The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 051: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with traditional bowhunter Ron Rohrbaugh, the pizza magnate Jimmy Doran, and t-shirt magnate Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Subjects discussed: Turkey on Thanksgiving; King of the Mountain gear; deer hunting injuries; the first deer Steve missed with a bow; gap shooting; hunting with compounds vs traditional bows; baiting laws in New York; popup blinds and wigwams; leather, bone, and wood; sightpins on recurves; and bowhunting in a ghillie suit.  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 the meat eater podcast you can't predict anything all right jimmy doran's here can we say what you do i'm the pizza guy any questions that come up now jimmy was just being a good friend and dropped by now here he is sitting in getting yeah we ate some fantastic pizza did we ever man well you're welcome what's it called it's called belltown pizza downtown

seattle belltown yeah well jimmy does all that pepperoni and all that every it's all wolf meat that's it it's ground up he grounds up his own wolf meat still call the health department so any pizza any pizza questions anyone here has defer them over to to mr darn and also you had a you had a big year i had a fantastic year big year very big year yeah best ever so i'm relatively new hunter but definitely this year was took the cake i'm a little worried next oh not in pizza sales no no just american elbow grease man just running his business getting out there mixing it up getting a lot of a lot of excellent big game hunts yes very good it's very fortunate he wears

a meat eater t-shirt that's it the meat eater t-shirt's my lucky charm or he carries in his backpack and he's kind enough to take a photo himself with it maybe it depends on how bad it stinks on day four no tearing it up yeah no fantastic elk yeah two mule deer and an elk one mule deer in central oregon elk in the Missouri River Breaks, Montana, and then shot a really nice elk by Fossil in central Oregon. Great stuff. Yep. Yeah.

A lot of them. And then you got some doves. Yeah, we shot a few doves. You know, we had some of those doves for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, you did. You're welcome. Some people kept calling them little turkeys. Little turkeys.

Because we did them whole. Right. Because my wife always complains at Thanksgiving because seldom do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving. Really? Yeah, because we just cook. You save up good stuff. So this year for Thanksgiving,

we had hooligans or candlefish, king salmon, halibut, moose, some elk meat, and morning doves. Yeah. And because people like gripe, my brother Matt and my wife bitch about the lack of turkey. Okay. So I plucked those morning doves and cooked them like little mini turkeys. And they did look like little mini turkeys and they did look like

little mini turkeys man it was cute but everybody got their own little turkey really yeah did that appease their turkey yeah it was a step in the right direction and normally i don't even do the normal sides like last year we did what's called a mixed boil you know which is like all kind of boiled vegetables and but this year we add all the normal sides. Matter of fact, let you know that mashed potato we were eating last night? That shit's from Thanksgiving. That's old. Still.

It was good. So that was just like a creamed sweet potato. Mashed yams. But I mean, think of how old that is. How long ago was Thanksgiving? Just been sitting in my fridge. A couple weeks. You don't feel sick at all, do you?

Not yet. It'll kick in. You'll be heading for the door. Hey, you know a lot. I'm glad you're here. Is mashed potatoes pretty stable? I would say it would last a while. When I was in college, I'd eat it a couple weeks in.

I don't know. Now it'd be about a week probably. Because you're in the commercial food business, are you, are the guidelines like the guidelines are probably like ridiculously safe, right? They are. It's proper holding temperature, stuff like that. Proper refrigeration, making sure,

you know, you don't want to get. Does it feel extreme or does it feel reasonable? It feels totally reasonable. Does it? Yeah. Because I remember something with potatoes. When I worked at a restaurant to get a ski pass for a while, we served baked potatoes. They were wrapped in aluminum foil, and there was a strict, hard, fast rule that you could not take those potatoes home. They were very worried about that, and maybe because it was just because the aluminum foil

would hold it in that like danger zone too long yeah could be and what is it that you would get from a potato like that i have no idea i don't know cases spending a lot of time in the bathroom other than that i'm not really sure i don't know what you get potatoes oh good i was just gonna say i read something not too long ago about potato salad because everybody thinks that's because it's got mayo and shit in it. No, it's not the mayo. It's the potatoes.

Oh, really? Yeah. Well, there you go. Really? In the sun, potatoes grow bacteria really quickly, especially combined with the mayo. And so it's the potatoes that are the problem, not the mayo itself. Oh, no shit. Yeah, I always thought it was the mayo too.

Of course it's mayo, because that stuff gets nasty. But it's the potatoes. Huh. There you go. Y'all are going to get sick from those mashed, but it's the potatoes. There you go. You are going to get sick from those weeks old mashed potatoes. That was weighing in with the voice of reason on taters was Ron. Give us your last name, how you sound it out. Yeah, it's Roarball.

I struggle with that one. That's all right. Roarball. Everyone struggles with it. You got it. You nailed it. On the front of your new book, Traditional Bowhunter's Path, that's not a King of the Mountain wool pants you're wearing,

is it? No, it's not King of the Mountain. Remember that company? Yeah, I love King of the Mountain stuff. I have a King of the Mountain vest. Are they still around? When that shit came out, I was just,

I couldn't, I was so paralyzed by jealousy when that catalog came out and I was a young lad. I wanted the trapper wool pullover and I'd look at that price tag wanted the trapper wool pullover. And I'd look at that price tag, $350 at the time. Wow.

Which was in the 80s. Oh, yeah. It was super expensive. Which is thousands now. I remember being like, what? It must be magical. You must be able to fly. That stuff was the highest quality close weave wool for the day. I mean, that stuff was great.

But its selling point was you can machine wash it yeah so then i remember cabela's came out with a knockoff they came out with a knockoff and i bought some of that shit and took it on a hunt and after got it wet a couple times it was like i was wearing uh tight spandex yeah look like i was in a shakespeare play yeah because just, whatever happened hadn't happened, you know? And then you'd get where you didn't want

to wash them because it was just going to make them worse. So then pretty soon they're just like, when you walk, they sort of crackle because of like dried blood

on the knees and shit, you know? But those are the, do you like them? Yours didn't shrink too bad in that picture. No, not too bad. I actually have

a wool coat that I love that was made by a company called Wolf Woolens or something like that. I don't know wool coat that I love that was made by a company called Wolf Woolens or something like that. I don't know what it was. Same thing happened.

I wore it in the rain. It shrunk. It got really small. You know, one of those deals you stick your arms out and the sleeves come up to here. I loved it so much. I took it in my shed, and I made a frame out of two-by-fours,

and I hung cement blocks off of it. Stretched it back out. And wet it. They kept wetting it again and trying to get it. worked. Never got it. Never got it back. It was all misshapen and screwed up and I gave it to a friend. If someone came in your shed, they think you're up to some weird devil stuff, man. You're doing some weird time. No, but I've been in that same situation with a pair of king of the mountain. I think they were called the bun light pants. I had spent a bunch of money on them as a hunting guide you know and had to have the best

and uh same thing i washed them and i don't know if the no i did cold wash i mean that's what you have to do and even that just like the the the complete saturation of that wool i put them on the next time and i was a ballerina. I was just like, what? I called them and they're like, yeah, you need to re-wet them and then slowly stretch them. When it happened, I just overpowered it, I guess, and busted the

seam that's between the waistline and your pocket and just ripped them right across. They ended up fixing them for me for free. They couldn't stretch them back out. Well, somehow they got to be back to normal size. I don't know if I just wore them back in normal fitting, but that was 10 years ago and I haven't washed them since.

Yeah. You guys want to see a good segue? You ready for a big segue, Jimmy? I'm in. As a traditional bow hunter, I imagine you hunt wool a lot, huh, Ron? Yeah, I do love wool. Of course. That's a great segment. I like wool.

I like fleece. Because you got to be quiet. You got to get close, and so you got to be quiet. Like, what's close? Like, okay, traditional bow hunting. Now, that's recurve and longbow. Recurve and longbow, yep. Let me say, I do want to get back to being real close and real quiet and all that,

but I don't understand. How is a recurve traditional? Because recurve is like a longbow, right? You have culture. So they feel that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the bow and arrow in North America is a technology that's maybe four or 5,000 years old. Yeah, that's right. And people were still shooting longbows up to the moment when they got their hands on firearms.

Whoever was using a recurve, like who made the recurve? Yeah, you have to be careful of the term traditional, I think, because it's just taken on its whole own life. And so when I think of traditional bow hunting and traditional archery, it's really kind of this generalization of everything pre-compound. Yeah, that's what it's come to mean. Yeah, so it's really, I mean, for me especially, I think of it as post-war era, you know, 1940s through, you know, the late 60s, you know, when the compound came into being, you know,

that's really when traditional archery took off and became really popular. I don't think traditional is meant to kind of go back to pre-war. It took off as a response to the compound. No, no, I think it took off as a response to post-war era. Did I say pre-war? No, no, you said post-war, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, people coming back from being overseas, from being in the war, I mean, this phenomenon is true for hunting in general, but, you know, for archery especially, coming back and being able to pick up a bow, you know, for archery, especially coming back and being able to pick up a bow, you know, a lot of the states were just legalizing, you know, seasons for archery at

that time. Archery was super popular. There was, I mean, not just bow hunting, but, you know, there were archery lanes in the cities. There was, you know, all kinds of archery competitions. Yeah. In the fifties, mile man belonged to the Chicago Bowman. Yeah, exactly. And it was, you know, like, and then Pope and Young was kind of a thing, and they were pushing for seasons, but he was a recurve hunter. But a recurve isn't a throwback. But who did invent the recurve? So, I mean, recurve goes back to probably some Asiatic styles of bows,

where there's a lot of reflex and deflex in the limb, some recurving of the limbs, you know, to get static tips in some cases. You know, you've seen these bows, you know, some of them made out of bone and sinew, horn and sinew. It's fantastic. Yeah. But it was never like an American, it was never, there's like no American indigenous cultures that were shooting recurve bows. Not that I can think of. Probably the earliest I can think of was the bowier for the Bear Archery Company. Fred Bear's bowier was Nels Grumley.

