker 2: was gonna be like was what I experienced. Now years
Speaker 2: later I realized Montana isn't always like that going through
Speaker 2: Yellowstone or the Madison River and then you got people everywhere,
Speaker 2: and it's one of the most popular tourist destinations. But
Speaker 2: it never changed the fact that I know what Montana
Speaker 2: has to offer, and then each time I come here,
Speaker 2: I try not to take it for granted. I just
Speaker 2: appreciate each day here and again that comes from the
Speaker 2: upbringing that I had for my parents.
Speaker 1: So what was it your decision like to get in
Speaker 1: the military.
Speaker 2: Well, nine to eleven happened. I was working. I think
Speaker 2: I had just gotten back from Paris. The like I said,
Speaker 2: the company zoned by Thompson, So I would spend several
Speaker 2: months at the year traveling to France, to Poland, to
Speaker 2: Mexico where they had their their factories. So anytime that
Speaker 2: we completed something with R and D, we would go
Speaker 2: out there implement that technology into the factories in the
Speaker 2: assembly lines and troubleshoot. And they were an engineer, yeah,
Speaker 2: in the applications engineering department, where we basically would took
Speaker 2: the pretty much the final products of everything that the
Speaker 2: physics labs and everybody else put together, and then we
Speaker 2: made the final product what it is. So nine to
Speaker 2: eleven happened. It was like a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 2: waking up turning on the news and I was like,
Speaker 2: what the hell? And I literally didn't I mean I
Speaker 2: don't think anybody went to work that day and I
Speaker 2: was set there, glued.
Speaker 1: To the TV.
Speaker 2: So like most other people, I felt bad. I wanted
Speaker 2: to do something. I went and gave blood. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was a lineup there were to give blood. So
Speaker 2: I gave blood, and I felt that still wasn't enough.
Speaker 2: And then I was thinking about things I could possibly
Speaker 2: do to to help like basically America. And then I
Speaker 2: got that phone call from also my dad, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: you you really needed to do something to join the
Speaker 2: military or something to pay back our you know, our
Speaker 2: family's debt to the US.
Speaker 1: Because where was he calling from.
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, at that point, my parents were divorced because all
Speaker 2: the years that they spent working all these long hours,
Speaker 2: their relationship kind of like just like uh disappeared. And
Speaker 2: at that point, you know, the kids are all growing up,
Speaker 2: so they were divorced. But I don't know exactly where
Speaker 2: he was calling from, but he just told me that
Speaker 2: I had to do something because I was the oldest,
Speaker 2: and oh, really, yeah, I'm the oldest, and I don't
Speaker 2: know if I should say this, but my brother's two
Speaker 2: week and my sister's a girl, so it was really
Speaker 2: up to me. And then h I had already thought
Speaker 2: about it a little bit, but that kind of like
Speaker 2: pushed me over the edge. And then literally the very
Speaker 2: next week, I was down in the Army recruiting station
Speaker 2: and uh submitted my two week notice to the company.
Speaker 2: Everybody thought that I was no uts because it was
Speaker 2: one of those companies that you got there and people
Speaker 2: left when they died, because it was really good company
Speaker 2: to work for. They gave you like thirty days vacation
Speaker 2: a year and another thirty days of six days, so
Speaker 2: literally you have sixty days year where you didn't have
Speaker 2: to shut the work and still got paid. It was hourly,
Speaker 2: very very good wages, where like the average media income
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania back then or Lancaster then was about twenty
Speaker 2: four thousand, and I was making way more than that,
Speaker 2: so I was able to go do all these great
Speaker 2: things that I absolutely love and not I ever have
Speaker 2: to worry about the cause like muskie fishing. I mean
Speaker 2: I was a fly fishing back then, but going up
Speaker 2: to Canada or going to the Codes to shoot wild
Speaker 2: game and hunting wherever I wanted because I really didn't
Speaker 2: have any school, loans or anything. And it was a
Speaker 2: tough decision because I knew I had to give all
Speaker 2: that up. Another part was the fishing, and I fished
Speaker 2: a lot in the chest speak literally like when it
Speaker 2: was a hunt season, after work, I would drive an
Speaker 2: hour and a half down to the Chesapeake Bay and
Speaker 2: go after stripe bass to call them rock fished out
Speaker 2: there at the East Coast, or go flounder, or go
Speaker 2: and grabbing with some of my friends. And I knew
Speaker 2: all that was going to go away, because I mean
Speaker 2: I wasn't a idiot. I looked up the salary difference,
Speaker 2: and I knew that going from over sixty thousand a
Speaker 2: year down to basically making like twelve hundred dollars a
Speaker 2: month was going to be a drastic change in lifestyle.
Speaker 2: But it was the plan was only going to be
Speaker 2: three years and so and then you would.
Speaker 1: But you went in as a trained engineer. But you
Speaker 1: didn't go and become a you didn't be like, I
Speaker 1: want to be in the corps.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 2: The way I looked at it was, uh, well the
Speaker 2: corps was a different story.
Speaker 1: So they were actually I mean the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but the Marine Corps was the first one to
Speaker 2: a corps. Yeah, but the recruiter was was a lazy
Speaker 2: son of a bitch, and he wanted me to run
Speaker 2: the background check and my fingerprints. He was actually having
Speaker 2: me do all this stuff, and I was I thought
Speaker 2: that was what you're supposed to do. So it was
Speaker 2: actually coming back to the Marine Corps recruiting station with
Speaker 2: all these documents and whatnot, and then I found out
Speaker 2: I was missing something and I had to go again.
Speaker 2: And then the Army guy was out there puffing on
Speaker 2: a cigarette and he's like, hey, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: And then he told me I'll take care of all
Speaker 2: of that for you. Like, oh, what do you guys
Speaker 2: have to offer? And they're like, well, there's college loan
Speaker 2: repayment and all this other stuff. And so went in
Speaker 2: there talk to him a little bit. He sold sold me.
Speaker 2: This guy was willing to cater everything to take care
Speaker 2: of all the paperwork, and I literally just had to
Speaker 2: show up and I was like, this is totally different
Speaker 2: the Marines. These guys really wanted me. So I was like,
Speaker 2: I knew the Marines had the grunts. Armies also had
Speaker 2: the grunts. I was like, all right, I'll go Army
Speaker 2: because everybody that pictures, you know, the fighting force, they
Speaker 2: always think Marine Corps first, and that was that was
Speaker 2: the same way. And then he told me all the
Speaker 2: different things that the Army had to offer and I
Speaker 2: ended up signing with the military. Now, everybody blames their
Speaker 2: recruiter for their miserable life in the military.
Speaker 1: They never lied to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the difference was my recruiter actually was a
Speaker 2: really good guy, and he was actually trying to talk
Speaker 2: me out of going to the infantry because I had
Speaker 2: maxed out my ASVABA. My scores were off the charts
Speaker 2: and I could have done anything. They were offering me
Speaker 2: all these military intelligence MOS's the job, along with civil affairs,
Speaker 2: all the stuff that requires high test scores. And I
Speaker 2: was like, no, if I'm gonna give up three years
Speaker 2: of my life to make a difference, put where the
Speaker 2: fight's at. Put a rifle my head, and I chose
Speaker 2: to join the infantry with the mindset it was only
Speaker 2: be just three years. And uh, because if I was
Speaker 2: gonna join, I wanted to deploy and the them West
Speaker 2: that was the highest rated deployed was eleven bravo as
Speaker 2: an infantryman. And that's what I selected. MHM, Hindsight's twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: You know what you asked for.
Speaker 2: I got what I asked for and for. But uh,
Speaker 2: to all the young kids out there that might be
Speaker 2: thinking about the military, really consider your life choices. Infantry
Speaker 2: is very rewarding. You're gonna have a brotherhood of people
Speaker 2: and the combat of arms that you will never experience
Speaker 2: anywhere else. Do a lot of cool shit, and you're
Speaker 2: gonna do a lot of stuff that's really gonna test
Speaker 2: your psych and your your body. However, there's gonna be
Speaker 2: sacrifices that you're gonna give up, and that number one
Speaker 2: sacrifice is going to be your body in your brain.
Speaker 2: If you're willing to give up. That sacrifice is.
Speaker 1: The the body you gotta give up. The body and
Speaker 1: the brain you're gonna give up.
Speaker 3: Both those are two big.
Speaker 2: Parts what's left because after twenty two years of service.
Speaker 2: I've already had eleven surgeries to fix all sorts of
Speaker 2: different elements by me I have. I may look very
Speaker 2: young for a forty nine year old, but I probably
Speaker 2: have the body of a sixty year old. And then
Speaker 2: your brain will also start start failing you too, because
Speaker 2: you're gonna go through some some really troubling times when
Speaker 2: you're gonna you're gonna have to have some metal fortitude
Speaker 2: or intestinal fortitude alone. Was a metal strength to overcome
Speaker 2: a lot of the shit that you deal with in
Speaker 2: the infantry.
Speaker 6: But it is a very ruarding mos at uh.
Speaker 1: I want to keep on the chronology, but let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. At this point nine to eleven you
Speaker 1: going into the infantry, are you just eating and sleeping,
Speaker 1: fly tying.
Speaker 2: I wasn't even touching that yet once you're aware to
Speaker 2: some of it at this point right, nothing, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, there is such a thing as a fly rod.
Speaker 2: For like ten years, my first ten years I was,
Speaker 2: I was gone a lot, so when I got back,
Speaker 2: I'll spent more less.
Speaker 1: Where all did you get sent to?
Speaker 2: Iraq, Afghanistan, Southern Philippines, Kuwait, so Middle East? When I
Speaker 2: got back, my first duty station was Korea. I was
Speaker 2: really upset because they weren't deploying all they do.
Speaker 1: But that's really common though, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's really common. A lot of first assignments there are
Speaker 2: to places that you actually don't deploy out of and
Speaker 2: then your next one. Now, the fortunate thing for me
Speaker 2: and my mindset back then was it was only a
Speaker 2: year and then I was able to pick whatever assignment
Speaker 2: I want. So I knew that Hawaii was getting ready
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: Because did you.
Speaker 3: Get bumped up in rank because of your education?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I came in as a specialist four on an E
Speaker 2: won the E nine scale.
Speaker 1: I got another totally off the off subject, not off subject,
Speaker 1: but out of chronology when you were in So, when
Speaker 1: you're stationed in Korea and you had time off, would
Speaker 1: you drank? No? But can you with your background and
Speaker 1: your family, would it be inadvisable for you to go
Speaker 1: to Vietnam?
Speaker 2: Actually, Uh, that's a really sour subject because my grandfather
Speaker 2: was dying and I was out in the field training
Speaker 2: and my family, my mom called the unit to give
Speaker 2: them a Red Cross message to let him know that
Speaker 2: my grandfather was dying, and a flight from Korea to
Speaker 2: Vietnam is really short and it's very expensive, and it
Speaker 2: was I could have literally gone just like that on
Speaker 2: a whim, and they never notified me. So my grandfather
Speaker 2: passed away, I was within like a really short hop
Speaker 2: of getting there to be by his bedside, and they
Speaker 2: never told me.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Yes, I could have gone to the Vietnam to answer
Speaker 2: your question, but that happened while I was over there
Speaker 2: in Korea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then and your family would not have been
Speaker 1: pissed about it.
Speaker 2: Now Yeah, Now, my family pretty much has allowed me
Speaker 2: to make my own life choices and do whatever I want.
Speaker 2: Is just live with the repercussions of my choices, and
Speaker 2: that's how they pretty much have treated I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: there was always those pressures doing well and whatnot. But
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, all my parents wanted
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Was just happy. Yeah. So you spent time in when
Speaker 1: you spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, these are long stints
Speaker 1: of time or short in and outs, or.
