Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today, I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Dirk Durham, better known as the Bugler. He's been the
Speaker 1: Phelps Game Calls marketing manager for three plus years. We've
Speaker 1: been working with him for five plus years. He does
Speaker 1: more than just marketing, though he's marketing, he's kind of
Speaker 1: our community manager. Great Elk color, great Elk Hunter. Proud
Speaker 1: to call him a buddy. But God Dirk here, except
Speaker 1: for his roles are changing. Sad to see him go
Speaker 1: as the Phelps marketing guy. But he's gonna be transitioning
Speaker 1: into a content creator for the Meat Eater content team.
Speaker 1: But it's still gonna have a very heavy focus on
Speaker 1: Phelps Game Calls brand and making sure that that's you know,
Speaker 1: we've got good quality content. And another exciting announcement is
Speaker 1: part of this new position is you're gonna be the
Speaker 1: co host of Cutting the Distance. So the way it's
Speaker 1: gonna work, I'll have an episode every other week, Dirk
Speaker 1: will have episode in between those, and so I we're
Speaker 1: excited to be bringing twice as many Cutting Distance episodes
Speaker 1: to all of you. So with that said, I'm now
Speaker 1: going to take the guest seat and Derek is gonna
Speaker 1: host cutting the distance here.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, there, I got some big shoes to fill.
Speaker 1: Well, well only only literally because the size fourteen.
Speaker 2: That's what I meant, your size fourteen. I'm eleven and
Speaker 2: a half wide. Yeah, wide shoes. How many people do
Speaker 2: you know that has to wear a wide?
Speaker 1: Shoot? Not me. I got fourteen's but they're normal.
Speaker 2: Well well I'm one of them, so I just found out.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here, super excited,
Speaker 2: uh taking on this new role. If I didn't have
Speaker 2: a dream job before, I feel like this is even
Speaker 2: more of a dream job. So I don't know all
Speaker 2: the details yet. This is kind of a rapidly moving
Speaker 2: transition change. But everything that that's kind of been set
Speaker 2: forth seems to be pretty pretty awesome. Seah, it should
Speaker 2: be pretty fun.
Speaker 1: I'm a little jealous of your your duties, your position,
Speaker 1: but I mean, don't, don't get me wrong. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of work there, a lot of I mean editing
Speaker 1: is sometimes painstaking, and you know, planning all of our
Speaker 1: content and travel to the shoots and whatnot. But it
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty dang cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if I have to edit like a mule
Speaker 2: deer film, Right, if it was an Elk film, it'd
Speaker 2: be exciting, but Mule Deer is like watching pain trying
Speaker 2: not to.
Speaker 1: Put him asleep. Is it should be good. I'm excited
Speaker 1: because I know my strengths and weaknesses on a podcast
Speaker 1: like very. I mean, anybody listens to Cutting the Distance tactical, technical,
Speaker 1: and Dirk brings a different level of excitement, So I
Speaker 1: think it'll be a great compare contrast. We'll have similar ideas,
Speaker 1: but then you're gonna get you know, more entertainment from
Speaker 1: Dirk and more technical for me probably. So I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see the podcast evolve into a little bit of
Speaker 1: a you know, Jacqueline Hyde or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it. Just pretty contrasting I think from week to week,
Speaker 1: and it'll be a good mix up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll have a lot of on my own podcast,
Speaker 2: but really I would. My goal is I really want
Speaker 2: to continue to like touch base with you and do
Speaker 2: some collab podcast too, because number one, I like to
Speaker 2: give you a hard time in front of everybody. Thanks,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, take you out of your comfort zone
Speaker 2: a little bit, make funn of you know, kind of
Speaker 2: what I do best. But those are the things that
Speaker 2: we both love and everybody else does so so but
Speaker 2: that's the reason why I'm over here, you know, to
Speaker 2: cut this podcast with you. And then also spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: we may or may not be working on some new
Speaker 2: cool stuff for a Bugle Tube. But you know film
Speaker 2: and Jason, you know, he dressed up like a nerd
Speaker 2: tried to, you know, explain, explain what is airflow and
Speaker 2: what not to the lay person, you know, dummies like me.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I just kind of glossed over
Speaker 2: and just kept running the camera while you were talking.
Speaker 2: But I tried not to laugh because you're the nerd
Speaker 2: glasses you're Oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's why I love when Dirk has a great idea.
Speaker 1: Is it involves me dressing up into something that uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for me, talking in a voice that's uncomfortable for me,
Speaker 1: and then trying to get through what I have to
Speaker 1: But no, I think it's it's good. We'll more more
Speaker 1: to come later, but we're working on a YouTube that
Speaker 1: we hope to have out pretty soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll talk about it. Hey, And as always, if
Speaker 2: you guys have listener questions, you can email those two
Speaker 2: c t D at phelps Calls dot com. And then
Speaker 2: I want to do something really cool where I have
Speaker 2: listeners call in. We're gonna get a phone number set
Speaker 2: up here real soon, but I want listeners to call
Speaker 2: in if they have a question, call in, leave a message.
Speaker 2: I won't probably pick up the phone, you know, especially
Speaker 2: if you call it two in the morning, Hello, but
Speaker 2: call in with your question. I will play your question
Speaker 2: on the air, and then I will do my best
Speaker 2: to answer it. So I think that that would be
Speaker 2: really fun and in a better way to kind of
Speaker 2: get your question across. But if you don't feel like
Speaker 2: call in and feel weird about leaving a message, then
Speaker 2: by all means, please please send an email. Because I
Speaker 2: feel like there's lots of questions out there that sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, being experienced hunters, we kind of take for granted.
Speaker 2: But but if you're a new hunter, or maybe you're
Speaker 2: experience hunter but you're seeing something weird every year you're
Speaker 2: just like, hey, I just hey, you got any you
Speaker 2: any feedback on this, then we'd love to hear those
Speaker 2: kind of questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's tough at times to to, you know,
Speaker 1: think about everything that we think about out in the woods. Right,
Speaker 1: sometimes it just kind of comes natural and we don't
Speaker 1: think about it, but some of you out there may
Speaker 1: you still have questions on and it's always great for me,
Speaker 1: Like I love any question at any level because it
Speaker 1: gets me to think, It gets me to like boil back,
Speaker 1: you know, situations that I've had to think about that
Speaker 1: and yeah, every any question, every question will be accepted
Speaker 1: and where we're excited to get those from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so weird. Sometimes folks will ask me
Speaker 2: a question and immediately I'm just like, I don't know
Speaker 2: what I why I do what I do, And so
Speaker 2: it takes it kind of a minute to kind of
Speaker 2: mull it over sometimes to like break down that process
Speaker 2: in my head, because you know, once you've you've hunted
Speaker 2: for a long time, sometimes you just kind of go
Speaker 2: with your gut real quick and you don't even think
Speaker 2: about the real the real reason why you do something
Speaker 2: until somebody actually asked that question and it really breaks
Speaker 2: it down. And so so those questions are great. So
Speaker 2: some of the stuff, like you said, that we don't
Speaker 2: even think about. It's great to get those questions and
Speaker 2: then have us you know, break it down and and
Speaker 2: make it to some usable some usable content. Well hopefully
Speaker 2: I don't know you'll be thinking that anyway. I kind
Speaker 2: of want to talk about elk season plans a little bit,
Speaker 2: you know, it seems like that's part of the fun
Speaker 2: of elk hunting is and in any kind of deer
Speaker 2: and deer hunting and any kind of hunting is making
Speaker 2: your plans to go. And I always look forward to
Speaker 2: the plans, like, Okay, where are we gonna apply for tags? Okay,
Speaker 2: now I got my tag. Now scout, you know, HIT
Speaker 2: and E scouting, and that's super fun, you know, getting
Speaker 2: on on on your on your computer and doing all
Speaker 2: your scouting and then you know, talking to your buddies
Speaker 2: and making plans. So, Phelps, where did you get an
Speaker 2: elk tag? Did you get like a bunch of elk tags?
