Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 35 - John Barklow

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

John Barklow is the Big Game Product Manager for Sitka, a hunting brand based in Bozeman, Montana. Prior to his current profession, he served for 26 years in the United States Navy as a Diver. We met in 1997, when I was a punk new guy, and he was running the dive locker for SEAL Team Five. His background and experience is diverse...In addition to classical dive training, he is a wealth of knowledge in climbing, skiing, back country travel, snow safety, and survival, to mention a few. For 15 years he worked at, and lead the Kodiak training facility where all SEAL candidates now go for their cold weather and survival training. To add icing to the cake, he has been a bow hunter for 30 years, and we recorded this podcast at the end of an epic bow hunt for Axis deer on Lanai, Hawaii. www.sitkagear.com

Ladies and gentlemen, we're back for another week. Episode 35 is still brought to you by Onit. Onit.com slash hot. O-N-N-N-I-T dot com slash hot. If you go to that, you're going to land on their Alphabrain trial. I have talked about it previously. AlphaBrand is designed around memory and focus, and I've already messed up two times on the free trial.

that they are currently offering. I think I've said twice the two previous episodes that if you click on the button and sign up, it's going to give you a bottle of 60. Yeah, that's not correct. If you buy a bottle, it's going to come in 30 or 60 or a 90,

I believe, but the trial is 14. So, if you're interested, and what you should be interested in doing, go to Ona.com slash hot, go about halfway down, and just click on the video of Joe Rogan.

He's wearing a tight shirt, a tight pair of paint, He's talking about it. That's all you should need to know. And beyond that, if you are interested to look at the other stuff that Onit has to offer in the upper left hand side, you'll see Onit and then the little vertical line and then Alper Brain. Click on the Onit, which I'm doing right now. It will take you more to the Onit homepage where you have a lot of different options against along the top. I personally, people ask me all the time, type of things that I take.

And I'm going to say what I said when I first did a advertisement for on it. Supplements are great, but no amount of supplements is going to get you out of a garbage disposal diet. You need to look at supplements as the micro of your life and the way that you eat and train and rest and recover as the macro of your life. If the macro is a mess, you're going to have really expensive pee. That's about what this breaks down to. So if you can dial in some of that other stuff, workout, stress level, recovery, diet, then you can start looking at doing some, or I mean, you can look at doing it whatever you want to, but if you really want to optimize, you would look at doing it after you maximize the macro.

So to answer the questions of the stuff that I actually take, if you click on the supplement tab, come down, I take the total primate care. It comes in a day pack and a night pack. Very, very easy to just take a handful of pills and you're kind of good to go. for the day. Again, those are micro type things, vitamins minerals. Same at night. Another one I haven't tried, but I'm actually going to pretty soon here. I want to try this on it. Total gut health. I've constantly heard people talking about the state of your gut health and how much it can have an effect on your life. I've never really looked at it, but it's something that I do want to try.

Another thing I've been trying recently is the shroom track. Shroom, wow, Shroom Track. Shroom Tech is a pre-workout. Most of the time for a pre-workout, I have a cup of coffee. I've messed around with in my earlier days, I've taken pills that I'm pretty sure were laced with methamphetamines. And I'm not going to lie, the performance in the gym was awesome. And the stomach cake and the shakes afterwards was not awesome. So I went away from all of that, if anything, a cup of black coffee. But I have been messing around with the Shroom Tech. I actually heard Joe talking about this the other day.

It's not like a turbo boost. You'll feel the difference, but it's only going to feel like if you had a four-speed car before, you're going to feel like maybe you had a fifth speed. So those are the ones that I take pretty much on the daily. And another one that I cannot recommend enough is the protein bars and the protein bites. Those things are ridiculous. Just don't eat too many because you need to eat real food as well. But that's it.

If you want to go check it out on it.com slash hote, the opposite of cold. And that's that for that. Episode 35. My guest today is a very good friend. And he's a friend that I met at the very beginning of my career, literally probably within the first two days of walking across the quarter deck, which is naval terminology for front door of SEAL Team 5, which is my first duty station.

After, you know, you join the Navy, you go to boot camp, or at least this is the route that I took. It's changed since I was in the military. I joined the Navy. I went to boot camp. I had to pick an occupational specialty because the attrition rate in Buds was so high. I picked my specialty based off the shortest school available, which at the time happened to be OSA school or operations specialist A school. It's a radar scope

operator. Still haven't seen one to this day. Checked into Buds, graduated Buds. Our entire class went to Fort Benning, Georgia to learn how to commit controlled suicide out of the C-130 jumping static line. Got done with that and then checked into my first actual duty station, even though all of those things along the way were duty stations. This is my first permanent duty station. And John was managing the dive locker at Seal Team 5 at the time that I checked in. And he actually took myself and a very good friend at the time named Jason on our first climbing trip, which leads into a little bit of his background because it's very diverse. So John spent 26 years in the Navy. Most of that time, I'll say two decades of that.

associated with and directly attached to the SEAL teams. He knows as much about the SEAL teams as I do. He's probably spent, I mean, if he did 20 years in the teams, he's got three more years in the teams than I have. But I would say it's atypical for somebody who is a diver to spend that much time in the SEAL teams because they have their own occupational specialty and their own career path inside of the Navy. And he is a climbing expert. Wealth of knowledge when it comes to the outsubstance. It climbing backcountry skiing, snow safety, rope work, all of those type things.

He spent 15 years as the AOIC, which is the assistant officer in charge of the detachment in Kodiak, Alaska, which is responsible for cold weather training and survival training. All of the students now are routed through there before they go to their first seal team, which is also different than when I went through. after leaving the military he did a short period of time at beyond which is a not a footward apparel they're an apparel or survival system manufacturer that focuses on what I'm going to call I hate the term the tip of the spear because I think it's been bastardized and too many people use it they focus on the apex communities and we actually

get into that a little bit in the podcast so I'll let that get covered when it gets covered and now currently is the big game product manager for Sitka. Sica is a hunting brand to say the least. They make gear for Waterfowl, for White Tail Hunting. They have some categories like Big Game and my personal favorite subalpine, which just happened to be developed underneath John's purview. And we talk about that a little bit as well. so crazy diverse career inside of the military oh yeah he's also been a bow hunter for 30 years

I should have opened with that because that's obviously the most important thing on his resume taking all of that experience now working for sitka and designing gear systems I should say that help people not only survive but thrive in the outdoors whether you're hunting or you know maybe just like being outside you don't have to hunt people If you don't want to hunt, don't hunt. I dig it. If you want to check out their stuff, go to sick of gear.com. And if you're anything like me, you'll spend hours there looking through pictures, watching product videos.

It's a rabbit hole that feel free to go down. But I digress. Episode 35 with the survival expert, John Barclow. Okay, I got the red smoke. Okay, Kathy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger. close now. Come on

a minute, man, give it to me. I need it. Got to be cleared hot. I feel like I get hit with a baseball bat. Repeatedly.

I hate bow hunting and I can't wait for our next trip. It's a, I don't even know how to describe it. Like we were saying at breakfast, I think my favorite part of this week

was listening to somebody else describe how they came unraveled in the moment that came. They counted because she was basically describing how every shot process works for me where you, how can I encapsulate this? She shot great at a target, a block, and then they moved out the block distance, and she felt super comfortable.

And then she crawled for days, days, finally got a shot. And when the target had four legs and a pulse, the world changed and went upside down and you're trying to think about a hundred different things. How did she describe it? Line up the circles. There's a bubble. There's a pin. There's some colored string in front of my eye.

Yeah, frustrating would be the week, or not the week, would be the word I would use to describe this week. So we're in Lanai, Hawaii, hunting axis deer. How would you describe your week? Blissful. You're such a liar. Humbly, frustrating, enjoyable. And you've been about hunting for how long? 30 years.

Oh, my God. Yeah. It's one of the more frustrating. Challenging, frustrating. Hunts. I mean, I'm laying in bed this morning. I woke up. I'm trying to replay every shot.

Arrows had hit. Arrows it didn't. And I'm like, what can I do better? I'm not going to lie. I was laying in bed a few nights, and I would literally almost sit up right from my head I would hear. Meow. Which for people who've never been busted by a female axis deer,

you will, or I did, devoted an inordinate amount of my time trying to be an invisible bush, maneuvering slowly towards a male axis deer. And I would be, I thought I was invisible. I thought it was the best stock ever. And then from somewhere I didn't see you here. And you're done. I think we mastered that, actually. Yeah.

One of the most, I don't know. I know that I don't have a ton of bow hunting experience, but I would say it's an 80% frustration, 20% joyous experience. I think I quit it to golf. You could have a terrible round of golf, 17 holes of terrible golf, and have the 18th hole be phenomenal, and you're walking into the pro shop to buy a new set of golf clubs. Whereas before that, you were, like, breaking your driver over your knee

and throwing it into the bush, but it just takes one. Like yesterday, When the wind shifted, I guess you've got to lay it out a little bit. So we were here for six days of hunting. I would say the first five days were challenging to say the least. There's no wind, swirling wind, light wind, hot out. The animals would lay down, which you can't see them. Invisible.

Invisible. And we were out grinding it out, putting miles underneath our feet, just going and looking for these things. And I would say we had some success. I think we can both agree the first success we had should not have happened. in any normal world. No, we had to force it, you know, but we got it done. But then the wind shifted, and yesterday was like playing a completely different sport. We actually went out and it was consistent and we were with a guy that, I don't know,

probably speaks to those animals at a Bluetooth level back and forth to say he has an understanding what was going on, but that was 20% right. It went from being frustrating to, cool, what's next? But you know every species is different You know try to try to hunt a white tail deer You know in the summer Not rutting not on a food pattern You know or try to hunt elk when they're not bugling

Whatever it is you have to exploit the Whatever the species you have to try to exploit their weakness And when you have everything stacked against you And everything in the favor of the animal Like dude it's just there's nothing to exploit And it's tough And then that one day the wind shifted, and all of a sudden we're getting 25, 30 yards from bucks. We're getting 50 yards from herds of hundred of deer.

And for people who don't understand the difference in the five days previous to that, we would probably get 200 yards from those animals, which were the bows obviously out of range. Yeah. And they're still kind of knowing you're there. Yeah. You know, and we're going from 5.30 in the morning. Until 7.30 at night. just trying to make something happen,

trying to walk into that one scenario. And we did. I mean, a couple times. You know, all in all, we did all right. What? We're bringing three deer each out of here. I quit multiple times inside during this week, though. Like, I give up, and then I would round a corner and there's a deer.

I'm like, okay, I'm back in, coach. But to me, that's what makes bohunting. Like, you have to maybe be a bit of a sadistic person, but when it has, happens, it is so incredible. Like the gal we were talking about, like when she finally does put it all together, she's already addicted. But when she finally puts it all together,

I can't wait to talk to her and hear about it. I think what was cool was to watch her, what did she have? She had a recurve? She had a compound. Actually, two compounds. One's just a, I would say, a completely different design.

The name of thing, a gearhead? Gearhead. I don't know how to describe that. It almost looked like something by nine-year-old. It would look normal size in her hands. It's a micro-sized bow, which in this environment actually makes a ton of sense now. I understand why the guides out here use that thing. So she, on her first day, had a suite of weapons to choose from. On the first day of hunting, we went out there, realized she had no broadhead. So she kind of just watched from the truck. Mind you, this woman is a world-class, I would say, spear fisherman. She is, yeah. Local to native

of the Hawaiian Islands. So obviously familiar with being out here. But she was having so much fun just crawling around and not getting to really shoot and just watching the animals. And I think all of us at the end of the day, the first question, did she get a shot? Did she get a shot? And it was, yeah, it was honestly my favorite part of the trip to sit there and recognize in her the exact same feelings that I've had. Yeah. And it just completely comes apart. And then you look at the mirror and you're like, I got this.

