The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 056: Las Vegas, NV. Steven Rinella takes a break from SHOT Show to answer frequently asked listener questions with Ben Obrien from YETI Coolers, Ryan Callaghan from First Lite, and Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.
Episode Date: February 24, 2017Subjects discussed: the inexplicably awful feeling of leaving kids at home when you have to travel; the author Robert Ruark; why you should never meet your heroes; lung shots vs. head shots; whether h...unting guide schools are worth it; using grip-n-grin photos as marketing materials; whether it's more economical to hunt or just buy meat from a store; female deer with antlers; the effects of lunar phases on animal movements; dealing with your fears; physical disabilities and the relevance of wilderness; how to handle a gutshot deer; whether hunting is a right or a privilege; and how to get a job in the outdoor industry.  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.
Transcript
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This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case
underwearless meat eater podcast you can't predict anything
all right ben o'brien father of one it's good it's good it is good father of one. It's good? It's good. It is good.
Father of one.
There's no way for anybody to explain to you the feeling that is like you probably.
When that child shoots out into the world.
Yeah, and is in the world and looks at you like,
I'm going to need you for a while to help me out with life.
Yep.
I think you even try to explain what the feeling is or how it goes,
but there's no explanation of what that life change is.
There's an Irish writer.
His quote is,
Far from being young, as young as a human can be,
they seemed immensely old, their foreheads and features streamlined by time,
as archaic and smooth as the heads of pharaohs in egyptian sculpture
as if they had traveled an immense distance to find their parents then in a second they became
young that's that stout shit that is heavy and you i mean you read it well right from an irishman
right and to another irishman i'm feeling it but yeah they
come out and they're like little miniature old travelers yeah that's about the best way i can
also like oh it's a baby i thought it was alien well yeah it took me a couple you know i think
they say it takes it took me a couple months to really like have the connection yeah that you know
then they start looking at you and recognize you and saying you know and speaking to you without using words um but once that happened
i just and changed my whole outlook yeah it's cold-blooded thing to say but i i do like i the
mom connection is very strong but there is i mean i hope it is if you've done any kind of good job
picking out who's gonna be the mom of your, you'd like to see a nice, strong connection there.
But yeah, I felt like it's cold-blooded to say, but I felt like my connection to the
babies matured over a few months.
Yeah, that's what they say.
When you read people are writing about fatherhood, they said, just be, you know, the connection
in that first couple of months is mother time.
I mean, they're essential to the life of that little baby so you know you i kind of felt like a
spectator for a while and then when you finally yeah you finally make a connection with him
yourself and get some time to just be with him and like i sat with my son just out and it was
texas in november and it was warm we just sat in this sun and I just looked at him for
like two hours and then after that I was like all right you're like welcome home welcome home son
two months later but yeah I mean that's that's the that's the feeling and then you come you travel
you go hunting and you just I mean it's for me it's hard it's tougher every moment that I go
I remember after having our first kid and I and the first time I had to go away
for a period of time
after having our first kid,
I remember I was sitting in the bathtub with him
and I honest to God wept.
And it became such a problem for me to leave
that my wife said,
you're going to have to figure this out
because you're gone a lot.
It can't be this big thing
because they're going to internalize this you know it
needs to be a little smoother a little less emotional yeah i stood at the door when i left
to come here for for shot show i stood at the door i just kind of stood there i didn't look
back or anything but i just like shut the door and i just stood there for like five minutes
i was thinking about what what is going on in my brain right now because i just had to get it figured out because I wasn't about to do that.
I wasn't about to leave emotional and come here and not be invested
because I'm going to travel.
I'm going to be where I'm at, be present where I'm at.
So it's a weird change.
But I don't think anybody could ever explain it to you until you've –
I don't think there's no way –
I don't care if you're a philosopher or the smartest person you've ever met.
I just don't think there's no way. I don't care if you're a philosopher, the smartest person you've ever met. I don't, I just don't think there's any way to explain it.
Yeah.
At least I'm from my, my standpoint,
how it's changed my outlook on stuff.
Yeah.
Kel and just looking at us with a blank stare
has no idea what we're talking about.
Never bred a woman.
Now.
Speechless.
So Ben, Ben, Ben ben explain what you do i'm the hunting marketing manager for yeti
yeti coolers um my job is to just to be the the champion for hunting inside our company you know
and a lot of companies that you work with steve and a lot in our industry are strictly hunting
we have the privilege and sometimes the challenge
of being a lot of things. That's surfing, climbing, rodeo, ranch, music, all the things that we work
in. My job is to make sure that when we- Beer drinking.
Beer drinking. Yeah, we got beer drinking. We got barbecue. We have a barbecue and beer
marketing manager at Yeti, which is the best title in the history of titles.
But my job is to be the champion for hunting
and handle everything that comes with that in our business.
You came out of a journalism background.
You used to be a sports writer.
Yeah.
