The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 018

Episode Date: September 17, 2015

Juneau, Alaska. Steven Rinella talks with Janis Putelis, Mike Washlesky, Garret Smith, and Korey Kaczmarek from the MeatEater crew. Subjects discussed: hunting blue grouse; Randy Newbird; how MeatEater cameramen got their jobs; getting smoked on the mountains by a 50 year old female grouse hunter; devils club vs. poison oak and peckers; nepotism; Bigfoot; and what Steve thinks about to help him keep moving up steep hills in the mountains. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, everyone. This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording in the warm and sunny Juneau, Alaska. The only state capital not joined to the international highway system.

You can't drive out of Juneau. How many people live here? Ooh. Did they find that here? Ooh. Did they find that out? 35. Was it 35? 1,000? No idea.

Doesn't matter. Not many people live here for a state capital. Surrounding us is Tongass National Forest, and we've been here in juneau for four days of action-packed sooty grouse hunt which is something you probably haven't heard of before i'm just gonna lay some quick groundwork well no no first thing i want to talk about who's here um we have our representative from the famous hunt to eat t-shirt company, Giannis Poutelis. He's wearing

his Hunt to Eat shirt. Garrett Smith is wearing a Hunt to Eat shirt. Did you buy that or get that for free, Garrett? I can't say. You can say. I was given it. The people in this room get a free Hunt to Eat shirt.

Really, if you want to... We've got shirts in stock. Giannis, Long Tongue Gianni, Gianni Cimani, whatever you want to call them, has t-shirts in stock now at Hunt to Eat. And I want to point out, I have nothing to gain. I, Steve, the host, I have nothing to gain from you buying Giannis' t-shirts. Besides many thank yous. In fact, I'll point out, I have something to lose.

Because if you get rich and famous from selling t-shirts, you're not going to work here anymore. That's not true. You don't know that. You might just do it out of the goodness of your heart. I like my job. I can only lose from telling you to go buy one of Yanni's Hunt E t-shirts. He's got them in stock.

How much are you selling them for, Yanni? $24.95. But wasn't there a special deal where people could put in a thing and get some cheap t-shirts? There was, but this is tough because we're recording this now. It's May 14th, and who knows when this is going to air. So it's tough. Check the website. Maybe we'll have a special going.

Full price, man. Garrett Smith. Garrett, you weren't born in Miles City, Montana. Great Falls, Montana. Born in Great Falls, Montana. He's working with us right now because his old man, in a roundabout way, not to diminish your talents, but in a roundabout way because your old man's friends are my brother.

Yeah. Talk about nepotism. Yanni is friends with my wife. Full circle. Mike Walsh-Lesky's here. He's not friends with anybody. Nope. Mike got his job the honest way, man.

How did you come to work here, Mike? I sent an email to ZPZ. You sent it to me? You sent it to ZPZ? Yeah. Did you think about sending me one? No, I didn't have it. I watched an episode on television like a year ago,

or actually a little bit more than a year ago, and was very moved by the production. It was whenever you didn't pull the trigger on that bear at your cabin. Oh, yeah. And I thought, well, the first... What did you think about the hosting? I thought it was excellent.

Excellent hosting. Yeah. No, it spoke a lot, the fact that you didn't take the bear. I was just like, well, first of all, not to diminish other hunting shows, but there was something that really stood out. The first episode I saw was with Rogan.gan i was like what the hell am i watching like

why is joe rogan on a hunting show and then i watched another one because it was like a marathon or something like that and it was the episode where it was just you uh out hunting that bear and you didn't pull the trigger and i was like that says something the because you know most hunting shows are like you got to put it down i mean that's the whole point we're here you gotta kill the animal it's like but then you came out to work what does, you've got to put it down. I mean, that's the whole point we're here is you've got to kill the animal. But then you came out to work with us, and that bear sure got shot. Yeah, it sure did. Were you disappointed? No.

It got revenge on us, man. Yeah. Mike's a – That was your first trip. Yeah. That was my first trip, yeah. Just a young kid. Mike Walsh-Lesky is out of Austin, Texas, and he's up here right now because, as everyone knows, Operation Jade Helm.

The U.S. military is in Texas. Much fear in Texas that it's actually they're overthrowing the government in Texas. Is that right? The U.S. military is imposing martial law in Texas to confiscate, take everyone's guns? That's the fear. That's the fear. Yeah, so they sent the U.S. Army into Texas, and it's a big operation to declare martial law in Texas and disarm Texas. That's what people think is happening.

That was going to happen until the Texas governor very boldly said that he's going to have the National Guard keep an eye on the U.S. Army while they're there. He's going to defend us from the U.S. Army, yes, and special forces. He's like, and not only that, I'm going to send some mall cops out too. But Mike's up Juneau until all this blows over, man, because he doesn't want to have martial law put on him. Yeah, I had to duck out, man.

It was getting too crazy. Also joined by Corey Kazmarek. Yes, or Kaczmarek. What nationality is that? Polish. Yeah. He didn't really get his job, honestly, because you came on recommendation from a Polish. Yeah. He didn't really get his job, honestly, because you came on

recommendation from a guy. Yeah. Well, it's a small town. ZPZ West moved to Bozeman and I live in Bozeman, Montana, so.

That's an honest way to get a job. It's not a good recommendation. No, that's true. It is, yeah. Yeah.

I like the way Mike did it. Send an email. Yeah. Now, everyone's going to send an email. Yeah. But to come on to send an email. Yeah. But to come on recommendation,

you know what, the more I think about it, to come on recommendation, now that is something. We'll see. Hero to zero, Mike. Sorry. So, but to get on with it,

the main thing I want to talk about is blue grouse. Now, I, as a hunter, I'm a fan of... I like hunts that are underutilized. I like hunts that are overutilized. There's too many people trying to do it, which I would say that generally hunting ducks. Ducks is high competition hunting, typically.

Public land whitetails, high competition. Turkey is high competition. I like all that stuff. But I also like stuff that just no one does because I don't know why. It's just not something people know about. I would say squirrel hunting, people know about it. They just don't do it. Or there's way more squirrels and way more squirrel hunting land than there are people interested in hunting squirrels.

But one of the most underutilized hunts in the world is the blue grouse. Now, a blue grouse, people used to call them blue grouse. And then some years ago, like seven years ago, I think. 2006. 2006? Yeah. I can't figure And then some years ago, like seven years ago, I think. Oh, six, 2006. Yeah. I can't figure out how many years ago that was.

10, five, nine. Yeah. Right. And that ballpark, right. And that ballpark,

thanks for the math. Garrett, um, right. And that ballpark, the ornithological Society declared, or not declared, but suggested that it be split in the blue grouse, which is a bird from the western U.S., was split into two populations, dusky grouse, sooty grouse.

Duskies live in the interior mountain range of the Rockies. Sooties live on the coastal ranges. Now, people who run into and inadvertently, as an incidental take, kill a blue grouse now and then because the birds are just kind of there and they don't really know to run away. People, they're one of many birds that people call a fool's hen, which is like a disparaging term for a bird. people, they're one of many birds that people call a fool's hen, which is like a disparaging term for a bird.

And what they're getting at is that they would say it's not that smart. The blue grouse isn't that smart because, you know, subscribe what happens when you walk up on a blue grouse. You were talking about this earlier. Oh, in the Intermountain Rockies. Yeah. In a terrier.

Well, yeah. So what is now since 2006 now a dusky dusky grouse well often i've run into them archery elk hunting and i used i used to always have an arrow maybe sometimes two marked you know grouse on my fletchings you'd actually write it on there oh yeah because it'd be like a slightly crooked arrow or something would be wrong with it. So you wouldn't feel bad shooting at a grouse. But, yeah, you're just cruising along, and you look over, and 10, 15 feet away, there he is just chilling, feeding. Sometimes just kind of like they see you, but they're not flushing. They're not running.

They're just kind of slowly walking away and enough time to take oftentimes multiple shots with bow and arrow. Oh, yeah. I've killed more now duskies, blue grouse with my bow and arrow than I have with a shotgun. I one time, hunting in the interior ranges, shot a blue grouse with my bow and then grabbed a rock and killed a second one. The point I'm getting at is people look at a blue grouse and they live in the high country typically. They look at a blue grouse and they go like, oh, there's a dumb bird. But that's a dumb way of thinking about it.