Speaker 2: They were all VERI the longest I was there for
Speaker 2: was fifteen months straight. Yeah, fifteen months straight. And then
Speaker 2: the shortest I was gone for was six months, and
Speaker 2: then you had nine, twelve, fourteen's all mixed in there
Speaker 2: and you were there, and what role combat operations for
Speaker 2: the most part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as an officer, as a non commissioned officer.
Speaker 2: As a non commissioned officer, okay, because by the time
Speaker 2: I went on my first deployment with my second duty
Speaker 2: assignment there, which was Hawaii, I was already a sergeant
Speaker 2: and five then. So that's the difference with the military
Speaker 2: versus the civilian side. You could be like a twenty
Speaker 2: year old you wreck a sergeant or a corporal, and
Speaker 2: you're alread gonna have three to four people that you
Speaker 2: control their lives. And then with how many people usually
Speaker 2: as a fire team leader, you would have three to
Speaker 2: four people that fall underneath you and you're their immediate supervisor.
Speaker 2: And eventually when you make squad leader. In a typical
Speaker 2: infantry unit, you have anywhere from nine to eleven if
Speaker 2: it depends on whether it's you know, with the light
Speaker 2: infantry or a striker infantry. And then as a platuoncer
Speaker 2: once you get up, which is generally about twelve to
Speaker 2: fourteen years in then you have thirty six to forty four.
Speaker 2: And then as an infantry company first arm you would
Speaker 2: have anywhere from one hundred and thirty six to over
Speaker 2: two hundred and then that was my role for the
Speaker 2: last five years was as a first art And you're
Speaker 2: retiring now next year.
Speaker 1: Yep. Twenty years, twenty two years, twenty two years.
Speaker 2: Army has changed quite a bit. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: things that I absolutely love and I wasn't looking back
Speaker 2: on it. I wouldn't change anything I had done. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, the way it's right now with
Speaker 2: me coming up through basically the entire duration of my
Speaker 2: time in through all these wars and conflict and having
Speaker 2: certain expectations of how people should be and how soldiers
Speaker 2: should be has changed quite a bit. Now that we're
Speaker 2: considered like a peace time military, got it, And that's
Speaker 2: not what I signed up for. And now that I've
Speaker 2: I've done my time, it's time for me to move on.
Speaker 1: You just don't mean you don't want to, you don't
Speaker 1: feel the need to be there during peace time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the drive isn't the same anymore, along with you know,
Speaker 2: other factors like my body is starting to give out.
Speaker 2: And I've always been one of those that you can't
Speaker 2: tell people to do something you can't do it themselves,
Speaker 2: You do it yourself, got it? And I'm now at
Speaker 2: the point where I cannot be as physically fit as
Speaker 2: I used to be, where I always pride myself that
Speaker 2: my fitness was higher than most I got it. Can
Speaker 2: run out with the best of them, with the seventeen
Speaker 2: eighteen year olds, and can't really do that anymore with
Speaker 2: like basically all the injuries that I've had.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about surgeries you had, you had,
Speaker 1: you had injuries within the military, yeah, I got you,
Speaker 1: I got you.
Speaker 2: And then within them from doing certain things, and then
Speaker 2: also just the wear and tear where we would do
Speaker 2: certain things as an infantryman where you have to be
Speaker 2: able to carry a thirty five pound ruck a pack
Speaker 2: on your back along with your weapon, your prograss I
Speaker 2: mean all in all, you end up carrying probably close
Speaker 2: to sixty five pounds wor a gear and you have
Speaker 2: to do that foot march twelve miles and under three hours,
Speaker 2: which you either can walk really fast or you have
Speaker 2: to jog some of it short legs like me. I
Speaker 2: had to run a lot of it because there's no
Speaker 2: way in how I maintain a fifteen minute pace with
Speaker 2: all that gear on with my short legs, So I
Speaker 2: had to jog and run, and you would do that
Speaker 2: every year along with all the other conditioning foot marches
Speaker 2: where it might be six miles, might be nine miles.
Speaker 2: And then when you go to the field, we do
Speaker 2: all these different infantry battle drills for training aspects of it.
Speaker 2: Some of them are like, for example, move into contact
Speaker 2: or move into daylight. Moving daylight is exactly what it
Speaker 2: sounds like. You start off walking at night and you
Speaker 2: keep walking until daylight on. If you don't find the enemy,
Speaker 2: then you basically you halt. Or if you do move
Speaker 2: into contact, you keep walking until you find the damn
Speaker 2: enemy and then you take the fight to them, or
Speaker 2: you're doing a reconnaissance. I mean, there's a whole lot
Speaker 2: of different aspects of it. And then there's no such
Speaker 2: thing as we can't walk there because of the terrain.
Speaker 2: You may do like in Korea that would really test you,
Speaker 2: that will break your freaking body because of the elevation
Speaker 2: and then the mountains that you're walking up and down.
Speaker 2: So you find all the different drawls, the different cuts,
Speaker 2: and you make your path and you would sometimes walk
Speaker 2: fourteen eighteen thirty hours. We had one combat operation after
Speaker 2: we had a soldier killed that we were hunting for
Speaker 2: specific people where it was a ninety six hour operation.
Speaker 2: We we're up four days straight, and fatigue and everything
Speaker 2: starts kicking in. And that's where the fitness has to
Speaker 2: come in. Because if you're not fit, you're tired, you're
Speaker 2: gonna fall asleep, and somebody's gonna die. So those are
Speaker 2: the things that start stressing your body and really start
Speaker 2: stressing your brain. You know, one incident like or a
Speaker 2: one event like that is it's not so bad, but
Speaker 2: you multiply that over the course of numerous combat deployments,
Speaker 2: twenty plus years of service, and it has its toll.
Speaker 1: When after Afghanistan had gone for twenty years and people
Speaker 1: started to draw parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, and then
Speaker 1: we pull out of Afghanistan in a way that seemed
Speaker 1: reminiscent at a minimum, right of our withdrawal from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: What'd that look like after having spent time there? What
Speaker 1: was that like? Emotionally for you?
Speaker 2: It was it was disheartening. And I'm gonna leave it
Speaker 2: at that because I'm still an active duty remember, oh,
Speaker 2: and I might actually say something.
Speaker 1: I might We'll talk to you.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to you in a year Yeah, talk to
Speaker 2: you in a year and I'll tell you very passionate
Speaker 2: feelings about that. But it was very disheartening. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: there were there were there were good men and women
Speaker 2: that that lost their lives on how it was handled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it. Still not time flies start.
Speaker 2: Time flies in the seven years ago is when I started. Okay,
Speaker 2: so what happened seven years ago? So I was getting
Speaker 2: ready to leave Hawaii. I was still recovering from some
Speaker 2: of the injuries that I was getting medical help for,
Speaker 2: and at that point right there, I was really not
Speaker 2: doing platoon sergean't work anymore where. I was just getting
Speaker 2: ready to PCs permanent, change the station and leave Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Packed up all the stuff, they shipped it off. We're
Speaker 2: living out of the hotel room until our flight. So
Speaker 2: I had a couple of weeks left and I was
Speaker 2: hitting the drink.
Speaker 1: Pretty hard in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: In Hawaii because the one thing I don't want to
Speaker 2: get too far ahead of myself. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that like with non commissioned officer or leaders in
Speaker 2: general in the military is when you have soldiers that
Speaker 2: you're responsible for, you will put it on a facade
Speaker 2: in order to present that appearance to those soldiers. So
Speaker 2: you put it on up a wall, and you always
Speaker 2: have to show because they're gonna mimic everything you do.
Speaker 2: So even if I wanted to be or pissed as
Speaker 2: drunk every day, I really could. And because I had
Speaker 2: soldiers that were responsible for But the minute that you
Speaker 2: take those leaders and you have them no longer in
Speaker 2: charge of anything, then that wall comes crumbling down real fast.
Speaker 2: And that was happening to me, where all the things
Speaker 2: I kept bottle up inside for years and years. You know,
Speaker 2: soldiers that were lost over in combat, people that I knew,
Speaker 2: that were very close to and no longer around, injuries
Speaker 2: that I felt, and then just a shearer amount of
Speaker 2: horror that you see over the Middle East, where you
Speaker 2: know they'll strap like one of the soldiers that we
Speaker 2: had passed away died from a suicide vest and it
Speaker 2: was like basically a little many metal, late handicapped child
Speaker 2: girl that they strapped the vest to. So so you
Speaker 2: walk in there, you know, selling cigarettes and whatnot to
Speaker 2: all the soldiers to get accustomed to see and seeing
Speaker 2: these local national kids, and they strapped the vester and
Speaker 2: they blew her up. Soldiers wearing what he mic rounds
Speaker 2: on his vest because he was grenaeddeerse rounds exploded and
Speaker 2: basically just tore his inside out. So those are the
Speaker 2: things that you'll deal with that you basically just have
Speaker 2: to pack away. There's some people that can't, and then
Speaker 2: they're the ones that will have like those mental breakdowns.
Speaker 2: And though uh they are the vocal about PTSD et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Well, I couldn't have that luxury because I had,
Speaker 2: you know, I had soldiers that I was responsible for.
Speaker 2: I at thirty six other men that if I broke down,
Speaker 2: then what were they gonna do? So I bottle a
Speaker 2: lot of that crap up. So the minute that I
Speaker 2: no longer was in charge of anything, I had all
Speaker 2: this free time in my hands. As I was getting
Speaker 2: ready to leave Hawaii, you know, I was drinking pretty
Speaker 2: heavily try to drown out some of that shit. And
Speaker 2: uh though, the time where I first started getting into
Speaker 2: the fly fishing aspect of it, I was at a
Speaker 2: bar and there was an old guy that kept on
Speaker 2: trying to talk to me, and I was kind of
Speaker 2: like brushing them off, and then he brought up the
Speaker 2: subject of fishing. So keep in mind. I absolutely loved
Speaker 2: fishing as a kid, but I didn't really dangle in
Speaker 2: it at all because I was so busy with the
Speaker 2: military for so long that it kind of like took
Speaker 2: a back seat to everything I was doing in the military.
Speaker 2: But that sparked, you know, my interest right away. It
Speaker 2: was brought back, you know, some of those fun memories.
Speaker 2: And that's how he got me to open up. And
Speaker 2: he took me out to Conniehiwaba and I don't even
Speaker 2: know what sized fly rod or whatnot. It was just
Speaker 2: some huge rod and showing me how to do some
Speaker 2: basic casts and Uh handed me this who was this
Speaker 2: guy was Korean War vet? Yeah, it was just another vet.
Speaker 2: Uh caught my first fish and it was the most
Speaker 2: exhilarating feeling. It was totally different than anything I had
Speaker 2: caught I had done with conventional gear because that rod
Speaker 2: was so long and you feel like every headshake, every movement,
Speaker 2: the runs and whole nine yards. I had no idea
Speaker 2: that it was the trophy sized bonefish as my first
Speaker 2: fish that I caught it.
Speaker 1: In Hawaii, Hawaii. It was huge bonefish, man bonefish.
Speaker 2: That was my first fish on a fly rod. To me,
Speaker 2: it was just a.
Speaker 1: Fish, but you caught it on a flat in Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Yeah, huh. And so unfortunately, soon after that we we
Speaker 2: left Hawaii and moved to my next assignment and again
Speaker 2: got all caught up in uh in the military, and
Speaker 2: didn't fly fish again for for almost like six seven months.
Speaker 2: And but were you like not at all?
Speaker 5: You weren't thinking about fish?
Speaker 2: No. You know how my mindset is when I get
Speaker 2: a focus on a very on specific task, I get
Speaker 2: like obsessed with making sure it gets done right. And
Speaker 2: the task that I had on hand was that we
Speaker 2: were certifying National Guard guardsmen before they deployed overseas, and
Speaker 2: we wanted to make sure that they knew what the
Speaker 2: hell they were doing, otherwise, you know, they could suffer casualties.