Then you look at the animal and you're like, I don't know if I'm going to be okay. She's going to be thinking about it for months. It's going to be awesome. But she's got lots of opportunities. She can come back. Yeah. The opportunity has definitely existed. I think we just got unlucky with the wind.

But like you said, even then we forced it. We made it happen. And yeah, my knees are sore from crawling. My lower back is sore from being bent over. I don't know how to train for that. I don't know how to train for crawling and hunching over and like doing the Hobbit walk totally bent over. Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I think instead of doing like wind sprints, you know?

Like you could take a standard CrossFit workout and just like put a pack on or a weighted vest and just hunch over and do like 200 yards like walks. Like seriously, what would you do? I don't. I got to do more Turkish getups. Well, I mean, you definitely don't want to load your body in that compromised posture. I felt like I had Spina Bifida by Tuesday. I mean, I don't, it's like you find yourself just hunched over because you're trying to get behind a bush. and then you're walking, you're like, oh, my lower back hurts.

And we're not the smallest people in the world. No. Yeah, if you're under six foot tall, I don't like you at all, especially when it comes in the hunting world. I honestly don't. I mean, imagine adding six inches and being Dudley's height, and he gets it done. He must have a back of steel. Yeah. He just wears his goofy decoy hats on his head.

You know, I thought about that, too, because we were talking about that. Like, a cow elk, would it be close enough that you could maneuver? because if you could do that and do the little muse that Jason was doing, like especially during the rut, dude, I think they would be running at you. Certainly the bulls or the bucks, I guess I call him. I don't know. And then there's Mark who, I mean, we have to talk about his techniques a little bit. We won't give his last name because I don't know if you want to share them

before he puts in the copyright and trademark paperwork on his hunting techniques. But he crawled more than anybody here. He was solo, complete John Rambo. He would get dropped off. He would not come out of the field. Every time I saw me, he had a fresh coat of mud on his face. He was talking about making leave fans, putting leaves in his head. And then yesterday, he essentially nuded up from the waist down.

He left his boxers on, thank God, because nobody needs to see that. And walked around so much in just his socks and boxers that he has a coat of pink on his lower body that's going to hurt him for days. Days. Because he was at the absolute bottom of the barrel. What do I do from here? And he got it done at last light on the last day after looking for his backpack

for hours. He was literally pulling out all the stops. He's like, it's so noisy trying to walk through that stuff. And he's like, I can walk through grass more or far quieter when I'm naked.

And then he did it. Like to have the thought, Okay, that's one thing. But he executed on it and took his shoes off. That's how far he got driven into the abyss, though. Oh, these axes sterile just ring you out. He, his, we ran into him at the grocery store that one day for lunch. And he literally didn't want to talk about what had just happened previously. He got a snack and dove back in.

And at the end of the day, had multiple stories about what had happened just previous to lunch. It's, yeah, it's so frustrating. And then to see him last night at last light, smile on his face, great buck, and he's talking about going hunting the next morning. Yeah. I tried to sleep in because we actually finally had the day off, and I couldn't sleep in, literally waking up with a racing heart. If he can even put pants on today, I'd be surprised.

That's how Bernie is. He might. He's going to have to walk around in a jock strap, I think, for days. He needs to invest in some aloevara for sure. But, I mean, I don't know. I guess when you get that frustrated, so again, six days of hunting, he finally got it done and probably the last five minutes of six days. Yeah, literally.

I mean, the last bit of shooting light. What are we coming back? I'm already thinking about it. No kidding. You've got to get the trade wins. Yeah. How can you gauge that, though, too? I mean, if you book months in advance, you're kind of taking a crapshoot, right?

Yeah, so because you can't count on that, the one thing you, can count on is the rut and like jason's like june's a totally different ballgame i don't think i've ever you're exploiting more weaknesses they're rutting up the males are kind of acting like knucklehead you can call them they can call them you can rattle them in i'm still i think yet i think i've seen a rut it was for elk in late september in utah it's for a day i will be good i have yet to see because when I went back later, it actually was able to get my elk. They were behaving completely differently.

But for that one day in a valley that I was in, we couldn't have had this conversation because they were so loud. I didn't seem doing anything crazy. But I also don't... I've heard people describe it in a lot of ways. They're just... They're not thinking as clearly

because they're thinking about reproducing, obviously. I didn't necessarily see that, but they were really, really, really loud. What month? That was September. Yeah. In Utah. So other than them barking like that,

or bugling, that's really the only animal I've ever seen behaving. I've never seen a deer in the rut, so I'd be interested to see how it changes. The reason I'm laughing is because wait till our Elkhut in September.

Like literally, dude, it's like 10 at night and you're like, will you please just shut the hell up? It is insane. It's insane. Dude, it's, if you can hit it like that, it's the coolest most primal thing you've ever been around.

The day I was successful on the elk, I was in the morning, they were bugling again, and there was frost on the ground. It was like a cold morning that was heating up throughout the day. And it was probably the most majestic noises in that valley, and I was just watching elk that had frost on their racks, beuling his steam was coming out. I would have been completely happy sitting there just watching them all day long. I didn't realize the only bugle in the rut, and then the rest of the time they're quiet. Well, if you're lucky they bugled during the rut, there's some areas with a lot of predators. areas that get a lot of pressure.

Yeah. Like they won't. They'll do it maybe a night or they'll do it just till literally sunup. And then it's, it's even more frustrating than hunting Axis here. Because the thing with Axis, they're there. Like there's hundreds of them. You'll find them. But you're not going to go through a forest and hope you bump into a bowl.

I think I will say I know for a fact I did things out here that I would never do on any other type of hunt because of the fact if we did look around It's like, oh, okay, let's go this direction and there's more of them. Yeah, you could take a chance because if you blew it, you'd, you know, chances are 20 minutes later, you'd run into something else. I would be terrified to do that, even in the environment where I was at, where we could see a lot of the bowls that were moving around in that same place in Utah. I would have been scared. Well, I shouldn't say I would be scared. I know that I couldn't get away with a lot of the things that I was able to get away with. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, I hate it. So I've got to start practicing again tomorrow when I get home. I've already got a list of things I need to do. A couple more things I need to buy. Some work I need to do on my bow. That's why I love it, man. That's why I love it. I am literally addicted to it.

I mean, my wife, God love her. She's like, she just shakes her head. She's like, what are you like, what are you doing with your bow? Like my buddy when I lived in Alaska, you know, he'd come over because I had the bow press. We'd be there for a weekend. She's like, what are you doing stuff? Aaron's string stretched a little bit. It's like a 16th off.

And she's like, what? And I'm like, yeah, no, seriously. She's like, I just, okay, I get it. Jamie will call me, and she's like, hey, no, just check in and how's your day going. Like, it sucks. Leave me alone. I hate this. And she'll pause for a second.

Why do you do this? Why are you hunting? This is supposed to be fun. Like, well, it's not, all right? Leave me alone. Hold on, I got to go. There's an animal over there. I swear, in the course of 30 years, I've, you know, probably come back to the truck and

said to myself, that's it. I'm done. I'm quitting. And then like literally before I get home, I'm already strategizing. I told you, I came back on this one hunt. I'm by myself. I get back, like days and days, backpacking around. I whiff a shot.

I'm so pissed off in like the seven or eight hour hike out. I'm just like fuming. Like hike angry. That's a, it's a. You got one shot in that whole time. Yeah, one. And I get back to the truck. You know, it's just an open pickup truck.

And I have a truck and pull on my hand. And I'm just so pissed off. and I throw the trekking pole and the thing bounces in the back of the truck and just touches the back of my window and shatters the back of the window on my truck and I was just about

ready to quit. I was just about ready to try to break the bow over my knee at that point. I was going to say I probably would have gone and started beating the bow with the bow. A couple drinks, a little bit of time to cool off. I'm out there to the next day practicing, you know. It is amazing. I think I'm in the same boat. I'll get so frustrated and you'll get to that point where it's like okay I can't take this anymore and then

two minutes later you're thinking okay what if I did this what if I did that what if I changed that what could I do to make sure that that didn't happen so I don't know that's the kind of people we are that I mean there's some people that just they have no interest in it yeah and some people that get into it and really just don't understand what it's all about like it's not easy it's definitely not easy do not watch a hunting show and think that in 30 minutes five animals are going to hit the ground. Yeah. Fortunately, I hadn't watched a lot of

those shows and I tried to go into it with realistic expectations, but I will say that the frustration level is more than I thought it, than I thought it would be. Because you can do everything right and you still might get screwed. Like, you have a great stock and the wind could switch on you and you're done. And there's nothing that you can do about that. And it sucks.

But this is coming from a guy. I mean, you've had a lot of you know, a lot of opportunity to hunt in a year. Like imagine, you know, back in the day, so to speak, when there wasn't a lot of information out there, gear wasn't as good. I mean, I knew guys back, I grew up in Ohio. I knew guys that, well, myself included. I mean, I hunted three years, three, before I ever shot one arrow at a dough.

You taught yourself? Yeah. I can't imagine self-teaching archery and then archery alone without a coach or the, I mean, obviously the internet is a great resource. It is now, yeah. But not having that and then teaching yourself hunting by yourself. Yeah, your odds have got to be less than 1%. Single digit at the best.

Yeah, my dad bird hunted, but nobody in my family, really to this day, they have a big game hunted. That's why I told Dudley, like in all sincerity, I said, dude, thank you. Like, you have no idea what you've done for people like me. Like, where I have actually, you know, somebody who's willing to share those years of experience, you know, I wished I had that 20, 30 years ago. That would be incredible. So people growing up now, I don't even know, you know, how do you appreciate it? But no, he's literally changed the game, like literally. Target archery and bow, honey, like literally change the game.

Yeah, when people make them. mistake of asking me for advice when it comes to Bose or how to get started on bo hunting and it's my default answer I spend a lot of time just on YouTube I mean I know the guy and I can reach out to him and text and recall him and I spend a lot of time just rewatching yeah the YouTube videos or again okay this is where you hold your silver back and this is the anchor and it's just like you can't you cannot hear that stuff enough and I think for me for my personality it helps to hear that constant reinforcement and then I try to do everything I can to practice like do you practice

shooting from your knees oh yeah yeah I I had seated because when I went blind hunting in Texas, I had never thought that I was going to take a shot from a chair. And I drew back the first time and I like, how this doesn't feel right. And just whiff. Yeah, you can find yourself in some really bizarre kind of contortions trying to draw your bow. Flat on your back, draw your bow and sit up like in antelope country when you're in tall grass. How do you keep the arrow on the rest?

Finger. Wow. Yeah, even this week I took, you know, shots from my knees, but super crouched down where you're away from the correct contortion and the stacking of the joints and you know that it's not right, but you know that if you move to the correct position, you're going to get busted. Yeah, well, I told you I forced that one shot. Yeah. Totally twisted. And I know if I'm twisted a certain direction, I'm probably going to push the arrow a certain direction. And I did. I did. I knew it. And I was just, you know, trying to shoot through a softball size hole. Completely twisted up. It's 60. It's 60 in the wind. It's a thing.

Oh, man. Yeah. It is a thing. What's your role at Sitka? What's your actual title? Big Game Product Manager. So I'm assuming you bring a lot of that 30 years of personal experience with you to that role. But you never, how did you end up at Sitka?