And he used to build a static reach recurves on the end of what you might otherwise look at and think was a longbow. Gotcha. You know, it's got these static tips on them now uh what so you do your hunting primarily the recurve recurve and longbow you do use both yeah i killed uh two good bucks this year one with a longbow one with a recurve why do you bounce back and forth i'm just an idiot um you know it's no different than guns or whatever you know you just have a bunch of stuff you like to play with and different setups. And one of the things I love about traditional archery is just each bow is different. Every piece of wood is different. Every, you know, whoever made it has put their own touch on it. You know, there's a lot of craftsmanship that goes into it. And so every one is different. It's just

like, you know, going hunting with a different buddy every time you go out. Now, did you, did you use the, you cool so far, Jimmy, on all this? Yeah. I've got about 40 questions, it seems like. Did you, did you, did you get into it as a response to like experiences rifle hunting or were you just, were you just a bow hunter, flat out? Your old man was a rifle hunter. Yeah, no, I grew up with a rifle and a muzzle loader. I hunted mostly, you know, 50 caliber flintlock, 243, 270. And I got into, I had a bow, you know,

growing up as a kid, I had this little fiberglass bow that a neighbor gave me and I loved it, man. I went everywhere with that thing. I just couldn't be separated from it. Used to shoot in our field and we had this big Creek by our house and I'd go and I'd go out there and fling arrows at muskrats and stuff. And then I just kind of got away from it because my family wasn't into bow hunting. We were into gun hunting, and we used to go to our cabin in Pennsylvania and gun hunt, and I loved it. And then at some point in college, I went back to the compound bow, and I started hunting with a compound bow a little bit.

Just to take advantage of the seasons. Yeah, just to take advantage of the seasons. Yeah, just take advantage of the seasons. And I did like to bow hunt. It wasn't like I didn't like it or anything. I just, you know, I just had gotten away from it. And then, you know, I tell this story in the book. I, you know, I ended up in the hospital. I fell down a set of steps and, you know, messed up my back a little bit.

And then I killed a deer, killed a small buck. And I tried to wail him over a fence, you know, kind of one of these clean and jerk moves. It was a woven wire fence. And I just totally wrenched my back, ruptured a disc in my back, and really messed up. Deer hunting injury. Deer hunting injury. Or a weightlifting injury.

Ended up in the hospital in traction. Was that right, really? Yeah, my girlfriend at the time. Was it a nice buck? I hope so. From that standpoint, it was not worth it it she brought me this grocery bag full of magazines and one of the magazines in that bag was traditional bow hunter it was a 1993 issue and i pulled that thing out and i started reading it it was like it just lit a fire

you write for that magazine now i write for the magazine yeah i just could not stop reading that magazine i read it over and over laying in the hospital you know legs pulled up in ropes and when i left i was like this this is for me this is what i want to do and i just been doing it ever since love it yeah that's the thing about uh like bow hunt my relationship with bow hunt was always that along with most people i grew up with you just hung with the bow because it let you gave you much more hunting seasons you know like in michigan people I grew up with, you just hung with a bow because it gave you much more hunting seasons. Like in Michigan where I grew up, general firearms, 10 days long.

If you bow hunted, you started bow hunting for deer October 1, you hunted up to the November, the mid-November rifle season, then the woods fills up with dudes, right? It gets chaotic. That thing ends and then you bow hunted again for another month and a half. Yeah. I mean, you just like triple or quadruple your

season. It's always out in the woods, but it was that, but it was never like, um, you know, I always appreciated the challenge of bow hunting, but it was just a thing. Like I like to hunt. There was a bow season. Therefore, you know, you hunt it with a bow, but I was never looking to then go, and this might not be the word you bow. But I was never looking to then go, and this might not be the word you use, but I was never looking to then go handicap myself by having a self-imposed limit on the technology. Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I mean, you know, self-imposing yourself to something that's more primitive can come in like, you know, you can do that for a lot of reasons. So, you know, somebody who picks up a rifle might self-impose some trophy quality. You know, I'm only going to kill 140-inch white tail or, you know, I want to kill a big 6x6 bull elk. You know, for me, I didn't have a ton of money, you know, when I started out doing this. I couldn't really travel as much as I wanted to

to go hunt and so self-imposing traditional archery on myself and I've I've only hunted with a gun maybe three times

in the last 25 years no shit so you just don't do it anymore I don't do it anymore I hunt only only with traditional bow nothing

and the times I have hunted it's been with a with a flintlock and I have taken a couple of deer with that. But, you know, for me, it's all been recurve and longbow since then. But it's that. That's how I'm self-imposing my—that's where I'm getting the new challenge from. Yeah, I'm with you.

So instead of killing something bigger, you know, I'm interested in getting closer and making my equipment more primitive so that, you know, I get that same kind of rush and that same kind of challenge and experience. You know, you can only shoot so many whitetail does, you know, before he's like, yeah, I'm going to try something a little different. Maybe I'll, you know, longbow and wooden arrows. It's another way to kind of get at this. What's your effective range, you know, with each set of tackle you're using there? Like what's a, not pushing it, but, you know, a each set of tackle you're using there, like what's a, not pushing it,

but you know, a good reasonable shot. 20 yards. Is that right? Nice and close. Yeah, 20 yards is, you know, where I like to be. I've shot, you know, white tails out to a little over 30. I shot a clip springer in Africa at over 30, you know, but generally 20 yards.

And I know some guys who like that, you know, they set up their ground blinds or tree stands or whatever for the closest shot they can with something like a longbow. They want to be 10 yards, 12 yards. I've actually found that that's worse for me because when you have that animal on top of you, I mean, you have no room for error. You're going to get winded.

You're talking about wool clothing and being quiet. You know, the person- Just getting the damn arrow pulled back. Yeah, i mean just just getting the full draw is impossible and so i've learned that for me about 18 yards is where i want to be you know you can start getting above 18 weird stuff can happen but at 18 that's pretty good you know what's an example of weird stuff that can happen well deer can jump the string okay you know you can screw up a shot pretty quick at 35 yards with a you know with I mean, I regularly practice out to 45, you know, and I can hit the vital zone on a 3D target, you know, easily at 35 again and again and again. But that's not a live animal.

Yeah. That's not an animal that can jump and move. Yeah, it's like the compound shooter who likes to shoot, who will fling arrows at 90, but then he's deadly at 45. Exactly. Yeah. It's also a whole different ballgame when you're cold, when you're nervous. who likes to shoot, who will fling arrows at 90, but then he's deadly at 45. Exactly. It's also a whole different ball game when you're cold, when you're nervous. I talk a lot about performance anxiety or buck fever in this book because I think it probably is the reason for-

Performance anxiety? I like it. Not that kind of performance. It's so hard to replicate that in practice, in training. Yeah, I'm kidding. I used to always have guys at the range. When we'd have hunters coming in, we'd go and shoot a couple shots. I'd be like, all right, your gun's good.

Now, run 50 yards, turn around, sprint back, grab your rifle, and then off your knee, let's see what your group looks like at 100. Yeah, big difference. It's big. I don't know any other way to. Yeah, what's your take on it? You can't prep for it, or do you think you your take on it? You can't prep for it? Or do you think you can prep for it?

You can't prep for it. Well, you can prep for it, but I think it's even worse with traditional archery gear because if you're shooting a compound or a rifle, you've got a sight. Let's just talk compounds. You've got a sight pin and you've got a peep. And not only are they tools for you to hit your target,

to line up and hit what you want to hit, but it's a support system. It gives your brain a set of, it's a mechanism that you know what to do. You're going to draw that bow, you're going to line up the pin and the peep, you're going to put the pin on where you want to hit, and you're going to release your arrow.

Without sights, which is the way most guys shoot long bows and recurves, there's none of that. So you have to force your brain, you know, and your whole body with, you know, all the adrenaline pumping through you, come to full draw, pick a spot, you know, on the animal, just find some ripple of muscle, you know, whatever it is, a little dapple of sunlight, and look at that spot and stare it down and come to full draw and release. And there's just no support mechanism and it's so easy to full draw and release. And there's just no support mechanism.

And it's so easy to fall apart. Yeah. It's really easy to just not, I mean, you know, you just boom and the arrow's gone. And, you know, it's nowhere near the animal you're trying to hit. So you talk about those funny matches, like the ripple of muscle or sunlight. You're talking about being not just I'm going to hit the deer

or not just that I'm going to hit the deer or not just that I'm going to hit the rib area, but like, I'm going to hit that, that thing. I'm going to hit that little hair that's out of place right there. It's the whole aim small, miss small. That little like burdock or whatever on his side. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you have to, and it's so hard. I mean, you have to train yourself to do that because you don't, I mean, when that big buck comes in or any animal comes in, you know, you're just, your blood is pumping, you're, you're not thinking right. And being able to really slow yourself down and say, pick a spot is so important. When I was a kid, my old man would put stickers on our bows and the sticker said, stay calm,

pick a spot. Now that you remember, not that you would remember to read the sumbitch sticker, but it was just on there, you know, and it was like a reminder. But I remember like the first year I missed the bow, it was, you know, feet from the base of the tree. And you couldn't imagine, like, you couldn't, like, how could you miss that? You can't. But then you pull, I remember like those first times bow hunting, I was 12 when I missed my first year of the bow.

And, you know, you pull back and then you think about it, like you couldn't even, there was no recollection of doing any of the things you're supposed to do. It was just like, there's a deer and you pull back and let go. Yeah, and I think a lot of that's adrenaline too. I think it's why we forget. You take a shot and you don't even remember where the animal went.

You don't remember seeing the arrow. You don't remember the shot. I think your body is just so overloaded on adrenaline that you just can't, your mind's just out of whack. I talk about this in the book too, but you know, there's lots of, of, you know, studies with humans looking at multitasking and we really suck at multitasking. You know, you can, you can type an email and eat your lunch, but try to type an email and talk on the phone at the same time. I mean, it's really hard to do that because you're using those same kind of mental capacities, those same kinds of things in your brain.

You make those decisions with the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Each side is responsible for making all kinds of decisions when you're multitasking. And for me, you know, I just have to break the whole shot sequence down into steps. And so when I see an animal and I decide I'm going to shoot, I have this whole thing I do in my head where, you know, I pick a spot, bow arm, my bow arm goes in a certain position, and I draw to my first anchor where my hand comes to rest under my cheekbone. And then I reaffirm my spot. I'm like, all right, I'm on my spot. I'm still on my spot.

