The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 032

Episode Date: April 1, 2016

Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis talk with call maker Jason Phelps. Subjects discussed: the annoyingness of people, such as Annie Raser, who don't get a chubby about hunting turkeys; the first and second bull that Phelps ever called in; lathes; consistency in craftsmanship; the inherent difficulties of stretching latex just right; why turkeys gobble at weird noises; the best weird noises to make a turkey gobble; grizzly bears; the ESA; market saturation; American elbow grease. 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.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now 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. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Hey, everyone.

First thing I want to talk about, how annoying it is. I don't understand people who don't want to, guys who like to hunt, who act like they don't want to hunt turkeys. You hear it so much. You just have that habit? Yeah, the anti-racer. Oh, yeah, I just don't get it. I just don't get it. i hear that from so many people but that doesn't count as your house going yeah man spring thunder dude

it's just it's mini elk hunting oh my god just locate them what it's like i don't understand like what's not like big old damn bird coming through the woods is head changing colors right i mean you know why because i think when most people think hunting turkey they're not thinking hunting wild turkey they're thinking like i'm hunting butterball and cartoon turkey and who whatever the turkey is that's in their head or the turkey that like is in their they go to their mother-in-law's house you know in some suburb in new jersey and there's a turkey in the yard and they think that's what turkeys are like. It's hard to give the turkey respect until you've been schooled by the turkey a few times.

Multiple times. I get sick of hearing about that from people, man. It's like the... I mean, it's one of the most hunted critters on the planet. Not on the planet. It's one of the most hunted critters in the country if you look at man hours. The most shot animal in the country is morning doves.

Numbers. Man hours, I think, is deer. Pure numbers is doves. Man hours is deer. I think turkey's up there, though. The old squirrel's got to rank high, too. Yeah. But think about doves, dude.

You go out and, you know, like we went dove hunting this year. A couple hours into it, you got 60 doves laying there with a bunch of guys, you know. So, yeah, it's the most harvested critter. We're here with, how do you like to describe yourself, Jason? Callmaker. Callmaker.

Jason Phelps. Phelps. Quality game calls. This guy, what's interesting about this guy is he actually is out in his garage he makes the calls i mean from scratch out in his garage right yeah literally i mean we besides uh the laminate coming to me pre-pressed you know basically i get a big sheet of plywood and that's what i start with on the wood calls and you know the the diaphragm start is a piece of scrap latex a piece of tape and an aluminum frame you know and and everything's hand built so far i've been able to keep up with the man but everything's hand built and you're by me yeah and you're a real pain in the ass about getting american made stuff pretty much i mean very very

the green bands on some of these calls are made in like Indonesia, but that's about as, you know, I've really tried, you know, the whole bleed red, white, and blue thing. Pretty proud American. I've really tried to source all my plastic, you know, in the U.S. and work with companies that, you know, are able to source everything in the U.S. So why did you ever get interested in making game calls? Okay, here's a, I'll keep the story short, but there was a small local sporting goods show there in my hometown, real small.

Explain where that is. Menlo, Washington. I think it was the Pacific County Outdoor Show. Yeah, we're recording right now in Seattle, Washington, in my brand Spigotty New Garage. And Jason, you're from two hours south of Seattle. Yeah, down, Peel, Washington is actually where I live, but just outside of St. Trish, Halas area. And you come from a long line of loggers. Yeah, everybody in my family.

That business is booming. It is. It's still going good down there. Is it really? I was joking because I thought it was like. No, it's still. I mean, they work for where I was joking because I thought it was like. No, it's still, I mean, they, you know, they work for where I was, which one of the last.

So they're doing pulp and stuff though, right? Yeah, export. Where I was, there's a lot of export, but you know, get too deep into it. You know, they're on, you know, 35 to 40 year cycle. So a lot of it, you know, isn't, they aren't getting the export and stuff anymore. But yeah, there's, you know, a lot of them still make it, make a living out there.

The, you know, my hometown's pretty much loaded with loggers you know that work out of the warehouser uh pl camp got you got you but then you like peeled off didn't yeah yeah my old man he's like i don't know if it's because he was afraid i wasn't going to cut it and so it's going to hurt his pride or what but he's like yeah you need to go off and uh go to school and so i ended up pretty good it's pretty good at math, so I naturally went to engineering. Got a master's in game calls. Yeah, yeah. And then always had a passion growing up.

Ever since my first elk calling, the switch was flipped, and I've been hooked ever since. So, yeah, getting into it, you obviously started out, like, liking making games, making animal noises. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it started off with the Primo's Terminator Bugle. I called my first bull, and I'm like, man, how can I incorporate this into my livelihood

or to my passion? How old were you then? It started at seven years ago, so I was 25. Just had my first kid, and it was shortly after that I started up the game calls. No, no, how old were you when you got it? I mean, how old were you when you blew your first game call? I bought my first elk call in 98, so I would have been 16, 17. It was the night before our archery opener here in Western Washington,

and we were out just scouting for muzzleloader and rifle. And we actually pulled up to a landing and the elk scattered, you know, seeing us pull up. I'm like, that's weird. You pulled to a landing, like in a boat? No, a landing where they log from. So you said, yeah.

So we pulled up on the landing and the elk scatter. And I didn't know what I was doing. Get out and rip a bugle. And all of a sudden you hear a bugle down the timber where they just ran from. And know before probably 10 minutes we had a bull 30 30 yards in front of us just going nuts you know what pissing all over himself and uh man this is easy bow season starts tomorrow no none of us have bow tags you know we're all rifler muzzleloader hunters and um I didn't hunt archery that year and then so my junior year in

high school I I got a bow out of the cabela's catalog i remember like a mail order bow you know don't go to your local pro shop get fitted none of that just mom and dad buy this check out where you left-handed or right yeah yeah but you know have no clue on draw length or any of that stuff because at that time nobody around us bow hunted um so mail order a bow right out of Cabela's. Wow, just that long ago, late 90s, there's nobody bow hunting. No, not in our area. It's taken a huge exponential,

it's grown exponentially since probably the 2000s. But at that time, it was pretty much, you had any elk you wanted to yourself. Really? Yeah, you could go out. Why is that? Nobody, there were very few. I mean, a couple of local guys, I knew that bow hunted some old timers that had grown up doing it their whole lives,

but there was nobody compared to what there is now out there. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know that. Yeah, everybody was a muzzleloader or a rifle hunter out there. It went out the next day, opening day of Archery Elk, and it still may be my biggest true Roosevelt I've ever called in, a big six by seven, 40 yards. I'm like, all right, that's within 12 hours.

Really? Yeah, within 12 hours, I've called in two of the biggest Roosevelt's I've ever seen during rifle or muzzleloader season. Did you kill it? No, I still wasn't bow hunting. Yeah, I was still just dinking off calling. Oh, it was bow season. So you called a bull in bow season without a bow.

On bow season without a bow. Close. A ton of shot opportunities. Yeah. Why don't you go get a dude with a bow? We tried. Run an ad in Craigslist. Need a dude with a bow.

That's the thing. You couldn't barely find anybody back then. It would have been a tough chore to find somebody with a bow tag um so you're kidding me no it was and then of course it took off but then next year i bought a bow and i think i missed six bulls i thought it was going to be easy so i go out there and uh i didn't have the whole uh nerves under control yeah yeah that's a that's a cost yeah so six bulls i think i've flown arrows over and then finally the seventh one i somehow settled all the nerves and made it count. We were talking about this the other night.

It's like a buddy of mine was talking about how he's got so many friends that can shoot on paper so much better than he can. He's like, they just know more about the gear. They can shoot better than me. They can talk circles around me. They ask me questions I don't know the answer to. But you put them in front of an gear, they can shoot better than me. They can talk circles around me. They ask me questions I don't know the answer to, but you put them in front of an elk, they can't hit it. Because you put me in front of the elk, I just hit it. But it's psychological, man.

Yeah, there are guys that have ice flowing through their veins for sure. Yeah. But you got to beat that out of yourself too, I think. Yeah. I think some people just have a certain number of misses laid up and i mean yeah yeah and then of course you know didn't put a whole lot of practice in you know being a converted rifle hunter is like ah you pick your bow up sight your 20 through 40 yard pin in and go out and you know i i quickly learned that you know the dedication to the archery trade and you know that

it required a lot more than going in sight and your rifle in you know a week before season it required you know kind of a year-round commitment and so yeah man you know dialed all that in but yeah i would think of hunting as a discipline but like but but it's not you don't even need to think about like archery it has to be a discipline yep you know anyone that's good at it unless you just got like the ice like you're saying not only not only ice flowing through your veins but you need just like uh another use of the word discipline just like the kind of discipline to know when and you have a shot when you don't have a shot so if you can do that if you can go out in the woods and be like hey i'll shoot 30 yards or i don't shoot you know and guys that are able to stick to that and let a bull walk that's 35 40 yards away because they drew in their line like that's my thing man

you give me a bullet 30 yards i'm gonna put it right in the heart or i'm not gonna shoot but you wind up shooting and then later being like paced off. You had no idea where the thing was. You know what I mean? Yep. It's just hard. I don't even miss it. I used to like to bow hunt a lot. I don't know.

I tried to give Yanni a minute ago. I tried to give Yanni a piece of archery equipment. He told me he don't bow hunt anymore. I honestly think it's easier than rifle hunting though. Well, yeah, in that you're not dealing with hordes of dudes. Yeah, or just, I mean, say the same area I could hunt area A, bow season and hunt rifle season, whatever season they give me, I'd rather have a bugling bull and take those odds

versus a rifle and have the extended range, but not necessarily be able to know where they're at or dial them in. So I honestly think from a success standpoint, I'd rather pick up a bow. Yeah, I think if God came down and put a gun to my head and said, you got to get it out this year or I'm going to pull the trigger. And I had to pick, I could do like rifle,

especially in Montana because I did so much with my bow in there. But when I would do it, I could do like rifle, especially in Montana because I did so much with my bowhunting there. But when I would do it, I'd be like, okay, so I got a six-week archery season, you know, and can pretty much hunt by myself. I would probably go that route. Yeah. Knowing that just like the pressure aspect of it.