Because we'll have to get to it at some point, but you know I have known each other for quite some time. Yeah. there was a gap in connection, but we, yeah. Which is very common in the military. For sure. But being the hunter that you've been hunting, so you were in Kodiak before, we can work our way back to that because I actually want to talk quite a bit about survival and the realities of survival.

But did you ever think you would work at a company like that with that, or did that just kind of happen to fall into your lap? And because of the experience that you had, it helps you do the job you do now. You know, yeah, so I'm laying in bed. I wake up. two in the morning. I'm thinking about getting out of the government. You're in Kodiak at this point?

Yeah. Okay. And I literally, I remember that I wake up, it's 2 a.m. I'm like, I'm done. Like,

it's time to move on. No, I mean, I had a great time, but I'm like, it's time to move on. I had that moment as well for different reasons

where I woke up and I realized my body can't do this. You have to go focus on doing something else. And I'm like, I got to figure this out. And I said, I got to do something that I'm passionate about. I said, I'm going to get into hunting industry. And in my mind, this is all going through my mind, like, super quick.

And I'm like, and there's only one company I want to work for, it's Sitka. Well, what I didn't realize at the time is the company wasn't really structured. Like, my role didn't exist. Yeah. I'm the first person to hold, like, that title. What year was this? You had this realization? Probably 2013, I think.

And what year was Sykka found it? And I think I got out in 2014. I think 2008. Okay. So they were, well, they're still young, I would say. They are still young, yep. But much younger in the story arc of where they are today. Yeah.

No, it's, so anyways, I didn't even know how to go about it. And just through, you know, I don't know if we've ever talked about it, but just from some bizarre, when you start looking for something, it's amazing what you can find, right? When you're ready to kind of reach out and accept what's out there, So anyways, long story short, I start talking to these folks. It was like an 11-month interview process. And in the meantime, I had to go get another job because I actually did get out of the government.

And I said, hey, you know, I'm still interested if you ever want to talk again. Well, when you got out, you transitioned to beyond, right? I went to Beyond clothing for six months. Awesome company, little company out of Seattle. and I was a product manager there. Were you guys using their stuff in Kodiak? No. I had got the experience with their stuff.

For people who don't know what Beyond is, yeah, the survival clothing manufacturer that I would say specializes in the Tier 1 units. That's where they got their niche market, was that you basically get this bag that I can't even imagine with the value. I'm going to get another drink. All right.

That's John's hand going into the ice. But you get handed this, bag after selection and the value of that bag has got to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Oh, easy. And it's the layering system for everything that touches your skin to the puffy layers to the waterproof, to the windproof layers. And they do

go to direct to consumer, right? They don't have any retail as far as storefronts, but they'll go direct to consumer so you can buy the stuff. It's expensive. It's really nice. It's made in the USA. It's made in the, well, it has to be very compliant, right? To sell the government. Yeah. So if you want to

There's few things in my life that I'm willing to spend a lot of money on. One of them is parachutes because they're life-sustaining. The other one is cold weather gear because that's also life-sustaining. So how you landed it beyond, we should probably talk about what you were doing in the military. So a guy worked with Rick Elder, who's the president of Beyond, he reached out. He says, hey, I hear you're getting out. Need a product manager. They were in the process of developing.

some pretty like specialized niche stuff for like your unit for boarding and things like that. And he's like, you know, come on down. And he let me, I was, I owned a home in Salt Lake. So we were already, you know, plans were in place. And so I would commute back and forth for a week or two at a time. And I got a lot of work done in six months. Got a lot of stuff done. And Rick really gave me my start, so to speak, or my credentials outside of the government. You know, we all know that that transition is not an easy one, and you don't know necessarily that the skills and knowledge you have, how it translates. So anyways, Rick gave me my start, and it damn near broke my heart when Sica called back and said, hey, we want to bring you in for another interview. And I'll get to why they did that here in a second.

But, you know, and I had to tell Rick, and he's great. I mean, we're still good friends, you know, and they're doing really well. but so they call me back and they're like, hey, we'd like to bring you in for another interview. I think I did a phone screen for another phone interview. But the reason why is our friend George, right? Yep. Is friends with Jonathan Hart, one of the founders of Sitka. George knows everybody.

He does. He does. And they're riding a chairlift, I think, in Squaw, George and Jonathan. and you know George says something basically like hey so have you ever you know filled that role for big game product manager which Jonathan basically as the founder was doing right that was the foundational part of the company and he says no no we haven't haven't filled that yet and George is like man I'm telling you you got to you got to look at my buddy John like and he's like John who he's like John Barclow he's like John Barclow he goes yeah we've interviewed him and that was basically I actually credit George with getting me over the hump and getting me the face-to-face interview, and then they hired me like a couple weeks later. And George, you worked with, or four, I guess, remotely in the military. Yes, George was the operations officer.

Yeah. I was the AOC up in Kodiak, yep. And he is also the connection that hooks us up here. He is. Yeah. And I think he might have helped us reconnect face-to-face as well, too. The guy's amazing. He knows everybody.

I'm convinced. and knows how to do almost everything. And like I said yesterday, all I can say is my back still hurts for carrying him through buds. For the four weeks we're in this same class. He got shin splints, which is also known as bitch legs in the business. No, George is an awesome guy. I mean, phenomenal dude, well-connected. He's a renaissance man.

He is absolutely a re-he won't admit that, but he is a renaissance man. And if people don't know who I'm talking about, it's episode 32 Jack Carr is the same George that I'm talking about. pictures of himself. Yeah, so he's not trying to completely stand. Yeah, we don't have to give those last name out or his home address. But yeah, I mean, that's, it's unbelievable to me. So you went, so we'll go backwards. Big Game Manager at Sica, Beyond Clothing, AOC at Kodiak, Alaska.

Yeah. What is Kodiak, Alaska? Yeah, so. The facility that you worked out. Yeah, so the facility, and I'll probably, get this slightly wrong, but it's started in like 19, say 85, 6, 7, somewhere in there to train Navy SEALs to basically fight

in Northern Asia. So China And I would say slash survive in those environments. Fight partly 50% survive, another 50%. I mean, in my opinion, yeah, absolutely at or near the top of the most harsh environment you can try to survive in. So anyways, I got up there right after, well, September 11th, right? They changed all our lives.

And I was at SEAL Team 5 working in sub-ops or diving, whatever they called it back then. And that's right when I left. So I think that's where our departure. Yes, well, that's where everybody's departure went, right? I mean, everybody got scattered. And so I was working there. and I had been passionately pursuing my mountain guide credentials to try to be a, you know, maybe a professional, professional climbing guide, ski guide.

I'd already taken a few platoons out and given them some winter training, some summer training, some rock climbing, some, you know, different things like that. Anyways, and I knew the master chief up there. at Kodiak. Well, anyways, when September 11th happened, the reality was, even though we still played around, that truly the team's cold weather and what I'll call mountain skills or mountain survival skills had perished with the Cold War. Like most of those guys who had done that were retired. Or they were like Team 2. Exactly. It was very concentrated back then, the way it was organized. I try to tell people, like, we won all the engagements right out.

after 9-11, but you don't want to write a book about how ugly it was. No, and it was probably more... We did. You know, we did. The advantage was technology. It was technology, and we did when we went into the trees. We forced it, and we were successful. But, I mean, I remember when we were at Team 5 together, like, they wouldn't even give

us Desert Camys, because those all went to Team 3. Team 3, right. And so they wanted my green ones, and I wanted their tan, and it was like, no, piss off. You can't have mine. I'm not telling you anything. They didn't even go to Kodiak at Team 3. Not at all. And then here we are in Afghanistan.

Like, how can you have that on your uniform? When did you get that piece of gear? What do you guys call yourself? This isn't going to work. I had a guy that ended up being an instructor for us. He's telling us a story, Team 3 guy, going in Afghanistan. We're still very young, probably not even a year old. And they're in the back of a 47, and they're sitting there, and there's a pile of snow shoes.

Because they know they're going to get inserted at altitude in the snow. And they're literally looking at it. I can't even tell you the gear they've got on because it's nothing appropriate. They've got some boots that aren't broken in, et cetera. Probably jungle boots. And he's telling me, he says, I'm looking at this pile of snow shoes. And he goes literally, I don't know how to put it on. Like, we'd never had snow shoes on, but they know we needed them.

But anyways, nobody put them on. Ramp comes down. They get out. Luckily, it wasn't hot. And they fall in the snow up to their waist. And they're fucked, right? Yeah, you're not going anywhere. So anyway, so we needed to really get on it.

So I was just because, I'll just say, unique skill sets that I had. Which, before you go farther, two things. One, I think it's important to note that the distance between Seal Team 5 and Seal Team 3, geographically at that time was probably 100 yards. Yeah, you could throw a baseball. You could throw a baseball and hit the two commands. One command trained a little bit in the winter environment, alpine environment. The other one didn't, but deployed to the same place.

And then two, the reason that you were able to go to Alaska and do all the stuff that you did and pass those skills on is because you had a very robust skill set yourself. You actually took Jason and I on our first lead climbing trip ever to JTree. Yeah, you said that and it was interesting because I remember the trip, but I didn't. I mean, I remember you guys were there, but I just didn't. It was just the two of us. I just hadn't put it together. Yeah, I just, I did so many of them that. I remember you were teaching.

And some of them are a blur because of. Tequila and et cetera. For whatever reason, I think we were drinking like Natty Light, which is in a tent. Like, God, and all I remember is I would wake up in the morning. I'd never drink Natty Light. No, Jason and I were. I remember waking up in the morning and looking at my hands and going, I don't want to touch these fingers to porous rock anymore. I just like putting them on a belt sander for a day.

Oh, God. And then the first climb in the morning, you just touch your hand at the rock. You're like, oh, it's unbelievable. But, I mean, so you, I mean, we have to go even farther back. You are a Navy diver that spent the vast majority of your career. I would say you know as much and spend as much time in the SEAL teams as I did. I like to say I was classically trained as a Navy diver. And I did that job for six of my 26 years in the Navy.

And then you were in the SEAL teams. And then I worked with the SEAL teams for 20 years. But so classically trained in Navy diving, we're talking the legitimate probably the hard hat stuff, the depth. You were talking last night at dinner about doing the diving tables tests. And for people who don't understand how the middle. military gets their diving tables and figures out how long you can stay underwater. What they do is they put people underwater for a really long time. And if you come up and you get bent and something goes wrong, they take five minutes off

the table and put another person in the water. Next. Yeah. And if he's okay and they're like, well, you know what? We'll go to 10% safety margin and that's where your dive table comes from. But none of that has anything to do with climbing either. No. And at Team 5, when Jason and I checked in, we went on that trip, I think in 90.

It would have been 97 or 8. It was 97. I was going to say 98 at the latest. Yeah, at the latest. You were already, I mean, later on in my career, I was able to climb with Cosgrove and Gerberde. Like, I was leading the Bastille crack with, I think it was Gerberdine, right? He freaked me out. Have ever told you about this?

I was with Jason. I don't want to say his last name because he's still active, but he was a team five guy too. We climbed a lot together, Jason. He's awesome, yeah. And I was leading like the third pitch, and this is in by Boulder, right? That's what we flew into. and I was bleeding, so I was above my own protection that I was setting at a subpar level, so I was pretty sure that if I had fallen, I was going to take a zipper all the way down.