Speaker 2: So that was my main focus. I was traveling to
Speaker 2: places like Graling, Michigan, to Drumming, New York, all over
Speaker 2: the place, and we would get these battalions, brigades of
Speaker 2: National guardsmen and then we ran them through the gauntlet.
Speaker 2: And so that's what I was doing for a long time.
Speaker 2: And then the time that I got re rekindled with
Speaker 2: the fishing aspect of it was I was actually driving home.
Speaker 2: I lived about sixty eight miles or so from work
Speaker 2: one way, because a big part of my life is
Speaker 2: my kids, and I wanted to find the best schools
Speaker 2: I could put them in. So the area around post
Speaker 2: generally most military posts, not exactly the great is where
Speaker 2: you got a lot of strip bars, pawn shoves, and
Speaker 2: oh yeah, so it was the best schools was up
Speaker 2: about sixteen miles away in northeast Indianapolis, in the town
Speaker 2: called Fishers. And I made that commute every day, so
Speaker 2: long drive home, listen to a lot of radio, a
Speaker 2: lot of audible whatnot. And this one time I had
Speaker 2: the radio on and there was a commercial for the
Speaker 2: Indianapolis Sports and Outdoor Show and I was like, WHOA,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll check this out. It's only fifteen minute diversion
Speaker 2: from getting home. So I was stealing uniform, drove there
Speaker 2: and went started.
Speaker 1: I just went there right then, just went there right then.
Speaker 2: And it's walking around checking out all the boats and
Speaker 2: the hunting lodges, and I.
Speaker 1: Mean the radio ads work man.
Speaker 2: And so when I got over to the Fishing.
Speaker 1: Air and visited the guy that did the ad by,
Speaker 1: I want you to know I literally came here because
Speaker 1: of that radio.
Speaker 3: Ad when you said the exit now, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It was very similar to the guy that does those
Speaker 2: four wheeling ads where they you know, they're yelling and screaming,
Speaker 2: come check this.
Speaker 1: Out right now, you know, I will, damn damn it,
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 2: And so I went and then when I made it
Speaker 2: over to the fishing area, they had a very little
Speaker 2: small corner there just for the fly fishing. I was
Speaker 2: checking out the no show and eventually I made over
Speaker 2: to the fly fishing area and then I got I
Speaker 2: was I was hearing, hey, soldier, come here. Who the
Speaker 2: hell's calling me? I realized I was still in uniform.
Speaker 2: So there's a organization called Project Healing Waters fly Fishing
Speaker 2: and they had a chapter there out of an Indianapolis,
Speaker 2: and they had a little booth there. They're trying to.
Speaker 1: You shit me because you had your uniform on.
Speaker 2: That's how I had a big target on my Bag's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a soldier. So went over there and they start
Speaker 2: telling them about themselves and what they do and now
Speaker 2: they help veterans overcome disabilities, whether it's mental or physical.
Speaker 2: You're like, I having to know a guy and how
Speaker 2: they healed through fly fishing and whatnot. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: flyfishing is pretty cool. I did that once. They're like,
Speaker 2: we'll show you how everything else you need to know,
Speaker 2: so sign up with their email list and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, I got this notification.
Speaker 1: Intervention dude, and it's like God was like talking to
Speaker 1: you through your car radio.
Speaker 2: And I am was left though on my first outing
Speaker 2: that they had So being being a soldier, you kind
Speaker 2: of feel like you're almost an outsider to civilians at times. Uh.
Speaker 2: You change over the years, and one of the things
Speaker 2: that changed about me was I didn't like being around strangers.
Speaker 2: I didn't like being around crowds. I didn't like it
Speaker 2: being around in an environment I couldn't control. So it's
Speaker 2: that fight or flight mentality, and I was getting that
Speaker 2: like that first day I was at that outing. Even
Speaker 2: though there were other vets there, I didn't know who
Speaker 2: was a VET, who was a volunteer, who was what.
Speaker 2: It was just completely I'm the only one there that
Speaker 2: didn't know anybody.
Speaker 1: You know, man, I don't know if that's particular to that,
Speaker 1: because that might be your age shining through too, because
Speaker 1: I got that problem bad. Even ship.
Speaker 2: Could be that too, and you come found them with
Speaker 2: the military, and then you exceptlified it even more.
Speaker 8: So.
Speaker 2: I was actually getting ready to leave and I was
Speaker 2: walking back to my car and I was about to
Speaker 2: drive off, and this older gentleman my name, Oh, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: you're getting ready to leave that first fishing outing.
Speaker 1: So they host you on a fishing outing. Then you
Speaker 1: get there and it was too much.
Speaker 2: There was too much going on, and.
Speaker 1: So you're almost say, never mind, this isn't for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I literally walked to my car, was hopping in
Speaker 2: and then.
Speaker 1: This this unannounced you're just leaving.
Speaker 2: I was just leaving.
Speaker 1: I was just.
Speaker 2: And uh, this gentleman like in a way that was weird. No,
Speaker 2: to me, it was normal, was like but I mean
Speaker 2: like in a way they would be like, wow, that
Speaker 2: guy just left. Yeah, I'm sure they they deal with
Speaker 2: that quite a bit because they deal with a lot
Speaker 2: of soldiers that and veterans that are going through quite
Speaker 2: a bit. But this guy named Joe Smith, he's uh
Speaker 2: find out you know, he's the program coordinator there. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's where are you going? And then he kind of
Speaker 2: like talked me out of it, and uh partnered me
Speaker 2: up with somebody because I didn't realize that once you
Speaker 2: go there and then you sign up, and then they
Speaker 2: put a volunteer with you to be like your buddy
Speaker 2: for the day type of.
Speaker 1: Deal, and another veteran.
Speaker 2: Uh sometimes sometimes just a civilian that just wants to
Speaker 2: help out.
Speaker 4: I used to do that, and I was I just
Speaker 4: teach people how to cast and take him out on
Speaker 4: the river and the drift boat and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I had no idea where organization, no warriors and
Speaker 2: quiet water. And so they partnered me up with somebody
Speaker 2: and then took me out to the area where there
Speaker 2: was a bunch of crappies and with a fly rod,
Speaker 2: and they're showing me some basic gas and whatnot, start
Speaker 2: catching some fish and then kind of like slowly forgot
Speaker 2: about everything else, all the anxiety that I was dealing with,
Speaker 2: and all that melted away again. And when they you
Speaker 2: hear that cliche quite a bit, where you know, healing
Speaker 2: through fishing, healing on the water, It's very true because
Speaker 2: the reason why fly fishing works so well compared to
Speaker 2: conventional fishing or archery versus conventional honting is the amount
Speaker 2: of concentration attention to details that's required in order to
Speaker 2: achieve your end state If you don't pay attention to
Speaker 2: what you're doing, you're gonna hung up with the fly rod.
Speaker 2: You don't pay attention with what you're doing with the bow,
Speaker 2: you're not can hit your target.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so an if you got a if you
Speaker 1: got a soccer ride out with a bell on the end,
Speaker 1: you can still be pounding some drinks and thinking about
Speaker 1: the war.
Speaker 3: Let, the circle, the job.
Speaker 2: But you're constantly so busy with a fly rod that
Speaker 2: you kind of like start tuning everything else out. And
Speaker 2: that's why that it really helps with with the mental
Speaker 2: healing aspect of it, because you tune out all that noise.
Speaker 2: And uh, that's what tying is. Was Also, so.
Speaker 1: When you were when you guys are fishing crappies, what
Speaker 1: were you do you remember what you were throwing?
Speaker 2: I think it was a little pheasant tail o. It
Speaker 2: was whatever he tied on then.
Speaker 1: But did you take any particular interest in it at
Speaker 1: that time? The fly?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 2: Sort of because of the engineering background, I was more
Speaker 2: intrigued on the howism to everything, So I uh, even
Speaker 2: to this day, like the first time I looked at
Speaker 2: the fly I was deconstructed on my brain, like how
Speaker 2: is this thing put together.
Speaker 1: Got it. I mean you just looked at the world
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 2: I look at the world, look at a camera system,
Speaker 2: and I think it's the same way, Like how how's
Speaker 2: this lens put together, how's the glass, how's the magnification,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Everything I look at I deconstruct.
Speaker 1: You've been eyeball and that old Triumph trap right there.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, it's probably why
Speaker 2: the Japanese and the Chinese are so far advancing technology
Speaker 2: because they steal all American ideas deconstruct everything to their engineer.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so I look at stuff and I started deconstructing.
Speaker 2: It was the same way with flies. It was the
Speaker 2: same way with the cast. It was the same way
Speaker 2: with how the fly rods built the physics behind it.
Speaker 2: So coming from the engineering background, I looked at it
Speaker 2: a little bit differently, where I like in the casting
Speaker 2: and using the lion the rod on basically catching that
Speaker 2: fish versus the the real is like the engineering behind
Speaker 2: it on applied pressure and whatnot, and using basically motion
Speaker 2: order the cast. And I mean, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, some of the best casters in the world
Speaker 2: with the flywre can cast further than anybody with a
Speaker 2: bake cast or a spinning rod, because they know what
Speaker 2: they understand physics. So when I was looking at those flies,
Speaker 2: I was already starting to think that now I really
Speaker 2: didn't know exactly, you know, how you would do it.
Speaker 2: All I knew was the type of materials, but I
Speaker 2: didn't know all of the materials, And so that even
Speaker 2: piqued my interest more because then on another trip home,
Speaker 2: I was like, I was like, you know those flies.
Speaker 2: I kept on thinking about it. It was stuck in
Speaker 2: my brain, and I googled the.
Speaker 1: Fly as a thing. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2: Googled fly shops in Indiana, and then there was this
Speaker 2: shop there called fly Masters of Indianapolis, and it was
Speaker 2: literally the exit that I take home. I passed by
Speaker 2: it almost every day and had never paid attention to it,
Speaker 2: small little corner shop that you just you wouldn't, dude.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like it's like it's like a screenplay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like this entire screenplay was going through.
Speaker 2: But it was like there, right there, that exit. And
Speaker 2: then I pulled that that parking lot and came in
Speaker 2: and uh, super friendly guys in there. Derek, he's the
Speaker 2: store manager there still works this day.
Speaker 1: Big shout out Derek.
Speaker 2: Big shout out to Derek. He's a great guy.
Speaker 1: He was the name of the shop again, fly.
Speaker 2: Masters of Indianapolis. So I went in there. Uh Now,
Speaker 2: the stigma behind Mo's fly shops is like, if you
Speaker 2: don't look like you're you can spend money, they kind
Speaker 2: of like ignore you because the stuff in a fly
Speaker 2: shop is expensive as heck, there's no going around there.
Speaker 1: You think that's true. It is not the not the price,
Speaker 1: but you think that that you think that, you know
Speaker 1: it is too like the one time of year I
Speaker 1: going to buy a few leaders and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: As someone who managed the fly shop for a few years,
Speaker 5: you know, you know who's coming in to buy a
Speaker 5: spool of tippet, and who's coming in to buy a rod?
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 5: And you're gonna spend more time on the guys buinder.
Speaker 4: It depends on where you're at too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got locals that are coming
Speaker 5: in that you're seeing every couple of days and they
Speaker 5: become your buddies.
Speaker 2: Sure you can also go to remember the last majority
Speaker 2: of the fly shop owners are still the old school,
Speaker 2: older guy mentality. Where it was like a a a
Speaker 2: gentleman's type sport. And there's a big difference in nine
Speaker 2: hundred one thousand dollars rod versus somebody that's gonna go
Speaker 2: to Walmart and buy, you know, a fifty dollars kid
Speaker 2: and the ones that looked like they would shop at Walmart.
Speaker 2: A lot of those guys kind of like tend to
Speaker 2: ignore quite a because the don't think they're gonna spend
Speaker 2: the money.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately that that's the case with some fly shops, not all.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately for me, that wasn't the case with fly Masters.
