Bear Grease - Ep. 31: Bear Grease [Render] - Tough Bowhunting, OnX Dudes, and Analyzing Folsom

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

On this episode, Clay is joined by an entirely new Render crew while at deer camp in Arkansas. Zach Sandau and Jared Larsen of OnX join the conversation along with Clay's good friend Rusty Johnson of United Outdoors. You'll enjoy the guys talking about some tough public land deer hunting and about Rusty's hardcore whitetail hunting tactics. Clay talks about the details of his doe kill and the crew spends the last thirty minutes analyzing the previous podcast, Folsom Part 2. You're going to hear lots of laughs and hear some good perspectives on this one!Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Hey guys, before we jump into the surrender, I want to tell you about meat eater gives.

From December 6th through December 13th, 10% of all sale orders over $50 on the meat eater store website will be donated to organizations handpicked by the team. The organization that I'm going to donate my portion to is Sportsman's Alliance. These guys are guarding the gate. They're protecting our rights as hunters. And that is often a thankless job. and I want to say thanks to sportsmen's alliance. So if you use the code clay on your Meteeter store purchase over $50,

that money will go to them. Also, you'll be able to see my top 10 picks for gift ideas on the Meteor store, which they got all kind of stuff. They got tethered saddles. They got game bags. They got knives. They got T-shirts. And soon we're going to have some Bear Grie's merch.

That's coming. Check this out. Meteor Gives. Merry Christmas. All right. I just want you guys to know that this is like a little insider info here. Because you guys are a whole new crew, you're going to be heavily scrutinized by the regular render people. Okay?

So every word you say is going to be evaluated. It's going to be talked about amongst the group. So who's usually on the render is my wife, Misty Newcomb? Sharp as a tack will pin you to the wall if you get a fact wrong. Brent Reeves witty as they come He's loud Daniel Roop

I mean that guy You don't want to mess with him So I'm not trying to I'm not trying to scare you Just trying to tell you You're going to be scrutinized Because we have a new group Welcome to the Bear Grie Surrender guys

Thank you So we have a totally new crew This has only happened one other time So welcome to the Bear Grie Shrender Man I can't wait to introduce all you guys So we are in Northwest Arkansas in the midst of the worst white-tailed deer hunt

that probably any of us have ever had. And it's been in the mid-70s every day for Arkansas, which is very hot. And we've been hunting. Tomorrow will be our fifth day of hunting. And we've killed one dough and one cottontail rabbit. We won't go into the details of who killed these animals. but maybe later we will

no let me introduce my guest to my left Jared Larson of Onex Jared It's an honor to be here Clay I'm welcome man I'm stoked to be on the bear grease render and I'm excited about talking About the Folsom site Yeah as tough as the hunting has been this week Me and my cameraman Wyatt Cole

We're talking when we crawled out of our stand this morning We've barely seen a deer And this has been one of the funnest weeks in deer camp just because of the camaraderie and the entertainment value that the boys have brought to camp. You know what? Justin and I kind of had the same conversation on the way out of the woods after basically seeing nothing today.

I just said, man, it sure seems like we've had a good time. Shouldn't we be having a bad time because we have such a bad hunt? I mean, Wyatt this morning was like, dude, it's already Thursday. I was like, well, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Which usually doesn't happen when you sit for four days in a row without seeing deer. Yeah, it's tough. So, Jared, what do you, so guys, okay, introductions go slow, okay.

So we're going to take our time here. This is important. People are important, Rusty Johnson. Jared, what do you do for OnX? So I am the Whitetail Marketing Manager, for lack of better term, at OnX. Tell us what OnX is. I mean, most people would know, but there's some that wouldn't. Yep.

So OnX, I work on the OnX Hunt app team, and we, build a GPS mapping app that turns your smartphone into a functional GPS, whether you have service, whether you don't have service, our bread and butter is private landownership data. But it's used for a plethora of different game species from hunting elk in Washington to squirrels in West Virginia. If you like to hunt, heck, if you just like to get outside, there is going to be value for you in the onex hunt app. If nothing else, it keeps you from getting lost.

Yeah. Hey, okay, Rusty, do you ever feel like we're getting punked by the cell phone companies and maybe even by these guys when we don't have cell service and they can still, our phones are still GPSs? I know, right? I mean, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's one of my favorite features is the offline. No kidding. Yeah.

And we have a lot of areas here. How does that work, Jared? Well, you know, you punch in two lines of code to some software engineering and it's done. And your phone's a GPS. Easy. Yeah. Used to, GPS was like a big deal. You had to go like buy your own GPS and anymore or not so.

On X, man. Good to have you guys. I'm going to go out of order and I'm going to introduce Zach Sandow. Zach, you work for OnX too. I do. Welcome to the Bear Gries render. Yes, thank you. I'm excited.

I've been listening to these since the first one. Hey, he really does. He pulls out. Man, okay, if you listen to the Bear Gries podcast, Clay Newcomb knows it real quick. I could go through it I could tell each one of you guys how many times you've listened to it and how many times you haven't

We're gonna do that Based upon Based upon like you know how they're tracking You know these companies track people's data Not on X we don't do any tracking I track my friend's data On how much they've listened to the Bear Grish podcast And Zach Sandell listens to it

Because he was pulling up little facts From the Boone podcast like weeks ago He was like man When Dan Boone did that I was like you really listen don't you And he was like yeah So honestly for me like it's when it first came out we work with you anyways but the storytelling of it was sweet and I do a lot of drives hunting season like when I'm driving across state it's the perfect thing to listen to a good mix up from the traditional podcast especially in the hunting industry. I mean it was easy like I just had them I'd download four or five of them and listen to them on a full trip there and back and so it was always great but yeah no I'm pumped I'm pumped talk about this one. Um, myself, I've worked at OnX for six years now.

Okay. I manage the hunt team, work with marketing team, and then the folks, we have a, you know, awesome team and our company as well. You know, we have our hump product. That's our baby. That's what got us started. But now we have an off-road product. And then we also have backcountry product. So yeah, we've grown quite a bit since Jared and I first started. There was 32 people when I started. And what was it? Like 50. 60. 60 when Jared started. And we're much, much bigger than that. Yeah, four and a half and six years later. So it's been really cool.

And now you're originally from Montana. Yep. I was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. So where our home office is. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And now, Jared, you're from Wisconsin. Yes, yes.

White tails, you know? White tails. So to your left, Jared, is my buddy, Justin Mischot. Justin, welcome to the Bear Gerser Interman. Thank you, buddy. I feel like I've been on this just by hanging in the tree with you. Yeah. We've had a podcast.

Go on for five days already. I talked Justin's ear off when we hung together. Just nonstop chatterbox. I learn a lot from you. Man, so Justin and I, Justin went to Canada with me this year in film. And then he's been with me this whole week in film. We didn't know each other before that, though. So back in September when we first met and we've had a great time.

Justin is extremely talented and good at what he does. Let me just tell you, if you're needing a... I better not say this. People from other companies might listen to this. If you're going on a white tail deer hunt... You already fighting Mark. I know. Me and Mark Kenyon fought over Justin

when we're tree stand white tail hunting because he's the man. So, no, Justin's a really good photographer, really good videographer. Really good to have hanging in a tree with you. And a good white tail hunter, too. So I'll go to him for advice. What should we do, Justin?

Hadn't worked too much this week, but... Yeah. You know, scent control. So, sent control. That's right. That's right. No, I'm kidding. You're from New York.

Yes, not originally. You got a bunch of kids. South Carolina. So I feel like with these accents that are flying around here, I feel a little bit like I'm at home. But, yeah. Because all the Yankee accents? No, no, no. No, you guys, the Arkansas boys.

Oh, okay. It feels like South Carolina. You guys got that same southern flare. Okay. And I was just at the gas station. They had fried chicken by. the register. So I knew I was in the right place.