Speaker 2: Or like you got one elk tag? What do you got?
Speaker 1: So your beautiful state of Idaho decided to keep me
Speaker 1: locked out? I don't know if if you set that up,
Speaker 1: if you have when this, when this Jason Phelps guy
Speaker 1: gets on here, make sure he doesn't get in the
Speaker 1: waiting room.
Speaker 2: So I've been listening to my emails like don't let
Speaker 2: Phelps get attacked, right, hope we got too many non residents.
Speaker 1: So I didn't get Idaho kind of was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is fucking real bleak, right, And I ended up
Speaker 1: in Colorado really didn't. You know, some of the points
Speaker 1: game is is all random luck. I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: quite burning Utah Colorado points and so I'm like, dang,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? So uh, I had an
Speaker 1: opportunity again to get an organ tag, so I was
Speaker 1: able to gather that one up. And sometimes good decisions
Speaker 1: come because they're forced. You know, the last few years,
Speaker 1: I've been very fortunate, blessed to have multiple tags and
Speaker 1: multiple states across the West, which is a blessing and
Speaker 1: a curse. Right, You can't you spend six seven, eight
Speaker 1: days traveling between these hunts, which is in my opinion,
Speaker 1: We've said it time and time again. Time on the
Speaker 1: ground is the most important thing to find in success. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm losing two three days between each hunt trying to
Speaker 1: get there, figure things out, change crews, move around. So
Speaker 1: this year, only having one tag in my pocket, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is actually maybe a better thing. Let's just focus
Speaker 1: on that tag all September. So I've got an Oregon
Speaker 1: ELK tag. I plan to be there for twenty plus
Speaker 1: days or whatever it takes, or shoot, maybe get it
Speaker 1: done in a day or two. You just never know.
Speaker 1: But on the on the schedule, I plan to be there,
Speaker 1: you know, between twenty day eighteen to twenty days, and
Speaker 1: then put all of my energy and effort into that tag.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I've by dancing all over
Speaker 1: the country is sometimes we show up in new units
Speaker 1: and you just start getting comfortable on day three, four five.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes us a while to figure out
Speaker 1: these ELK and where they want to go and and
Speaker 1: just the general general patterns and whatnot, and you have
Speaker 1: to take off. So I'm excited to just go finding out,
Speaker 1: you know, go find ELK, sit on them, learn them,
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on in an area, start to
Speaker 1: take all those details. So yeah, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I gotta just gonna hunt. I haven't hunted my home
Speaker 1: state of Washington for ELK. Not we should back up.
Speaker 1: I did draw special tag last year in Washington, so
Speaker 1: I did hunt at Washington ELK, but I haven't hunted
Speaker 1: over the counter ELK in Washington since twenty thirteen. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come back with a muzzleoader. It's been a
Speaker 1: ten year break, So as confident as I'd like to be.
Speaker 1: It is western Washington elk hunting, and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a tough one there. There's no guarantees in western Washington,
Speaker 1: so it'd be a good challenge. But it'll be nice
Speaker 1: to be able to hunt, hunt from home and hunt
Speaker 1: some old, familiar grounds and see if I can still
Speaker 1: figure out how to kill a raghorn around here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome to be able to hunt some of
Speaker 2: that old ground. It's it's like, oh, you're kind of
Speaker 2: rekindle an old love or something. It's, oh, man, I
Speaker 2: love this this little viewpoint here. Oh I bet there's
Speaker 2: some milk down in this little basin or whatever. And
Speaker 2: then then then you don't hear anything and you get heartbroken.
Speaker 1: Again, or or you remember how much you love the
Speaker 1: Devil's Club in the bottom of this canyon and you
Speaker 1: have the BlackBerry briars in this cant Yeah, it's uh. Now,
Speaker 1: I I do a lot of hunting because of the
Speaker 1: brush and the understory nowadays coming from Usterer Wasing like
Speaker 1: I grew up just in a jungle, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I won't I won't necessarily enjoy that coming home but yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be fun to come back and go explore the
Speaker 1: haunts that used to hold Elk all the time and
Speaker 1: see what's still around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to your point back to having that one
Speaker 2: September tag is like you said, you know, you lose
Speaker 2: a lot of time to travel into but you know,
Speaker 2: if you haven't had two or three Elk tags in
Speaker 2: your pocket each fall and you try to hit you
Speaker 2: try to hit timing just right. There's there's been times
Speaker 2: where you go to a unit and uh, there's Elk there,
Speaker 2: but they're just not talking, or they're talking but they're
Speaker 2: not coming to calls. I mean, every stage of the rut.
Speaker 2: Every every day is a little different.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: If you're not there in the right days, in the timeframe,
Speaker 2: you can have a really tough hunt, you know, or
Speaker 2: maybe it's inclement weather. You know it's hot and dry,
Speaker 2: and you know the day you leave it starts raining
Speaker 2: a little bit and things get freshened up and bam,
Speaker 2: elkor on fires. So that's that's tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so by being in one place, you can
Speaker 1: take advantages of the highs and lows. But you versus
Speaker 1: you may miss you may be in a low the
Speaker 1: entire time. If you only have six or seven days
Speaker 1: in an area and we've all been there where it's
Speaker 1: like just even the same unit, is this the same Elka?
Speaker 1: You know, it's like somebody just flip the light switch
Speaker 1: on that morning and it's nuts, versus you've been hunting
Speaker 1: it for ten days prior to that and just been lackluster.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to be able to catch that. The
Speaker 1: other big change in Oregon this year is they've always
Speaker 1: started the I'm gonna probably get this wrong, but it's
Speaker 1: it'll be mostly right. Like the last Saturday in August
Speaker 1: was always their start or some some form of that.
Speaker 1: They always would start that season in late August, but
Speaker 1: typically the Oregon seasons would close up twenty first twenty second.
