Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer.
Speaker 1: So Carmen, Uh, what have you been doing? Are you
Speaker 1: still a biologist? That's a good question. Really, it's like
Speaker 1: up in the air. No, it's not up in there
Speaker 1: at all. That's never been up in the air. But
Speaker 1: as usual, I am just still patching things together. And um,
Speaker 1: let's see, since I was last year, since you were
Speaker 1: last in this studio, in this studio, I spent a
Speaker 1: winter um helping on a new project that is happening
Speaker 1: in Washington State. It's a big predator prey interaction project.
Speaker 1: So I'm already interested. Well. Um, so wolves have been
Speaker 1: returning to Washington on their own, walking in um, just
Speaker 1: like regular old animals, Just like regular old animals. Not ino, No,
Speaker 1: not in the back of trucks. Uh. They have four
Speaker 1: legs and they can travel real far. Can you tell
Speaker 1: peop where they're coming from? And my part of the state,
Speaker 1: in the Cascades, they're probably coming down from BC, whereas
Speaker 1: over in the northeast of the state they're probably trickling
Speaker 1: over from from Idaho, which are trickling over from the
Speaker 1: Yellowstone re interduction right and yeah, or and south from
Speaker 1: from Canada. Um Oh, so you think that some so,
Speaker 1: but if you think it's fair to say that if
Speaker 1: you took if you look at Washington State, do you
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say that some is definitely fair
Speaker 1: to say that some wolds are coming out of Canada
Speaker 1: and would becoming regardless of the Yellowstone work from the nineties.
Speaker 1: But is it fair to say that some are coming
Speaker 1: from the reintroduction work that happened in Yellowstone in the nineties,
Speaker 1: from them going into Idaho and then flowing over into Washington. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this has raised questions about what might be
Speaker 1: happening to um our ungulate populations. There's a big mule
Speaker 1: deer heard in the Cascades in the Menhou Valley where
Speaker 1: I live. Um and so that's one of the steady areas.
Speaker 1: They're also looking at possible cougar wolf interactions, other interactions
Speaker 1: with other like what happens when a wolf and a
Speaker 1: cougar get together? Yeah, what happens when they're sharing the landscape? Um?
Speaker 1: And then over there's another study area over in the
Speaker 1: northeast area, and there they've got a lot more white
Speaker 1: tail and elk, and so they're looking at interactions with
Speaker 1: with um white tail and elk, and then also with
Speaker 1: cougars and wolves over there and another smaller carnivores too.
Speaker 1: But to do all this, these animals need collars on.
Speaker 1: So UM. Anyway back to what I did this winner,
Speaker 1: I helped put collars on cougars and then we did
Speaker 1: a deer capture effort so UM. So that was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. And then over the summer. Right now,
Speaker 1: how how is she? How you put them on? There?
Speaker 1: This is a good time for that. On what how
Speaker 1: you got the collars on the wolves and the cougars.
Speaker 1: The wolves already a lot of them already had have
Speaker 1: callers on. The state does a continual monitoring, so the
Speaker 1: state's putting collars on. There was also some callers left
Speaker 1: over from a project I was on a while ago
Speaker 1: out of Washington State University UM looking at wolf predation UM,
Speaker 1: and so there were already some callers on from that
Speaker 1: project as well. So the wolves were that's kind of
Speaker 1: an ongoing thing. UM. The cougars UM. A woman out
Speaker 1: of University of Washington. A PhD student is heading that
Speaker 1: up and she's um working in both study areas, and
Speaker 1: there's houndsmen in both study areas. Actually Bart George is
Speaker 1: the one from the northeast with that guy. Well, I
Speaker 1: haven't um, well, no that's not true. Worked with him
Speaker 1: on the deer captures. But all right, I'll tell him
Speaker 1: you got you got a problem with him anyway, houndsmen
Speaker 1: that were incredible and their dogs that were really incredible
Speaker 1: to work with. Um. So they we'd just go out
Speaker 1: when there was um, you know, it was all snowy.
Speaker 1: So you're using this snow tracking snowmobiling around looking for
Speaker 1: for cougar tracks. And then and um, if you find
Speaker 1: cougar tracks that seem fresh, they load the dogs up.
Speaker 1: They had these cool little trailers stowmobile trailers to pull
Speaker 1: the dogs out there and set the dogs on them.
Speaker 1: And they would just work and and find those cats
Speaker 1: and tree them and then set up nets around the
Speaker 1: tree and and dart. They can really to catch it
Speaker 1: because they don't want it to get hurt falling out right,
Speaker 1: So you can set up these huge nets. Well net
Speaker 1: isn't quite the right word. It's like a big canvas
Speaker 1: thing and it's um, it's two of them, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's around the circumference of the tree. And then
Speaker 1: you stretch it out. It's probably a I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen foot diameter. You've got a clear a
Speaker 1: lot of brush for you string this net, probably if
Speaker 1: there's brushing the way. Yeah, and then then you're pulling
Speaker 1: it out and tying it off the trees um and
Speaker 1: you're trying to guess, you know, where where it might
Speaker 1: fall and and block any dangerous things like rocks stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah. So anyway, the idea is that the
Speaker 1: cougar falls into the net as it falls. But if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, if it gets hung up, then um, the
Speaker 1: w df W biologist who was heading up the capture
Speaker 1: would put on climbing hooks, climb up there and and
Speaker 1: lower the cat down. So but usually it seems like
Speaker 1: they fell out. That's easy from there. No, when you
Speaker 1: hit the cougar with the tranquilizes are dark, how long
Speaker 1: has it take before he dozes off? As long as
Speaker 1: it was a good hitt and it got a good
Speaker 1: dose and it got enough I don't know, maybe ten minutes,
Speaker 1: ten fifteen minutes, and this whole time the dogs are
Speaker 1: just going nuts and you got to restrain those dogs.
Speaker 1: He'll tear it at you to restrain them. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that done by like a rifle? Yeah, tranquilizes a gun,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Um and then the um So for capturing
Speaker 1: mule deer, that was actually really fun. And one of
Speaker 1: the techniques for catching deer is to set up on
Speaker 1: their winter range huge um nets, so hundreds of feet
Speaker 1: of nets, um, and you set them up in topography
Speaker 1: that might sort of funnel them towards your nets. And
Speaker 1: then um people hide in snow forts or whatever little
Speaker 1: fort they can make amongst these nets are kind of
Speaker 1: set up in in in rows and in various places,
Speaker 1: so his hiding. Meanwhile, I gotta understand the nets are
Speaker 1: laid flat. No, No, they're standing up there probably I
Speaker 1: don't know, ten feet tall and maybe strung together, so
Speaker 1: they might be a couple hundred feet. Why they're like
Speaker 1: if you had drift drift nets or something, so you
Speaker 1: might have um, sort of layers of them like a
Speaker 1: like a stadium going down a drawer or something. So
Speaker 1: you're hiding amongst the nets snow fort, maybe a white
Speaker 1: sheet over your head or whatever, and um, meanwhile there
Speaker 1: are helicopters or a helicopter driving around and they they
Speaker 1: pick up deer and sort of slowly gently pushed them
Speaker 1: towards the nets and the helicopters going and you're in
Speaker 1: your fort and you hear the helicopter and your heart
Speaker 1: starts beating really fast, and all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: deer just running right at you. They run into the
Speaker 1: nets and you had big giant box. They avoided that.
Speaker 1: They avoided that. It was winter so they didn't have
Speaker 1: their antlers. But um, we were just coloring doughs like
Speaker 1: you just wanted the dosh. Um. They leap into the net,
Speaker 1: they get stuck, You hop out of your fort and
Speaker 1: um spoon them basically. So you you run up and
Speaker 1: you start spooning them. Yeah, you straining up, big spoon,
Speaker 1: big spoon, um, and I mean you're latching yourself onto
Speaker 1: the back of the deer. Yeah. So they're they're probably
Speaker 1: kind of down on the ground, you know, tang in
Speaker 1: the net, and you come behind them. You don't approach
Speaker 1: from the front, right right, you don't want to get clovered.
Speaker 1: You come from behind and sort of just give them
Speaker 1: a big spoon hug thing, uh with your legs as well,
Speaker 1: and you want I learned the hard way. You want
Speaker 1: your your weight towards the back, um, because otherways they
Speaker 1: can get their back feet under them again and they
Speaker 1: can buck you. But um it actually I'm making it
Speaker 1: sound harder than it was. No, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think they No, I don't get that sense. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like it's a strong animal. It's a strong animal.
Speaker 1: How how hung up in the fence are they? They
Speaker 1: can get pretty hung up. So you so you spoon them,
Speaker 1: you've got them, You're you're grabbing their their legs so
Speaker 1: that they're not kicking once you've got it restrained people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. Yeah, yeah, just sort
Speaker 1: of depending on the deer and how worked up they were,
Speaker 1: I guess. So do you have your face just like
Speaker 1: really tucked into the side of like the neck so
Speaker 1: you're not yeah, or kind of in the shoulders so
Speaker 1: you're not getting headbutted. Yeah, and so you're just you're
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's like extremely cuddly with with this deer.
Speaker 1: How hook in one in one set where we were
Speaker 1: we were, um, they were pulling in small groups of
Speaker 1: maybe four four or five deer. Um. But we had
Speaker 1: a lot of people and so dar it hit the nets.
Speaker 1: Designated tacklers like myself, that was my job tackle the deer.
Speaker 1: Then other biologists come put a face cloth on or
Speaker 1: not like an I cover. They just chill right out.
Speaker 1: Then right, they chill right out. And if they aren't
Speaker 1: getting calm, and you know, they're monitoring their vitals that
Speaker 1: their vitals seem a little higher or whatever, they can
Speaker 1: be tranquilized to just help ease them through that where
Speaker 1: your goals are not tranquiliz them. Um, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: fast recovery if you don't, you know, because then they're
Speaker 1: just going to jump up and hop away. It's pretty
Speaker 1: fast recovery even with this particular drug. But um, it
Speaker 1: was pretty easy to just restrain them really quick, slap
Speaker 1: a collar on, take some measurements, and then they just
Speaker 1: go on their way. And what's their attitude when they
Speaker 1: jumped back up again? M hmm, bewildered. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It looked like a little like whoa yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but then they quickly pull it together and get out
Speaker 1: of town. Ye exactly. Yeah. Have has anybody have any
Speaker 1: of that? Have you guys been checking on any interactions
Speaker 1: yet there's it too soon. Um. I'm not really a
Speaker 1: part of that project right now, so I'm not completely
Speaker 1: up to date. But you're just you were part of
Speaker 1: the collaring but not part of the monitoring. So um.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, basically so they as of the end of
Speaker 1: this summer, none of them had died from anything. My
Speaker 1: husband actually almost hit one in his giant work truck,
Speaker 1: but almost one, yeah, exactly. Um, but otherwise as of
Speaker 1: the end of the summer, they were doing Okay, I
Speaker 1: talked about this before. They did a big collaring study
Speaker 1: one time, um up near Juno, and they had a
Speaker 1: collard moose I believe it is a moose, not a caribou.
Speaker 1: A collared moose fell into a crevass. It was scavenged
Speaker 1: by a collard grizzly that fell into the crevasse and
Speaker 1: died too. And then those carcasses were scavenged by a
Speaker 1: collared wolverine. That's lots of collars, lots of stuff with
Speaker 1: collars commingling. Yeah, that's very cool. That's kind of stuff
Speaker 1: you'll be looking for the study. Yeah, but are there
Speaker 1: issues in coloring these deer in because you're you're picking
Speaker 1: them up and really like family groups. Right. Well there, Um,
Speaker 1: it's on their winter range, so they're pretty dense on
Speaker 1: the range anyway. But that was one of the reasons
Speaker 1: they were bringing in small groups. They pick off a
Speaker 1: couple from a group because we didn't want to get
Speaker 1: a bunch of callers in a group that's hanging out.
Speaker 1: I had this very I've changed the story slightly because
Speaker 1: I don't want to give away information to anybody, but
Speaker 1: who were having a very hard mule deer season in
Speaker 1: Idaho and we all, yeah, and pure curiosity. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: a bunch of biologists and uh. A friend of mine
Speaker 1: had called and the information that he got was, there
Speaker 1: are only four color deer left in your unit. I
Speaker 1: went out the next day and found three colored here
Speaker 1: in one group. I was like, huh, what are the
Speaker 1: odds of that? That's like a thing doing this poorly
Speaker 1: because I found all three in one spot at the
Speaker 1: exact same time. But Carmen can speak to this better
Speaker 1: than I can. But that's, you know, the survey strategy
Speaker 1: called mark and recapture. We'll be like, let's say you
Speaker 1: in Karmen craping where I'm wrong or add color to
Speaker 1: this after I exp playing my understanding of mark and recrapture.