But yeah, I got a lot of kids. Not a lot. Three. Three kids. They're all great. To your left, to Justin's left, my old buddy, Rusty Johnson. Hey, Clay. How's it going, man? It is going good. I'm glad to be here.

Finally sharing a camp with Clay Newcomb. Man, Rusty and I have known each other since 2007 when I killed a deer and you were an official Popen Young scorer. Yeah. Looked you up. however we found Pope and Young scores back then probably on the internet yeah and uh no it's probably in like a yellow page's book it was probably like that long ago it was a long time ago yeah but uh nah

it's it's it's been fun hunting with this week yeah yeah yeah it's been a joy we've had a blast yeah yeah what do you think about all this this has been like ridiculous hadn't oh man this is probably the hottest and probably hardest hunt I've ever had this time of year here in Arkansas. I mean, it's so unusual. I can't, I don't know that we've broke records, but it would surprise me if we didn't. Yeah, 76 degrees on September or December 2nd. Unreal. So, uh, we're going to go around here in a minute and talk about Rusty.

But to your left, we got, we got a couple of guys that aren't, don't have headsets that are here. We'll go back to them. but to your left is your son Rustin Johnson. What's going on? How are you doing, man? I'm doing really good. Man, when I met Rustin, he was just a little, just a little dude. I was still chubby, but I was a little.

Yeah, yeah. Fun size. How tall are you, Rustin? 6.3. Or if I'm wearing a boot, 6.4. 6.3 and you're not, you're not exactly petite as 63, man. No, I'm anywhere between 3 and 400 pounds. It depends on what.

what time of year if I'm in hibernation or not oh man well you guys are so fun to watch father and son team how old are you 20 I'm 24 24 and your dad turned 50 just a few days ago at camp just turned 50 it's been so fun everyone thinks we're brothers though because he looks young for his age he does he does it looks good clean living man we'll talk about rusty's uh we want to get a hunter to talk a little bit about Rusty's hunting style. But, uh, so the other guy that's here is Hunter Rood. Hunter, you're, where are you from? I'm from, uh, southeast Minnesota.

Southeast Minnesota. And you've been hunting with Rusty Johnson all week. Give us a, okay, what are you going to tell people about Rusty when you go back home next week? When you talk about his white tail hunting, his eccentricities, all these things, what, describe him to us. He loves hunting white tails more than anybody on this earth. Like, there's no argument against it. and he spends more time in a tree than anybody.

I mean, his straight up tactic is get a picture of a buck and then just go sit in the tree and wait for him to come back. It's real simple. Just spend as many hours in a tree as you possibly can. Even if it's three hours before sunrise. I mean, you're in the tree. We've been waking up at like, well, he wakes up at like, I don't know, 245. Yeah, I've been getting up about 245.

And I come downstairs and he's sitting in the kitchen fully dressed waiting at 3.45. We were joking this morning. Hunter was real proud of himself because on day three he felt like he'd woke up before Rusty and was going to be ready. Because the first day, Rusty said, where truck is rolling out at 4 o'clock. And the guys woke up Hunter at like 3.57. It was 4 o'clock. It was 4 o'clock. And I was going out the door at 4 o'clock.

That's pretty good. Yeah. And then so a couple days later, he's like, okay, I've been trained by Rusty now. I'm going to beat Rusty down the stairs. And he walks in, he flips on the lights, and there's Rusty sitting, waiting. Sitting in the dark in the corner. Like tapping his foot very impatiently, like, come on, like looking at his watch. Like trucks running, everything's ready to go.

It's just like, man, this dude loves it. Can't get enough. And you've been sitting long days? Yeah, we've been doing all day sits. And I mean, like, well, we get down and switch trees, but you're still in the woods all day. But it'll be like 75 degrees. And this dude's like, one might just walk by at noon, you know, even though it's 75 degrees, you know, he might get thirsty. Hey, me and Justin, it was actually Justin's idea.

So today, so we have this group text thread going, you know. and turns out I'm kind of in the lead on like the point system we have going here. I wasn't going to mention who killed the deer and the rabbit. But Justin, so we decided we were going to get down at like 10 o'clock this morning. And what I was going to say about Justin, we're coming back to Rusty, but I'm going to talk about Justin. Justin every single day at about 8.30 starts talking about sausage gravy and biscuits. Oh, man, brutal. And he'll start, he'll start like glaring in.

into my eyes and kind of lean forward and go, man, some flaky biscuits and some sausage gravy. Eggs. Eggs. Buttery eggs. And he sees it works on me. I kind of started to soften up a little bit. And so we go, we get down and he said, I said, well, maybe it was my idea. It was your idea.

You got to throw me under the bus and I was going to stay there, but go ahead. And I said, I tell you what, let's do. Let's go to the town over here 20 miles. you and Zach, because Zach was hunting with us, let's get a big country breakfast and get back to camp about, you know, 12, 31 o'clock. Everybody's going to be wondering where we're at. And what were you going to say, Justin?

Oh, we've been hitting it hard. You were going to say, anything could happen. Yeah, anything you could happen. You've got to be out there. Got to be out there. But he was mocking Rusty what Rusty would say. It was really funny. We laughed.

We laughed. We didn't get our breakfast, though. I don't think that food trick would work on my dad Rusty. He doesn't eat at all during deer season. He loses a bunch of weight. No, the first day I sat with him, I was monitoring that. And he ate a Hershey's candy bar with nuts in it, and that's like his go-to. Drink one bottle of water.

At noon, he ate a granola bar, and that was it. All day sit. All day. Meanwhile, I'm on like 3,000 calories. The king of the snacks. Okay. And there was also a rumor going around the camp, the first. that like in an all day sit like sitting across from you eye to eye you're filming him he said like 10 words

uh you're kind of warmed up later in the week yeah we did like day three we talked about beaver trapping we got really close after that but that that was like two minutes two minutes max i mean we're in there to kill a deer you know yeah i mean you can't kill a deer if you're talking well that's not necessarily true that's strange that the you know This is strange that, yeah, kind of the team Nukum-Mishu is winning. I mean, we've been passing bucks the last couple days.

Do you pass them if they're at 130 yards? I'm not sure that's an archery pass. How about the other two that were at about 10? You know, great point. You were saying Brown and it's down. I mean, Rusty has high standards. Okay. Now, what I did learn about Rusty on this trip,

you get like anxiety. before a hunt? Like excitement anxiety? Absolutely. Talk to us about that. Can I help you with that? Well, when I wake up, I mean, I'm so worked, I don't get much sleep, you know, when I'm hunting like this.

Right. When I wake up in the morning, I have this gag. I mean, I just start gagging because I've got so much excitement and I'm so ready to go. I mean, it just, it's the anxiety. I mean, it just, I'm so excited about it. How often would you say you feel that much excitement slash anxiety about a white tail hunt? every day that I go Every time

Every single day I can validate it I hear the pukin Every time See I'm still like asleep But he wakes me up About to leave And he's puking or gagging

This is after four days I've seen nothing This is normal Rusty I've done this for years He gets wound up Really? I've just I mean I love it so much

That it just gets to me I don't know what it did Jared what do you think about this It blows my mind Like I mean I love white tail hunting But Rusty getting up like a full solid two hours before everybody else in camp. I mean, the fact that he sits in the dark drinking coffee waiting for his cameraman.

No, he's like drinking coffee. Like he is beyond next level and I will echo hunter's sentiment that throw some names out there that might like whitetail deer hunting as much as Rusty Johnson. And let's put him into camp together. Let's see. My money's on Rusty. Same. Like, whatever it is. You Snapchated me earlier this week,

and you had the little temperature gauge on. It was 67, and it was like 1.25 p.m. You had the timestamp on there, and you said, we're sitting in a food plot waiting for one. And I just was dying, because the rest of us were sitting in camp, eating sandwiches. Except for Clay and Justin, they were a shock patching one out. Yeah, that could be true.