A blue grouse, like blue grouse generally, human predation is not something they're generally dealing with. Right. They live in areas where they have other stuff that they're worried about. And I think it's unfair to birds and fish and animals when humans declare them dumb because their response upon seeing a human isn't to run away. You know, people be like, oh, those deer are dumb. They didn't run away. But you might say, well, maybe he's really smart because he doesn't run from everything he sees and waste calories and put himself into risk

from other kinds of predation that he might not know about when he inadvertently runs into other things. And so he knows to hold tight and assess whether there really is danger or not. And it's dumb to fly away and run away from stuff that means you no harm that could be one way of looking at it yeah it's like a uh an ignorant person's way of like it's personification like you're putting like human emotions and feelings to an animal and and saying in that situation, if a human did that, you would say it's dumb. You know?

Yeah, but humans let humans walk up on them. No, I know. But that's just how I walked up on a ton of people in that restaurant we ate at tonight. I know. None of them ran. I saw two run, actually. Yeah. You almost ran over some guys with your van.

So, yeah, the word anthropomorphism, giving, it's kind of different than, anthropomorphism is what people do with their dogs, usually. Like, act like their dogs are capable of emotions. You know, I'm like, you're like projecting human tendencies or human attributes onto animals which most dog owners are guilty of you know it's an unfair not ronnie bain not ronnie bain but most dog owners look and those those those humans that are saying that you're saying i just i just walked

up to some people but that bird had people sneaking up to it in camouflage with a rifle. So if you had done that in that restaurant tonight, maybe not everybody would have been so dumb and just been hanging out. Some of them might have fled. So especially if you walk through the door with a rifle and camouflage. We have so much ground to cover. I want to move the blue grouse storyline. I risk being real boring so blue grouse are hunted in the fall now years ago in probably in the late 90s early 2000s i was out hunting black bears in the spring

and the way when i lived in montana the way we eventually started hunting black bears in the spring and the way when I lived in Montana, the way we eventually started hunting black bears once we got good at it is we would hunt, uh, southerly south facing, east facing, southeast facing exposures in really steep country where you had avalanche

slides or snow slides would clear away snow on big hillsides so that you'd climb up into a high area in the mountains and everything's covered in snow except avalanche shoots where the snow slid off and then the sun warmed the hill up and because the snow was gone those hills greened up those strips would green up faster than all the surrounding topography. And you'd get skunk cabbage and glacier lily and all kinds of grasses would grow on these snowshoots. And a bear

a black bear who might den 8,000 9,000 feet above sea level he comes out of his den around May earlier or later, but generally May 6th. Some people say May 7th.

I think my brother Danny thinks it's May 11th, but there's a day every year when all of a sudden, like bam, all the bears come out. Some bears trickle out all the time, but like bears come out. We used to hunt these avalanche slides, and now and then we'd be sitting at the foot of an avalanche slide,

and you would hear a noise that would sound like... So who thinks they can do it best? Not I. I'll do mine. Okay. But someone else has to do theirs next. Yeah, I'll try mine. I would hear this noise.

Okay, picture. It's April, May, and all of a sudden. Was that six, seven notes? Hold on a minute. You try yours. That's one far away. Yeah, that's what we got to watch. That's all we're going to see.

That's Mike doing a far away grouse. Who else wants to take a stab at it? You're getting the point. The bar is set too high. I don't got it. Just do one. Let one rip. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Let one rip. Oh, oh, oh. No, never mind. Johnny. Ah, ah, ah, oh. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. That was good. Yeah, that sounds good. You hear this noise.

Now, we were, for a couple years, baffled by what this noise was. Cause we, I grew up in Michigan, right? We moved out West, get into the hunting and fishing action. We'd hear this noise. Turns out that the blue grouse, which is just kind of,

I was going to call them blue grouse. Like everyone knows now, right? Dusky grouse, city grouse, blue grouse. Learned that it's, it's,

it's a blue grouse and that's his noise in the spring to call in ladies and eventually figured that out and then learned that there's a thing in southeast Alaska where you can hunt blue grouse

in the spring and in Alaska they call them hooters, spring hooters because you can hunt blue grouse in the spring. And in Alaska, they call them hooters, spring hooters, because you can hunt them in the spring. The hunting method is you go out into the mountains in the spring and try to listen for that hoot noise and then try to locate the bird. Now, three years ago, we were finishing up a bear hunt, and we had passed through the town of Ketchikan. Yanni was there.

We had some time to kill, and we were going to take some pictures, and we drove up on the road system out of Ketchikan on Revillagegado Island, or Revilla Island, or Revy Island. We drove way the hell up the road till the snow got too deep. And then we walked for a ways and got to this high road. And it sounded to me like from everywhere, from everywhere was, Mike?

What? Do the far away. Oh. Everywhere. You remember that, Giannis? I do. Describe your impressions. Giannis was so moved he started a t-shirt company.

No, it was one of those things where because we weren't focused enough like we weren't hunting them so we're just like cruising around doing our thing we're taking some pictures and no because if you remember i propose we drive back into town and buy a 22 then drive back up there to hunt for an hour for our plane i forgot about that no so yeah we heard a lot of hooters it did sound like they were everywhere yeah it haunted me as haunting as the noise is it haunted me a year after that well so that year i started researching how to hunt spring hooters because like i had a spot I got onto this idea where I was going to kill them like how you kill turkeys. So I found this catalog online.

There's like, here's one right here I'm looking at. The Macaulay Bird Sound Library. Here, the library's full of stuff. All the library things start this way. I'm going to play one thing real quick. LNS catalog number 45232. That dude says that. Then you'll hear

that's a female. Okay. That's a female tending her chicks her and her chicks so i started trying to find ways that you would mimic these noises and i would send the noises to friends of mine who were musicians first asking them like if you had to figure out how to make that noise how would you make it i sent them both the female and the male sound. Now, everyone said that blowing on a beer bottle would make the male noise,

but you don't. And everyone said there's some kind of Australian instrument. Didgeridoo? Do you go like this? No, that's the thing's the i don't know that's some yeah with the like thing on the end yeah yeah i think it is i think it's like a roped up yeah you spin the rope real fast what's it called i have no idea boomerang rope remember they had a ghost caller toy growing

up it was like a tube you do that and it. Yeah, that's right. Did it work? I mean, it made that sound, yeah, now that I think about it. Whenever I was out there, I pictured an old guy with a moonshine jug with triple X's on it, just softly blowing on it. Yeah, first thing Mike said when he got on the mountain, he's like, jeez, there's a lot of old moonshiners out here. He said, all these moonshiners out here think we find a still. So yeah, it sounds like an old dude blowing on a moonshine jug.

Anyways, I sent these sounds to everyone. I eventually sent the sound to the guys at Down and Dirty Game Calls. And they made me a box call and an open read call that I could use to try to mimic a hand. And it's kazoo. Like that was the other thing musicians kept saying is like, you might be able to do it with a kazoo, but I couldn't figure out how to do it with a kazoo.

But I got this open read call that sounds damn good. And it's like, it's like, uh, is that right? Yeah and it's like it's like uh is that right yeah sounds like that and i put out a thing on social media asking anyone if anyone had a dead female blue grouse laying around this dude named who i've become kind of like email buddies with this guy named shad brunsonson out of Utah runs out.

He's like, Hey, I'm going hunting them anyways, runs out, shoots me one. I have it go to a taxidermist that I know in Montana who stuffs that female and armed with a hen call and my decoy, I go out back one year later with Yanni,

and Doherty was with us, back out to Ravilla Island and spend four days trying to get under the tree of a blue grouse in order to call to it and present it with this decoy, thinking that I would pull the bird down out of his tree where they're hiding up in the tree, pull him down, he'd come down and strut, and I'd shoot him.

And we got killed on that trip. Talk about why we got killed on that trip talk about why we got killed from what i know now no from what you knew then from what i knew then there weren't as many birds we felt like we hunted the same we didn't have a lot of room in Rome. We were kind of hunting the road system out of Ketchikan. We had, I don't know, maybe three, five miles of road we could hunt. It was National Forest, something like that. And I felt like we were working the same four or five birds. We named them all. Yeah, we had them all named.

The Terrain. Ghost Bird, Lost Bird, Randy New Bird. Houdini. Houdini. Houdini. Yeah. Yeah, we knew about these birds, and we tried to find them. You could not find them. Yeah, we kept getting cliffed out.

We got cliffed out numerous times where we just could not. We felt like we couldn't continue moving on these birds. What these sons of bitches will do is they'll get up in a high spot. Picture you're at the head of a canyon. The walls of the canyon come together and peter out at the head of a canyon or the head of a draw

on a mountain slope. There's some big badass spruce tree rising up and towering over the head of the draw a blue grouse will go up into that high spruce tree and start making his weird hit it mike noise and you it sounds like it comes from everywhere like you know if you're out in the woods and you hear a sound you'd say to your buddy like point your finger at the sound what i've noticed people do when a blue grouse calls they don't point their finger they sort of like gesture with their hand like uh like oh it's's over in this vague sort of direction. Yeah, what we've started doing now is like a two-handed pie.