Speaker 1: But let's say you have a lake and you're like,
Speaker 1: how many while I are in here anyway, okay, and
Speaker 1: you're going pull the scene through the thing and catch
Speaker 1: a hunter walleye and put a tag in each walleye,
Speaker 1: and then over the course of the weekend, you know,
Speaker 1: guys catch three hundred fish, including ninety walleye with a
Speaker 1: tag in them. You'd be like, I have a pretty
Speaker 1: good sense of how many wallye. Or in this lake
Speaker 1: where we're catching in a sample size of three hund
Speaker 1: we've got the collared ones. Or imagine you you tag
Speaker 1: a hundred walleye and then people fish for three years
Speaker 1: and pull hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of wally out
Speaker 1: of the lake and no one ever finds one of
Speaker 1: the tag in it. They're like, man, this shipload a
Speaker 1: wall in this lake. Sure. So if you know there's
Speaker 1: in the whole unit, right, there's four deer left with
Speaker 1: collars and you go find three, I'd be like, amy
Speaker 1: deer in this unit, yes, which was based on is
Speaker 1: the case? How's that? Was that a good job? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good description of that. The only thing I
Speaker 1: was going to say is that it might not have
Speaker 1: been a Mark re capture that. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of just thinking along the lines of migration corridor. Um,
Speaker 1: how these deer moving. Not all the deer moved from
Speaker 1: one spot through one area to the next spot. So
Speaker 1: I was like, it seems odd to me that of
Speaker 1: the colored deer left are in this very small little
Speaker 1: hillside that I picked out. I want to clear, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean that. I don't want you think I'm a dumbass.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that as Mark catcher. I just meant
Speaker 1: like as a way to say, like if I knew
Speaker 1: there was four right, yeah, no, yeah, I get what
Speaker 1: you're saying. I don't think you're dumb. I totally follow
Speaker 1: that made total sense. I think this is just a
Speaker 1: different situation. In my mind, it was probably a different question.
Speaker 1: Who knows what the question was that they were putting
Speaker 1: callers out there for. But so, no, they weren't doing
Speaker 1: a bad job. I don't know. So because I'm like
Speaker 1: trying to follow your career now, um, as a as
Speaker 1: a budding is not the right word, as an up
Speaker 1: and coming field biologist. You're right, now, not like you're
Speaker 1: not what are you doing right this second? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you're right right the second, but where are you?
Speaker 1: What are you doing right now? Right now? So? Well,
Speaker 1: are you going to be working on another project? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I have another one coming up right now. I'm working
Speaker 1: as a baker making coffees for people. And when's your
Speaker 1: next project? Come up? In January? Won't be and that's
Speaker 1: gonna be another dear, dear thing. I've been doing a
Speaker 1: lot of deer things lately. So over the summer I
Speaker 1: was doing for the same Predator Prey Project UM coordinating
Speaker 1: the capture season for fawns, putting college on fawnds over
Speaker 1: the northeast part of the state as a part of
Speaker 1: this to see how what UM fawon survival rate is
Speaker 1: over there as a part of this bigger picture predator
Speaker 1: Prey project. So did that and then um, yeah, nothing
Speaker 1: was was starting up and in the area that I
Speaker 1: live right after that, So I've been just working at bakery,
Speaker 1: which is great place to be for the fall, and
Speaker 1: and then next doing another deer capture project totally different.
Speaker 1: This is with UM Department of Transportation because the stretch
Speaker 1: of highway that goes through the Mahow Valley apparently has
Speaker 1: one of the highest rates of road kill deer in
Speaker 1: the state. So going to be callering deer there and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if there are certain habitat variables
Speaker 1: along stretches of highways where or of that highway where
Speaker 1: more deer are getting hit. So they're trying to understand
Speaker 1: if there's like some Yeah, it's a habitat study basically
Speaker 1: trying to see if we can link clues about the
Speaker 1: habitat to hire collision rates on the road. So it'll
Speaker 1: be a state level project. It's just in the Madhouse.
Speaker 1: So if you but I'm saying it's conducted by the state. No,
Speaker 1: this is Washington State University and Department of Transportation. So like,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen to you in the long Like what's
Speaker 1: gonna what will happen in the long run? As a
Speaker 1: biologist in the long run, I'm but you gotta move. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I'm making it hard on myself
Speaker 1: because I love where I live, um and I've worked
Speaker 1: there for so long and on so many different projects
Speaker 1: that um, I've gotten pretty um attached to that landscape
Speaker 1: and just passionate about it, and that's the landscape in
Speaker 1: the wildlife that I want to be working with and
Speaker 1: and trying to improve. Um. My husband has a really
Speaker 1: good job there too, so that's a factor. I have
Speaker 1: family there, and so I'm I'm making If I wanted
Speaker 1: to just move around, which I did quite a bit
Speaker 1: when I was younger, Um, it would be a lot
Speaker 1: easier to to find a permanent job. But there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a tiny place. There's no no stoplights
Speaker 1: in this valley. It's it's small, so there's not there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of permanent jobs. Yeah, So I'm just
Speaker 1: biding my time until something does come up and just
Speaker 1: patching things together. So I'm kind of unusual. And then
Speaker 1: I'm almost thirty five and I'm I'm still patching things
Speaker 1: together doing field work. But on the other hand, that's
Speaker 1: really what I love to do, is is being out
Speaker 1: in the field and doing field work. And then what happened,
Speaker 1: because it's the other thing I wanted to check back
Speaker 1: with you in because I'm interested in your in your
Speaker 1: beginning to hunt. Mm hmm, Yeah, So what happened there
Speaker 1: this year? Yanni said that you said that you had
Speaker 1: what how did she say? What'd you say? Long? Argueous, challenging.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was it was a great hunting season, I
Speaker 1: mean for home real quick though, this is your what's
Speaker 1: hunting season? What? What? Isn't a word? But you get
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um
Speaker 1: tenth maybe I think so almost maybe I yeah. So
Speaker 1: I started hunting, Um, I started getting really intrigued and interested. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I was doing my undergrad at humblest State
Speaker 1: University in wildlife. Um, I didn't grow up in a
Speaker 1: hunting family. UM, did some fishing with my grandpa. Whatever.
Speaker 1: You then you're going to be a biologist? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always known. Yeah, I was in school for wildlife
Speaker 1: biology and I always wanted to do that. Um, So
Speaker 1: I was already, um, you know, grew up camping and
Speaker 1: backpacking in the out of doors and grew up in
Speaker 1: a rural area and so, UM, I knew I loved
Speaker 1: being outside and all that, and I was doing wildlife
Speaker 1: work and I, um, yeah, I don't know, it's just
Speaker 1: something about it got me and I wanted to start hunting,
Speaker 1: and so I just did it. And I took my
Speaker 1: hunter safety and where safety on Bambridge Island, Washington in
Speaker 1: the Sportsman clubhouse. Um did that and I went. My
Speaker 1: first hunting trip was with a family friend in northern
Speaker 1: California and the Trinity alps Um and he had been
Speaker 1: backup I'm getting not lost, but close to it. So
Speaker 1: you're going to school down in northern California, in big
Speaker 1: dope smoking country down to home. So you're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get into it. I'd like to get
Speaker 1: involved in this hunting. Yeah. So you wind up out
Speaker 1: on Bainbridge Island. Sorry, yeah, that is confusing safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the closest place. No, I'm I'm from Washington
Speaker 1: over in that area. That was. Yeah, So I was
Speaker 1: just it was a convenient time location to take it.
Speaker 1: You're living on on Bainbridge Island, but it was near
Speaker 1: to where my parents live. I was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: home on a break or something like that. So you're
Speaker 1: taking a ferry to go do hunter safety. There's a
Speaker 1: bridge ocase you're coming from the peninsula side. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just had a guest down from Bainbridge. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: writer John Mullam heard him. Just check them out. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: so I get it now. Yeah, so I was picture,
Speaker 1: you're taking a ferry from somewhere to go to hunter Safe,
Speaker 1: you're coming from You're coming from the Olympic Price actin anyway.
Speaker 1: So I got that and and yeah, I lined up
Speaker 1: this trip with UM in California. Back down in California
Speaker 1: with a family friend who had been packing. His family
Speaker 1: had been packing into this particular spot for I don't know,
Speaker 1: like fifty years or something. UM, and I was the
Speaker 1: first woman and I think the only one since to
Speaker 1: ever go to that to that him on the trip. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so it was. And that's not by design. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that's just by the fact the only ten percent of
Speaker 1: the hunters in America are women. Yeah, basically, No, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like no girls allowed, inevitable sign no no on
Speaker 1: the clubhouse door. No, Hey, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: signs on a lot of clubhouse doors. That's true. I
Speaker 1: was at a thing this year. I was at a
Speaker 1: thing this year where like no girls allowed for real
Speaker 1: hunting hunting thing. I'm leave it there. Sometimes you know
Speaker 1: signs that aren't there, but you can tell they're there,
Speaker 1: And there's sometimes just signs that are there. Now, not
Speaker 1: that I condone it's easier for me to understand that
Speaker 1: the signs not there, but it's understood. But it strikes
Speaker 1: me as really strange when the sign is there. That's
Speaker 1: pretty ballsy in this day and age. Do you think
Speaker 1: in a situation where women come and knocking that want
Speaker 1: please let me read the sign? That's weird. So what
Speaker 1: happens on this trip? First and last, first and last
Speaker 1: girl to ever come with these guys. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the first time they ever got skunked? Man? Really,
Speaker 1: did they draw a connection? No? But it has always
Speaker 1: haunted me, you know, because you're here. You know, back
Speaker 1: in the old days, no women allowed on the ships
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, So I've always worried that maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody might have How many people were on
Speaker 1: this trip. It was just my dad and um this
Speaker 1: family friends. So there are only three of us and
Speaker 1: we got packed in on mules, dropped off, dropped off
Speaker 1: and no black tails. So it was certainly near the coast,
Speaker 1: and um, it was awesome. I learned a ton and
Speaker 1: it was Um, it was a great trip. Did you
Speaker 1: see some critters? We saw some critters. Apparently it was
Speaker 1: it wasn't the curse of having a female there. It
Speaker 1: was a really dry year. Things were different, and there
Speaker 1: had also been an article in a hunting magazine about
Speaker 1: this spot that previously that it always a lot of
Speaker 1: good spots, right, and so there were a lot. A
Speaker 1: lot of people showed up, whereas normally they had the
Speaker 1: place themselves. So we saw some some deer and I
Speaker 1: had a blast and I was definitely hooked. Um didn't
Speaker 1: even get a crack. No shots there were shots fired.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't have any shots fired, but there
Speaker 1: was a miss early on in the trip. The family
Speaker 1: friend that that we were with, my dad wasn't hunting.
Speaker 1: He was just along for fun, and yeah, my dad
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't hunt, so your old man. It was like, hey,
Speaker 1: that sounds fun. I'll come along, but I'm not hunting.
Speaker 1: But you're hunting. And the family friend he takes a poke,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and You're like, I got to do more
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah. And so then I just started going
Speaker 1: alone um or with anybody I could drag along with
Speaker 1: me in Washington after that, because I was a Washington resident.
Speaker 1: So I went um around the plain area in the
Speaker 1: North Cascades and just dragged my ass up ridiculously. Steve
Speaker 1: mountains in horrible um vine maple with little to no guidance,
Speaker 1: little to no guidance. I mean, I'm I'm comfortable in
Speaker 1: the woods. That wasn't it. But as far it was
Speaker 1: like someone's like, hey, man, go here, sit on this right,
Speaker 1: a little perch and observe and you'll see, you know,
Speaker 1: around nine am watching right that kind of intel no
Speaker 1: no intel um. But it was a blast, and you
Speaker 1: know I learned, Okay, crawling through vine maple isn't. There
Speaker 1: were deer there, I saw them, But crawling through vine
Speaker 1: maple up these cliffs isn't. Can you describe fine maple?
Speaker 1: No vine maple is It's kind of like um slide alder,
Speaker 1: that same sort of idea, where it's just really dense
Speaker 1: branches that you're having to contour it through, and if
Speaker 1: you're going uphill, it's coming downhill and you're trying to
Speaker 1: get oh yeah, like the way all there's branches downhill
Speaker 1: and girls parallel to the ground. Yeah yeah, exactly. That's
Speaker 1: a real plant that's hard to fall in love with. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So same thing not on this the cocktail of ruby
Speaker 1: with the trin and these are not there's some nasty
Speaker 1: country in there, and then you have poison oak. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't get so I'm very lucky like that. Yeah special, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so so I won't get the timeline. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: establish the chronology of a of a hunter. Not just that,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna get into the chronology of a female hunter,
Speaker 1: the creation of a female hunter. You're comfortable with that,
Speaker 1: which might not even be a thing I'm gonna ask,
Speaker 1: but Year one, are you cool on all this right now?
Speaker 1: Tracking no questions whatsoever. I'm just listening, okay, just want
Speaker 1: to make sure. If something comes up, jump in. I'll
Speaker 1: try for sure. Ten years ago, you do the trip now.
Speaker 1: I don't expect you to have like a like a
Speaker 1: You haven't kept the hunting journal, have you? No? I haven't, man,
Speaker 1: I for years kept hunting, extremely detailed hunting journals. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating to go look at those now I quit. I
Speaker 1: wish I hadn't quit. Whether what happened, who I was with,
Speaker 1: where I was. Oh, man, it takes like a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to do it, but my god, I was
Speaker 1: I was not too long ago, reviewing hunting journals from
Speaker 1: a long time ago. And if I had done that,
Speaker 1: my whole life because a lot of times I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I don't know. I know this one
Speaker 1: spile was pretty sweet. I can't remember where it was
Speaker 1: and I lost my map, But there's honest to goodness
Speaker 1: places where we went and saw bears spring bear hunting
Speaker 1: that I cannot remember where it was that we saw him,
Speaker 1: but I know that was like, yeah, there's a slide
Speaker 1: up some creek and I just you know, you remember
Speaker 1: exactly everything, but just like would never be able to
Speaker 1: walk there again because we checked out a lot of
Speaker 1: trainages and it's become blurry and time. So now that
Speaker 1: you need that level of detail. But what happened to
Speaker 1: nine what happened nine years ago? So the year after
Speaker 1: the first one, is that what you mean? Um, that's
Speaker 1: when I went to playing and crawled around and fine, fine,
Speaker 1: maple saw some deer through the brain nothing happened, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they were does Yeah yeah, so didn't see any
Speaker 1: bucks and you're hunting by yourself. Um that those times
Speaker 1: I was with some other family friends that I drug
Speaker 1: along some um, some guys that were younger than me,
Speaker 1: and they'd never hunted either, And you weren't married at
Speaker 1: this point. So you weren't hunting with your husband at all.