Rusty was sitting on a food plot in 70 degrees December. first waiting on a big one. We've seen a big one, big spike. Minnesota 11 point as you've... Northern Minnesota 11th. Okay. We would have had a big one down, but I was in school for most of the time. This is the first day I've got to hunt.

Yeah. Yeah. So I've been hitting the books. Yeah. Rustin is in law school. Yeah. Shock of the camp. I mean, I've known this for years, but you look like a lawyer. I'm in my last year of law school.

I feel like I've been in school forever, but it's going. That's awesome. Awesome, man. Almost to the finish line. Could to know a guy like that just in case you get in trouble, you know? You get a little trouble. Never know. Hey, the guy that I haven't introduced yet is Dalton.

Dalton, how's it going, man? Awesome, man. What do you have to say about Rusty? You know Rusty as well as anybody. There's huge pros and cons to hunting with Rusty. And I think the guys have touched it pretty good. The only negative to hunting with Rusty is you start questioning how much you actually like to deer hunt.

Like, that's the best way I can describe it. You think that you love hunting and you get high. I sat with this guy for 13 days in Kansas. So we hunted 13 days. I think the first five, we don't know that we saw a deer. We hit it terrible timing. We had to make adjustments.

And he's not joking. Every single morning that light came on at 2.30 in the morning. I don't set alarms when I stay with him anymore because the dry heating wakes you up. The dry heating will wake you up. Wow. So this is verified by multiple sources. Yeah, you don't even set an alarm. You may want to get that checked out, buddy.

Yeah. But that's incredible, though. I mean, it's December, right? December. I'm one of the hardest times we've been on. in years and he's still he's that way every single time and you killed a big buck uh you've killed two good bucks this year i have yeah and you killed a big one on public land i did i sure did like a week ago uh yeah i'm i'm excited about that one but i'm also a little bit sad about it because

that's a buck that rusting was chasing he hunted his butt off for that bug and i go in there in two days and knock him down but sorry rusting that's just what that's way that's the way it goes Yeah, it's a really nice, it's the biggest eight point I've ever killed. Yeah. And I've killed some pretty good eight points. 143. Well, ask him about his last biggest eight point because I also had that one on camera and was hunting it and then he goes in there and kills it. Yeah, he did.

Yeah. Yeah, last year. That's nice. But I kind of set him up on it. So I was happy that he did it. Yeah. You know, talking about Rusty liking the hunt so much, I identify with that because I remember before I got into the outdoor, I remember seeing all these guys in the outdoor industry and the problem with comparing people to people in an event where like in sports, you know, you can compare like stats, you know, like how many points did he score? How many points did he score?

Yeah. The guy that scored more points is better. Yeah. The problem with hunting is that it's not like that at all, not even remotely like that. And nor is there any reason really why we would compare one hunter to another hunter. But we do. Always. Human nature.

I remember when I was not in outdoor industry at all. And I remember having a thought, I don't need to be the best hunter. I don't, I'll never be the best hunter at what I do. But I remember thinking, it is not possible to love hunting more than I love it. And that validated me. as a young man. I'm not saying my, the way I would express that would be different than you would, but I'm saying that is a valuable, valuable. That's a gift, man. To be passionate about something. Man, when I meet people that are not passionate about something, I don't understand that person.

Right. To be passionate about something is a gift, man. It is. As long as it doesn't control your life in a negative way. There are things that we can get into that like distort us and make us kind of screwed up as humans. I don't see that inside of your world. He's a strong family. He's got a, he's a great husband. He's a great father. And so, like, this hasn't messed you up. Because it messes people up.

It does. Y'all know what I'm saying? I mean, you can take something to an extreme where, yeah, maybe the guy is like so, you know, so performance oriented that the rest of his life is a wreck. And my whole hunting career, I've been interested in being as passionate as I could be and being the best that I could possibly be while maintaining balance inside of my life. Because I knew that for a whitetail of deer

only means so much, but it means a ton when you have a big world that it fits inside of kind of a context, if I could say that way. And I see that with you and Rustin. Yeah, and it was passed along from my dad. That's right, yes. Yeah, your dad, I wish he was here.

My dad's one of the best hunters that I know. Yeah. I mean, he don't hunt much anymore. He's getting older now, but I mean, he is, I learned everything that I know from him, and he is one of the best hunters that I've ever seen. And see, the first time I ever met you, you were with your dad. And I recognize that you and your dad had a really strong relationship. And he was an official score or two, just like you were. You guys know what we do on the Bear Grew Shrender.

We have to, is there anything else we should cover? Well, I think I want to go around and have you pegging number. on how many Bear Grease episodes that we've all listened to. Oh, sure. No problem. Because, yeah, you said you were pretty dialed. No problem. Okay.

Okay. Do you know that off top of your head? Should we set over unders for each person? This is totally going off just, this isn't like data that I have, like, behind the scenes. This is just me interacting with you and... This is your intuition. I would say Jared has probably listened to 70% of them. Justin's listened to five.

Rusty's listened to about 5% or 5%? Five total episodes. Rusty's listened to one. Probably. Dalton's listened to three. Rustin is listened to probably 80% of them. Maybe. In the ballpark?

Ballpark, maybe a little bit lower. I'm a busy guy. I'd say, okay, so you're all off. Yeah, well, I'm in law school, got United Outdoors and Fireside Apparel. Your recollection of the ones you did work. Zach, you probably listened to, oh, Justin's showing me his deal. Do you see this? These are your top three.

Yeah. So you've listened to more than five? Yes. Are you offended? You underestimated them. Are you offended? He's filming your hunt tomorrow. And Zach, how many of you listen to, Zach?

I don't know. I was trying to think of that. I think you have, what, 32? 30 episodes. 30 episodes. I would say, I'm over 20 for sure. I don't know where I'm out from there. You know, like 70, 60%?

Yeah, I can't say listen to all of them. Okay, now tell me how I did. Uh, you were probably, I'm probably about 50% if there's 30 episodes, I've probably been at 15, 20 in that realm. You were in the realm. I was impressed. Okay. I was off on Justin. Sorry, Justin. I did 10. Nah. But it's double. You were exactly correct. And I listened to it today. But after listening to it, I liked it. And I'm going to, I'm going to start listening to them. Okay. It's really interesting. Dalton. I think I'm exactly three, actually. The very first. How many did I say? You said three. Okay. I think it's exactly three.

Okay. I don't know. What about the hunt? Yeah, you should give a little spiel about, I mean, I think the hunt can be summed up. Rusty. Rusty hadn't seen much for the first three days. The last two days, he's been in the game. In the game with the great buck.

I am in the game. I am in the game for sure. Yeah. Hey, yeah, those first two or three days were terrible, terrible. But then we moved over here to this new area. And, well, that's first to Clay Newcomb here, just wrangling private permission. Yeah. To change the course of the hunt.

We need to start from the beginning. We came here to hunt public land in Arkansas. Bowhunt public land starting on November 29th. We got to give credit to Rusty Dalton and Rustin from United Outdoors for spending, I don't know how many hours in boot miles. A lot of thousands. To scout and have, you know, somebody. ideas laid out for us, but Mother Nature came in. This same week last year, it was on fire.

I remember that. You were texting me from the tree stay. What was cool about this for me is this is a place that I used to hunt, but had not hunted it probably since 2005. So that's kind of the overarching thing. And then we got permission on a big piece of property over here just for the days we're here. It's just kind of a random deal.

We ran into somebody. They happened to have a big piece of property. and they happen to let all of us bow hunt it. And it's a really good piece of property. I mean, the fantastic piece. Yeah. Just the weather and timing is still really tough. Yeah.

But Rusty is on one. Tell us your story, down. Well, I got lucky. You know, we kind of all dispersed and kind of spread out. And Clay kind of told you where to go. And Clay dropped me a pin. And so that's where me and Hunter went. I got lucky.