Speaker 1: This year they moved that ahead a week, so it
Speaker 1: will now I'll be able to hunt into the very
Speaker 1: end of September, which I'm excited about because I'm one
Speaker 1: of those guys that really likes the peak of the rut.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily need to be like, well, you might
Speaker 1: have more success on the front end or the back end,
Speaker 1: like I want bulls biegel and ripping their heads off
Speaker 1: more so than what my percentages of killing them, and
Speaker 1: I've always had great success, you know, from the thirteenth on.
Speaker 1: So it's like I'd rather just be in that more
Speaker 1: peak of the rut than outside of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you know, let's say the bulls are
Speaker 2: cowed up and they're not coming to calls real good,
Speaker 2: it's still just fun. You know you're doing it, you're out,
Speaker 2: you're out participating in the rut, right, Whereas if they're
Speaker 2: not talking at all, you're just like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: does this will even work anymore? I don't know what
Speaker 2: I'm doing. It's not a fun hunt compared to like,
Speaker 2: at least if you get to see them interact and
Speaker 2: interact with them, that's a lot funner.
Speaker 1: I've never twenty nineteen Idaho hot as heck. Everything was
Speaker 1: dry up top, and I had never been more defeated
Speaker 1: on an elk hunt than that one, because we were
Speaker 1: looking at bulls every day. There's a bowl, there's a
Speaker 1: herd in that canyon, and you'd be glad them nothing.
Speaker 1: You'd walk up the there's elk, you'd be agle at
Speaker 1: them nothing. I'm like, there's nothing more defeating before you start,
Speaker 1: Like these are the ones I can see they're not
Speaker 1: making a peep, Like I don't even know if I'm
Speaker 1: buggling to like big Timber, and it was just like
Speaker 1: you're just you're worthless out there, like if they're not
Speaker 1: gonna bugle, Yeah, we can go stalk, you know, spot
Speaker 1: and stalk these elk because we know they're there and
Speaker 1: nothing else is talking. But it's just really defeating to
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'd much give me bugling bulls all day,
Speaker 1: and I'll take that over, you know, maybe more elk
Speaker 1: or elk that aren't bugling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well like last year in New Mexico, for instance,
Speaker 2: we we had the opportunity to hunt the same unit,
Speaker 2: but you were we were hunting two different seasons. You
Speaker 2: were for season, I was second season, and you kind
Speaker 2: of saw a little different different performance of the rat
Speaker 2: than I did. Talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when we showed up and we actually even
Speaker 1: have better or more data than that because me and
Speaker 1: Maranella got to hunt the unit the year be prior,
Speaker 1: so we got these and me and Steve hunted first season.
Speaker 1: You ANDed second season. But within that first season, it's
Speaker 1: a fifteen day season, so me and Steve hunted the
Speaker 1: last six days me and col hunted the first seven
Speaker 1: days or whatever it was, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a lot different. And there were still elk there. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, there were elk, but you could tell
Speaker 1: that they weren't quite settled into where they wanted to be.
Speaker 1: For September, we were watching, you know, the same bowls
Speaker 1: days apart. One time one would have cows, one times
Speaker 1: he wouldn't, one time he would have a few cows,
Speaker 1: and you could just like tell that the pecking order
Speaker 1: was being established and these bulls really didn't want to
Speaker 1: play the game the way we wanted to. But the
Speaker 1: year before, I'm like, man, we ran the same system,
Speaker 1: did the same thing like we normally did, and we
Speaker 1: had bulls, you know, these big bulls just going crazy
Speaker 1: coming into calls. Last year was very You almost felt
Speaker 1: like you were walking on eggshells in the in the
Speaker 1: mountains with the call in your mouth. Right, you were
Speaker 1: just as much as we always preached the hammer at them,
Speaker 1: locate them, move in aggressively. You were like, this isn't
Speaker 1: working right. You knew on day one or two you
Speaker 1: tried to run that system and things were going the
Speaker 1: other way, and you didn't get winded so it was
Speaker 1: just very you had to play very reserved and very
Speaker 1: similar to the Idaho scenario. I was just talking about
Speaker 1: where you knew they were out There were elk everywhere.
Speaker 1: You get up in the morning, elk feeding out above.
Speaker 1: But you move in tight, try cow calls, nothing, try,
Speaker 1: you know, you just couldn't work these bulls. And I
Speaker 1: think it had to do with the timing. They just
Speaker 1: weren't receptive to kind of some of those systems. But yet,
Speaker 1: so the other question in my mind is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if your your buggling is not working, let's
Speaker 1: go run caw calls, let's let's change. But it wasn't working.
Speaker 1: I think we were in this time where they had
Speaker 1: they were, you know, breaking down the hierarchy, they were
Speaker 1: establishing herds, they were going through this process and they
Speaker 1: didn't really care about this cow elk that they couldn't see.
Speaker 1: And so I almost felt helpless. There was nothing we
Speaker 1: could do to really get things going very well. Multiple
Speaker 1: call ins where things would kind of half ass commit
Speaker 1: and then they would lose interest halfway on a call in,
Speaker 1: where before you could almost hang your hat on this
Speaker 1: cal and like all this bulls committed, you know, you
Speaker 1: can see it when they break and you know, they
Speaker 1: might have to go into a little rise or and
Speaker 1: you're like, where did that go? But just a lot
Speaker 1: different than when you were there just the ten days
Speaker 1: after we left.
Speaker 2: Right, And then you say, the bulls that you've seen
Speaker 2: with the cows were like younger bulls, like younger five points,
Speaker 2: like two and a half three and a half year
Speaker 2: old bulls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the most part, as we got like we're
Speaker 1: hunting the first of the eighth or something like that.
Speaker 1: Early in the hunt, there were a lot of small bulls,
Speaker 1: and the bigger bulls seemed to be running, you know,
Speaker 1: by themselves, kind of checking on these herds, checking these cows,
Speaker 1: you know, doing what they do prior to you know,
Speaker 1: estris or whatever they're waiting on. They leave those younger,
Speaker 1: more immature bulls to run the herds and they just
Speaker 1: kind of spot checking. Then towards the end you started
Speaker 1: to see the bigger bulls picking up cows, you know,
Speaker 1: or groups of cows, smaller groups. I think it was
Speaker 1: it was just timing. We were ahead, right for sure.
Speaker 2: So then fast forward to whenever Dusty and I showed up,
Speaker 2: it was a little it was quite a bit different scenario.
Speaker 2: You know. There were the bulls were very vocal, big
Speaker 2: bulls now are taking cows, but those those younger bulls
Speaker 2: were kind of, you know, playing the Satellite Bowl.
Speaker 1: Role.
Speaker 2: And it was it was still like with those bulls
Speaker 2: being cowed up so much, they seem to kind of
Speaker 2: still want to want to keep those cows. So you
Speaker 2: start calling to them and they're like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: think so. Then they'd move off, and they'd move off,
Speaker 2: and it seemed like they were moving over to an
Speaker 2: area away from where we were at. Like it almost
Speaker 2: seemed like all the elk where I was hunting was
Speaker 2: kind of moving over to this other area, you know.