And then I just keep pulling until I hit my second anchor and boom, the arrow's away. And you're literally running through a checklist in your head. Kind of. That's what I do when I practice when I'm actually hunting. Not the checklist doesn't always come because things are happening so fast, but if the actions come, the actions come, they're just, they're burned into your brain. You know, the muscle memories there, the, you know, it's all in your head and you just kind of do it. But if I don't have that system, you know, I found this, found this out the hard way. I'm just, I'll fall apart. You know,

I won't make a good shot, but with the system, I'm good. I'll fall apart. You know, I won't make a good shot. Yeah. But with the system, I'm good, you know. So now when you aim, I know you talk about this in the book, talk about like, what's the term, like point, like when you aim off the point of the arrow? Yeah, gap shooting. Yeah, that's right.

Gap shooting, yeah. My brother's recurve shooter and hunter. He shoots gap. Well, he talks about it. I feel like he does. Yeah, gap's deadly. I don't really, I kind of gap shoot. It shoots gap. Well, he talks about it. I feel like he does. Yeah, gap's deadly. I don't really, I kind of gap shoot. It's a ranging system, right?

It is. And so for me, I have this whole system where I come to my first anchor on my face and then I keep drawing the string until the cock feather hits my nose. And that's my cue to release. It's like a little psychological trigger. Once that thing hits, boom, I'm gone.

And that out to about 27, 28 yards, I'm just looking at a spot. I'm just looking at something I want to hit. But beyond about 27 or 28 yards, I can't help but see the tip of my arrow in my vision because, you know, I'm coming up like this. And so the arrow is coming up into my field of view. And so at that point, I used to try to ignore it. But over the years, I've learned, why not use it? Just use it as an aiming system. So once I get to that distance, then I can hold the arrow right on where I want to hit. And if I'm further than that, if I'm 35,

then I'm holding the tip of the arrow just a couple inches above where I want to be and so on out to 40, 50 yards. Now, does your point of aim uh differ using traditional gear over compound placement like i imagine you get real afraid of the shoulder blade oh yeah you do like shoulder blades instant death not not for the deer but instant death for you as the archer by all not any more so with traditional gear versus compound gear well yeah you gotta have way there has to be a hell of a lot less energy out of a long bow than out of a souped up compound yeah there is and some of it depends on

your broadhead too you know if you're shooting a nice two blade broadhead i certainly don't want to shoot the shoulder but if you do by accident you can often penetrate the shoulder and get the blade but not the bone proper yeah the blade but not the action not the not the femur or anything so you can punch through the blade you can with a two point you can like shoot 30 yards or whatever 20 yards you could go you could put like a wooden arrow through that shoulder blade and get into the vitals you can i don't recommend it but yeah you can absolutely do it do you aim like i like usually aiming for the crease or you usually back a couple ribs just to give yourself room to play? Well, I mean, you know the game. I mean, you don't want to go back too many ribs because then if the animal, you know, if he gets jumping the string a little bit forward or backward,

then you're, you know, getting into the punch or if you just kind of screw up a little bit, you're getting into the punch. So I pretty much, you know, come up the back of the leg and then come, you know, maybe a couple of inches back on the ribs. About dead center of the body is where I want to be. 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 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 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, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club club y'all and then do you ever take um do you just shoot broadside no i like quartering away yeah but i mean you never do like face on shots so that's just too hard you knew what i did this year didn't you i can tell by the way you're like no i don't know what you did i i shot my first ever deer this year quartering on in brisket.

Coming in, you know, a shot that a rifle hunter or a combat hunter wouldn't think about. But you just don't do it with traditional gear. And I've never done it. Why wouldn't you do it with traditional gear? Because you just can't get the, you know, you just have a little pocket in there where you can get to the vitals. And there's just a lot of meat and a lot of bone in there to penetrate. And with a compound, you can just kind of, you've got the kinetic energy to punch it through there.

And so it's still not a great shot with a compound, but it's one that guys do. And with a rifle, it's an easy shot. But with a traditional bow, it's, you know, a lot of guys probably listening to this podcast are shaking their heads, you know, why the hell would he do that? You know, it's really a no-no kind of a shot, but I've been doing this a long time.

I had a shot at a good buck. He was standing there. I kept looking at that spot, looking at that spot. I was calm and I thought, I can do that. I know I can put that arrow there. And frankly, it was one of the deadliest shots i ever made is that right yeah deer went maybe 60 yards and was done so you know it does work will i ever do it again i don't know you got away with it felt good i got away with it it worked you know it causes a lot of you know controversy in the hunt oh yeah i mean guys get really pissed off when they hear about other other you know bow hunters taking that shot yeah i got you can i ask you what kind of a difference in feet per second like what kind of energy difference between a modern compound and all yeah and the traditional it can be pretty big i mean so i shoot bow i used to shoot you know close to 60 or even a little over 60 pounds but i changed my

shooting style a few years ago and i dropped back to 50 pounds and i haven't seen any real difference in penetration but so at 50 pounds you know i'm shooting probably 175 feet per second and i'm shooting an arrow that weighs around 500 grains i think that works out to like you know 35 pounds of kinetic energy something like that compound shooters probably shooting more like i don't know 275 is probably not out of the question at all yeah but she's gonna say it's about right and then maybe 350 grain arrow so you know a lot lighter arrow but you know kinetic kinetic energy of that is probably up around more like i don't know i bet close to 50 pounds okay so yeah there's there's a pretty big difference pretty big difference do you think that that

for someone that hunts compound they want to switch to traditional archery um what's the biggest challenge there is it do you think it's the proximity for people like you now got to have the distance so you're accustomed to shooting a certain distance you got to cut that in half or do you think it's just that it's so much more difficult to put the arrow where you want to put it? I think it's, it's more difficult to put the arrow where you want to put it because even though compound shooters can shoot 40 and 50 yards, you know, I hunt mostly in the East, so it's mostly whitetail stuff. Guys are still mostly shooting at deer at 20 and 25, even with a compound. So I don't think the distance is that much because

when you're ambush hunting you can kind of pick you almost you can you're in some ways you're picking the distance yeah exactly your setup is picking the distance yeah i think it's the lack of it's where it's back to the support system again you know when you're shooting a compound you've got all that you know you've got those tools you know to be able to just kind of keep yourself calm lay the shot in there the way you want it. And with a traditional bow, you just don't have that. The other thing you don't have is let off. And so it's not like you can, you know, you see an animal coming, you know, it's passing behind a stand of dug fur or something.

And you know it's going to pop out at, you know, 20 yards. And you know it's going to take a few seconds for that to happen. Compound bow with 80% let off. You just pull when you've got good cover to pull, you know, you're at full draw, you hold, you wait, you wait, you wait, you wait, that animal pops out, and you know, you're able to get a nice shot off, you can't do that with a traditional bow, and you know, unless you're Hulk Hogan, and you can hold it that long, you know, you're waiting until just a few seconds, or a fraction of a second to be able to get the full draw and get that arrow off and so that's a big when you're shooting it's like one

fluid like you don't really camp out at all full drawn isn't it kind of like a fluid motion depends you know lots of guys shoot that way they shoot split finger so one finger above the knock two fingers below the knock on the string they're drawing drawing all the way back and you know standard places middle finger corner of the mouth and they're just the whole time they're drawing they're just burning a hole in what they want to hit and when they hit full draw the arrow's gone it's that fluid motion it's instinctive shooting i'm kind of a hybrid system i'm not a gap shooter but when I get to my first anchor point, I'm locked in and I'm there for a couple of seconds. And you can hold it a beat or two longer.

Yeah, a beat or two longer until I can get to my second anchor point and then I'm gone. So I'm a slower shooter than a lot of guys. But you could draw back and hang out for a couple seconds, a few seconds, and then still do a nice shot. You wouldn't need to let off and start over again to get your system down. Yeah. I had a buck come in on me this year and he was coming at it, just a nice crisp walk. And I came to full draw right at the point when I thought he was going to come out in my shooting lane and he stopped it. So here I am, I have no shot and I'm at full draw and I'm holding and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I you know just waiting for him to do is take like three or four more steps and you know my whole body's quaking I'm like an aspen leaf you know I'm like shit there's no way this is not gonna happen and so I had to real gingerly let down and good thing I did because he ended up staying there for

a long time that didn't spook him no it didn't spook him and then finally he actually turned away and started to walk away and then turned back around and went right through the shooting for a long time. Oh, that didn't spook him that long? No, it didn't spook him. And then finally, he actually turned away and started to walk away and then turned back around and went right through the shooting lane. I hoped he'd come through and then I was able

to make the shot. Did you get the deer? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. What kind of stuff are you hunting? Ag land?

No. I hunt mostly behind my house where I've got, I own 36 acres and then I have permission on another, gosh, I don't even know, probably 250 or 300 acres, which I know doesn't sound like a lot in, you know, in Western terms.

No, that's big. East of the Mississippi, man. That's a chunk of land and it's all ridge, you know, it's all mountain land basically. Not, no, so not ag land. Nope. Well, I use, I mean, I traveled to other places to hunt, so I do have some properties that are ag land. You had to say your main hunting spot. Big woods.

Woods. Yep, big woods. Yeah. And you use bait for deer? No. You never use bait for deer? No bait for me. New York State, bait's not legal.

Bait's not legal in New York State? Nope, no bait. So what do you- Ohio, I think, is our closest state that allows bait. So what do you- Ohio I think is our closest state that allows bait. So what do you like to sit on then? You're sitting on trails? I sit on trails. Back up for a minute. So bait is not allowed at all in New York state? You're not even allowed to feed deer in New York state. I think that's true. It's true in some counties and I think it's going to become true statewide mainly because of chronic wasting disease so

there's concerns about that so you use scent attractants yeah you can use scent attractors yep so what is your typical setup I figure out bedding areas and feeding areas and I like to get close to bedding areas because you know deer aren't moving until you know the last light so if you know if you're sitting on food you sit there all day and you're not going to see anything in a lot of cases, not always, but you know, especially if you're hunting October when, you know, deer, they're not food stressed yet or anything. And so they're staying in their beds until after dark, and then they're going to get up and move to food. So if you can find those bedding areas and get close, and what I like to do is figure out the terrain funnels, you know, I'm hunting mountain grounds.