Because like bowhunting, you go find an elk, and there's a reasonable assumption he's going to be there tomorrow if you leave him unmolested. Rifle season? Dude. Yeah, who's going to run into him? Yeah, who knows, man.

So anyhow, you were out there, little kid calling the bull, calling the bull. Was hooked. The teenager. And then, you know. So do you have a, do you have a make, do you have like a story where you're like,

yeah, my call failed me. And I knew that I had to make my own. No, there was a, there was a story where you're like, yeah, my call failed me, and I knew that I had to make my own? No. There was a time where the current call company I was using, there were some quality control issues, and I was like, man, my call that was money, everyone I'd buy, and now all of a sudden, one out of four, one out of five is good. And I'm like, what the, what's going on?

And that kind of led to it. But the real reason, and it's kind of a strange reason to ever start a business, is I was at that sportsman's show walking through and there was an old man in the corner, had an old lathe, and was actually turning calls at the show. And I just, I was with,

it was my girlfriend at the time, wife now, and just kind of watching him. I was like, I can do that, you know. You're like, hey, baby, do that. Yeah. I can do that. You're like, Hey baby, yeah, I can do that. You think that guy's sexy because he's turning calls over there. And, uh, no, I was like, you know, being a semi redneck growing up in a small town, like I can work a lathe, you know, have wood shop in school. I can do all that. And it was kind of, so I was able to kind of tie my passion into, you know, that kind of let the spark, this guy was sitting there making calls and they didn't sound very good. I like why you know let's let's sit and play around see what we can do

make one sound good and then we'll kind of do a slow release um you know i thought when i started making this it all started with the wood elk call that was the very first call i made and what do you call that one the easy estrus easy estrus yeah just uh you know they i got on a lot of the at the time there was three or four custom call forums, you know, where the custom call makers were on there, you know, talking about woods they were using and, and styles and finishes. And so I was just, you know, soaking it all in as much as, as much as I can learn, you know, what, what wood goes with what finish and, you know, what, what acoustic properties do you get out of certain densities? And so I was soaking it all in,

and I actually traded my first muzzleloader bullhorns for a lathe from another local call maker down there. I'm like, I sent him three maple burls that my uncle had cut as a timber faller, and I traded a set of my horns because he makes calls out of the actual horn. Oh, is that right? So I traded it. I'm like, man, to me, they're just sitting in the garage collecting dust but it had some sentimental value but i'm like this is this is you know just had a kid you know i'm like this is my this is my entry in so he traded me a

lathe um for for that three burls and so how old were you then 25 yeah kids a little bit young not young young by modern standards yeah yeah so yeah i was 25 had the kid was like three months old i think when i kind of started and got the lathe and uh ordered all the all the tools and and you know all the chucks and all the wood turning tools and like i said i thought i would that call changed i mean i'm holding the call right now checking it out no i mean the band it i make a style without the band which is kind of my standard um you know we we fancy them up with the bands but the call really hasn't changed at all for the last six years yeah you'd call that just like a basic uh external read yeah an external read it's you know

it's tuned nasally a little bit estrusy um you know which in my opinion in september is kind of the sound i'm going after um we matter of fact we talked a little bit before. Can we change that sound? And yeah, if somebody prefers a deeper tone or whatever, I can custom cut a read and really dial that into your preference. I've called Elk in with that call. Is that right? Yeah. I met Jason through J. Scott and then made a few phone calls

and begged him for a few free calls. What year was that? Because I remember you having one of these. This was the first time I've seen these. Yeah. I don't know. It's got to be four or five years ago. 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 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 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 MeatEater 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 hand-picked by the on x hunt team some of our favorites are first light schne 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. So you started turning them on a lathe, the wooden barrel. Yep. And you did a lot of extra of, I shouldn't say extra like doesn't matter, but a lot of, like it's an ornate, it's like an ornate call. Yeah, I mean, started, got the finish, got the sound, got the size and the shape.

Some people wanted it to fit their hand right. Some people, and so I got the sound. To me, the sound is always going to rule a call. So I worked on the sound first and then made them look good second because I knew that was going to, what was going to sell them. And so I kind of dialed this all in. And in that first year, instead of selling 10, I sold two or three hundred you know on the local selling where hunting washington.com there's a forum local you know i know that forum yeah hunting washington.com and

just started putting them i become a sponsor for dirt cheap prices like they let you know level of entry was was dirt cheap like 50 bucks for a year. So I got on, signed on as a sponsor and calls just started rolling off. And then keep going back to small country kid. I don't know how websites work. I don't know how e-commerce stores work. I don't know how any of this works. And all of a sudden I'm hit in the face with

how are you going to keep up? How are you going to let people get on and buy them? And so that's a whole different road. I'm just a call maker at heart. All this other stuff like business decisions and stuff sometimes. I did the best I could. Rip a couple notes on that thing. That's the easy asterisk.

It is really easy to use. That eat sounds good really easy to use um i always joke with my old man he's the only guy on the face of the planet i haven't been able to teach to use this thing oh really it looks like it looks painful he gets us he gets his big you know squint squints his face up like i'm like no if you're trying that hard, let's start over. I actually made him a special bite and blower, like the old school bite. He uses that style. That's what I started.

When I first started messing around, that's what I would have is just the bite and blows because anybody could make a noise. But see, that's the thing is, that's why I always sucked at game calls because I wouldn't work on it at all. So I was brought up, like I mainly, I hung out with a lot of friends, but I mean, I mainly hung out with my two brothers, and the middle brother, I'm the youngest, the middle brother

was just like more of a tinkerer, man. Like he was the kind of guy that would, you know, just totally dismantle electronics and shit, and often leave them dismantled, but he would like dismantle them. Or, and he got a, he made a little kit to wrap his own rods, you know? So he'd wrap his own rods and lacquer them. Like just all the painstaking, meticulous

hunting and fishing type stuff. And he learned how to do game calls. Not make them, but just learn how to mess with them and mess with them and tune them. And he was always like the family caller. And I, it wasn't until I just, it wasn't until way later. Like it kind of goes like this when I was in college, regular school, college, you know, they make you take Spanishanish three years right i never paid any

attention man i'd go in there and i try to like memorize this shit ahead of time so i could get a grade the minute i got out of school i went to mexico for a month to fish just camp on the beach and fish i'm like i can't believe i just wasn't paying any attention the whole time they were trying to teach me spanish because now i'm sitting here looking at these guidebooks trying to figure out how to say basic shit that i know i learned in school and didn't care because it wasn't like real to me at the time and all those years you don't have any responsibilities and anything you're supposed to be doing if I would have just been messing with calls I missed 10 years of practice yeah yeah no I what else are you gonna do it like a 10 year old dude should be messing with game

calls yeah yeah you leave one laying around my house the kids have got it slobbered up you know they sound like a dying rat or dying cat whatever whatever they noise they can make but yeah the kids the kids are just oh yeah they love those things i put in my kids mouth all the time now just because you know they run around everything sounds like a kazoo yeah but it's like just getting some basic familiarity with it you know because like but so much of the hunting we did we were kind of like pre when i grew up hunting tree stands in michigan was like before people were real serious about the science of whitetail hunting you know we do it for ducks we do a lot of pass shooting a lot

of jump shooting you know and you'd see you'd be out there and just like guns blazing out in the marsh and some guy wailing on a duck call. It's like, dude, it's just like, doesn't matter. You're not going to bring one in with that call. Yeah. You know, we're past shooting out here. So it's just like stuff I just never figured out. And we'd start field hunting for geese and, and, uh, yeah, man, but I was, I was in my twenties before I got, started realizing what I was missing out on.

Yeah. You know, when you moved to Montana and was missing out on. Yeah. You know, when you moved to Montana, probably started hunting elk. Yeah. That's yeah. Then it started messing around with the bite and blow elk call started to matter.

Yeah. I remember calling you one of the first times I went out, I remember calling the cow elk and real close. She came in and started blowing at me, like barking at me, you know, and I was like, this is a powerful medicine,

man. Yeah. But really elk calling and elk calls aren't that much older than than before when you're saying you started doing it right when you brought that first bugle tube in 98 i mean elk calls maybe another 10 years yeah i think you know i don't know the whole history i know know Larry D. Jones out of Oregon and then Carlton were kind of on that cutting edge of diaphragms and kind of introducing that. And then kind of the next historic mark is Rocky Jacobson developing that pallet plate and then the whole patent issue with them and Primos. And then they carried that. And then, yeah, realistically, elk calling isn't that old.

Now, my brother, I have an older half brother. I was just talking yeah now my brother i have an older half but i was just talking about my brothers i have an older half brother and he was he guided elk for many years out of esses park colorado and i remember it must have been the early 80s they were messing around with they were taking uh diaphragm calls made for turkey there was no elk one taking diaphragm calls made for turkeys and taking pvc um black plastic you know yeah vacuum hoses or anything they can get oh yeah blowing elk bugles and back then hearing about it back then it just worked dude it was like the it's just like it was like the cutting edge you know yeah i mean my my grandma my grandpa passed away now but my grandma you know she shows me the like the old uh like straws the hard hard plastic straws that

you can kind of coil up and if you blow through those you can get that kind of that high pitch my grandpa used to locate bowls you know back with those and you know it's just kind of funny the progression you know anything these guys could get their hands on to give them the edge and you know and then it went to you know going to find your shot back and stealing the hose and chopping it up and then you know we were talking earlier with the honest you know now it's a blast a black plastic bat you know people are a lot of guys use those they just chop them up and drill holes in them and use them for their bugle tubes. The first bull elk I ever, maybe even ever saw, and then proceeded to kill, didn't find him, but killed him.