Speaker 1: So then, um, I did that, I think for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, and then let's see what happened doing
Speaker 1: all those couple of years. Never gotten, never got anything.
Speaker 1: Were you seeing bucks? Uh? Nope, it just does. But
Speaker 1: see that's what I'm saying. Why are you still okay
Speaker 1: at that point? Okay, go ahead and finish what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I wasn't hunting effectively at that point. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was doing. I knew that I wanted to
Speaker 1: challenge myself and be having a really hard time, so
Speaker 1: I was doing that. But because I was crawling through
Speaker 1: vine maple going up these really steep areas, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no way to be quiet. You couldn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have good visibility. I was just bumbling around.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know if I walk long enough and
Speaker 1: hard enough eventually the exactly if I'm soaking wet? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And why but what kept you wanting to keep doing it?
Speaker 1: Because people like instant gratification? Yeah, Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was just determined and I I just love being
Speaker 1: out there. Um were you meantime saying to people a
Speaker 1: trailheads like, hey, do you see any deer on or
Speaker 1: you like running into all? Yeah, I was reading books.
Speaker 1: I was talking to anybody I could, friends that hunted
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And when you read books, and
Speaker 1: the books said find um like a good place where
Speaker 1: you can really observe the surrounding country. That didn't make
Speaker 1: sense because you're in thick stuff. Exactly creative, but it
Speaker 1: didn't match up like what you were seeing, right. But
Speaker 1: so then I was learning about still hunting, and so
Speaker 1: I was trying to do that too. Um. But I mean,
Speaker 1: and this is in Washington. It's a week. You've got
Speaker 1: a week and a lot of times I did work
Speaker 1: during the week. So even though it was a couple
Speaker 1: of seasons, it was like days a couple, you know,
Speaker 1: going on general firearm right, exactly, general firearm right, not
Speaker 1: ten years, you got two days a year. No, this
Speaker 1: was just in the beginning. This is we're just we're
Speaker 1: only in years nine, eight seven or thereabouts right now,
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't remember exactly. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing other animals, yeah, yeah, seeing those seeing you know,
Speaker 1: bears and whatever else is out there. Lions Nope, no, no,
Speaker 1: not in those years. Nope, not a very opy spot
Speaker 1: out there. Okay, what's wrong? Sure? Then what happened? Okay?
Speaker 1: So then, um, I decided to move to the Mahou
Speaker 1: Valley in the Cascades. Very different scene. It's open there,
Speaker 1: there's tons of meal deer comparatively, and so I, um,
Speaker 1: I bought my first truck and it was stick which
Speaker 1: I had never driven. So I I drove out there
Speaker 1: and learned stick on the way and pulled into a
Speaker 1: spot that I had breathed was a Toyota Tacoma. Nice rig. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's got that same rig. I'm thinking, is that
Speaker 1: a great or down grade? Joannie smaller? Okay, So there
Speaker 1: you are driving a stick shift Toyo Tacoma yea for
Speaker 1: the first time. And I pulled into this spot where
Speaker 1: I'm decided I was going to hunt. Um And how
Speaker 1: did you decide this? I looked at maps and then
Speaker 1: I breathe play scouted it and yeah, I just sort
Speaker 1: of it was a lot of just pulling out of
Speaker 1: the hat sort of. And still no one has said
Speaker 1: to you, hey, go do this, no mm hmm. I
Speaker 1: mean I I learned some from from this family friend
Speaker 1: on that first trip about you know sitting that. So
Speaker 1: his technique where we went was to you'd hike to
Speaker 1: these spots that he knew, you know, they'd consent, consistently
Speaker 1: gotten deer, and it'd be like a brushy, a little
Speaker 1: drawer or something, and we'd wait and then if that
Speaker 1: didn't work out, we'd go somewhere else. But meanwhile, how
Speaker 1: is it that they're not Meanwhile, why how is it
Speaker 1: there aren't guys saying like, come hunt with us. Steve
Speaker 1: is perplexed the universe hadn't offered you all some sort
Speaker 1: of guidance. Yeah. I also kind of had a thing
Speaker 1: where I really wanted to do it alone. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I could imagine, I could imagine that in a
Speaker 1: in a small mountain town where men tend to like
Speaker 1: outnumber women by a lot, Okay, that there'd be a
Speaker 1: lot of guys would be like, um, hey, let's go hunting.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean that as a euphemism. I mean
Speaker 1: there's be like like, oh, you you're like struggling to
Speaker 1: get into hunting. Come with us. You were rejecting those proposals.
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting those proposals, know, I mean I just
Speaker 1: so in the case of menhow I didn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've literally pulled right into the camping spot with all
Speaker 1: my all my stuff, and where you're getting funny looks
Speaker 1: like here's this lone woman out hunting, which is just
Speaker 1: you like, I'm sorry, just like it's not something not
Speaker 1: that it doesn't happen. It happens, but it's not something
Speaker 1: you typically see. You see a lot of groups of
Speaker 1: guys driving around on a truck Chester fried Chicken. That's
Speaker 1: the thing I see oftentimes. I don't oftentimes see I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm yet to see uh, just a loane
Speaker 1: female hunter or even like a group of That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I'm saying I haven't seen it, but I
Speaker 1: know that happens. I know the women right met and
Speaker 1: hung out with women who do do that. But I'm
Speaker 1: never out, No, it's rare and have I'm never like out.
Speaker 1: And I've seen some orange vest across the valley and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about how upsetting that is to me, but
Speaker 1: how it shouldn't be upstaying to me because we're all
Speaker 1: in this brotherhood together. And then I decided to glass
Speaker 1: them up through my spot and scope and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a woman that never happens. Damn sure what it is?
Speaker 1: The guy? I uh, I think that I'm out in
Speaker 1: the woods alone a lot for work, and so you
Speaker 1: don't feel and look out of place. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I look like, but I do comments. I get
Speaker 1: a lot of well you do get comments. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have people saying telling me to be careful, you know,
Speaker 1: if you run into somebody or people make comments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I how do you reply to those comments? Well, nicely,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't. It is irksome. It is. I find
Speaker 1: it irksome. Um, the assumption that I need to be
Speaker 1: cautioned or checked in with because I'm out there alone.
Speaker 1: I wish it was different. I wish that nobody thought
Speaker 1: I had a second thought about it, which I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously that's wishful thinking because people are going to have
Speaker 1: a second thoughts. They don't see it very often. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of this this self perpetuating cycle of that's
Speaker 1: a good way important. Yeah, people saying, you know, be
Speaker 1: careful out there, and so then two women and so
Speaker 1: then women being fearful to be out there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I understand that because it's like you want to be
Speaker 1: you want to think like why, uh, why do you
Speaker 1: have to act like it's unusual, and some old guy
Speaker 1: is gonna be like, because it is right. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that you want me to act like it's normal. But
Speaker 1: that's not normal. So like we can all pretend, or
Speaker 1: I can tell you that I hope you're careful right well,
Speaker 1: or you could say, you know, right, exactly exactly. It's
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of you can make the metaphor
Speaker 1: um sort of similar. I often when I pick up
Speaker 1: a pocket knife, I am told, don't hurt yourself. You yes,
Speaker 1: how about when you rassling deer? Not so much. But
Speaker 1: but the part is when I pick up a kitchen knife,
Speaker 1: nobody ever says that, you know, And so it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's this unconscious you know, it comes from a
Speaker 1: good place. I don't want you to get hurt, but
Speaker 1: I also I don't need somebody to tell me when
Speaker 1: I pick up a pocket knife to be careful. I know,
Speaker 1: it's sure. Yeah. Now, like everyone at this table besides you,
Speaker 1: comes from a place of incredible privilege in this society,
Speaker 1: being like you know, white men have like a track
Speaker 1: record of being in charge of stuff around hereabouts, right,
Speaker 1: So these sorts of things when I hear about it,
Speaker 1: like I felt like I have this knee your thing
Speaker 1: to want to defend the people Like oh, he means,
Speaker 1: well yeah, but how do you deal? Like when you
Speaker 1: deal with something like that, you recognize you're like, come on, dude,
Speaker 1: really like I need to be careful. Maybe you'll be
Speaker 1: careful because you look like you've already have a heart
Speaker 1: attack or whatever. You're thinking, like do you are you?
Speaker 1: Do you get mad at the guy or you just
Speaker 1: sort of get this like perturbed at how culture is.
Speaker 1: I get perturbed about how culture is. It depends also
Speaker 1: on how blatant something is. I mean, I think women
Speaker 1: probably in general are fairly used to or maybe don't
Speaker 1: even notice comments like that. But um, maybe because I
Speaker 1: work in wildlife biology and specifically oftentimes with carnivores and
Speaker 1: and also hunting, I'm often in an environment that's traditionally
Speaker 1: male dominated. Um and so um, I am around comments
Speaker 1: like that more maybe, And I'm also aware of them
Speaker 1: because i'm sort of constantly, um fighting those stereotypes and
Speaker 1: those assumptions that people might be making about me. Right,
Speaker 1: It's easy to walk into like walk into a room
Speaker 1: with another biologist, and if he's male, people assume that
Speaker 1: he's a biologist and say, you know, something signs you
Speaker 1: to him, maybe, but don't assume that I'm a biologist.
Speaker 1: Have you been pairing any vegetables lately? Essentially, it is culture,
Speaker 1: because I said, I got my own little story interject here.
Speaker 1: I used to faith feel that same when I'd be
Speaker 1: like in a grocery store, when I will stay at
Speaker 1: home dad doing the grocery shopping, and I'd have my
Speaker 1: eight months old with me, you know, and people would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, do you know where your mother and
Speaker 1: your wife is. You're out here alone in the world
Speaker 1: with this child. You know. I'm like, come on, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just yeah, I got out of control. Man. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cook dinner tonight too. But yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah. I don't want to make it sound like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just I think it is just a it's
Speaker 1: a culture thing. The difference is the difference is and
Speaker 1: this is like something that we're talking about a lot
Speaker 1: in our culture right now. There's a difference between stereotyping
Speaker 1: that has teeth in stereotyping that doesn't have teeth in
Speaker 1: some directions that's toothed damaging in some directions, it's just
Speaker 1: like weird and annoying, right, and in some directions, like
Speaker 1: with women, has got a whole nasty history too that
Speaker 1: goes along with it. But I mean, being stereotyped into
Speaker 1: either gender role is isn't irksome? So yeah? But um
Speaker 1: so now do you have you ever had you ever
Speaker 1: been out during these early years of going out hunting?
Speaker 1: Did you ever have guys that were just outright scamming
Speaker 1: on you? No? But I didn't. I mean I wasn't
Speaker 1: interacting with a lot of people either. I was trying
Speaker 1: to get away from people. And you never had guys
Speaker 1: make you uncomfortable out in the woods, No, in trailhead
Speaker 1: or whatever. It was a cute little lady like you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're rolling that into the annoying Yeah, like that's
Speaker 1: the annoying not threatening type. Yeah. Um, so let's continue
Speaker 1: out with the chronology. Okay, I'm gonna return to this
Speaker 1: and return to aspects of this, not that aspect, but
Speaker 1: other aspects of of the female hunter experience. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: sol quick question, do you have a lot of pink
Speaker 1: stuff on all your stuff? I have zero pink stuff? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um m hm um I think in your seven,
Speaker 1: I did eight, and what happened, well, but we missed.
Speaker 1: My first big solo trip was when I first letter that.
Speaker 1: Let's back up, because this was where I learned. I
Speaker 1: learned a lot um And yeah, yeah, So I pulled
Speaker 1: into the Manhoue Valley. I'm moving here, learning stick um,
Speaker 1: starting a new life here. Um. But what was it
Speaker 1: for work? It was because my sister had just moved there.
Speaker 1: She was about to have a baby. UM. I knew
Speaker 1: I loved the area, and I knew UM I liked
Speaker 1: working in um high mountain areas with carnivores, and it's
Speaker 1: a really rich environment there with um, you know, links
Speaker 1: and wolverines and bears and everything else. So so just
Speaker 1: you're like making a kind of move to a greener pastures,
Speaker 1: but not some overwhelming, like specific thing. You're chasing it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wanted I'd been traveling around doing different field
Speaker 1: projects all over the country, and I was starting which
Speaker 1: I loved, but I was starting to want a community
Speaker 1: and a sort of set down't I guess, so I
Speaker 1: just chose that spot. Um. But anyway, this was day
Speaker 1: one and I pulled into this place where I wanted
Speaker 1: to camp and I spent the next um eight days
Speaker 1: hunting every day um by myself and yeah, I'd hyped
Speaker 1: back to my truck every day. UM. And it was incredible.
