Speaker 1: Hey, what's up. This is the Meat Eater podcast recording.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the first media podcast we ever
Speaker 1: recorded not on the road. We're in my office. I'm
Speaker 1: on the road, that's right. Yeah, this is the first
Speaker 1: media podcast ever recorded where where I was not I
Speaker 1: Steve Ronnella, was not on the road. I'm joined here,
Speaker 1: as is often the case by Janice Patellos, who is
Speaker 1: on the road. We're in the Pacific Northwest, Um, overlooking
Speaker 1: the beautiful Lake Washington and in a little office and
Speaker 1: fixing it due somewhat of a special episode of podcast here.
Speaker 1: Because there's this thing that happens. We get, we get
Speaker 1: like like you know, the media podcast, right. The name
Speaker 1: comes from the fact, the word media comes fact that that. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a show. I do, a television show called Meat Eater. Um,
Speaker 1: hopefully you've seen it. If you haven't seen it, hopefully
Speaker 1: go check it out. But but I'd like to think
Speaker 1: if I didn't do a television show called Meter, I
Speaker 1: maybe still have a podcast by the same title. So
Speaker 1: there's these these things that exist. Um, you know, they
Speaker 1: they they circle around each other in some way. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm explaining that to you. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: I'm the people watch this show, the show called Meat Eater,
Speaker 1: which is arguably um the next to Apocalypse now, Godfather One,
Speaker 1: Godfather too, and Strange Brew um perhaps the best thing
Speaker 1: to ever be filmed, And people watch this program and
Speaker 1: they always right in with these like hunting questions. And
Speaker 1: what you notice over time is that people keep like
Speaker 1: people ask the same questions. So something about the show
Speaker 1: or something about the subject of I think probably the latter,
Speaker 1: Like something about the subject of hunting um brings up
Speaker 1: these perpetual questions that people always ask. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times I have what's cool about having the Honest
Speaker 1: here and the Honest as a producer on the show
Speaker 1: but also a lifelong hunter, former guide, all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff like that. A lot of times I will defer
Speaker 1: some of these questions to your Honest because they you know,
Speaker 1: they he can speak to them with some authority. So
Speaker 1: for this episode, what I want to do is is,
Speaker 1: in some way, it's like answering questions that come in
Speaker 1: all time. But it's more than just answering questions for
Speaker 1: some particular dude out there. You know, It's not like, hey, Bob,
Speaker 1: here's the answer to your arcane esoteric question, because these
Speaker 1: are things that are just on people's mind all the
Speaker 1: time when it comes to particularly the big game hunting
Speaker 1: um in order to give a little context, and we're
Speaker 1: just gonna, I'm just gonna start rolling into these and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna do a bunch of them as much
Speaker 1: as we can in an hour. And so this is
Speaker 1: just like a like a big game hunting discussion. And
Speaker 1: one of the first questions and we get all this
Speaker 1: time is like people always right and asking what's the
Speaker 1: best bang for your buck hunt? And it's usually a
Speaker 1: dude who lives somewhere east of the Mississippi River grows up.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a hundred white tails off his life
Speaker 1: on small game off his life. He's been saving up.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of dough. He's been saving up,
Speaker 1: and he wants to figure out, like what is the
Speaker 1: big wild West hunting trip he's gonna do. What's he
Speaker 1: gonna hunt for? And where is he gonna go? And
Speaker 1: this is his big chance to you know, experience the vast,
Speaker 1: beautiful vistas of the American West. And yeah, you can
Speaker 1: feel he's don't even paying attention. He's working on a
Speaker 1: side project on his computer, um, which is the completion
Speaker 1: of Yeah, yeah, I actually I want to throw it
Speaker 1: in real quick. The reason you honest to tell us
Speaker 1: is in my office right now, as we just pulled
Speaker 1: a five day Uh, I don't wanna quite call a
Speaker 1: bender because there was besides the bottle of beer here
Speaker 1: and there. You know. It wasn't like the old stories,
Speaker 1: you know, Jack Caraway getting all hopped up on pills
Speaker 1: and you know, writing for days on a big continuous
Speaker 1: piece of butcher's paper. But we did just spend five days,
Speaker 1: you know, fourteen fifteen hours a day, um, putting the
Speaker 1: finishing touches on volume two of The Complete Guide to Hunting,
Speaker 1: Butchering and Cooking Wild Game, which will be released in
Speaker 1: the fall of two thousand fifteen. This coming fall with
Speaker 1: spiegl and Growl, the division of Random House and imprint
Speaker 1: with Random House Beautiful Books. And we've been just busting
Speaker 1: our asses on getting this thing done. That's why Yanni
Speaker 1: is here. We finally turned it in last night. So
Speaker 1: all that research and work it makes us even better
Speaker 1: boned up. But we didn't quite finish it because Yanni's
Speaker 1: messing around something over there. But yeah, so this this
Speaker 1: question is this pre new question, like if you're gonna
Speaker 1: go out, you're gonna go out west and do something
Speaker 1: you want to go do a wild West hunt. What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? I'm gonna take the I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give the long d I'm gonna give it a long answer.
Speaker 1: We're gonna give an answer for the long thinking, detail
Speaker 1: oriented dude, and I'm gonna give an answer for the
Speaker 1: impulsive dude. The long thinking, detail oriented dude will think
Speaker 1: of a couple of species to interest him, and I
Speaker 1: would suggest, if you really don't have like a Western
Speaker 1: experience with like good availability, a good chance for success
Speaker 1: and action, um, I would think about mule dering elk.
Speaker 1: Do you disagree with that? You No, not at all.
Speaker 1: I would think about mule deering elt. I would think
Speaker 1: about the following states from the south working north. I
Speaker 1: would think about Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Montana.
Speaker 1: It's good to mention that he's asking about affordability as
Speaker 1: well well. I would give him the long, detail oriented answer.
Speaker 1: So let me let me go on a little bit.
Speaker 1: So so I'm just named it the western states. Some
Speaker 1: states that would rule out Like, if you're a dude
Speaker 1: from the Midwest, you know, or the East or wherever,
Speaker 1: and you want to do a Western hunt, this is
Speaker 1: gonna this, this will this will piss some people off.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't spend a ton of time looking at Washington, Oregon, California.
Speaker 1: I just want to spend a bunch of time on
Speaker 1: those states. It's long ways to go. Yeah, add to
Speaker 1: the gas bill big time. Yeah, it as to the
Speaker 1: gas build also, It's just like, uh, I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking at those states for a bunch
Speaker 1: of reasons. But the long detail oriented dude, I would pick,
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna pick couple of species, and I
Speaker 1: would start doing some research in publications such as Eastman's
Speaker 1: what's the Eastman's one called Eastman's Hunting Yeah, and Bow
Speaker 1: Hunting Journal, Eastman's Magazines, and Hunting Fool Magazine, and start
Speaker 1: doing some research on what are the premier low pressure
Speaker 1: mule deer and elk units in a handful of states
Speaker 1: that seem attractive to you. Like, let's say you decided
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do like you got your heart set on
Speaker 1: the Northern Rockies, so you're gonna be like you're thinking
Speaker 1: Idaho Montana. Let's just say you love the looks Idaho Montana.
Speaker 1: Never been out there, you want to go up there.
Speaker 1: Get Eastman's and get hunting fool and start reading through
Speaker 1: those publications and finding low pressure draw units in no
Speaker 1: states and then start applying for those units. Because if
Speaker 1: you know you want to go sometime in the next
Speaker 1: five six years, start applying for like the cream of
Speaker 1: the crop top pick units. And these are not secrets,
Speaker 1: you know, these are widely known things. Basically, it's the
Speaker 1: things with the minimum percent chance that you're gonna draw
Speaker 1: the tag, and start applying for those tags for five
Speaker 1: or six years, because you might just get lucky and
Speaker 1: hit some sweet unit, hit a tag for a sweet unit,
Speaker 1: and when that happens, you'll know now is my time
Speaker 1: to go, because I'm gonna have a fantastic hunt. And
Speaker 1: it also narrows down because any tag you draw like
Speaker 1: that asking me for a very specific little chunker ground,
Speaker 1: and you'll know to hammer down where you're gonna go hunt.