Speaker 2: When I went in there, they they were cool. They
Speaker 2: were really cool and answer a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you're a dirt bag in Indianapolis and
Speaker 1: you want to be treated with respect at your local
Speaker 1: fly shop.
Speaker 5: Well, not all fly shops sell tying stuff either, Yeah,
Speaker 5: because it's a million different skews that cost three dollars.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. Change. I can't pinpoint the time,
Speaker 3: but it used to be like every fly shop, in
Speaker 3: order to be a fly shop, had materials and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Like wall in my mind's eye, right, yeah, it's actually
Speaker 2: a dying art over in the East Coast, if you
Speaker 2: go to any of these fly fishing clubs, the average
Speaker 2: agent there is probably closer to sixty five seventy. Now,
Speaker 2: it's different out here in the West because it's still
Speaker 2: popular with the young folks, because it's it's activities. At
Speaker 2: most of the colleges you go to Colorado, it's it's
Speaker 2: the vast majority you'll see on the people in the
Speaker 2: river are you know, nineteen to thirty year olds. You
Speaker 2: go out east, most people you see on the water
Speaker 2: with a fly rod or late fifties seventies. Huge disparity
Speaker 2: between the East Coast and the West Coast.
Speaker 4: Whence it comes down, it's trent. It's trendy here. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's like.
Speaker 1: A well, it's been that way for decades. It's not
Speaker 1: even it's not even trendy.
Speaker 4: Since the time I moved out here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I would even say it's like, at a point,
Speaker 1: it's just the reality. But it's not even trendy. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's it's a it's a discipline or a
Speaker 1: pursuit that remains alive and well in a part of
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, but unfortunately a lot of those older customer bays
Speaker 2: are starting to pass away, and then along with them
Speaker 2: the drive to tie flies, and there aren't enough replacements
Speaker 2: coming in to basically take up the helm of all
Speaker 2: these guys. There's more guys that tie flies and fly
Speaker 2: fars that are passing away than are guys that are
Speaker 2: taking up the sport parts of the US.
Speaker 1: I want to just pause for one mix. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure I'm clear on something. Going into a
Speaker 1: fly shop and having the big wall of all the
Speaker 1: hackles and you know, dubbing, that's becoming not a thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know this.
Speaker 3: A lot of Yeah, lots of shops have gotten rid
Speaker 3: of that because, like what Brody said is it takes
Speaker 3: up a lot of retail space and your return on
Speaker 3: that retail space is way lower than like your soft
Speaker 3: goods or your hard goods, and so like your clothing,
Speaker 3: your waiters, stuff like that, you have better margins as
Speaker 3: a retailer.
Speaker 5: On Yeah, you get someone like Sun coming in messing
Speaker 5: up all the materials and then you spend an hour
Speaker 5: putting everything.
Speaker 1: They ring it all up. He's got like thirteen bucks
Speaker 1: for stuff.
Speaker 3: Brody's got to get the ladder out getting up there.
Speaker 2: But there's a big However, that because depending on the
Speaker 2: market in the region of the US, some shops will
Speaker 2: survive solely on tying materials because the return on the
Speaker 2: tying materials is actually far superior than it is on hardware.
Speaker 2: Because you can go on there with five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: and you might walk out with a small little brown
Speaker 2: back with him cials. It adds up, yeah, five dollars,
Speaker 2: seven dollars.
Speaker 4: You know, you think about that that hackle that whites
Speaker 4: whiting hackle, like that stuff is not cheap.
Speaker 2: No, Like, just to buy a basic entry gate grade
Speaker 2: cape is forty five bucks just for one color of
Speaker 2: a specific ackle. And that's where a lot of people,
Speaker 2: when they jump into that rabbit hole is. They look
Speaker 2: at books, they'll see all the materials, and they think
Speaker 2: they have to follow exactly that material list. And those
Speaker 2: guys there will run into every fly shop and they
Speaker 2: want to tie this fly or that fly, and they
Speaker 2: will have a list and they'll buy this hackle because
Speaker 2: this one fly calls for it. They'll buy this, and
Speaker 2: next thing you know, you have boxes of shit that
Speaker 2: you will only have used once ever for one particular pattern.
Speaker 2: And then after you get into it for a couple
Speaker 2: of years you realize you get substitute a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that you don't have. But a lot of beginner
Speaker 2: tires don't know that. And those guys there will will
Speaker 2: keep a fly shop in business because they will spend
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars just buying materials for stuff that they
Speaker 2: might not even ever catch a fish.
Speaker 1: It's very addictive. Do you know the editor and fly
Speaker 1: tire uh and writer Jay Nichols? You know him at all?
Speaker 2: I know the name. I've never met him though.
Speaker 1: We lived together, Okay, Yeah, and I remember going out
Speaker 1: and U shooting pine squirrels and their tails are awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: him taking that hair and putting in his coffee grinder,
Speaker 1: you know, bacon make it like because he used to
Speaker 1: tie for the shops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right here, this is the claws on this crayfish
Speaker 2: or pine squirrel.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, he used to have like he just sit
Speaker 1: there just like I guess what you're calling guide flies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, not all the time, but he had a
Speaker 1: lot of times would spend time just tying and tying
Speaker 1: and tying and tying to go sell him at you know,
Speaker 1: Grizzly Hackle or whatever the hell it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like fly shops are awesome, and for anybody
Speaker 2: that that hasn't gotten into fly fish and that's looking
Speaker 2: into it, develop a relationship with your local fla shop
Speaker 2: because they're the ones that if you if you don't one,
Speaker 2: they're probably going to go out business because all the
Speaker 2: big box store competitors is going to price them out.
Speaker 2: But if you go in there you develop that relationship,
Speaker 2: You're going to learn where to fish, where, what's biting,
Speaker 2: you know what type of flies are actually working, the
Speaker 2: time of year. You're gonna learn all these things and
Speaker 2: you never find out in a book because it's a
Speaker 2: local expert that's helping them out. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: you're also supporting your local economy and that will help
Speaker 2: you throughout the entire journey, whether it's time flies or
Speaker 2: picking the right gear, going to the right places to fish.
Speaker 2: It's spent certain times a year. There are just certain
Speaker 2: things that local guides know, local fly shops know that
Speaker 2: you can't ever find from Google or from.
Speaker 3: A lot of them.
Speaker 5: Do like tying seminars and classes and stuff. Did you
Speaker 5: did you do any of that at at that shop?
Speaker 2: And Indianapolis I did it with healing waters and eventually
Speaker 2: going full circle. I came back to fly Mass and
Speaker 2: I did some demos for them for customers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how do you become once you got into it?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: I guess ninety whatever, I don't know. Ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the people that start tying flies sit down and
Speaker 1: tie what they use, Okay, and they're just it's just functional, right,
Speaker 1: You're just tying them because you want to tie the
Speaker 1: flies that use Uh, how did it? What is the
Speaker 1: jump where it becomes artistry? Well, I would because you're
Speaker 1: you're not known now as just a dude that can
Speaker 1: whip out a shipload of pheasant tails before he goes
Speaker 1: out fishing.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say ninety nine percent. I would probably say
Speaker 2: close to the fifty percent. Nowadays, with the influx of
Speaker 2: the younger generation getting into tying.
Speaker 1: I mean that people are into the artistry. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: more like your bread and butter fishermen are buying flies. Yes,
Speaker 1: and tying has become like like is it is tying
Speaker 1: retro now?
Speaker 2: Tying Uh? For many, like especially with guides, is a
Speaker 2: means to an end where they're supplying their own flyboxes
Speaker 2: versus having the buy.
Speaker 1: Out of financial considerations and so that's still a.
Speaker 2: Thing that's still think for others it's they the flies
Speaker 2: that they tie with their patterns. They know it's going
Speaker 2: to work better than anything they can buy, got it.
Speaker 2: So again it's still a means to an end, nop.
Speaker 2: And then for that other fifty percent, it's either for
Speaker 2: the mental health or just for the artistry. Just I mean,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, if you look at it,
Speaker 2: it's adult arts and crafts. That's all.
Speaker 3: It is, arts and crafts.
Speaker 8: Sir.
Speaker 1: What was the first fly you tied that had some
Speaker 1: sort of merit beyond just being a thing that someone
Speaker 1: would go and snag in the bush behind them and
Speaker 1: write it off. That's another loss fly right.
Speaker 2: Probably Again, this here will be the obsessive compulsor nature
Speaker 2: of me. When I started learning, it was through books.
Speaker 2: Healing waters helped refine all that, but I was I
Speaker 2: had some books I was looking through there fly Masters
Speaker 2: of Indianapolis again, they gave me my first fice had
Speaker 2: no costs because they have, like I was telling you,
Speaker 2: on the East coast there and even the Midwest, you
Speaker 2: have a lot of people dying off. So these widows
Speaker 2: don't know what to do with their husbands. Or their grandparents' stuff,
Speaker 2: so they end up just giving it to charities or
Speaker 2: fly shops or whatever. And the fly shop there runs
Speaker 2: a lot of classes and whatnot on Saturday, so they
Speaker 2: had widows up bringing stuff all the time. So they
Speaker 2: had advice that they gave me along with the tools,
Speaker 2: some materials and whatnot. And you know, as I'm paging
Speaker 2: through this.
Speaker 1: Book, they gave it to you. That's bad business. Bad business.
Speaker 3: Hits free good?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: What they had to repeat customer. And so.
Speaker 2: I was reading this book and reading about the history
Speaker 2: about the flies and how we got to start over
Speaker 2: there in the UK, and then how the early pioneers
Speaker 2: through to Gordon in the early nineteen hundreds took some
Speaker 2: of those British patterns and fashioned them to flies that
Speaker 2: would work in the fast moving waters up there in
Speaker 2: the Cassicall Mountain up in New York and turn them
Speaker 2: into you know, our modern drive flies today. So that
Speaker 2: really perked my interest because I'm such a history nerd
Speaker 2: that all I wanted to know the why isn't everything?
Speaker 2: And I read about it and then I looked at
Speaker 2: this one fly and I was like, man, this fly
Speaker 2: is just gorgeous. It's a pattern called the ginger quill
Speaker 2: developed in the early nineteen unders.
Speaker 1: The ginger quill.
Speaker 2: Ginger quill made out with mallard flank wings and uh
Speaker 2: strip peacock quill body hackle hold on yards. So I'm
Speaker 2: looking at this flies like I got to tie this thing.
Speaker 2: So look through the materials, didn't have it, went back
Speaker 2: to fly masters. But when I needed came back home
Speaker 2: start tying this fly. It looked like something that fell
Speaker 2: out of a bull's nose.
Speaker 1: But with the.
Speaker 2: Military background and the engineering background is like fur feathers
Speaker 2: threat ache at the best meat. I'm going to tie
Speaker 2: this damn fly. When it was all said, I tied
Speaker 2: about one hundred and twenty of these flies until I
Speaker 2: got it looked like wow, until it looked like that
Speaker 2: fly in the book, having no idea. That's not how
Speaker 2: you should start tying flies, because there's very simple patterns.
Speaker 2: You start off with the wooly buggers and all this
Speaker 2: I'm tying one of the most difficult lies there because
Speaker 2: in order to get those mallard flank feathers to sit right,
Speaker 2: they split real easily, and if you don't put the
Speaker 2: right amount of threat pressure on there, the feather. The
Speaker 2: strands between each of those feathers will just start frank.
Speaker 2: So it took over one hundred of these flies and
Speaker 2: a lot of so good, a lot of trips to
Speaker 2: fly masters. I literally bought them out of mautter of
Speaker 2: flank feathers until I got the fly look right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you just started with a San Juan worm,
Speaker 5: things could have gone.
Speaker 2: The funny part though, I was so proud of myself.
Speaker 2: I like, I tied this this ginger quilt, ginger quilt,
Speaker 2: just like the one in the book. And then I
Speaker 2: discovered Google and I typed ginger quill and the modern
Speaker 2: version look nothing like the ones that are in the book.