And that bull was bugled in, but he was bugled in with a PVC tube, like a three-footer. And no mouth call at all. No, no, no, he had a mouth call, but he blew it through a PVC tube. And that was in 2000, I think. It's amazing the way the animals adapt, where they hear sounds and sounds get old in their community and then they associate those sounds with the man.

But you think, you got elk turning up. Not so much with turkeys, but you got elk turning up that are in their 20s. Dude, that's a lot of experience yeah a lot of have you found that to be true here in washington and calling it elk and yeah i mean there's there's a huge um difference between calling elk within a mile of a road versus calling elk 15 miles in a um you know walk-in a lot of our industrial timberlands out there are walk-in access only and you know there's a big misnomer that you know, walk in. A lot of our industrial timberlands out there are walk-in access only. And, you know, there's a big misnomer that, you know, Roosevelt's don't bugle. You hear

from, you know, locals around here or people that have hunted both places, oh, the Roosevelt bulls don't bugle at all. Well, I can, if I wasn't going to, if I'd show you my honey hole, I would prove you wrong or, you know, watch my video that we put together. But yeah, I mean, Roosevelt bulls, there is a difference in my opinion and herd together. But yeah, I mean, Roosevelt bulls, there is a difference in my opinion in herd dynamics. Some of those Rocky Mountain bulls have a lot of more mature satellite bulls that are kind of pestering the herd.

And so that does naturally bring out more bugling, but it's not unnormal to go out in the morning here and hear 10 different bulls in a canyon bugling. Wow. Yeah. I mean, so- And you're talking about out in the rainforest too, man. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. Thick, heavy coastal timber. You're not hearing three mile away bulls. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and the same thing, you know, pressure to, you know, hearing stuff, getting accustomed and learning.

I killed a bull in 2011 in a Christmas tree patch. Basically it was replanted probably 10 years. And we'd been hunting this canyon all day, roads around it, bugling from the roads or walking out finger ridges and bugling nothing all day. I sat with that bull as my buddy went to get help in our bike carts. We were on a biking area.

He was going to push both of our bikes up. And as I sat with that bull, the canyon just lit up. Probably by the time we were done, eight to 10 different bulls in that canyon. We've been bugling and hunting that thing all day, but there's roads around it. But, you know, it is, you know, sun went down and those bulls just lit up. And so, like, they've been there the whole stinking day. It's just so much pressure.

If they've heard people bugle from every point along that road, they just weren't going to answer anything. So let's back up, though, because when you started making that, you started making your cow call, why would people even buy it from you? Because you're just saying, like, yes, I make a call. You didn't have any way to share what it sounded like. No, I mean, we did a small video production. I was back in 07. We did me and my buddies, you know, we did a small video production. I was back in 07.

We did me and my buddies, primetime outdoors, four of us over the shoulder, camera action. So we did have some video. We went out and did like a two-minute little YouTube video. This is what the call sounds like. So that helped a little bit. But I was fortunate enough in 2009 to kill a muzzleloader bull on film out there in my neck of the woods. And that helped sell the call. And then, you know, it was funny, though.

You called that bull in. Yeah, I actually called him in twice. Called him in, kind of going through the timber. He got to about 40 yards and realized something. And then all the elk were single filing. Muzzleloader, I don't know if it was a bad musket cap or what but pow drive you know just the cap went off and nothing so he backed out and i actually called i didn't like that a whole bunch no they ran around but it was we were in a salal patch just a jungle patch and we actually went back ate lunch for 45

minutes circled the next little finger ridge over and i called him and another bull back in just using that easy estrus and i killed the one bull and uh um you know so we had that video to share and you know the it was kind of yeah it was kind of cool to you know call a bull and scare the heck out of it and then turn around and call that bull back in yeah he's kind of like what are the chances there's two dudes out here yeah that's got to be one kind of post post-ret. So it worked to help sell the call. And then not fast forwarding too much, in 2012, I had killed a really big bull here in Washington. And it was funny. I'd already had the diaphragms out. I was tinkering with kind of completing the line.

And then as soon as I killed that bull, I was like, oh, these calls must be even better. It's like, no, they were the same calls before I let that arrow go. And they were the same calls after I let that arrow go and they were the same calls after i let that arrow go but now all of a sudden they were better calls you know and that was really and then that was kind of um you know social media kind of it was all just timing was perfect and that's kind of helped me you know catapult so yeah it was definitely starting out in the elk world yeah yeah definitely and you know whether it's a business decision, whether it was more of my true passion, but, you know, some of these other call markets are so flooded, you know, like turkey call.

What, how can I differentiate myself from anybody else in the turkey world? You know, cause there's a thousand turkey, more. There's a thousand plus turkey call manufacturers. You know, you look at elk and there's four or five and that's what I was best at. And so I, you know, that was like, let's, let's focus on that. And then we'll expand the predator line and turkey line down the road.

So you never mess around with whitetail stuff then? No, I, I've got some, you know, production type stuff. I really get a lot of requests, you know, on this side of the state for blacktail and mule deer calls. Yeah. Um, you know, one, and I, I was fortunate enough to do a lot of listening. You know, our state allows bait hunting, and I went over and hunted with my buddy on the east side.

And, you know, so we had a lot of, we literally sat in a ground blind and didn't have more than two minutes without a group of deer in front of us. You know, and bucks running, you know, and running and calling and, and you know coming in and out we could hear him approaching from behind us and from the side you really got to take a listen and what species mule deer i'm like man at least the bucks we were listening to were so quiet and

deep i'm like i can't i'm having a heck of a time replicating that and you mean like grunting does yeah or grunting but you know grunting bucks chasing those and like it's such a deep sound compared to what you hear all the whitetail calls make. I'm like, man, I don't know if I can replicate that. I could with the calls that I had, but it was pretty rough. Do you make a blacktail like a fawn bleat or a deer call? Yeah. My close read predator is tuned for fawn distress.

Zap that once. Do you do like a bear kind of deal like that like the sick of black tail guys use yeah similar um it's kind of that yeah you know but this this call that brings that brings the does in just stomping mad i've got probably 10 does that are in my yard all your blacktails and i i will when they you know here in april or may when you know june whenever the fawns start dropping i'll go out and mess with them i'll go to the corner of my house and blow them and you can do you have does like literally crisscrossing your yard running around

the corner and just going nuts yeah there's a couple there's a couple calling things that that just make you wish that all calls were that way i think calling havelina and then blowing one of those at a black tailed doe yeah it's sort of like you know even when you stand up she stills like okay i see a dude but there's a fawn here somewhere in distress yeah i bet you more than 50 of the time even when i kind of pop out of the corner she stands there and looks at me and still just stomping and blowing like i'm hey you know here i'm i'm a guy you know go back to your phone or whatever don't get too uh you know we were asked a couple uh me and janice were asked a couple this fall just to just kind of watch and because like they're so convinced you know running

down the mountain you know snorting at you stomping their feet leaving coming back you know running down the mountain you know snorting at you stopping their feet leaving coming back you know it's just like you feel like you got an animal on a tether you know which is not a feeling you get all the time long game calls i've watched some hunts up there on you know sick of blacktail and during the rut they'll do it and the does will come around a lot of times those bucks are like still chasing them and that looks like a kick that's what a buddy of mine says he thinks that he's like when i call a buck in he's like they just know they're going toward deer activity and he was saying too that when you get that doe in there stomping around raising holy hell during the rut he's like just hold her there no bucks will show because the box is gonna show

because he hears her messing around yeah you know he's gonna show up yeah Because the bucks are going to show up because he hears her messing around. He's going to show up. He's not coming to the rescue. He's not coming to help or fun. He's like, I don't know. Something's dying. There might be a doe over there too. I'm looking for that doe in heat still. The whole game call thing, I don't know if it's a God complex or what, but being able to have control over nature is always just, I don't know.

It's been my passion. Like, man, I can, I'm literally like the steering wheel to this, you know, a thousand pound bull, you know, elk, or I'm the steering wheel to this, you know, 20 pound black butterball. You know, I basically controlling nature at this point, you know, and fooling them. And so that's always been kind of that allure and what's drove me to, you know, develop all these calls and like, you know, have, whether it's a, feel like I have a small part, you know, you get the pictures and what's drove me to you know develop all these calls and like you know have whether it's a feel like i have a small part you know you get the pictures and it's pretty rewarding to say yeah you know you know your calls were part of this even though i say a lot of times like it's the carpenter it's not the hammer you know like don't give me the credit you're the one running the calls making the right decisions but it's cool to just feel like you have a little bit of you know a part in that success when we were a part in that success. When we were down in Bolivia,

we were out in the jungle with, you know, just like indigenous South Americans. And they would go and suck on their hand to make a monkey noise. Remember that? They would take a blade of grass to do a tapir whistle. What other kind of stuff did they do?

They'd make a lot of noises. Like remember that under that big date tree he's sucking on his hand make a little noise remember him doing that the night i got to go out oh no no no i forgot yeah you weren't there that night yeah you swapped camera guys every night so yeah no they would go they're under this tree and they knew there was monkeys up in the tree and they were just going you know and then later they were uh taking grass and making a whistle and i couldn't ask but later i was able to ascertain that there's a tape here i'll make a whistle like that you know so they're just out like doing game calls with native materials you know it's awesome yeah no it's you know people obviously been doing it for a long long long time man that's like my favorite turkey locator you know just the the old alcohol with your hands you That's awesome. Yeah, no, people have always been doing it for a long, long, long time, man.