Speaker 1: You can start starting maps and all that. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're just a guy who's like I'm going this year, man,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I would think that the first thing
Speaker 1: you want to do is pick your species. And again
Speaker 1: one quick interjection on that note of those points and whatnot,
Speaker 1: A lot of states, Um, it doesn't really matter if
Speaker 1: you're actually already choosing the particular unit. You can just
Speaker 1: be collecting points. And that's probably the most important important
Speaker 1: thing that you need to be doing to be thinking
Speaker 1: about this grand adventure in the future, is just collecting
Speaker 1: some points. So when you do have your penny saved up,
Speaker 1: your ready to roll, you've got these great options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to give a quick crash course on bonus
Speaker 1: points in big game tag draws. It's a really complicated subject.
Speaker 1: We have a ton of information about it in the
Speaker 1: complete guide book that we're working on. But the way
Speaker 1: to work is, like you put let's say you want
Speaker 1: to put in for a unit, like let's just pulling
Speaker 1: out of Like the premier multary unit in Montana is
Speaker 1: to seventy. Okay, it's in the upper bid root. If
Speaker 1: you could have any mule deer tag in Montana, you'd
Speaker 1: want unit to seventy. Now, the odds of drawing unit
Speaker 1: to seventy or single percentage points, okay, especially for a
Speaker 1: non resident, you're just not gonna do it. Montana has
Speaker 1: a bonus point system though, so every year that you
Speaker 1: put in for a tag and you don't draw, you
Speaker 1: get a point added to your name, and Montana squares. Well,
Speaker 1: let me back a minute. You get a point added
Speaker 1: to your name. That means the second year you put in,
Speaker 1: your name goes into the hat two times. But what
Speaker 1: Montana does now is they square your bonus points. So
Speaker 1: let's say you've applied two years in a row unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: for you to two seventy. The next year you apply,
Speaker 1: you have two bonus points. Your name will be going
Speaker 1: into the hat four times for your bonus points in
Speaker 1: a fifth time because you're filling out a new application.
Speaker 1: So right now, for instance, I'm sitting on you know,
Speaker 1: I think twelve bonus points for bighorn sheep in Montana,
Speaker 1: I apply for the same unit every year six eight
Speaker 1: for big horns. My name will be going into the
Speaker 1: hat this year one forty four times. I still will
Speaker 1: not draw that tag. Mule, deer and elk are different, though,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of opportunities. So the long thinking guy,
Speaker 1: we'll start right now this moment accumulating bonus points in
Speaker 1: a handful of states. I put in for every state,
Speaker 1: but I am able, like I hunt a lot more
Speaker 1: for variety of reasons. I hunt a lot more than
Speaker 1: most people. I put in for like pretty much every
Speaker 1: Western state. But for you, pick a couple of states
Speaker 1: that you've always wanted to visit, or better yet, where
Speaker 1: you have some family or friends or some connection, some
Speaker 1: connection to resources and logistical support, and start putting in
Speaker 1: for tags every year. There's no reason not to do it.
Speaker 1: It costs a little bit of money, but just do
Speaker 1: it now. Let's say, but that's not the case, and
Speaker 1: you want to go this year or as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Pick your species. I would suggest elker mule here, and
Speaker 1: then narrow down into what state you want to hunt.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing I would do. And I would think,
Speaker 1: like for affordable states and availability of tags, and you
Speaker 1: want to go for mule deer, elk. I'm gonna try
Speaker 1: to narrow it down a little bit and say that
Speaker 1: in Johanna's correct me on this, I would say Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: mule deer, elk, availability of tags, good hunting potential. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only problem with Montana is they have increased their
Speaker 1: prices a big time for the nonresident hunter. I want
Speaker 1: to say that your upwards of eight hundred dollars, even
Speaker 1: maybe being close to nine hundred. If you want to
Speaker 1: do the combo tag, you're gonna wind up being shocked
Speaker 1: at what tags are gonna cost. Another states like Colorado
Speaker 1: is a cheaper state to hunt. Yeah, right now, I
Speaker 1: think you can hunt a boil in Colorado is a
Speaker 1: nonresident for about five and that's definitely one of the
Speaker 1: cheaper states. Idaho might be a little bit less. They
Speaker 1: might be in the four's. Um. Yeah, Montana, you're up
Speaker 1: there eight somewhere. It's a lot of money. And what
Speaker 1: you gotta look at is you gotta look at how
Speaker 1: you're gonna you know, this gets into the whole their
Speaker 1: subject is when you go do this, how you're gonna
Speaker 1: save money, Like you're gonna drive camp out of your truck,
Speaker 1: public land, all that kind of stuff. But the tag,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be expensive. And there are a thing that
Speaker 1: guys run into on a promise. This is like Colorado
Speaker 1: has some over the counter ELK opportunities, right, Idaho, Montana
Speaker 1: has some over technically like they basically have some over
Speaker 1: the counter opportunities because of something I'll explain where you're
Speaker 1: you're supposed to put in for a draw every year,
Speaker 1: like you have to apply around June one or late March,
Speaker 1: and in around June one you apply for a tag
Speaker 1: for the following fall. Oftentimes there's not enough applicants to fill.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of quantity of tags, so the
Speaker 1: leftover tags are sold basically in the over the counter
Speaker 1: way until the until the quota runs out, until the
Speaker 1: number of tags for sailors sold, and it usually happens
Speaker 1: sometimes in the late summer. Sometimes it doesn't even happen
Speaker 1: until season starts. So when I say over to counter,
Speaker 1: it's not technically over to counter, but it's basically over
Speaker 1: the counter availability. Um. It takes a little bit of research.
Speaker 1: You can get to find yourself with some great tags.
Speaker 1: If you do that, you find those undersubscribe units um,
Speaker 1: and they should be that you can't buy them over
Speaker 1: the counter. So the guy that's not doing any research
Speaker 1: is not finding that tag, not getting into that unit.
Speaker 1: So with a little bit of research, you can really
Speaker 1: get yourself into some good stuff. Yeah. So, um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to get even more detailed. Mule deer, I
Speaker 1: would say, uh, Idaho not but not the Panhandle for availability,
Speaker 1: inexpensive all that kind of stuff, mule, deer and idahole.
Speaker 1: Not the Panhandle. Um Colorado you gotta put in for
Speaker 1: mule your tags and some of the better units take
Speaker 1: a couple of years to draw. But Idaho you're just
Speaker 1: gonna get the tag. Montana a more expensive tag. I
Speaker 1: think about the eastern half of the state for elk
Speaker 1: um Idaho in Colorado, yeah, if you're not playing the
Speaker 1: long game, Colorado is hard to be for the uh,
Speaker 1: the short game guy, because there are lots of elk there.
Speaker 1: It's something like two and fifty elk in that state.
Speaker 1: There's two seasons that are wide open over the counter.