Speaker 2: Over time, it looks so much furtier the modern verses
Speaker 2: because we have better materials nowaday.
Speaker 1: And the modern version looked better.
Speaker 2: Because of the better quality hackle. When the materials there's
Speaker 2: you get genetic hackles where they.
Speaker 1: And you're you're working off some old ass book from
Speaker 1: the seventies or something.
Speaker 2: I'm taking working off a picture that was taking probably
Speaker 2: like nineteen oh five. Got it and my fly looked
Speaker 2: nothing like the modern versions. So I started all over again,
Speaker 2: and so I got it looking like the ones that
Speaker 2: I would solong on uh on Google.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, are you at least fishing this thing too?
Speaker 3: No, I was gonna say, what what else did Google
Speaker 3: tell you about that fly?
Speaker 1: Dude? If you just saved those hundred and we could
Speaker 1: make a big display case the progression top to bottom,
Speaker 1: the one hundred flies lined out, it would be a
Speaker 1: nice little thing for the auction House of Oddities.
Speaker 2: So that fly right there was was the first. It
Speaker 2: was a fly that really right there.
Speaker 1: Oh, let me see this fly was, huh, the.
Speaker 2: One that really got me going down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I was picturing when you when Chester just showed me
Speaker 1: the picture I was pictured something look like those old
Speaker 1: crazy Scottish like Atlantic salmon flies, right yeah, like like
Speaker 1: like Chester's crazy, not crazy, Chester's tattooed is uh.
Speaker 2: So when it got to me, I was tying for
Speaker 2: about eleven months now at that point, and a lot
Speaker 2: of it was just meet dabbling, figuring things out on
Speaker 2: my own and having no idea whether I was doing
Speaker 2: anything right.
Speaker 5: But no tying those flies on under the end of
Speaker 5: the lead where you were.
Speaker 2: I was fishing a lot of midges, pheasant tails, hair zier.
Speaker 1: So you're fishing meanwhile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I literally tied every fly that was in that book,
Speaker 2: The Founding Flies, written by this gentleman my name, by
Speaker 2: the name of Mike Valaf from New York, so he's
Speaker 2: still around. Actually met him.
Speaker 1: Years later at he tried every fly in his book.
Speaker 2: I tied every fly in his book, and that included
Speaker 2: deer hair patterns, the streamers. These were all it's called
Speaker 2: like basically forty three masters guys from the nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: to the sixties that were showing their famous patterns there.
Speaker 2: And I tied like each of the ones that I
Speaker 2: saw in there. So I was figuring out how to
Speaker 2: do stuff. I was probably doing it very wrong, but
Speaker 2: I was spinning deer hair at that point because I
Speaker 2: wanted to mimic these irresistible atoms and whatnot. And it
Speaker 2: was through a lot of trial and air uh daky
Speaker 2: deer hair wrapping hackle. A lot of it was self taught,
Speaker 2: a lot of it was asking questions over at the
Speaker 2: local fly shops and uh, some of the guys over
Speaker 2: Project heilling Waters knew some of the answers, some did,
Speaker 2: and then so at eleven months they they Project Heiling
Speaker 2: Waters told me there's a national fly Time competition that
Speaker 2: they wanted me to enter, and I was like, what
Speaker 2: the heck, what is it. They're like, well, just a bit,
Speaker 2: you know, five of the same patterns, and if you
Speaker 2: you win in it, you know it's good for the program,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, all right, sure,
Speaker 2: so I I tied five fans.
Speaker 3: We're not aware that these competitions exist at this point.
Speaker 2: I had no idea how big this was because to me,
Speaker 2: I thought it was just like like a local chapter.
Speaker 1: This is so much like a movie. This is like
Speaker 1: the part and Karate Kid when he finds out about
Speaker 1: the karate contest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I tied five of these fan wing fan
Speaker 2: wing quote Gordon's and five of the stimulators, which is
Speaker 2: very popular was created out of here out west.
Speaker 1: And were you? You weren't You didn't happen to be
Speaker 1: like in a romantic rivalry with another.
Speaker 2: Tire where nobody even knew who I was.
Speaker 1: He was not like, you're not trying to win a
Speaker 1: woman's favorite. I'm just thinking about the movie here. You're
Speaker 1: not trying to win a woman's favorite through fly Time. Well,
Speaker 1: you gets like a real asshole who's good at times.
Speaker 3: Well, there's somebody at the fly shop and you guys
Speaker 3: reached for the same hackle at the same time, and
Speaker 3: he may have said something discriminatory and then you reunite
Speaker 3: the competition.
Speaker 2: So my buddy, his name is Joe Jackson. He's from Indiana. Also,
Speaker 2: he was also that that got out from from disabilities.
Speaker 3: There's another Joe Jackson from Indiana, the Jackson the family.
Speaker 2: Oh, never minding the competition too.
Speaker 1: At one time, Phil says something I had no idea
Speaker 1: that he totally derails the conversation.
Speaker 2: Nobody gets it, continued, He submitted flies also, and I
Speaker 2: didn't I didn't know that he had submitted flies if
Speaker 2: several people from that same program, and so they invited
Speaker 2: all the files. I was notified. You know, I was
Speaker 2: one of the top five finalists for this competition. And
Speaker 2: then there was this International fly Time Supposium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: and they paid my way to get out there, put
Speaker 2: me up in the hotel, and then come check out
Speaker 2: the show. Who was tied at the boots so you
Speaker 2: have to tie him there? No, you submitted them. And
Speaker 2: then there was a panel of all these like renowned
Speaker 2: expert tires from across the US that analyzed the work,
Speaker 2: that analyzed the work, So it seems ripe for fraud
Speaker 2: could be.
Speaker 5: When they do when they do analyze them, are they
Speaker 5: deconstructing them? Are they just looking at.
Speaker 2: They're looking at them. They see if they all look
Speaker 2: the same, the proportions are correct.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you don't need to tie it in front
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Well, you eventually do that if you. I mean, they
Speaker 2: have a like a little boot there where you get
Speaker 2: an hour block and you said, had.
Speaker 5: You worked your way up to like a real nice
Speaker 5: souped up rotary ronsetti vice yet or you're just working
Speaker 5: on that same one that they gave to you.
Speaker 2: That was advice they gave me was ritt yea, they
Speaker 2: gave you.
Speaker 1: A good one. Tell me this vice again, I never
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 3: I gave you.
Speaker 1: My daughter's is a rinsettie, the old one. Hey tell you.
Speaker 1: The only thing we tie on her his lead ahead.
Speaker 5: Well, either way, that's like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some other good companies that make them. Thank you.
Speaker 1: What's it all the rubber bands and whatnot on there?
Speaker 5: Well, because there's a little piece on there that keeps
Speaker 5: keeps the flex on the jaws and that rubber, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm talking about, goes around the jaws that broke.
Speaker 2: So I just put a rubber.
Speaker 1: It's a round zetti.
Speaker 2: It's a rubber zetti.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're based out of Florida.
Speaker 1: And that's the cats asked for. Cast me out for vices.
Speaker 2: No, I have, I think only eleven vices at home.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite?
Speaker 2: I really don't have one particular one. I use them
Speaker 2: all because they all serve a different purpose. There's a
Speaker 2: couple that I bought them because they're they were cool
Speaker 2: to look at, but functionally wise, they weren't as good
Speaker 2: as some of the other ones. But like Norvice is
Speaker 2: one of the ones I used quite a bit. Rensetti
Speaker 2: Regal was another good one. There's a lot of different companies.
Speaker 1: It makes the most kick ass pair of little scissors.
Speaker 2: UH company would call it the renowned because they're they're
Speaker 2: based off of German scissors. Yeah, and they're sharpes scissors
Speaker 2: by far. I mean, the engineering behind them is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Now, what could have what could have fell a uh
Speaker 1: put into a pair of scissors? Good pair of scissors.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're.
Speaker 2: Gonna say something crazy no, you can put more money
Speaker 2: into advice.
Speaker 1: I'm a scissors like a scissors enthusiast. Yeah, you want to.
Speaker 2: Get a pair of really good scissors. And so, uh,
Speaker 2: going back onto that time competition when I was there,
Speaker 2: they started announcing all these winners off, fifth place, fourth place,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And then finally it was me and Joe
Speaker 2: left and then they announced Joe. I was just, you know,
Speaker 2: the first runner up. I'm like sitting there like this.
Speaker 2: They really even down on me. I was like everybody
Speaker 2: else is gone and I'm still sitting there at the table.
Speaker 2: You yeah, that's one of like the guys around me.
Speaker 2: They're like congratulations sign and I'm like, oh ship, I
Speaker 2: want So they called off my name and then gave me.
Speaker 2: They gave me the Regal Advice as one of the prize,
Speaker 2: along with certificates and all this stuff like.
Speaker 1: First yeah, first runner up is confusing. I remember entering
Speaker 1: an essay contest and getting the letter when I was
Speaker 1: in high school, getting the letter that I was first
Speaker 1: runner up. I thought it meant at one, and then
Speaker 1: someone had to be like, no, that's not what that means.
Speaker 1: You're like despike the word first. It's like your second.
Speaker 5: It's a more flattering way of saying second.
Speaker 2: So first and second place ended up being two guys
Speaker 2: from the same program. It was me and Joe, but.
Speaker 1: Out of people from around the whole country.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Did you guys have the same mentor Uh?
Speaker 2: He was there quite a few years longer than I was.
Speaker 2: I was just I was still relative that they knew there,
Speaker 2: So I really don't know how he Uh he was taught.
Speaker 2: I know, he was self taught a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: He does a lot of deer hair stuff also, but
Speaker 2: he was very involved with the program at that point,
Speaker 2: and I was like the new guy coming in.
Speaker 1: And so what was the average these guys that are
Speaker 1: tying in this in this competition? Were you guys? Were
Speaker 1: you guys relatively young?
Speaker 2: I was always relatively old compared those other to other tires, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that are in the program. Most of these guys are
Speaker 2: either veterans that that did you know, three years, got
Speaker 2: out some disability, or got injured in their seventh year.
Speaker 2: So you had the vast majority of them are probably
Speaker 2: I mean, it's gonna vary between programs mid thirties to
Speaker 2: mid forties, yep.
Speaker 1: And but I guess that it's great, and that's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I could appreciate that because you stayed
Speaker 1: in for so long. But what I meant was the
Speaker 1: fly tying, the competitive fly tying community in general. Tens old. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if the eyesight thing eventually bombs
Speaker 1: ye out or.
Speaker 2: It does, but they make cheaters and everything you can
Speaker 2: wear for them, Like I have really good eyesight. I
Speaker 2: mean we see it about twenty fifteen or so, so
Speaker 2: I have that advantage with my eyesight. But the other
Speaker 2: part to it was like back then it was one
Speaker 2: huge competition where first place was against everybody, whether you've
Speaker 2: been tying for six months or you've been tying for
Speaker 2: six years, there was no difference. Nowadays they break it
Speaker 2: down my beginner, intermediate, advance. So it was pretty cool
Speaker 2: to have basically won that competition, and that opened up
Speaker 2: the can of worms from there because they started announcing
Speaker 2: I started my first social media page because I was
Speaker 2: still using like mass emails to attach pictures of flies
Speaker 2: that I'll send it on my buddies. It's like, hey,
Speaker 2: look at this one, Look at this one. They're like, dude,
Speaker 2: I only just open up a social media account, so
Speaker 2: everybody just look at it without having to open up
Speaker 2: emails and whatnot. And that's how I end up starting
Speaker 2: the insecretive account, was just so that people.
Speaker 1: Will look at these and what is the Instagram account?