So there's, you know, lots of little hollows and bridges with benches and that kind of stuff. And so, you know, I try to figure out how a buck is going to get from his bed to his food. And sometimes there's, you know, things that are like staging areas where, you know, a buck will come out. It's a safe spot because there's some cover there. And he'll hang out a little bit, you know, before will come out. It's a safe spot because there's some cover there and he'll hang out a little bit, you know, before heading off to the food. And those are great spots if you can figure them out. Where he's going to mill around.

He's going to mill around. You do see that quite often, like just glass and deer, any kind of hunting situation with deer. I think oftentimes you'll see them where, where they spend a lot of time in the, in the after, like if they're coming out for the evening feed, where they spend a lot of time in the after, like if they're coming out for the evening feed, where they spend a lot of time before really committing to coming out onto a big sage flat

or coming out into an ag field. You know, they're up. They're not like just standing there. They'll feed on some browse and yeah. But they know that like risky step. Oh yeah. And they're prolonging that risky thing, you know. Yeah, and you can see a lot of sign in those places.

You'll see lots of tracks and, you know, shit. And as far, and if you're looking for bucks, you know, a lot of times you'll find rubs popping up. They rub in those places. Yeah, because I think they're bored. You know, they're in there. They don't want to go to the food because, you know, that's a dangerous spot.

Often doesn't have a lot of cover. They're in a place with a lot of cover and they're just kind of moving around in there, maybe feeding on what's there rubbing. Yeah. It's like, I don't think people, or I'm sure they do. Some people probably don't realize what 20, I mean, 20 yards is close. Yeah. 60 feet. Yeah. I mean, you're like breathing the air with them,

but it must be, you must be sitting there sometimes and have deer walk by where like that deer is so damn close, but I'm not going to take the shot. Oh, I love it. That's one of my favorite things actually. know it's just you know how you know having a doe and a couple of fawns walk by it you know at 10 yards and they're right there I mean you see every hair on that deer you can see her eyelashes you know you can you can see her see her nostrils flaring in and out when she's breathing I mean it's not that's why I'm in the woods I mean you know that's the stuff that really makes your heart tick after After, you know, growing up tree stand hunting for deer

and then moving out west and just being so in love with spot stock hunting and backpack hunting, you know, like hunting really big country with firearms especially, or even just with bow, but like traveling while you're hunting. I never got like really nostalgic for being in a tree. But then one day I was just out in Mile City with my brother

and we spent a couple of days bow hunting out of trees. And after a long break from it, after a decade of not doing it. And I remember sitting in that tree being like, man, I just totally forgot the level of detail where just being there and instead of you moving to things or you moving into some things, just having the things come to you. I remember being like having raccoons messing in the tree next to me and then squirrels and the way birds will come up and land

on your arrow shaft and all that. You're like, oh, I totally forgot. Like you watch wildlife in such a different way or you like how skittish rough grouse are i'm not kidding how many times sitting in my tree stand and just observing a rough grouse which doesn't happen you can hunt you can be the biggest damn bird hunter in the world and you don't the only thing you ever see of rough grouse is them going but to be like oh yeah there he is he's feeding yeah i mean down below me scratching in the leaves it's like you see shit that you just don't see yeah i mean when you're a hiking hunter you know we all we all kind of evolve as hunters and you know we think about what it is we

really like to do and and how we do it and i got to a stage in my hunting where i felt guilty for not doing more spot and stalk hunting or not doing more, you know, kind of still hunting. I was always sitting in a tree or sitting in a ground blind. And I was like, man, I should really, you know, I should start doing more of that other stuff. And I have done more of it. But I always come back to this thing, you know, where I've matured a little bit.

And I said, well, that's what I love to do. For all the reasons you just explained, I just love, you know, to, to, to just figure the deer out, just really learn a place, you know, learn what makes it tick, you know, where's the topography, where's the food, where do they bed, where is that one spot in the entire forest that a deer is going to walk by? That's what really, it's like a chess game. I mean, that's what really gets me going. And then on top of that, you know, you become part of the forest when you're sitting there for hours on end and you get to see the really cool stuff. You know, the red fox, you

know, leaping up in the air and snow diving after meadow voles. I mean, that's the kind of stuff you don't really get to see if you're out cruising around too much, but if you're right there, you know, you get to see a lot of interesting wildlife. I remember being there one time and watching a mink dedicate about 20 minutes of his life to trying to catch a chipmunk in some holes in some trees and just being like, man, you know,

the shit you just- So tenacious. Yeah, the shit you just never would notice, you know, I loved it. Now, you mentioned ground blinds. You sit in ground blinds? Yep. Not pop-ups much.

Yeah. That's like a generational thing. I think it's like so few people, a mild man would build, he'd build a wigwam ground blind, but he was trained up hunting traditional archery, hunting recurve. Even when he switched to compounds though,

he would still quite often build a wigwam style ground blind and he would even excavate it out so it's just dead quiet in there. What's wigwam style? Dome. He'd build a brush dome. I mean where it was closed on top. Where does the word wigwam come from?

Like the Ojibwe and other eastern where you're born. Those people, the indigenous people where you were born use wigwams. You were born in a wigwam. No. You were born in wigwam country. Type in wigwam in your damn phone. Isn't there a sock company called

wigwam? There is, but nobody knows what that means. It's a style of house. Jimmy Dorn, you know what that means? Absolutely. A lowly pizza man. Looks just like a shelter. A lowly pizza man. A shelter. Dome shelter. A lowly pizza man. A shelter. Yeah. Dome shelter.

Dome shelter, willow reeds, and I don't know, leaves and stuff, wasn't it? They sheathed it with different things. Anything from bark to grass. But it's like a dome. That's also the first time I've heard of it using it. Because we built, I mean, that's all I sat in growing up, you know, until we were old enough to get into a tree. It was always ground blind.

So we never built like a roof. A woven, it's like a woven thing so you wind up you go around your perimeter and put in long bendy poles and you make a circle long bendy poles then imagine bending all those poles in to meet at the top and then then you have like uh what looks like umbrella staves with no umbrella and then you run circular like you're they're basically forming lines of latitude so there's your lines of longitude like a half of a globe with longitude lines on it and then you put in you take sticks and make your lines of latitude and then you brush it in but then you pick your shooting height which is whatever your comfortable height is when you're kneeling or sitting or whatever.

And you leave that band of latitude not covered in any brush. And that's where you shoot out of. And you could do a square dance there and they're not gonna know you're in there. It was a lot of work. When I was in Africa, we hunted out of these, they called them rock hides, but they're basically pit blinds

and then build up with rock to about waist high and then above that is basically a thatched hut you know with little shooting ports in it and so it's kind of wigwam like but it's just thatched grasses and stuff and i mean you'd get away with anything in there yeah this is like basically if he was alive now he used to build these ground blinds now and then if he was was alive now, he'd have a pop-up blind. Because a pop-up blind is the same damn thing. It's like you can get away with a lot of movement. Somebody should make one and call it the synthetic wigwam.

Yeah. You can get away with a lot of movement in a pop-up blind. But anyway, I've never shot. You'd put a lot more thought into where you were setting up your pop-up blind if you had to build that. Oh, no. It was a thing. You would have a couple of them around. You'd have a couple of them around

that would just be in your repertoire. I could still take it. It's funny because one of the farms we grew up on, I could take it where it was like a spot where my old man liked to sit and there was no appropriate tree there and he would just have this ground blind he'd sit down in. But you'll this ground blind he'd sit on it.

But you'll sit ground blinds. Yeah, but I don't build. But don't you just get whiffed so bad? I don't build wigwams because they, part of the, I mean, I'm on the move all the time. I use a climbing tree stand most of the time. I like to move from place to place. And if you're going to stop and build a ground blind,

you're actually going to, you know, take out a saw and cut some stuff. Yeah, make a lot of disturbance. It makes so much scent and disturbance disturbance so i carry just a little like little mesh netting on fiberglass poles you know that i can just right down in front of me and i try to back myself up to a deadfall or even a bunch of dense grasses or something like that you get a shot off like that yeah and it's no trouble like a turkey blind set up almost that's my system now for the with the kids that's what I carry.

Because there's just no way you're going to get them set still long enough. Do you wear a ghillie suit? Yeah, I love ghillie suits. They're so much fun. They're tough with bows, though, because you've got all that strands of stuff hanging off of you. You just trim that arm off. That's what I do, yeah. I take scissors and trim it up. But I always tell guys who are thinking about a ghillie suit is practice like crazy in that thing before you go hunting with it.

I mean, even back here at your chest, you know, depending on your body shape, you know, your bowstring sometimes can get into your chest. And with all those strands on there, it snags. You really have to be careful. Now, were you trained as an ornithologist? You work at an ornithology lab. Yeah, I work at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Which is the, like, ornithology lab. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't trained as an ornithology lab. Yeah, I work at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Which is the, like, ornithology lab. Yeah.

Yeah, I wasn't trained as an ornithologist per se. I mean, my degrees are in wildlife biology and ecology and a little bit of forestry. But I did my master's work on birds. I worked on American kestrels. Oh, no shit. Yeah. We just had a kestrel in one of our shows. Mm-hmm.

There was kestrels working while we were hunting mule deer in Nevada. A lot of kestrels in there. What were you looking at with kestrels working while we were hunting mule deer in Nevada. A lot of kestrels in there. What were you looking at with kestrels? I was working at a place in Pennsylvania called Hawk Mountain Sanctuary where they have a bunch of property there. I was looking at just how they select their nest sites. Their populations are declining

and trying to figure out what is it about their territories around their nest sites and the nest sites themselves that makes some of them really successful and others not successful? Why do nests fail in those places? You know, because it was just a...