I got lucky. Yeah, it was the gar-hold. That's kind of what I had in the back of my mind. He was gar-holling me. But anyway, it turned out really good. I mean, we saw a lot of deer. We saw a really nice eight-point come out, grunted him into the base of the tree.

We decided to let him go. He was dead by everybody else. We saw a nice little six-point, a spike. We saw a lot of doze. Over 20 doze. I lost count of how many doze we saw. So we noticed where they come out of the woods and right at last light,

Hunter said, here comes a deer down the fence line. He said, I think it's a small buck. So I put my binoculars up, and I said, no, I said, that's a shooter. So, I mean, we were running out a lot really fast. And he got in to about 15 yards, and he smelled us,

and he started snorting, but he wasn't moving anywhere. He would just stomp his foot, and he would snort. I just need him to take a couple steps. I love these privately amateur bucks, man. Yeah. two steps

as all I needed for him to get in an opening and he stood there he stood there we were losing light losing light he finally took those two steps I come to full draw I could not see my pen in the peep site so it was game over at that

at that time so I just let my draw down and we just sat there and he finally eased off so we made another play on him tonight and we again misjudged where he was going to come him out and we saw him again and he got within 50 yards and I actually drawed on him and again it was

late low light I couldn't see my pen and my peep I don't think I would have took that shot anyway I mean 40 is about my max nowadays when I was younger I might have shot a little further but so he eased off so we got one more day to make another play on him and I feel confident if he does what he did today then we might have a shot at him I'm hoping keep my fingers crossed Yeah. You know, we're all rooting for you, man. We need some excitement around here. I believe this deer would bring some excitement to the camp.

Yes, he's a really good buck. I think a spike will bring some excitement to this camp. I think another rabbit tomorrow would bring a little excitement to this camp. Although, that's not an overly true statement. The excitement level has never wavered. I mean, there's been positivity and... That's the best group of guys. A lot of chatter going on.

So, you know, it would just be some nice... icing on the cake to come through in the fourth quarter. Yeah. Let's be careful not to start any rumors. Deer hunting is terrible. Turkey hunting is terrible. Might as well go to Missouri. Yeah.

I'm kind of starting to hunt Oklahoma, so Oklahoma hunting is terrible too, so don't go there. Justin, what do you think of this hunting? You hunted all over the country, really? It's tough, man. I mean, again, I feel like you can't get past the barrier of it being 75 degrees in December. I mean, you told me on the phone when we first talked about this trip, this is going to be tough. You know, I didn't imagine it being like this. But, I mean, it was cool to go in.

You know, we got a mile back in from the truck and some serious terrain. Coming, you know, from New York and making judgments on where to sit based on, like, food and things like that. It's just like, there's no food here. I don't, how these deer. You rock some grass. How these deer survive, I have no clue. It took me three days to find deer poop. They don't poop here either.

Well, Rusty took the only video of the only deer pooping in the county. You have to eat to poop. I've been intrigued because I'll say to you, I'm like, we're looking at the map. I'm like, where's the food? Like, why would these deer get up from one spot? Like, they should just lay there and die. There's no food. Just give up.

Not now. Besides, for no food, there's like, baseball and softball size rocks underneath like four inches of leaves. It's rock piles, man. Ankle busters. So if they move to try to find food, they break their ankles. So it sucks to be a deer here. And that's probably why we're not seeing any.

And then Rusty Johnson is creeping around at every tree day and night. If you decide to get up, Rusty will kill you. Rusty's got so many jail cameras out. He knows when every deer in this county stumps and stands up. Oh, man. Well, while we're sitting here, you know, our shirts hanging off

in like swimsuit weather, I'm getting photos of deer back home. So as soon as we can wrap this up. Yeah, it's just like, man, I'm really wasted my time. I just wasted. I see actual food on these cameras of deer eating. No, it's good.

But like I was saying, we went back in a mile from the truck, and obviously at home, too, you have to pick spots based on terrain and movement. And, like, you know, we sat and, again, felt like Nowherstville for two nights or two sits, saw a deer the first night. They were just out of range. And then the next morning, we sat, and, man, the only deer we saw ended up on your back. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk about that. Rusty, I don't know if I told you the whole situation with that dough. Man, let me say as well, I was absolutely thrilled to go back in where we did and kill that deer. I hunted back in there when I was in college. I think about that spot to this day.

A fall doesn't go by where I don't think about that spot back there where I took Justin. Really? Yeah, because it was when I cut my teeth bow hunting over here. I mean, I left Gary Newcomb's camp, Camp Newcomb and was flushed out on my own, you know. And I found that spot on topo map before on X when we actually went to the store and bought a big three by three topo map. But it hadn't been back there. I just moved, I just have done other stuff, you know. So to go back in there and even just to kill a dough.

thrilled. I'm serious. That's the highlight of my season. I've killed three pretty good bucks. I told Justin this, there's a, one of my arrows is still in a tree over there somewhere because I missed a deer up there at like 40 yards. And my era stuck in a tree and I just left it there for the anthropologist in 10,000 years. Huh. When I was in school years ago. Yeah, that's going to be our segue. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be our segue. But I want to talk about this dough real quick. This dough came in. We were up. Just under 30 feet.

103 feet. We were real high. Yeah. Because that's the way you beat a deer's nose, boys. You get up real high. Hang out with the birds. This dough passed all the way around us and actually dropped down into the kind of head of this hollow. And I was hanging as absolutely far to the left as you could in a tree saddle.

Trust in it. I've got my feet, like, you know, just like on the side of my platform. And I'm just like hanging off. and this deer steps out to 30 yards and I knew it because I had ranged openings and I just knew it was about 30 yards. The deer, it's thick. I drew before she came into the opening.

I mean, it was just perfect. And she got into the opening, bach, grunted at her. There was one vine about half the size of your pinky that was running up about three feet in front of her right over the vitals and I chose to send it. Because I knew that if it deflected, it was close enough to her that it wasn't going to be an issue.

If that vine had been 15 feet away, it would be a different. Shot in my mind, I just hit it right where I was aiming. 30 yards. And so now the deer is probably 40 feet below me, though, because I'm 30 feet from the ground. And the deer is at least 10 feet below the base of the tree, am I right? Yep. So it's way down there.

Shoot. In my mind, I just see it just go right where I wanted. But still, it's a long shot. It couldn't really tell. The deer mule kicks, runs out there, stops 50 yards away. And I think it's just going to start tumbling down the hill. It stops, it turns, and it starts walking. And I go, oh, man.

And it gets down, it just walks out of sight, and then we hear a deer start blowing. And I know the deer that shot isn't blowing, but in your mind you're thinking, is a deer just shot, blow it? And Justin, I even said, did I miss that deer? and Justin was like, I could have swore I heard you hit it. And I said, I could have swore I saw me hit it with my eyes. Yeah. And then, but then there's a big log right behind this dough.

And I think, maybe I went right under that dough and it hit that log and just thudded and it sounded like I hit her. Nothing like the what goes through your mind after releasing an hour. Yeah. Like second guesses, third guesses, seven guesses. And so we set up there for 20 minutes. I get down. I walk over to the arrow. Well, first of all, from the tree stand, we're glassing the arrow, and the arrow has no blood on it that we can tell. And I'm in my mind thinking I just tin ring this deer, and this arrow is not adding up. I get down, walk over to it, pick up the arrow, and I'm telling you that arrow was almost clean, and it had stomach content on it, very little blood and white hair. So I go back up and report to Justin and say, not good, buddy, and we set up in the tree for two hours.

and I'm like kind of in the dumps just like man I just gut shot this deer this is you know we're going to track this deer all day we're over a mile from the truck we finally get down start tracking it spotty spotty blood look like liver blood dark liver blood not very much liver blood stomach content and little specks of blood trail it to the log where we saw it turns down hill we get about 10 yards from where I saw it and there's a deer laying there dead and I walked down there and I absolutely tin ring that deer. I hit it. I counted ribs.