Speaker 1: I got to know this mountain really well and I
Speaker 1: was seeing I should have shot probably five bucks that trip. Um.
Speaker 1: I had opportunities. The stumbling block there was just UM,
Speaker 1: I was really worried about UM. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: was like I wasn't good yet at no, because it's
Speaker 1: a three point minimum and I, um, I wasn't good yet.
Speaker 1: A quickly figuring that out, which sounds weird three times, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it had to be a Michigan six or a
Speaker 1: Western three point. Well it could be. It could only
Speaker 1: have one antler doesn't even missues as long as one
Speaker 1: antler has three points. So um. But I had some
Speaker 1: incredible moments with Bucks and it was a blast. So
Speaker 1: you'd see the book and you'd be like there'd be
Speaker 1: a pause or you just wanted to really extra careful.
Speaker 1: Sure there was no surprises when he got over there, right.
Speaker 1: I also had real shitty optics And is this still
Speaker 1: really thick country? Um? No, no more, it's more open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the particular mountain I was on was a little thicker,
Speaker 1: but in general was more open. Yeah, more the what
Speaker 1: do you mean, what are the optics? I don't know,
Speaker 1: off brand binoculars. Yeah, but things that I know now,
Speaker 1: like okay, if I saw that animal again with my binoculars,
Speaker 1: now I would know exactly what it was, that it
Speaker 1: was legal. Um, in hindsight, you feel like there are
Speaker 1: some legal box Oh yeah, oh absolutely, I know, like
Speaker 1: I can picture the racket, yeah, exact claim. Um. And
Speaker 1: also just I don't know that those those It probably
Speaker 1: is something that people who have brought up hunting don't
Speaker 1: think about. But for me, the being out there was
Speaker 1: not what was hard. Figuring out just sort of smart
Speaker 1: ways to hunt was something I had learned in the
Speaker 1: years before that. But then those final moments between getting
Speaker 1: something in your sights and pulling the trigger was for me. Um,
Speaker 1: that was the stumbling block, just all the little decisions
Speaker 1: and I had a lot of you know, fears and
Speaker 1: anxieties about what could go wrong, and so that was
Speaker 1: a stumbling block. But if I hadn't been alone, maybe
Speaker 1: I probably would have gotten a deer because I might
Speaker 1: have had somebody to say, hey, go for it. Um.
Speaker 1: But I'm also glad that I did that trip by myself.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't screw up shooting illegal block right yep, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, as a guide, we'd see that a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, people have a real easy time getting kind
Speaker 1: of up until that moment and then when it's just
Speaker 1: like you'd be like, yeah, peek over that hill and
Speaker 1: kill that deer or kill that bull, they kind of
Speaker 1: look at you like, uh, what what now? You know,
Speaker 1: what do you mean is like pick over that hill
Speaker 1: and kill that bull? And you're like, well, take about
Speaker 1: four steps and really slowly with your gun already up,
Speaker 1: you know, like no one you know, and there's like
Speaker 1: you're saying, there's like a thousand little things going through
Speaker 1: your head, and it's, uh, we're kind of coined a
Speaker 1: term for it, right, Like just those last few moments
Speaker 1: of like when you really go into like a kind
Speaker 1: of a kill mode, you know, and everything else just
Speaker 1: disappears and you're like, now it's going down. Some people
Speaker 1: lack that decisiveness. Yeah, I was just too caught up
Speaker 1: in my anxiety about was this going to be exactly right?
Speaker 1: Was it going to go exactly right? So we were
Speaker 1: one time. Uh, you know, there's a similar restriction with
Speaker 1: doll sheep where rather than accounting three points, there's like
Speaker 1: things that make a doll sheep legal or not legal,
Speaker 1: like that when viewed from the side, their horn describes
Speaker 1: the three sixty degree circle, or that both of the
Speaker 1: land lamb tips, that each lamb tip is completely broken off,
Speaker 1: or that it has seven annually seven growth rings. So
Speaker 1: if they're not obviously full curl, it gets really difficult.
Speaker 1: Then we were hunting with a guy at one time
Speaker 1: where we observed one, so that's a legal ram, and
Speaker 1: he stalked it and got up into range and we
Speaker 1: never heard, you know, the block, and he comes back,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's legal. Yeah, And then he had
Speaker 1: he left early, and then we went and refound it
Speaker 1: and shot at legal ram. It was like, is that
Speaker 1: yea doubt, But people that have that doubt are It's
Speaker 1: good to have that kind of doubt because the opposite
Speaker 1: right that can get you in just is like the
Speaker 1: trigger happy Yeah yeah, feller right, So I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't get a deer um anyway, started living in But
Speaker 1: you kept at it for eight days? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: kept at it. It was blast. I mean just being
Speaker 1: out there and actually seeing that many deer compared to
Speaker 1: the years before where I hadn't been. That was exciting enough.
Speaker 1: How many miles are you straying from your truck? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wasn't. I wasn't keeping track, but I
Speaker 1: mean I'd be out all all day, hiking around, running
Speaker 1: into other hunters a little bit, not much. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a little good spot. Um. I've been there since and Nope,
Speaker 1: I've never seen I haven't spent that much time, but
Speaker 1: I have never seen that as many deer as I
Speaker 1: did that year. Um. Yeah. So I started living and
Speaker 1: working in the Mahaw Valley and um, just hunting every year,
Speaker 1: just you know, it's a short season. And I met
Speaker 1: my husband, he hunts, and so we started hunting hunting together. Um,
Speaker 1: which was which is it's great? I love Um I
Speaker 1: was let's see, it was the first winner that I
Speaker 1: moved there. And so I was, um, helping with the
Speaker 1: links trapping effort and also working at a bakery and
Speaker 1: making coffee. And he is alignment and his his crew
Speaker 1: was working in the area at that area of the
Speaker 1: valley where the bakery was, and yeah, came into the
Speaker 1: coffee shop. Yeah, and weally like, Um, was it quickly
Speaker 1: established that he liked to hunt and you'd like to hunt? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very quickly. Yeah. Um. Anyway, we started hunting together, which
Speaker 1: was a whole nother journey. Um, just for me, adjusting
Speaker 1: to hunting with somebody else really was a big part
Speaker 1: of it, um, like in a negative way. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I liked hunting alone. I do like hunting alone. UM,
Speaker 1: but I also like hunting with other people. It was
Speaker 1: just meshing our our styles and um and yeah, getting
Speaker 1: used to consistently hunting with somebody else. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know, now we're married and we've been together
Speaker 1: for a long time, and you know, when we go
Speaker 1: on hunting trips, you might you're not always comfortable. You're tired,
Speaker 1: you're cold, you're hungry, and so when you're with somebody
Speaker 1: who you don't have to be on your best behavior with, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can get squabbly and stuff. But we're
Speaker 1: it's getting more and more um, harmonious, and it's always
Speaker 1: been been great to hunt with him. It's um, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool to do that with with somebody that I'm
Speaker 1: not close with. So um but anyway, back to the
Speaker 1: hunting journey. So we just started hunting together and finally
Speaker 1: got my my first buck and we were hunting together
Speaker 1: and it was it was it was perfect. It was
Speaker 1: a great spot in stock and um yeah, so that
Speaker 1: was a great experience. And then and so what happened
Speaker 1: with that? Like, how do you feel about that? Then?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like finally it felt like finally yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it felt really satisfying. And and it wasn't a
Speaker 1: huge buck or anything. I was really proud. Did you
Speaker 1: get up the way you wanted to get it? Like,
Speaker 1: were you still kind of doing it on your own? No,
Speaker 1: we were together, but we were working together, so well
Speaker 1: it felt it felt really good. We spotted the buck
Speaker 1: ways away and it was maybe an hour of stocking
Speaker 1: and then and I was out in front and peeked
Speaker 1: over this rock and the buck was bedded down maybe
Speaker 1: forty yards for me, So it was so it was
Speaker 1: it was perfect. Now did you, uh, what was your
Speaker 1: emotional response? Were there outward manifestations of emotion? Probably? I
Speaker 1: think that, um, I mean, you know, classic sort of
Speaker 1: things that you would see. Was it sadness or was
Speaker 1: it like real jumping up and down happy? It was? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't. I wasn't jumping up and down, but it
Speaker 1: was happy, it was relief. There might have been a
Speaker 1: tear or two. Is that what you're getting at, because
Speaker 1: I've yeah, I've had the good fortune to hunt with
Speaker 1: quite a few women over the years, and um, there's
Speaker 1: a And it's hard to understand. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's that it's a freer if it's like a freer
Speaker 1: sort of expression, or if it's like some kind of
Speaker 1: innate thing or trained thing. But I find the emotional response,
Speaker 1: based on admittedly small sample size, I find that the
Speaker 1: emotional response is often different. Yeah, well, okay, what about
Speaker 1: this though laid on me? Could that be more that
Speaker 1: these are people who are experiencing their first steer kill
Speaker 1: later in life? I think? So that's what. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Because the cases I'm thinking of our people
Speaker 1: being introduced to hunting as adults, whereas I'm hunting with
Speaker 1: a lot of guys who hunted their whole life and
Speaker 1: all the shock has worn off. The surprise is not
Speaker 1: the shock. But you know what I'm saying, All they're like,
Speaker 1: holy sh it, Yeah, I've seen plenty of man tears
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, I have since then. Should I was
Speaker 1: on the verge this year with my mule there. God
Speaker 1: is telling me too. You know it's funny. Who was
Speaker 1: just telling me? They cried and they got something I've
Speaker 1: seen you told me. Damn your cry. Sorry, go ahead,
Speaker 1: that's what you think is going on. I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean for me, it wasn't um sadness. It was
Speaker 1: just there has been so much build up and then
Speaker 1: there was the adrenaline going and I cry easily, anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't, I was not correcting. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of tears. I think it was just kind of the
Speaker 1: release of all the all the build up to that moment.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw Yann he's uh Yan his dad Yeahan,
Speaker 1: his dad shed a tear when when he got his
Speaker 1: moves all right, because you got to what I was insane.
Speaker 1: But I'm just wondering. I'm like, you were there because
Speaker 1: when people any picture sign your hunting trip, I'm like,
Speaker 1: we took a hunting show on our right. I see everything.
Speaker 1: I got an eye in the sky when I review footage,
Speaker 1: and yeah, Yan, his dad was moved emotionally. Um so sure,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna give up though, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give up on the idea that I think it's more common. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, let me be clear that I think it's
Speaker 1: a higher I'm not gonna give up on this idea
Speaker 1: that I think that that there's a higher likelihood. And
Speaker 1: then I could say, what what factors are at play?
Speaker 1: A higher likelihood that a female hunter will experience the emotions,
Speaker 1: not experienced them differently, but like, but the outward manifestations
Speaker 1: might be different, specifically, there might be tears. Mean, no,
Speaker 1: I think that a that there's a greater likelihood of
Speaker 1: of emotions beyond just hell yeah, yeah, yeah, Well okay,
Speaker 1: here's a little theory back to what we're talking about
Speaker 1: with gender stereotypes. It's more acceptable in women right in
Speaker 1: our society, less acceptable in our society. That's what That's
Speaker 1: what That's what I'm That's what I'm That's what I'm
Speaker 1: like getting at or wondering about. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's that it's that I see
Speaker 1: saying outward manifestations. Yeah, the feeling could be the same,
Speaker 1: and we only know about what happens when we're present.
Speaker 1: So whose principle is it just by observing something you
Speaker 1: change it Heidelberg Heidelberg principle. I don't know off the
Speaker 1: top of my head. He's talking about someone's uh, astronomy,
Speaker 1: not astrology, but astronomy. And there's this idea that by
Speaker 1: observing something, you change it. So it's not really that
Speaker 1: what that dude was tom about isn't really the same thing,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. What I'm saying is by observing
Speaker 1: in this interaction, you are changing it because you're a presence.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that I'm not postulating or I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that like, oh, woman experiences shooting a deer
Speaker 1: differently than man. It's just a guy might say. Of
Speaker 1: the ten things I'm feeling right now, I can tell
Speaker 1: you the one I'm not going to act on right
Speaker 1: because guys don't cry or guys don't act like they're conflicted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will act like I'm not conflicted and act like
Speaker 1: I'm not about to cry. I think the last time
Speaker 1: I had it, when I killed a big game animal.
Speaker 1: It was pure um like relief type of tears. It
Speaker 1: was like day five or six of the Haunt, and
Speaker 1: I've been just homping some serious hills and was worn
Speaker 1: out and just fatigued, probably hungry, lost like five pounds
Speaker 1: that week, and finally it's like standing over at dead
Speaker 1: elk and just like kind of like crying for no reason,
Speaker 1: and you're like it's just like the relief. You're like, finally,
Speaker 1: you know, I got it done. I've been just like pounding, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing.