Did you find anything, like, conclusive? Well, one thing I found is that, you know, kestrels do best in pasture kind of situations. They don't like, you know, row crops, corn, soybeans. They just can't hunt very well. And for the size of the bird, they have pretty short legs. And so getting down into some of those row crops is tough for them. There's, you know, lots of insecticides used in those places, and they feed on a lot of insects.

So that doesn't work very well. But, you know, pasture situations are great for kestrels. The other huge thing is starlings. So if you have kestrel nests, either in a natural cavity in a tree or in a nest box, and you're pretty close to the farm proper, close to the barn where you've got big populations of starlings.

They rob the eggs. Those starlings will just go in there and they take their bill and they pierce holes in the kestrel's eggs and then they'll just build their nest right on top of the kestrel eggs. Oh yeah, they're nasty. But the kestrels will probably just, feed on the starling they could eat the starling outside of the nest but

they just don't they're just too timid and they just don't do it i spent some time with a guy that was in the bluebird restoration and he like typified his work as um just on a large property you know he was having great success with bluebirds but he was like if i was going to condense it all down it's i kill english sparrows and starlings because that's that's how you help bluebirds there's no doubt about that yeah so uh like uh is there a certain amount of writing involved in your like how did you like why how did you come to start writing articles and books and whatnot?

Like if you got that whole other set of obligations. Yeah, I just love to write. When I'm out hunting and I have all those experiences, things we were talking about, seeing all kinds of wildlife and dealing with bows and arrows, which I just love. There's a whole rich history of archery and all the woods and there's just so much richness to it. And I just felt a need to start to write it down. So I used to write it down for myself.

And one day I said, well, maybe I'll just write this down a little more formally and send it to a magazine. And it took me a few tries, and then boom. One day I got a letter in the mail that said, we've accepted your article, and we're going to send you a check. And the gigantic magazine check started rolling. Gigantic, I don't know about that. But I was like, oh yeah. And I was just hooked. I mean, you know, I have a full-time job. I have a career that I love, you know, doing conservation biology and wildlife work. But, you know, this was something that I was

really passionate about and I wanted to do. And so I've just done it. Sure, I make a little extra money on it, but honestly, it's not enough to, it's enough to buy a couple of bows and go on a couple of hunting trips now and then, but certainly not. I mean, guys who are freelance writers and make a living at it,

I don't know how they do it. I mean, you gotta be a machine to turn out enough articles, you know, to really do well at it. But for me, it's, you know, it fills a niche in my brain. So what year was the first year? When did you sell your first article for publication? 2002, maybe. 2002 or 2003, somewhere in that ballpark.

So here's the thing I always wonder about with writers. Like I think there's people who are really into something, like you're an airplane enthusiast, let's say. And that's the thing you are, you're an airplane enthusiast. And then someday you write a book about planes. Or you got people who are writers and they're like, I'm going to write. So here's my subject matter, right? Were you the, I'm going to write, and then you found your outlet through traditional

archery or are you like I'm gonna do traditional archery and then eventually like I know so much shit I'm gonna write it down no my my my connection was definitely through archery and hunting and then writing yeah you're like I'm gonna dispenseense my wisdom or try to like put some of my thoughts and find out what exactly they are by putting them on the paper. Yeah. My freshman year in college, I had to take a remedial writing course just to get in. I mean, you know, coming out of high school, I was no writer. Yeah. See, I was going to write some damn thing. I mean, I knew I was going to write. Yeah. No, I definitely was not that. But once I figured it out, you know, once I figured out what

I needed to do to get better as a writer, I loved it. I mean, I just ate right into it. You got into the craft. I got into the craft of doing it. And I write a lot for work, too. I mean, I, you know, a lot of what I do is, you know, is conservation biology that's focused on strategic planning. And so I take science done by other people. I take science that we do in our own team.

And this is what you guys were talking about earlier. And figure out how to reformulate that into conservation and management recommendations for wildlife. Gotcha. That's what I really love to do. So taking information, making it applicable to real-world situations. Exactly. And especially to practitioners, to foresters and land managers and people who are actually out on the ground doing it. What I want to do is give them a cookbook.

I want to give them a set of best management practices to go out and manage for, you know, whatever suite of species we're talking about. Yeah, I can imagine. Like you got some guys, I always think about my friend Doug Duren. You know, he's got a background. He manages a family property um and they do ag and they do timberlands and stuff but he's got all these little battles on you know like certain oaks right trying to get some native like oak species regenerated and it's a huge problem because you know white tails love them can't get. You know, and I imagine like as he's figuring all this out, you also have, there's probably resources out there, you know, that some guy knows.

But just making the two people come together, you know, where like you got the guy who's like trying to do some like on the ground stuff and giving that person all those tools of what might be known in the academic world, you know, and making sure all those connections get made. Yeah, I mean, for so many years, those connections didn't get made because, you know, scientists, by virtue of where they worked often at academic institutions, weren't, you know, they just didn't get into making policy. They, you know, they were steered away from any kind of advocacy and they weren't translating their results into management recommendations. And so much of that has changed now. I mean, where I work, we're encouraged to do that. We really want to take that next step and take the science and put it on the ground.

And cooperative extension units at universities. Yeah, that's like an extension agent. Exactly, that's what they do. To be that guy who's the liaison between land managers and research, right? Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, those were set out initially to try to figure out how you could get your Holstein to produce more pounds of milk. But now that's widened out into soil conservation science. And I do non-game bird work and you'd be amazed at the number of people who are they're interested in doing that kind of stuff they own

50 acres that was once a working farm and it's not a working farm anymore they've got some money and they want to manage for wildlife you know they want to they like birds they want to have you know some warblers around or whatever it is yeah Yeah. Coming from a Western perspective, I think it's hard for some people who have a distinctly Western perspective, don't realize the importance of private lands conservation on the Eastern half of the country, where you just don't have that, where you don't have, you know, a lot of these states in the West, 50, 60, 70% of the landmass is federal or state forest, public land. So you look at like, oh yeah, all the conservation work, you know, is like happening in these areas. You get out in the East and if landowners aren't doing good conservation work, it's not happening. Yeah. I mean, some of the species I work with,

like golden-winged warbler and wood thrush, as much as 80% of their distribution in the United States is on private land. So if you can't do conservation on private land, moving the needle on those populations, you know, trying to stabilize the population and recover them, you just, you aren't going ways that it happens, but you almost like to see, you like to see more credit go to those people who on there, you know, I think Doug and many, many guys like Doug, but those people who are thinking about that stuff, like in addition, they have an obligation to pull resources off there and try to make money or break even or whatever your situation is in the land. But then people who, we talked about earlier about handicapping yourself with certain things, but like handicapping your operation by having some obligation to wildlife on there as well

is way the hell off subject. But it's important work, man. But you deal in that kind of stuff. Yeah, all the time. And you're trying to figure out cooperative solutions to a lot of this stuff. As a suite of species, grassland birds are declining faster than any other bird group. And a big reason for the decline is just the way in which we take off hay crops now. We take off more crops and we take those hay crops off earlier. And so these are birds that

nest right on the ground. They're obligate ground nesting grassland birds. And they just get hammered by, you know, the hay mowing. And so figuring out how you work with farmers so that farmers can still get their hay crop off, can still feed their animals, can still make money from selling hay, and you can still, you know, have a window of time where you can get at least one brood of young you know of those grassland birds off i mean that's the kind of stuff that's fun to me because you know working landscapes are that's what you know this country is built on

you know landscapes need to continue to work but they also need to be able to produce wildlife and so figuring out how to do that is it's an art and a science i worked for a greenhouse for quite a while when i was in high school and we would in the summer day uh in the spring they'd be hardening off the flat you know flats like when you go buy plants they come in those little like a flat like a flat of flowers right we'd move hundreds of flats out into fields they'd come out you'd be loading a conveyor in the greenhouse. You'd be emptying these entire greenhouses and lining these fields with flats. It'll just be like a field of flats.

I remember one time, and we're out there pulling in thousands of flats. And I find a flat that had, that a kill deer had put its eggs in the cup of the flat. So we pick every flat up, and I leave the one flat laying out in this field and i explain to the owner i'm like hey you know that one out there i didn't pick it up scotta killed your eggs in it and he has some bitch walks out in that field picks that flat dumps those eggs out there carries it in his greenhouse man they're were being like, come on, dude. Sorry, kill deer. I mean, I was no softie. I was no softie as a kid, but I remember being struck by that shit. It was being like, dude, come on, man.

So how long did it, when did you start working on your boat on traditional bow hunters path? Like how long something like that take you when you got a whole other job you're trying to do? Oh, man. Yeah. And my son was born just as I was starting to work on this thing and so you know i was one of those deals where you get up at four in the morning you know and you're right for two hours like i'm mad at the kitchen counter until i hear him wake up and you know and the whole family thing starts but i don't know from start to finish it's about two years yeah something like that i mean i think

i turned the manuscript in in about i don't know maybe 14 months or something like that I mean I think I turned the manuscript in in about I don't know maybe 14 months or something like that and then there's that whole you know editing process and production you know you know the drill you know that goes into all of that so who do you man like who's the most who's the best audience for it in your mind is it are you thinking like uh um is it meant to be for people looking to get into it for dudes that are already into it? Yeah, it's everybody. That's a tough question. Well, this is one of those first books too, where, you know, you're throwing the kitchen sink at it a little bit, you know,

because it's the first time I've done it. So I guess I have, I have three audiences in mind. I have traditional bow hunters, you know, traditional archers who are already into it. And there's a ton of information in here that I think they'll, they'll like and can benefit from lots of how-to stuff. It's for compound shooters who want to pick up a traditional bow and traditional archery is one of the fastest growing sports that we have. I mean, people are really coming to it and there's not a lot of good information out there about how you make the switch. So, you know, compound shooters wanting to switch to traditional archery is another one, another audience. Oh, like their challenges or

what they're facing are different than someone who's got no archery background coming into it. Yeah, it's a little different. And just, you know, what bow do I buy? I mean, you know, there's hundreds of bowiers out there now. You know, do you get a long bow? Do you get a recurve? Do I spend a thousand bucks on a custom bow or should I just go buy a $500 production bow? Now, do you come down and be like, and help people or you just try to muddy the waters in your book?