I hit it four ribs into the rib cage. The deer's quartering away from me. One, two, three, four ribs in. Entry hole. The arrow exited about three inches behind the front shoulder in the lower one-third of the cavity. Entered right here. Came out right here.

Neacropsy showed liver and double lung. Wow. Crazy. And she walked away. And she walked away. and that era was covered in, it was an expandable head and it clipped. Oh, Clay. She was blowing, don't tell me that.

She was blowing, like, stomach contents out of her hole. But it was, the entry hole had stomach content. Anyway, it was just wild. I mean, everything about every single factor that would have told me gut shot, but my eyes told me it was a tindering. Anyway, it's a good shot. It was a good shot. So it worked.

Well, and it's a dang good thing that Clay did tendering that thing because I was in charge of the food plan. And I just planned in a night of venison because all I heard was about this on-fire week in December. Yeah. And boy, we just about went hungry one night. Yeah. By on fire, we were talking about the temperatures.

Yeah. Let me learn with you, Southern boys. Yeah. Okay, well, back to my arrow that is lodged in an oak tree back on that ridge on public land, that anthropologists will dig up. The point of the bearer's renders, we need to talk about this.

the Folsom Part 2 podcast, killing bison with stone points. Jared, what did you think? What stood out to you? Well, there, all right, so the one thing that stood out to me is the number that I think I heard was 32 bison. That's right. And bison antiquis. Bison antichwis.

And, you know, it sounded like they harvested these bison with some type of addalattle or spear throwing. We're not sure. What really stands out to me is I've butchered some milk, I've butchered some deer. I cannot imagine the amount of time and effort it took to butcher 32, 1,000 pound animals with stones. Those people had to be there for days cutting up bison meat. Like they maybe just lived there for a month. Yeah, yeah. Like that part to me was just like, man, I cannot imagine that workload.

Yeah. That's a good point. And what we don't know is how many people there were there were there. Well, and, you know, there was some speculation. I think it was you and Steve going back and forth that these people, it was not a populous area as far as human beings anywhere on this continent at that point in time. To the point that you guys were saying that it likely wouldn't have been uncommon for you not to see anyone that. that you weren't related to for your entire lifetime. Yeah. And so, I mean, in my mind, it was like, okay, what?

Like 15 people, 20 people killed 32 bison? Yeah. I would, if I was up there with an atlattle, I'd have been like, all right, guys, we got a, we got a few of these things run away. Like, I ain't butchering for six months. Well, hey, that's a good, how many got away though? You tell me.

That's the time. That's one thing that I was wondering, How many was the herd actually? Right. How many was actually in the herd? Yeah. And I can't remember in there. Did he explain why there were no bulls?

I mean... It was just a... That's a good point. It was a cow-calf herd. So they just weren't... That time of the year, breeding was done. And bison segregate like that, and they'll be bachelor groups.

Just like white tails, rusty. Bachelor groups, hanging out, dole groups. So it was just a cow-calf herd. It was in the fall. Mm-hmm. So I've got a question. So you say it's a cow calf herd. Is there any knowledge or speculation around whether they valued the horns or antlers off of maybe the males?

And they might have taken it with them? Well, there were not males killed at the Folsom site in that pile because they accounted for the skulls or the females and calves. You know, so it wasn't like there were unaccounted. They were able to tell that it was all females. And so, and they left all the skulls. And because they said that there's no value to them, right? So they wouldn't carry them because they're too heavy. Yeah.

Yeah. Got the select cuts and then got out of there. Yeah. Yeah. It would be interesting to know how many got away because undoubtedly you would think some would have gotten away. For sure. Yeah. What's crazy is like, I mean, you shot that dough.

she ran 50, 60 yards. Like, how are they doing this that they're just piled up right there? That's the mystery, man. It would be hard to move a big animal. I mean, you would think that they would run. It all died in a spot about as big as this living room. They all figured they died right there

because, I mean, weren't they found in a creek bed? Well, but also like the topography that they talked. about plays into that. Yeah. Being at a Box Canyon that was at the top. But I think it is interesting with that. For one, there's a couple things going, I'll take a step back in a second, but how they knew it was in the fall.

I think that was pretty cool. Yeah. It's so straightforward. But when he said it, it's like, wow. To look at that, when I asked him, I thought, why didn't I think of that? Yeah. I should have known that. Yeah.

It was really interesting. But with the Box Canyon, I thought it was interesting because immediately I thought, like, yeah, they're going to disperse. It's crazy to think they drug them all. to one area to take care of them. We knew that they took select cuts. So if you're going to do that, you could just do them where the animals are, get what you need and go,

so you think it'd be more dispersed. So I think the topography definitely plays into that, especially when you get into the tactics from Steve to who was it, Dr. Meltzer was the other one? I think they both could be valid. Well, now, Kyle Bell is one. Oh, Kyle Bell, Kyle. So Meltzer and Steve, you know,

had the same idea that they were herded in there and all killed. That they were coming in there on their own free will for that solvice. No, no, that was Kyle Bell. That was Kyle Bell. That was Kyle Bell. Which, without knowing the area, it's tough to say. I think both could happen.

So Steve thought that they were herded in and they got stuck at the top of this box canyon, no place to escape. Kyle Bell thought they were going there freely. Bison are going to do what they want. And they were going in there for some sort of mineral. And then, you know, knowing that they're going to go in there, it's a perfect ambush. This wasn't on the podcast, but this is what the Bear Grouch Render is all about. The manager, the Crowfoot Ranch, a really sharp guy named Seth, he thinks there was a mineral in there too.

And I mean, Clay, what do you think? We never heard an opinion from you. Man, I got to go with the experts. Dr. Meltzer has literally devoted, like, a massive part of his career to study this exact thing. I mean, he's done a lot of other stuff, too, but I mean, he literally wrote a textbook. Like the book that he wrote is like an academic textbook. I mean, it's like,

it's not like a nonfiction, like fun read, you know, like it's like a textbook, man. So I just got to believe the guy has more data points than he can say in a five-minute section on my podcast. And we talked a whole lot more.

I talked to him for hours. Yeah. And we've now heard him speak on the podcast for like 21 minutes. That's what it boiled down to with him. So, you know, there's stuff you just got to take out.

that being said these other guys who this Seth this ranch manager he's running cattle all day he's on that land all day he knows that farm he knows that place

watch us how similar ungulates he doesn't think you could push him in there and then Kyle he's got a convincing little sound bite there he's like I've been on 200 bison kills I'm hard to argue that with bison but

Steve's point I think is pretty a counter to that, which is so strong, which was these bison literally may have never seen a bipedal human before. Sure. They could have walked up to these things and scratched them behind the ears

before they killed them. I mean, I'm exaggerating. Yeah. But these aren't domesticated bison like we would have today. For sure. So potentially the behavior of these animals. And undoubtedly,

humans have, we know it from Whitedale Hutton. I mean, it's so, clear, human predation changes animal behavior. Absolutely. So potentially they could have been herded. Yeah. And I think they probably were herded in there. Do we know what the major predation source was at that time?

You know, that's a good question. I'd have to look it up, but there were some wild predators back then, man. Yeah, probably some mean stuff. There were, I'm not sure if the dire wolves, they probably weren't around at that time. Definitely some simulation of a modern gray wolf. But I mean, these bison antiques came out of a time of predation of like massive jaguars that are like three times as big. American cheetahs, American lions, saber tooth cats. But I think those were deeper into history.

It really is fascinating. And the other thing that's kind of shocking to me, at least from what I gleaned from your podcast, was they found the bison, you know, remains. They found some fulsome points. but there really wasn't any other artifacts that were found. You know, nothing other that suggests that they made camp there for a while while they dealt with these bison or that they were in the area for any significant period of time. Right. So like that was kind of shocking to me.