Speaker 1: You just show up and buy attack so you can
Speaker 1: decide the week before that you know you want to
Speaker 1: go elk hunt. There's a lot of opportunity there. Randy
Speaker 1: Newburg wrote a great article I think it appeared in
Speaker 1: Bugle magazine where he lined out how to basically go
Speaker 1: on this affordable western elk hunt in Colorado for a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And I think he did it leaving Wisconsin
Speaker 1: or Indiana one of those Midwestern states. Um driving out,
Speaker 1: you know, car camping. Uh, obviously you only drink water
Speaker 1: and you eat Ramen noodles. But even with a six
Speaker 1: dollar elk tag for a thousand dollars, you want elk
Speaker 1: hunting for a week. I used to do stuff. I've
Speaker 1: lost touch of it now, and sometimes I feel like
Speaker 1: I need a reality check, you know, because the way, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just the way I'm able to hunt, like
Speaker 1: doing a show and stuff. You know, you just you
Speaker 1: stop thinking about money in quite the same way. But
Speaker 1: to give you a sense, I mean the kind of
Speaker 1: hunts we used to do. I want time. Took a
Speaker 1: greyhound bus from Montana to Alabama to hunt ducks, and
Speaker 1: I broke down a shotgun and put it in a
Speaker 1: duffel bag and hit it in the duffel bag. Drove
Speaker 1: a two and a half days on a greyhound bus
Speaker 1: because I couldn't afford a plane ticket to Alabama to
Speaker 1: hunt ducks on public land, and it took me two
Speaker 1: days to get back home on the bus. So you know,
Speaker 1: I've done cheap hunts. And it's like the way to
Speaker 1: cut down your costs is is just like self denied,
Speaker 1: you know, privation. I think there's some expenses you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get around. You're not gonna go hunt without the tag, right,
Speaker 1: you gotta have the tag. That's gonna cost money. What
Speaker 1: is the negotiable stuff and the thing? And I also
Speaker 1: mentioned that I got a guy book on the head.
Speaker 1: I think I also mentioned my guy book. Is you
Speaker 1: gotta look at I'm getting into some life stuff here.
Speaker 1: You gotta look at like where where where are you
Speaker 1: spending your money in your life? I remember one time
Speaker 1: watching the guy pull up and to pull up to
Speaker 1: a trailhead in Montana and he pulls up, you know,
Speaker 1: brand spanking new pickup truck, and he pulls out a
Speaker 1: twenty dollar pair of binoculars and starts glass and for
Speaker 1: ail k out of his truck window. I remember thinking that, dude,
Speaker 1: is guy. His priorities all wrong, you know, all wrong.
Speaker 1: He might have bought that big hunting truck, but then
Speaker 1: he burned up all his money on something that was
Speaker 1: like a large measure of vanity project. So I think
Speaker 1: that it's like, I don't mean, you know, in aid
Speaker 1: privacy here, but I think, like, so often where's your
Speaker 1: money going? Like are you like what are you spending
Speaker 1: your money on? I understand the tags are expensive, but
Speaker 1: there's not a guy I know that I couldn't go
Speaker 1: into his personal financing and find the money necessary to
Speaker 1: buy a big game tag if he really cares about that.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back to talking about big game tags in a minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just reread the question, you know the guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not trying to I'm not trying to pick
Speaker 1: that dude out, No, I know, I just just want
Speaker 1: I just want to specifically answer his question, you know,
Speaker 1: before we get away from it. Oh. Um, but I
Speaker 1: agree with everything you're saying there, But he's con prohibitive
Speaker 1: for a guy with a young fa Yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: he's got a young family. And just what came to mind,
Speaker 1: because I know a lot of guys actually go hunting
Speaker 1: with young families on this particularly big game hunt is
Speaker 1: a Wyoming antelope hunt. It's a nonresident you can get
Speaker 1: and then your family. Yeah, you can't probably your family
Speaker 1: in the late summer, right analopns. You do not have
Speaker 1: to get up early in the morning. You can get up,
Speaker 1: get the family going, roll out there at ten o'clock,
Speaker 1: go hunting, leave the kids at the truck for a
Speaker 1: little bit. Whatever has to happen. Um but uh and
Speaker 1: for antelope does or even a bucking wyoming, you can
Speaker 1: probably get it done in two days, two days of hunting,
Speaker 1: and the tags are cheap. Right antalope tags in Montana,
Speaker 1: I wasn't even thinking about. But you know, I want
Speaker 1: to move back and we can't spend all our time.
Speaker 1: Now here's the second mold. Like this is one of
Speaker 1: the second most common questions that ever come in, is like,
Speaker 1: what's a good all purpose rifle, both in terms of
Speaker 1: caliber and everything else? Reasonable price, reasonable price? You know
Speaker 1: this question comes in. I swear every day and in
Speaker 1: a couple and every day a couple of times in
Speaker 1: some different way. Let's start with the caliber part, like
Speaker 1: what's a great all purpose caliber. There's a movement right
Speaker 1: now in shooting, in hunting to go with lighter calibers.
Speaker 1: This has to do with recent they're sort of ongoing
Speaker 1: technical improvements to ammunition. Ammunition is becoming more reliable, the
Speaker 1: materials work better, they're bonded in better ways. The bullets themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but bull yeah, I mean bullets are getting well,
Speaker 1: they're getting pushed faster, and they're performing better. They're able
Speaker 1: to withstand you know, very high flight speeds or you
Speaker 1: know feet per second, high musclevelosities. They hold together better,
Speaker 1: and this is leading to like greater efficacy on part
Speaker 1: of the bullets. So people are realizing they can get
Speaker 1: away from some of the high recoil shoulder busters and
Speaker 1: shoot these faster, flatter shooting, smaller caliber rifles with high
Speaker 1: quality bullets in them. I don't really want to get
Speaker 1: into that, but like right now, sort of the hot
Speaker 1: new caliber among long distance shooters and stuff is everybody's
Speaker 1: you know, talking about how great six point five millimeter
Speaker 1: rounds are. Right, everybody used to shoot, you know, point
Speaker 1: to eight for like seven millimeter stuff, and thirty caliber
Speaker 1: stuff was sort of always like the go to calibers
Speaker 1: for all purpose, you know, general purpose, big game rifles.
Speaker 1: People are getting away with that in some way. I'm
Speaker 1: sort of a throwback or traditionalist or something, or just
Speaker 1: a guy who likes to stick with things and I'm
Speaker 1: familiar with. But when I'm thinking about and it's like,
Speaker 1: I hate, I almost hate this conversation because it's so
Speaker 1: dependent on your your personal experiences. I often tell people
Speaker 1: if I had to have one gun, that I could
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life, and I had to
Speaker 1: pick it right now, Like what's your caliber for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life? And you hunt all your interests
Speaker 1: in all forms of big game in North America, I
Speaker 1: would pick I had to pick one rifle, I think
Speaker 1: that I would pick a seven millimeter m mag if
Speaker 1: I was ruling out. Um, if someone came down and
Speaker 1: said you can't have that one, then I would start wondering,
Speaker 1: do I want a wind mag or just a two
Speaker 1: seventy And I would start vascillating between those two. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like there's a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to achieve the same thing. Like when you say, like
Speaker 1: you know three mag, there's three Wind mag or three
Speaker 1: Chester short magnim. You can get those same muzzlevelocities and
Speaker 1: trajectories and bullet weights with other guns. But those are
Speaker 1: just ones that come to my mind. That's what you'll
Speaker 1: find a lot of in my gun cabinet is that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And I'm like an old timey Elmer
Speaker 1: fuddy kind of guy for thinking that way, But that's
Speaker 1: what I like. I tend to also like a rifle. UM,
Speaker 1: My goal isn't to try to get away with as
Speaker 1: much as I can get away with. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: the kind of guy who's gonna go out and hunt
Speaker 1: mule deer with a two forty three. It can be done.