Speaker 2: It's a Sun Underscore tel and so they they started
Speaker 2: looking at these flies and next you know, like I
Speaker 2: get these notifications. So and so is following. You were like,
Speaker 2: what the hell is this person doing. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what it was. And I started getting these messages and
Speaker 2: I had no idea what a DM was. And then
Speaker 2: it was my cousin that told me, hey, somebody just
Speaker 2: likes what you're posting up on there. And eventually I
Speaker 2: had a question if somebody could ask me like a.
Speaker 3: Demonstrator, like don't worry, you don't have to go kick
Speaker 3: their ass, like they just like what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I thought it was just my friends that were following
Speaker 2: this account. I realized that strangers that I could just
Speaker 2: follow your account. So somebody had asked me to post
Speaker 2: a like detail how I tie in a specific technique.
Speaker 2: It's like hackle wrap or something like that. So I
Speaker 2: tried to explain, but it was taking me long, so
Speaker 2: I just recorded the video and I posted up there
Speaker 2: and the next you know, like this video I had
Speaker 2: like over a thousand likes. And I was on social
Speaker 2: media at that point for like three months or something like,
Speaker 2: and so I was like, wow, a thousand people like this,
Speaker 2: And so I started posting more of these videos and
Speaker 2: these these flies, and the I guess the algorithm love
Speaker 2: these little videos or whatever, and the account just like
Speaker 2: like really blew up. And then it spanned of like
Speaker 2: a six years that you know, went up to somewhere
Speaker 2: in eighty thousand some range now. And then in the
Speaker 2: fly fishing or in the grand scheme thing, it's not
Speaker 2: a whole lot, but for the fly fishing industry itself,
Speaker 2: it's equivalent probably having like a million followers in like
Speaker 2: a mass industry because fly fishing is so small and
Speaker 2: so but this is like the fly tying world tying
Speaker 2: in fishing because the one difference with my account is
Speaker 2: I try to mix in the fish that I catch
Speaker 2: along with the flies that I tie, and then it's
Speaker 2: flies that that are proven patterns that work. It's just
Speaker 2: I show the techniques. It's basically sixty second video is
Speaker 2: what they boil down to on how to do the
Speaker 2: major portions of these. I'll speed up the mundane stuff
Speaker 2: with the raps, and they'll slow it down on the
Speaker 2: more intricate parts. And then somebody that has a general
Speaker 2: idea how to tie they could basically capture how to
Speaker 2: tie this fly in a span of like sixty seconds
Speaker 2: versus having to sit through, you know, fifteen twenty thirty
Speaker 2: minute YouTube videos on a tutorial. So somebody just wants
Speaker 2: the basic idea of how to do something, they were
Speaker 2: looking at these videos, and over the course of that time,
Speaker 2: I got to meet quite a few cool people in
Speaker 2: the industry a lot, Like I meant that author, he
Speaker 2: knew who I was, and it was his book that
Speaker 2: got right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2: Same deal with Like that's a good part of the
Speaker 2: movie too, right, manufacturers of most of these vices, Like
Speaker 2: when I went to Sims with Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundation,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring them up,
Speaker 2: And we talked about that a little more a minute.
Speaker 2: But when I first came here for my first outing
Speaker 2: with Warriors and Quiet Waters, they took us to the
Speaker 2: SIMS factory to outfit us with with SIMS gear and
Speaker 2: along give us you know, fly rods and whatnot taking
Speaker 2: the vets. At that point, I was already fishing for
Speaker 2: a little bit, but a lot of vets come here
Speaker 2: and they ain't never done it before. So when I
Speaker 2: went there, a lot of the guys that are working
Speaker 2: as SIMS knew who I was from from the social
Speaker 2: media aspect there and that was yeah, yeah. So one
Speaker 2: of the guys, he doesn't work there anymore, his name
Speaker 2: is Brent, but he came out he was like, man,
Speaker 2: do you have any flies with you? I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got my fly box out here in my pack
Speaker 2: and he said, can I check the my house? And
Speaker 2: I was like yeah, sure. Brought him in there and
Speaker 2: he's looking through all these flies like you can have
Speaker 2: him when he's and he still has them on his
Speaker 2: man or he lives here in Bozeman, and but he
Speaker 2: never fished and we kept them. So I didn't realize that,
Speaker 2: you know, time, flies gonna have that much impact for
Speaker 2: some people, and there are people that really love the
Speaker 2: artistry and the uh the work that's behind in concept
Speaker 2: of fly. The longest time there for me was just
Speaker 2: basically a way to relax in a way to catch fish.
Speaker 2: I don't have a single fly, that's fright.
Speaker 7: Do you.
Speaker 5: Will you fish with a fly tied by someone else?
Speaker 1: Or is that no?
Speaker 2: I have no problems doing that, Okay, I won't fish
Speaker 2: with flies that are tied overseas and the sweatshops right
Speaker 2: because they're they're garbage.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I didn't know that that was the thing
Speaker 1: till till a couple of years ago that that had
Speaker 1: become a that there's a couple of countries that where
Speaker 1: is it somewhere?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kenya. Now there are some companies that are very
Speaker 2: good and they take very good care of those workers,
Speaker 2: and some.
Speaker 4: Are what percentage of flies in these fly shops do
Speaker 4: you think are tied overseas?
Speaker 2: Ninety I bet I would say probably close to the
Speaker 2: ninety five percent, much lower in some of the local
Speaker 2: shops here, for example, like a huge fly fishing community
Speaker 2: like Montanam Bozeman. A lot of the fly shops here
Speaker 2: probably maybe fifty percent, maybe a little bit more. So
Speaker 2: the really good one will support local tires. And then
Speaker 2: there are some people that tie commercially and that's all
Speaker 2: they do, eight hours of a day is just tie
Speaker 2: flies for shops. I mean, I'd rather stick up food
Speaker 2: in my eye than do that for eight hours. But
Speaker 2: there's there's people that do that for a living.
Speaker 1: And it'll be like a carpal tunnel component to that shattoo.
Speaker 2: And then just the for me, I would get bored
Speaker 2: doing the same reea when you get.
Speaker 5: Into order for yeah, that's when inconyms and you just
Speaker 5: gotta do the same.
Speaker 2: A lot of people that ask me the tie flies,
Speaker 2: how much did I sell them for? And I don't
Speaker 2: sell flies for.
Speaker 1: That, So you don't make any jingle off fly time.
Speaker 2: Uh No, I don't sell anything, make any money off
Speaker 2: of it. I just do it basically. I enjoy it,
Speaker 2: you know, So yeah, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't make like you don't just sell where I
Speaker 1: could just buy this. As a person that collective flies.
Speaker 2: Now, there are times where I will put together like
Speaker 2: a shadow box or something like that, or tie like
Speaker 2: two or three dozen flies for silent auxs and charities.
Speaker 2: And then because I don't sell flies, then those those
Speaker 2: shadow boxes, those flies that are meant for fishing and whatnot,
Speaker 2: they go for an astronomical amount that helps those organizations out.
Speaker 2: So maybe one the two times a year I'll offer
Speaker 2: flies for sale to help out a cause like I
Speaker 2: did one here for Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundations several
Speaker 2: years ago, and then they they paired it up with
Speaker 2: you know, nine nine rounds of golf with Jordan Speith,
Speaker 2: and so they pair they do that with alumni where
Speaker 2: will some guides will take other people on the trip.
Speaker 2: I donated flies and then I do some for Healing Waters,
Speaker 2: like I still stay active with them, and then donate
Speaker 2: flies for the fly Fishing film tour in in Indianapolis,
Speaker 2: and they have a silent auction there and generally one
Speaker 2: of those shadow boxing go for as much as like
Speaker 2: five hundred and six hund dollars because people want some
Speaker 2: of these flies and I don't have them for sale.
Speaker 1: So you just live off your army money.
Speaker 2: Uh not totally. I mean I would be lying if
Speaker 2: I said that, because like on Facebook and on TikTok
Speaker 2: for videos, I get paid for.
Speaker 1: Some of the views.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's some secondary income that comes off of that.
Speaker 2: I mean it's not you can make a living off
Speaker 2: of it per se, because I don't have like the
Speaker 2: millions of followers on YouTube or whatever. But it's enough
Speaker 2: to pay for a fishing trip here or there.
Speaker 1: So now that you're retiring from. Now that you're retiring
Speaker 1: from the army, what's your plan?
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it's gonna be boiled down to
Speaker 2: what my wife wants to do, because for twenty two years,
Speaker 2: she well she's her and the kids have followed me
Speaker 2: around the country and then pretty much had really no
Speaker 2: say in the matter other than where we're gonna live
Speaker 2: once we got there. So they're gonna play a big
Speaker 2: part of it. I know they're more tempted to go
Speaker 2: back up to the Northeast to be close to the
Speaker 2: family because my mom's starting to get up there in years,
Speaker 2: my sister, my brother lives there. But there are some opportunities.
Speaker 2: I do want to get into the outdoor industry. I
Speaker 2: cannot go back into the engineering world anymore. There's no
Speaker 2: way I could sit in a freaking cubicle for eight
Speaker 2: hours a day after spending the last twenty years in
Speaker 2: the military. So there are some offers that I've had
Speaker 2: it for. Most of it's for guides, some of the
Speaker 2: working fly shops, for services, stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's one offer here in Montana working with Healing Waters Lodge.
Speaker 2: Basically Mike Gary offered me to be one of the
Speaker 2: guides on his expeditions through the Smith River. He gets
Speaker 2: the large portion of the permits that go through there,
Speaker 2: and so he's always looking for vets to hire, and
Speaker 2: another ones to help a buddy that runs a guide
Speaker 2: business in Wyoming up there in the northwest, and the
Speaker 2: Titans doing some of those cutthroat type chips. So right now,
Speaker 2: it's it's still very fresh because the decision was, you know,
Speaker 2: finally made that we're going to retire next year, and
Speaker 2: so at this point right now, I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: figure out all the different objects of war. I finally
Speaker 2: decide which one I want to do.
Speaker 3: Retirement making nervous.
Speaker 2: It does because after doing it's almost like prison. The military.
Speaker 2: You had a structured lifestyle for twenty years and now
Speaker 2: suddenly all that's gonna go away and you're going into
Speaker 2: that civilian force and you're on your own. So yeah,
Speaker 2: anybody that says otherwise that was in the service, they're lying.
Speaker 3: All my buddies say it's hard, it's hard, and I
Speaker 3: mean for years right after. So yeah, it's a challenge.
Speaker 2: The other challenge is basically because I've always been in
Speaker 2: charge of large groups of people for so long now
Speaker 2: that everybody had to listen to, you know, orders that
Speaker 2: I gave, and going to civilian workforce ain't gonna be
Speaker 2: like that. I might have to work for an idiot
Speaker 2: that is no better than somebody that should be sitting
Speaker 2: by a dumpster somewhere.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you should be looking my boots, buddy.
Speaker 2: And I end up being a subordinate to them, and
Speaker 2: I have to bite my tongue. So those are things
Speaker 2: that you know, I am concerned about because somebody didn't
Speaker 2: like something, or I didn't like some the way somebody's
Speaker 2: doing something, I'd give them a nearful and then they
Speaker 2: would fix their their shit. And that's how the military works.
Speaker 2: That's where the discipline comes in. And I realized I'm
Speaker 2: not an idiot, and I realized you can't do that
Speaker 2: in the civilian workforce. But that does scare the shit
Speaker 2: out of you too, having the work for people potentially
Speaker 2: that have no business being at charge of others.
Speaker 1: I got a friend I tell this story all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on the
Speaker 1: show here, but I have a friend who retired from
Speaker 1: the army, and then one of his teammates retired from
Speaker 1: the army, and right away as teammate killed himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I texted him, I said, I said, we were texting
Speaker 1: about this, and I'll always remember the text. The kind
Speaker 1: of one of the most compelling sentences I've ever received
Speaker 1: in a text message is I said, I don't understand, like,
Speaker 1: what is that? Why does that happen like that? And
Speaker 1: his reply was it was the wild West during those
Speaker 1: war years and then it's over in an instant, And
Speaker 1: that was all that's in his mind, sufficed as an explanation.