Oh, I try to help people. No, so you're like specific recommendations. Well, specific as you can get. I mean, everybody's different. I mean, I'm looking across the table here at Yanni. You're what, six, one probably, you're, you're a big guy and, you know, your, your whole situation is going to be different than mine. And so when I make recommendations about what bow to go with, you really have to, there's

some generalizations. Yeah. But, okay. I guess kind of what I'm getting at is this in the, in the how to, like we did some how to stuff, like some, like how,to stuff like some like how-to books and in there you want to be like oh yeah you know a good pair of boots should do x y and z right so you could leave it at that or you could say for instance this is a hell of a boot like do you help people where you kind of like listen i've done a whole bunch of hunting killed a bunch of game there's a lot of reasons there's a lot of arguments for and against all

this kind of stuff if you're on the fence go recurve not longbow or you just kind of say like here's all the shit to consider yeah i guess i think i mostly just say here's all the shit to consider a little more pointed than that you know know, but I definitely don't say, if you're making the switch from compound, you absolutely have to shoot a recurve because that's the pathway then to the longbow or something. I just don't believe that. I think everybody's got to make their own decision. And I think, you know,

if you give them good information, they can do it. People are smart. I mean, they can figure this stuff out. Yeah. You know, so I try to steer them down the right path. Now, do you feel that, uh, do you find yourself trying to talk people in the traditional? Are you like, if you're interested, here's a resource. Yeah. I, I talk, try to talk people into it in the sense that I'm really passionate about it. And I love, you know, the leather and the bone

and the wood and all the stuff that just comes with it to me. Leather, bone, wood. Yeah, I just love it. Now I'm hooked. It's just so cool. day and have a place to hunt and really, you know, not just time practicing, but you're not going to go shoot a squirrel or a rabbit or a deer every time you go out with a traditional bow. It's going to be every 10th time you go out or every 50th time. And so if you're working, you know, 70 hours a week at some job and you have three kids and you really want to learn how to hunt, or you're

already a hunter and you just want to do something a little different it's probably not the right thing for you at that time so no i don't i don't you know take people by the shoulders and say hey you got to do this yeah that's the thing though because people say to me like oh so you think that everyone who ought to go hunting i'm like no no not at all no yeah if you're interested in it i'd love to have a chat with you. But I'm not going to, like, try to convince you to be interested in it. Yeah, there's no doubt. 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.

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I'm amazed at the number of, you know, this whole notion of, you know, adult onset hunters, you know, people who are, you know, have never hunted, they're in their 20s or 30s or, you know, maybe even 40s or 50s and they're coming to hunting. And we're seeing that so much in New York State, you know, coming out of the city and out of other urban areas, people who have been introduced to hunting through food and through meat eater. And, you know, I get it all the time. I work at Cornell University where I'm surrounded by students that are coming from all over the country. And they hear through the grapevine that I'm a hunter and that I'm a traditional bow hunter. And they'll seek me out and come to me and say, look, you know, I've never done this before.

And by the way, don't tell my classmates I'm interested in this. I'll be a pariah. I really want to check this out kind of thing. That never happened 10 years ago. Is that right? Yeah. I shouldn't say never, but it didn't happen often. Not like it is now.

Yeah. Good. There's no doubt about it. In my mind, the biggest argument against it, I own a longbow. I own a recurve. Never killed a big game animal with a longbow or recurve. Yanni and I talked about this not long ago. It's like, my thing is,

like my primary goal as a hunter, it's like primary goal as a hunter and a fisherman. You know, I got a million secondaries, or I guess you can only have one secondary. I got the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, right? Primary goal is that I have enough meat where when my family's eating at home, we have wild game meat. That's like my number one thing. So all else falls from that. It's like, I want to be that when we're eating in the Rinella household, like when I cook dinner at night, I go into my freezer and I got enough game meeting there where, you know, and I think that, um, if I knew I was going to fulfill that all the time and I, and I, I fulfill it quite handily right now, primarily because of the particulars of my, uh, my, uh, occupation, I have absolutely no problem doing that. But let's say I got into some other line

of work down the road that really limited how much time I spent outdoors. And I was looking at that long bone as much as I'm like, man, I respect it. I respect it. No end. I got kind of like some family ties to that stuff. I get it. It's like a higher art. But I look at it and I'm like, but I know if I, you know, with that rifle, man, I'm piling up the pounds of meat.

I mean, we eat a ton of venison. I mean, it's almost the only meat we eat. And so my goal every year is to stock the freezer too. And it takes a lot of time with a longbow or a recurve, but you can do it. I mean, I have three deer in the freezer right now. That's a good jump on the situation, though, man. By the time the season is over, I hope to have two or three more. And that'll, you know, it's my wife is over, I hope to have two or three more. You know, and that'll,

that'll, you know, there's, it's my wife and I, a three-year-old son and I have a daughter who's just two months old. So she's not eating venison yet, but she will be soon.

Four or five months. Yeah. Oh yeah. If you're putting away a few deer, you're loving it. Yeah. And you know, I mentioned earlier.

But you got a lot, but again, you got a lot of days into it. Yeah. You're not hunting three days. Huge amount of time. I mean, you know, I, my, it's funny.

We were cleaning out some stuff at the house a couple of weeks ago and my wife ran across one of my old hunting journals and she starts leafing through it. She was like, holy shit, you hunted every single day from October 1st to almost the end of November. It's like, yeah, I either get a morning hunt in or an afternoon hunt for every day of the season. I mean, I don't do it anymore because I have a family and I just can't. But when I was single, I mean, I was out there all the time, but you mentioned about filling the freezer. Those times that I was pulling the muzzle loader out in the last 25 years, it was at the end of the season and the freezer was empty. so that's your freezer filling trip is to take a flintlock you're like baby i'm getting serious getting out this year flintlock that's crazy take no

prisoners hope it ain't raining oh yeah yeah rain no prisoners today man i got this souped up firearm to here mine's all rusty too and the scopes are the scope the stock's all banged up it's just a mess. So do you ever think you're right about hunting with flintlocks? That's a whole damn thing too, man. Yeah, I don't know. I love it. My dad got me into flintlocks, and I just love doing it.

Yeah, maybe someday. Yeah, you got to have nerves of steel because you need to hold steady between the first boom and the second boom. Most people, the first boom, they got the muzzle six inches up in the air yeah you gotta sit tight boom bam well and you get those really delayed fires too you know where the flint hits the frenzied and the powder in the pan flashes and you're holding holding holding then all of a sudden boom you know by that time you're well off what you were gonna shoot at yeah i've done some messing around with those,

but I kind of like that stuff. Yeah, it's fun. But what do you think? Do you think you'll do more books? Yeah, definitely thinking about another book. I'm working on it now. I was working on it in the hotel room a little bit and just kind of framing it

and getting some stuff on paper at the moment. It's not going to be about bow hunting. No? No, it's going to be about bow hunting no no it's going to be it's going to be about hunting okay uh it's i found in writing this book that i like writing about people you know i love writing about natural history and hunting and all that stuff but i really love writing about people and i'm passionate about conservationist and the whole hunter concert conservationist movement and it strikes me that you know we hear all the time about this this whole suite of people who you know who founded the hunter conservationist movement

leopold gifford pincho pincho grinnell we talk about those fellas all the time yeah i've only in the last year really started to like just dedicate a little bit of free time of like learning more about that the names you just hear But there's a whole bunch of others too, like FDR, you know, did a whole bunch of some, you know, founded the civilian conservation. FDR? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Some of the, like the, the new deal works. He had a hand in founding national fish and wildlife foundation. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff. Other. He's an unsung hero. If he, in fact, is a hero. Absolutely.

No one talks about that guy. So. I mean, not that they don't talk about that guy. So, what I'm thinking about- Not that they don't talk about him. I mean, the fellow had to get a little bit tangled up in World War II. But I mean, no one talks about him through the lens of conservation. Yeah, you just put your finger on what the book is going to be about. My working title is Red Hands, Green Hearts, Stories of American Hunters and Conservationists. I like that shit.

That's good. And I want to tell their stories. That's a good title. I don't want to just do like, you know, Roosevelt did X, Y, and Z. Why did he do it? What were his hunting experiences like? What, how did Leopold hunt? I mean, you know, Leopold actually, from what I've read, wasn't a very successful hunter and his wife actually out hunted him a lot, but those stories aren't out. He seems to do a little bit of blundering in the game. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He kind of was, that was like, he kind of like take the long walk. Yeah. And like, there's one! Well, to come up with some of the stuff that he said, you had to have a long walk. Exactly, you know. Make it through. Yeah, I imagine he probably walked past a lot of shit,

like deep in thought, and then he realized, oh, standing there, you know. And I want to find some of those figures too like fdr like um stewart udall uh you know some of these people who who were hunters and did great conservation work but are completely unsung you know we just don't know about them and i want to tell their stories yeah it's interesting now uh stackpole books is kind of cool because they do so much stuff in the in the outdoor space they've been around a long time yeah have you liked working with those guys i guess you can't say if you didn't but probably wink no they've been great yeah fantastic no i mean they've been such like a constant in the as far as like like uh natural history stuff and hunting and fishing spaces and adventure travel and just, you know.

Yeah. I mean, it was funny because when I had the idea for this book and I wrote the proposal and I sent it out to a bunch of different publishers and Stackpole was top of my list and I never heard back from them. And so I pinged them again and never heard anything. And I was literally just about ready to sign a contract with someone else when Judith Schnell from Stackpole returned one of my emails. Judith Schnell still around? Yeah. And she said, absolutely, we're interested in your book. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to get back to you. And it was just like, boom, everything fell into place after that. And so he's, I mean, she was literally hours or a day away from, you know, or I was from, from, you know, with going with someone else.

So where, what's the best way people, uh, what's the best way people find your book? I'm getting it's on Amazon, right? It's on Amazon. Um, you can buy it there, but you can also buy it at my website, which is traditional spirit outdoors.com. What all is that? What kind of stuff's on your website? Uh, it's stuff about the book and other stuff. I do a lot of freelance writing and you know, I'll do, um,

writing for people's websites, kind of content development, that kind of thing. And do you do other shit? Like are you nap? Do you nap broadheads and do aerial shafts and stuff? I make arrows, but I don't do any napping.