That's my favorite turkey locator, just the old alcohol with your hands. I don't know, something I'm worrying about, just being able to replicate it with nothing more than your hands, a barred alcohol, and get that turkey to snap back. I'm glad you brought that up because this is something that we've debated and argued about for a long time. I'm curious to get your perspective on it. We'd go out and we'd be like going out in the pre,

you know, in the dark hour and a half, four daylight to locate a turkey. And it was like, shh, quiet, quiet, quiet,

you know? And someone like slam a car door. It's like, I gave up eventually. I know that like owls and all that, but we would go out and just make noise now i take a predator call yep that and i don't even try to like i don't be like yeah these turkeys are wise so this needs to sound like something killing the fawn you know i just go out and make the most hellacious sound the most abrupt hellacious sound i can make on that call to

shot gobble. One day I remember we were laying there hunting turkeys and we couldn't find anything. We're, you know, got the peacock thing. It's like, how many turkeys have heard of peacock? Right. But they gobble it. Yeah. We got a peacock thing.

We got a coyote thing, all this stuff. Nothing's a goblet. One day my brother Matt just like, like hey at the time as long as stops i just don't know they really like i don't know if it matters that much i don't either what you're shocking them up with and i don't know if they're thinking when he yells hey and he gobbles i don't think that that turkey's in saying oh i better leave now because that was a man yeah he was just yeah responding back basically yeah it's just i i we you know we our experience is all washington turkey hunting but there's something to be said for locating at night you know we got

that i call it the 30 minute window from about 10 minutes before you know dusk and 20 minutes after they're gonna gobble yeah yeah or if Yeah. If they're going to gobble, that's when they'll do it. Coyote howl, for some reason, will locate, you know, for us over there,

locates everything at night. But then, like you were just saying, we have always been hesitant to use it during the day because now it's like, well, do they want to come run into a coyote?

You know, so you're trying to like process this also. I don't know how much they think about way off sounds because I've watched him. If he was at 75 yards, though, it just happened to be. I mean, it's a huge difference. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, give him some credit. They don't live that long, you know? A three-year-old turkey is an old turkey. Give him some credit. He's definitely watched other turkeys bite the dust at the hands of a coyote so if you think about how like turkeys are born to die right yep 75 of nests roughly 75 of nests to get laid are destroyed before they hatch 70 of the turkeys that hatch are dead within their first year 70 percent of the ones that are not are dead within the next year 70 of those are dead within the next year that's why when people

find like a big you know a three-year-old bird it's like he's a survivor man you know i mean and they'll drop multiple clutches but i mean they just die all the time it's like turkeys are constantly dying all over the place you have to think that if you're in an area that has significant numbers of coyotes that a turkey in his one or two years on earth is gonna be like that's not a good sound dude like that i could tell you the dude yelling i don't know what that is but that noise i could tell you i think he's gonna kill me as a coyote yeah but yes so i hear all that and i do like the natural noise because when you're out in the woods you do want to be discreet you know and so running around screaming

and blowing honking car horns it's just like it's just an unnecessary thing yep just naturally i have uh heard turkeys shot gobble crows in real life you know i've heard turkeys shot gobble thunder in real life i've heard them many times shot gobble red tail hawks yep where i see the hawk hear the turkey hear the dogs barking coyotes yipping jets flying over have you heard that flock of geese flying over yeah yeah a lot of times that jet, you get the, whatever, that noise that rolls off every once in a while off the jet, and bam. Really? All right, we didn't have to make a noise.

That was easy to get this one started. Yeah, I just think it's like he's just out there making racket. But, yeah, I would never yell. If you yell a turkey 75 yards away and do that, hey, a turkey's going to haul ass out of there. But the way off noises i don't know if they're processing it i don't i don't think so either we've we've always been careful in the morning you know because a lot of times we'll locate at night and then try to get where we

think you know 100 yards within that tree for the morning you know if nothing else is exciting because it's thinking things gonna gobble 50 times in the tree before it flies down but then he's gonna fly down and go off in some other direction yeah the opposite and you kill him And you kill him at 11. Yep. Yeah, we'll kill him later. But yeah, we usually, you know, our morning's usually silent, just kind of enjoying the sunrise, enjoying all the sounds. Yeah, we used to get up there and think that, you know, because everybody's like, yeah, call him off the ruse, call him off the ruse.

You know, it'd be like 8.30 in the morning. It'd be like, damn it. Yeah, I flew the other way. And now I'm like, I would just sleep till now and get up and go get him at 10. 30 in the morning be like damn it yeah i flew the other way but now i'm like i would just sleep till now and get up and go get them at 10 11 in the morning it's taken me 10 years to even realize that now and maybe people have been saying it i just wasn't listening but you should really never call at a turkey that's in a tree you should never call it one in a tree you should always let him hit the ground. Yeah, just wait. Never. Yeah.

Especially when you hear them up there and you got all these hens going off. Now, I've done it, and I know people have done it, and I see it done, but it's just, yeah. Late morning, man. Yeah. Spare it.

Like, just don't even mess with them. But your whole life, you're brought up like, you got to be out there hunting at dawn. And it does happen, and it feels good when it happens, but if you're going to give me, if I had to pick two hours if someone if i had to be like i could only turkey hunt two hours a day i'd hunt from 11 to 1 yep i'd probably pick 10 to

noon and some of the best turkey hunters i know public you know not not your private land guys but some of your public land guys here they won't they sleep in they'll eat breakfast in camp and they don't go they don't even start their turkey hunt until nine you know it's like let you know and then just the natural process of the hens going to lay you know breaking up the floor it just all makes sense you know and and i think it's just part of you know wanting to be part of that cool experience the sunrise and you know turkeys gobbling a ton in the tree i don't know if i necessarily want to miss out on that but some of these old timers are like you young bucks can go chase these turkeys around in the morning i'll go out there at nine and kill them or ten o'clock and kill them yeah

this thing is you if i hear a goblin like pre-dawn darkness i wouldn't say like man we're gonna get this turkey but if you're out and it's like 11 you know it's kind of sunny out getting warm you get ready for a nap and also yeah we got we got we got you're like dude we're gonna kill that turkey start the oven yeah you just know it's like that dude's gonna play ball man you know same without you know not to switch gears completely but i the same that's why it's almost a mirror image to me um it's like man you get that elk to answer at 10 or 11 or noon and it's bad it's like that's a you know that's a killable elk no i know same same thing it's just some reasons like us things bored in the middle of the day or something i'll keep them entertained and uh yeah we've had great success turkeys and later that middle i

never thought about it with elk but i could see yeah it's like you know he's probably more likely to play he's not just one of like one of a thousand alcohol making racket in the first five minutes of the daytime yeah at 10 a.m he's probably not traveling like he is at 6 a.m yeah he's in our in my opinion you know there's you know probably people that could you know argue but oh yeah he's gonna argue yeah i always but you know we've always had great success or at least at least have an opportunity if we hear that bull you know somewhere between 10 and 1 if he does bugle we you know usually get in close and at least have a an opportunity if we hear that bull somewhere between 10 and 1. If he does bugle, we usually get in close and at least have an opportunity or get to see him or whatever. A close encounter.

Once you got out of doing the estrus, not got out of it, but you made the easy estrus, what was the next call you added to your line? Is that when you got into diaphragm call? Diaphragms. We bought the presses um we have one one press that uh you know basically presses down the aluminum frame we stretch the latex out it's all in a micrometer you know so i can tell within ten thousandths of an inch i don't understand what you mean by presses so i'm gonna tear this call apart just so you can that's no don't tear that one okay

there's there's an aluminum frame under, and it starts out as an oval. It's open. I bend it, and then it crimps it on both sides. So I'll crimp this side first, so this side, and then I'll stretch this side underneath. You just stretch it by hand? It's all on a press. When you're pulling the latex.

Yeah, it's all by feel and by hand, and that's really the art in it. When I first got this thing, I about quit diaphragms. I probably threw 1, thousand of them away. I'm never going to get this. It truly was. There's tricks to it and I was frustrated. It's like somebody handed me a Rubik's Cube.

Is that right? I'm not ever going to get it. Just get the tension right on the latex. The tension right or the cuts right or there's side tension, there's back tension, there's tension at 45s. There's all

different kinds of stretches you can put into these things. I couldn't, you know, master turkey calls and I'm going to offend the turkey call makers are easier to make the elk calls. There's a lot more, in my opinion, finesse to get these things to react right. So that was my next venture is, you know, being a, a die at this time, I had been hunting archery elk for eight years and knew serious elk hunters want diaphragms. They want to be hands-free. They want to be able to bugle, cow call, all from the same call. That was my next rabbit hole I started running down. In between, these are all what I call my medium now, which is what 95% of the guys order, what fit 95% of the guys. But before that, I had a youth and a large. And I knew at the time I was trying to market these things, they weren't the best for everybody,

but I was trying to either fit them in one or the other. And finally, I did well enough that I developed my own frame, this medium frame. My wife worked for an orthodontist. They make lots of molds with people's mouth. I was like, hey, let's start making, take some measurements off of pallet, inside pallets. I want to know, I want to get this average figured out. And so we kind of dialed it in there and came up with the size that was going to work.

So what is the average pallet? In southern Washington. Is that proprietary? Two inches. No, no. Don't tell us. No, no. You can't keep it a secret.

Don't tell you. No, no. You put me on the spot. No, it's something easy. Anybody could buy them and measure them. That's a good idea, no, it's something easy. Anybody could buy them and measure them. That's a good idea though, man. So hit a couple notes on your diaphragm. That's a turkey, isn't it?

Yeah, this is my- Well, you didn't bring any elk ones. I can use the double. It's not going to sound the greatest. I didn't bring any elk calls up. But this is a pretty tight double. It's similar to, this would be more of a bugle read but so let me ask this first is it elk call is the latex tighter or looser than a

turkey um a little bit looser um and usually not as many layers you know a lot of turkey calls end up being doubles or triples just so they can kind of stand that you know hard cutting um a lot of my elk calls are like one what i call one and a half read or a double read. And do you sell more diaphragms or more? I sell, you know, just for pure quantity, more diaphragms. You buy more. Yeah, but, you know, of course, the Easy Estrus sells really well too, and it's priced a lot higher.