Speaker 1: It's a really.
Speaker 2: Difficult subject to talk about because it's such a huge
Speaker 2: problem with veterans. I mean, there's all sorts of different stats.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to bore anybody with these different stats,
Speaker 2: but on average, you know, you have veterans that are
Speaker 2: over fifty percent likelier than their civilian counterparts that ever
Speaker 2: served to commit suicide. And the early parts of the war,
Speaker 2: He's very correct. They threw you into the waywell west
Speaker 2: you come back, and there was no support system. For example,
Speaker 2: my first deployment, we were the theater QRF in Iraq.
Speaker 2: They had no basically area of operations assigned for US specifically,
Speaker 2: so every time there was a major engagement going on,
Speaker 2: somewhere or things were about to flare up. They would
Speaker 2: move my entire battalion to that engagement, not realizing that
Speaker 2: all these different engagements, firefights that we were getting too,
Speaker 2: would have a toll. And so those were things that
Speaker 2: people never thought about back then. Like my battalion there
Speaker 2: probably got into more campaigns than any other unit they're
Speaker 2: in the history of the Iraq War because we were
Speaker 2: just like the theater cure out for everything, bouncing around.
Speaker 2: We didn't stay anywhere for longer than thirty five days.
Speaker 2: And so you have a bunch of young men and
Speaker 2: women that you know, some of them seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: eighteen years old, and they're seeing firefights and deaths for
Speaker 2: the first time. Id's going off the whole nine yards,
Speaker 2: local civilians getting blown up, all sorts of shit, and
Speaker 2: uh so we did that for fourteen months. If things
Speaker 2: weren't bad enough. They had initially told the unit we
Speaker 2: were going to be home by Christmas because it was
Speaker 2: going to be twelve months at that.
Speaker 3: Mark, which is kind of a big deal for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was something to look forward to. So we were
Speaker 2: all looking forward to it. We're gonna be home by Christmas.
Speaker 2: Tell any of our loved ones, et cetera. And then
Speaker 2: the first elections happened in Iraq in two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and they extended us for an additional couple three months,
Speaker 2: and they moved us to another area up there in
Speaker 2: Missoil to help oversee the security for these first elections.
Speaker 2: So Christmas went out the window, and we end up
Speaker 2: being there for fourteen months before the fifteen month deployments
Speaker 2: were even the thing. They were extending unit. There was
Speaker 2: like unit up in Alaska that were on their way
Speaker 2: home and got rerouted back. Yeah, so they had family
Speaker 2: members that were waiting at.
Speaker 1: Their talking about some phone calls.
Speaker 2: Man, oh yeah, I mean, holy shit. There were zero
Speaker 2: shits given about the repercussions of some of these actions
Speaker 2: because the war had to be fought as soldiers. You know,
Speaker 2: it sucks, but we did what we were told, So
Speaker 2: we went through all that. We get back and you
Speaker 2: basically start taking thirty days of leave right away. Now
Speaker 2: the military is like a mountain pot of all different cultures, upbringings, backgrounds,
Speaker 2: and whatnot. You have some kids that never had a
Speaker 2: friend in their life and now suddenly they're surrounded by
Speaker 2: people that are watching their six all the time, and
Speaker 2: they have a supports system there. They're going through all
Speaker 2: this crap, getting into these engagement and these firefights, seeing
Speaker 2: him all sorts of stuff, but they had buddy there
Speaker 2: that we're dealing with the same stuff, and that's why
Speaker 2: it makes the military is very unique. The only other
Speaker 2: agencies that are very similar to that as like some of
Speaker 2: the the HRTs SWAT because they go through a lot
Speaker 2: of crap too, and so any organization that goes through
Speaker 2: a lot of heartache and a lot of suck fests
Speaker 2: in essence, the people get closer because you're enduring that
Speaker 2: same pain and all the horrible things that go with it.
Speaker 2: And so that's why the infantry is very unique. Like
Speaker 2: the special forces community and all the branches, whether it's
Speaker 2: the Seals, the Air Force, whatever, it's a very close
Speaker 2: knit group because all the things that you're dealing with,
Speaker 2: somebody else is dealing with too. So you have these
Speaker 2: young kids that had fellow buddies that were dealing with
Speaker 2: all that, so they never felt like they were alone.
Speaker 2: We get back from these deployments and then everybody's scattered
Speaker 2: to the four winds, and now suddenly you have these
Speaker 2: kids that never had a friend of their life until
Speaker 2: they joined the military or buy them cells for thirty
Speaker 2: freaking days after just going through all that crap overseas,
Speaker 2: and then those those demons start coming and they started
Speaker 2: getting those nightmares, they started hitting the bottle, they start
Speaker 2: taking drugs, and there was there's a major problem with
Speaker 2: basically suicide because the initial part of it was the
Speaker 2: PTSD from combat soldiers. Nowadays, the vast majority of soldiers
Speaker 2: that are committing suicide and activity have never been deployed.
Speaker 2: Veterans that have gotten out, some deployed, some don't. The
Speaker 2: vast majority have PTSD or from deployments. But there was
Speaker 2: never really a good support system in place for that
Speaker 2: entire global war terror on how to deal with soldiers
Speaker 2: come back from wars. We didn't learn a damn thing
Speaker 2: from the Vietnam War because those Vietnam vets came back
Speaker 2: with the same shit. They were dealing with the same
Speaker 2: issues soldiers from World War One, world War two. So
Speaker 2: you're talking about the entire history of America's wars. We
Speaker 2: didn't learn a thing. Basically, soldiers were just once you
Speaker 2: were done with you and they spit you out, you're
Speaker 2: off in your own and society didn't really know how
Speaker 2: to deal with soldiers and having all these these these
Speaker 2: different issues and demons. And for the soldiers, when you
Speaker 2: when we have a tendency to do something we don't
Speaker 2: have as it, we just go full bore. There's no
Speaker 2: different with suicide. There's a difference between crying out for
Speaker 2: help and if you actually want to commit suicide, soldiers
Speaker 2: will do it. And a lot of times, uh, there
Speaker 2: are sums that have warning signs that you could tell
Speaker 2: there's something wrong and then uh, just be be a
Speaker 2: buddy and ask direct, are you going to hurt yourself?
Speaker 2: Is something? Is everything? Okay, just be direct. But there
Speaker 2: are other ones that will hide all those demons and
Speaker 2: have no idea that you have, no idea that they're
Speaker 2: contemplating suicide in the side that brings because they would
Speaker 2: put on that facade and I ran across that multiple times.
Speaker 2: My last unit over in Colorado, we had five suicides
Speaker 2: in our battalion alone in one year, and none of
Speaker 2: those kids deployed.
Speaker 1: What's the battalion size?
Speaker 2: Italian size was roughly about nine.
Speaker 1: Hundred and five suicides in one year.
Speaker 2: We had I think it was close to eleven and
Speaker 2: three years, and these were most of these kids were
Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty five, never deployed, So it's it's there's
Speaker 2: trauma that that soldiers that deployed have, and there's also
Speaker 2: trauma that soldiers never deployed have because the lifestyle sometimes
Speaker 2: is enough for soldiers to push them one way or another,
Speaker 2: and a lot of vast majority and I think this
Speaker 2: also applies probably to all civilians too, where you start
Speaker 2: mixing alcohol, drugs, financial merital issues, those are usually the
Speaker 2: big ones right there that will push people towards suicide.
Speaker 2: And you combine those things together and you're talking about
Speaker 2: it recipe for disaster. And unfortunately, the stigma with seeking
Speaker 2: help is still strong and prevalent to this day the
Speaker 2: longest time for my vast majority of my military career.
Speaker 2: If you told somebody you had to go see a
Speaker 2: behavior health specialist for some mental health stuff, you were
Speaker 2: labeled and then you were basically like an outcast. And
Speaker 2: then the military eventually realized that I was wrong, and then
Speaker 2: they start encouraging people to go seek help to deal
Speaker 2: with all these issues without having any repercussions. But for
Speaker 2: a while, there were repercussions if you sought medical assistance
Speaker 2: for mental health. But even though people say no, nobody's
Speaker 2: gonna judge you for that, there's still that strong stigma
Speaker 2: and people are afraid of being labeled or having that sigma.
Speaker 2: And I think it's military and civilian side, but I'm
Speaker 2: telling you it's like, no matter how bad it is,
Speaker 2: it's never that bad where your life is not that important,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of different agencies out there that
Speaker 2: can help you. The most important ones, like I said,
Speaker 2: are the ones that are available twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 2: regardless of where you're at, and you could talk to
Speaker 2: them and nobody will know. Ninety eighty eight is a
Speaker 2: really good one.
Speaker 1: So say that one again.
Speaker 2: You could text, call, or chat and it's completely anonymous,
Speaker 2: and they're a nine.
Speaker 1: Eight eight short core and well it's like nine but different.
Speaker 2: Just text ninet eighty eight yep.
Speaker 7: And then let me explain a little bit about that one.
Speaker 8: And I'll put a list of organizations and resources in
Speaker 8: the show notes, but if we can verbalize some of
Speaker 8: that on air, it'd be helpful.
Speaker 2: They're available to military and civilians, it's to everybody. And
Speaker 2: if you ever are feeling down and you think that
Speaker 2: you may possibly hurt yourself. You could text, call, or
Speaker 2: chat with somebody and then they will get you professional
Speaker 2: health and no cost to you, and it's available twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day. The other one stops soldier suicide.
Speaker 2: They have the the one eight number that's also twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day where you can get professional health
Speaker 2: or active duty military regardless of branch. And then those
Speaker 2: that are transitioning within are three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 2: basically one year from the time your separation and under
Speaker 2: You could also utilize Military one source dot com. I
Speaker 2: know a lot of my fellow brothers and sisters don't
Speaker 2: like that stigma of seeking behavioral health. So if you
Speaker 2: go to Military one Source, you will get five counseling
Speaker 2: sessions with a professional that's completely anonymous that never gets
Speaker 2: reported to your chain of command, So that way you
Speaker 2: can get that help. But there the VA also has
Speaker 2: a hotline that you can call. There's multiple agencies. Like
Speaker 2: Corn said, she'll publish a list. But your life is
Speaker 2: important because the minute you're gone, you leave avoid in
Speaker 2: somebody's life. I mean, it's a difficult subject to talk about,
Speaker 2: but it's a reality. And then the problem is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of leaders that don't know how to deal
Speaker 2: with it, so they either brush it off turn a
Speaker 2: blind eye to it. And then leaders also fail to
Speaker 2: change with the times. So like this current generation, like
Speaker 2: I label. I know people hate label, but I call
Speaker 2: them the meat generation. Because everything's instantaneous. With the push
Speaker 2: of a button, you want something tomorrow, Amazon one day delivery,
Speaker 2: within two days, you're gonna have something else. Everything is
Speaker 2: instantaneous at the touch of the phone. So social media
Speaker 2: and smartphones are have been great to the network and
Speaker 2: reach out to others, but also it's been a curse
Speaker 2: because you could hide behind being an anonymous person, behind
Speaker 2: that and show a different facade, and then the same
Speaker 2: deal with when you start suffering it through through all
Speaker 2: these mental pains or life issues that you're dealing with.
Speaker 2: Just like ordering something instantaneously, you could just not deal
Speaker 2: with it instantaneously. And it needs to stop. And the
Speaker 2: only way it can stop is to educate people that
Speaker 2: it's okay to have issues and to seek out that help.
Speaker 2: Because everybody, regardless you know what ma Maye joke about,
Speaker 2: has an important role to play because there's people that
Speaker 2: care about and that's military and civilians.
Speaker 1: I like, well, man, I appreciate the you being so
Speaker 1: open about it.