So probably on part three, you'll hear David Meltzer talk more about that because part three, I asked him, I said, who were these people? Like, what do we know about these people? I mean, these were humans. They were like us. They had emotions. They had feelings. They were just like us, but they used flint rocks to clack together to make fire.

And they made stone points out of church that they found. They're a little grittier than us. And so I asked him, you know, who are these people? And that's when he began to talk about how we do not know where they camped. And that's his biggest frustration, he told me. As he said, we were there. We know so much about this site. He said, we cannot, for the life of us, find where they camped.

Because they had to have camp close. And there could have been remnants of a camp there, but over that long, what's going to be left is the stone and not the baskets or the other things they might have had. And I said this to Dr. Meltzer, and I'm not sure if it was an offensive question to ask an archaeologist, but I was like, I'm standing. at the Folsom site.

And you would have walked past it and it looked like every other place. You wouldn't have thought something special happened here. Yeah. Look like every other place. And by now, you know, the second excavation

by Meltzer was done and, you know, it was over 20 years ago. So it just looked like a drainage, you know. Yeah. And I'm standing there and I think,

and I ask the guys I'm with. I'm like, how do we know there's not something incredible 12 feet under the ground right there? Yeah. Nobody ever dug there. We don't.

They literally dug up a spot about from this living room wall to probably the kitchen door over there, which is about 30 feet. I'm telling you. That whole box canyon hasn't been excavated? No way. What? I could, you know, my measurements might be wrong, but I'm telling you, you could have shot a recurve bow. Wow. Any side of that to the other one and could have killed a year.

I would have thought something this important, they would have went way beyond the bounds. A back hole would have been in there. well no you got to be careful because every time you activate you destroy that's okay and this is when you learn about archaeology which i'm doing now you realize how it's like surgery i mean it's like saying there's something wrong with this guy why don't you just go in and fix it well it's not like i mean these guys are like taking months and months to excavate like a small area i mean they're like removing i mean so it's i'd have been an excavator like back in George's time.

Shave off the bison skull to fit it in the box. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got to catalog all kind of data points, too, before you can even remove the item. Right. You said that the paleontologist got there first and was concerned with the bones and everything. But then later the archaeologist came,

and they said that a lot of what their original excavation did, like took no regard to humans. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, they were worried about the bones. Yeah. And so they weren't that concerned about anything else. And at the time they excavated it, you know, we didn't have the technology that we do now with radiocarbon dating.

And I couldn't get into all the detail of what Meltzer studied. I mean, it was like wildly deep stuff about the sedimentation, the sediment layers. They were able to take those 10,000-year-old bones and understand how long they were in the sun before they were covered with. silt. Wow. Because the decay, you know how a bone? Like if you had a deer bone out, you know, somewhere, wherever the sun was hitting, it would turn white.

Exactly. Where it was touching the dirt, it would maintain its natural color. And they felt like with pretty quickly, like within a couple of years, that thing was silted over. And that's the reason it was preserved. Yeah. For 10,000 years. And then it was only uncovered once in recent times, like within the past. What was it, 70 years before Meltzer did?

Was the first time? That was the excavation. Yeah, the excavation. And now they removed everything that they didn't leave anything in the ground. Yeah. On purpose. George McJunkin found a small section of bones. Yeah.

You know, imagine a 32 bison killed right here, and there's a drainage right here. The new, the flood pushed the cut bank of that drainage. You know, imagine three or four feet this way. Yeah. exposed these bones enough for George's to be like, those are cool, somebody needs to come down here and check this out. You know, and then he dies, nobody comes. Finally they come.

And then this guy named Carl Schwaheim, who was a friend of George's, the museum hired him. He wasn't even an archaeologist. He was just a dude. All about who you know. Yeah, and they hired him to get them a bison antichl skull. Because by that time they'd been like, hey, that's bison antichaelus. That's pretty cool.

We need one of those. they hired Carl Carl goes in there starts digging Carl finds a Folsom Point which at the time wasn't a fulsome point

he just finds a stone point it's like dudes I found a sweet stone point it's pretty cool in Meltzer's book he has Carl Schwaheim's handwritten notes because Carl was

instructed somehow to write notes of what he found every day this is late 1800 no no this would have been 1926 and 27 something like that and Carl

it was a pretty good artist and he drew in his notes a picture of the fulsome point that he found and it looks just like it that's cool so how big are these they're not real big man the big ones are like three inches long probably that long is the stone that they're made out of is that native to exactly right there or did it come from some where they made somewhere else bear grease podcast and he didn't even listen to that one that good we talked about it on the podcast rusty they uh they they got that stone from

Texas, 150 miles away in Texas. So the, oh, he did listen. Okay, you jogged my memory. But then wasn't Steve saying that they were finding, or you could find Folsom points throughout the West. That's right. That's correct. Up north, far north.

Absolutely. So those people roamed. Well, or at least shared technology as well. It wouldn't have been necessarily those people and the stone wouldn't have come from there, but that technology. What he was describing was that, that technology. and we're calling technology, the design of a point, was clearly connected to people that were connected to one another.

Like, if you made a fulsome point, and what to me is so neat from a human perspective, is that fulsome point represents so much more than just a stone point to kill an animal. If you're in Montana and I'm in New Mexico and we make the same stone point, I gave wrong to you, we share the same value system, we probably shared the same understanding of who God is.

We probably shared the same value system of how we hunt, how we manage the land, how we raise our kids. I mean, there's just so much more that's transferred and what's so fascinating. And Steve did such a cool job of bringing it out is that the stone point isn't necessarily, I mean, of all the things that could have been left, the stone point just happens to be made of a material. That is basically this last. Yeah.

And so all the, everything else is gone. We have a stone point. It's a shame that that's all we have because there's just like so many questions left unanswered, but it also makes kind of fun. Oh, it's sweet. You get to dream up your own scenarios. Yeah, it's the symbology of it. Like we're looking at just a stone point and essentially writing a narrative, well, trying

to put together historical context, but then building a narrative and trying to get, you know, an inference from this. And I was thinking about it. what, you know, you're joking about your arrow and, you know, someone to find 10,000 years, but like, let's take the arrow out of it. What do we have that's that symbolic? Because, like, as you're saying, those people are connected from that one point. What is something today that if someone found 10,000 years, would it even last, for one?

Would it make it there? But then what is something that's that significant? And I was trying to think about it. I don't know if there is something like that. Why are people shooting expandable broadheads? I was wondering what the cutting. Dayander was on that Falson point

compared to your mega meat, you know? How effective are we on here? They find that expandable and they go, these guys were real

chumps. Yeah. They were terrible. Low IQ. I thought 300 times went extinct. Hey,

actually, Rusty, I have three expandables and three, four, four blade fixed heads in my quiver.

Oh. And I've shot way more fixed blades over the last 15 years than expandables. I'm proud of you. I know you did. No need to be proud.

I just killed stuff and it dies. No, what's so awesome, it's the mystery of this that is what makes it so unique. How did they kill these bison? We don't know. I thought Steve's, I mean, this is what Steve's good at

is like the idea that this was just a snapshot of time. Yeah. And trying to understand if this was a big deal or if it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Was this another day? It was a common place?

Was this just a normal day? Yep. Oh, well, we need to go get our meat harvest for the next three weeks. Let's go get them. Yeah. Or were they talking about it for years? Or did they talk about it for the rest of their lives? This is the pictograph on every wall in New Mexico is this bison hunt.