Speaker 2: And I don't know we should even say it, but
Speaker 2: it was right next to this we're hunting, the kind
Speaker 2: of a line of a border line of another unit.
Speaker 2: So they were moving over into their their running mecca,
Speaker 2: which was on the other side of the line. Though,
Speaker 2: So we're kind of like you're helpless. You're like standing
Speaker 2: at the fence line, which is the border. You're like, man,
Speaker 2: I wish I could go over there. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: you could like just over the rise. I could just
Speaker 2: hear chaos. It sounded like something off off of some
Speaker 2: of those old old Primos videos, you know, just just
Speaker 2: twenty five different bulls screaming their guts out. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I wish I could even see into it, just to
Speaker 2: witness what's going on over there. But it seemed like
Speaker 2: every day we got like less elk on my side,
Speaker 2: and they were moving into that other unit, and we
Speaker 2: were just about ready to like, Okay, we're gonna completely
Speaker 2: move in the unit because the unit is fairly good size.
Speaker 2: We're gonna move areas here. But on the third day
Speaker 2: then and it was the same thing, like if I
Speaker 2: bugled a lot, it seemed like we're gonna, we're gonna leave,
Speaker 2: you know that the big bulls would move off, and
Speaker 2: then the satellite bulls they didn't seem to be want
Speaker 2: want much confrontation, but uh, the satellite bulls weren't super
Speaker 2: super vocal. Though. It seemed like the big bulls googled more,
Speaker 2: and then the satellites would kind of come in quiet.
Speaker 2: So I started kind of start doing some cow and
Speaker 2: calf calls, and uh, we're just about ready to leave
Speaker 2: this area. I'm like, you know what, Dusty, let's uh,
Speaker 2: let's wrap it up here. Let's hike back to the truck.
Speaker 2: Let's grab our camp and we're gonna just move move
Speaker 2: our camp. I like to I like to kind of
Speaker 2: travel light, you know, I don't set up a big laborcat.
Speaker 2: Let's move our camp over the other part of the
Speaker 2: unit and try it over there. And but there was
Speaker 2: this one bull. They just kept on like Laney sounded
Speaker 2: like he was laying's bed and he did this really
Speaker 2: crappy moany bugle. He sounded like a moo cow. And
Speaker 2: there was a bunch of moo cows in the area too,
Speaker 2: you know, moving around like that stupid thing sounds like
Speaker 2: beef cow moving in its bed over there. But it's
Speaker 2: an elk. So I'm like, let's go. It's on the
Speaker 2: way to the truck. Let's go on the way to
Speaker 2: the truck. Let's go over there and just kill that
Speaker 2: bowl and we'll just go home. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of said that, you know, kind of being funny,
Speaker 2: like there's no way in heck we're going to kill
Speaker 2: this bowl. But anyway, we get over there, super super
Speaker 2: close and get danger close, like I thought, Okay, if
Speaker 2: I take one more step, this bowl is going to
Speaker 2: see us or detect us. So that's how close we
Speaker 2: want to get. So I stopped and I let out
Speaker 2: the most quiet little calf call you've ever heard, and
Speaker 2: the bowl answers, and I'm like, and I can see movement,
Speaker 2: and we're like sixty eighty yards from this bowl. I
Speaker 2: can see antlers through the trees. He's laying there, and
Speaker 2: I gave a few more and he stands up, and
Speaker 2: then over the next five ten minutes, he just kind
Speaker 2: of slowly feeds over to us, and they'd give this
Speaker 2: real weird moany move out bugle every little better. It
Speaker 2: was a well you'll be able to watch the video.
Speaker 2: The video is gonna drop here pretty soon. But anyway,
Speaker 2: came over, came in close enough I was able to
Speaker 2: shoot him, you know. And I don't want to give
Speaker 2: too much away, but anyway, it was an interesting It
Speaker 2: was a definitely an interesting hunt from what Phelps had described.
Speaker 2: And then the biggest, the biggest, the biggest grind I
Speaker 2: actually have with New Mexico and Jason Phelps is that's
Speaker 2: dirty sucker didn't tell me about chiggers. Like like, on
Speaker 2: day two, I woke up and I've got this weird
Speaker 2: rash all over the inside of my elbow? Is that
Speaker 2: like the ween No, the weennus is the actually the
Speaker 2: loose skin on your elbow. This is like the the
Speaker 2: elbow inside your your elbow pit. I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, a spider must have just ate me up
Speaker 2: last night. So I'm like checking my sleeping bag for spiders.
Speaker 2: I'm checking the dent for spiders, and I'm like, Dusty,
Speaker 2: look at these spider bites, and and that the next morning,
Speaker 2: the third day, i wake up and I've got him
Speaker 2: on both side and then up on my chest. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what is going on? And then we get this elk killed.
Speaker 2: And then we're driving home and as we drive, they're
Speaker 2: getting worse, like we hadn't showered, of course, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: it looks like somebody shot me with bird shot. I've
Speaker 2: got him so bad. I'm like, oh my god. And
Speaker 2: they itch so bad. And it was a different kind
Speaker 2: of itch that I'd ever experienced. It was like it
Speaker 2: was like a mosquito bite times one hundred, and you
Speaker 2: couldn't quit itching, and every time you'd itch, it was
Speaker 2: so satisfying the way it felt, but then it made
Speaker 2: it itch more. Yeah, it was horrible, and I was
Speaker 2: like Phelps and I sent him a picture. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what's something something got me? And he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: those are chiggers. I'm like what to.
Speaker 1: The best of my knowledge, because the year before me
Speaker 1: and Steve both got lit up and then I forgot
Speaker 1: to tell you just ten days prior to you being there.
Speaker 1: Cow got it worse than anybody I'd ever seen, Like
Speaker 1: along your belt line, your armpits, neckline, like they anywhere
Speaker 1: they could just get in and there they hurt. It's
Speaker 1: it's weird, like centerpoint feels like there's some sort of
Speaker 1: stinger or something. You still so when you itch him
Speaker 1: it actually hurts a little bit. Yeah, they're they're nasty
Speaker 1: to the best. If you know what they are, let
Speaker 1: us know about it. So the best of what we
Speaker 1: could check is they were like some sort of tigger
Speaker 1: on steroids.
Speaker 2: Well, when we got home, Dusty took a piece of tape.
Speaker 2: He started reading about it and he's like, okay, he
Speaker 2: thinks they could be tiggers. And so he got a
Speaker 2: piece of like duct tape and put on one of
Speaker 2: the bites and then peeled it off. And then he's
Speaker 2: got a he's got a microscope, right, you guys are
Speaker 2: probably hit it off real good. You just get a
Speaker 2: nerd out about you know, nerd stuff. It's science, yeah,
Speaker 2: basically science. You could probably explain it, but we wouldn't
Speaker 2: understand it. Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it.
Speaker 2: But so he looks at it through a microscope and
Speaker 2: then takes a picture and sends it to me, and literally,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a tigger. It's like just like the
Speaker 2: picture online. And they're nasty, like they burrow in. They
Speaker 2: don't they lay eggs or something.