Speaker 1: You know. That was part of it for me that
Speaker 1: year too, because I had been hunting on the weekends
Speaker 1: really hard, and then during the week I was working
Speaker 1: every day, so I'd get up and hunt out behind
Speaker 1: the house before work, go to work, which was hiking
Speaker 1: all day, going to um wolf kill sites, and then
Speaker 1: I come home and hunt more, and so I was
Speaker 1: just kind of worn out by that. When you're going
Speaker 1: to wolf kill sites and then having a tough time
Speaker 1: hunt we ever like, man, these wolves, these wolves have
Speaker 1: this dialed no because they actually don't really have it
Speaker 1: died now that I think their success rate is, it's
Speaker 1: not what people might think it was. And a lot
Speaker 1: of so going to wolf kill sites, you're going to
Speaker 1: um places where there's clusters, they've got callers on taking
Speaker 1: GPS points every two hours. So you're going to places
Speaker 1: that I have clusters of points. Yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: you know something died. You just know that something went
Speaker 1: on right, And so most of those places are betting
Speaker 1: sites or just whatever check right exactly. So that much
Speaker 1: time wolves have been hanging out. Oh it's awesome, and
Speaker 1: you're following around the same pack and so um yeah,
Speaker 1: you get to kind of know what what they're doing
Speaker 1: and what they're deal is. It's really they use the
Speaker 1: landscape and where their spots are and um and going
Speaker 1: to kill sites. It's just fun. It's really cool because
Speaker 1: you're you know, poking around trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what happened, who's been there scavenging where they actually scavenging
Speaker 1: there's um yeah, it's fun. It takes a lot of
Speaker 1: tracking skills, which I enjoyed doing something yeah, which you're
Speaker 1: probably developed. But I want to make sure you put
Speaker 1: this thing. I want to make sure you put this
Speaker 1: thing to bread because I've like, I feel like you
Speaker 1: don't like what I'm saying or getting at When I
Speaker 1: asked about the crying. Oh no, no, um no, I'm
Speaker 1: problem with it. I just um, I just knew that
Speaker 1: was probably where you're going with it. How did you
Speaker 1: know that's what I was going with it, because it's um,
Speaker 1: I knew it was probably expected that a woman would
Speaker 1: be more emotional and no, no, no, not you. But
Speaker 1: if you you fit into a bigger, a bigger pattern.
Speaker 1: Come on, yea, what isatterny carbon into a bigger pattern
Speaker 1: to have before you asked the question or it got
Speaker 1: to your point that you sort of could have just
Speaker 1: pulled a group of people, and then it's sort of
Speaker 1: been like, what's possibly like a question that we'll get
Speaker 1: to you know, shit, really, yeah, here I am. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and defend myself. You don't
Speaker 1: need to know. It's not just like it wrong. This
Speaker 1: is like this. Here's what how I picture this. This
Speaker 1: is where I get to um, where I get to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with the person I respect, whose opinions
Speaker 1: I respect, and I get to ask them all the
Speaker 1: things that guys wonder about women about hunting. Now I
Speaker 1: was gonna ask this next, I'm gonna ask it now.
Speaker 1: The reason being, and this is something that you and
Speaker 1: I have discussed at length. The honest we keep being told, right,
Speaker 1: but we keep being told in the media and the
Speaker 1: outdoor media that there is such a thing as the
Speaker 1: female hunter and the female perspective is needed in hunting,
Speaker 1: and which I agree with wholeheartedly. But Janice is always saying, like,
Speaker 1: but is it really How do we know that it
Speaker 1: is that there is such a thing. Maybe it's just hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's and there. And I want to like the
Speaker 1: second part because there in lies the issue. We're saying
Speaker 1: that it's no different. It should be no different, we
Speaker 1: should always treated as equals. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are very invested in this idea of enhancing, developing,
Speaker 1: bringing out the female perspective, which they tell us is
Speaker 1: no different. I'm just staying like, I have my own
Speaker 1: opinions about this. I'm saying like one might survey the
Speaker 1: cultural dialogue surrounding women in the outdoors and come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that, like, let me make sure I'm getting
Speaker 1: this right. The female perspective is important, but it's not different.
Speaker 1: And there's there's tension between those two ideas, but they
Speaker 1: live side by side like friends. I would say to
Speaker 1: that a lot of things, not that I have a
Speaker 1: problem with anything that you've just said, but I have thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't know. I'm just feeling like
Speaker 1: I need to defend the fact that that you felt
Speaker 1: like you were needing to defend yourself. No, I totally
Speaker 1: because I agree with you, because I've thought a lot
Speaker 1: about this obviously. Yeah, I knew you had because even
Speaker 1: ask that specific question, because and maybe I should have earlier,
Speaker 1: because I was just wondering, like, how do you spend
Speaker 1: time like sitting around in the woods when the hunting slow,
Speaker 1: thinking about this thing that we're now going to get
Speaker 1: Let's say what I damn sure haven't done, because I
Speaker 1: have never said all in the woods and being like
Speaker 1: as a man, I feel this right. Yeah, Well, what
Speaker 1: I've come to is if there is a special female
Speaker 1: perspective on hunting, I'm not really sure what that would be.
Speaker 1: I personally don't feel like I have a a special
Speaker 1: perspective on it. I feel like where we should be
Speaker 1: um what people mean when when they say that we
Speaker 1: should be equal. It doesn't have to do with the perspective,
Speaker 1: but in how women are represented and treated. I understand
Speaker 1: that's not the mysterious part to me. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear you talk about it. I completely understand that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think it's it's I don't know that anybody's
Speaker 1: trying to say, um, that women have this different perspective
Speaker 1: and it's important. No, no, yeah, but that that, but
Speaker 1: that it's the same at the same time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you can bring different things to the table,
Speaker 1: but where it needs to be equal is how you're
Speaker 1: treated at the table, if that makes any sense, right,
Speaker 1: So I, um, you know, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: treated in any differently when I'm out there. It would
Speaker 1: be nice to see equal representation in hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: if if it would be great too go on TV
Speaker 1: and and see as many women killing it out there
Speaker 1: and being inspired by that and being inspired, maybe not
Speaker 1: even consciously, but just seeing women doing that helps you
Speaker 1: to realize you can do it too. Um. And and
Speaker 1: just by the fact that there aren't as many women
Speaker 1: out there doing it, and that when people are talking
Speaker 1: about hunting, it's all talking about men predominantly. Um. It
Speaker 1: just every time kind of reinforces them the stereotype in
Speaker 1: everybody's brain. Women included that this isn't an activity for us,
Speaker 1: This isn't something that I could excel at. Can you
Speaker 1: think of four ORMs of describe for me the ways
Speaker 1: that you see female hunters represented or how they represent
Speaker 1: themselves in in media, like like, what are the what
Speaker 1: are the things that you see? Do you have you
Speaker 1: have categories of representations? Well, I don't watch a whole
Speaker 1: lot of TV or I don't look like hunting magazines.
Speaker 1: No I do. I watch a lot of YouTube hunting
Speaker 1: videos and then mostly men. But I, um, there was
Speaker 1: one I saw lately of a woman just out there
Speaker 1: hunting by herself, high country mule deer, and she was
Speaker 1: just it was really exciting and cool for me to see,
Speaker 1: to see that because it was that it was that
Speaker 1: it happened to be a woman out hunting, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the point of it exactly. Yeah, And so then
Speaker 1: you noticed it and it resonated with you. Yep, I
Speaker 1: noticed it. It resonated with me, and it um yeah,
Speaker 1: And she was just she was doing it alone and
Speaker 1: that was neat to see. If you're watching okay, let's
Speaker 1: let's say watching YouTube videos. If you're watching a YouTube
Speaker 1: video and you and you stumble across the video where
Speaker 1: the point of the video is to point out that
Speaker 1: here I am a woman out hunting. Does that resonate
Speaker 1: with you or do you not like to see it?
Speaker 1: Articulated No, I think it's it's great to articulate it
Speaker 1: because women are underrepresented. If you can, um, you know,
Speaker 1: bring attention to the few women that are doing it,
Speaker 1: I think that that's great. Yeah, it's the um it's
Speaker 1: just not seeing it as much and not being exposed
Speaker 1: to lots of women. It. It's not completely normalized, you know,
Speaker 1: and so that's why people have have a little double
Speaker 1: take when they see women in the wood. It's because
Speaker 1: it's not normalized. And it's it's back to that self
Speaker 1: perpetuating thing where it's not normalized for women to be
Speaker 1: out there. They're not you know, hearing stories about other
Speaker 1: you know, their mom or whatever going out there hunting.
Speaker 1: They're not seeing it on TV. They're walking into you know,
Speaker 1: hunting stores, and it's getting a lot better. But it
Speaker 1: used to be that the only camo for women was
Speaker 1: like bikinis and underwear, and so just seeing those little
Speaker 1: things daily, it just paints a bigger, maybe subconscious picture
Speaker 1: that this this isn't something that women do. Maybe they
Speaker 1: can't do it as well or whatever. But that to
Speaker 1: talk about camouflage underwear, Okay, there's there's I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, because it's like camouflage, is Fredericks of
Speaker 1: Hollywood still in business? I don't know's that type of
Speaker 1: First Light. You guys at First Light make camouflage men's underwear.
Speaker 1: We make camouflage women's underwear. To why because they are
Speaker 1: they are a camel line. I'm not gonna go find that.
Speaker 1: I just want to know because I don't know if
Speaker 1: I was dated when I it's very dated to point
Speaker 1: it out, but I just want to make sure I
Speaker 1: wasn't even so dated that it doesn't exist anymore. When
Speaker 1: it started out, you know, very small company. I want
Speaker 1: to interrupt my own and I want to go for it.
Speaker 1: Hold bear with me for a minute. This. I want
Speaker 1: to get back to this. But I just really need
Speaker 1: to This is a question I've had to. I need
Speaker 1: to pursue this for a moment. Sorry. So, I mean
Speaker 1: there are and we're at shot show. We'd be right
Speaker 1: across the way from Remember when we were in the
Speaker 1: corner it shot the booth right across from us with
Speaker 1: like the sexy camel Yeah, you know, like why do
Speaker 1: we have to be But okay, but when it started
Speaker 1: out for us, uh, you know, very small company and
Speaker 1: we have we would die Marino wool. You know the
Speaker 1: uh what's now a conifer not green black dry earth
Speaker 1: um and uh fusion right without really knowing what you're
Speaker 1: gonna make out of it. But you have to at
Speaker 1: least get to your m o Q, your minimum order quantity,
Speaker 1: just to get the stuff produced. So we got to
Speaker 1: this point where like, well, we gotta make everything in
Speaker 1: everything just to hit our m o Q. And that's
Speaker 1: how it started. But I was like, why the hell
Speaker 1: are we making camel boxers? The thing is they out
Speaker 1: sold the solid colors. Now who is buying them? Is
Speaker 1: it a dude buying them or is it? And I
Speaker 1: always said, you know, it's grandma buying like it likes
Speaker 1: camel needs new underwear exactly. But the thing is itself.
Speaker 1: So now it's it's there, dude, I had. So I
Speaker 1: had a pair of your camel boxers on. First off,
Speaker 1: I put him on, and my lovely wife pointed out
Speaker 1: that did not let that go on observed, uncommented on.
Speaker 1: She had to comment on her surprise, and we had
Speaker 1: a little laugh about it. Then in the middle of night,
Speaker 1: my two year old comes in our room because he
Speaker 1: is wet, and now that's not doesn't fly with him anymore,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna let someone know. So I hop out
Speaker 1: of bed in my camel boxers and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be like because Jimmy and Roles, you're sleeping and mean
Speaker 1: be quiet, and he is screaming, what's that underwear? What's
Speaker 1: that underwear? It struck him like yeah, but we're trying
Speaker 1: there day a little kids, know would be afraid of
Speaker 1: snakes and spiders. He knew that he had not encountered
Speaker 1: underwear like that in his day, and it really just
Speaker 1: wrong me, Like, you know what, I don't know what
Speaker 1: is that underwear? So people really do want they want it,
Speaker 1: and it's everything, but it's boxers. So it's not like
Speaker 1: like I can see a guy dude hiking him too.
Speaker 1: I can see a guy a guy likes to hunt.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas time and he gets his wife some stuff
Speaker 1: that she actually wants, and he's like, yeah, I knows,
Speaker 1: for fun, I'm gonna get her some camouflage linger just
Speaker 1: to have a laugh, right, And so he would buy
Speaker 1: the camouflage later. But that's not who's buying technical Marino
Speaker 1: technical underwear. Yeah, I truly don't. I'm from the dude
Speaker 1: who buys his lady lingerie and camel. Oh just okay?
Speaker 1: Who has going to both ends of the spectrum and
Speaker 1: articulating here? I don't understand any of it. So yours
Speaker 1: puzzled and and everybody is too. But the thing is
Speaker 1: it's it's great for me because when I go on
Speaker 1: a trip, I'm like, yeah, we're the black Ones for
Speaker 1: five days. Now I can move on with new the
Speaker 1: camel like I go back to the Black One. Long
Speaker 1: trips like that, I find myself. Yeah, I'll change my
Speaker 1: said while in I'm like, if you balance the days,
Speaker 1: I should really go back to the dirty pair, because
Speaker 1: I got four on knows and six on these. Jump
Speaker 1: back to my dirty put it? What? Um? Can I
Speaker 1: see your underwhere? Real? Quickly? We'll call you running? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think gray, solid gray, not a real
Speaker 1: tree blue? You have like a fish cut? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's fish and deer on there? All right? Where were we? No? Okay? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you stopped and we didn't go all the
Speaker 1: way around the horn on cal Do you got fair
Speaker 1: of camels? Then? I know? On firmost basement, so freeze.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry? How did what came up that I that
Speaker 1: I needed to well, uh, the camel section in some
Speaker 1: of these big walking into a camel section. But do
Speaker 1: you really there were no female Yeah, I'm sorry. Karmon's
Speaker 1: point was there were no female hunting clothing hunting clothing.