You hear a blue grouse and you make a pie thing. Sometimes your pie thing describes 120 degrees, right? Or sometimes you might, a very narrow pie wedge would be a lie. Yeah. A very narrow pie wedge is a lie. But I would say a narrow pie wedge is a 15 to 20 degree pie wedge. Right?

If you see someone give, if you hear a noise, you hear a grouse, a blue grouse off, like he's a mile away, whatever he is. And you drew a pie wedge more narrow than 15 degrees. You, the person's overexcited, you know. To put it this way, one time while we were trying to hunt spring hooters in Alaska, we had a grouse's location in our minds pinpointed to two trees, one of which I climbed.

Hours later, we were probably about a mile away from there. That's right. Trying to ascertain which mountain the bird was on. He never stopped hooting. I think we finally said he's probably up on that ridge. We said F it. We couldn't go on the ridge, though, even. Oh, that's what it was?

Wrong land. Wrong land ownership. For four days, it would just be like, we'd get burned by, let's say it was Randy Newberg. We'd get burned by Randy Newberg one day. The next day we'd get exasperated.

We'd go back up to try again on Randy Newberg and we'd sit and just listen to him being like, what portion of the mountain range is that bird calling from? I got so befuddled and it was so miserable that I called some buddies of mine. And I happen to have a buddy of mine named Matt Carlson. He's a biologist, but he does a lot of ornithology. And he grew up in southeast Alaska.

And I called him because i knew he'd hunted a spring hooter now and then he said like you know to be honest i never did it enough um it's tough to find him let me ask around he calls around and finds a dude who another biologist from Juneau who knew a retired woman named Barb, who is a blue grouse master. And one day, all pissed off, while we were hunting blue grouse, I called Barb and asked her how to find them. And she gave me some tips that just explaining over the phone didn't mean no good. And then we just got, we continued.

We had one more day, hunted the last day of the season and didn't find any birds. Yep. A year goes by. And we email with and become friends with Barb and finagle an invitation

up to come and hunt blue grouse with Barb for four days. Which just ended and we fucking slayed him slayed him we really we really worked barb we just we kind of gave her the the one-two punch we like we really a couple phone calls we eased into it eased into it. We eased into it. Really had our tails tucked between our legs. We were like, you know, we didn't have a good time. Yanni even pulled this one on her. You do what you pulled on her. About your daughter.

About my daughter? No, not your dog. Daughters. Yeah. Yanni even took it to this to try to finagle an invitation out of barb he went as far as to well because it's not everybody that wants to jump on tv there's a lot of people that do want to be on tv some people could give a shit don't need don't need anything to do with tv yeah there's people who want to come

on a tv show because they think it'd be fun. They want to hang out, go on a free trip. It'd be fun. They're always curious about how TV shows get made. Mm-hmm. Okay.

There's people who want to come on a TV show because they want to sell something. Like, oh, Yanni comes on the podcast and sells T-shirts. Like, they got a thing they're going to get, a specific concrete thing

they're going to get out of it. That's hunt8.com. Yep. And then you got, what were the other kinds we identified? I tried to have it be three, but we identified five kinds of people that want to be on TV.

They want to be a guest on a TV show. There's people who just do it. They don't want to do it, but your buddy's with them and they'll just do it. Yeah. Like my brother Danny. Which is pretty much what happens with barb but anyways the card i pulled on her as i said look i've got two daughters and there are no great female hunting role models out there let alone a blue grouse hunting right please show them how it's done. And so. Barb's been hunting blue grouse for 25 years. She hits it hard.

Yeah. And what was interesting that I realized about her this evening at dinner is that she's got a very deep hunting resume. She passed around her little portfolio of pictures. And Barb's killed just about everything in the state of Alaska. Moose, doll sheep, whatnot. Her family moved out of here when she was a very little girl. Yeah.

Which makes me like her even more because she's just into going hunting blue grouse. Like just going cruising. Yeah, she's hunted all the big game, but she is like a blue grouse hunter. Yep. And she took us out and taught us how to find those things. Hey folks,

exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers.

You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all.

And I can't even, I'm searching, I don't know what the method is. Corey today commented that blue grouse hunting is good for, it's like good for anyone who has good hearing and is in good shape. Did you equate it to golf a little bit?

No, no. Well, I said the opposite. I guess it's a, you know, it's a hunt that's probably not meant for deaf people and people out of shape.

That's how I put it. I met Barb the first day we got here. We flew in. Me and Yanni were talking to her in the hotel, and I was thinking to myself, oh, this is going to be a breeze. Barb's probably in her 50s, I would say, mid-50s. We're just going to walk around in these nice park forest parks and look for these birds and first day we're sweating you know within 15 minutes because everything is

straight up and down here covered in moss covered in moss thank god it wasn't raining and she crushed us. I mean, she pretty much left us in the dust, really. I still don't understand how she was doing it. Just a climbing fool. Yeah. She smoked us. And maintaining, day one.

She made one of our cameramen quit. And she didn't even have pink accents on her gun. Nope. No pink needed. Not even breathing heavy. Did it without mascara. Just out there hammering the mountain.

And on point. She was always knowing what she was doing and looking for. Barb hunts by herself. Here's how she hunts. Her husband doesn't hunt blue grouse anymore. And he'll come out, they'll go out on their boat, and sometimes they'll just go out and cut the engine on a calm day and drift

out in the ocean, listening up on the surrounding mountains to hear some hooters going off. Then Barb's husband will bring her up and beach her. They got a flat bottom boat, like a big boat. They can sleep on the thing, you know, and carry a Zodiac around on it. But he'll go up and beach her on the beach. And then she'll go hunt all day while he trolls for salmon.

And then she carries an orange banner with her. So she don't need to pay any attention to where she winds up. She usually beelines it. I'm talking temperate rainforest. I mean rainforest. She beelines it up to, you know, 13, 14, 15, 100 feet, hunts, comes down, hits the ocean shore, hangs up her blaze orange banner so that her husband, while he's trolling up and down the shoreline,

will notice the banner and know to come get her. All spring. She says that they don't start fishing halibut until spring hooter season's over. There is probably no other person who's that committed. If they are, please email me. Yannis.Patelis at 0.0.com. I would love to talk to you.

I've read a handful. The only place that publishes blue grouse hunting articles is Alaska Department of Fishing Game. They try to promote it to new hunters and stuff like that. Every year, they'll round up some dude who's gonna write like a blue grouse article and the blue grouse article will be like oh there's this zany thing um i'm usually into

something else but so every now and then i'll go do this zany thing and the birds are like and no one can write an article without using the word ventriloquist. They're like a ventriloquist and you know, it's this silly kind of zany thing. That's like what it brings out in people. I don't know why people are down on it, except that I think it might be that when you find the bird, you shoot it out of a tree with a.22. It's not wing shooting.

No, it's not wing shooting, except that the article that we read that was published in the Juneau newspaper, wasn't it, that you forwarded to me? No, I can't remember where it was. Before we came here. But this guy wrote an article about it, how he so into it and he said that hold on i thought he wasn't into it i thought he's saying i'm not a big hunting guy now and then i'll go do this well my point is that all the effort that he put into finding these birds he wasn't going to shoot him with 22 he just took his oh that guy smokes my true, the 12 gauge. Yeah.

Which I don't know. Most of the birds we found, you weren't going to kill the 12 gauge. You're too far away. Yeah, I was going to say, man, they were high. Because bullet drop is an effect affected by vertical distance, but shotgun spread is.

He's saying he's shooting. He's mostly walking away from a lot of birds where he's not finding them because he's not going to be shooting them with a 12-gauge at 70 yards, a thing the size of a softball. The body. Unless he's up there with a bunch of heavy shot and a super turkey choke and a bunch of heavy shot. Maybe.

I don't know. I'll have to talk to that guy. Anyways, he did make a thing. He likes to shoot them with a scatter gun. They don't jump. So that's the thing. It's like, do you guys ever hose ducks off the water with a shotgun? Never done that.