And I got to a point, and if you rock climb, you'll understand this point, where you're kind of stuck and you don't, and my world is kind of shrunk in. And I was like looking around and, you know, I had all my weight on my feet. And I was relaxed, but, you know, it was becoming an emotional event for a little bit. And right next to me, I hear Gerberding go, hey man and he takes a drag off his cigarette which means he's hanging on by one hand in tennis shoes

in his approach shoes and he taps a cigarette he's like hey put put something in right there and I just I turned my head away from him because I caught out of the corner of the eye like I'm scared out of my mind and this dude is in shorts a t-shirt and I think New Balance 850s 200 feet up

smoking a cigarette and I just Turned my head away from it. I was like, hey, man, I need you to get away from me because you're freaking me out. He's like, all right, cool. And just scurried up the top. Wow. But, I mean, so I got to climb with all those, but it was based off some of the skills that you had taught us, like the aid climbing stuff.

And I actually was a lead climber one I was on the East Coast the whole time with the magnets on the side of the ship, like all sorts of stuff. That a Gurbidine trip was actually while I was at that command. But where did you get that knowledge? Because you said you grew up in Ohio, which I'm not, I don't think it's known for. Brother, it's just like my bow hunting is what I wanted to do, and I went and got it. I was living in Virginia Beach is when I first got to, it's called Detlittle Creek, and we were teaching sub-ops, right, how to get guys in gear out of submarines underwater. Is this part of your classical training?

No, this was my first command with the SEAL teams. So we were doing, you know, free ascent and going on sub-trips and teaching guys how to how to get Zodiacs and outboards. I mean, the MSLO, MSLI. Just shit that they don't even do anymore. How to get in and out of torpedo tubes and like the classic like James Bond stuff. I would say the torpedo tube.

I've seen pictures of it and I've heard people talk about it. That's some legitimate Frogman legacy stuff. Yeah. If there ever was. And if you have, if you ever want to know if you're claustrophobic, get in a tube. Yeah. Describe for me a torpedo tube lockout if you would. So the first.

guy gets in feet first. And obviously this coffin is going to fill with water. So you have to take your rig off and you have to put it in front of you and you're breathing. And so you shimmy in first, feet first. And then the next guy gets in head first so that you're face to face. So when you die, you can make eye contact with each other. And if anything happens, you can buddy breathe, etc. And then it gets really, really dark and very quiet. And then. And then, you know, then it starts flooding. And once it floods, then the pressure inside the tube

and the outside pressure is equalized. And then they open up, and then the guy just, the guy that got in second just starts pushing a dude in the face. And you just kind of pop out like a turd from a submarine.

Except you're coming out the front end. You're coming out the front end. So, you know, That was like really old school. Then we started, then they had escape trunks, you know. Yep. And then the dry decks. And then actually when you got, and I never did that, but there's actually submarines, as you know, that are, yeah.

So that, all that eventually went, well, out here. We did 20 plus days on the Kamea Mea off of Guam on a pre-911 deployment. And all we did was MSLO, MSLI, which is. mass swimmer lockout mass swimmer lock in and it's this huge I don't know garage bay I mean it's not as big as a garage

what does it look like hard to describe like a 20 foot conics box a conics box which most people listen to this wall so I have no idea what that is either I'm trying to think like a shipping container a shipping container and it's attached to the top

of the submarine and you crawl in there and it's totally dry and they have the regulators coming down and they might have a mini sub in there and then they slowly start filling it up and there's some chemlights that are cracked. And there's a guy standing in a chamber, a partially submerged chamber who's writing stuff on a twisting knobs and dials that I have no idea what they do. And the thing floods and you sit there and like you said, they equalize the pressure.

And probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, though, was sunset at Guam. They were wanted to do a practice recovery where a couple of us swam to the surface and we would on a rubber band, we would launch a chem light into the air and they would see it with the periscope. The sub would come at us. as the sub was coming out as we would dive down, get in front of it, and basically just hover there as a sub past,

and then we would scoop into the dry deck. That was one of the coolest things I've ever done. But to do that, we obviously had to get out of the sub, and it was right at sunset. So they cracked the door, and you can see the propeller slowly spinning on the nuke sub. Yeah, seven prop. And the sun was setting, obviously we were about 60 feet underwater,

but just the angle and the color, and then it's like, all right, cool, get out. It's crazy. man I mean it's funny because you know I know you worked at second phase yep and which is a phase in buds that teaches diving and it's so funny because guys are like oh pool comp pull come pull come and it and truly I mean I say because I'd you know basically I'd been in the water for 26 years that you know water is a great equalizer I mean I've seen some of the toughest dudes just damn near lose it because of water

but in the grand scheme of things, just what you described, diving down 60 feet in the middle of the ocean to try to go inside a moving submarine. I mean, pool comp is a joke. Yeah. It's a joke compared to that.

Because it's controlled. In that other environment, there's so many other variables. It's not controlled. Yeah. But you have to be able to do one to be able to do the other, which is why pool comp is so stressful. And I usually gave the verbal brief

of pool comp, and I would get up there and walk them all through it. And the things I used to always go back to were these are the procedures you have to follow. I don't care how freaked out you are. If you deviate from the procedure, you're going to fail, which may not make sense to you right now because this is an artificial test that we're doing to you. But people have died later on in their career because they deviated from procedures that were briefed to them. So you either need to accept the fact that the emotional aspect of the fear or the panic,

which is largely what it was, that doesn't matter. you stick to your procedures and it'll save your life later on. But couldn't you say the same thing, not to save your life part, but couldn't you say the same thing about bow hunting, your shot process? Like shooting a pistol, it always comes back to the basics, the mastery of the basics,

right? And that conscious thought of working through so that you get over the target panic, buck fever, fear of drowning, whatever the case may be. Every high level marksmanship instructor I ever worked with. I was always surprised

by how many times they would go to the line, the shooting line, face a target, no ammunition in their gun, and just, here's how I index my holster, here's where my magazine is. They would go through dry reload drills with no bullets in and just pull the weapon up and dry fire, dry fire, dry fire,

and then they would go set some record-breaking time after doing all of that. You could shoot a million rounds, but I bet you those guys have shot five million, not necessarily imaginary rounds, but they've pulled the trigger so many times with that around in the chamber. That's how they got as good at they are

because they have such a mastery, mastery of the basics. But again, how did you get so good at rock climbing? Yeah, so I was living back there and met a guy who had climbed and we got connected through another guy. Anyways, the three of us ended up climbing, and they were really experienced. I mean, it damn near cost me in my marriage, to be honest. with you, like, real close, but I just every weekend I was going climbing. Going up to, like, New River Gorge area to climb?

We went to New River Gorge, and my wife, she's actually a good climber. You know, we would go climbing together, but no, I had, so the rock, the basic free climbing, you know, hands and feet. That was good, but then we started doing the aid climbing. We'd go to North Carolina. then the Yosemite Red Rock starting to do big walls like so a I started going down a rabbit hole dude that you got to describe aid climbing too I'm pretty sure I was real close to not coming back from it like I was I'm not going to say I was talented enough to be a Gerberdine but yeah but I was

I was going to know that I was going to live out of my van down by the river I was going to say you're going to invest in the Volkswagen yeah so aid climbing for people who don't know what that is is actually you can describe it well it's so it's you're using artificial means to scale essentially sheer cliffs. So you'd look at something and say, well, there's really no weakness. There's no handholds, footholds, any crack I could put, you know, traditional protection in. But aid climbing has different gadgets that you can use. And really for, you know, that's what I, that's how I started people climbing is with aid climbing. I thought it was the more appropriate method for a military application. Because if you think about it,

and you know you can fly over get all the imagery you want but essentially anything you would do real world would be a first descent right which means it's the first time you've ever seen it you have no idea what it's rated all you have to do is be successful one person has to be successful one person has to be successful so it's it's game on it's anything and everything i don't care if it's poles with hooks or magnets on a ship whatever it is you got to get it done And so there's, you need a big bag of tricks and skills to be able to do that. And you don't necessarily have to be the most fit rock climber, but you have to be really mechanical and understand how it all works. And so it's systems and ropes and it just gets really complicated.

We're talking things like if you look down at your finger, like your index finger and you see the gap between your nail and the actual skin, we're talking like a fee fee fee. hook tucked it. I mean, that's the type of stuff that it is with A-climbing. And then you have basically rope ladders at your feet are on and you're moving one to the other. It's, it's very intricate and it's not what I would say, quick. It can be if you can go from A to track climbing and then back to Aid. But yeah, I remember you teaching Jason and I that stuff as well too. And we would take an hour to climb 20 feet because we were literally just trying to figure out how to get our protection placed along the way. Right, but you got really good at place and protection, which is truly what you, so you know, you mentioned Bastille Crack and you're like,

well, I don't even know if it's very good. Yeah. When you aid climb, you know because every piece is holding at least your body weight. Yeah. And yeah, so anyways, I took that about as far as I think I could with my body size, you know, 225. We did a first descent in Red Rock, me and a guy. We called it Thor's Highway.

And because we used, I used a lot. my hammer. But anyways, I kind of, I know what you're talking about when you had gherberding come up. And two moves off the hanging belay, cam blows out of an expanding flake, right? So I take a small fall, a couple feet.

No big deal. Put the cam back, okay, I know that. Cast off. And I don't exactly remember now. I've got it all written down, but I think 12 or 13 hookups. moves. So that's just hooks.

Yep. Small little just hooks that are suspending your entire body weight. And you're trying to reach as high as you can to do as few as you can, but you also have to do them where it's available. And then a little bird beak, which is just it's just purely

for body weight. It would never hold my weight. Anyways, and then right, and I'm sitting there and I don't know if I've ever been more focused in my life because I'm like, fuck me. What am I doing, right? And off to my right, because we're trying to, we're trying to force a route between a couple other routes, right? And this dude is like 50 feet to my right, like free climbing some

5-8 fun thing. And, you know, I've already been on the wall for a day. And this dude's like, hey man, you look kind of tense. And I swear to God, like, if I wasn't afraid of pulling the hook out, like, I'd have fucking thrown something at him. Yeah. But, and then get to the very top of the pitch and the last move, I have to slot like a really tiny nut or stopper, right? And then mantle onto this ledge. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know about that.

So that's when I started really pursuing the, which probably no safer, but, you know, alpine climbing, ice climbing. My wife's an incredible skier. So that's when we made the move from Virginia Beach when I met you. we made the move out to California. I wanted to go to a team, and I wanted to be on the West Coast, purely for the climbing and skiing, to be honest with you. Yeah, the proximity to J-Tree or all those places.

And Yosemite and all that. And every weekend, I mean, and again, I just met people that were guides, and they were more than willing to share their time and take me out and let me screw up and teach me. And I amassed a really good amount of experience in a short amount of time. So anyways, that kind of set me up for, so here, so I'll give you one more story. So one of the platoons, this is how it all started, one of the platoons was supposed to go to Kodiak and something happened, flights or whatever, something fell through.

And so the platoon chief, Chip, he comes me and he says, hey man, a buddy of mine at the time, Jared, told the guy Chip, he says, hey, I think John can do it. Well, I'd been up skiing in the San Gargonio Wilderness, which is near Big Bear. Okay. I've been going up there and doing a bunch of backcountry stuff and just, it's awesome. We should go there some time. But so anyways, he's like, hey, man, I think John could do it. So anyways, I end up running this cold weather trip for this platoon. And that really chipped, again, this guy chipped, like he gave me my start, we still talk to each other. Anyways, I ended up in Kodiak. And then once I was in Kodiak, we just turned the burners to it, spent a year doing nothing, but basically working ourselves up,

went to all the American Avalanche classes, most of the Canadian courses. Just every outdoor world or just, I wouldn't say necessarily survival, but let's say educational school that enhances your survival rate? And the great thing about the teams is, like, they'll spend the money to bring the experts in. So, you know, I was able to learn from Mark, our friend Mark, incredible guy, like some of the best, you know, survival instructors in the world. He knows a thing or two. He does know a thing or two. Yeah.