Speaker 1: But would that actually bother you? Well? Yeah, what reasons?
Speaker 1: Why did that bother you? Well, first of all because
Speaker 1: of what it symbolized or because it was impractical, both
Speaker 1: both because it was just you know, going and be like, really,
Speaker 1: this is all there is is bikinis. There's nothing here
Speaker 1: for me. The store that had men's hunting apparel and
Speaker 1: then women's bikinis exactly, there might be a couple of
Speaker 1: items for women, but pretty you know, it was maybe
Speaker 1: a rack and then a rack of like camera underwear
Speaker 1: and stuff for women and be targeted towards the men
Speaker 1: shopping in the store. Right, Yeah, I actually might now
Speaker 1: that I think about it, I think I'm buying my
Speaker 1: wife as seat of these for this Christmas. Let me know, no,
Speaker 1: I mean the other call the bikini, not the kind
Speaker 1: you guys have. Ok let me practical set um yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know, just too it's free country yep um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it bugged you because of what it symbolized in
Speaker 1: did you look at it and think this? Did you
Speaker 1: ever look at and go well, I guess it makes
Speaker 1: sense because because a lot of companies don't make left
Speaker 1: handed stuff, and that's a higher percent the high percentage
Speaker 1: of the American population is left handed than the female
Speaker 1: percentage of license hunters. I get that the frustrating. I
Speaker 1: feel burned when a company is not making a left
Speaker 1: handed product. That's tough, But I don't feel burned by
Speaker 1: what it all means, right well, because right yeah, because
Speaker 1: they've got nothing. Please, I'm not equating being left handed
Speaker 1: being ye yeah so um but yeah. But it's still
Speaker 1: frustrating because part of that is that's that feedback thing
Speaker 1: where when all signs are pointing towards women don't hunt
Speaker 1: and not encouraging women to hunt, there's not going to
Speaker 1: be women hunting, or not many women hunting, So there's
Speaker 1: not going to be many clothes sold for women, so
Speaker 1: there's not going to be many women hunting, and on
Speaker 1: and on. So do you think that a woman would
Speaker 1: actually not because I see this mentioned though, then that
Speaker 1: that's a barrier to entry. I have a hard time
Speaker 1: picture that there's in the history of this country has
Speaker 1: been a woman who is like, uh, man, I would
Speaker 1: love to go hunting, but I just can't because there's
Speaker 1: not specific female hunting close. There's no way that's happened.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, yeah, but it's it's it's stacking all
Speaker 1: of these little signs up together. That's, hey, we don't
Speaker 1: want you here. Yes, I believe in that part. I
Speaker 1: believe in the the accumulation of these little girls allowed
Speaker 1: exactly accumulation of unwritten notices for women's entire lives. And
Speaker 1: it's not just women don't hunt. It's little cues their
Speaker 1: entire lives from when their baby's on too, be careful,
Speaker 1: don't take risks, um, don't be outside alone. It's kind
Speaker 1: of it's more than just don't hunt. It's it's a
Speaker 1: stack of cues that we're getting our whole lives. Are
Speaker 1: you getting it from your family you personally? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I mean my my um. My parents are very adventurous
Speaker 1: and always encouraged us to do whatever we wanted. My
Speaker 1: sister and I, Um, you haven't felt it like that
Speaker 1: disapproval from your father? No? No, no, no no, no no
Speaker 1: no no. My dad's a botanist, and so I grew
Speaker 1: up out in the woods with him all the time.
Speaker 1: Um My mom, they you know, took us backpacking and
Speaker 1: everything else. And my mom, um, my mom is an artist.
Speaker 1: Um her main medium is cow intestines and yeah, or pig.
Speaker 1: Um what is she doing with these intestines? So it's
Speaker 1: or fish skins or lots of different sort of um,
Speaker 1: organic media materials. And it's so it's not like creepy
Speaker 1: or creep vibe at all. Yeah, No, it's actually really beautiful.
Speaker 1: She does sculpture stuff and it's um. She takes the
Speaker 1: gut and and um slices it up so that it
Speaker 1: lays flat and dries it either around a form or
Speaker 1: dries it flat and then and that's her medium. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, paper would be or something.
Speaker 1: So she might stretch it around a frame of sticks
Speaker 1: that are made into a boat or um, make it
Speaker 1: into like a book, all sorts of things. What's the
Speaker 1: UK what's the word? You know? The Walter skin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was part of the inspiration for for those boats
Speaker 1: that she didn't think. Yeah slightly translucent, yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you can see light through it. So anyway
Speaker 1: I grew up, I'm just yeah, So she's not exactly
Speaker 1: a stereotypical to her on next time, she's great, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll throw out a chunk of gut. So I grew
Speaker 1: up in a house where you open a yogurt container
Speaker 1: in the fridge and it might not be yogurt, might
Speaker 1: be a little scraps of meat scrap, It could be gut,
Speaker 1: it could be or whatever. I mean. She also she
Speaker 1: was actually, uh went to Humblet stay tuned. She worked
Speaker 1: in their vertebrate museum and skinning and stuffy animals and
Speaker 1: so so she wasn't gonna tell you. So she's not
Speaker 1: going to tell you that girls shouldn't be out cutting
Speaker 1: stuff up right exactly? Yea. All right, so you had
Speaker 1: a you had a I want to say, a typical
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, so it was. It was a science
Speaker 1: biology focused family, you know. Um yeah, No. The next
Speaker 1: thing I want to ask you about what when you
Speaker 1: see Okay, now, because around the subject of apparel and gear.
Speaker 1: All right, Um, when you go into a sporting goods
Speaker 1: store and they now have a full line of female apparel,
Speaker 1: but it's all got a bunch of pink stuff on it,
Speaker 1: are you thinking, thank God? Or are you like man?
Speaker 1: Do they overcorrect or is it some other kind of
Speaker 1: like I don't really know what to make of this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be one of those choices. But
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, the pink stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean to me, it's um is it actually technically
Speaker 1: good gear? Does it work? I think that um, it
Speaker 1: kind of gets back to that where women in the
Speaker 1: field and that special but we want to be equal.
Speaker 1: If um, I think that I'm a quite feminine person
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna all of a sudden feel comfortable
Speaker 1: wearing UM. I mean, I'm not gonna wear like really
Speaker 1: man macho clothes just to fit in. I'm gonna wear
Speaker 1: what I feel comfortable with when I when I work
Speaker 1: with in the field, which is most days. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not dressing in any sort of macho way or anything.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing what I what I feel comfortable in. And
Speaker 1: so if women feel more comfortable and clothes that have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a feminine flair, um, I don't
Speaker 1: personally have any being cameled, but if that's what feels comfortable,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I don't need it doesn't make you
Speaker 1: nauseous to see it? No, I mean, if it it
Speaker 1: my to my I look ridiculous, But I don't. Whatever
Speaker 1: anybody wants to wear, if it works and it's comfortable
Speaker 1: and it's practical, yeah I don't. I think you can
Speaker 1: be feminine and be a badass in the field at
Speaker 1: the same time. Last year, Wisconsin and maybe some other states, Johnny,
Speaker 1: you might know the answer to this. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: a few others I don't know who pass some legislation. Montana,
Speaker 1: did they pass some legislation? I know what happened in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It is one of the rare things where the all
Speaker 1: the politicians Wisconsin could all agree on this, and it
Speaker 1: was like a quick together and it's a quick, easy
Speaker 1: thing to decide that. Um, the reason women are out
Speaker 1: hunting is because they just don't like blaze orange. If
Speaker 1: you allow them to wear a blaze pink, they would
Speaker 1: flock to the woods. So once this problem was identified,
Speaker 1: they quickly got in and pulled together and and legalized
Speaker 1: blaze pink. Like, when you hear about a rule like that,
Speaker 1: what do you When I tell you? That, what do you?
Speaker 1: What jumps to your mind that that's really ignorant and ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That's not the problem. Yeah, he only has the problem No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I mean maybe you could make it into
Speaker 1: the problem sort of symbolically, like, um, we need to
Speaker 1: make the hunting the image of hunting. Um says no
Speaker 1: girls aloud and saying welcome. Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem I had with it. Half with it.
Speaker 1: I don't think of blaze orange as being like a
Speaker 1: man color. If you, to be legal, had to wear
Speaker 1: a face mask with a mustache painted on it, okay
Speaker 1: and one, And that was just how it always was.
Speaker 1: So anytime a woman wants to go out in the field,
Speaker 1: she has to have a mask with a mustache. And
Speaker 1: later states like, man, I just feel like the mustaches
Speaker 1: are a bit much for the female hunters. Let's pass
Speaker 1: a law saying you can wear a mask with no mustache.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, that's a that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: I agree with this new no mustache law because a mustache,
Speaker 1: when I see it, exceptions aside, screams man to me.
Speaker 1: But I don't think of blaze orange is being gender specific. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I think that that was kind of a, um,
Speaker 1: not great idea they had. Yeah, I would really be
Speaker 1: surprised if that changed anything drastically Okay, there's no scientific data,
Speaker 1: polling data whatsoever to back that thing up. No women
Speaker 1: were like, oh, bro, I'm dying to hunt. Ain't doing
Speaker 1: it in blaze or no, Nope, not for me. I
Speaker 1: mean very quickly when and I mean I've seen this.
Speaker 1: And that's why this law was very irksome to me.
Speaker 1: I wrote a few letters on it. Um, what law
Speaker 1: the pink? Yes, you got you wrote letters about it.
Speaker 1: I didn't care that much. It's just an email these days,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of email addressed a long while. Um.
Speaker 1: But so we put together a women's line. We had
Speaker 1: a panel of fifty women from young to old. Uh,
Speaker 1: skinned wide, all across the spectrum of um of skill
Speaker 1: level or days in the woods, I guess. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that's how we developed our line. And then and we
Speaker 1: decided that we were gonna have any pink gun anything, right.
Speaker 1: And when we launched it industry facing at shot show
Speaker 1: and we're showing it two buyers for all these stores
Speaker 1: who are overwhelmingly male. Very often we would get, hey,
Speaker 1: this is really nice, but you know what you should do.
Speaker 1: Put a little pink on there. This is for you.
Speaker 1: And they'd be like, huh, a little insider info for
Speaker 1: you guys, helping you out, you boys, and idahol might
Speaker 1: not be aware. And this, yeah, the blaze pink laut
Speaker 1: it is the same thing. It's a bunch of dudes
Speaker 1: being like, all right, what they want. And that's what
Speaker 1: is irksome about the pink is that it that that
Speaker 1: is their idea of what women are going to want
Speaker 1: or what it makes them comfortable or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it is, that's great, but um, it feels a
Speaker 1: little bit frivolous to think that that's what's you know,
Speaker 1: that was the problem. I just don't like little things
Speaker 1: like that, tying down valuable time when any form of
Speaker 1: government is in sessions. Yeah, there's a few other things there.
Speaker 1: They want to go with some slam dunks now, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they definitely do. And you know, Wisconsin. I always love
Speaker 1: Wisconsin because they went from having a case law where
Speaker 1: you had to have your gun in a case to
Speaker 1: be in a no case state. Now you just put
Speaker 1: your gn the bad you don't gonna have a case.
Speaker 1: So the place has my you know, undying affection. So
Speaker 1: they know all the slam dunkers that they get through.
Speaker 1: I'm behind some of them. Yeahy are you typing down
Speaker 1: thoughts that you'd like to ask Karmen? I was reading
Speaker 1: up on how the blaze pink thing got started and
Speaker 1: just seeing where like the genesis of it was all right, Karmen,
Speaker 1: Now is there anything now that we've had uh, and
Speaker 1: we're the guys here might have more? I've asked a
Speaker 1: lot pretty much all of my ask a woman questions.
Speaker 1: Do you have questions that you've ever wished you could
Speaker 1: ask of a guy about these subjects? Mm hmm? And
Speaker 1: it could be like it, could you keep mind you're
Speaker 1: not gonna insult me. You could ask a question that
Speaker 1: that betrayed a you know, that might betray some level
Speaker 1: of ex aspiration with the way guys look at things whatever,
Speaker 1: Like I won't take offense, But is there ever do
Speaker 1: you have any like burning questions about why do you
Speaker 1: guys always have to blink? I think I would, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I think I know the answer, but I would
Speaker 1: ask men to think twice before they maybe even just
Speaker 1: sort of subconsciously are if they're in a situation with
Speaker 1: a woman outside um telling her to be careful or
Speaker 1: I don't know, to me be more encouraging of actually
Speaker 1: taking risks and putting herself out there and you don't
Speaker 1: like the protector stands. I mean no, not beyond what
Speaker 1: anybody would you know, watch their buddies back out there.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, well it's like the pocket knife thing. I
Speaker 1: don't need somebody to tell me to be careful with it.
Speaker 1: And I or, um, you know, I used to go
Speaker 1: I'm a runner, and I worked in the South for
Speaker 1: a while, and for whatever reason, this happened even more there.
Speaker 1: But I'd be running at night often and men would
Speaker 1: constantly stop and you know, asked me if I needed
Speaker 1: a ride, and wasn't I scared of bears exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, no, I'm not scared of bears.