Speaker 1: People do it. I remember meeting the kid. He's like,
Speaker 1: this guy, tell me, oh, yeah, my kid just killed
Speaker 1: elk with the two forty three. Later I was talking
Speaker 1: to the kid. He's like, yeah, I shot at nine times.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he couldn't have done it cleaner, but
Speaker 1: I'm just but I like to have. I like to,
Speaker 1: you know, have plenty of gun, plenty of bullet, plenty
Speaker 1: of speed, and plenty of weight. And you know, that
Speaker 1: seems to be a fading perspective. It seems to be
Speaker 1: now this competition to like get away with as much
Speaker 1: as you can get away with, like shrink it down
Speaker 1: as watches you can shrink it down. And also, at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think you're gonna shoot things from
Speaker 1: farther and farther away. So I'm gonna use a really
Speaker 1: teeny bullet this borderline already, and I'm gonna toy around
Speaker 1: this idea that I'm gonna be shooting stuff at seven
Speaker 1: yards with it. I'm not that crazy about it. I'm
Speaker 1: done talking about him. I'm gonna be honest talking about
Speaker 1: it now. It's a very very in depth subject, that's
Speaker 1: for sure, and we certainly don't have enough time or
Speaker 1: I don't have the experience and knowledge to really really
Speaker 1: uh speak to it too. But just speak in your
Speaker 1: own Like I said, it is a personal thing. You've
Speaker 1: been in. You've watched a hundred elk in your career,
Speaker 1: right right, and in our camp. You know it's gonna
Speaker 1: toy contradict what you just said. But in our camp, yes,
Speaker 1: you pellet rifles. No, the one rifle every guy in
Speaker 1: our camp used to always like drop his shoulders, drop
Speaker 1: his head when it walked the camp when it was
Speaker 1: time to go l Connie with a new group of
Speaker 1: clients was a seven millimeter Remington magnets. Personal experience like
Speaker 1: not big enough. Uh yeah, you know, too fast, too small,
Speaker 1: and yeah it just didn't whatever. We just had bad
Speaker 1: experiences with that caliber and whatever. You know, that's just
Speaker 1: how it went. It just happened to be that way.
Speaker 1: You know, it could be a total how does your
Speaker 1: brother saying like we're just getting fulled fooled by randomness, Brothers,
Speaker 1: My brother is a cologist, but he's a statistician. Um.
Speaker 1: Even more technically, he like he's does a type of
Speaker 1: work or a discipline or something called basie and analysis.
Speaker 1: I could be screwing. I hope he's not listening to this,
Speaker 1: but he's a statistician. He's really big into the science
Speaker 1: of science, or he's big into, you know, how scientists
Speaker 1: approach things, how scientists think, how their influenced, what they're
Speaker 1: biases are. And one of the things that he's interested in, too,
Speaker 1: is his idea of being fooled by randomness. Like you're
Speaker 1: out fishing and you got are all fishing a pumpkin
Speaker 1: colored grub for small mouth, and someone puts a black
Speaker 1: grub on and hooks a fish that he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're hitting black, and everyone switches to black. He thinks
Speaker 1: that those situations are ripe for being fooled by randomness. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyhow, so yeah, back very quickly to calibers without
Speaker 1: going into the rifles themselves. Um, I'm I'm even older,
Speaker 1: more fundier traditionalist guy than you. So I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with to seventy and the thirty six multiple reasons, but
Speaker 1: always find ammo for it. And uh, those calibers have
Speaker 1: been killing stuff for many, many, many years. Um. But
Speaker 1: my takeaway, or what I'd like the listener to takeaway
Speaker 1: would be, is to pick the caliber, use a premium bullet,
Speaker 1: whatever caliber you choose, use the best bullet you can afford,
Speaker 1: and shoot the caliber that you can shoot comfortably and
Speaker 1: confidently until sick of these guys to make their whole
Speaker 1: decision based on recoil. Well, it's a big deal. So
Speaker 1: if if you listen, if he has to funk up,
Speaker 1: it's such a it's such bullshit because guys say that,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, man, I can handle that going. I'm bucking up.
Speaker 1: And you watch him shoot, and the guy pulls his
Speaker 1: head of foot away from the sculpt before he pulls
Speaker 1: the trigger because he's got the flinch him so bad.
Speaker 1: So you can't say that he's he's got I don't
Speaker 1: mean buck up physically, I mean buck up psychologically. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well that you know that takes time and practice. But
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, whatever it is, if you some guys,
Speaker 1: maybe just or or any person. We shouldn't say, guys,
Speaker 1: some person might never ever be able to shoot a
Speaker 1: thirty caliber um, you know, magnum rifle. It just might
Speaker 1: not be in their things, small framed, just they don't
Speaker 1: have the you know, my kids starts hunting, I'm gonna, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have him home with the seven mm a
Speaker 1: weight I think recoil issue. Yeah, So I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: but listen to seven M I was talking about the
Speaker 1: seven millimeter remake, and again it's like there's so much
Speaker 1: personal bias. Right, I just happened to own very nice
Speaker 1: shooting seven millimeter round mag shooting like one sixty grain
Speaker 1: bullet at about three thousand ft per second mulciplocity, and
Speaker 1: it just shoots good for me, right, and I've had
Speaker 1: some good hunting experiences with it. So therefore I'm extolling
Speaker 1: this caliber based on just a very small thing. I
Speaker 1: happen to own one that I've had good experiences with
Speaker 1: and that I like, could I have had that same
Speaker 1: rifle chambered in a different round and taking it on
Speaker 1: those hunts and had those experiences. Absolutely, And if that
Speaker 1: was the case, I'd be talking up that one. So
Speaker 1: Janice is right there. If kicks, like there's kick, I
Speaker 1: have a three that kicks like a very slow kick.
Speaker 1: A seven milliment around meg kicks you like like getting
Speaker 1: kicked in the face by Joe Rogan because we're just
Speaker 1: watching him kick a kicking bag the other day. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's a seven millimeter ram meg and it's so abrupt
Speaker 1: and fast that it gives you a headache. And all
Speaker 1: those things can be managed a little bit. You know.
Speaker 1: There's also a big fat of very lightweight what they
Speaker 1: call mountain rifles. If you're packing on a rifle the
Speaker 1: only weighs seven pounds, all loaded up with the scope
Speaker 1: on everything, it's gonna kick and bark and want to
Speaker 1: jump that same rifle. You know. The heavier stock or
Speaker 1: heavier this that that comes in at ten pounds is
Speaker 1: gonna recoil a lot less. And my my seven mm
Speaker 1: m bag with a scope on it is twelve pounds
Speaker 1: nine ounces, right heavy. But you like my brother Danny said,
Speaker 1: he's got an old Ruger Ruger Model seventy seven. It's
Speaker 1: a thing weighs a ton um. But he said, man,
Speaker 1: you as you lay that thing over your backpack and
Speaker 1: you know something's gonna die. It's just like right, a
Speaker 1: heavy right folds just settles in. Yeah, you're like he
Speaker 1: was just talking about that, you know, just like you
Speaker 1: lay that thing up in your pack and you get
Speaker 1: nestled in there and it's just like that thing is
Speaker 1: just there's no doubt where that bullets going. And those
Speaker 1: light rifles. I had a rifle. It was too light.
Speaker 1: I couldn't shoot it. I never felt good mhm in
Speaker 1: a real world hunting scenario. That's a big thing. Not
Speaker 1: a lot of people talk about there's this big push
Speaker 1: for light rifles. Is it's like it seems like a
Speaker 1: recoil thing to me, this big push for light rifles.
Speaker 1: People are talking about carrying them around. But the reason
Speaker 1: I'm carrying mine around is I'm hoping to shoot it
Speaker 1: at some point and if I need a couple more
Speaker 1: pounds to make that thing feel good when I go
Speaker 1: to shoot it. And the vast the bulk of the
Speaker 1: shooting I do, and I hunt, you know, Western hunts
Speaker 1: a lot, the bulk of the shooting I do is prone.
Speaker 1: With my pack. What was the word you use the
Speaker 1: your day for certain kind of rests improvised? Is shooting
Speaker 1: prone with an improvised rest backpack? Why to jackets your
Speaker 1: buddy's shoulder or whatever? And doing that, I find the
Speaker 1: little bit of weight on that rifle makes a huge
Speaker 1: difference Okay, we gotta take a quick break. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back after this message. I don't mind toting around
Speaker 1: some extra pounds. My twelve pound nine ounce rifle was ridiculous,
Speaker 1: too heavy, too heavy. These six seven pound rifles, I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're light. Yeah, I think that eight to
Speaker 1: nine is really optimal, you know, I mean everybody, And
Speaker 1: look a lot a lot of people that are packing
Speaker 1: around six pound rifles. They could shoot better with a
Speaker 1: seven or eight pound rifle, and they could just shave
Speaker 1: those two pounds off their gut and be all the
Speaker 1: same going up the hill. That's a good point, man.