So, you know, it's all. And at Beagle Tubes, actually, if I could keep the stinking things in stock and the manufacturer can keep up, I probably sell the most beagle tubes all right yeah yeah and these easy as just as long as you don't lose it i mean you could this thing will work 10 years right just replace the castration band yeah i mean yeah this latex isn't really protected from uv at all or that latex it's in that castration band castration band that's what that is yeah you go to the farm store i buy you know tail docking that castration band. Castration band, that's what that is? Yeah. You go to the farm store,

I buy tail docking slash castration bands. You're shitting me, that's what that is? Yeah. That's why a lot of guys will call me up and say, hey, will you ship me one? I'll pay for shipping. I was like, it's cheaper if you got a farm store. You just wrapped that around my nuts, man.

I could have brought the tool for you. No way. No way. Yeah, but alcohols are stretched a lot looser um you know not quite as much latex in there a lot easier to blow and this is this is a double it's going to be a little bit hard to control as an elk call but i could make it work especially for a bugle nice it's not it's not uh it's not perfect it's not perfect by any means i uh my competition calls that i use are all like one and a half reads or if i was out hunting i would use a one and a half read to do all the locating and stuff and just a lot easier for me to operate and that's that feels foreign in my mouth even trying to bugle on on it. So when you're blowing on diaphragms,

what are you mostly doing with your hand? Let's talk about turkeys first. Like, what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to achieve that you're sounding like a bird, like a ventriloquist-like thing? Or are you trying to actually affect the sound? Yeah, by using your hand, usually to one side or the other, it's causing some sort of deflection off of your hand.

You know, that sound's going to hit your hand and bounce back. And so you're really kind of adding that rich tone and some reflection in that call. I was a nerd when I first started this with our cameras, and I would go set up 50 yards away and do it with my hand and without with my hand with without and you could hear a definite difference in the tone um by just having a hand or just yeah better it's just richer you get some bounce back you kind of break the call up um if I'm on top of a high ridge I won't put my hand because I want that I don't want anything to block you know that sound if I'm trying to locate um you know I'll just let it rip and and don't use my hand but you know typically i don't know why i don't know you just got your hand in there whoops is yeah but sometimes when i'm watching guys dude i'm like that can't all make sense i feel like

it's just like a thing where you feel like you need to be doing something with your hands i don't know what to do with my hands no elk calling especially when i do you know cow calls it's you know you always got your hand kind of cupped. I ventured down, I had another external elk call for a while called the director. And that call really opened up when I designed it. I didn't realize what my, you know, I designed the tone board and then designed the barrel afterwards to get that right sound. That barrel ended up being less than an inch long. And it absolutely changes the sound, whether you put your hand over it and you're absolutely changes the sound whether you put your hand over it and you're leaving it open if you put your hand over the end of that barrel and blow versus if you leave your hand open like that you know if you open your hand up you completely change the

call and completely change the characters characteristics of the call um you know so not so much with easy estrus you can cup it can tighten it. It doesn't affect it as much. But on that call specifically, it made a big difference by reflecting some of that sound. So how many different diaphragm elk calls do you make? Online, I usually make six different turkey diaphragms. Six turkey diaphragms. Yeah, I've expanded to turkey diaphragm yeah i've expanded to two more so i've got eight total just different cuts or different tensions different cuts and then on the elk side when we say cut like explain what we're talking just because i wish that we could

that everybody could see one of these things laying in front of us but most guys know what a diaphragm call looks like but explain what what do you mean by a cut okay so on a turkey diaphragm we've got you know typically three we'll say three pieces of latex, um, in order the top reads, usually the furthest out, um, you know, the read under that set back just a little bit. And then the third read set back a little bit more that top read. Um, we, we typically put some sort of a cut in it. And what that does is by letting that little bit, you know, since we put the top read out the farthest, we leave some of that reed hanging over that second reed. So the second reed is actually your calling reed, and then that top reed is actually introducing some rasp to the call.

Yeah, it's like when you saw what it's cut, it's like you got a little V-shaped piece of latex, which is just vibrating. Yeah. Imagine as you blow air across it, it's like flapping in the wind, but at a very, very high frequency. Yeah, and I've played with this a ton. However big a chunk,

nobody can see what I'm talking about. What do they call that cut? This is a ghost cut. Industry refers to this as a ghost cut. The center's cut out of it. There's all different kinds of cut. The split wire, the split V, is a typical cut. We've got the bat wing cut

you know the split is usually a really raspy call because you have so much material we didn't take any material out you know so you left all of that material overhanging the secondary yeah now what i found you know with the cuts i found that calling turkeys, I can do like a key key, something like that. I don't want a cut or I don't want a big cut. Yeah. And then for like yelping. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So certain calls are better. You mess with it. That's the thing is like everybody's just got to pick them up and mess with them. I don't think you can really anticipate what's going to work for people. Yeah. And that's the hard part. You know, some guys come in with what I consider kind of like a shoestring budget. You know, give me your best two calls. I'm like, you just put me in a hard spot, You know, some guys come in with a, what I consider kind of like a shoestring budget. You know, give me your best two calls.

I'm like, you just put me in a hard spot, you know, to decide for you because I don't know what's going to be the best two calls for you. I can recommend based on what, you know, feedback I've gotten and stuff. What do you get for a single diaphragm? Seven to eight bucks.

I'm still fairly low, but you know, I think a turkey diaphragm is a six pack sells for like 35 bucks. You know, so we're under, we're under six bucks a diaphragm, which is a pretty good deal. And you make all these? All of them. I said, I can make anywhere from,

if they're a single read alcohol, I can make 50 of them an hour. And if some of these triple reads and stuff, I'm probably at 30 of them an hour. The whole process? Yeah. I mean, but it's, your efficiency definitely depends on doing one call,

the same cut, the same stacking, you know, because I got to lay all these retail. What are you cutting that with? Just like tying flies. Super sharp seamstress scissors, basically real small. You hand cut them. Everyone's hand cut. After you stretch it.

Yeah. And some of these, the latex is like a pain. You know, like pain you know like you know that one you basically cut on the ghost cut you make the two cuts and then you grab that piece of latex and pull it and it rips well you can see sometimes it doesn't rip and so you know like this calls the ghost cut specifically that's my casper turkey call it's got like a uh 20 throw away because the cut doesn't turn out right so you make I know I have 50 of them to make for an order, I'll make 70 because I know I'm going to ruin 20 of them.

And it's kind of just part of the deal. And the larger manufacturers, do they have it figured out where they're doing it completely automated? No. As far as I understand, there are some big companies that make calls for other companies, basically. They come up with their specs, and then somebody's sitting there spitting them out all day. But I think one of the larger call companies tried to go overseas and basically stretch out 10 yards of latex at a time.

Oh. And then have a press come down and hit 200 of them at a time. It didn't work because as everything hit at a different time, you were getting variations in the stretch, and it just didn't work out. I think, to my understanding, everybody that's making diaphragm calls has somebody or a group of somebodies sitting down, hand-pressing all of these.

So what makes a good one? With everybody making them, how do you differentiate a good one from a shitty one? Consistency. everybody making them what may how do you differentiate a good one from a shitty one consistency if i in my opinion and you know anybody can hold the hold me to this if you buy my casserole turkey call or if you buy my rip and red turkey call and you order 100 of them all 100 of those i expect to be the same um with me making the, and this is right now I'm able to keep up, but say I'm paying you $15 an hour to sit at a press. I can only make it like four hours and my back starts cramping up, my shoulders hurt. Now say I'm paying you $15. If you're getting paid piecework, you don't care if

this one's off by 10,000 so you didn't stretch it. You're stamping them and throwing them in the pile because you're getting paid. I'm not saying everybody does that, but I have, you know, control over it. My name's going on the call. I have some pride in this. If I fold a piece of latex or if I miss a cramp or something's wrong, I'll toss it in the garbage. It's not worth it, you know, for me to put my name on that. And that's, there isn't, you know, I'm a call maker and I don't want to discredit other call makers, but really when it boils down to it it's somebody stretching latex and putting tape on it it's not rocket science you know so to so to speak and um uh that's only that's what you said there's some art in that

there's there's art and um you know because there is no dial indicators on some of these stretches so it really is by feel um by eyesight i ask you about that is there anything that you can use to press against that latex to see how much rebound it has or you could probably come up with the gauge but then you've got to try to hook like an alligator clip to the back and then somehow you know on a fine scale measure the you know the poundage or the um you know whether you probably measure in ounces of pull i don't even know how you'd measure that. I have a dial indicator on the one stretch,

but it still matters on how much stretch I put on the opposite side so everything truly is by feel. Yeah, I can remember when I was told that when I was having issues with diaphragms because it's the same thing. It's like you'd have two or three, and you'd be like, man, these things are money, and you'd go buy a couple more and it'd be because the same thing it's like you'd have two or three and you'd be like man these things are money and you'd go buy a couple more and then be like the same call

and the next two would suck you know and finally i talked to somebody and they were like oh yeah every year i start off the season with 30 of them and i have five i hunt with the other 25 going to the trash you know and so it's it's cool to hear that you you know put that much effort into the consistency is that when you open up a package you're not guessing whether it's going to work or not. When I went to, here's a, I went to Oregon State Elk Calling Championships three or four weeks ago. And it was kind of my little backstory.

I blew out, we had the Portland Sportsman's Expo, which is one of the largest sportsman shows west of the Mississippi here down. And I had a booth there and I blew out my competition call. And it was almost heartbreaking, like the one I used in Vegas. And now it's gone and I have a competition next week. And I got down there and my buddy, Corey, who I'd made a bunch of calls for, he's going to buy them from me. He needs some calls for the competition. And I was like, Corey, I need to borrow one of those, one of the beasts, which is the name of one of my bugle calls.