Speaker 1: And in my head, I'm thinking, but when people slow
Speaker 1: down and stop like this, this is what yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm getting kind of yeah. So um, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's not even conscious for a lot of people, but
Speaker 1: this sort of just protective. It's not even that it's
Speaker 1: worry that's palpable from men. I'd rather just be assumed
Speaker 1: that I got this. I'll ask for help if I
Speaker 1: need it. We kind of covered this early, but I
Speaker 1: just want to help a check on something. Do you
Speaker 1: feel that when a guy does that thing the little lady,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, it's dangerous are here. Do
Speaker 1: you feel that it's a that it's coming from an
Speaker 1: honest place normally, or do you feel that it is
Speaker 1: a way of that it is a way of like
Speaker 1: asserting a sort of dominance. Is a little bit strong award,
Speaker 1: but it's a way of like letting you know how
Speaker 1: he feels about what he's seeing. Or do you think
Speaker 1: it's like he's honestly concerned about my well being? I
Speaker 1: think that it's usually from that place of honestly being concerned,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it um is coming from that's it's
Speaker 1: coming from a naive place um, and it comes off
Speaker 1: as sort of patronizing. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Every conversation
Speaker 1: I have on the trail with an anybody ends with
Speaker 1: have fun, be safe. Yeah kind of be safe. That's
Speaker 1: like see you later. Yeah yeah, but I say it
Speaker 1: to everybody day. We're a tricker treating we trick or
Speaker 1: treated the fire barn. As I walked off, I was like,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot of guys, be safe, man. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't think those guys like that guy really patronized us.
Speaker 1: It's just it's like a sign off. You're telling me
Speaker 1: all these kids can't be sweat like when I when
Speaker 1: I like my body is taken off, I give him
Speaker 1: the finger. It's just like I'm just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: be safe. You're saying, what's up? See you? And that's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, I totally give what you're saying,
Speaker 1: and I say, you know, I tell people to drive safe,
Speaker 1: be safe whatever, all the all the time. So it's
Speaker 1: not that's why these things are. It's hard to describe
Speaker 1: and hard to talk about because I couldn't probably point
Speaker 1: to every single instance and be like he was being
Speaker 1: really I mean, sometimes it's blatant. You can tell that
Speaker 1: they're talking down to you or patronizing it. But I
Speaker 1: couldn't um tell you the motivation between behind every one
Speaker 1: of these events. But as when it's your whole life
Speaker 1: and it's it's a pattern, um and it's just they're
Speaker 1: they're just slight things that um you might even be
Speaker 1: questioning like what what did you mean by that? But
Speaker 1: it's it's um hard, it's it's hard to maybe put
Speaker 1: your finger on what the motivation was because there are
Speaker 1: so many people who are just you know, be safe
Speaker 1: out there or whatever, And it's totally coming from a
Speaker 1: good place. But it's the it's the pattern of it.
Speaker 1: It's a it's stacking up over living and growing up
Speaker 1: and around old men and hunting camps. You're like, very
Speaker 1: real and happening all the time. There's a word. It's
Speaker 1: not new. Um, it's kind of coming into its own
Speaker 1: now where you'll see it like all the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like the word man splaining you're familiar with, does that
Speaker 1: bug you? Man's plaining for people who don't man's plaining
Speaker 1: is there's this idea that men explain things to women
Speaker 1: differently than they explain things to men, where they explain
Speaker 1: things as though they were talking to a dumb child, yeah,
Speaker 1: or just as assuming even that just that it needs
Speaker 1: to be explained, little lady, let me tell you the
Speaker 1: r the dose and that. Yeah, I'm I've just learned
Speaker 1: that word this summer. Um. And funnily enough, a woman
Speaker 1: was describing it to me and then a man splained
Speaker 1: man splaining to me right there. Um, But it is
Speaker 1: a good word to describe something had a man's plain
Speaker 1: man splaining Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's bother some. For example,
Speaker 1: this just a couple of weeks ago, my mom and
Speaker 1: I were out hiking and ran into somebody coming down
Speaker 1: the trail and he stops and we're chatting, and I
Speaker 1: interrupted him to because there's a peregrine falcon and I
Speaker 1: was pointing. I said, oh, look, peregrine falcon whatever, and
Speaker 1: he says, Nope, that's actually a h Harris hawk um
Speaker 1: and starts describing to me that I've misidentified it. And
Speaker 1: he starts telling me about this hawk and he was
Speaker 1: totally wrong. It was a falcon and I but you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get into it, so I just
Speaker 1: let him man splain it to me. But both my
Speaker 1: mom and I, she's a great birder, just internally rolling no.
Speaker 1: And he started to get into well, they used to
Speaker 1: be called uh, and he started to say swamp hawks,
Speaker 1: which is not correct. It's marsh hawks. And I sort
Speaker 1: of corrected him there, but he didn't didn't even catch
Speaker 1: on that maybe I knew something about what I was
Speaker 1: talking about, and he continued to So you guys were
Speaker 1: having a little know how showdown. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: basically just let him go on about it, let him
Speaker 1: be a guy. Yeah, but my mom and I definitely
Speaker 1: afterwards were just like, yeah, so the you and your mouth,
Speaker 1: you and your mom, it was enough union mouth. Then
Speaker 1: later oh yeah, we talked about it later. It was
Speaker 1: so blatant and he was so wrong. We were there there.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking example, I'm talking about a woman
Speaker 1: in the wood. Yeah, yep, yeah, that's the experience. Can't
Speaker 1: be Yeah, yeah, So I think we don't know if
Speaker 1: we covered it or not. We kind of you kind
Speaker 1: of said I like when you said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we bring it, might bring different things to the table.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be treated equal at the table. So you've
Speaker 1: had like a lot of honey experiences now with guys
Speaker 1: and as a female if you much with other females. Nope, no,
Speaker 1: But like, so do you do you feel like is
Speaker 1: there a different experience to be had there? I? Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I certainly cannot speak for all women, and
Speaker 1: I um, if there is, I haven't identified it, or
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I in particular bring something special
Speaker 1: as a woman. I think, yeah, none of it has
Speaker 1: to be special, but just not blessing that you're not
Speaker 1: blessing the woods with your presence special or like changing
Speaker 1: hunting in in any way with some fresh female perspectives
Speaker 1: that the deer you shoot feel better about having been
Speaker 1: shot by a woman. No, I don't think they give
Speaker 1: a gentle hand. Sure glad it was lady that blew
Speaker 1: ahold through my side Jesus hot and cold. That was
Speaker 1: like my big takeaway when I sat around chatting with
Speaker 1: the gals from the office, Brittany and Nicole and Annie.
Speaker 1: I don't know who else is there that time, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of like we went through like their year
Speaker 1: of hunting that fall and were kind of having the
Speaker 1: same conversation. In the end, I was like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like you just had all a bunch
Speaker 1: of like beginner like hunting stories this year, you know.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, cool, thank you. Yeah. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: there will be some women out there that do bring
Speaker 1: a special feminine perspective, and I'm look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: what that is. But I don't feel like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just don't. You're not hostile to it. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: hostile to it. Okay, I forgot one thing I forgot
Speaker 1: that asked we started out so you know, have go
Speaker 1: in great detail. This year was a shitty hunting yeard
Speaker 1: or no, No, it was great something, Yeah, I did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this year I shot a buck all by myself,
Speaker 1: UM alone on the mountain for the first time, which
Speaker 1: was that felt really good working. Uh No, he was
Speaker 1: packing for our trip to Idaho because we went, so
Speaker 1: we did. So this year's story was we did um
Speaker 1: the high hunt. So in Washington there's in September there's
Speaker 1: a week long high hunt UM and that was really
Speaker 1: it was a really fun year. It was hard because
Speaker 1: we were having a UM huge wild fire. It ended
Speaker 1: up burning two d seventy thousand acres, mostly in the
Speaker 1: Satan Wilderness, which is our big wilderness area to UM
Speaker 1: to hunt for the high hunt. That's where we've hunted before.
Speaker 1: Can you explain high hunt? So that's it's in certain
Speaker 1: only in certain wilderness areas. Wilderness areas tend to be
Speaker 1: the highest nasty portions of the fort. Yeah, there might
Speaker 1: even be an elevation requirement of like you guys talk
Speaker 1: about Colorado, it has to be above in the rags
Speaker 1: called the high huntin I think they call yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and right, But have you ever heard like, like what's
Speaker 1: that Colorado hunt where they you cannot hunt below ten
Speaker 1: there's like an early season mule deer wilderness tag and
Speaker 1: it's for ten thou feet and but I think I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, but I feel like these do they
Speaker 1: say that, It just say wilderness are is what happened
Speaker 1: to be real high I I don't remember. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think, well, in our area, yes, we're fine in
Speaker 1: all of our all of our wilderness areas where you
Speaker 1: can hunt, but I don't know about other areas in
Speaker 1: the state if there's an elevation thing. Um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so we kind of had to be on our toes.
Speaker 1: So we ended up um hiking into areas that we've
Speaker 1: never been in hunting and UM, we had a blast.
Speaker 1: It was it was awesome, but neither of us had
Speaker 1: the stars a line to get a buck. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: we saw bucks. Let's see we went. We actually ended
Speaker 1: up backpacking into three different spots. Um. In the first spot,
Speaker 1: I think we saw four And why couldn't you get
Speaker 1: one because you're seen them way off? The first we
Speaker 1: saw a little um there was a little group the
Speaker 1: night before opening and they were way off. Went up
Speaker 1: to where they were for the opening day of the
Speaker 1: high hunt and UM ended up jumping one buck and
Speaker 1: and didn't see any other that day, and then I
Speaker 1: saw another one that trip uh just for a second
Speaker 1: and it disappeared into into the trees. Nope, we didn't
Speaker 1: see any other hunters. That's That's one of the really
Speaker 1: great things about the High Hunt is there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people coming in hunt in the Okanagan in Okanagan County. Um,
Speaker 1: because it's great. There's a big you only heard there,
Speaker 1: but you have to work to get away from people. Um.
Speaker 1: But the High Hunt kind of does that for so. UM,
Speaker 1: then you guys are gonna go hunt Idaho. And he's like,
Speaker 1: I'll pack you hunt. Yeah, so well, so that so
Speaker 1: we did the High Hunt. We hunt it really hard,
Speaker 1: had a great time, didn't get any deer, so then
Speaker 1: we both could still hunt during general because if you
Speaker 1: get something there the high Hunt, you can't hunt during
Speaker 1: general General. We backpacked in pretty much did another high
Speaker 1: hunt um, and my husband got a deer and um,
Speaker 1: so that was really fun. And then we we came
Speaker 1: back from from that particular trip and had a couple
Speaker 1: of days before we left for our Idaho trip and
Speaker 1: so um, I wanted to just hunt to the bitter end,
Speaker 1: so he had to pack and I just went off
Speaker 1: hunting by myself. Just behind our house there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of state land and UM found a little buck and
Speaker 1: uh and I I stared at it and I had
Speaker 1: so now I was in that position again of here's
Speaker 1: the last couple moments where you're my mind was racing
Speaker 1: and having all these doubts, and I just uh finally
Speaker 1: told myself that I'm I'm gonna have these doubts every
Speaker 1: single time. I just need to pull my socks up.
Speaker 1: And and I knew that I had it, you know,
Speaker 1: part of my brain. I just needed to shut those
Speaker 1: doubts down and and I did it and I got it.
Speaker 1: So so that felt good. I felt like a hurdle
Speaker 1: I finally cleared. So do you're all by yourself? Yea
Speaker 1: may having doing getting through those those final moments by
Speaker 1: my by myself with yeah, without somebody you know saying
Speaker 1: you're good, go for it. So yeah, so we got
Speaker 1: so I got that deer. And then next day we
Speaker 1: left for Idaho and UM and that was an incredible trip,
Speaker 1: really worked really hard. Um I only had an elk
Speaker 1: tag and my um husband had an elk and a deer,
Speaker 1: and my brother in law did as well, and they
Speaker 1: both got nice mule deer, and um, we never caught
Speaker 1: up with the elk, but we we learned a lot
Speaker 1: about the area and I had a blast though. So
Speaker 1: that was a really cool trip too. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And he presented it to me like it was some
Speaker 1: kind of disaster. Oh no, not a disaster at all.
Speaker 1: I mean we worked really hard, you know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: the part he caught us arduous. Yeah, we were hiking
Speaker 1: in you know, I think our first camp was thirteen
Speaker 1: miles and in and we stay there and hunted hard.
Speaker 1: And it's I mean it's rugged country and uh in
Speaker 1: the Cascades. So but yeah, what time do you hit
Speaker 1: that hit Idaho? Uh? Last week of October? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was for me coming from Washington going there.
Speaker 1: The number of deer that we were seeing it was
Speaker 1: insane and some big wide open, some big wide open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just it was so cool to be seeing that
Speaker 1: many bucks every day. And it felt like compared to
Speaker 1: our bucks that I'll tell you what, if I was
Speaker 1: playing are all out of whack. I haven't heard enough
Speaker 1: where I know. If I was playing the Hunting Trip,
Speaker 1: I would be headed to screw Colorado. Just unbelievable. Amounts
Speaker 1: of bucks everywhere. You look like you trust Carmon because
Speaker 1: she's a woman. He was talking about Colorado. They're forecast
Speaker 1: to know about the gentler sets that they do not. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is this is everywhere. Any comparison
Speaker 1: in comparison. So yeah, in comparison. Can't trust these women.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that can't. I'll be careful out there. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of big bucks out there. It could hurt you.