He's from Texas. Do you not do it because you don't hunt ducks? Or do you not do it because you think it's unsportsmanlike? No, because I don't hunt ducks. Yeah, no, that's something I have. In Minnesota, we go duck hunting. I guess the etiquette was to let them get off the water first. I can sit on ducks. I, yeah, no, that's something I, Minnesota, we go duck hunting and we'd always, I guess the etiquette was to let them get off the water first before we,

that's the etiquette. Yeah. No, it's weird, man. Cause you're saying, I see both sides of it. You know,

when you're saying, yeah, I want this thing to be dead and I, and I want to give it a chance. You could also be saying, I'm also giving it more of a chance that it's going to, that I'm going to hit it a chance we could also be saying i'm also giving it more of a chance that it's gonna that i'm gonna hit it with a bb and not kill it's like you want it dead but you could make it dead you know shoot it but it is unsportsman it's generally regarded as unsportsmanlike to hose a duck off the water that's how market hunters used to do it too

i mean but is that the same as like shooting a deer bedded i mean is that same listen man i will fight that to the dead it is not it's not no listen it's way different i think that to shoot a bedded animal is a sign of good hunting not bad hunting it's like you've done your work right it has no idea you're there like you put on you put such a good stock on that you found the thing laying you know you don't like drive up on a bedded animal yeah people might be confusing bedded animal with like animals asleep and like your father-in-lawlaw after Thanksgiving dinner was passed out on the couch. Like, that's not the animal you sneak up to. These animals aren't just snoring with their head on the ground.

You just happenstance across them and then get to boom them. No, bedded animal is, like, it's on full alert, you know, in its bed, in a safe spot where he can see all around it he's got the wind coming in the right direction he's got cover behind him and like you're saying if you sneak in there you've done something special now if you oppose shooting bedded animals because of shot placement problems i understand where you're coming from shot placement is difficult on bedded animal but we filmed the thing we filmed the antelope hunt I spent a long time

belly crawling up on an antelope very hot, very uncomfortable belly crawled on an antelope got close to it in his bed had a perfect shot killed it and never even stood up blam, dead some guy writes in an email like

I've hunted all six continents and i've never seen anybody shoot a bedded animal i'm like i don't know he must be not looking you know he was like morally outraged not about shot placement but just the coward you know how cowardly it was to shoot a bedded animal. So I was like, so is it cowardly to shoot an animal running away from you? Shooting them in the back. I think it's BS. But the whole shooting birds out of trees thing, I think that that might be a thing is because guys that hunt birds like wing shooting,

and it's not wing shooting. Garrett, you don't need to raise your hand, dude. Well, I was thinking with you talking about the bedded down animals and getting a good hunt on them, it takes that skill and effort, and it seems like with the grouse, the sooty grouse in particular, I mean, to get up in that country to find out where that sound's coming from, to find them in the tree to get a shot at them, that effort is there. Yeah, it is worse.

Yeah, it takes that skill yeah it's worse so you earn or yeah i mean you don't earn but if it's an etiquette thing or a fairness thing a sportsman's thing the sportsman's things there with the sooty grouse not needing them to absolutely man like if you got all you go to south dakota right and you go up and you get out of your truck, you have some coffee, eat a couple donuts, walk down into a ditch row, and start spitting pheasants out every which way. And you shoot with your shotgun and you act proud of yourself on that. I'm telling you, if you're going to measure effort,

that is nothing compared to what it takes to find a blue rose. It's hard, man. It might be less than 5%. It's nothing, man. It might be less than 5%. It's nothing. Nothing. No, I think it's like an excuse. I think they know what it takes to go up there and to get a limit. We've been at it four days and had some great hunting.

Did not get a limit any day, and we're trying to figure out what it would take to get a limit. Not get a limit, but always hearing hoots. Always hearing hoots. I think maybe people know what they have in store for them i mean you're talking about what do we hike for elevation gain and loss in in our bigger days 1700 yesterday right that was but that was just one way yeah one way to top and bottom so and long days too you know but you think you gotta keep pointing out we're talking about in rainforest. It's not like hiking on a trail.

It's off trail. You're getting landed on the beach. We'd go out and get landed on a beach with a boat. Boat pulls up. Everybody jumps off the bow, and you're at tideline. And you don't start hearing hoots until you're six seven hundred feet up typically straight up and yeah it's really i mean it's a physically very challenging hunt and there's no other hunt that i can think of and i've been trying to think of it turkey hunt involves listen for gobbles but there's no other hunt that just comes down to listening, locating the source of the noise, but that's only half of it

because once you find where you've got it narrowed down, you know what three trees is in, and these are trees that are a couple hundred feet tall, several hundred feet tall sometimes. That's a lie. 150, 200 feet tall. Before you get into the optics of city grass hunting, let's take a quick break.

All right, welcome back. We're going to get back into bluegrass hunting. get into the optics of city grass hunting let's take a quick break all right welcome back uh we're gonna get back into blue grouse on oh we're gonna start talking about like finding them by noise and finding them by sight but a couple things came up one i meant to talk about this right off the bat does anyone here we never quit we were talking about before we started recording we're talking about bigfoot no one here believes in Bigfoot, right? Do you believe in Bigfoot? No, I believe that there's some sort of archetype about someone larger than us humans.

Yeah, I agree with that. A lot of cultures have a version. Yeah. Mike? Not until I see proof. I'm undecided so i did what do you mean you're undecided well there was a i saw you know with all the internet videos there was an asian bear that walks on its hind legs for longer periods it can walk up to like 400 you know like a quarter mile or something. I can believe that. And it looks like.

Does that mean it has a. Well, the Bigfoot thing, like, I don't know. No. Do you believe that there's a giant hominid? No. Actually, no. Yeah, you're right. No.

No. That's good. Not that taken care of. So the other that came up, we want to touch on that. Something else we're just talking about touching on? Oh, the painting in the hotel room. It's like this painting from, it must be some prominent saddle around. It's a big grizzly up on the mountains above Juneau.

And he looks like he's headed down into town to go drinking. It's like he just must have come. It's a lot of snow. He's just come out of hibernation. It's like, yeah, he's like headed down to get drunk. Like, what is going on? Or eat a few people. Yeah, he's like, there's no he doesn't have like a

man he doesn't that if i was the painter and i wanted to make it that he was headed down to to kill people i would have him look mean i don't know he's got his mouth open he's like he's like the version of the lone wolf you know with the wolf in the village below have you guys seen that no that bear is going down to get drunk or something that was the other thing so yeah back so the trick now there are parallels in this world the sound thing okay listening for bugle and elk yeah like you're you listening to locate listening to a turkey you listen to locate but in but in those things squirrels i'm always listening for squirrels barking i'm heading their direction yeah there's a big audio component to is that is that the right word big audio component to a lot of hunting auditory auditory component to a lot of hunting but nothing like where you're trying to track down such a difficult sound and even when

you get like what will kind of happen is that you'll be out hunting you'll you hear a hoot right and you'll argue about what direction it was and you'll go in that direction and then you won't hear it anymore and then you'll crest like a slight ridge and it'll sound farther away than it did before you started walking that way but you know you're walking in the right direction because it's still you still agree on the direction but just is less loud now then you walk and the sound goes away then you walk a little more and the sounds louder than you've heard it at all and then you walk a little more and it sounds louder than you've heard it at all. And then you walk a little more and it's really faint. You can't tell what's going on.

And then you climb up the next ridge and it's booming loud. At which point you're like, Oh, he's in this clump of trees. And then it might take on the way though. I got to add, you're constantly, at least maybe today I wasn't,

but up until I'm saying walk. Yeah. As, as you as as which is the wrong word oh that's right yeah climbing your climb four points of contact about climbing through the rainforest steep rainforest yeah usually using your hands the point i want to make is that you're constantly like i said up until today kind kind of second-guessing yourself. Yeah. Just like wondering, like, am I going the right way? Did the bird I'm chasing quit hooting? Am I now chasing a different bird?

Are we on the wrong ridge? It just goes on and on and on. It never quits. Well, that was the cool thing. It's like you have three options. You hear a hoot. It's like, okay, he's either right, he's either center, or he's left. And you have to just choose a direction.

Or there's the other one where he's behind you. Well, and that's the thing, too, is that the topography really changes the sound of the bird. And so that's why you have to get up. Because if you're going to get on the beach and just say, I'm going to go hunt sooty grouse or blue grouse or whatever, and just go up 100 feet from the beach, you're not going to get anything. I mean you have to go up to get above them in order to hear anything at all. And especially this one thing that I learned in the short time that I was here is that if you're down by a stream or if you're inside a saddle or ravine – because I've never been elk hunting, i don't know how that bugle carries and like how that like way the hell better than a hoot right so it's just like okay you got these like little things but even then if you're down by

a stream like the streams we're crossing and the bulls bugling up on the ridge above it you probably won't hear him that stream will drown it right okay so it's like yeah so you have to get up and and and get into essentially like where they're broadcasting from like on that same kind of level because that's what they do they're picking the big tree just to like you know find a mate you know and just like then that and that's where we found was all these big trees are not like you know on a bush yeah exactly and it might be that you hear them now and then like we've had it where we heard them all day but we had a thing happen today we heard a hoot turn around someone we heard a hoot. Try to remember how it sounded.