Incredible. Yeah, it makes me think, like, how much of that got, like, when that flood came, how much of that stuff is gone? Four or five hundred yards down further, you know? Yeah. so many of those, you know, bones. That brings up a good question of mine that I had, or my major question of the pivotal point, is there's so many different weather events and different climate changes in the past 10,000 years. I'm wondering if some kind of weather event maybe artificially moved them together, the site,

or maybe the erosion and then the covering the erosion, how many cycles of that occurred over 10,000 years and how that may have affected the site. there's just a lot of questions that I have that I don't I don't know if we're well see we we do we do like with with the certainty that with the highest level of scientific certainty what they did when they went back 70 years later at Folsom yeah if you if you read that textbook that that Dr. Meltzer wrote between your law books yeah between all the law books no that's that that's that's that's that That's exactly what they went back to understand was the, they call it the paleogeography,

which is what was the geography of the land, paleotipography, what is it, paleotopography, which is the geology of the land throughout the time period, because the geology's changed, but also the, I think he called it the stratigraphy of the land, which is the stratification of it. they're able to basically tell by the deposition and the layers that this was not moved here by erosion, number one. And he went on and on, and I asked him, and I just clipped out these kind of highlight points. But I mean, what they do, what archaeologists do is determine that this happened culturally, not by the events of the natural world, like pushing the stuff together because that could happen. Like, for example, you know, you could have a bison kill down three or four feet below the surface and have gophers digging holes and burrows down there and knocking a stone point from the surface down there and falling. Then you find a bison kill with a stone point there.

You know, holy cow, you know, they're the same. Man, these boys make a living making sure that is not the case. And there's a phrase they use called NC2, which means in place. I don't know. It's probably French for in place. Why we're using French words? I don't know. But basically when they found that point,

that fulsome point in between two ribs, it wasn't stuck in a rib. I thought it was stuck. Half the time I researched this, I thought they were saying it was stuck in a rib. And it was not. It was laid in between two ribs. And there's an iconic photo,

and I'll put it on my Instagram, of two ribs. And you know how we've all probably found airheads in the ground when you just see half of it sticking up. and you're like, that's in C2. Yeah. I say it every time. Yeah.

And this was that. And then they found so many, there was so many data points. I think they can understand the flaking on a point to understand how old it is. So like these bones are 10,000, radio carbon date 10,000 years. These flakes, you know,

the stone points come back as being verified of being that old. So it's like everything there, the sediment was that. It's like, no question. So it's pretty settled. Oh, it's 100% settled. See, what I feel for Dr. Meltzer, though, is the various degrees of quality control throughout

this whole thing. Like, yes, he has a historical context and he can put this together, but he talked about, like, you know, the archaeologists from the paleontologists, but then even the way they mapped it. Yeah. It would be nice if he could just go and do it, like, you know, and get the full picture. Because, like, how tough is that knowing someone? And I was thinking about that, like, people are trying to shoot, holes saying that people haven't been around for 10,000 years and it's like you could look and

be like that's not a credible source he could have dropped that there planted it lied whatever man it would be tough to try to figure this out using no or knowing that folks who don't know as much as you do now because we've progressed and we have better technology kind of just went through and dug up some bones yeah and you got to take that into account when you're trying to draw a conclusion from all this like yeah it's like got to be frustrating that another detective was already ramside. Yes. Yeah.

Trying to figure out. 70 years later. But what, and just to clarify the whole conversation, Meltzer, it was long time ago established that this site was legitimate in 1928. Yeah. When those guys were like, I mean,

the leading archaeologists in North America came and said, this is legit. There's no way to argue this. This is real. humans killed Bison and Tickles. Before the second exceivation? Absolutely. Okay.

So that was never in question when Meltzer went back. Melzer went back to discover a whole lot of other questions that they had. Okay. So that was never in question. But, and there's a, oh man, a bunch of Meltzer's textbook is about all the drama with that. Yeah. And it was really informative because you see. It's good.

Archaeology is highly scrutinized. Like they don't just, you don't just roll up and find a point and be like, yeah, we've been here for 300,000 years. And then everybody believes it, like highly scrutinized. But what was interesting to me

is that it was clear that it was highly influenced by human ego. I mean, he wrote about it. He was like, this guy didn't like this guy, and he was trying to discredit it for no good reason.

And so there's that going on. Yeah. Like these leading archaeologists, you know, like trying to discredit someone because they didn't find it. Yeah. So there was some of that going on. But this was so clear cut, they're like, everybody. Huh. The leading archaeologists at the time, I can't remember his last name.

Maybe it was Brown. Within a week of him being at Folsom, he went out and he actually took one of the big full points. And he was a big enough wig that he was able to just say, I'm taking that with me. and he took it to all his lectures and he said, man has been in North America for 10,000 words. And when he said that,

it was like, no one was going to argue with this guy, but it was groundbreaking, shattered. And what I'm going to talk about in podcast number three is it shattered people's idea of life on planet Earth.

Yeah. I mean, like, we thought humans had been in North America for 3,000 years. And all of a sudden, we've been here for 10,000. It kind of like destabilized people. So when you showed up to this site, you know, some places that you show up with historical

significance or what have you, you just like there's an aura about it, you like get chills. It's kind of just like an experience to be there. Yeah. Was fulsome that way for you? It was really neat being there. I can't say that, I mean, it was kind of an academic experience in some ways just going there and seeing it and trying to understand what happened and then being there with the experts and stuff.

But I'd be lying if I said it was totally like that for me. Now, when I come back and I really study it and kind of put it together afterwards, it is 100%. I wouldn't say that when I was there, it was like that. Sure. But when I asked him about that the other day we were driving in the truck, he was like, it looked like that. Pointed out the window.

He said it could be, it doesn't look the same. It's not the way it was. And that's true. It doesn't, it does not look like a Box Canyon anymore. Oh, really? Yeah.

It just, I mean, it just looks like a, it looks like a drainage. And by drainage, I mean, like, like,

probably like 10 foot down. If you were standing in the bottom of it, the stream bear would be like four or five feet wide. And there'd be banks going up this way and this way. And it just kind of, it kind of goes up just a little bit and then flattens out. But. Oh,

I imagine like these plateau wall. and no. It was an indescript place. Interesting. But the Box Canyon, and I don't fully understand how they understood what it looked like that. Yeah. But they did.

And yeah, you'd walk right past it. Well, Eric Siegfried was drawn Topal Maps like 100 years before he came out with the Onyx, Hunat. He just didn't know about it. Say that again. That joke went right over my head. The on-X founder, I was just joking that he had that box scanning mapped out. That's how I knew.

That was a nerdy on-x joke. Got it. Super nerdy on-x joke. It also makes you wonder what's hiding under completely ordinary places just all around us. Totally. I mean, that was what I said. How much of planet Earth has been explored by an archaeologist to this detail? You know, very, very.

I like that it's that way. I like it. I don't want to know everything. I want there to be mystery. Absolutely. Well, what is so hard for us to understand, when you look back at human history in like the fulsome people,

as we define the fulsome people as being defined by this technology of the points that they used, they were around for about a thousand years. The fulsome points were in fashion for a thousand years. That seems, When I say that, does that sound like a long time or a short time? Insanely long time.

Yeah. Does it? Like, I'm sitting here, I was just thinking about like 10,000 years. That's not even really comprehensible for me. Right. Yes. A thousand years is still like, holy, like, still kind of incomprehensible. So here's my point about how we live in this. We live in the most bizarre, bizarre human experience of humans that have ever lived on planet Earth.

I'd agree. I mean, for 100 years, we've been using fossil fuels and driving trucks and cars, having electricity, having the technology to be able to have a conversation. This would have been supernatural stuff to a Folsom Hunter if we could say, there would be people that will listen to this conversation in the future. They would be like, what kind of witch doctor are you, man? I mean, like, we live in such a bizarre human experience that we think that we're normal and that we think that this is normal.

This is not normal to humans. At least if we look back at human history. And we're so stinking, arrogant, thinking, and I'm talking like as a, as mankind, to think that we know everything, that everything is tame and that everything is discovered and that everything is understood. Yeah. Because technology and science has just skyrocketed. You know, if human knowledge was on a graph, it would be a J-curve, you know, starting about 200 years ago. And it would have got steeper and steeper and steeper and steeper and steeper. steeper the last 50 years.