Speaker 1: That little thing grows and you have basically fists on
Speaker 1: you until it's ready to get gone. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: they weep out. It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was horrible. I like literally I
Speaker 2: and I was a dusty didn't get it as bad
Speaker 2: as I did. I think my my body makeup, you know,
Speaker 2: fat guy. They I got a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of good stuff coming through my pores evidently, you know,
Speaker 2: if Krispy Kreme don't at Greece, I don't know what else.
Speaker 2: But they loved me and to literally two months later,
Speaker 2: I was still scratching them things like a crackhead. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was, it was bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did want to rewind just a little bit
Speaker 1: since we did have that first experience, you know, me
Speaker 1: not being able to make hardly any calls, you not
Speaker 1: necessarily being able to make aggressive beagles. But like when
Speaker 1: me and Steve were there, we were actually there before
Speaker 1: you in this maybe just to lay out that you
Speaker 1: can expect different things on different years in the same spots.
Speaker 1: We were there five six days ahead of you, and
Speaker 1: it was really good because I had pre scout prior
Speaker 1: to Steve and the team getting there. We could not
Speaker 1: not make the right call. I could get tight Bugle,
Speaker 1: I could get tight calcol and we had bulls just
Speaker 1: like running the ret Fest, you know, five hundred. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like they were on a poker run. They
Speaker 1: needed to come check out this bowl. They need to
Speaker 1: go check out that bowl. And every bowl was like
Speaker 1: making this crazy loop and it was like nothing I
Speaker 1: had ever seen before. So yeah, it's just weird from
Speaker 1: you know, three three different trips of the same unit
Speaker 1: anywhere from about fifteen sixteen days apart, and the elk
Speaker 1: acted completely different at different times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, honestly, if you if you hunt
Speaker 2: elk for very long, you kind of you notice that,
Speaker 2: like it's not every year. You know, every year's not
Speaker 2: a ten. There's a lot of fives out there, you know,
Speaker 2: and every day is not a ten. Definitely within you
Speaker 2: you're alloted time, you know, whether you're a weekend warrior
Speaker 2: in it, which you know I used to do that
Speaker 2: a lot back in the day, or you know, if
Speaker 2: it's five ten days whatever, you got to hunt in
Speaker 2: year to year. Just there's some years just line up
Speaker 2: good and they hit and some some they don't. And
Speaker 2: I think that's year to year. The ruts ruts more
Speaker 2: intense or less intense in certain areas. I mean, you
Speaker 2: look at New Mexico when we hunted before in another area.
Speaker 2: You know, we hunted there two years in a row,
Speaker 2: and it was it was a little lackluster until that
Speaker 2: one day and it was like the flip of a
Speaker 2: switch man and big nasty bugles. If I if I
Speaker 2: blew a big nasty bugle, man, it really got the
Speaker 2: bulls going. You know, they didn't care about cow calls.
Speaker 2: Whereas you know the next year when we went there
Speaker 2: with lampers, then, man, I don't know that I ever got.
Speaker 2: I had one day that was maybe half as good
Speaker 2: as the previous year, but we still didn't go with
Speaker 2: those big rut fests that that we loved. But in
Speaker 2: the area had hardly any cows. So if there's hardly
Speaker 2: any cows in my mind, and there are quite a
Speaker 2: bit of bulls, like the bull crowd ratio is pretty
Speaker 2: tight in my mind, like blow a cow call and
Speaker 2: them things are gonna beat your door down. But they
Speaker 2: didn't really care about cow calls much either. There. It's
Speaker 2: just I don't know. I think there's a lot that
Speaker 2: go along with the timing and all. You know, we
Speaker 2: don't know what happened the first season. We weren't there
Speaker 2: the first season. Maybe they were running around like crazy,
Speaker 2: you know, coming to bugles and cow calls.
Speaker 1: And they're I mean, you hunted that flat country quite
Speaker 1: a bit. I just feel like that other area that
Speaker 1: we hunted first was they were just more nomadic, right,
Speaker 1: There was no pattern to them. Those elk may have
Speaker 1: came from three miles away and joined up, or it
Speaker 1: just seemed like lots of movement. It wasn't so much
Speaker 1: like local elk. And yeah, it was like one day
Speaker 1: on fire, one day nothing. It was just they were
Speaker 1: It's just weird, right, versus a normal mountain unit. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: they're going to bed in this patch of timber, they're
Speaker 1: going to feed this, and like you get that same action.
Speaker 1: But yeah, New Mexico is interesting, you know, not where
Speaker 1: we grew up hunting elk, and so I still feel
Speaker 1: like I'm trying to figure it out or apply what
Speaker 1: I think I know. And and that that spot where
Speaker 1: you know we hunted first. Yeah, it was just like
Speaker 1: a light switch, I my gut tells me because there
Speaker 1: were bulls we'd never seen before all of a sudden
Speaker 1: just show up. And then some there were some guys
Speaker 1: hunting the same unit that ended up killing the bowl
Speaker 1: later that we had seen four miles three miles away.
Speaker 1: They had crossed two roads and crossed the Big Ridge
Speaker 1: line and they ended up killing. So these elk are
Speaker 1: just and he had heard of what seventy eight cows
Speaker 1: and that bowl traveled a long long way. So it's like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can like necessarily figure out
Speaker 1: these things or if you're trying to hunt a specific boy,
Speaker 1: better stay with them every day and you know, and
Speaker 1: try to figure them out, because they were just moving
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, they would never like bed in the
Speaker 2: same place, and they wouldn't bed long too, like you know,
Speaker 2: typically like in the Northwest, you know, you bed down
Speaker 2: some milco. It's like, okay, they went to bed right
Speaker 2: over there. They're gonna stay there for most of the day,
Speaker 2: right until it gets the shadows get long in the
Speaker 2: evening and things cool off and the thermals change, and
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, it's time to get up and eat.
Speaker 2: Typically you're like, okay, I'm going to close the gap
Speaker 2: and get over there, sit on them a while, and
Speaker 2: start calling once, you know, about the middle of the day,
Speaker 2: about twelve one o'clock. But New Mexico, I don't know
Speaker 2: how many times I did that. It was like Houdini.
Speaker 2: You'd get over there, get super close, and then it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: they ought to be settled, let's start calling nothing. And
Speaker 2: then you like slowly creep in those elk are gone.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: They would lay there for like an hour or something
Speaker 2: and they'd get up and leave. But in my mind,
Speaker 2: it's because there's so damn much rocks and pokey stuff,
Speaker 2: I mean, and then there's not not a lot of
Speaker 2: good shade, you know, there's not a lot of tall trees.