Speaker 1: What are you doing with that pocket knife? I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have that. Who gave that to you? Um? So it's
Speaker 1: all the grays. You guys are eating all kinds of
Speaker 1: deer meat. Yeah, a lot of dear meat. You guys
Speaker 1: eat muliar. Then you guys are eating mule deer, right.
Speaker 1: Mostly guys like the flavor. I mean it is so
Speaker 1: that first buck that I got was a buck. I mean,
Speaker 1: as I was walking up to it, I could smell
Speaker 1: that that goaty smell that was that was a strong one.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. Oh yeah, the whole thing tasted goaty.
Speaker 1: Did Yeah, I did, what do you call it? Goadie
Speaker 1: like kind of a barnyardy sort of Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: year it was ruddy from a Yeah that year, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: You could smell it as it was cooking, as I
Speaker 1: was cooking. Yeah, yep. And that that year's still tasted fine, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it tasted strong. I mean we ate it.
Speaker 1: It was really but yeah, so just walking up to it,
Speaker 1: you were like, holy moly. Yeah. And that year, um,
Speaker 1: hiking for work, there were least two times when I
Speaker 1: smelled a buck before I saw it. Really, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is real barnyard goaty kind of smell. But the Idaho
Speaker 1: ones I heard bucks are great and Idaho all the
Speaker 1: bucks we got this year are delicious. But they were
Speaker 1: not they you know, they didn't you couldn't smell them
Speaker 1: when you were up at them. They weren't already smelling. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the date of the one you shot in Washington?
Speaker 1: You felt, was like right, it out pretty good? Um,
Speaker 1: it was it was mid October. That was a strange year.
Speaker 1: That year is what a lot of people in the
Speaker 1: valley referred to as the slaughter of because for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: bucks started migrating down into the valley earlier. Maybe because
Speaker 1: it was a really dry summer, I don't know, but um,
Speaker 1: they started migrating down really early, and um it seemed
Speaker 1: like they started getting ready earlier and they were just
Speaker 1: it was a slaughter. So people were killing show up everywhere, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this pass hunting season people have done I think pretty poorly,
Speaker 1: it seems like. So it's just one of those things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well congrats on your first solo deer. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about as small as a deer as could be
Speaker 1: legal in Washington. No, no, not this one. No, that
Speaker 1: was yeah, this one, that one, So what's the new one?
Speaker 1: So that's a just tiny, delicious buck. Yeah, alright, good.
Speaker 1: I thought you're saying you got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: eating a head of you know, that's all behind you know,
Speaker 1: ye yes, polish it off. Now you're moving on to
Speaker 1: the good one. Yea. And then have you guys eaten
Speaker 1: any of the meat off the box that were killed
Speaker 1: in Idaho? Yep? They're great? Yep yeah yeah, Kale, I'm
Speaker 1: just ask if you had any final thoughts. I'm just wondering, Uh,
Speaker 1: where are you taking me hunting next? Now? Your place
Speaker 1: is burned out. I'm so sorry. I'll tell I'll answer that,
Speaker 1: and I have some thoughts and questions but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: not do them ungradulation and uh, lots of milestones to
Speaker 1: come huh. And obviously, uh, when did you guys start
Speaker 1: going out of state for hunts? Uh? My husband has
Speaker 1: gone elk hunting for his whole life out of state. Um,
Speaker 1: this was my first time. Nice. Yeah, but adding some
Speaker 1: more days to the year, Yeah, that's a big thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Does he does he kill elkin Washington too? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: then real quick, I'm going to ask you this before, Um,
Speaker 1: would you do you have interest or not in bear hunting?
Speaker 1: I don't not an invitation, I don't personally you're a baker.
Speaker 1: Oh then the bear fat Yeah, yeah, I've done that
Speaker 1: with a road kill. No, it wasn't a road kill,
Speaker 1: was a bear call. I've done sweet good. But I just, um,
Speaker 1: I think we may be talking about this last look
Speaker 1: at it and see a game animal. I've just yeah,
Speaker 1: I've done so much bear work, and you know, cub
Speaker 1: counts and you're dealing with their cubs, and I just
Speaker 1: just special. There's a lot of people I know that
Speaker 1: are lifelong cold blooded hunters. You just don't want to
Speaker 1: hunt bears. Man. They're like a lot of guys I
Speaker 1: know they got a bear too, and my brother put it, uh,
Speaker 1: one of my brothers put it. He quit bear hunting
Speaker 1: when he got a bear and walked up to it
Speaker 1: as his first sort of feeling because you know, the
Speaker 1: hide is beautiful, right, so you can't ditch the hide,
Speaker 1: but it's expensive to get him tanned. And you used
Speaker 1: to be like sweet, you know, get the bear, get
Speaker 1: the eat the bear, have a bear rug or bear
Speaker 1: hide for whatever. He said. He walked out to one
Speaker 1: and his first feeling was oh man, and he's like,
Speaker 1: then I just knew I was done. I just knew
Speaker 1: well the minute I calculated, like I gotta spend money
Speaker 1: to get the two thing tan because it'd be wasteful
Speaker 1: to that. And he just took that as his thing.
Speaker 1: That wrapping her up on bear hunt. Yeah that makes
Speaker 1: sense because and you guys chime in obviously. But you're
Speaker 1: seasoned hunter now, right, like ten years doing things a
Speaker 1: hard way. That was a girl, and you've got some successes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel like, um, now you're kind
Speaker 1: of working up to something else. Um? Yeah, well, elk
Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to getting my first elk um.
Speaker 1: We always putting for all kinds of tags. I'm I
Speaker 1: really want to go moose hunting. I'd love to go
Speaker 1: sheep hunting. There's tons of things I'd love to do. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm also just I just want to get um
Speaker 1: good at high country mule deer hunting, because that's what
Speaker 1: is Yeah, it's what you know. We've Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: We've spend the summer scouting and hiking around in the
Speaker 1: high country and um, yeah that that part has just
Speaker 1: really got me in the getter and I'm want to
Speaker 1: do that. So yeah, I want to get good at
Speaker 1: that me too. Can you explain it last time? You
Speaker 1: explain that sort of graph, the sliding curve that you
Speaker 1: have for when the animal goes from yeah, food, and
Speaker 1: then I forget what too. Yeah. So there's there's your
Speaker 1: your and it's I imagine its being different for everybody.
Speaker 1: Got your x axis, which is a order of animals,
Speaker 1: and it might, for example, start with mosquitoes, something you
Speaker 1: want to kill, and it might end with like your mom,
Speaker 1: something you really don't want to kill. And then there's
Speaker 1: two lines and one is kind of your I think
Speaker 1: of it as like, uh empathy, and that that line
Speaker 1: climbs to a point where you're you cannot set that aside,
Speaker 1: and you just could not kill something. And then there's
Speaker 1: the want to kill, want to want to want to hunt,
Speaker 1: wanna you know, engage in some sort of predator prey
Speaker 1: relationship want to eat it line, And so where those
Speaker 1: Internet sect is where things get fuzzy. Oftentimes that's maybe
Speaker 1: a bears for people, it seems like, and then above
Speaker 1: that as things you just couldn't bring yourself to to kill,
Speaker 1: and that that line for me, um gets blurry or
Speaker 1: it gets the empathy line climbs when I've worked a
Speaker 1: lot and and know a lot about and a species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking on the flight over here at a
Speaker 1: very agitated gal that I was right next to um
Speaker 1: for reasons unknown, and I had stewardess or flight attendant,
Speaker 1: and I was working her tail off and uh, but
Speaker 1: she like whacked me with the cart and I was
Speaker 1: trying to avoid the gal to my right because she
Speaker 1: definitely needed some space. But so I got whacked with
Speaker 1: the cart really hard, and I kind of looked up
Speaker 1: at this gal and she looked at me like, get
Speaker 1: the hell out of the way. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: ask her, when did you lose your empathy? Yeah? Probably
Speaker 1: doesn't take long in service business sometimes, but that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily just being around the critter that you're dealing with,
Speaker 1: right right, Well, I mean I don't know, under understanding
Speaker 1: and maybe um it gets harder to objectify them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you started squid, you make it burned out
Speaker 1: and eat squid or find I'm not appetizing, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like, oh I studied squids so much that
Speaker 1: I now feel real bad eating a squid, Right, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that would happen with a squid for me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's like it has a different
Speaker 1: kind Yeah, well yeah, so for like, um beavers, I
Speaker 1: worked on a beaver project, a really cool project and
Speaker 1: how for a couple of years that um it's still
Speaker 1: it's still happening. It's a beaver relocation project, and a beaver,
Speaker 1: I feel like, is one of those animals that people
Speaker 1: um underappreciate, But through this project, I just um have
Speaker 1: kind of a in love with them, just learning and
Speaker 1: sort of taking time to recognize what they do. Because
Speaker 1: this project, um, so our job was to there be
Speaker 1: landowners that might call that live down on on the river,
Speaker 1: on the ditch system or whatever, and they have problem beavers,
Speaker 1: and so usually those are just easily removed. Well in
Speaker 1: the Medhow, just like a lot of the West beavers
Speaker 1: were you know, trapped out and UM yeah right yeah,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of places they've had a hard
Speaker 1: time re establishing UM themselves. And so in the Medhow
Speaker 1: there's all these high country creeks and stuff that used
Speaker 1: to have beavers in them, creating a vastly different landscape.
Speaker 1: So we had these little creeks that would then have
Speaker 1: UM just sprawling wetland beaver establishments, UM just sort of
Speaker 1: punctuating these streams with all this fabulous habitat that is,
Speaker 1: you know, waterfowl habitat, fish habitat, fawning habitat UM. And
Speaker 1: then not to mention that those beaver establishments hold water
Speaker 1: back and so the snow melt off doesn't just rush
Speaker 1: off the mountain, and so everybody downstream benefits by a
Speaker 1: slower release of the melt off every year, and maybe
Speaker 1: that stream doesn't dry up UM. And there's also evidence
Speaker 1: that that's holding the water in ponds. UM keeps the
Speaker 1: creek at a lower temperature for for fish because that
Speaker 1: water is sinking down into the ground. And when when
Speaker 1: it comes up later, it's it's still really cold. Um.
Speaker 1: So the aim of this project is to take those
Speaker 1: problem beavers and then um by live trapping them and
Speaker 1: then we would um actually hold them in a fish
Speaker 1: hatchery facility until we could get like a family group,
Speaker 1: um and then release them up in the high country
Speaker 1: in areas that could benefit from basically restoration of the creeks. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we'd release them and hopefully they would they
Speaker 1: would stick um anyway. But the point is is that beavers,
Speaker 1: I feel like, are often really underappreciated, but um, they
Speaker 1: are actually now I know, just nuggets of gold. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that's something that I personally maybe didn't think
Speaker 1: about much before. But UM, my empathy line has has
Speaker 1: gone way up for these these critters because what they
Speaker 1: do is just so it's instant gratifications, the most important
Speaker 1: it's the most important animal to American history. America was
Speaker 1: built on that, right. Yeah, America's first homegrown millionaire made
Speaker 1: his fortunes. Yeah, yeah, trading and beber hunh. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're also really important for our landscapes. But yeah, Pooter, Andrew,
Speaker 1: Andrew Pooter, do you have any final Um, it's been
Speaker 1: interesting has been a pleasure to listen to your stories.
Speaker 1: It's feeling good about everything. Yeah, I didn't contribute much,
Speaker 1: but I don't care. That's good to listen. I want
Speaker 1: to make sure you have that you feel welcome to
Speaker 1: good presence. Yeah, thanks, Yeah, I'm John already had my
Speaker 1: closing thought. Cal I think I'm there too, don't. There's
Speaker 1: some good stuff though, Carmen, Um, can I make a
Speaker 1: b h A plug? That's great? So I, um, um,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna make the rest of us look bad. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm working on growing a little community of h members
Speaker 1: in the Mahaw Valley because it is such a important
Speaker 1: maybe you know, probably the most important mule you're hunting
Speaker 1: place in the state. UM. And it is such a
Speaker 1: unique landscape with those wilderness and everything else. UM. So
Speaker 1: trying to get a b h a UM community sort
Speaker 1: of established there. Um. And it's also BHA means back
Speaker 1: Country Home, which is a nonprofit conservation group that uh
Speaker 1: you tell them right, keeping public land public and um
Speaker 1: and managed appropriately. And so we have an issue with
Speaker 1: a mining company in the valley UM wanting to put
Speaker 1: in a Canadian mining company wanting to put in a
Speaker 1: big copper mine. On our our four service land UM
Speaker 1: and so our Washington chapter is UM supporting a mineral withdrawal,
Speaker 1: which is legislation that would protect uh forty million acres
Speaker 1: of our headwaters from not only this copper mind but
Speaker 1: any future mining claims and UM. Anyway, so our our
Speaker 1: chapter is supporting this mineral withdrawal. UM. But I just
Speaker 1: want to encourage anybody who is from Washington, especially if
Speaker 1: they come maybe from the west side of the state,
Speaker 1: to hunt out in the men how to UM check
Speaker 1: out our Washington chapter and get involved. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some volunteer stuff coming up this spring and UM
Speaker 1: people who hunt out there can can work on the
Speaker 1: landscape a little bit with us too. And a headwaters
Speaker 1: issue is everybody's issue, because everybody's downstream. Yeah, good plug,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. Carmen van Bianchi, that's right right, Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us, Carmen, thank you,