Yeah. You haven't shot. You haven't napped ahead and tried to shoot something with it? I've tried to nap. When you say you make an arrow, what's your blank slate? Yeah, I'm starting with just a wooden shaft, unfinished. I buy a wooden shaft and then go from there. Cedar, I like ash.

Ash is a little heavier. In your book, you talk about the fletching and the fletching process. Yeah, it's fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So say the website again. It's traditionalspiritoutdoors.com. If people go on there, they probably buy a signed book off you, right?

They can get a signed book. And the other thing they can do is I give 10% of all book sales back to backcountry hunters and anglers. Really? 10% of the cover price. 10% of the cover price when you're buying the book. So if someone buys the book, you give $2 10 cents to BHA. Yeah. It's generous. You know, it's, I think conservation is so important. Piss ants at Patagonia. They only give 1%. You're really gutting all those boys. No, not it's dead trout picture. It's real. No,

it comes from a place of love's it comes from a place of love it comes from a place of love i i've always like i know a lot of guys hunting patagonia i like patagonia i actually met a fella that works at patagonia not long and i was telling about that it's just that uh i feel like they've um you know you got this like patriarch who kind of started this company and he's like uh he likes to do a little hunting and fishing and whatnot. And I just feel like they haven't got the memo. They haven't got the memo. Trolling for him or a representative to give us a call or email.

I heard at one point that he was a closeted hunter. Yeah, but I think that's bullshit. That's not true. I think people like to make that story up. He's not closeted. Yeah. He's like open about it because he was just recently profiled in the New Yorker

and in there he talks a bit about hunting. He's not closeted. I thought he was closeted. Yeah. I don't know. Anyhow, what was I saying? About Pat Wodak? How'd that come up?

1%. 1%. They only gave one to the planet. You know, Yanni did a whole damn t-shirt run. I think he gave all the money away. Mm-hmm. 100% of the profits. All the money. I can't compete with that, Yanni did a whole damn t-shirt run. I think he gave all the money away. Mm-hmm. 100% of the profits. All the money.

I can't compete with that, Yanni. No, it's been good for us. Did you sell them out? Good for you in one way. No, we've been... Well, I just think the exposure, you know, it gives us its marketing. I mean... So hold on a minute now.

So it's not... But so... All right. So explain that. You had a t-shirt. There's BHA written on it's not. But so, all right. So explain that. You had a t-shirt. You had a t-shirt. There's BHA written on it. Yeah. We specifically made a t-shirt for this person.

For this purpose. Did you take the money out to make the t-shirt? So at least. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, profits. All right. So once we paid for the shirts, paid for the design.

So you weren't losing money. No. I got you. Because that's the bad business. That would be a bad business design. So you weren't losing money. No. I got you. Because that's the bad business. That would be a bad business. Because then he won't even be around to do any good for anybody. Yeah.

No, and it's great, man. When you get an email or a personal phone call from Lan, and he's like, dude, you guys really put your money where your mouth was, and we just got another check from you guys, and we're so stoked. Like you send the check in. Yeah. Did I ever tell you this story? Yeah feels real good i might have told i might have told sorry if i told this story on a podcast i one time went to god have i told the story i was

down in remember talking about north carolina like what's the trendy town in north carolina charlotte there's charlotte not trendy the one up in the mountains. Asheville. I went to Asheville, North Carolina, and this guy down there was doing this. He does this wild game dinner, okay, where he charges, you know, 75, I think it was 75 bucks a seat. He does a wild game dinner. And I had pointed out to him, like, you know,

some of the seminal wildlife conservation legislation in this country had to do with banning the sale of wild game meat. pointed out to him like you know some of the seminal wildlife conservation legislation in this country had to do with banning the sale of wild game meat and that's kind of how we recovered our wildlife species because we got rid of market hunting and what you're engaged in here is you're engaged in market hunting um and you're breaking a whole lot of laws by having by charging for a wild game dinner we talked some more about it. I'm like, he goes, oh, so-and-so. I'm like, yeah, places do fundraisers.

You can do fundraisers with proper accounting, you know, where you have a wild game dinner and you raise money and the money goes because it's not a for-profit venture. And he then says, oh, okay. And so then I go to one of these dinners. It's probably a book tour thing I'm on. And he says how, and I get to pick the recipient of the money.

And I pick the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. After that dinner, I got ahold of him and said, hey, you let me know if you ever get a check from the organization or the person or anything. Never got it. Never got it. And he's talking about it at the event. Tricky son of a bitch.

That's a debit out of the car. Yeah. I never went after him about it. I don't want to talk about anything, but I didn't do all the work I should have done to document it or whatever, but I remember thinking it was a little bit... Yeah.

So anyhow, so you write them in. You just like write the check. You keep track of it or whatever. Yeah. But they sell it too. Not yet. We're going to print some more up and get them some shirts to sell.

You guys sell Belltown pizza t-shirts? Lots of them. Come summer, the tourists like to take them home for sure. They eat pizza walk all the t-shirts pizza get a cool t-shirt is that why you're asking me who does our t-shirts yeah i got a great guy so yeah our t-shirt situation's a mess man everybody's like calling me up trying to hit you up for t-shirts because i know i know you yeah just earlier jimmy dorn hit me up for a net gaiter for a kid of a friend. Yeah, my buddy Cody's kid, Ridge, is going to have a Merry Christmas. Dude, anybody named Ridge? We got a guy we work with that we named him Ridge.

He's a cool little kid. His name's Chris. We named him Ridge Pounder. Oh, yeah. That's a cool name. Yeah. His wife is Miss Pounder. Ridge Pounder.

Whatever happened to that son of a bitch? He needs to come back out with us. Yeah. You talking to him at all? Yeah. No, I'm keeping the leash. I'm trying to shorten the leash, you know? But yeah, he had to go and just test the waters other places.

Realize that he was already working for the good folk. Yeah, yeah. Jimmy, you got any closing thoughts? Wow, not really. I just enjoyed learning a little bit more about longbows and recurves, and I still have that. Yeah, you shoot some arrows out of a out of a souped up ball yeah i have a compound nice matthews that i like a lot but you shot a freak buck with it i think last year i did i shot a really old really smelling crazy looking deer crazy looking deer yeah um you'll do yes

five by four it was really super old you look like like he'd been through hell. He was not in good shape. I did him a favor, I think. He was in the autumn of his life. He was at the very end, yeah. There was no fat, no blood came out. It was just bizarre. And about a thousand ticks on him and a distinct smell.

Good stuff. You probably served all that meat at the end. Oh, yeah. Special sandwich. It's a little funny. We'll give you a served all that meat oh yeah special it's a little funny we'll give you a discount on that one he ran a Super Bowl special there if you could sell it that's what they pay the big bucks for

across the Atlantic in Germany I was told by a guy who's a who you know like in Scotland stuff they do you know they got like it's a different system there the landowner owns it's not like, like in Scotland, stuff they do. You know, they got like,

it's a different system there where the landowner owns, it's not like America. Like in America, the people own the animals there. The landowner owns the animals and they sell. And the German market,

rutting stags. They want rutting stags. They like them to be, the word they use is high. Okay. High flavor. Didn't we hear the same thing about the the big boars in texas and somehow they oh yeah that's right separate the big boars the meat out from the big board yeah you think like i don't want that big board i'll take that little fat sow

what are you saying for the european market some european markets they like a good they like when they're eating game meat they want to know they want to know it right they don't want to fart around oh it's so tender and mild they're like fuck that yeah i've been trying to keep that in mind lately as i go through my meats and you know just like taste and whatever and just not have that like it's like with eating these chicken breasts we're always like oh the blander it is the better it, as opposed to being like, oh, no. I mean, culture in general. Yeah. It's got to be work. Like the measure of good meat is tender and mild.

Yeah, exactly. It's tender and mild. It must be good. Yeah. And instead now I'm like, you know, maybe I want to shoot that rutted buck, you know? Dude, we did a Pepsi challenge. We were eating raw meat out of a one and a half year old buck and raw meat out of a four or five year old full on buck.

Mule deer. Now the one had been hanging in a tree in cold weather for several days. So that gives it a, the big buck had been hanging. It's just like, you would have known. Not even.

And everybody talks about, oh, yeah, that old buck. Well, I'll shoot a eater buck and all that. It's like, dude, that buck, there was no difference between those two bucks. Couldn't tell. Raw meat cut right out of the damn leg. Same cut. The bigger buck actually, it was better. Better texture.

Yeah, to the tooth, it was better than the young buck. The young buck was literally killed eight hours earlier. Yeah, but that fresh meat has a real iron taste to it, and it hasn't gone through its rigor process. What's that process called, Helen Cho, who you know, Ron? Yeah, I know Helen. EKG, man, where they catch a fish. You ever see this?

Like I was out fishing with Helen, and they catch a fish, and they cut the tail and bend the tail back. And then they run a steel rod, like a piece of wire, through the spinal column to relax that fish. But I saw guys in South America that caught a big river turtle. And they ran a willow, not willow probably, but a long bendy green stick all through down its spinal column and that just melted that turtle. Just relax. Because if you cut that off turtle, you got to wait six, seven hours before you can cut

it up. This turtle was just like, bleh. That's that. Yeah. But the same way when they shot cattle, you know, I've watched them process cattle in like big slaughterhouses. You know, they hit them with that captive bolt gun, hang them up. I think they hit them with the captive bolt gun, flip them around,

hang them up upside down, bleed them, then electrocute them. And once you zap them, there's no flinching, kicking. Just jello. Yeah, they're just. I think it does something to the whole rigor process with the nervous system. But they got that same thing about running that rod through that turtle. Dude, that thing was not. You just eat it right then and there. Probably severs all those nerve

connections from the spine going out to the muscles. Yeah, because you know when they're like this, you pull the arm out, the arm comes right back. You do that to it, he's just... Yeah, the brain's probably in there firing away going, you know, pull, pull, pull, pull, but nothing's happening because it's all been cut off. Speaking of zapping meat,

did you ever get to try that tender buck gadget? No. I still got it, too. I want to try it. But it's like our hunting isn't really conducive to it. You have to take it out to Doug's. Yeah, the place where you can get the whole cow. Well, I mean, like, yeah, I can load my backpack up and then put a battery in there and shit.