Speaker 1: I had a rifle that not long ago I sent
Speaker 1: to a gunsmith to put a heavier barrel on it.
Speaker 1: Not because I want, not for anything to do with
Speaker 1: like the barrel, overheating or anything. I just wanted more white.
Speaker 1: The rifle never felt good to me shooting it. Loved
Speaker 1: carrying it, you know, It's like carrying around a chopstick. Yeah. Lastly,
Speaker 1: for me, on caliber, I feel like you need to
Speaker 1: be able to put that bullet confidently in the spot.
Speaker 1: So again, shoot what you're comfortable and confident with, and
Speaker 1: I would rather you put it in the spot that
Speaker 1: you know, I tell you to put it as opposed
Speaker 1: to flinch thems and you know who knows where the
Speaker 1: bullet goes. And then we're just hoping that big overrides. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, bad shot placement. That's the point that's brought
Speaker 1: up so much. Man, I mean, you kill elk with
Speaker 1: a pen knife, You've put in the right place. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's move on to your best, reasonably priced, affordable good rifle. No,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to change. Let's get to that,
Speaker 1: but I want to change. I want to interlude with
Speaker 1: one that comes up all the time. Can you dry
Speaker 1: age venison and elk and stuff? Okay, yeah, there's a companies.
Speaker 1: You don't want to age at all. Don't age bears
Speaker 1: and don't age pigs because the fat isn't tolerant. The
Speaker 1: fat sour is bad. And not only that, but the
Speaker 1: fat on wild pigs and the fat on bears, well,
Speaker 1: fat on everything sours in your freezer taste a lot longer,
Speaker 1: but it will happen. You can put a fatio chunk
Speaker 1: of bear meat in your freezer and pull it out
Speaker 1: eight months later, and that stuff will have turned a
Speaker 1: bluish green color. I'm not joking. If you're trim the
Speaker 1: fat away right away, kill a bear, skin it, trim
Speaker 1: the fat away, get the thing into your freezer. Kill
Speaker 1: a bear or kill a wild pig, skin it, get
Speaker 1: the fat off. There's a lot of uses for the fat.
Speaker 1: You can render it out and do great stuff with it.
Speaker 1: Because when it's rendered, it's has a great shelf life.
Speaker 1: It doesn't on the animal other than that on hoof dance.
Speaker 1: So birds, well, we're not gonna talk about births. That's
Speaker 1: the whole other thing. On hooved animals. You can definitely
Speaker 1: age them, the all kinds of thinking about how you
Speaker 1: age them, hide on, hide off. Do you recommend it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have the facility for it. Because what I
Speaker 1: was gonna point out, in so much of my life,
Speaker 1: I'm always like thinking of this situation where I'm gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, have like a walk in cooler. It just
Speaker 1: never all standless steel meat hooks on rollers. It never happens.
Speaker 1: What does happen is you're in some hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: trying to butcher a deer in a bathtub because you're
Speaker 1: flying out the next morning. Or you and your buddy
Speaker 1: go up and you gotta come back home, and you
Speaker 1: know that at home it's seventy degrees out. You gotta
Speaker 1: work the next morning. You got too dead deer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just not like it. Just those those are games.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about. Let's just say you are living in
Speaker 1: um you know a little bit of a northern latitude,
Speaker 1: and you do have a garage with a concrete flu
Speaker 1: or that does stay cool. What can we do that?
Speaker 1: I tell you an anecdote my old roommate when I
Speaker 1: was in h school, my roommate killed a calf elk
Speaker 1: in the in the late season hunt. It was a
Speaker 1: January hunt. He killed a calf elk. We hung that
Speaker 1: calf elk in my garage, skin off, and never froze
Speaker 1: any of that elk, and ate the entire thing with
Speaker 1: it hanging in that garage with the temperature hovering a
Speaker 1: tad below a tad above freezing in the wintertime it
Speaker 1: hung in there. It must have been an are It
Speaker 1: must have taken us probably about seven weeks to eat
Speaker 1: that thing. We just will. Sometimes you go out there
Speaker 1: and did field kind of frozeny sometimes to be fine,
Speaker 1: and we just ate it. My old man talks about
Speaker 1: my dad was born. He hadn't use fifties dead now,
Speaker 1: but he's got some old timey experiences. He was talking
Speaker 1: about hanging deer skin off until there was a quarter
Speaker 1: inch of mold covering the deer, at which point they
Speaker 1: would butcher the deer. This calf elk I'm talking about
Speaker 1: that we had hanging there. You could, I'm not joking you.
Speaker 1: You could stick your thumb through that meat. It was
Speaker 1: so beautifully like dry aged by the end of it.
Speaker 1: But it was perfect conditions. This is in Montana, dry cold,
Speaker 1: sheltered area. It's good what I do now, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about real world stuff. The only talk
Speaker 1: about my my brother Danny's experience. What a strategy my
Speaker 1: brother Danny's. Oh, I also wanna say. We had that
Speaker 1: elkin Kentucky and a guy in that case we we're
Speaker 1: going somewhere else couldn't bring the elk comb And that
Speaker 1: was like one of the only times in recent memory
Speaker 1: I've ever had something butchered by a butcher. He hung
Speaker 1: that thing ten days and dude, I couldn't tell. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like it was like tender regular old doubt right
Speaker 1: old out. My brother Danny, uh kills the moose every year.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like his main thing as his main parties.
Speaker 1: He kills a moose and that's what his family eats.
Speaker 1: Everything else is just extra. He don't think about having
Speaker 1: his freezer like I often think, like, okay, falls coming,
Speaker 1: October is coming. I want to have my freezer emptied
Speaker 1: out all of last year's game eating up because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be filling it with new game this year. Um.
Speaker 1: He thinks about it the other way around. He doesn't
Speaker 1: want his freezer to be empty around September, which is
Speaker 1: his main hunting time. He doesn't want his freezer to
Speaker 1: be empty in September. He wants to have like if
Speaker 1: he's in't going into a new year. So let's say
Speaker 1: he's fall of this, he's following two thousand fifteen. He
Speaker 1: wants two thousand fourteen is game to be Peter and
Speaker 1: Out midwinner because that allows the animals this he's killed
Speaker 1: in the fall to age in his freezer. This is
Speaker 1: something people don't talk about. They should talk about it more.
Speaker 1: HOOFD game ages intend arizes in your freezer the same
Speaker 1: way if you leave something in your freezer too long,
Speaker 1: it can go south on you can go bad. Some
Speaker 1: of that decay is good, and some of that decay
Speaker 1: is called aging, like aging is just breaking down. He
Speaker 1: kills the moose in September. He don't want to even
Speaker 1: look at that thing for a few months. He forgets
Speaker 1: about it. Butcher's it right away. He's got that time
Speaker 1: of year. You got blowflies everywhere. It's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's wet, rainy. The thing is already coming back a mess.
Speaker 1: You know. He hunts out of canoes and stuff. They
Speaker 1: come back. They got a moose all chopped up in
Speaker 1: game bags. You get home, there's you know, meat bees, blowfly.
Speaker 1: Lord knows what it gets in the freezer, forgets about
Speaker 1: it because it ages. Then what you do, and this
Speaker 1: is what I do all the time. If I'm home
Speaker 1: for a week and I know, okay, i'm home, I'm
Speaker 1: working from home, I'm gonna be cooking every night. I
Speaker 1: don't just do all my thawing the morning. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cook something. If I know on Friday, I'm like Friday,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a big elk crost. I will thaw
Speaker 1: that thing out maybe on Saturday. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm saying all kinds of stuff that violates the U.
Speaker 1: S d A protocol. I guess I don't really care.