Well, and his attitude was just, it's perfect for special operations, right? Because he thinks that way. He thinks very unconventional. Yep. So yeah, so anyways, whatever, I spent 15 years up there. And so you have to explain, or I'll explain how people get there. So if you want to be a seal, you obviously go to boot camp where you learn how to fold underwear and T-shirts oddly in March. I would say that's what I got out of Navy boot camp.

Pretty much. I still fold my T-shirts the same way. I think it freaks Jamie out. I don't fold T-shirts anymore. There you go. Or underwear. You go to. You're occupied, well, at least when I went through, you went to an occupational school.

Now, Buds is an occupational school in and of itself. Yeah, that's right. If you graduate that, you're not a seal. You have to continue on a training pipeline. And isn't the first thing they do, actually, Codiak? Or do they do jumping first? It changes all the time. At one point, we were the last part of it.

And at one point, we were the very first part of it. It's a bit much, honestly, for a guy to come out of Bud's. and go right to Kodiak. I mean, it's a first time they've traveled. They've got to decompress a little bit, too. It's not a great place to jump into for a month because day one, I mean, we're hammering on them from day one. Well, and I think the point is that pre-9-11, like at Team 5, the platoons would go there

because Team 5 was tasked with Southwest Asia. Right. In cold weather environments, Team 3 would not go there. Shortly after 9-11, they realized that we have to get rid of this geographic specificity and everybody needs to go training. So instead of being a place that took platoon's part and parcel, it became actually part of the pipeline. So you would get every single student,

whether they were going to the West Coast or the East Coast, and they would all go through the training that you put them through and have that cold weather skill set. Right. I call it the basics. I mean, again, it changed over the years, but 30 days up there and they were probably, in the field, 25 of those?

Yeah, so what did you guys teach? I mean, walk me through, the students show up there. Again, they're not seals, they're learning, they're in the learning phase, and they're getting close to that point where they're going to achieve that goal, but they're not there yet. And I think actually the stuff that you taught up there

is what I was telling you we should sit down and do a podcast. That's the most interesting stuff to me, the survival aspect and the things that you were teaching. So talk to me about the curriculum at a broad level. Yeah, so, you know, if somebody asked me, oh, what'd you do? I really don't know what to tell them.

And I, over the years, I've kind of gotten to the part where I say, well, I was a survival instructor, right? And that's not necessarily tells the whole story. Then I'd say, well, I taught, you know, mountain warfare. Well, that doesn't really tell the whole story. So I don't really know. So we'll just call it survival, right? But my definition of survival is probably not the classic definition of survival.

What we tried to do in 30 days is allow guys to go into an incredibly dangerous, uncompromising environment, very dynamic weather, and be able to live and survive and do their job. and I like to say that, you know, at the end of the 30 days, my goal was to allow them to go into a field, into the field on a real world up, and leave on their terms and not the mountains terms. And that's because that's the job. I mean, you're not, and, you know, our friend Mark, like he tell you, he goes, because we would go on more advanced trips together. And he's like, man, he goes, I didn't really.

it, but, you know, when I'm alpine climbing, I go when the conditions are perfect. And if they change, I leave. And if I drop something and it's not working, I go home. You know, he goes, you guys can't do that. And I said, no. Like, these guys have never seen the terrain. There's no guidebook for it, right? I mean, obviously there's Intel, et cetera.

But, and if the shit goes south, you're not coming out. They're still going. Yeah. And we would go out and, I mean, my. God, the weather we went out in, like just, it was savage, you know? But it taught guys that if, again, if they understood the basics of clothing, of hydration, of nutrition, all these different things, right? Not, I mean, we got into the fire and all this kind of shelters, all these kind of things, right? That it gave them the confidence to go, yep, I can go.

I can go out there. and if shit goes south, if I've got these couple things, like, I can do this. You can audible and get the job done for sure. I can do this. And it was cool because we would teach the basic course. And then eventually, you know, platoons, once the war start evolving, platoons would say, hey, we'd like to do more advanced stuff. And, you know, of course, you're seeing a lot of the former students.

And so you knew what they were taught and you knew, you know, you'd do a quick refresher. And then you could begin to build upon that. and so it was really cool but but you know my that's my definition of survival it's like well what about making a a bird trap or a basket and I'm like well they don't need to know that I mean I could teach him that yeah but that's primitive living that's more for somebody yeah once they'll get off the grid and we're not filming a TV show here like this is like no shit and uh so you know I've done a couple things uh working with Sitka gear like basically it was plug and play for me.

I mean, everything I had learned about clothing systems and layering, et cetera. I just, I'm like... Probably even camo. Right. Absolutely camo with the PSM program, but personal signature management. But it was just plug and play for me because what I was learning and what I was teaching, I was then applying to my own hunting. I told you, I said, you know, I'd basically hunted for 15.

years by myself. Part of it was because I just, every time I'd go out in the mountains, I'd have, you know, between 12 and 50 of my favorite friends out there, right? These students and my buddies, and it's like, I need to get away,

go out by myself, do my thing. But I would practice, I would try things, I would come back and apply those lessons, right? So getting the Sitka, it was like, well, this is, it's the same stuff. It's just, you know, a little bit different. It's a different application is all it is.

You're shooting different things. and, you know, but for the most part, it's similar. Broad brush, it's similar. But so I did this thing where I jumped in the frozen river, you know, and got out. You got to tell about the, or talk about the rewarming drill, because I think it got enhanced and it evolved since when I did it. No, it definitely did. So it just used to be a kick in the nuts, right?

Where guys would come up to Kodiak, it'd be like, all right, strip down to your boxers, go jump in the freezing, frigid, raging, you know. We got into, we woke up one morning and we know there was a whiteboard there. We had breakfast and the gear list literally said running shorts and tennis shoes. And we got into a military like 15-packed van and we drove along until there was a section of beach that was accessible. And they're like, okay, ghosts, you have to completely submerge yourself. And then you can have your neck, you know, you need to be basically at your chin in the water for five minutes. and I'm like, okay, so we went out there and it sucked.

The worst part, though, was by far the rewarming process and the burning and the tingling and all of that. But we went out there and we dunked our head and you sit there and the five-minute clock comes up. And then we got into the van and drove back and we went into a hot tub and I think we drank beer for the rest of the day. And it was a kick in the balls versus, you know, because I know you were talking about the layering system and the understanding of that. That plays into the rewarming drill as well. So maybe you can explain what you guys do now and actually teach. Well, it's critical. You have to have an entire kit, right?

So, I mean, the reality is once a guy becomes a seal, like, I think he's proven that he can deal with cold water. So to just make somebody get cold again. Sometimes. I mean, we're all a little hydrophobic, but it's worthless. Like, there's no training value in that. And so over the course of probably two years, we were able to work with these, you know, incredible outdoor companies, right? Some of the finest out there.

Developing clothing, backpack, sleeping bags, tents, etc. So now we had a system. We had a basic kit now that we could train to. And so we had to add training.

We thought there was value, but we needed to put it in there. So what we do is there was one part of the training. We'd go on a four-day patrol. Which is basically, just think walking around. Yeah.

So civility, yeah. They'd call it hiking. We went on a four-day hike. That's what we did with guns. And, you know, we teach them how to use a terrain to their advantage, which is interesting. You know, you've gotten into snowboarding. Yep. Make sure I get back to this point because I might go down the road here.

What's part of the snowboarding or the hiking? The hiking. You know, you've gotten into snowboarding, but you've got to split board. You're getting into backcountry stuff. And so it's real interesting because as a. civilian, right, we're going out there and we want to make sure we're safe and we do certain things and we wear

beacons, you know, avalanche beacons so if somebody gets buried we can find them. We have the basic tools to do that etc. And again, we go when the weather's good, we go in places that are safe, we avoid certain terrain features and it's almost like

it's almost like archery hunting in bear country when you are a military person doing a patrol in the mountains you almost do everything wrong or everything that's dangerous because you need to exploit the terrain to your advantage. You're worried about covering concealment. You need to move in low areas. You need to move at night.

You may need to move over convex surfaces, et cetera. You probably, in a real world op, you're not wearing a beacon because you don't want to be deft, right? Like you're doing all this stupid stuff, but you need to teach them that. So we would go out and, you know, and teach them how to do that and how to avoid certain areas what to look for, et cetera. So anyways, we go on this hike in the winter. And at the end of that, you're teaching guys, hey, always have water on you. Make sure you pack. You know, when you pack up your, you know, your LUP, your camp, like make sure that.

LUP is the layup point. Yep. So, sorry. But when you do that, make sure that you are ready, like you are always ready. So to your point of folding your T-shirt and your underwear, right? It's basically the same lessons. Yeah. Make sure your shit's together.

And so at the end, they'd come down after four days. They can, you know, see the trucks. They're smelling the barn, et cetera. And it's like, stop, boys. We ain't done yet. Yes. And time for some negative reinforcement. Some negative reinforcement.

There's a classic picture of a guy, one of our instructors standing on a rock with his hands in his pocket. It's just as calm and warm as can be. And these poor bastards are in water up to their neck, wearing their clothes, because we have a training system. A clothing system is trained to. Right? Which is the reality because you're not going to go fall in the water and running shorts in the wintertime. You're not going to do that. And what you don't know is prior to that pick,

Because there was ice on the lake that day. And it's kind of like telling the guy to dig his own grave is we gave them a couple of axes and said, three or four you'd go out there and chop a hole in the ice so that you can jump in it. Because they thought for sure they were out of it. They're like, oh, no, there's no water to jump in. It's like, no. At that point, I think you could probably audibly hear the motivation just suck. And they've already, you know, they've lived in snow caves.

They've gotten their balls kicked in for four days. Which is not the four seasons, which we were lucky. It is not the four seasons. You can survive in a snow cave. You're not thriving in a snow cave. Yeah. Well, potentially you can. But if you make the Hilton of snow caves, yes.

Hopefully we find that out next year. But, you know, so you really, you really test a guy and reinforce lessons. Like, listen, you know, and I don't know if it happened to you, but how many times you're going out for 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, and all of a sudden you get retasked. And you either don't come back or you come back or you come. come back, load up again, and go, or you get reinserted somewhere else. Like, you don't know. There's no.

So you have to teach these guys what it is. And so anyways, they would get in the water with their clothes. They'd get out. We'd leave them for a pretty long period of time, but we knew all the, just like you guys in second phase, we knew how long we could leave them, et cetera. And then they would get out and we would teach them, again, a process, right? something to think about. So don't freak out. What is your number one priority? What is your number two priority? What is your number three priority? And so anyways, we would teach them that. So I did it

because I think, you know, the hunting industry, you know, nobody talks about this. Everybody wants to be a backcountry badass, I call them. And there's no Superman's cape, right? So like, I think we make awesome product. Like I literally would trust my life to it. But you have to know how to use it. Yeah. You know, so your son's, what, 14? Yep. And you're going to teach him to drive.