We heard a hoot. We're like, well, let's just go in that way a little bit and see what happens next. And we go down, and Corey, you proposed to go up on a little knob to listen from a knob. And I was like, well, no sense in all being on the knob. So I was down off the knob, but we're close enough where we can communicate. I'm hearing that sound going loud and clear. And you guys couldn't hear him.

Me and Garrett could not hear him. He was only like 50 feet away. I'm like, there he is. They kept giving me like, they don't hear anything. I'm like, no, dude, he's right. So we wound up finding that bird. And that wound up being the bird that we spent close to two hours

looking for it I think it was after we identified his clump of trees we spent an hour and 45 minutes trying to find the bird in the trees thrown off by this fact we found 15

a total of we found 15, a total of found, not killed, but found a total of something like 15 blue grouse and spruce trees to the point where I was like, Oh, they're in spruce trees. And this one we couldn't find was in the hemlock. So you get to an area and I started in my head,

I would get to an area, a clump of head i would get to an area clump of trees you got it low you he's like he's got me one of these five six trees i mean we're talking about big ass old growth timber right he's one of these five six trees and i would usually go like where's the spruce you know there'll always be a spruce and the sun bitch would always be in the spruce way up high like how many feet up are they 100 feet up yeah i'd say 80 footers i mean the root systems are 12 inch round roots coming out of each tree on those big trees those are i mean they're old growth trees and they got the birds sit on top of big limbs that usually if you find a bird you can see from below what you usually see is his beak and his tail and if you move a foot or two either way you want to see him and it's a dense forest and so you got all you got cover from

other trees so it's not like this is like the one lone giant towering yeah you know thing that's like just like you know with blue skies behind it. I mean, there's dense coverage. You got frisbee-sized holes to look through. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, coming back to parallels, glassing these suckers up is right up there with like glassing up a Betacusier. Yep. But instead of looking a mile away, you're looking 50 yards away.

Right. You know what I noticed? Barb was running eights. And I know for a fact if I ever come back to City Grouse hunting, I noticed? Barb was running eights. And I know for a fact if I ever come back to City Grouse Hunting, I'm going to have some eights on me. I'm not. You're not? You're going to stick with the tens? Yeah.

What are you going to get out of having eights? Just less shake. I don't need the magnification. You have less shake. You're looking 50, 75 yards. You're not steady. For a bird that's actually making noise perched up there, even moving while he's making noise,

and they are tough to glass. Although he had 10, what? Your binos were 10 and your scope was? Listen. This story. Yeah. So today, I had 10 binos and a 7-power scope on my double deuce. I found a patch of the bird that we spent an hour and 45 minutes trying to locate.

I found a patch of that bird in my 10-power knockers. Couldn't see that patch in my 7-power scope. So I eventually had to look through my binoculars and study the cones on a hemlock, the configuration of cones on a hemlock, and then look through my rifle scope and try to identify those hemlock cones go back to my binoculars and study some more like okay there's a black patch of limb then i see those four cones there's just one little stick coming down and he's there go back to my rifle scope and find all that stuff. Never been able to identify that I was seeing the wing patch on a bird.

While Corey was holding a hat up to block the sun. Because I was staring into the sun while doing this. So sevens isn't good. I'll have you know I won't kill that bird. After two hours. And a couple shots. And a couple shots. I didn't have any binoculars, so I had to eyeball him.

I got to give Mike credit. He found our first bird. We put 30 minutes into it. Mikey naked eyeballed him. Did you really he's doing like the hound circle around the tree once we isolated like okay it's got to be it's this tree it's this tree because like that's that's the cool thing about it too is it's like okay i think it's the these three trees in this general area because that that sound really just kind of like kind of rolls around you know and and so like and that's a nice thing doing it with two people

is because then that person can go down and like hear it from different directions like you kind of triangulate yeah you know what okay it's got to be this tree it's this tree so i'm looking right in here and so and that's nice that's that's the cool thing about it but i didn't yeah if i was going to give one tip to a new city grouse hunter i would say do once you're in the area where you're like okay i think this bird is here do some circles and get a hoot from you know all sides of where you think he is and i feel like after you do one circle you're about 90 plus percent sure of what tree he's in and that gives you that much more confidence of where to glass. As opposed to just kind of hanging back and looking up there and going, okay, he's in one of those four.

You're now glassing four trees. And this sounds weird. People are going to be like, what? You're glassing into four trees. Well, four trees is a lot more country than you want to cover. And they're not like flapping their wings and displaying and strutting around on a limb. They're not like right at the tip of the limb, all silhouetted and stuff. They're close to the

trunk. They're always sitting at the seam of a big-ass limb in the trunk. They're just very, very slight. These are big birds. They're big birds. They're not as big as a pheasant, but close. They're 100 feet in the air. In dense...

The canopy is just dense. You it's just like you have to isolate that tree and just like you have to narrow it down otherwise you're just looking at limbs and shadows and moss like i saw it like i was like it's like yanni i was like there's a bird sitting on top of that tree right there and he's like no it's just like part of the tree i was like no i was like you're serious it's like that looks like a bird he's like no i agree with you but that's not a bird and it was him no no this was like oh it's like one of those tree tops it's just and then he described because i hadn't seen anything because i'm filming you guys and so i hadn't actually you know seen a bird in a tree so i don't know what i'm looking for and he's like so he describes like

whenever he hoots the tail just kind of bumps a little bit i was like okay well then that's something for me to look for whenever i hear the sound i'm looking for this one particular emotion and so i like i was like okay well i think he's in this general area and then as soon as he told me that it's like i saw the tail you know kind of flutter i was like yeah there he is it's like boom got him my piece of advice if i was thinking of someone a sooty grouse hunting tip the whole sound thing like finding them there's nothing i can say it's just you gotta just trial and error. Or go with someone to watch someone do it. It was helpful to watch Barb do it. I couldn't believe it. I would say trust yourself.

Don't second guess yourself. Trust yourself. If you pick a direction, keep going that direction. Trust yourself and know that he's probably always a little bit farther than you thought he was in the beginning. That first day we went out with Barb, we hiked up and we must have hit probably like, I think we hit 600 feet.

And we heard a hoot. And based on my experience from the year before, I'm like, who cares about that? You'll never find that bird. Because he's one of those 30 degree certainty birds. Like one arm out here, one arm out here one arm out here you try to like draw the pie wedge like a pie wedge bigger than anybody would want to ever eat a piece of pie so i'm like well clearly that's not going to matter and barb says no we'll get under his tree and we didn't you just start going you gotta be a hound dog man you just gotta

and what would mess me up the year before is I could never get my head around the idea that you'd hear a noise and get closer to it, but it would get fainter. So I would think that I was doing something wrong all the time. I couldn't accept that the noise will get fainter as I get closer. And then all of a sudden

it'll get loud again and all that. So I'd go and it'd get fainter. I'd be like, well, that must not be right. I'd turn and go the other direction thinking that I had misread its direction. The tip I was going to give is these things live on such a steep pitch.

Corey, you know pitches. What are those pitches? What are the hillsides? How would you describe the hillsides? It's probably like 5' seven climbing standards which is maybe at some point we were 50 degrees a 50 degree pitch yeah not a little plus maybe even some of that you're just grabbing a root grabbing another root grabbing a tree you know and you're just sticking your feet in this moss and it's falling. Yeah, I tend to wear big, heavy-angled boots and just kick my toes in.

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. If you're climbing with crampons, kick my toe into the moss down and then just climb up like that with my heels out in the midair. But my suggestion, when you're looking looking at when you get where you think you maybe you don't know which trees but you gotta my my strategy became to pick a tree and work that tree and rule the son of a bitch out right be like i'll rule that it's like the hour and 45 minute bird we ruled out the three spruces. Then I started looking in the hemlock.

That's why it took so long. At one point, I was like, this is for the birds, man. I was ready to go. I proposed leaving. I proposed leaving and going looking for another hooter. Like you said, Steve, too, when they shift the direction that they're actually projecting the sound it changes where it's like you know when you throw your voice you know so it's like a three-dimensional yeah that's a good way of putting it yeah yeah and it does because you'll be sitting there and the it'll like be like the birds moving from tree to tree but just

because but then when you do see one he is always doing that. He hoots on one side of a tree, he'll step over to our limb, face the other way and hoot in our direction. And it sounds like you kept proposing that there was two, three of them up in the tree. That's what it sounded like. I think there's two. That's why it's so important to do the circle around the base of the tree. I keep getting what my suggestion is.

But on top of yours, the going around, go uphill and get eye level. Because the pitch is so severe that you can do this. Go uphill and get eye level with the canopy. So you might wind up being, I remember today, I wasn't even close to eye level with the top of a tree but i remember ranging the tree trunk i was 37 yards from the tree trunk uphill behind it looking into its canopy kind of looking into its canopy. And so you kind of read, like, what direction should I go uphill where it's not going to be obscured by a bunch of twigs and shit from another tree?