Speaker 1: I'll pull that thing out on Saturday and and I
Speaker 1: don't even know this is the right word. Basically, I
Speaker 1: dry age that thing for five six days in my fridge.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Like I it makes it more tender,
Speaker 1: and it makes the texture nicer to dry ryot because
Speaker 1: you know, it's wild game more than like when when
Speaker 1: you thought a wild game out. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: when you freeze it fresh and stuff, you notice that
Speaker 1: it bleeds a lot. You know. I've also heard it
Speaker 1: that's a big part of off flavors. And that's why
Speaker 1: you should do what you're talking about, is because when
Speaker 1: you're letting it sit like that, you'll see that it
Speaker 1: does release some more of that blood. You get rid
Speaker 1: of that blood. Sometimes that blood can is where that
Speaker 1: the texture gets. I'll let it sit, I like, ideally,
Speaker 1: I like to let it sit until a little rind
Speaker 1: forms on the outside of that block of meat, and
Speaker 1: then I trim that rind off and that stuff. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it looks so beautiful under there. But yeah, let's say
Speaker 1: I just live and I and I have this. I
Speaker 1: have this just to answer the question, I live in
Speaker 1: some place. I hunt near there. I got a boatload
Speaker 1: of money. I go out and build myself uh factory
Speaker 1: spec meat aging walk in cooler. Yeah, there's not a
Speaker 1: thing that I kill outside of wild pigs and bears
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't go hanging there for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: For as long as I could. I'd monitor it closely,
Speaker 1: but absolutely unhang everything. Just to answer the question, yeah,
Speaker 1: my quick answer is at least to twenty four hours
Speaker 1: because and again I'm no expert on this, because but
Speaker 1: from what I've read, that's how long it takes forga
Speaker 1: mortis to set and then leave those muscles and so um.
Speaker 1: And I've had that. I've eaten meat that was, you know,
Speaker 1: too fresh. We talked about that a lot on the show,
Speaker 1: because we're eating meat right there in the field and
Speaker 1: sometimes that too fresh meat needs to be pounded with
Speaker 1: a rock to make it tender. And so I give it.
Speaker 1: I try to give it at least twenty four hours
Speaker 1: from when it hit the dirt, which isn't too hard.
Speaker 1: Usually by the time you get home it's been that long.
Speaker 1: I want to hit U super quickly. They're gonna go
Speaker 1: back up to the money wanted to get. What's your
Speaker 1: opinion on hunting wolves. I think wolve should be managed
Speaker 1: like big game, managed like all big game. UM, don't
Speaker 1: push them to the point where their viability is threatened.
Speaker 1: Same way I wouldn't want to hunt elk until their
Speaker 1: viability is threatened. It's a renewable resource. There's hunter interest
Speaker 1: in it. If you can allow some extraction of the
Speaker 1: renewable resource without damaging the viability of the resource, I
Speaker 1: think you should do it. Yahny, Well, now, don't you
Speaker 1: want to talk about wolves? Boys? You were you were
Speaker 1: hot from one of these questions. Oh, we just we're
Speaker 1: gonna finish up on the caliber rifles thing. If you
Speaker 1: want to talk about like a model, you know, a
Speaker 1: maker and a model of a good affordable rifle, that's
Speaker 1: pretty should be able to answer that in a couple
Speaker 1: of sentences. But what is affordable less than a thousand bucks? Um,
Speaker 1: I guess there's a couple of tiers. Let's let's let's
Speaker 1: do one less and one under a thousand. About that,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I just buy so few
Speaker 1: like I just don't buy rifles. I have rifles that
Speaker 1: I've always had. I have rifles that I've gotten from friends,
Speaker 1: and I've had rifles that I've gotten through work, So
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't really know, like I would be
Speaker 1: a really I would be really bad hunting equipment prices
Speaker 1: right because the peculiarity of my occupation in in life.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what stuff costs. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I mean I know what stuff costs, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that kind of stuff costs that much. What you
Speaker 1: tell me, what's the good five rifle? Is there a rifle? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I believe that it's I think you can get a
Speaker 1: Remington's seven hundred in like the bottom tier that's right
Speaker 1: at that price mark. I want to tell a red Aster.
Speaker 1: There's also a Ruger American, which I think comes in
Speaker 1: right at that price mark. And then when just a
Speaker 1: model seventy, they probably have one as a more of
Speaker 1: a plastic e composite stock on it. It's seven nice
Speaker 1: synthetic or a nice wood stock um, but all three
Speaker 1: of those makers too. You can get into that seven
Speaker 1: ellar range and get yourself a really nice rifle that
Speaker 1: will last many, many years, probably many generations, as long
Speaker 1: as you take care of it. I want to tell
Speaker 1: Remington Model seven story. My old man. He died in
Speaker 1: December two thousand two. In two thousand he bought a
Speaker 1: brand spiggotty spangety new Remington Model seven Hunter. I remember
Speaker 1: at the time, I remember, I feel like it cost him,
Speaker 1: you know, four or five bucks at the time he dies,
Speaker 1: I don't even if you ever shot anything with this thing.
Speaker 1: He dies, and we have this little drawing where we
Speaker 1: put uh me and all my sip, my brothers, and
Speaker 1: all my half siblings and stuff. We wrote down the
Speaker 1: name of all his guns. Like he got a little
Speaker 1: pieces of paper. On each of the piece of paper.
Speaker 1: He wrote down the name of one of our old
Speaker 1: man's guns and put him in a hat and started
Speaker 1: drawn the pieces of paper out of a hat to
Speaker 1: see who got what. He didn't specify any of this
Speaker 1: in his will, you know. So I drew this new
Speaker 1: Reming to Model seven, left in my minds for years.
Speaker 1: At some point I got it and brought up to
Speaker 1: my cabin in Alaska, and never really shot it carefully.
Speaker 1: I mean, we sighted it in by by shooting it
Speaker 1: at old oil drum, just to make sure it was
Speaker 1: kind of right on. I took it up a mountain
Speaker 1: shot a blacktail deer. Uh took it out in the
Speaker 1: boat on salt water. My brothers shot at blacktail deer
Speaker 1: with it. This is a thirty OT six model. Then
Speaker 1: I hung it on the wall in my cabin, which
Speaker 1: is the wettest, rustiest, nastiest place on the planet, and
Speaker 1: I just sprayed it down with w D forty, but
Speaker 1: didn't do anything to the boar, you know, the inside
Speaker 1: of the barrel. And UH left it up there for
Speaker 1: a decade, for almost a decade, to the point where
Speaker 1: you look down this barrel and you could barely see
Speaker 1: down it the boar. So rusty took that thing home,
Speaker 1: cleaned it up, and for the first time in my life,
Speaker 1: probably the first time in the gun's life, took it
Speaker 1: down to a rifle range to shoot box ammo, to actually,
Speaker 1: like on a bench, shoot this rifle. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: the one that I cleaned out. Dude, Oh, Johanna's cleaned
Speaker 1: it out right. Let me tell you. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: the first twenty patches that came out of the bore.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can say it, but it
Speaker 1: mean it looked like diarrhea. I mean, it was just brown,
Speaker 1: goopy soupy, and I was almost scared to fire the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Joanna's even expressed fear about firing, and He's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's gonna happen that rifle. Of all the
Speaker 1: rifles I own, and I owned some expensive ask custom rifles,
Speaker 1: if I had to go out right now to shoot
Speaker 1: and someone said you gotta shoot me the tightest group
Speaker 1: you can shoot, I would take that rifle. I take
Speaker 1: that rifle the range and shot three shot group after
Speaker 1: three shot group after three shot group that were two
Speaker 1: touching like be like two touching and one just off
Speaker 1: of touch. Yeah, they were pouting about half inch to
Speaker 1: three quarter inch groups, which is just that's that's an
Speaker 1: abuse model seven hundred shooting box AMMLE. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: And I'm a guy who owned some expensive as custom rifles,
Speaker 1: I don't get that kind of group out of so.