Yeah. And so he jumps in, the Ferrari you give him. I use this analogy the other night. And he gets it in, he, you know, grinds it into second gear and he's going, you know, 40 miles an hour. And he thinks it's the best thing ever. But the reality is, you know that there's six speeds and you don't go 200, right? And so once he knows there's six speeds and go 200, you're like, damn, this is, like,

really worth it. So, anyways, I just took the lessons from the military. I'd already applied him in my own life to my hunting. And I'm trying to teach the hunting industry, like, what it really is. Because most guys will say, I was looking at something today online. Some guy did a video, and I won't comment on it. But guys are like, well, that's the dumbest thing ever. Like, you get dunked in a river.

Like, why would you not just jump out and make a fire? And I'm like, I'm like, fine. I'm like, I said, and I can't say this, right? But I'll just be fair. That's not a smart thing to do. And the reason I can say that is because I've been there and done that. And so if you can tell me I'm prepared, I have several ways to make a fire. They're all waterproof.

And I've done it in six inches of slushy snow. I was going to say, and you have a fuel source. Or, you know, in the rain. Or, because you have, if you're cold and wet, you only have a certain. amount of minutes and I can't tell you exactly, you know, but it's not long, maybe no more than 10. Before you begin to lose fine motor function, you have nothing but gross motor function, so you know how they teach you to rack up. Yep, rack bang.

Exactly. Gross motor skills, right, in the heat of the moment. Same thing. So it's like, am I going to spend 10 minutes trying to start a fire, that the reality is if the fire is as big around as a soft, is not going to provide any heat. So I'm just going to die looking at that. You're going to freeze to death looking at flames. Or am I going to go through my priorities, getting warm, get out of the elements.

At some point, once my shit is figured out, now I'll start a fire. Right? And so that's what we taught the guys. And so that's what I'm, you know, that's what I'm trying to at some point kind of beat the drum and get back. country hunters because there's more people going to the back country than ever and yeah they need to be prepared they need to train how many people per year in the back country do you think it's stuck in a or caught in a survival situation i mean it's probably that's i mean it's a wild-ass guess for sure but what would your what would your guess be it is and i i don't know but i would tell you

that my guess is they're not talking about it on instagram i would agree so um so so so I did a podcast with Brian Call and Gritty Bowman. Who is a bowman, but he's not gritty. There's no dirt under his fingernails. He had a manicured beard. It's like, you're not a gritty bowman. You're a bowman, damn it.

I love the guy. He's awesome. His definition of gritty is interesting. Well, do you see him? He's sitting down. He's sitting down doing seated box jumps. Like, the dude's strong. Why would you do that?

I don't know, because he's got strong legs and he wants to exercise him. And it made a great, great, great post. Super great post. Like I was like, God damn, dude. He's like jumping on top of my head

from a seat of position. But repeatedly. But so him and Aaron Snyder were hunting elk at 12,000 feet, 125 in Colorado. You know, and Aaron's a ranger, ex-ranger.

And they're wearing our gear. And storm rolls over the top is so often does, especially in the high country. Quickly. quickly. And it was dusk anyways. And so

Aaron decides, I'm just hauling ass to the tent. I'm not going to stop and put anything on. Brian says, I'm going to haul ass to the tent, but I'm going to put a rain jacket on. Well, by the time they get to the tent, and then we talk, he talks about this on the podcast, and I don't know which number that is. But, you know, they almost,

They almost don't find their tents, which is, you know, that's a whole other topic of conversation. That's happened to me a couple times. So they almost don't find their shelter, but they do because they're smart. They're thinking through it. They're staying clear. They have a process. They get inside. What do they do?

Right? So they think about it. They're like, well, we'll jump in our sleeping bags. So they jump in their sleeping bags. And then they're like, well, this kind of sucks. Like, my balls are kind of steamy. and, you know, my armpits are kind of moist, and I don't know if this is, like, the best thing ever. And so they're like, and he tells me, he's like, they're constantly talking about this.

And I'm not throwing them on to the bus, but this is a great example because these are really experienced dudes. So they take all their stuff off, and I'm probably, you know, summarizing here, and they throw their stuff in the corner of the tent, and they put on some dry base layers, which I never, I never bring extra clothing, ever, because I don't need to. Yeah. And they get in their sleeping bags and they go to sleep and they wake up the next morning and they're at 12-5 in Colorado. And I said, and I said, well, was the temperature? And he goes, below freezing because our stuff was frozen.

And so now they had to go and put it back on, right, and then figure it out during the day and dry their stuff out or you spend an entire, if the weather's good, you spend the next great day that you'd rather be hunting drying their stuff out, right? So I don't know, but Brian was gracious enough to share that story, but it's like, dude, these are experienced guys and this is happening. Like, guys that are inexperienced? Those are experienced hunters. That doesn't mean that they're necessarily experienced and understanding what they need to do in a survival situation. I think there's a clear delineation between those two.

I think they did. I think they just, they knew what to do. They just decided to do something else. Obviously, they need to take their clothes off and get in the same sleeping bag. That's where I thought that story was going. I got a story about that too, but I won't go there. So tell people what would have been the correct approach. So assuming you've thought through the entire system, everything from socks and underwear to the sleeping bag in the tent, the best thing to do is once you found the tent to get there, take the rain gear off, assuming you had a shelter and all that, get inside, get in the sleeping bag, wet.

You could potentially ring your stuff out once you're in the shelter. That's appropriate, right? As long as you're not on the verge of hypothermia. You don't have to rush necessarily, but sometimes you do, and that's what I demonstrated in that video. And get in the sleeping bag with your clothes on. Now, the sleeping bag's got to be synthetic. I've tried, I've tested, treated down products. They've got severe limitations.

people don't talk about compressibility being one of them with moisture and you sit there and you start your stove and you boil a hot cup of coffee tea apple cider whatever Irish coffee whatever it may be I was yeah a little bourbon and so you get some hot liquids in you so your your body right you're 98.6 your body is the engine that will dry out your clothing. Which is where the hot liquid comes in because you're creating that stoking the fire from the inside of it.

Yeah, correct. So exactly the same analogy. You're throwing a log on the fire. Yep. You throw the log on the fire. You start with the drink. It's super easy. Your body assimilates it, you know, pretty good, especially if there's sugar in it,

jack your metabolism. Everything's going good. Now go ahead and eat a meal, whatever your meal may be. If you want, eat a candy bar, something like that, while the meal's getting ready to be prepped. Body warms up. You're in the bag. assuming you have a proper layering system, your body will literally cook the system dry from the inside out.

It'll probably take, you know, depending, there's a lot of, you know, what's the humidity, temperature, etc. A couple hours, right? You might need to roll over lay on your front so your ass dries out. You know, there's a few little things. But I wake up eight hours later. My shit's dry, I'm ready to hunt. Yeah.

The only thing I bring extra, Because it's so super important as socks. I normally bring a pair of socks for every two days. So let's look at that same scenario, but you can't find your shelter. Yeah. What's your thought process then? So that's when you need to know what your priorities are. So in that case, if you didn't put your hand gear on, you better put it on now.

Yep. So that's going to stop convective heat loss, right? And so it's important to know all this stuff. Like, what is convective heat loss? you know, how do I stop it? What causes it? All this kind of stuff. So convective heat losses,

wind, stripping heat away from your body. Essentially what you're saying is you need to do your due diligence before you go into the field. You need to be a student of your craft. Correct. And like in one point I wanted to bring up to you, like you've said it, I hope people catch it is you have to think through your entire system. If you have a great layering system but a sleeping bag that wouldn't work in that environment. You're fucked.

And that's the point. So it can't be part and parcel. And all of those, it doesn't matter unless you find yourself in that situation. But if you find yourself in that situation, it could be the difference between, hopefully not life and death, but being comfortable and, you know, sacrificing 48 hours. Maybe you only have 72 hours to hunt. The rest of your time is going to be spent trying to warm yourself up and getting yourself back to that position where you can go out again. Yeah. I mean, if you have a great tag at a minimum, it could cost you that hunt.

And potentially it could cost you your life. It could cost you a couple digits. Like, don't you owe it to yourself, let alone your family to like, you know, I like to say exercise your system. Yeah. So that's maybe a way that people understand it on, you know. Or if you want to look like a genius in a crisis situation, think about that crisis situation before it actually occurs

and think through what you're going to do. Because I have been on both sides of that coin where something happens. and for two days before I'm like hey if this happens I'm going to do this this this and this and we're going to be fine and then I've also been the asshole that's been there and something happens and I go okay how am I going to get myself out of this and the difference in results and those two things they might end up in the same place but they take a different trajectory yeah it's not always parallel to get to the same location yeah no exactly so rain gears on you can't find your shelter yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna provide whatever

shelter I can so that first first layer first line of defense what clothing do I have? So if I don't have it on, I'm putting rain gear on. Next thing I'm trying to do is get out of the elements. So where can I find a place to seek refuge? Right? So we've talked, you know, tree wells or the lee side of a mountain or a rock. Or, you know, can I?

I like the tree wall one. Let's go with that. Do I have a tarp? You know, can I shrink something up real quick? But it's going to depend. Like, you'll know, like, I got 10 minutes to figure this out before I'm kind of screwed here. or I have like 30 minutes, but nonetheless, you need to figure it out quick. Do that first.

Now kind of reassess your situation. What do I have? Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? Like how far away from the truck am I? Do I have a GPS? Does I get reception? Whatever the case may be.

Do I go for it? The worst thing you can do is panic, right? And the panic comes in really because you're ill-prepared. Yeah. So then if you're going to ride it out, you probably do want to start a fire at that point. But again, there's so many factors like... I have a good fire story. I don't want to interrupt you.

Like I can't even... Like I can't even... I guess that's why we're doing the podcast, but... I have a good Kodiak fire story. You're ready for it. No, I am. But, you know, do you have the right materials to start it? Do you have the knowledge?

You know, do you have a knife? and then there's all these things like you don't make it round you make it long you don't have to cut wood it heats a couple people like you know but you've already got the shelter in place that's a big one right there instead of making a round fire make it lengthwise there's so many there's so many factors that people just because they know they've read it in outdoor life and it makes sense to them and they've started it in uh you know so let's say they started a fire they didn't burn down the state but they started a fire in Southern California in their backyard and they're like, oh, this shit's easy. Like, it's super easy.

Well, of course it is because there's no relative humidity. And you're in a drought. And the woods already been split. And I've got my cotton ball with Vaseline or whatever the hell they got. And it's like, no, that's not reality. So, you know, jump back to Kodiak. So we did a thing during, we had a five-day survival block. We taught basically the survival portion.

And when I, a couple years before I left, we ended up teaching the survival portion of Sear, which is, go ahead. Survival, escape, resistance, and evasion. Right. We taught the survival portion of that. And so anyways, at the very end, so they didn't eat for three days of the five, two days for classroom, I think, something like that, three days in the field. And, you know, of course, like six hours into it, these dudes are starving.

But they're not. You can go, you know, three hours without shelter. I think you mean they feel hungry. Yeah, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food, right? It's basically because you have so much internal fat on your body, you can deal with it. But so anyways, at the very end, it's like, all right, boys, here's a deal. And I forget right now an hour or whatever the case may be, like to go gather materials. So they go gather materials.

And it doesn't matter. I mean, it could be raining. It could be monsoonal rains. be six inches of slush underground, it doesn't matter. Anyways, they go gather materials, and it's like, all right, you have 15 minutes to start a fire and get a quart

or a liter of water boiling. And if you do, give you a mountain house and you get to eat. There will be a reward. And if not, you don't get to eat. I'll tell you what, man. And, you know, you let, you definitely let guys

figured out and struggle. But at a certain point, you want to teach them too. And so, you know, there's so many things, you know, the preparation of the materials. Like, you have to get the right wood. You have to know how to take a knife and get to the drywood when it's in a wet environment. You need to site prep. Like if you throw it down on a sheet of ice, part of the fire triangle is heat. If you don't have heat because the ice is sucking the heat out of the fire, you're going nowhere.