And if you can find a little gap and then climb up there and look into the tree rather than looking up. We found, I think, one bird from looking up. Yeah, well, because you got all the branches below it, and they're at the top. I mean, they're not halfway up, at least from what I saw. I mean, they're up.

So looking straight up the tree is just like, you know, it's garbage. I mean, you got to do concentric circles out, find those little pockets. Yeah, which brings me to the kind of a final, not the final thing, but an important part of this. You go up, up, up, up, up,

and you're getting away from the trunk of the tree looking in. When you find it, you invariably wind up in tricky shooting situations. You are not going to shoot a blue grouse by lying down prone. The

shooting angles are usually much too severe to shoot over your knee. You're shooting up. I shot one lying down on my back. You know? It's like your contortionist

trying to get in the shooting position on him. But it's the most rewarding shooting I've ever been involved in. It's not like it's the most rewarding shooting I've ever been involved in. It's not like a... In its own way, I would say it's as difficult as wing shooting. Oh, definitely. It's very demanding.

Especially if you're not going to blow the breasts out of them. If you're trying to hit them in the neck and head, it's very demanding. It requires great attention to detail on the head. It's like head shooting squirrels. Not easy to do. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes and our raffle

and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in Canada the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this This season, the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24 K topo maps, way points, and tracking.

That's right. You were always talking about, uh, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, um, you guys in the great white North can, can be part of it.

Be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet.

Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I love hunting blue grouse. I don't think it's going to catch on. Yeah, it's tough, man. Which is part of the appeal, too, right? It doesn't get saturated. And it's just not. I mean, you got to come like dudes from down – dudes from the lower 48 aren't going to – when they do their big Alaska trip –

If they're up here spring bear hunting, they ought to just tack on two days. Because no one's going to be like clearing it up with their wife and shit to like come up to hunt blue grouse, time off work you know buying a bunch of garbage online for hunting gear and then come up shoot birds yeah i don't know why but if i was in alaska maybe after their first time if i was a sheep hunter they experience it yeah then they'll do it it's an adventure i'll tell you what you do this all spring and i don't know how whatever you'd have to do for june and july to retain that shape but if you did this all so deep grass season you would be ready to smoke the brooks range and and look for dolls so this is so this is the the uh the primer the your your workout

getting ready for that so this is a good like – This is CrossFit. Yeah, this is your, you know, your Rainforest CrossFit prior to – No, it's better CrossFit because like my brother criticizes CrossFit all the time. He says CrossFit, the only thing it does is makes you good at CrossFit. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Like when I'm going to go hunt with someone, like if I'm going to take someone on a hunting trip, I usually tell them like you're sitting there thinking about what sleeping bag you need, what gun you're going to bring, whether you got this kind of scope or that kind of scope.

Here's the thing that's going to make it that you're happy and successful or miserable and not successful. Your ability to climb hills. Well, that's a good way to – And whether or not your feet Your ability to climb hills. Well, that's a good way to... And whether or not your feet are going to hold up. Yeah, I mean, well, this is a good primer. It's like the only thing... If you're going to go on a mountain hunt, you're going to go on a sheep hunt, elk hunt,

mule deer hunt, all the garbage you think you need to worry about. Like, oh, do I want this kind of pants or that kind of pants? That is largely bullshit it's like can you walk a long ways up and down hills and have your feet stay in good shape and that you can keep doing that day after day after day after day with a smile on your face with a smile on your face because the minute you don't want to go to that next ridge you're done all

right everyone i know you're enjoying the meat eater podcast and you're especially enjoying it because it's free and to keep it that way we got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors the minute you start finding reasons to not go to that next ridge it's over for you i was kind of curious what do you guys think whenever you're looking at just straight up like what is it? You were talking about these. 45, 50 degrees. 50 degrees.

Okay, I got to get up there. Whenever you're having to grind to get up to the top, what do you guys think about whenever you're doing that? And it's just your legs are screaming. I don't know if your legs are screaming and stuff, like physically what you're going through. But what's going through y'all's mind in those situations to get you to the top of that?

Me lying there, dying on my deathbed as an old man. Yeah. Wow. That keeps you going forward. Yeah, because I always think about this. When I'm dying, okay, I will not be like, man, I'm sure glad I didn't climb that hill.

There's just no way. Yeah. There's no way yeah there's no way today we got up on a ridge remember we're on the ridge top yeah okay and there was a hooter down below i'm like man i don't want to get off the ridge top because we're up on the ridge top then we have to go down there to kill him or try to kill him and then climb back up to the ridge top then i'm like why in the world are you thinking this way go down and then climb back up to the ridge top. Then I'm like, why in the world are you thinking this way? Go down there and then climb back up. There's a mental component

of having to go up there. Day four. For y'all, yeah. I have a lot of curiosity too. I'm always curious about stuff. I always think I'm going to find something weird laying on the ground or I don't know. There's a reward at the top.

So yeah, I'm always like, maybe we'll find something weird laying there. Or he's all benched out. There are benches. It wasn't a consistent climb, climb, climb. There was some. I mean, some of you are just like, oh, crap, I got to.

Yeah, I don't know, maybe like two bucks. Maybe two bucks got tangled up and died with their antlers locked. Yeah. And also, I'm going to stumble across that. Or I'll find a dead guy. Some pirates. Some pirates didn't actually get to bury their treasure. I always look in the holes under the trees and thinking there's something in there.

Gold nugget. Of course. I was expecting something to jump out. Wolverines coming at you. Yeah and thinking there's something in there. Gold nugget. Of course. I was expecting something to jump out. Wolverines coming at you. Yeah, so there's that. There's like, will I ever do that? But that's not what you're thinking of like, I need to get to the next bench so I can look underneath that tree for a Wolverine. I'm always like, where's Barb right now?

She's way up there. I think about this. There's a direct correlation. There's an undeniable direct correlation between how much weird shit you see in the woods and how much time you spend in the woods. Sure. You know what I mean? Guy spends a lot of time in the woods,

has a lot of things like stories that begin with, I'll tell you what happened, you know what I mean? Like that. Or he's got shit on his shelves. He's like, you see that? You know? We learned a lot about porcupines. Yeah.

Well, what about you, Corey? What's going on in your head whenever it's just like, it's foot in front of foot in front of foot to get to the top. The grind. The grind. In the grind. Yeah. Sticking your foot in the moss.

Depends on how long the grind is. Just going. I try to go just in my head, try to push myself to the plateau without stopping. That's it. There's nothing else in that time. If it's a longer, we're talking trying to go 2,000 feet,

same consistency, you know, the pitch. Yeah. Then you can get more of a rhythm, but this is kind of like steep, bench know, the pitch. Yeah. Then you can get in, like, more of a rhythm. But this is kind of, like, steep, bench, listen, stop. That's the point you raised. Because Corey used to be a competitive, like, a professional snowboarder. And you got to walk up a lot of those hills. Yeah.

But you were like, you said today, like, but doing that, every step's the same. Yep. Yep. It is the same. It's yep. It is the same. It's just like the same step. It's like a meditation. The same step over and over again. He goes, but here, every step is different.

Okay. Yeah, every step, you're twisting an ankle different degrees. Every step, we're sinking up to our knees in holes that were covered by moss stuff. Dead logs exploding. Every step is different. Crawling over logs, under logs, trees, grabbing a dead tree, knocking over the whole tree, you know, like. Yeah, out of the sound.

I got a different take on that. But I think, too, your question is, just so you guys are all, I think what you're trying to ask is really, like, what is, like, a motivating kind of a factor? Not just, like, what happens in your to ask is really like, what is like a, there's like a motivating kind of a factor, not just like what happens in your head, but like, no, you're in,

you're in the grind. And like, what do you say to yourself to be like, yeah, I'm fired up to get to the top. Right. Just what I just said. No,

I know you answered it. Right. I just, just wanted to make, do you want to be the kind of guy that goes up the hill or not? No, no, you're still going to get to the top.

You're still going to get to the top. But that time before you get up there, I mean, your brain is, you know, what are you thinking about your taxes? Oh, like thinking about like that? Yeah, like what is going on in your mind during that grind? Trying to find a Blue Rose. The whole time? The hell are you thinking about?

I start playing songs. No, you answered it right the first time. You are you thinking about i start playing no you answered it right the first time you said no he's not asking that he's not saying what motivates you he's wondering what at a certain point there might be some pain involved well it depends you're thinking about stuff besides what we're doing while we're out there whenever i'm climbing whenever we're going straight up like we have to get up there and it's like we're not like okay we hear the sound we got to go up right and it and it hurts and it's like, we're not like, okay, we hear the sound, we got to go up, right? And it hurts and it's painful and stuff.