Speaker 1: You know, I know a lot of guys like t
Speaker 1: K three lights, but those are more expensive. That seems
Speaker 1: like a very popular out of the box gun. You
Speaker 1: just gotta shop around. Man. If I was really going
Speaker 1: to buy a new rifle, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I would buy new. I would spend a bunch of
Speaker 1: time on gunbroker dot com and stuff like that. That
Speaker 1: and a great tip. Find a dude who's got a
Speaker 1: custom rifler is some kind of souped up rifle that
Speaker 1: is old lady is mad about him halving and he's
Speaker 1: gotta sell it. Yeah, and the used gun racks at all,
Speaker 1: the Sportsman's and the Cabellas are great places to be looking.
Speaker 1: You kind of need to know what you're looking for. Um,
Speaker 1: but they they have quality stuff and they're not gonna
Speaker 1: They're not gonna just have junk in there. But what
Speaker 1: a guy told me once, and I was in there
Speaker 1: perusing the guy that worked in the gun library or whatever,
Speaker 1: I forget what I was looking for. I was looking
Speaker 1: for a dear calibern It just happened to be November.
Speaker 1: So he's like, man, it's just it's just you're looking
Speaker 1: for that to seventy or whatever. It's the wrong time
Speaker 1: of year. You should come back about January, because what
Speaker 1: happens after big game season Now everybody wants to go
Speaker 1: hunt coyotes, environments and stuff. So everybody comes in switching
Speaker 1: out their six is there two seventies or just a
Speaker 1: short magnums and they want the two hopped up to
Speaker 1: forty three or the hopped up you know, the little
Speaker 1: bitty guns to shoot you know, uh, coyotes with, and
Speaker 1: then the same thing happens again. They do all that
Speaker 1: in the summer, and then they drop off all those
Speaker 1: vomit guns and one so it's kind of never ending cycle.
Speaker 1: I want to read it. I want to read a
Speaker 1: question that cracks me up. This is a good guy
Speaker 1: I don't know, Chris Rao. Okay, this kind of this
Speaker 1: in some way to me, really expresses everything we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. He says, I noticed you switched to the
Speaker 1: two seventy WSM Winchester short mag. So it's like a
Speaker 1: two seventy, but you know, a short version of two
Speaker 1: seventy short action version in lieu of the long action
Speaker 1: seven millimeter mag. I have a two seventy w SM,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love it. I was wondering what ammo
Speaker 1: you are shooting or handloads for elk. I've taken eight
Speaker 1: bucks and probably a dozen hogs here in northern California
Speaker 1: where I live, few more, four mule deer out of state,
Speaker 1: and two elk. But I'm always looking for new information
Speaker 1: about hunting or components in my hunting gear. I hand
Speaker 1: load and have taken all these animals to date with
Speaker 1: one bullet on forty grain nozzler accupond, all with one
Speaker 1: shot from thirty to sixty eight yards. From my handloads
Speaker 1: there are fairly fast at three thousand one d fifty
Speaker 1: feet per second on the chronograph and very accurate. But
Speaker 1: everyone is telling me to switch to Burger or Barnes.
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of guy. If it ain't broke, don't
Speaker 1: fix it. But I'm always willing to experiment with new things.
Speaker 1: Thanks for your feedback, dude, I would like don't do
Speaker 1: I wouldn't change anything. That's a great bullet. The occupon
Speaker 1: only probably are getting with the occupon is it's it's
Speaker 1: got letting it. So if you're hunting, you know in
Speaker 1: more and more areas are gonna eventually be going lead free.
Speaker 1: You might run into trouble there. But for a guy
Speaker 1: like that with that track record to be sweating this
Speaker 1: stuff kind of shows you the poor state of affairs
Speaker 1: were in when it comes to people acting like these
Speaker 1: little things are gonna fix problems. The dude could obviously
Speaker 1: shoot he's ambitious. Don't change anything. Yeah, it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like he's got any problems with his brig No, I
Speaker 1: don't care everybody's talking about no. Nope, way to hack
Speaker 1: on Barnes and Burger. I of Barnes and Burger bullets.
Speaker 1: Here's no when it comes in all the time. What's
Speaker 1: your painting on camouflage? I don't see you wear a
Speaker 1: ton of it. Um, I'll tell you what. Here's a
Speaker 1: couple of things about camouflage. Absolutely for turkeys, Absolutely for waterfowl,
Speaker 1: always mostly had to toe and that not a lot
Speaker 1: of times. It's not just the cameras is important self.
Speaker 1: It's just covering up your white, flashy hands or even
Speaker 1: if you have darker skin, just the oils and our skins.
Speaker 1: You know that that it tends to shine, so that
Speaker 1: needs to be covered up and muted. Yeah, So like
Speaker 1: it's almost like camouflage. It's funny because I think when
Speaker 1: people I'm guessing when this guy says it, what he
Speaker 1: means is like like garments with camouflage, garments with camouflage
Speaker 1: patterns on them. My wife's taken off, not that she's here.
Speaker 1: She has ducked in to say AUTI, Um, he saw
Speaker 1: about garments with like printed camouflage patterns. I'm guessing camouflage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can go out and hunt ducks with
Speaker 1: just earth tones on, of course, but you gotta be
Speaker 1: careful about blinds and camouflage yourself with vegetation, with material.
Speaker 1: But to to to get through this question, if I'm
Speaker 1: going hunting for waterfowl or turkeys, I am very serious
Speaker 1: about wearing camouflage clothing. I have get this could be
Speaker 1: a fool by randomness, but I don't think it is.
Speaker 1: Remember one time when I first became a believer in camouflage.
Speaker 1: I mean, my brother Danny, or hunt ducks in Michigan,
Speaker 1: kept flaring ducks out of our decoys on his little pond.
Speaker 1: And I had a gray hoodie on light gray whitish
Speaker 1: gray hoodie on my hood and I had a duck
Speaker 1: jacket on, like a duck brown coax. We're hunting dead grass,
Speaker 1: dead dead grass and cat tails. A bit of my
Speaker 1: hoodie was sticking out. We kept flaring ducks. Danny's like
Speaker 1: tuck that hooden. I tucked that hooden. Stop flaring ducks.
Speaker 1: It could be fooled by randos, but I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like that happen over the years, particularly
Speaker 1: face shine you're blowing birds, and then someone puts a
Speaker 1: face mask on and you quit blowing birds because your
Speaker 1: face is just like oily and shiny, so covered up.
Speaker 1: I wear camel, and I don't know. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you this empirically. I wear camel bow hunting because why not.
Speaker 1: It's just not that hard to get camel. It's like
Speaker 1: you're never gonna regret having Like I can't imagine a
Speaker 1: situation where I would regret having camel on, Like, oh
Speaker 1: I would have got that thing had I been wearing
Speaker 1: solid colors. It just isn't gonna happen. Sometimes. I do
Speaker 1: think that with some of the camel patterns that are
Speaker 1: very very dark, that at a distance grater of even
Speaker 1: ten fifty, you start to look like a black bear.
Speaker 1: And so in that case I'd rather just be wearing
Speaker 1: like a nice light gray or or that first light
Speaker 1: dry earth, because even at a hundred yards I might
Speaker 1: look more like that light rock on the hillside than
Speaker 1: that black bear. I don't care. I don't worry about it. Hunting, um,
Speaker 1: I don't worry about it. Rifle hunting for big game,
Speaker 1: I never wear all. Growing up bow hunting, white tails,
Speaker 1: we didn't wear a camel. My mom would stitch us
Speaker 1: clothes out of wool. We'd wear that. We'd wear army
Speaker 1: surplus wool earth tones. My dad always hunted muted earth tones.
Speaker 1: You know, he blended good. Um. We used to just
Speaker 1: wear mostly because I do a lot of mountain hunting.
Speaker 1: For years and years we did all of our mountain
Speaker 1: hunting and mountaineering clothes. My especialty was going into good
Speaker 1: wheels and stuff like that, Salvation Armies in high end
Speaker 1: mountain towns. If you can go to a good Will
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, Montana, or Jackson, Wyoming, Aspen, Colorado, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get all kinds of like great mountaineering type clothes. And
Speaker 1: I would hunt that stuff, high quality stuff that I
Speaker 1: would get for cheap. Had I found awesome camel Jackson there,
Speaker 1: I would have bought him too. But you know, um,
Speaker 1: but if you have it, you're not gonna regret it.