And to pull that out of the package and then turn around and use that in the competition is kind of my own personal testament. I didn't sit and pick through 100 or 200 of these calls to get the perfect call. I pulled one right out of the package that was an inventory that I would have shipped to anybody. And that's really what I strive for.

And a lot of times I'll make 50 to 100 at a time. And if I can't grab four or five out of there and they hit the perfect note, I won't necessarily scrap the whole lot, but I'm going to go back to and inspect them like, do the cuts look right? Do the stretches look right? And if they don't, I'll toss them and kind of clean that lot up. And I think that's some of the stuff you don't necessarily get with everybody and

but you probably but don't you wind up hitting the thing where you know as you as you keep doing this and and find more success at it that you're just going to come to a crossroads the day's coming it's it's coming quick so then what do you do because your kids aren't old enough their name will be on it people have told me that women are better call makers on the diaphragm you know smaller i got big old paws i'm trying to get in these tight little um spaces you know train somebody do you train family that's really been my my hang-up is wanting to give give up control of the quality control you know the quality assurance and quality control part of the deal. And I don't know what I'm going to do, to be honest,

because we're running out of time in the days. I need to still align for my good buddy Aaron. I either sleep faster or I need 36-hour days, one or the other. What year did you start doing it, selling turkey calls? 2009. I started kind of development late 2008, and I think I sold my first one in 2009. What's your first one?

What was the cut on your first one? Oh, turkey calls. That was 2011 when I got depressed. The Rip and Red, they kind of all came together. I developed those six kind of originally. This is the Rip and Red? Yeah. You basically looked at turkey calls you know i didn't reinvent the wheel i was like well what popular cuts are out there and so i tried to replicate the cuts

um you know i have a dragon slayer one of my elk calls it's really similar to the casper we just cut the corners off um and so i kind of knew about where i wanted that thing so on the on the dragon slayer we just cut the corners off so on the on the dragon slayer we just cut the corners off so off the latex yeah because that adds too much wrath so on an elk call i wanted it cleaned up and so there's just there's tons of playing and once you learn kind of how the latex reacts and what does what it kind of you know and then i'll come up with a new design and i just kind of slap myself on the side of the head why didn't you knew all the components to this call why didn't you develop this three years ago it's you know it's my new

best call or whatever now i've had these uh because i hunt a lot just keep it in my mouth i mean i'll try to bite it and have it out of my mouth but i've had them get wet and fall apart error is your we have there are tape issues and a lot of us get our tapes from the same manufacturers i'm not saying this didn't happen with a Phelps call, but I mean, I've had it happen with calls. It will happen with mine. You know, I try to warranty them. It's not necessarily my fault, but if these things, you know, it's water-resistant tape.

It's not waterproof. Yeah, I've learned to be much more careful about just having it be just like slobbered up all the time, man. What's your method for keeping them dry? Or like, how much do you run around? If you're just chasing a bull for a day, maybe you haven't heard one for an hour or two but like through the course of the day how much does that call in and out of your mouth a lot i i used to steve's gonna play some music that's the

rasty red ripping red i don't want to rip too loud get yours out answer yanni's question we get yours ready um so on elk hunt as much as I need it in my mouth, I will. But as soon as there's a break or we're chasing or we're moving, I have a buddy, a local guy down there just south of me. He had what's called a reed vise, and it's kind of a homebrew little thing. It hooks to my hat, and then it's basically got like an alligator clip that comes off. That's a good idea. The one thing I found this year in Idaho hunting elk elk 95 degrees all day latex doesn't like direct

sunlight so you'd start getting little hairline cracks in your call all right so then i flipped the underside of my hat when i was kind of blocking my vision but that's where your engineering degree yeah yeah i was like i can get rid of the sun so i use a reed vice and i also i have a prototype basically like a little coin purse squeezer but the thing i didn't like with that is a lot of guys were using vinyl and you know they put like a hole punch in it well that wasn't breathing very good so i used a piece of like 500d cordura on one side and then like mil spec mesh on the opposite send me one of those i'll have to get some made it trust me i've got tons of requests i just like i was telling you earlier everything in the u.s is ordered by the thousands it's like my initial order was like twenty thousand dollars and diaphragm pouches

like man how am i gonna you know have to but no i can get some more made i'll definitely uh so you try to keep it dry as dry and how often are you pulling apart the layers the latex layers i mean is it bad to get in there i'll be getting in there all the time like trying to blow a little air on turkey calls especially that top read once it gets stuck to that under reed, it's not near as raspy and it kind of locks the call up. So a lot of times in the morning, you got to be- So it is okay just to do this. I'll do this and get a little space in there.

Here's my advice. Get it wet first. Put it in your mouth for a minute and loosen everything up. Because if you try to pull that when it's dry, a lot of times, especially on these small little cuts, you'll rip the latex right off because it's stuck pretty good so yeah i've done that and and put it under a faucet too just to yeah yeah loosen it up yeah if you pull one if you don't clean it and you finish turkey season and throw it in a desk drawer it's pulled out later dude it's hard to get it apart so i'll like run it under a faucet and eventually i'll get it where i can yeah i mean

there's a lot of stuff if you have toothpicks around you know at the end of the day you can slide a toothpick in between you know um provide you know but it is okay to like yeah as long as you know gently separate them but yeah you can definitely separate them um a lot of times i'll get mad uh the casper or some like the casper um this call that has like really fine ones laying over when it gets stuck it just doesn't add into your ask. So it's like, no, I won't. So you'll be pulling the call apart in the middle of the morning. Hit a couple notes on your first one.

Sounds good, man. I'm ready. The wife's ready. Spring thunder. Yeah. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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 get irritated. Well, if you're sick of you know, sucking 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 hand-picked 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 On x out if you visit

on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all that's what i gotta do i gotta get the call into my race i gotta get the call in my mind into my wife's mouth because she just like right now they hate it my wife hates me running around the house blowing game calls and she's got the kids riled up they used to like it because she doesn't like you know they're like stop that dad they're like give me one yeah they don't like it but then they want to get one and go make a noise with it oh yeah i get my my wife's got my kids trained you go to rip a beagle in the house and you get three get out in the garage is all about in unison but she can blow a turkey call you're saying no she likes to hunt turkeys so she that's that's my wife's favorite you know she likes deer hunting elk

hunting but turkeys you like you like the ribbon red i do but it's weird with the headphones on i can't tell what you can't hear what you sound like at all sounds good you got a nice raspiness i admire that rasp man i don't get it but you're saying like you you visualize i don't know if it makes sense i just i in visual i visualize putting the air towards the end of the reed i don't know if it matters or not you know because here i'll tell you what i'll blow towards the back i'll imagine blowing towards the back and i'll blow towards the front it didn't matter that sounds good. That was a lot of rasp.

Yeah. You know what makes me mad is I think I've got this whole wild hen talk mastered, and you go out and you hear some hen off 100 yards yapping away. I'm like, man, I don't sound anything like her. No, that's the thing. Pisses me off. That happens to me every spring. That sounds horrible.

You know what that hen sounds like? That hen sounds like a 10-year-old kid with a box call yeah yep yep yep yep it's like yeah everybody in here trying to do all this finesse and here's some hen up on a ridge top just laying out it's like either that's like someone with a rusty box call yeah but it's a hen yeah choclis box or something yeah yeah just up there like the most well the same thing like listening to elk you know like you go out like there's like the perfect bugle right but then you go out and you're watching some bull and he's basically like yeah there are some nice ones but you also just hear a lot of bad there's just a lot of variation out there you know and you hear some bullies all like horse you know yeah or the ones that actually sound like that uh primos terminator tube where you where

you think like you'll never hear a bull that will actually sound like fluty like that but yet he lives out there yeah yanni does a yanni can whistle where it sounds like you know like when you can't even tell if you heard a bull or not. It's so far away. Do your whistle. That wasn't a great one. Yeah, it's like you're like, God damn, I just heard one way off. That's my goal every year is to not get called in by somebody. But I think it's screwed up. My chances on real elk sometimes.

Oh, yeah. Generally that, not the other way. I've had more times where I wrote a bull off as being some jackass, and then it turns out to be an elk. Yep. One time we played it all the way through and ended up getting a shot and killed a bull, but I was convinced.

I was like, I'm not taking one more step because I'm not getting called in by somebody. He's like, it's a real bull. I'm like, no, it's not. Listen, it's horrible. And he was back 15 yards to my left, but could see over the ridge better. And he was like, here they come.

I'm like, son of a gun. I'm glad we stayed, but if I was here by myself, I would have went the other way. Or mess with somebody. I like to call people top of mountains and stuff, mess with them. I walked right to a couple one time. We were actually walking off the mountain.