So there's nothing going on. So think about your taxes. No. Like, man, we should call my mom more often. Well, your mind doesn't wander

whenever you're like in that, whenever you do it. I mean, that's an honest question. Packing meat or something like that, it does. But all doing this,

I'm just hoping to find. Right, you're just getting up there. Oh yeah, like agery like if you're just like oh yeah we got a nine mile walk we're all done it's like just hiking out oh yeah i'm thinking about crazy shit man right that's what i'm talking about that's that was the question okay and i'm trying to learn how to think about something like i'm trying to be like because you know i write a lot right so i'll be like why don't i take this time and actually write something in my head, word for word for word, and memorize it?

And then I get home and I just have to type out what I wrote in my head. Right, okay. Because your body's going to do what it's got to do. But I can't do that. Because then I'll be like, man, I should really call my mom more often. I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to be writing my article. But then I can't you know yeah then i mean i'm on to some other thing like man i gotta remember that you know like i gotta get some new finger paint for my kids you know i can't it's uncontrolled but blue grouse hunting i'm

thinking mike i am constantly training for the next hunt every time i get into that position where it's the grind and it hurts my legs are like please stop please stop i'm like shut up legs and in my head i think the six point bull that i've been looking for for 20 years is at the top of the next bench the hooters at the top of the six point bull The Hooters are at the top of the next bench. You've killed a bunch of six-point bulls. No, I haven't. Killed a lot of cows. Cow kill a machine. But no, I'm just constantly thinking this is good for me. That's how I make it good for me.

And so I enjoy it because I think this fall, this hike that I'm doing right now, next fall is going to help me hopefully be successful in whatever. But doesn't that wind up being real circular? Because yeah, of course. Cause it's like, well,

yeah, it's helpful right now. Do you know what I mean? I'm helping myself right now in order to help myself in the future. It's kind of like people who like you get dumped by a girl and people like, yeah, it'll only make you stronger. It's like,

well, for next time I get dumped, I'm with you. I'm with you guys. Yeah, absolutely. It's like, this is like i get dumped i'm with you i'm with you yeah absolutely it's like this is like this is gonna pay off like this is the effort involved is you know i'm not gonna find a dead guy or two i think mike because mike originally was asking of like how like you make it okay in your head to like deal with the pain of of keep pushing. Don't take a break right now. Keep pushing. Yeah, there's a hooter at the end of the road, but you said it.

You're like, when I'm on my deathbed, when I'm dying, we'll be like, you know. Yeah, but you guys talked about motivations. You got that motivation to get up there. Where does your mind go? And this, I may be off here, but when I'm like, I'm maxed out, I'm thinking, man, I need to stop. And I know I need to go and I'm going to keep going.

Right. I actually go to really calm water, like sitting on a lake with a beer, and that's where my mind is. Okay, so yeah, you're getting that kind of stuff. Then I'd be worried about whether the fish are biting. I'd be like, I better walk down the beach i mean because it's about keeping your heart you know keeping your heart oh i got you you know i'm saying like your body's gonna do i mean you're sucking wind your legs are screaming you need to keep that heart rate down so i go to

a place of but you you climb like you do technical climbing yeah like ice climbing technical and it's all about that like your body's maxing out but you can go way beyond as long as you keep your heart rate down. It's being able to separate your mind from all the physical pain that you're feeling. Like these guys are saying, you've got to stay focused. Your motivation is going to take you there, but to get there and even further. You know you're going to get there. You're going to get there. I mean, there's no doubt that you're going to the top of that place.

But it's just dealing with that internal turmoil, at least for me. It's just like, this fucking hurts. Go to that lake. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if I want to calm myself, I'll sometimes just focus on breathing in and breathing out.

Yeah. Or I'll picture a really old dog on a really hot day down south. Yeah. On a porch. That will change your – yeah, that will change your – That makes me feel sleepy. But your body is still like in super mode. Did you ever just carry a picture of yourself taking a nap?

Look at that. Well, that's what a beer on the beach is pretty much. Earlier I mentioned getting dumped. How many of you guys many guys did all you guys get dumped way as hard in your 20s yeah 20s no no really dumping doing the dumping i got married oh, I got married young. Because I was observing not long ago how, like, you get dumped in your 20s by someone. For me, it was someone named Maris. And it killed something in me that never grew back. You didn't need that anyways.

Do you know what I'm saying? I was thinking about when people say, like, oh, yeah, it only makes you stronger. It's like, it didn't make me stronger. It killed something in me that never grew back. I'll agree with you, but that happened to me, I feel like, when I was, about when people say, oh yeah, it only makes you stronger. It didn't make me stronger. It killed something in me that never grew back. I'll agree with you, but that happened to me, I feel like, when I was like 12 or 13. I had an exhaustible

supply of disappointment that was killed. It was replaced by awareness of that There you go. I've been trying to fill that spot in me with replaced by awareness of that whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And that's... And I've been trying to fill that spot in me with whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.

It's the heartbeat. That's what the sooty grouse call. Mimics. Yeah, it's relationships, isn't it? The sooty grouse is just like, hey, babe. I'm at the top of this hill. While we were hunting sooties, I kept trying to think, what's the fun part?

And at various times, I thought, oh, the the top of this hill. While we were hunting, as soon as I kept trying to think, what's the fun part? And at various times, I thought, oh, the fun part shooting them, you know, like picking your shot. Then I thought the fun part, you know,

like bounce around, like what's the fun part? The fun part, the funnest part. Like if you could make a drug, if you could, you know, go to Bristol Meyer and it'd make you up a little,

no, they would don't do really that kind of drugs. Who does that kind? Who makes drug drugs? Bear. Pfizer. Pfizer. There you go.

If I was going to go to Pfizer and I'm like, I want a drug that makes me feel like X, but not X to C. I mean like Y. I want a drug that makes me feel like Y. Y would be the moment when you think, I will find this bird's cluster of trees? It's that. For me, it was like,

okay, this is the tree. Let's figure out what branch he's on. Oh, really? That was the happy part? We isolated it. That was the fun part. The fun part was once we figured out which tree it was and we started doing the circles and like looking around and stuff that I enjoyed that because it

was you know it was detective work no you're wrong it's when you it's when you realize yeah and it was your fun part like if you could get any in capsule form buck a pill oh somewhere right in there

I don't know if it's the cluster of trees or isolating the tree but right in that moment where you know you're underneath him but you haven't found him that's the funnest part you just said it was the same thing for you. No, it's when I know that I'm going to find the cluster of trees.

Oh, so you're still a couple hundred yards out, but you're like. This son of a bitch is going to get found. It gets loud in a way. We talked about this earlier today, about how now we've got seven or eight days of city grass hunting under our belts. And now as you hike, climb, trudge towards the bird, and there's a long time where it's so faint. It's the ooh, ooh, ooh. You have to stop to hear the sound.

You have to stop every now and then and go, okay, there's my straight right left. You keep going, you keep going you keep going and then the next time you stop it's got just a little bit more of a oh oh and you're like okay we're kind of bearing in next you keep walking you keep walking and then all of a sudden there's a point where you hear the bird over the sound that you're making whether it's your your boots or or scratching through the the brush or whatever and at that point now it's like okay we're in that we're probably within 200 yards and you're probably gonna we're gonna find this tree we're gonna you're gonna find the cluster we're gonna find his cluster so it's when the needle starts doing this instead of like doing this it goes like that but i felt like last year all that we did, we didn't have that dialed in.

Only one time. One time, yeah. But I didn't know what was happening. Right. And yeah, what was the bird that was right off, like when we hiked up the trail, got to the snow, and then he was off? Lost bird.

That was lost bird. We were under lost bird's tree. We were in his cluster. Yeah, no. We could go back and kill a Lost Bird. I've played that back a hundred times. He's a year older. I know right where he is. I got him. I got a GPS

waypoint on him. Yeah. He's a Lost Bird. I was like, yeah, Lost Bird. I now realize after multiple visits to Lost Bird's area, I now know that we were actually standing beneath Lost Bird's tree. Right. Yeah. It's a miracle he didn't shoot on us. Walking in circles.

Because I thought it'd be that you'd look in the tree and there he is. Right. So I'm like, oh, no, he's not in that tree. I must be insane. And then we just start going down these ridges and trying to go down these little cliffs and trying to get angles. Like, no, I realize, yeah, we were standing beneath Lost Birds. And even when someone tells you, no, you you're gonna have to glass up into the trees

it's the classic story of like the first time cruiser hunter when like our buddy jay scott says yeah go onto that ridge and that ridge across from you go and glass it and you come back 20 minutes later and you're like yeah man glass it he's like no no you didn't glass it because you picked up your binoculars didn't put them on a tripod, looked over the hill, and then left. And it's the same thing here. First thing Barb does, she pretty much does the circle, narrows down the tree, and then lays down.