You're going nowhere. Yeah. You'll be residents of the town that you and I were in for five of six days. Fuxville? But I'll tell you what, man. But just that, say, hour and a half of learning in an environment where, you know, after three days, they really want to eat. Yeah. It teaches them something.

I don't think they forget it. And then once they get to experience it for it, well, you don't have to experience it. But if you want it to sink in and be a lesson, that will stay with you probably for the rest of your life, I would say you have to experience it. Yeah, and I'm not saying everybody should go starve themselves for three days, to start a fire. But what I'm saying is, don't do it.

If you live in Arizona, don't start a fire in your backyard and go, yep, I'm ready for the dull sheep hunt in, you know, the Northwest territories, because you're not. Like, you're just not. So don't kid yourself and then be surprised when, you know, shit goes south and you're not ready. Like, prepare, learn, like, do everything you can. And stuff's still going to go.

go sideways, but you're far better off at that point than if you hadn't thought it through. Agreed. So tell me your fire story. All right. So first a question, though, because I want to see if you guys still teach the same thing. So if you get your tent going, do you guys ever teach them to fire up their whisper light stove or whatever it is to create warmth inside of the tent? I can never condone that.

Okay. But yes. Because that's where this story starts. And we don't use whisper lights anymore because I think I know where your story's going. yeah. We use a canister stove. Yeah. The MSR reactor is one of the best stoves on the market. But... Same one that I use. But nonetheless, because it won't

do what I think you're going to describe it does. So we have to prime it, right? Yes. So the whisper light... Into a cup. Into a cup or it needs to be on a shovel as well. Something inside of your tent. Shovel is good? Yeah. Yeah. So I was... This was my first trip up there. I was with DQ.

We were traipsing around, whatever it was. I remember he rolled his ankle and my back hurt. carrying him around as well too. Which is saying a lot. It is. Love you, DQ. We had all gotten together, pitched our tents.

I think I was going out to get some snow because DQ and I were a master's of. We'd have our tent up. The rainfly was open. It was like 70 in there. We'd be in shorts. And I think he actually had a little travel thermometer. We would yell out, we're at 72. It's a competition.

What we were doing is we were using our food stove to heat up the tent. You guys had probably big tents, like big north-faced tents or something. totally did. This is 98. Yeah. So before we were in it. Yeah. So we were carrying the white gas canisters.

You had to prime these stuff. You had to fill the bowl up, light it on the shovel in case it fell over. So I was out at the fly getting my, I think there were scarpas. They were like a hard boot. And I'm putting them on. And it's sundown. And I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on. But the next thing I see is like the growing sun now.

to me literally it was as bright as the glowing sun and I look over and all I can see is the pole outlines inside of the tent and it's just it looks like I'm staring into the sun and then it starts shaking the tent starts shaking and a zipper comes open and a sleeping bag that's on fire comes flying out of the tent and then another guy in the platoon dives out of the tent Head first because they had started the fire on the shovel in the whisperlight. They had tipped it over and the fluid gas had gone on to the sleeping bag and it burned a massive hole in the side of the tent. So I wanted to help them. From the bottom of my heart that I did, but I was paralyzed because I was laughing so hard.

So I couldn't render any assistance because I literally, I couldn't see straight. The tears were coming out of my eyes. and they slept the rest of the night with a massive hole in their tent and they charged. I unfortunately have seen that several times. So, you know, the whisper lights an incredible stove. White Astos definitely have their place. But there's more steps than just clicking the buttons.

Yeah, when we did the rewarming, I mean, you're doing some dangerous things on a lot of levels. But you're trying to survive too, right? And again, you have to understand what you're getting yourself into. but I've seen that a few times. I won't mention the guy's name, but I'm going around checking guys one night. It's a team five-pleton.

And I see the orange glow from the tent. You can't miss it. And I unzip the vestibule, so they know I'm coming. I unzip the tent, and there's two dudes sitting there on top of their sleeping bags with no shirts on in their underwear just chilling like it's a sauna and I'm like what the hell you can get intent to like in the games yeah but how dude how much fuel do you have to carry when you're like I did I'm trying to think

now I hope I don't butcher this but so I did a seven-day doll sheep hunt in the Brooks range, so north of the Arctic Circle. And I went in by myself and I took two four-ounce canisters. And I think, I'm pretty sure, I got it written down somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that I got seven

days out of one four-ounce canister. Wow. Because I'm like, I have a routine. Like, I am, like, I do this at this time. I mean, I try to, right? Like, it's daylight. like 24 hours a day up there. If you don't discipline yourself, like,

it's a shit show, I think. So, but anyways, four ounces, because I didn't want to carry a lot of weight. If I'm carrying white gas and I'm using it to heat my tent up at night, like liquid weighs a lot. Yeah. So, seven pounds a gallon, something like that?

Yeah. And I think it depends on the medium, but yeah. So, hilarious, though. hilarious. Like, that's, like, that's kind of like, the Cold War stuff so we don't do that anymore

like we kind of got away from that but the stories were sure funny they didn't think it was funny when they had the draft I'm sure they didn't yeah I think I snickered myself to sleep DQ and I laughed about that for a Was it his tent?

I was in the tent with DQ Oh I got you okay I think I was like an E3 and he was an LT at the time Yeah it was his OIC platoon but that trip up there I mean we had some interesting experiences we were we were that's the first time I actually ever got on the snowboard I think I was wearing my scarpas probably up on pier in midmout I'm sure no it was and it was and it was on ice and this guy's like hey try this on I immediately got turned around backwards caught my rear edge and knocked myself out

yep took the board off and just pushed it down the hill and that's why I waited another 20 some years before trying one again because I was like I know I don't want to do this that. We were doing a patrol along and we were on a, I don't know what it was, but the whole thing settled about a foot. It sounded like a shotgun going off. Yep. And everybody slowly reached back to turn on their avalanche beacons.

Yeah. Yep. That settling is unsettling. Snow shoeing, though, skinning. I mean, that was a great, unbelievable trip. And then, yeah, in the military, I'd never used a single one of those skill sets. I used the climbing stuff quite a bit. I'd never have a chance to use any of the, never, especially.

spent a night in a tent that I had a really robust climbing program where you were. I know that guy's a good friend of mine. Yeah. It runs that. And we had a pretty tight window of how long we were going to operate. But I never even took a tent into the field. It was pretty. No, it's, there's certain conditions where you can.

And we actually got away from multi-man tents and started teaching really small one-man tents. Yeah. Almost survival in like an air quote. Yeah. No, exactly. And one of the reasons is because every person has to. to do it for themselves.

Yeah. Because you know the group dynamic, right? The strong help the weak because everybody wants to get through the training, etc., you know, I mean, at a certain point. And, yeah, no, learning to backcountry skier snowboarding Kodiak is kind of like hunting access deer on no wind days. Like, it's graduate level stuff. Well, I only tried it for about 15 seconds.

Yeah, no, it can be rough for sure. Yeah, it was very rough. Jason and I forget what? We made a Ziploc baggie full of Gorp, which is basically cheese and sausage. Uh-huh. And took our ice axes in crampons. I think it was the first time I ever tried to walk. I'm completely shredded my outer layer with the crampons.

Self-arrested multiple times. And, yeah, we climbed that mountain. You could overlook the airport down into the base. Yep. What the hell's the name of that, yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, that was a hell of a trip, man. And it, I mean, I heard people all the time talking about.

you know the key to survival is the headspace and I think that's part of it like the will to just keep going and survive my personal opinion I don't know if you would agree and I think I alluded to it earlier is it comes to I think that a lot of it is the research before you put yourself into that situation and thinking through the what ifs I have found that those are the things that make the biggest difference like if everything's going grow up like you're in your backyard like you said oh I can make a fire sure but what if what if it's wet what if you don't have a lighter then what are you going to do it says what if it'll eat your lungs and you're not you're going to do it says what if it'll eat your lungs and you're much. So if you could, I mean, where would you start people off for the headspace when it comes to, where would you start the students off? I'm sure you guys gave them an in-brief in Alaska. It's like, hey, this is what we're going to be doing. Would you kind of explain to them where they need to be mentally going into those type of situations? Well, in training, you have to be, so, you know, you have so many diverse backgrounds that are coming in there, right? Some guys have

taken Knowles courses. Some guys, you know, went to the Naval Academy and did some stuff during the summer. You basically start from ground zero. But you have to be open to learn it too. And I'm as guilty of this as anybody. Like, you know, I said, well, I watched this video today. You know, and I need to be open-minded to it because 15 years I did this, I learned something every, almost every day I was out in the field.

Sometimes it was what I would never do, and sometimes it was, you know what, that's a pretty good idea. And I'm not, I'm not embarrassed to say sometimes I learn from students. I'm like, you know what, I never thought about that. Or, you know what, I never thought I would maybe pair those two things together. Sometimes the person with the least experience has the most objective viewpoint. Because their perspective is so different. And so you have to be willing to learn that, right? In 30 days, you could teach the basics.

I don't want to say you could scratch it, but you certainly didn't even go super in depth on the basics. You wanted to be able to take a guy and allow him to, at the end of the month, go out in the field in any condition and not worry about himself, but have the mind space to be able to think about the rest of the guys. So it's like, I've got this. Let me watch him. Let me make sure everybody else is okay. Because if everybody starts doing that, the reality is every guy is going to have a bad day.

I've had dudes go down with altitude sickness and damn near literally have to carry them out of the field. Right. And so dependent on your hydration, whatever it is that day. And so if you can stop thinking about yourself, and think about the mission and the guys out there with you, that's a win. Like, you've moved to the next level at that point. Or if you, in the hunting scenario, right,

if I can stop thinking about myself, like, oh, it's going to rain, I need to go back to camp, or it's going to rain, I got this, and this is the perfect opportunity to move in on this herd and kill this ball. They're going to say drive on as opposed to retreat back. you may begin to start to find more success than you have in the past. So, you know, and I think it's awesome. Like, it's incredible. A lot of our consumers, sick at consumers, like, I call them, you know, hunting, like, hunting athletes.

Yeah, that was the term I was going to use if you didn't use it. No, they are. And so they spend all this time, like training, right? Thrusters, burpees and all this kind of pack hiking and all this kind of stuff. they shoot their bows they shoot their rifles and it's like but you have so now it's time once you've dialed that now it's time to take the next step right what else are you going to do are you going to go farther off the road

if you go farther off the road you need to take more skills mark our buddy said you know what if weighs a lot and so what that means is that's a great line oh that dude's a fucking sage right But what that means is... We're talking about Mark Twight, who I'm going to have him on shortly, actually. He agreed to do it. He's phenomenal. No, the dude is...

I love that guy. He's intense. That's the word that I would choose for him. So Mark is another guy, right? And you see a common theme here. Mark is another guy that I truly give credit for up in my game and moving me on, right? And giving me opportunity. I mean, the guy's just amazing.

I haven't talked to him in years, but... He's the one who introduced me to CrossFit, which changed the trajectory of my life. for a variety of different reasons. So he put me in two other guys. We went out to do a, I think, a 10-day or two-week trip out Salt Lake with him. And it was a great excuse to go out and hang with Mark and fucking climb and ski. Yeah. And so he gave us, you know, again, you know, I'm the guy teaching and I'm going to courses

and learning from guys that are teaching me. Yep. Or talking about, you know, physiology and hydration and nutrition and all. all that and he goes, hey, I got this new, however he phrased, you know, workout routine, et cetera. Oh, okay. And it was Tabada, Tabata. Oh, God.