Speaker 2: It was that kind of that low shade. The sun
Speaker 2: would move and they probably get hot and maybe they're
Speaker 2: laying on a rock in the wrong spot, so I guess,
Speaker 2: or maybe they just like they don't want to stay
Speaker 2: in one spot and let another bowl come along and
Speaker 2: mess it up for him. But yeah, So anyway, back
Speaker 2: to the podcast, I'll be hosting a lot of these
Speaker 2: on my own type podcasts. Love to have Jason from
Speaker 2: time to time. I'm gonna start a series here leading
Speaker 2: up to September. We're gonna talk about preparations of what
Speaker 2: you can do to prep prepare for September. You know,
Speaker 2: all the things that go through my mind. Whether we're
Speaker 2: talking about fitness, you know, since I'm a fitness model,
Speaker 2: that's not not at all that but uh, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about fitness, We're going to talk about gear,
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about getting prepared, scout e scouting,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about and then once September hits,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about you know, all the all
Speaker 2: the tactics and and things to to use and to
Speaker 2: do once you get to your spot, you know, and
Speaker 2: maybe you're hunting out of state, maybe you're maybe you're
Speaker 2: hunting your local area. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: all the stuff that it's going to take to put
Speaker 2: together an elk hunt for this fall and hopefully get
Speaker 2: you better prepared. I know, I know every year, you know,
Speaker 2: I've been doing this elk hunting with archery l hunting
Speaker 2: for thirty four years and I'm like, Okay, I got
Speaker 2: this figured out, and then the next year, I just
Speaker 2: totally get schooled again, right. So that and that's the
Speaker 2: great part about elkhunting. It's fun. It feels like it's
Speaker 2: it's a craft that you can never master, and I
Speaker 2: feel like that's what the fun part is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's why I love archaill hunting
Speaker 1: so much, is that I'm one of those guys that's
Speaker 1: just wired. If I'm going to do something, I want
Speaker 1: to be the best at it, or feel like I'm
Speaker 1: the best at or have full control and so by
Speaker 1: never truly mastering any of it and and feeling like
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to hone that or get to that
Speaker 1: accomplishment or that goal of like having this dialed. But
Speaker 1: I think the reality is it's just there's so many,
Speaker 1: so many variables, and there the elk or were so
Speaker 1: unpredictable that I think that the fun thing is that
Speaker 1: I'm never going to have it figured out completely. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have a pretty good idea and you're going to
Speaker 1: do some things that work a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: But every year is a new learning experience. I go
Speaker 1: in with an open mind, try to figure out what's working,
Speaker 1: and you know, just add it to my my experience.
Speaker 1: You know, all my experiences go into a bag, and
Speaker 1: then you try to pull those out and hopefully it,
Speaker 1: you know, works. There's times where you know things can
Speaker 1: work perfectly ten times in a row, you think you
Speaker 1: got a slam dunk set up, and then you go
Speaker 1: to run at the next time and it fails right
Speaker 1: off the bat. You just never know. And that's what
Speaker 1: I love about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you know, I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of people think, oh, man, you if I had that tag,
Speaker 2: I'd probably just kill this or that. And no matter
Speaker 2: what how good a tag is from what I've found,
Speaker 2: whether it's been on my own experience, I've had a
Speaker 2: couple of decent tags. I've been along with other people
Speaker 2: that have some really good tags. You still have to
Speaker 2: show up and you still have to work hard. Every day.
Speaker 2: Just because you've got a really good tag doesn't mean
Speaker 2: there's three fifty bowls under every bush. I mean you
Speaker 2: still got to get up and do it and try hard.
Speaker 2: And and sometimes some of the better tags I've had,
Speaker 2: I've had to try as hard, if not harder than
Speaker 2: just good old over the counter units that I've had,
Speaker 2: you know, luck in before. So that's some some something
Speaker 2: that you know, you always had to kind of keep
Speaker 2: in mind in this fall. So I've got a tag
Speaker 2: for Montana, and I've got to well, I have a
Speaker 2: tag for Idaho. Sure whether it's over the counter, but
Speaker 2: I'm in for a draw for a good unit. So
Speaker 2: you know, I'm probably more likely to get struck by
Speaker 2: like draw this tag. But but who knows, somebody's got
Speaker 2: to draw. There's always so But Montana, I mean Montana,
Speaker 2: I mean it's a it's a great place to hunt elk.
Speaker 2: It's a mecca. There's there's a lot of elk, there's
Speaker 2: some big bulls, there's some It kind of checks every
Speaker 2: box whether you want to hunt flat country or back
Speaker 2: country or mountains or whatever. But there's definitely a learning
Speaker 2: curve and and I haven't cracked the coat on Montana
Speaker 2: yet so again, like I got to dig in on
Speaker 2: my et scouting and I'm gonna make a trip here
Speaker 2: in a few weeks over and just kind of learned that,
Speaker 2: like an go to an area that I kind of
Speaker 2: really want to check out and just go get boots
Speaker 2: on the ground and check it out and see in
Speaker 2: the past, I've I've just got my butt kicked in Montana.
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of looking forward to this year like
Speaker 2: maybe I'll build it, Like I'll figure it out. Right, Oh,
Speaker 2: I got these Montana figured out, and then if I
Speaker 2: get a tag again, it'll probably be a completely different game.
Speaker 1: I know where we left some really big bulls last
Speaker 1: time me and you were in Montana. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to get back there. I just haven't had an ELK
Speaker 1: tag in my pocket for Montana lately. But I I
Speaker 1: I just find myself if I get bored at work
Speaker 1: or if I just need to check out from the
Speaker 1: mind numbing designs and stuff that I'm doing, I find
Speaker 1: myself like floating back to that area because I one
Speaker 1: of the biggest bulls I've ever seen on the hoof
Speaker 1: I think was on that trip, and I think that
Speaker 1: area can be good if you figure it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well what I've been doing, if so I could
Speaker 2: go hunt that area again. I've been working on my
Speaker 2: track and field skills. I've been running hurdles, limbo and hurdles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've never been to such a place with so many
Speaker 2: blowdowns in my entire life.
Speaker 1: All right, you could, you could. We've spent ten minutes
Speaker 1: at a time, never putting foot like on dirt. You're
Speaker 1: on a tree, over a tree, walking this tree to
Speaker 1: get to the next tree, because if you were to
Speaker 1: put your foot on dirt, going to take it ten
Speaker 1: times longer. It's just an incredible blowdown patch.
Speaker 2: I'd like to say that was a fun hunt, but
Speaker 2: I can't really say that. I mean, it was a
Speaker 2: tough hunt. The camaraderie was awesome hunted with you and
Speaker 2: Yannis and the camera guys were great. I mean, we
Speaker 2: had a lot of laughs in a good time. But dude,
Speaker 2: it was brutal. Like we'd hear bulls bugling across these
Speaker 2: canyons and they weren't deep, nasty canyons. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we'll be over there in fifteen twenty minutes. Now like
Speaker 2: two hours, three hours later, we finally get over there,
Speaker 2: will the elk are gone or done bugling for the day.
Speaker 2: It was. It was so challenging.