Squid jigging, you got to carry a battery on. That's bad enough. Just get it from the car to the pier, man. I can't imagine hiking back in four miles at a 12-volt. Yanni? I think you did a really good job, Ron. I hunted traditional for probably, I don't know, at least six years, maybe a few longer.

Tell me about the turkey you got on accident. I shot, I'm proud to say I've gotten three shots at elk with my recurve, all well within my range. It was like that 20 yards or less range. All three arrows went clean over their backs. At the time, I was spending, for me at the time, big bucks to drive up to Montana because our our Monte or Colorado's archery season will close I would drive up to Montana spend twelve hundred

dollars on a week-long hunting trip and then fling one over the back I was like I'm getting a compound you know next year kill the cow um but still proud of the fact that I got in close and numerous other times you know I let elk walk it, you know, 24, 25 or whatever. And I think I'm going to come back to shooting traditional at some point, but the turkey that I did kill, um, before I shot a turkey with my shotgun, we would chase turkeys around with, uh, our reekers, which is super fun. We would do it just like elk, like have a caller behind us, you know, that would be calling the turkey and he'd come in strutting. And if that turkey strutting and he turns away from you,

I mean, you've got all the time and, you know, freedom in the world to draw your bow back and get a nice shot. Yeah, that sand blocks all the peripheral vision. Yeah, they can't see nothing. But this is actually in the fall and where we hunt Nebraska. I mean, it's like, it's near unlimited, like turkey killing. Like I forget, you can kill quite a few in the fall, but we would basically just ambush on the roost, you know? So we would just like hang out where we knew they were going to be coming back towards the roost and the evens, you know? So you're just in there, nothing's going on. And then five minutes later, it's like 50 turkeys around you. And a lot of times, the young ones, are they still poults at that point,

even if it's the fall? Poultish. Poultish, yeah. I guess I call them. But you can tell. I mean, they're only like five-pound birds. But they're fighting and screwing around or whatever. And I had these, I think they were two jakes,

and they were locked up like they do with their necks, like little twirled around each other. And I'm thinking, oh, oh just easy no big deal you know and i just draw back try to pick my spot let go and again just right over the back of the one i'm going ow and right as i kind of say oh at the same time i hear this kind of like weird like this turkey noise that's basically like a you know, you know, and there's so many turkeys around that. Then I'm like, I better go check that out.

You know, so I jump up and run and my arrow had just like gone over this little rise just enough. And there was a hen back there and she's running off. One of my arrows stuck. You're like, you weren't hunting with someone. Cause you'd have had to been like,

yeah, I was pulled back on those Jake's. Then I saw that hen and thought, Oh, it looks like a good eater. You know, you weren't hunting with someone because you'd have been like, yeah, I was pulled back on those jakes and I saw that hen and thought, that looks like a good eater. You'd have had to act like you meant it, man. My buddy still makes fun of me, who I was with, who had killed piles of turkeys prior to that.

But that was my first ever turkey of any kind of turkey kill. I come running back with that hen and now everybody's like, oh, you carry him by the legs, right? Well, I've got that hen by the neck. I'm just like, yeah, look, here's my hen turkey. But anyways, back to the book, I think you did a really good job of taking the pressure off of what traditional bow hunting is in there, and you really explained that well to where, like we touched on it earlier, where people earlier where people get into it it's like well what makes it traditional do i have to be walking around

in pure buckskins and moccasins or this that and the of course yeah yeah right and a cute skin hat right but you're like no it's like whatever you want it to be you can have it be that way and then pick what you like about it. And I got to say, yeah, shooting those recurve bows, it's such a different thing than locking off with a compound. There's just such a beautiful, smooth, something flowy about it. Shooting them is great. But on that, I have kind of like a follow-up question.

And as I was always wondering, it's a problem that I have with being left eye dominant but a right handed shooter and shooting traditional. And everybody's always like, it's a problem that I have with being left eye dominant, but a right-handed shooter and shooting traditional. And everybody's always like, you got to shoot left, got to shoot left. So now I have a left-handed longbow. I've been messing around with it a little bit. My shooting's not that great.

It might get better. But my question is, is like, how come people just don't take the simple bows that like you have on your cover here, whether it's a recurve or a longbow, and just put like one pin out there? They do. Oh, yeah. I've seen that all the time. Is that like totally okay? Cool?

There's just this weird thing that's happened probably in the last maybe 20 years. I mean, if you go back to the 50s and 60s, and I like to collect vintage bows, so I have lots of old bear bows and Ben Pearson's they all have holes on the back of the riser where there used to be a sight yeah I mean those old guys all shot sights on their recurve bows we shot burger buttons and flipper rests on them yeah exactly but there's this mindset now among the traditional archery crowd that you're not traditional or you don't shoot instinctive or you're somehow cheating. If you put a sight pin on a recurve and I say, Phooey do that. That's a bunch of crap.

I mean, if you want to use a sight pin on a recurve, do it, man. It's still, it's, it's, there's still so much fun to be had with a recurve.

And if that sight pin gives you some confidence or if you're cross-eyed dominant, I feel like it would like just having that one pin. I would just be like, there she is. Oh, it's, but it's all, it's already, when people start to act like there's these rigid definitions of that stuff, they feel like they're the gatekeepers or something. Oh, yeah, exactly.

Or you got guys like, oh, yeah, but he. You know, like I had all this equipment, but yet you flip through Three Rivers Archery, and it's not like, side pin for a recurve. It's like literally not in there, I think. I don't remember the name of it, but three rivers does sell this really cool site that's like a trapezoid shaped thing that's a little it's a little frame it's hollow and it's black like aluminum real lightweight aluminum and one edge of it is painted fluorescent yellow and so it's not a pin but it's like an aperture you look through so you've got that thing attached to your riser,

and you're looking kind of through this aperture that's not a pin prick, like you're trying to put an arrow there, but it gives you a frame of reference. Yeah, it's on the box at the end. And it's fast, too. It's not like a pin where you've got to dial it in. It's just come up, and you box it in. Like a ghost ring on a rear receiver, right? That's what they call that?

On a peep? Yeah, like a peep. Yeah. Try one of those. Yeah, I will. My brother, Danny, who shoots a lot with the recurve and does some hunting with his recurve, he shoots carbon arrows. And he had to really look to find a carbon arrow

that didn't have the fake wood on it because he felt like he's like, I'm shooting carbon. I don't want to then try to act like I'm not in bullshit people. And he goes, most of these carbon arrows sold have a wood finish where it's supposed to be like,

you're like embarrassed about shooting carbon. But he's like, I'm not, I was like, like, I'm not going to go out of my way and pay extra money to bullshit people i shoot those bullshit arrows he said you almost have to well the reason i do is because they're heavier because they're marketed to traditional bow hunters and they're

a little heavier than standard carbon arrows for a compound but he found and i have some right i got some around here somewhere. High Plains or something? Yeah, but he said you're almost forced into doing it because all the arrows of the right, you know. The right, exactly. Weaker spine. All done that way.

Yeah, but there's three rivers. Three rivers carry some guy that you can just buy black. And he felt so much better about it where he's like, it's like guys remember, you know, like sneaky Pete pool cues, right? Great pool cues that are made to look shitty. So it looked like you were shooting a bar stick when you were actually shooting like a fine cue.

You were actually shooting a good cue but you didn't want everybody to know it. So you got like a, they'd like make it look shitty cosmetically. Dufferin pool cues. Yeah, I get so fed up with all that stuff. Sneaky Pete. Yeah, but there are

a lot of gatekeepers. Oh, yeah. I mean, it happens in every discipline, you know, but it's like, oh, yeah, you know, he gets a lot of elk, but, you know, he, you know, shoots at 500 yards, whatever.

And in traditional archery, it's like, oh, yeah, but he's not. He shoots carbon arrows. He's napping them. He's napping his points out of glass and not obsidian man

somebody's always going to give grief yeah oh yeah oh man and in your world there's a lot of it and in the fly fishing world

there's a lot of it oh yeah I mean I'm sure I'll get emails after this podcast you know I can't believe you said that

you're not traditional enough exactly let's get a coon skin cap you'll make up for it. You got any final thoughts, Ron? Yeah, I mean, I guess my one final thought, you were asking earlier about, you know, if I think people should get into traditional bow hunting

or traditional archery. And I don't know, I'm not going to force anybody into it for hunting sake, but I do think if you like to shoot anything whether it's a handgun a shotgun a rifle a compound bow you'll love shooting a longbow or a recurve it is just so i don't know to me it's so satisfying to see that arrow fly and you know it's a little slower than a compound so you actually get to see the arc of the arrow you know you do a whole wood bone leather thing again and the other thing I think that's just so

freaking cool about it and the thing that it's I don't know if I'll be able to explain this but the thing that keeps me coming back is that it's one of the only hunting forms where it's your own energy from your body that's going into that arrow that's going into that animal that's putting meat in the freezer that's a good way to put it you know it's like chucking a spear or something but you know everything else something else is going to store that energy for you but it with traditional bows i mean it's you it's your shoulders your arm your back you know it's your own energy that's going into that arrow and i don't know if that's maybe be an esoteric thing, but it's just so cool to me. No, it translates.

Yeah, you can get poetic all you want over here. All right, so once more, you sons of bitches out there that want to start shooting trad bows, a traditional bow hunter's path, lessons and adventures at full draw. Ron Rohrabau Jr. What's your website again?

Traditional Spirit. What is my website? It's traditionalspiritoutdoors.com. Or you go find it out. You don't get mad when people buy it off Amazon, right? No, I don't get mad. We talked about Three Rivers. I should plug them.

You can get it from Three Rivers Archery too. Nice. Who brokered that? Did your publisher do that? No, I did that. Getting in there and doing it. Yeah, I mean, you have to. All right, man.

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