And then you hit the internet and it becomes a roller coaster and you do it 360. Yeah. Yeah. But there's so much we don't know and we'll never know. And there's so much yet to be discovered. I mean, this stuff like this, I think, is

designed to keep us humble. Yeah. Yeah, they were using that point for a thousand years and I'd switch broadheads halfway through season sometimes. The rain of the The expandable head will be about 30 years. Did you get to hold the Folsom Point? Yeah.

I mean, not the ones they found. Okay. So that was something I asked Dr. Meltzer is like, where is all this stuff? Yeah. Like, where are the bison? Where are the Folsom points? And they're scattered around. You know what I mean?

It was almost 100 years ago. Yeah. And things were way different back then when they excavated most of that stuff out. For instance, this bigwig archaeologist just carried a point with him. And they found it as I understand it. they found it in his desk drawer after he died. Wow. Like,

whenever he passed away. So, like, he had just, like, kept it in his, like, personal collection.

And this is, like, a really incredible point. Oh, that's not like that. It should be in a museum or something. Human history. And he's got it in his desk,

you know, and they found it. So they, they, still some of the points are unaccounted for. Whoa. Really? I'm using more on this hunt right now.

Yeah. Where did you get that false appointment? Dr. Melton. has in his in his textbook he they have a graphic that shows every single point they found the front and the back so there'll be two images the front and the back and i mean so they documented every single one they found and as i understand it well maybe the they don't have documented the ones that were lost i think they documented 16 but they said there was 20 so there's four that are still like probably got in the wash you know somebody probably washed it Storage wars and their wife threw it away. Start buying those old storage units. Never know.

But there are fulsome points, real fulsome points in a lot of places. I mean, I couldn't, I wouldn't even know where to start to tell you how many we have. But I mean, for sure, thousands. And you can find one today. We were at a farm in Nebraska a couple of weeks ago. And the farmer shows Steve Ronell and I, his collection. and he's got half a Folsom Point that he found on his farm in Nebraska. Wow.

So, I mean, it's not, it's very uncommon, but at the same time, they're around. They're around, yeah. So when I was at the Folsom Museum, which if you ever go in that part of the world, you've got to go there. It's really cool. It's just like this old time. It's the kind of museum you can go in and pick stuff up. Oh, whoa. Yeah.

Yeah. Ooh. So there's this case of Folsom points, and I'm like, can I open that? What? And there he was like, sure. And I'm going to post a, I'll post a video at some point of me holding a Folsom Point. And, yeah, so they're around. My kind of museum.

Yeah, yeah, they're around. But we will nerd out on the technology of the Folsom Point on the fourth episode. You guys do some kinetic energy testing and stuff? Oh, man, I talked to the, as my understanding goes, the nation's leading expert on Adel Addles. He did his P. HD on Adaladdles and he He went into detail on On why they use that

Why that technology the Folsom point was so good I'm excited for that one Yeah, it's it's really neat I just again like I'm that one's very interesting to me because I mean I've I've shot enough critters with You know a compound bow point 70 pounds that you get three inches of penetration when you hit up You know some bone inside of a white tail Yeah. Like the fact that these people were hand-sharpening rocks, fixing them to a wooden arrow of some sort with what like cat-tail fibers or something?

I'm just making stuff up at this point. Yeah, yeah. And then hucking them, presumably, out of an addal-addle. And they were able to kill thousand-pound animals that way? A bunch of them. That is insanity to me. Yeah, yeah. Thus, I would like a YouTube demonstration with you and an outlattle and a Folsom Point.

That's a good idea. There's quite a bit more to come. We're only halfway through the series, so there's two more full podcasts. And the things that the guys bring up next time, I think, are just as intriguing as this first one. What's interesting, too, is that this isn't the only one we have. I mean, there's other really unique sites. The Clovis site. The Clovis site was basically a similar thing, but it was a mammoth kill.

Was it also in New Mexico? Wow. So, I mean, it was the same story, except it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't the same story. Mammoth is huge. George McJunkin. What if George McJunkin had ridden his horse down there and found that too? Hey, boys, there's another one down there about 400 miles.

You might want to check it out. I believe it's a mammoth. What, George? Well, it's been super fun sharing camp with all you guys. Yeah, it really has. Absolutely. Man, for having such a crummy week of deer hunting, we really have had a great time. It's been a blast.

I hope some of the group text comes out on the, Meteor episode because the people deserve to see it. Well, hey, I hope Rusty wins this contest with a big... If you kill a big buck tomorrow, that beats a dough and a rabbit. Do you all guys agree? I think you'll agree when you see. I think you would just take the slight edge. What you don't know is that me and Justin Mischo think that that buck might end up on

our side of the road tomorrow. Well, wouldn't that be something? It could. There's a big old rub right behind our tree stand, and I can see. I'm sure he's working that entire area. I really think it was him. I mean, how many bucks are going to be rubbing on trees that big? That's probably him.

It really is probably him. Now, whether he's there in the evening, I don't know. I hope he comes to you because I don't want to kill him. Yeah, you do. Well. You would love to kill this bug. No, well, it's been really fun sharing a camp with Jared and Zach. You know, I've known you guys with this first time we really spent much time together.

So it's been a pleasure. Yeah. Yes, it has. I've been looking forward to this hunt all year, and even though it's been tough hunting, as I said, it's going to be a highlight of my fall. Good. No doubt about it.

Good. Rustin? Keep steadying, man. Oh, yeah, I got finals next week. That's awesome. You're here. Nitty-gritty. What's the game plan for the morning?

Give us the 60-second spiel and how you're going to kill this buck in the bottom of the night. One day. Okay. So, buckle up. Rusty's going to get sick and throw up. I've made the decision.

going to hunt where we hunted this evening in the morning. Against my, against my, against your advice. We're going to slip in there. We'll probably stay in there a couple hours. I know you're getting up early. Yeah. Be up at one o'clock. Yeah.

And then we'll come back here and we're really going to think it over really hard. And then we're going to go back right in the middle of the day. And we're going to look at this spot really hard. and I'm going to pick me a tree and I'm going to kill that buck. All right. Sounds like a plan. It's pretty simple. It's just that simple.

It's that simple. It's just taking us to class. Good. So I've been full drawing twice. If I come to full draw on the third time. I just had a great idea. Fantastic idea. What's that?

A decoy lowered out of your stand right at dark. You wouldn't want to put a decoy out there throughout the whole day because it would mess up all the does. Yeah. You need all the doze to come. by you. You've got a decoy in the stand. You assemble it in the stand. Put an eye hook right

through its back and then about 30 minutes before dark you lower it to the ground right underneath your tree. And then buck decoy or dough decoy? Buck decoy. And then for the last 30 minutes when that buck came out he walked straight to that six point.

At six point and he nudged him. Wow. Yeah he didn't really get aggressive with him but he just reached over and he nudged him. Is this not the greatest? We better, we better driving to the nearest. That would work, Clay. They will put my name in whitetail books 50 years from now because of this. 10,000 years from now.

Lower the decoy out of the tree. That will work. And they'll find that, they'll find my point up on that mountain. Messy doesn't need to sleep tonight anyway. Man, this guy, he must have, wow. He was beyond his time. Driving to the closest 24-hour bass pro and you better go get you a decoy. The one thing that they'll find 10,000 years from now that will survive is that buck with the j-hook

in the back. They're going to make all kind of cultural assumptions. Like, man, these dudes are crazy. Now, the ones

that I'm going to make, the Nukum lowerable decoys, you're going to have a stone point that you run your rope through that's stuck in the dudes back. There you go. You better make the,

you know, the bones. You better, you know, fabricate some good stuff to stick that. Yeah, just a mess with an anthropologist.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a newcomb pointed. Thanks a tonne, guys. It's been a good. It's been a pleasure. It's a pleasure. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day

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