Speaker 2: It's tough and there's some things you know, I'll be
Speaker 2: a blunt I don't like talking about it because it
Speaker 2: brings back bad memories, it brings back people that I've
Speaker 2: cared about. But I feel it's important because there's so
Speaker 2: many people that are taking away their lives way too soon,
Speaker 2: not realizing there's more to come. I've gone through my
Speaker 2: fair share heart ache two and try to utilize different
Speaker 2: means to drown out that pain. And I still get
Speaker 2: nightmares nowadays. But at the same time, you have to
Speaker 2: find basically an outlet, like a a useful outlet. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the right word is, but something constructive.
Speaker 2: And for me it was fly fishing. For me, it's
Speaker 2: being outdoors, whether it's taking photographs because I love photography also,
Speaker 2: or hiking or whatever the case may be. And then
Speaker 2: my kids are another big part of that. For you,
Speaker 2: it might be something else, but you have to find
Speaker 2: something that is constructive means if you're so focused, because
Speaker 2: for so long I was focused on just military military
Speaker 2: and military combat, combat combat, and then I was destroying
Speaker 2: my own self. If you go down that route, that
Speaker 2: that route, then you're going to be in a dark place.
Speaker 2: So regardless of whether you're in your service for the
Speaker 2: first year or you're in your fifteenth twenty year service,
Speaker 2: find a constructive outlet because you have to do something
Speaker 2: that will take your mind off of all the crap
Speaker 2: that you deal with on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2: And if you're not in the service, same deal, it's
Speaker 2: no different. It's anybody out there. You can have some
Speaker 2: type of constructive hobby. That's why hunting and fishing is
Speaker 2: so great for that.
Speaker 8: And there are organizations like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Armed
Speaker 8: Forces Initiative, others that are in the outdoor industry that
Speaker 8: are vets support.
Speaker 7: I know that you.
Speaker 8: Work with Warriors and Quiet Waters a lot too, so
Speaker 8: feel free to share about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I came here. Gosh, it was like I
Speaker 2: think two thousand and seventeen or twenty eighteen, and the
Speaker 2: program was a little bit different than they brought. I
Speaker 2: think it was six of US veterans. There were three
Speaker 2: Navy Seals guy, two other guys that were out of
Speaker 2: the service altogether because of injuries they had sustained. And
Speaker 2: then you had volunteers. Some were prior militaries. Some had
Speaker 2: kids that were in the military. My my buddy that
Speaker 2: was that was partnering with me was a gold Star
Speaker 2: family member where he had a son that died in combat,
Speaker 2: but the honorest son he wanted to give back still,
Speaker 2: so he was a volunteer there over the Quiet Water's ranch,
Speaker 2: and they brought us in together and then they they
Speaker 2: basically immersed us into fishing, teaching us how to fish.
Speaker 2: And then it's just like most most veterans, like the
Speaker 2: first day, nobody's really talking because you don't know who's who.
Speaker 2: Day two they started chatting a little bit, and by
Speaker 2: day three they're talking to their buddies, the volunteers, and
Speaker 2: then by day four, everybody's hugging and laughing. By day five,
Speaker 2: people are sharing their experiences, and it's it gets to
Speaker 2: be pretty emotional because you think that you're going through
Speaker 2: some shiit and you hear some of these stories of
Speaker 2: what people are dealing with. Like the one guy there
Speaker 2: that was at that ranch during my first encounter with
Speaker 2: quiet he had entirely his entire insides like blowing out backwards,
Speaker 2: and he was he was in pain all the time,
Speaker 2: the scars that he had there because like missing parts
Speaker 2: of his intestines and whatnot. Sow He's he was a
Speaker 2: vet that lost both legs from California. He came back here.
Speaker 2: Now he's one of the program leads that over there
Speaker 2: and Quiet Waters ran they do a lot for veterans
Speaker 2: and they immersed them here in Montana and show him
Speaker 2: that there there's ways to heal through the outdoors. But
Speaker 2: the great thing about those organizations like Quiet Waters is
Speaker 2: like when you're done with the program, you're not done.
Speaker 2: They don't just like check you off. Like I still
Speaker 2: stay in contact with Jesse, who I met, you know
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight. I'm going fishing within tomorrow.
Speaker 2: And you're part of that outreach or that reach. Their
Speaker 2: outreach to you is all year long, and you're just
Speaker 2: because you went through there, you're not forgotten. You're always
Speaker 2: gonna be an alumni. And I've came back again a couple
Speaker 2: of years later. It was last year I flowed the
Speaker 2: Smith River them and then coincide in this podcast here
Speaker 2: to go to Warrior Taste Vest this Friday to reconnect
Speaker 2: with a lot of the members. There are the volunteers
Speaker 2: and they're sixteen alumni that are coming back so they're
Speaker 2: one of the great organizations out there. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of them. We don't have time to show to mention
Speaker 2: all these different veterans organizations, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: organizations out there that will help. And regardless of your
Speaker 2: level expectees, you can have no idea what you're doing
Speaker 2: and they'll teach you everything you need to know. The
Speaker 2: same deal with if you don't have any interest in fishing,
Speaker 2: there's hunt for a Purpose. They'll teach you how to hunt.
Speaker 2: They'll teach you how to fire a rifle, they'll teach
Speaker 2: you how to use a boat.
Speaker 1: Warriors for Quiet Waters. I went and gave a talk
Speaker 1: there because they're doing some stuff unhunting right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have like basically, I think it's a six
Speaker 2: month hunting program yep, where you teach o the fundamentals
Speaker 2: of hunting from you know, selecting equipment to all the
Speaker 2: way the end result of stalking and firing that boat.
Speaker 4: A lot of those guys probably know their way around
Speaker 4: to rifle pretty well already though.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Let me hit you with one last question.
Speaker 1: Twenty two you've been married twenty two years?
Speaker 2: No, No, I've been married eighteen years.
Speaker 1: Eighteen years.
Speaker 2: Yep, I met her after being in service for about
Speaker 2: four years.
Speaker 1: Hit us with some marriage Hit me with your best
Speaker 1: marriage advice.
Speaker 2: You're never the boss, that's the god.
Speaker 1: Honest.
Speaker 2: This goes out to men and women, men and women,
Speaker 2: but mainly to the men, because most of the men
Speaker 2: thinks they wear in the family the pants in the family.
Speaker 2: How I kept my marriage together compared to most other
Speaker 2: soldiers is every time I deployed, I came back like
Speaker 2: a different person. And then while I'm gone, despite my
Speaker 2: what you may think, life goes on. There's still bills
Speaker 2: that have to be paid, there's still kids that need
Speaker 2: to be fit, there's still diapers that gotta be changed.
Speaker 2: And your significant other is the one that's doing all
Speaker 2: that while you're going out there fighting for your country.
Speaker 2: So when you come back and you try to basically
Speaker 2: take over all those same responsibilities again, you're about to
Speaker 2: get into the boxing match because they also changed. They
Speaker 2: got used to you being one, They got used to
Speaker 2: handling all that shit that you used to do. So
Speaker 2: you have to ease yourself back into it.
Speaker 1: If they come in pissing on your post.
Speaker 2: And that's how like that was the success to my
Speaker 2: marriage is coming back and then allowing her to still
Speaker 2: do whatever she wanted to do while I was gone,
Speaker 2: and then she wanted me to take over something she
Speaker 2: would vocalize it. I never pretended like I was in charge.
Speaker 2: I knew after my first deployment there, I was no
Speaker 2: longer in charge because she was strong enough to handle
Speaker 2: an entire household with kids while I was going.
Speaker 1: Because I travel a lot for work and have the
Speaker 1: whole time I've you know, known my wife. She a
Speaker 1: while came up with a thing where she said, if
Speaker 1: it's not going to be a big deal when you leave,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be a big deal when you
Speaker 1: come home. And there's a lot. There's a lot to that.
Speaker 2: I also had one thing before we end it. So
Speaker 2: with fly fishing, regardless of your level expertise when it
Speaker 2: comes to it, there's a these shows that it around
Speaker 2: all over the US. If you ever want to dip
Speaker 2: your fingers into it, just check what I was like
Speaker 2: to see some tying or see people demonstrate casting. The
Speaker 2: fly Fishing Show has shows all across the US, from
Speaker 2: California all the way in Massachusetts down the Georgia and
Speaker 2: then during my first exposure with this show, I met
Speaker 2: a lot of really really great people all across the industry.
Speaker 2: I met several people from Montana to California, all ver
Speaker 2: like you get tires that come over from Europe to
Speaker 2: come there, and these different authors. And then one of
Speaker 2: the great organizations that I met, well there is Uncharted
Speaker 2: Outdoors Women. They're based out of Colorado, and they're also
Speaker 2: trying to break the stigma of having women in the
Speaker 2: outdoor industry, where they take it upon themselves to take
Speaker 2: women fly fishing, taking them on hunts, whether it's duck, geese,
Speaker 2: animal calls. So my grand friend Aaron spearheads all that
Speaker 2: and she basically takes takes the role of the lead
Speaker 2: for Colorado, Montana, Oregon Ome. She just does all this
Speaker 2: stuff here to get more women out there. So there's
Speaker 2: a huge stigma that this is a male dominated industry
Speaker 2: is so far from the truth. Yeah, you have some
Speaker 2: idiots out there that may say that, but we welcome
Speaker 2: all genders, regardless of whether you're male or female. Pick
Speaker 2: up a bowl, pick up a rifle, pick up a
Speaker 2: fly rod, You're welcome in this industry. And I just
Speaker 2: had to give that shout out to Aaron, and.
Speaker 1: Then thanks man, Good luck fishing tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Hopefully it should be a good time of year with
Speaker 2: a hopper season here in September. This is like literally
Speaker 2: probably the best month of fish here in Montana.
Speaker 3: Got some cooler tamps.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then, so here's a litt unknown fact, useless
Speaker 2: fact that I'm really good at. Is these hoppers, grasshoppers,
Speaker 2: crickets or whatever, they have a parasite called the horsehair
Speaker 2: worm that they ingest when they eat grass. They grow
Speaker 2: us right, and they grow into this parasite inside the
Speaker 2: grasshopper or the crickets or whatever, And when it's time
Speaker 2: for those pairs to breed, they take over those hoppers'
Speaker 2: brains and they make them jump into the water commit
Speaker 2: kamakazi suicide so that they can basically expel themselves out
Speaker 2: of the hopper and then get find a mate, lay
Speaker 2: eggs in the grass, and the cycle starts all over again,
Speaker 2: because when the water level drops, grasshoppers eat the grass
Speaker 2: they get effect again. So that's why grasshoppers jump in
Speaker 2: the water at this time of the year and dry
Speaker 2: dropper rigs work.
Speaker 1: I thought it was all accident. I thought he meant
Speaker 1: to land somewhere else, But landing in the water.
Speaker 2: They all land in the water for that reason, because
Speaker 2: those horse hair worms need the water in order to
Speaker 2: find a meat. So that's why September at early, my.
Speaker 1: Kids must be infected with that parasite land in the water,
Speaker 1: no matter what they're doing. All right, man, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on. Man, it's been a great conversation. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I appreciate all the you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it advice, but the guidance for
Speaker 1: people who might be who might be in a you know,
Speaker 1: in a bad state of affairs, but fear that stigma
Speaker 1: or fear reaching out. So I think it's it's great
Speaker 1: for you to speak to it from that, from that
Speaker 1: position of having been there. So thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if I'd reached one vet that's listening to
Speaker 2: the this podcast or watching the YouTube, then yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't care how much it hurts to talk, then it
Speaker 2: was worth it.
Speaker 1: All right, Thank.
Speaker 2: You, Thank you.
Speaker 1: A ride on on.
Speaker 8: Seal Grey shine like silver in the sun.
Speaker 11: Ride ride on alone, sweetheart.
Speaker 9: We're done beat this damn horse today. Taking her new drive.
Speaker 9: We're done beat this damn horse today, So take a
Speaker 9: new one and ride on
Speaker 5: MHM