Just your standard Tabata thing. Which if people don't understand, it's eight rounds of 20 seconds of work, fill in the blank on your work, 10 seconds of rest. It takes four minutes. Yeah, and so we did row, pull-ups, push-up, setups. Oh, that sucks. Right? And we're like, we fucking get, we got this.

And we go to what I affectionately call the time his goal. gulag, which was like, it looked like something out of like the Rocky movie from the first one. Yep. Like, I'm surprised there wasn't a beef there that we had to like pick up or pound or something. Were you doing lunges in the snow with a telephone pole in your back? It almost got to that. And what did you say was four minutes?

Four minutes for a tabot interval, yeah. Fucking crushed. Yeah. Crushed. And honestly, full disclosure, like, I figured out like halfway, through that I needed to pace myself. And the one dude he didn't, because he just went for it, because that's the kind of

guy he is. Was crippled? Fucking crippled. And he's like, I won't mention a guy's name, but he's like, oh yeah, these world class alpinus came in that are friends of his. And the first time I put him through a Tabato workout, like, you know, and this guy's an amazing climber. He goes, like, he couldn't hardly

do any pull-ups at the end of the eight rounds. So, anyways, Mark, so Mark introduced me to CrossFit as well. Yeah. Like, actually, I like to say Mark introduced me to CrossFit before CrossFit was cool. So I met Mark shortly after I got injured on the East Coast. He came out and did a seminar for maybe eight of us. And it was at that time that I really dove headlong into the pool of using that as my recovery system.

And then before long, I was, you know, I had my body armor back on again and I was able to hang with the guys. And people were, you know, like, hey, what is that? this what are you got going on it it changed it was the paradigm shift yeah it was the it was the spearhead through the wall that was the paradigm shift between the what i'll call functional training versus training for hyper trophy because when i was at team five it was chest and tries back and buys and run on wednesday all day long yeah yeah i didn't know any better nobody did because you're a new guy nobody'll talk to you so you just follow the biggest dude into the gym and do what he does yeah no for sure like he changed my whole mindset you know and i think he's he's kind

of even evolved past that. Yep. You know, depending on the time of year, I'll tweak the training that I do and work around certain injuries and stuff that I have. But, yeah, no, he's a great dude. But I forget what I was going to say. It doesn't matter. I'm sure it was very profound.

I'm trying to kill this bottle of Petron before we end this podcast, which is not going to happen because there's like a fifth left. There is a fifth left. It was a 55-gallon drum. when we started. But it had a handle when you carried it out of the store. You were very happy about that. Oh, that was a great packaging.

We were frustrated by day two, in full disclosure. We went to the liquor store and just loaded up a cart and said, all right. At like 10 a.m. Plan B. God, man. The cool thing is, is everything you're talking about, that survival and thinking through in a system, I love the fact that I really like the fact, and I enjoy the fact that a lot of things from my old career have applicability into what I'm very passionate about now.

Not all of them do. And I have some still, my huge learning curve. The biggest one for me is the wind. Yeah. Because I think about it differently now. It used to be just for the ballistic coefficient and how it would affect the bullet. Yeah.

I mean, with a bow, with a long shot being called it 70 yards, if you don't understand the wind, I mean, you're completely screwed. I mean, go ahead and help with it quartering on your back. You're not going to see or hear or encounter anything. And like we're talking about a breakfast, I mean, I just, I need more experience around animals. Well, yeah, so that's what I would say. Like, your process and mindset for shooting, like, dude, you may not know it.

And I don't know if John would disagree with me, but like your shooting ability is so incredibly advanced for how long you've been shooting a bow. Right? Like, I'm hoping to get there someday. And, no, seriously. And you're stalking, right? So we had some interesting, funny stories about stalking, you know, military and otherwise. Just when you hear stalking, just think crawling in your face. Yeah.

But the difference is you've got to get around, like I think, people have to get around a bunch of different species and understand how they react. Like, for me, bears are pretty easy because they can smell real good, but they really can't see for shit. That's what I was going to say they can't see very well. That's been my experience. So I'm really aggressive with bears. Like I'll move right in on them if I have the wind. Yeah. These axes deer, they don't put up with a whole lot of anything.

And their vision seems to be, well, especially the females. Maybe the guys aren't paying attention, but those females... The females are definitely saving them. Hundreds of yards just... The buck's life. Yeah. Locked on. Yeah.

But, you know, every species and then even depends on, you know, what time of the phase you're hunting. Like September... Oh, we're talking about the rut. than October elk. Like, it just is. And I certainly haven't hunted everything or hunted them enough, but, like, I thought mule deer is pretty tough with the bow. I've yet to hunt mule deer, so hopefully.

And I got to tell you, mule deer compared to Axis deer, like the perspective now, it's like, I got this. Well, you said that they will, they'll bolt out, but then they'll stop. I have had really good luck if I've blown a mule deer out, that they will, their Achilles seal in my opinion is they'll run 40-50 yards and they'll stop broadside and look back to see what the threat was if you know assuming they didn't win you yeah well the access will do the same thing it's just they run four or five miles that's a problem right and they run four or five miles through like double overhead brush and so you can't get a follow-up um but i know that so if i blow a deer out

and it doesn't happen every time but if i blow a mule deer out i come first thing i do is come to full draw and in my mind i'm calculating like 10 yards 20 yards 30 yards 40 yards 40 yards He's at 45 yards. And I have been probably more successful than I should be because of that. And I kept hoping, like, these deer, you know, you blow one out, but now it's super hard. And you're like, ah, the axis deer will stop. No. Not even close.

I mean, they will. Like I said, just miles away. Yeah, miles away. I would watch, when we were separated, I would watch, or I could see that one day that you took a couple shots. Yeah. I would watch how. Yeah, that was pretty cool. you got to watch that.

For whatever reason, I happened to look up twice and I saw you at full draw, and the animals that moved, I was at least, I was at least a mile from you. And they were still running as they passed proximate to where I was until they disappeared another mile that I was watching. It was unbelievable. I've never seen anything more skittish in these things. I mean, hunted year round, what is it, they're from India? I think so.

And so they kind of evolved, like, the DNA is, like, evolved to, you know, avoid banking. Bangal Tigers or something. Yeah, they have no blood. So they have no blood. We've proven that multiple times. So I'm like, you know, I feel like I'm kind of a badass. I killed three. So basically I'm kind of as good as a Bengal tiger.

I was three times. Yeah. No, they're tough, man. And they're not like super big target either. Shoot a 700-pound elk at 60 yards. It's like, you know, I can do that. shoot a little dough. I'd be more than happy.

My shot last year was 42 yards. I'd be more than happy to get that shot again. Oh, my God. And I was in bushes in the shadow. Like I was completely, that thing had no idea I was there. Yeah, we weren't like, we weren't like newbie stalkers. Like, you know to use dead space, you know, to use the shadows. Yeah, when you can move, when you can't move.

Exactly. Yeah. No, it was fun. Like I said. It was not fun. I used the other F, frustrating. I got the sleep on it. I'm like, yeah, I need to come back now.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Because it will make you a better hunter. There is no doubt in my mind this has made me a better bow hunter. I'm in the same boat. I will go to bed, frustrated, and I wake up, and it's like, okay, what can I do to make this better? Yeah. I'm not going to give up because I'm not tuned that way, but... No, to me, it makes me more driven.

Yeah. I don't know if I can shoot any more days a year because I shoot not every day, but a lot. But I need to be smarter, right? I need to think through my process. in gear we're at breakfast this morning we're what can we do differently what about this what about that there's got to be and so what was getting us is a way to crawl with your bow that's not cumbersome yeah as opposed to like doing the i won't use the term that mark used for crawling along with it but like you try to lay it on your back but as your scapula moves it tries to bounce side to

side yeah i call the three fs of uh bow hunting fun yeah good i hope fun should lead the way frustration. Frustration. Absolutely. I forget what the other F was. God damn it, you just used it a second ago. I don't know.

That was the third F. Fantasy. No, it was fun and frustration, man. I think it's the pendulum that swings back and forth. Yeah. Our friend, do we use her first name? Kimmy.

Yeah. I told her last night. Oh, failure. That's the other F. How can you forget that? Well, I chose you for you for you. Failure is on the far left of the pendulum. frustration is the middle and then

occasionally it swings to fun and then disappears. But I told Kimmy last night at dinner I said I said strap in I said you are on for a lifetime ride. Yeah. You'll never master this. It'll always be something you can work on but you will have like it will It's just so awesome to be what I like about bow hunting

And people don't understand maybe who don't do it is Even though you're trying to kill the animal getting that close into their wheelhouse and being able to see how they react and interact in their daily life and stuff and the different sounds they make and like dude it's super cool and every species is completely different than the next yeah to get to 30 yards and be able to watch a herd of animals that doesn't know that you're there in their normal environment i'll call it just in their bedroom it's pretty cool how far did we crawl yesterday on that one stock It felt like a country mile to me. The one where I got the actual shot off and painted that arrow, tip to tail, and we could find nothing. Yeah. I mean, that shot was 41 yards.

You and Jason were so far ahead, and I lost Saudi at one point. Yeah. And I'm like, I may just use this in an excuse to lay down and take a nap. And then eventually I'll stand up and I'll see you. If I hear the bogo off. Jason would keep crawling and he'd look back and he'd give me this hand signal of like, come on. It's like, listen, I'm coming on.

You're just crawling faster. And he didn't even have knee pads. I'm like, dude, what's up? Savage. Guy's a ninja, I told you. He's a ninja, man. He's a local, for sure. It's, uh, God, yeah.

He put me on three bucks in two hours two days ago. Yeah, those are the ones that was watching. I literally would happen to look up, and there you were at full draw as the guy was jogging by in his orange shirt. And, you know, he's avoiding every doe on the way. Yeah, which I had no ability to do. No. Yeah. All right, man.

We've actually been at this for almost two hours. I know we need to go and check out. Yep. All right. Finish a tequila. We'll do round two again then. All right, man. We're done.

Ready? Yeah. We're done. That's all for this week, ladies and gentlemen. Do me a favor. Go to iTunes and write a review for the podcast. I would like to know what you think. John, if you're still listening to yourself talk or the podcast that you were talking on at this point,

go to iTunes and read a review. write the review you said you were going to write. Just saying. No, but for everybody else, I want to make this as good as it can be. To do that, I need outside and external and objective feedback. So give it to me. Send me an email if you want to. If it's terrible, I honestly don't care if you post a terrible review. I will listen to it and look at it objectively. There are certain things that I can control and certain things that I cannot. If you don't like the sound of my voice, well, I don't know what I can do for you. If you'd like to hear from a different category of guests. Maybe there's something I can do about that. So tell me what you think.

Everybody tells me it's important. In all honesty, I don't know necessarily why it is important. I think I'm going to have to do how it shows up in your search bar. If you search for the podcast, I really don't know. But I like it because it gives me the feedback that allows me to make the podcast better. And that's it. Oh, and the stickers are out. I just released the stickers because people kept asking me for stickers. I ordered 100 when they're gone. They're gone. And we're about halfway through that.

So if you want to get a sticker, go to clearedhotpodcast.com. There's a little tab up top that says shop. Click on shop, find the sticker. Buy the sticker if you want. And if you don't, that's cool too. And that's it. See you next week with episode 36.