Takes off her backpack, sets her rifle down. Yeah, busts out her binoculars, because she's not going to eat them until then, and then lays down and gets comfortable and starts glassing straight up in the air. I remember Chris Denham, the publisher at Western Hunter and Elkhunter Magazine. I was talking to him about hunting coos deer. I said something to him along the lines of,

well, how long do you sit in a spot? How long do you glass one area? And I remember him saying, sometimes all day. I mean, like without moving, he's like, yeah, without moving, I'll sit in one spot all day. I didn't really, I couldn't even really comprehend what he was talking about. Now I understand what he's talking about. But yeah, when I made that original call to Barb,

she said, I'll usually look for the bird for an hour. If I can't find it, I'll sometimes move on. And I'm like, yeah, you know, and then one thing after another.

All right. Yeah. Honest closing thoughts. Go. If you're up here, for whatever reason, cruise ship, spring bear hunt, whatever. Take a couple days and go city grouse hunting. It's a blast. That's it?

That's the best you can do? That's my closing thoughts, yeah. I'm trying to sell. I mean, I don't know. It's your closing thoughts. Yeah. Garrett? Garrett?

I would say in response to the fun moment, that scenery. Like, just. Oh, that's touching. See, that's the kind of thing I wanted to get out of you guys. No, when I break out of that lakeside, you know, trying to calm my heart rate, you look around here, and it's, I mean, that moss and, like, the light. I mean, it's beautiful. that moss and like the light i mean it's

beautiful whales yeah whales and the way when you hit one with a hit a grouse at 22 no no not that the feathers oh yeah when the sun's right and dozens of feathers are falling yeah falling from 100 feet up in a tree, and it just is nice. Yeah. It's a nice juxtaposition. There's like death and life in the air. Affirmation. Yeah, you know, I had a thought today that when I didn't feel bad shooting the bird,

but I felt bad as he fell out 80 feet up and he hit the ground so hard. No, he didn't do any of that. It was one of those where it was like it wasn't a single limb. So he's like gaining speed. He was almost hitting terminal velocity. You know, and I couldn't even see where he landed. But I don't know. It's that juxtaposition of like I don't feel bad killing you.

But after you're dead, I don't want you to slam the ground from 100 feet up. I feel bad shooting a lot of stuff, particularly bears. Whenever I shoot a bear, I feel pretty bad. Not that I stopped doing it, but man, just not a trace with blue grouse. I think because you're shooting primarily, you know, your goal, you're shooting males. You know?

Females are going to get bred. You're shooting males. And then something like that, you think like every year 75% of the birds alive are dying. A four-year-old blue grouse is ancient. I just don't feel bad shooting them. They're tasty, too. Yeah, it's like they have pretty high fecundity,

super high mortality. They're just dying all over the damn place. It's like if I didn't get them something you know i mean something's gonna get him now bears i killed a bear one time they with the tooth dent of analysis was 17 years old i was in my early 20s well he's about to die old age anyways yeah but i'm saying i can't be like oh if i didn't kill you something you know i mean like if i you kill blue guys like you shoot blue guys something else gonna kill him anyway now bear you might shoot him and i can't be like, oh, if I didn't kill you something. You know what I mean? If you kill blue grouse, like you shoot a blue grouse,

something else is going to kill them anyway. Now, a bear, you might shoot them, and I can't say that. You might live another 10 years. I don't know. What is the blue grouse's predator? Or what predator feeds off the blue grouse? Pine martins kill a lot of them. Weasels, long-tail weasels, ermines, kill a lot of them. Raptors

kill them. And then you got all the nest predators because they nest on the ground. Even pine squirrels will steal the eggs. We found a big-ass egg today way up the hill. Yeah. Did you guys really? Some seabird, like a duck or

something. Duck egg or both. Big robin's, robin egg blue, but the size of a chicken egg. Way up in the woods. Like in a nest? Something carried it up there. Oh, okay. Oh, you know what happened the other day, man? We had a robin build a nest.

Maybe that was a sooty egg. Way too big. Their egg would be like that yeah like a you know quarter uh robin built a nest up in my out our kitchen window and me and my boy were out in the yard and uh i see the nest fell out of the tree so i'm like oh jimmy look you know the nest fell out of the tree and walk over we're looking at the nest, and I realized that the babies had gotten pretty developed inside the egg, and all the eggs, when the nest fell out of the tree, all the eggs broke.

So he's four. He didn't like that a bit. Little baby birds laying every which way. He talked about that for a few days. Concluding thoughts, Mike? Hunt2Eat.com. I enjoyed the hunt. It was another new experience and an adventure.

It was awesome. It was an adventure. I liked it was awesome i you know it was it was a it was an adventure i liked it i liked it a lot and what i think about whenever i'm grinding and going to the top as i get a song it just keeps going over and over and over and for the past few days it's been fleetwood mac and i can't get fucking it which which one i can't get it up no i can't get out of my head no out of my personal head. Well, Fleetwood Mac. If it's Silver Springs, I'm with you there, man.

Landslide. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't know why. Get Silver Springs in your head, man. Yeah. That's a good tune. It's like a lady singing to a man, and she loved the man, and the man didn't love her. And she's telling him that, you know,

my voice is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. So like these guys in their 20s. Yeah. Yep. Fun times. Yep. Her voice is going to follow him down and haunt him. Corey, concluding thoughts closing thoughts how's one of those hunts where i think anyone could maybe not anyone but those who want to pursue sooty grouse can uh you probably have quite a

few encounters if you gave it your all you know it's one of those where you're probably going to have a good opportunity to see what you're chasing. Especially if you got a pair of ears on and you'd like to walk around the woods, this is the perfect hunt for you. Bring your kid out. You can't be a little kid though. My kid couldn't climb. My five-year-old, he's five now.

That ain't going to happen. If you made a goal to find one a day, if you're like, I could take my boy out and be like Our goal is to find one And we're going to bring a ton of snacks And look in a lot of holes Under trees and have a general good time And maybe you know

But yeah you're not going to have Coming downhill though man Well I'd wind up carrying him out on a show I'd wind up carrying him You're not going to carry anyone down that shore. Yeah, he's got to get a little older. Is that your concluding thought? Yeah.

And then, yeah, besides this Devil's Club. You know what? My concluding thought, I already planned out my concluding thought, which is freaking Devil's Club. Yeah. God, that stuff. It's terrible. There wasn't too much.

There was a little bit. There was more in the Alaska range whenever we were there with rourke that we were going through that was thick but man that stuff is just it's terrible i like it better than poison oak absolutely a lot better than poison oak for two reasons one where you get it is where you get it right it doesn't spread there's no surprises and it doesn't get on your pecker unless i mean unless you're like unless you pee different than i do it doesn't get on your pecker so it's like when you come out of the woods you're like i have devil's club in these places right and it's not like poison oak where you're like a week later it's like oh now i have devil's club you know it's like did i really touch myself there while that

was going on you know i mean um did you grab did you i mean i know you did you talked about it but like you know you're grabbing for vines and stuff when you're going up and you just like happen to like club you grab a vine of spikes to pull yourself up and just the main the main i got I got bitch slapped where I moved one out of the way with my foot, bent it out of the way with my foot, and it slipped from out of my toe and came up and just door nailed me. So my most Devil's Club action is from that one thing. But also one time I caught one on the leg and thought that my pants, but that didn't happen.

I thought my pants would stop it, but I got like a thigh full of Devil's Club. Do you want? Yeah, but my Packers clean. I bring this up only because Yanni's Yanni permanently permanently deformed

his Packer with poison oak. He told me it was so bad that if he was to meet, I mean, he's happily married. Stay married the rest of his life. But if he was not somehow in a hypothetical situation, was not, and had to meet a new gal, the new gal would wonder what was going on right exactly there's only one way to itch it um

all right All right. Yeah, I guess my concluding thought was Yanni's little thingy there. Thanks for joining. Oh, a couple things. A couple, yeah. Buy one of Yanni's t-shirts. Also, check out the show, Meat Eater, Sportsman Channel, Thursdays at 8 when we're on the air. If you don't do that, go to meateater.vhx.tv.

You can download and stream all kinds of Meat Eater. We just finished our best episode ever, and I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to figure out a way. I'm going to put some episodes up for free on VHX, man. But don't wait for that. Just go buy one for now. And then buy one of Yanni's t-shirts. But don't buy so many that he quits his job.

All right. Is that it? That's it. Good night. Ciao. Later. Hey, listen up. This sounds like an advertisement, but it's not.

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