Speaker 1: I like, I mean, I'm gonna tell on you a
Speaker 1: little bit. I think there was a point and I'd
Speaker 1: like to say we would have killed this bowl if
Speaker 1: Dirk had to go do some paperwork and the mountains
Speaker 1: and for god his release. He didn't realize, kid, for God,
Speaker 1: his release until we had I mean, in the size
Speaker 1: of the bull doesn't matter, but in this case, just
Speaker 1: to throw more at Dirk, like a very very healthy bowl,
Speaker 1: mature bowl we'd been watching all day, was coming down
Speaker 1: the pipeline or down a meadow bottom at him. And
Speaker 1: at that time, when what was the one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty yards away, when Dirk realized that his release should
Speaker 1: probably like make contact with his string, he realized he
Speaker 1: didn't have a release on his wrist, and we had
Speaker 1: the time when we called time. The elk didn't risk.
Speaker 1: They didn't respect our time out that we had called no.
Speaker 2: And then they then he moved to a position of
Speaker 2: you know, he had the advantage over us. But just
Speaker 2: you know, here's a pro tip. If you didn't go
Speaker 2: do some paperwork, don't take your your lease off and
Speaker 2: set it on the log, you know, put it in
Speaker 2: your pocket or in your pack. At least that way
Speaker 2: you can like dig in your pocket and get it. Man,
Speaker 2: that how frustrating it was.
Speaker 1: You chuckle now, But in the moment you're like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: like that dir's a.
Speaker 2: Really hideous No.
Speaker 1: No, no, I wouldn't say that, but you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think because that bowl was big, it had been
Speaker 1: your best bowl ever. Probably, I think it was hard
Speaker 1: and just like to have just the the stint of
Speaker 1: bad luck that your release wasn't with you. And yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to time out those that paperwork time.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially when you're eating weird food. You know,
Speaker 2: you're eating you know, dehydrated meals and and uh high
Speaker 2: fiber stuff, and.
Speaker 1: You always Yeah, I look back to that one, I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: we did everything right. That was one of those days
Speaker 1: where you just sit all day waiting for the wind
Speaker 1: to switch and and for those elk to get out
Speaker 1: of their beds and wake up, and it's like everything
Speaker 1: was right, but it was. It was still good. But
Speaker 1: now I one of these days I look forward to
Speaker 1: come back to Montana. I've got five or six points
Speaker 1: there looking to draw a tag the next time we
Speaker 1: draw a big game combo. But yeah, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: see how you do there in Montana and then Idaho.
Speaker 1: You going back to your stomping grounds or.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, I'm I'm torn. You know that
Speaker 2: my old stomping grounds, that the elk density is so
Speaker 2: low that you can spend a lot of days Like
Speaker 2: last year, I spent a bunch of days with hardly
Speaker 2: any bugling, any calling, and it's such stick country. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: people are like, well, why don't you just you know,
Speaker 2: glass them up and spot and stuck. Well, there's very
Speaker 2: few areas you could actually spot an elk in the open,
Speaker 2: and you could probably spend two weeks looking at that
Speaker 2: opening and maybe never see a bird, let alone an
Speaker 2: elk just lower densities and then so the elk have
Speaker 2: to bugle if you really want to play the game
Speaker 2: with them. So it was pretty tough. But every now
Speaker 2: and then you'll turn up a giant, which I did
Speaker 2: on the last day. I had to I had to
Speaker 2: leave early. My wife got a pendicitis and I had
Speaker 2: to had to head home. But I'm like, okay, we
Speaker 2: can hunt till twelve o'clock and then we got to
Speaker 2: go and turn up at just a monster and then
Speaker 2: you know, didn't come together for me. But but that
Speaker 2: I guess that's kind of the thing that kind of
Speaker 2: keeps you going back. You kind of fall in love
Speaker 2: with the country a little bit, the whole experience, and
Speaker 2: then you know, every now and then, you know, you
Speaker 2: turn up a pretty nice bowl and sometimes you can
Speaker 2: capitalize it on it or not. But I'm not. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'll go back to that spot this year.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking maybe trying something a little more local to
Speaker 2: where I live, less less hours of drive time instead
Speaker 2: of driving, you know, spending all my time driving. Maybe
Speaker 2: I can check out some area is they're a little
Speaker 2: closer to me to where I can have less drive
Speaker 2: time and maybe spend more time actually boots on the
Speaker 2: ground scouting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that spot you're looking at it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. I just have a hunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, if you wouldn't have been a dummy and
Speaker 2: didn't get an ELK tag, you know, do I need
Speaker 2: to call the governor and say, hey, get my buddy
Speaker 2: Jason an ELK tag. You know what he likes to hunt? ELK?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you have continued to I've been going
Speaker 1: back and looking at the leftovers just to see, and
Speaker 1: I think you still have control over me. There. You
Speaker 1: get like, hey, if this Jason Phelps guy logs in
Speaker 1: signed in, like there are no leftover tags or no turnbacks.
Speaker 2: The Idaho Fishing Game is shadow banning you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you you. I think they're You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: call him back and tell him to take that off
Speaker 1: of my account.
Speaker 2: Okay, well there is a chance.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, because as much as I want to
Speaker 1: really focus on one hunt, we could do a little
Speaker 1: early early September run over there and we've had some
Speaker 1: great success in that area early September.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially if I can get in there this
Speaker 2: summer and put some boots on the ground and see,
Speaker 2: you know, if the elk still where you left them,
Speaker 2: you know last time you guys hunted there be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's still a bunch of elk in here or is
Speaker 2: it just wolf scat You never know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you never know.
Speaker 2: But well that's fun, madam. I'm glad. I'm glad to
Speaker 2: join the team here on the Cutting the Distance podcast
Speaker 2: and the media group. Like I say, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where it's all going to head. And look
Speaker 2: like you know, on my day to day it's we're
Speaker 2: still figuring that stuff out, but but I know it's
Speaker 2: gonna be a good time. And And if you guys
Speaker 2: want to watch that Elk film that we talked about
Speaker 2: last twenty twenty two, new Mexico Elk film of mine,
Speaker 2: that'll be playing on the Phelps channel here pretty soon.
Speaker 2: So keep an eye out, check us out on social media, Instagram,
Speaker 2: Phelps game calls, and you'll when we'll keep your breast
Speaker 2: on what's going on in our film launches. So and
Speaker 2: then you've got some films coming out too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got mile Counts from last year coming out
Speaker 1: on the Meat Eater YouTube channel. My My Quality Washington
Speaker 1: Bowl I think is going to come out late August
Speaker 1: early September on the Loophole channel, And uh, I think
Speaker 1: that's is that it? That's all I got those two?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: One other thing. One one thing we forgot about some
Speaker 2: tags we we didn't talk about our deer. I mean,
Speaker 2: we got so wrapped up in the most supreme species
Speaker 2: of animal on planet Earth. We forgot about about the
Speaker 2: second second best mule deer and white tail third best
Speaker 2: third best white Now that's pretty debatable. That's that's a
Speaker 2: fist fight amongst deer, dear loving people.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: You all know white tails are smarter than mule there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, adaptable. I wouldn't say smarter, I'd say more adaptable. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got we got a couple of good deer tags
Speaker 1: in our pockets too, for you know, November tag. So
Speaker 1: we'll get to chase some can of meal is around
Speaker 1: and then some Kansas whitetail around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, I'm love that. I love the Montana Muley.