Speaker 1: Just if you have a good camera, wear it. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a good camera and you like can't
Speaker 1: afford good camel, I wouldn't stay home about it. For
Speaker 1: big game for me, I feel that with the cameo
Speaker 1: and clothing and gear, the quiet uh Trump's the camouflage
Speaker 1: we sat guiding. We used to have a lot of
Speaker 1: guys that would show up with all sorts of cameo, this,
Speaker 1: that and the other, and it was covered in velco.
Speaker 1: Nothing worse than trying to sneak through the woods, still hunting,
Speaker 1: hoping to catch an elk just over the next rise
Speaker 1: at a hundred yards and then behind you you here
Speaker 1: and that velco this out of the other rips open
Speaker 1: and the guys you know, squeezing and just playing with
Speaker 1: all the gadgets and whatever and being noisy, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff scratching against his legs because his pants were too noisy,
Speaker 1: because he was decided to bring out, you know, a
Speaker 1: brand new pair of car hearts elk hunting versus like
Speaker 1: a nice you know, shammi cloth pair of pants or um,
Speaker 1: you know, some quiet wool or something. So I would
Speaker 1: certainly go go find something quiet to go hunt big
Speaker 1: game in versus uh, something cameo. You want another hypothetical,
Speaker 1: like a not a hype not hypothetical. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what I'm so fried out from from our from
Speaker 1: guide book right, um, yeah, And he's holding the paper
Speaker 1: to says fifty five minutes here's the interesting question. What's
Speaker 1: your opinion on how hunting is going and what trends
Speaker 1: should we support to cry and hunting today if you
Speaker 1: want to continue to see a tendency towards smarter and
Speaker 1: more realistic world war, real world hunting for future generation
Speaker 1: satans of hunters and anglers trappers. This dude's name actually
Speaker 1: is hunter. Um. I don't like high wire stuff, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like it being confused with hunting,
Speaker 1: and I don't like it taking on tendencies of hunting.
Speaker 1: My brother raises these lambs. He gave one to me,
Speaker 1: my buddy, you know, but he said, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta go out and shoot the lamb. So we went
Speaker 1: out and shot our lambs with a twenty two out
Speaker 1: in the you know, in his pasture there. Did I
Speaker 1: then go and post a bunch of pictures of me
Speaker 1: sitting with that lamb, acting like I was out hunting lambs. No,
Speaker 1: we were harvesting livestock. Um. The other problem, I have
Speaker 1: a high wire stuff. Besides all that bad ethical stuff
Speaker 1: paints a bad picture. Also just too risky. Um with
Speaker 1: disease issues, disease vectors packing these animals into these you
Speaker 1: know situations and then having disease transmission escaped the wild herd.
Speaker 1: It's not worth the risk. You can give you all
Speaker 1: the economic numbers you want about Oh listen, that and
Speaker 1: this and that. I just don't I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like it wild animals, h if you want to,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like it seeing these animals, you
Speaker 1: know what, those ear tags and stuff. It just just like,
Speaker 1: on a personal level, it disgust me. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I hate seeing it. What I do like is uh,
Speaker 1: people taking great care to utilize to the maximum potential
Speaker 1: the resources provided by the animals that they kill. Catching
Speaker 1: released angling. There's no real damage there, but it's just
Speaker 1: it's just you know, playing with your food to be
Speaker 1: a catch for these angler. And I still end today,
Speaker 1: but we did a whole podcast on catch and release.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna talk about it now. Grab another question, Joannie.
Speaker 1: How do you cook red fox? Yeah? I we cooked
Speaker 1: coyote not long ago, a couple of years ago. I
Speaker 1: just burned. I did it like how I've had I
Speaker 1: saw how they cooked dogs in Vietnam, and I just
Speaker 1: cooked the coyote like that, burn the hair off, and
Speaker 1: then roast it wasn't that good. If I had to
Speaker 1: eat a red fox, like if I was doing it
Speaker 1: for fun, like people were coming over, We're gonna eat
Speaker 1: a red fox, I'll just burn the hair off and
Speaker 1: roasted just like a roast pig. If I just had
Speaker 1: to eat it, like if someone came down and said,
Speaker 1: you can only eat red fox for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, and that's what you have to feed your family,
Speaker 1: I would bone all of my red fox out, grind
Speaker 1: them up, and make stuff like chrees, oh and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, strong flavored sausages with it. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: pretty much take any meat like that and braise it,
Speaker 1: which is basically like slow simmer cooking for a long
Speaker 1: period of time, and whether it's two hours or six hours.
Speaker 1: When it's done, you let it cool, you pick it
Speaker 1: off the bone, and then season it. Put in a
Speaker 1: bunch of barbecue sauce, and man, you could probably save
Speaker 1: that fox. And that's even better. I take it back
Speaker 1: when I said I wouldn't make trees O. I would
Speaker 1: take my red fox yank to hide off it, trim
Speaker 1: whatever fat on. There is a way, quarter it out,
Speaker 1: rub h just a lot of salt and pepper on
Speaker 1: all those quarters. Brown them up in half butter and
Speaker 1: half oil. It's just me what I would do. Get
Speaker 1: a big pan, brown all those quarters, pack them into
Speaker 1: a big roasting dish, cover it two thirds away with water,
Speaker 1: put a lid on it. Put in my oven at
Speaker 1: between two seventy and three d degrees. Start poking it
Speaker 1: with a fork. About three hours later, when that thing
Speaker 1: was such that I could grab one of the bones
Speaker 1: and flick it and all the meat would fly off
Speaker 1: the bone. I would shred that stuff up and I
Speaker 1: would use it on barbecue sandwiches. I'd put it on bridles.
Speaker 1: I'd put it on tacos. I got some I got
Speaker 1: some moose meat. Not that moose is like red fox.
Speaker 1: I got some moose meat by freezer, by fridge right now,
Speaker 1: Like that big roast I did. It's all set up
Speaker 1: in the aspect. I just keep warming that thing up,
Speaker 1: grabbing a handful out and doing stuff with it. I
Speaker 1: gave some of Yanni there night we had it on bridles.
Speaker 1: I'll do that with my fox. And if someone did
Speaker 1: come down from from wherever heaven outer space and said
Speaker 1: you have to eat red fox the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: I would I would be a little bummed, but I
Speaker 1: would I would figure it out. I'm not afraid about it.
Speaker 1: We will make it a point uh here soon to
Speaker 1: try to harvest one during a meat eat or shoot
Speaker 1: and uh cook one up, see what it tastes like.
Speaker 1: I want to do one last quick because this comes
Speaker 1: up last quick, because otherwise I'm gonna miss my flight.
Speaker 1: How do you get meat home on on you know trips? Uh?
Speaker 1: When I'm on a trip, flying or driving or whatever,
Speaker 1: I kill something, I take it apart in big pieces,
Speaker 1: so I bone out muscle groups. Put those muscle groups
Speaker 1: wrapping up in surrand wrapper. Better yet, put him into
Speaker 1: receivable bags, zip block bags, gallon size zip block bags.
Speaker 1: Big muscle group stuff. Get into a freezer evey. I
Speaker 1: go bang on the door at some restaurant and beg
Speaker 1: some dude who's like walking washing dishes on late night
Speaker 1: shift to put in the freezer for a night. Get
Speaker 1: a good freeze on it. Pack those bags and the coolers, duct,
Speaker 1: take the coolers shut. It'll stay frozen for days in there.
Speaker 1: When I get home, I let it thought a little
Speaker 1: bit so it's kind of soft. Then I do my
Speaker 1: final detail work and repackage it for my home freezer.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening me Ner Podcast. Make sure to tune
Speaker 1: in Sportsman channel watch the show Meat Eater, Take Care,