We'd been in there for, I don't know, maybe three, four days. I think it was my dad. The only time he went in the back country. But we could hear him calling, and I was just 100% sure. I think he might have even been running the hoochie mama, which that call, you can definitely pick it out you know and so i just figured well i'm just gonna just trump down right through the forest just right at them which in retrospect probably wasn't the smartest thing to do because i come through like the last two christmas trees and

like six feet away there's a gal a girl standing there with an arrow knocked not drawn thank goodness oh really but knocked and just i can see the top limb just is like just shaking you know and her and her better i don't know if it's her boyfriend or husband behind her is like kind of smiling over her shoulder he must have you know known that you know i was coming or he caught a glimpse of me but you know in retrospect it's probably not the best thing to do just come charging in on something what was uh what was the response like when you started selling turkey calls like do you sell turkey calls to the guys in the east or is it always it's pretty localized my turkey a lot of it stems from guys i've sold elk calls too uh you know it's kind of that because you're saying the turkey call market's so saturated and Saturated. And you got the big companies back east, whatever the-

There's just a lot of turkey call manufacturers back east. And it's just- So there are guys making turkey calls, big companies that make turkey calls that aren't making elk calls. Yeah, correct. A lot of those companies back east are, you know, maybe Waterfowl Turkey, maybe, you know, Squirrel, you know, and, you know, there's some different mix. But if for some reason a lot of these call manufacturers have stayed away from elk, it seems like a lot of your manufacturers besides Primos, you know,

like Hunter Specialties and Nightingale have dabbled in it woods-wise. Some of these companies have dabbled in elk calls, but they don't have a huge presence out here where you know out west we've got you know pretty much from from back east but you've got uh rocky mountain game calls or bugling bull whatever you want to call them um you got berry game calls you've got point blank which used to be the old larry d jones um and you know it seems like out west there's a lot fewer um you know elk call manufacturers do you make a dusky grouse call i don't i did you watch our episodes about dusky grouse i didn't i didn't see i see you you'll sell five six of those every decade

you guys are intriguing because i hear about all the stuff you hunt and it's like i'm literally a mule deer blacktail and an elk hunter that's like that's i cut my teeth on that And it's like, I'm literally a mule deer, black tail, and an elk hunter. That's like, that's, I cut my teeth on that. And it's just, I've got an opportunity. I can hunt those every year. You know, I've always got the moose, caribou, sheep stuff on the radar, but that's going to be a lot harder to make happen. So you haven't dabbled in making a nice cow call for moose?

No. No, we haven't played around. I've made some horns. It's limited on that because so many guys that like to hunt moose just learn how to do it. Yeah, we haven't played around. I've made some horns. The market's limited on that because so many guys that like to hunt moose just learn how to do it. Yeah, with their boys. But I'm telling you, man, a dusky grouse call for guys that like to hunt spring hooters, you'd be the only guy in the market. But it's a tough call.

That's what everybody tells me. The male call is easy because you use that with like a jug or something, you know. But the female call, you because he's out with a jug or something. But the female call, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh. You just figure that one out. I get a lot of requests for antelope calls. I'm like, I'll just get you two glasses. The little noise. I don't know what this is.

I always joke with them because I don't know what antelope. I've never heard of it. Yeah, they do like a. Yeah. I just figured I was going to get like two glasses of water, pour them back and forth, and then just let the antelope hear the water, and that would call them in, right? Yeah, they do make a noise.

They make a noise, and they use it, and you can make a back at them and get a good response out of them. It's just like, you know, the closer you compare it to, it doesn't really compare, but you know like a whitetail's warning call, you know? When they blow.

Yeah, they just got like, here's a whitetail, like, right? they blow yeah they just got like like here's a whitetail like right and it was like but they like when a whitetail does it the whitetail doesn't give a shit about hearing it back you know like no matter it's never gonna come they're not gonna come check the noise out antelope are intrigued by that noise like you can hold their attention with the noise so you're saying no to all that stuff, but is there the next rabbit hole for Phelps game calls? Is there a challenge, like a call that you've been wanting to make

or trying to make that you just haven't figured out yet? Yeah, ultimately, blacktail. I want to make a blacktail grunt. It seems to be really popular. Blacktail grunt. Yeah. It's highly requested.

Mule deer grunt. The late season bow hunters have a... Who's using mule deer grunts? Bow hunters? Yeah. A lot of late season bow hunters think that they potentially, when they get in close,

it could be... They wouldn't use it all the time, but a lot of the guys say it could be a game changer or it could work occasionally. Well, I wonder if... I mean, if a muleuller's gonna act any different when he hears the whitetail i mean you know i mean does he give a shit i don't if he hears the whitetail

grunt i don't know i i've never that's one of the things i'm not real versed on you know i'd probably i'd probably call on some people that have messaged like it's shorter yeah it's it's it's shorter and it's deeper and it's quieter from what i've heard. But like I said, I don't do a whole lot of late season archery deer. Last year was the first year I've ever bow hunted for late mule deer. And what I heard wasn't what I thought I was going to hear a mule deer ground sound like. So I was like, all right, go back to the drawing board and change up the reed thickness and change up the barrel diameter and make some changes. But you never feel like messing with waterfowl?

I will eventually. If I want to make a run at this thing full time i'm probably gonna have to develop the waterfowl line but i don't this is the other thing you know some guys may you know go reproduce a call that's out there i'll probably bring in four or five guys you know because i'm not a waterfowl expert i don't i don't claim to be a duck hunter um the ones the the waterfowl calls I sell now are basically Echo inserts. You can buy them right off their website from Echo. And I basically just am a wood turner. I can turn the barrel.

I had my buddy come over and size the barrel for what he liked and that's what I sell. I don't have a whole lot of investment or my skill doesn't really come into play. My buddy basically sized it for me. But I probably imagine the predator call line is is decent we got one close read and three open reads um probably waterfowl's next did you bring one oh that's you yeah the close read we did the it'll do the fall in distress and also does that real raspy jack um once you break the read over really loud oh like obnoxious just just by get

force yeah yeah so i mean you got that real quiet falling distress and then you can crank it over and yeah get like the holy yeah that smokes noise yeah so uh so you're making turkey elk predator yep right now waterfall. A little bit. A couple of calls. Yeah. Yeah. Which, like I said, just a wood turner on the waterfall. But if you had to make just one, you'd do elk.

Elk. That's what your passion is. Elk followed by turkey followed by predator, probably in that order. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Most passionate about it. If I try to line all my vacation up, it's like elk like elk elk and then maybe a mule deer hunt on the end you know it's like i want to be elk hunting at least two weeks a year and in the rut how many elk trips do you do every year

um last year was one but i did it two weeks continuous so like you know weekends included we were gone like 19 days this year got a new job so it's like two you know a nine-day trip come back for a week and then a nine-day trip. So I'll try to hit, I'll try to be in the oak woods anywhere from 15 to 20 days in September. You're calling it elk every day, obviously. Yeah, usually we're pretty close. And then you hunt here with your rifle.

Yeah, or I'm actually putting in for east side special permits now. So typically I don't hunt Washington if I don't draw. We go out of state and do all of our elk hunting currently. The wife still hunts around here, so I get to go out, or the rest of my dad and his family, so I still get to do a lot of riding along and hunting along and spotting and stuff.

Yeah. But, yeah. The life of a custom call maker. Oh, it's exciting. It's exciting. So is your home shop just given over entirely to? Yeah, I basically built rooms within my shop because the dust was uncontrollable. I'm still just in the dust.

Oh, from turning the wood. Yeah, the dust and sand and it was getting everywhere. So we enclosed the section of the wood shop and then we've got our inventory in a different and then you know i'm still just working out of the shop basically so the lawnmower is parked on the other side you know it's not just a yeah a game call shop so you and you uh do you have a distributor or you ship it all yourself we do everything direct you know probably 80 of the sales come um directly through my website and then i've got people don't buy you off Amazon.

No. You want to buy a Phelps, you go to Phelps. Yeah, right now. We have four or five dealers, local bow shops that I'm just buddies with or buddy deals. We do have one other online retailer. It used to be Elk 101,

but now it's Black Ovis is selling the calls out of Utah as well. So a couple online distributors. It's funny, you know, you debate business models, you know, and I understand you want pro shop support, right? You want that guy to sell, you know, the guy that comes and buys a bow, your call. If you take that away from him, you may lose that support. And since he's got a, you know, a Bugling Bull or a Berry Read on the shelf, he's going to sell him that away from him, you may lose that support. And since he's got a, you know, a bugling bull or a berry reed on the shelf, he's going to sell him that because

that's where he makes his money. So there's a balance. You know, I like the whole QU model, you know, as a business owner, I like that model, but at the same time, I understand it's not the best model necessarily for the business I'm in. So like I said, I never claimed to be a smart businessman, but some of this stuff is the stuff i'm weighing right now like what direction do we go and what's the best direction and and like you're seeing growth every year though yeah oh yeah exponential growth every year i don't know where it's going to stop but like same conversation you start talking about that and you come back full circle to how you're going to keep up because i don't i don't know what i'm going to be able to do in july and August. That's my two by far biggest months

because we're centered around everybody buying their elk calls. It's gearing up for elk season. It's going to be interesting this year. Yeah. The wife said I have one more year to do this all on my own, then I better figure out a streamlined way. Is that right? Well, it was rough last year.

Basically, every weekend, all weeknights until midnight. Get up at 5, go to work, get home at 5.30, and you're making calls until midnight. Well, now you're just a couple hours south of Steve. You can probably just call him up. You can come down. I could not have stretched a little latex. I stretch a little latex my day.

Bet you never heard that one before. So now you've got a website obviously yeah yeah we're uh phelps game calls.com ph ph eops you know the nato phonetic alphabet which is like alpha bravo charlie delta yeah yeah it's supposed to be that all the nato countries um that they would look at those words and pronounce and know how to pronounce those words. I'm working on the confusing phonetic alphabet where I'm trying to find all like for P would be pneumatic. Or for P, you could do psychology or nomic.

So all words that don't start. Or for P, you could do psychology. Or gnomic for, you know. So all words that don't start. I'm just bringing this up to point out that your name is not F-E-L-P-S. For phone, P-H. Phelps. P-H-E-L-P-S. And what's the website, though? Phelpsgamecalls.com.

Phelpsgamecalls.com. And people just usually just order online. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm pretty open on social media. You know, a lot of times, and you know,

that's maybe the difference. You get the experience with me. A lot of times I'll get a, you know, we'll message back and forth banner, you know, back and forth at eight o'clock at, at night.