Speaker 2: It's like usually you get over there and it's like
Speaker 2: a blizzard. It's cold and it's nasty, and sometimes you
Speaker 2: can't even see because your eyes are watering from all
Speaker 2: the wind and ice chunks blown into your eyeballs. But man,
Speaker 2: mule deer are so fun to hunt over there. And
Speaker 2: then last year we did that with that whitetail hunt
Speaker 2: with our good buddy Randy Milligan. And he's got a
Speaker 2: beautiful piece of property.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the setup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he asked us to come over and hunt,
Speaker 2: and it's like, I mean, how lucky are we?
Speaker 1: How do how do all the locals say, he's got
Speaker 1: the hole.
Speaker 2: He's got the hole.
Speaker 1: So everything that's a good deer spots the hole. But
Speaker 1: you talk to anybody that maybe that you know that
Speaker 1: we're just we're brushing by, or you tell them you're
Speaker 1: hunting Randy's or you're hunting with Randy, and that's all
Speaker 1: you get. Yeah, he's got the hole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh yeah, he's got a hole.
Speaker 1: I'm taking that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good he's got a good buck hole. Yeah,
Speaker 2: deer hole. And then it was it was an It's
Speaker 2: super different than what we're used to. You know, I've
Speaker 2: hunted white tails for years in North Idaho. It's a
Speaker 2: different game, you know. I'd never set in a tree stand,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's more of a ground game. But
Speaker 2: we set in tree stands and ground blinds. And I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna be honest with you. I was scared
Speaker 2: to death in the tree stand.
Speaker 1: Oh. I was gonna ask you or have we been doing?
Speaker 1: Like have you been training? Because it sounds like Randy's
Speaker 1: gonna have us race up a tree, hook in and
Speaker 1: then race back. Randy couldn't get over, you couldn't put
Speaker 1: two guys in a more awkward position. I don't think
Speaker 1: to start with, is hey, get up this tree and
Speaker 1: clip yourself in. I'm like, Randy, couldn't we have did
Speaker 1: this in the daylight to start with? Like it's pitch black.
Speaker 1: I've never been up a tree in my life, and
Speaker 1: here I am, like with a lifeline and trying to
Speaker 1: get my thing all hooked in, and we should have
Speaker 1: probably did this in the day daylight.
Speaker 2: It's like trust falls, really, I mean, it's like because
Speaker 2: you weren't trusting that he put that those tree ladder
Speaker 2: steps strapped on tight and good with good good straps,
Speaker 2: aren't going to break?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you used to get climbing up like
Speaker 1: this one's real faded? Is it still good?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They don't care it creaked a little bit, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And then then then you try to get in the
Speaker 2: stand and I look like he laughed. He started laughing
Speaker 2: when I was getting the stand trying to get in
Speaker 2: the stand because he didn't put his ladder to where
Speaker 2: you could like climb up a little above the.
Speaker 1: Stand and then just kind of s your stands. The
Speaker 1: next step, the last step was.
Speaker 2: Like where I needed to be standing on to step
Speaker 2: into the so I had to kind of hump the
Speaker 2: tree to get my feet on that that last step,
Speaker 2: and then he's like, just swing your leg over, just
Speaker 2: you're student wrong, just swing your leg over him, like
Speaker 2: I can't. So then I heard I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I swung the leg over and I'm trying to crawl
Speaker 2: in and he was dying laughing. I wish somebody had
Speaker 2: have been there to film it, because but then once
Speaker 2: I got in this down, it's like, okay, I'm and
Speaker 2: we got we got our harnesses on. We're safe. You know,
Speaker 2: nothing would have happened if we had have fell out.
Speaker 2: But then I get sitting there and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't think I can draw my bow without being freaked out.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, build up some some confidence there.
Speaker 2: Stand up. I'm like trying to draw my bus, like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I feel like I'm just gonna follow
Speaker 2: the tree, stamp backwards, Okay, lean forward and shift weight
Speaker 2: a little bit. Okay, well, oh my god, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: fall out frontwards now I was. It was not good.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I hope a big buck don't.
Speaker 1: Come by this. I'm I'm not ready. I'm not ready yet.
Speaker 2: I like the ground blind. It was a way better.
Speaker 2: You just have to shoot through these little tiny narrow slats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, watch your stabilizer, watch your arrow, watch.
Speaker 2: Watch you with your wheel, your limb.
Speaker 1: I mean it'll be fun. I'm looking forward to that one.
Speaker 1: We were hoping that Steve was gonna go with us,
Speaker 1: but fortunate and he didn't draw, So it just be
Speaker 1: more dear for us, that's way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll scout it out for him, because
Speaker 2: you know, Steve would get the best stands and we'd
Speaker 2: get second rate stands.
Speaker 1: This will work out better.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well this way too, we can like scout
Speaker 2: out the places they have the smaller bucks and we
Speaker 2: can turn him onto those. Yeah, this is the this
Speaker 2: is the hole over here.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be there. We should have a
Speaker 1: great fall looking forward it. Yeah, stoke to have you.
Speaker 1: You've you've co hosted a few times for me, usually
Speaker 1: when I'm like running to the mountains and I'm I
Speaker 1: don't have an episode that's ready for this. We hate dirt,
Speaker 1: so you've covered for me before. But this is going
Speaker 1: to be a permanent, full time gig. So we're excited
Speaker 1: to have you here. On cutting the distance, I think
Speaker 1: you'll bring a you know, exciting, new entertaining fuel to
Speaker 1: the show where yeah, excited for our guest to be
Speaker 1: able to get that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and guys, like I said, guys and gals,
Speaker 2: please do send in those questions that way, we got
Speaker 2: plenty of material. You know, sometimes you kind of get
Speaker 2: embedded into this stuff and it's like, man, what don't we
Speaker 2: even talk about? Because you take for granted, like you say,
Speaker 2: you know of all the things, but there's a world
Speaker 2: of questions and a world of topics we can cover,
Speaker 2: whether it's elk hunting, deer hunting, crappie fishing. No, just kidding,
Speaker 2: I like to eat croppy. You're delicious. Yeah, I wish
Speaker 2: we had crappy where I love but they don't. Well
Speaker 2: maybe they do, and I don't even know right knows
Speaker 2: how smart what you know? But anyway, yeah, yeah, please
Speaker 2: do call in or and we'll get that number on
Speaker 2: my next podcast and episode and or you know, email
Speaker 2: c t D at Phelpsing Game Calls dot com. So uh,
Speaker 2: until next time, thanks for listening. And uh man, I
Speaker 2: wish I really a really cool tagline, like like get them, get.
Speaker 1: Them, cut the distance you have to come up with one.
Speaker 2: Monsters are dumming.
Speaker 1: There you go, all right, Thanks everybody, everybody,