You know, what do I need to order? This is what I would order. What do you do? And then all of a sudden you see the order pop through. So you have dudes call up and be like, Hey for advice on what to get yeah or or a lot of times like you know maybe it's a new era but i don't know if it's tacky or uh untackable but a lot of times with my phone now it's like it's easier to do a text message or a facebook message that's how i communicate and it makes it super

streamlined so i can deal with a lot more customers that way. So a lot of guys will just hit me up on Facebook and message me or text me right off the website and then it just makes it quick and easy. And then they place the order. Yeah, like instantly I can just talk and rob so-and-so and then bam on my phone I see

the order come through. It's pretty cool. Yeah, and you got concluding thoughts? They're beautiful calls, man. Impressive. You can rip a couple notes on there. Let's hear your Jackrabbit distress.

I'm no good at that. I can run the easy estrus. You can run the Jackrabbit. Steve likes to blow those at grizzly bears when we see them. I think I've seen you guys running from a grizzly bears when we see them I think I've seen you guys running from a grizzly bear in one of the episodes I do like to blow them at grizzly bears

and annoy these people I'm with I'm always like let's see if this bear will check this out we're only camped a couple hundred yards away let's see if we can bring this grizzly bear closer so you just don't have any fear of them it's not a lack of respect but just no fear I used to be real afraid Wait, let's see if we can bring this grizzly bear closer. So you just don't have any fear of him? It's not a lack of respect, but just no fear?

I used to be real afraid. No, not real. Yeah, it's just to me, it's like... What happened? You know how some dudes drive fast down the highway, right? Yeah. I don't like that. I like to drive slow down the highway. I have that, right?

I have that thing. I just don't have the bear thing. The same way some guys can drive 100 miles an hour, right? I have that thing. I just don't have the bear thing. The same way some guys can drive 100 miles an hour, right, weaving in and out of it. I can't do that. Those guys might be scared of bears. I'm just not afraid of bears. I mean, I respect them, but when I see a bear,

the first thing on my mind isn't that he's going to come scratch me up. So you're not reaching for bear spray or your gun or anything? No, I'm just like, well, hey, a bear. I always felt like somebody was going to pull my man card because the whole eastern Idaho, southwestern Montana, northeastern Wyoming. I went deer hunting in Region F in Wyoming against that eastern border. We seen like five – the day after I killed my buck, there was grizzly bears everywhere.

I'm like, this isn't my thing at all. I like that. I honestly like – if I could have absolutely identical places, everything exactly the same, and they're like, only difference is, this one's got grizzlies and this one don't. I'd be like, let's go hunt the grizzly one. Just because I like looking at them.

They're cool from a distance. I like looking at them from like 800 yards away in the spot and scope. If we had more time to talk about it, I would talk about the current debate around delisting in those areas you named. I've looked at it from all angles. I think the best way forward for the bears and for people is delisting. I think I ought to delist them off the endangered species list. There's a lot of bears in those areas.

They met the requirements. You can't tell states and all these people, you can't tell them for decades that here's what recovery looks like. And we're all going to strive for recovery and make all kinds of sacrifices and achieve the goal and then move the moving target then move the mark around people man it's just like it just makes people so resentful of the Endangered Species Act when in fact it's a great tool

that works well but you got to put shit on and take it off we don't tend to do it's a one way street man stuff gets on it never comes off especially if it's charismatic yeah you know yeah we don't got enough time but that's the whole same thing like this state and the wolves i don't know if you've looked into much this state's recovery the wolf recovery plan is absurd compared to the public ground we got versus the number of breeding pairs we have to have plus the three-year wait time.

It's like, why are our objectives in this state so much higher than these other western states that have way more public ground and way more, you know. And even when they do hit it, someone's going to block it because it's charismatic. Yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah, turn it over. Then they act as though turning it over to state management is some outrageous idea. And you want to be like, well, hold on a minute. Every other animal is state management.

So Montana is managing, what, seven, eight big game animals, all fur-bearing animals. They're managing everything. People go like, oh yeah, just turn it over to state management. That's absurd. But they manage all the the game they manage all the large carnivores they're managing black bears they're managing mountain lions they're on and off managing wolves managing coyotes managing bobcats it's not like they don't have a grip on that's frustrating oh yeah i don't mean to take us away from game calls what was your

concluding thought that you like the looks of the call ghani that's the best that's as much as you got no no no i didn't know uh now you got me thinking about uh you know management yeah let's not get into that conversation right now no but it's really something that just that i think people need to learn more about they do because i i really try to read both sides you know now just like you know there's been just so much written out there lately about like the grizzly delisting and it really seems like at least everything i've read so far it's been probably a half dozen articles like against the delisting it's very unfounded and like and just you know kind of fanning the flames type of rhetoric where they're not really just laying out the facts they're like the only

only thing that's gonna come from this delisting is basically uncontrolled trophy hunting yeah and you're like whoa no no no no that's not how it works, bro. Like what you just said is completely a lie. But yet, because of the magazine you published that in, a million people just read that. Yeah, the most irresponsible one I've read was in a thing called a publication, Daily Beast. I've read that one. I was surprised the guy that wrote that even keeps his job

because he says in there that there's no money, that a state doesn't have money to manage. And again, you point out how many they manage all the animals, right? Yeah. That they have no way of knowing how many get killed, which is absurd because you know how many tags you issue. It's like they know how many deer they're killing. You know, states killing thousands and thousands of deer. They know how many deer they kill through how many tags you issue. You do surveys.

You do mandatory surveys. You have quota systems that are in place. It's fine-tuned. So it's like they have no way of knowing how many. That's absurd because they track all that stuff. They don't have any ducks to kill. There would be no more of a controlled hunt in our country than if there were to be a grizzly bear hunt and the other point that they miss is all of these

individuals and game agencies and conservation groups who've worked so hard to get wolves and now grizzlies off the list don't you think that after you work that hard to get them delisted, the last thing you're going to want is to have them back on the list? Whose interest would be being served if you hand it over to state management that the state would shoot them all out so they get put back on the list again? Who's motivated to do that? You spent 40 years basically trying to recover the thing and then act like you're going to blithely go out

and shoot them all down so they get put back on the list for another 40 years and that's the motivation? Make any sense. So anyways, you like the looks of that game call yanni i do i'm fired up to go turkey hunting i'm stoked dude i'm so excited about turkey hunting um so will you hunt turkeys besides washington this year i i you know it's one of those and you know kind of you started off at the whole why don't even hit me with the high turkeys no i love turkeys it's just one of those things where i won't you know we've got you don't travel for we have three species right here and and you know we've got easterns on the west side we've got

um you know merriams down in the south central we've got uh rios down in the southeast and we've got kind of a merriam rio mixed up in that northeast corner we've got you know a ton of opportunity right here uh close so i typically don't travel more than you know four or five hours across the state to turkey hunt. But you do good? Yeah. We've did really well. You got concluding thoughts? That's where you get a chance to say anything lasting on your mind.

I'll go first with mine. You already had your chance. You said you liked the call and then you read some articles. I'm going to conclude with I'm going to get Annie Racer out and change your mind. Because I think I've got Brittany Brothers coming along with us. I have like a two-fold plan. Because for me to hunt with my wife, someone's got to stay in camp to tend to kids.

So she's going to come along to fill that void. I'm going to also take her out turkey hunting a little bit. And then we'll coerce annie to come along with us and she'll next time she's on the podcast she'll be here so you have a whole pack of ladies down there hunting turkeys good are they calling you teaching them to call i haven't yet but we've been talking we need to do all that very soon shot go pattern shotguns and get them calling a little bit you know jason thoughts thoughts um go let me go out in left field here you know um i'm excited just to kind of see where this whole thing goes and ultimately you know my i've been you know blessed um with the position to to you know maybe not

it reaches as many people as you but i feel blessed um i i get the chance to to discuss and talk with a lot of people and influence a lot of people through this game call avenue and ultimately just trying to keep the eye on the prize. I'm always thinking about my kids and my kids' kids and trying to leave this place. And if I can influence or impact anybody from my position, make sure we leave this place a better place for all of our kids to hunt and have the opportunity, especially on the political front.

It's never going to go away. I don't see it getting any better. Stay united. I get so tired of hearing the archery hunters argue with the muzzleloader hunters argue with the rifle hunters and then pulling knives out of each other's backs. I always feel like we should focus you know, focus our efforts elsewhere and, you know, stand united. Instead of arguing about whether it's better to do with a bow or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, that's, like I said, I kind of went out in left field, but that's kind of. No, no, no, that's a good closing thought. That's a closing thought through four. My closing thought is a thing i've always liked about either the world of hunting in the world of fishing is how it really invites so many people um just to be inventive and like just make stuff you know i mean yep like even growing up like i grew up around old guys

they'd like make their own bucket scalers and guys would make their own rods and tie their own stuff and then you kind of get good at it get a knack for it producing you're selling a couple things it's just like this funny little it's like such a great economy of uh entrepreneurs and you know just kind of like american elbow grease man you know like just people getting in there and making stuff and it's it kind of comes from people who are out in the woods and on the water all the time and they're messing around with their gear and they're like man this you know if i made this i'd make it this way or i'd make it a little bit better and just like that constant cycle of invention and and doing stuff it's just fun that uh the way the way hunting and fishing um really invite

people to get in there and and be craftsmen you know because there's a lot of stuff in your house just like things you might do in your world where you just don't have the the garage tinkerers you know like you do in this world, man. It's funny. You imagine in the old days, people would just sit around and everybody would nap their own arrowheads. It's kind of like that to see people out there just making hunting gear, trying to do something a little bit better.

You can just get in there and do it on your own. In your case, get in there and do it and make a business out of it. It's fun, man. It's a fun world. So, yeah mean good luck to you making the calls yeah thanks it was cool to get a chance to me because i've you know i've been wailing on some of these calls for a couple years now but never got a chance to talk with you so yeah yeah we'll uh we'll get you loaded up before you head to mexico all right so thanks for having me yep thanks for listening everyone

take care Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-axe hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips. Join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law. But hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, 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. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a

special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.