When I was a kid, I grew up on the East Coast,
and that's what you were when I was going to be a sports fan.
My whole family
was baseball football basketball what's next you know you guys hunted since the get-go right oh
yeah since the get-go uh but hunting was just a weekend activity we the dinner conversation was
sports like that's what we i listen to i used to listen to baltimore oreo games on the radio going
to bed every night as a kid like Like, that's what I listened to.
You know, I wasn't, like, reading Ruark and stuff.
It was Cal Ripken Jr.
Like, that was my thing. So when I first came out of college, I was a sports writer for a while.
You can't drop a writer name without breaking that down, though.
What's that?
Ruark.
Oh, Ruark.
Well, Robert Ruark?
Yeah, I mean, like, tell people, like, what you can't, because people aren't going to know.
I mean, a lot of people will know, but people always don't want to know about books.
He's the essential writer.
Like Death in the Tall Grass.
Yeah, Death in the Tall Grass.
He's the essential, to me, the essential writer for African hunting
and really adventure, at least in Africa, the adventure writing.
And you can name how many books he's written that are seminal to that.
Yeah, he's kind of like up there with Jack O'Connor.
He really is.
He belongs in a list of the greats.
They would be very close together.
Oh, absolutely.
And so before I went to Africa to go hunting,
I saved Robert Rourke's books, Death in the Tall Grass and Father and Son
and all those books until I was going to Africa to read on the plane.
That's how I felt about him. Getting pumped up get pumped up and like save that for that moment
and then he became a sports writer then i became a sports writer and i did that for
a couple years until i figured out that was terrible terrible thing to do it was a terrible
profession all you did was sit around and watch other people do things but why is it terrible
because you already liked watching people do things. Yeah, but you're watching them as a spectator. You're not involved in their world. You have no,
as an outsider in that world, you have no judgment other than your general opinion on what you see
on TV screen. But then when you're in it, as a writer, your judgment becomes important and
some of the intricacies and things that you didn't know about or never would want to know
about become important. But I just felt like my being a spectator in that way, sitting in a press box and writing about
what's going on in the field and then having to go down and talk to those people and not be able to
put them up as icons and love them. You had to know them as people. That's pretty challenging
because some of them can be bad people or just not who who you'd want them to be so to me it was that
was less of a that wasn't the career path i was going to go down i didn't know it would be a
hunting writer but i just uh i didn't want it to be that and i didn't want to ruin sports forever
by having that be my profession so in the writing world like in like the literary world there's like there's a real thing people talk
about is that you should try to avoid meeting your heroes because it's yeah i mean like you're
never gonna walk you're all you're always gonna walk away with a diminished appreciation for them
once you meet them because no one can live up to no one can live up to themselves on the page
yeah no you're right i mean yeah they can't live up to themselves on the play field either
so cal and explain yourself in what what fashion however you want man great america great american American? Oh, well, I work for First Light.
I've worn many hats over the years.
My current title is Director of Conservation and Public Relations.
That's your current title?
Yeah, pretty unique.
So, yeah, I guess we're kind of growing up.
Director of Conservation.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
So, yeah, you know, we work
with a lot of different conservation groups and
that's one of the things I've always liked to do.
Over the years it's kind of
become something
the First Light brand's been
known for. Kind of put
our foot in our mouths very
willingly on a lot of issues.
And so yeah, now we're kind of embracing that a little bit more and so that's that's where the title came comes from yeah Kenton came up with
it I said don't you think it should be more of a like communications title he's like no i think this is pretty good i like it oh thanks and of course janice patellis
hello anything anything you want to share yanni
about what i do or just anything random i don't know just like some insights about uh you know
we're here at shot show shot show the view outside of this room is incredible from shot show we've been it's the one
like a major drawback from shot shows that we're inside you haven't seen the light oh are you ever
inside you can't tell what the i mean yeah days could go by yeah you kind of forget that that
world is there yeah the first time you see the sunlight at shot show is when you're headed to
the airport yeah and it could be five days without sunlight is i used to think of it as being like um
i think it would be like how could you take because a significant percentage of the population that
shows up at shacho's people involved in the outdoor industry i mean it's like law enforcement
military all kinds of other stuff but a lot of it's outdoor industry but then you put them in
this place it's like the least outdoors environment on the planet.
I think it should be like the old Trapper rendezvous
where you camp in a really, in a cold, snowy valley.
This is, is this not the opposite of what you enjoy?
Like fancy dinners and walking in trade show booths
and like, I do not, I mean, I love the idea of SHOT Show,
but the reality of it is not, I'm not a fan.
I mean, it just is Vegas. I feel like I'm actually going of SHOT Show, but the reality of it is not. I'm not a fan. I mean, it just is Vegas.
You think of actually going to SHOT Show.
Yeah, the idea of what it is, like a gathering of people that all love the same thing, do the same thing.
People I haven't seen for a long time, that's awesome.
But the functionality of being in Vegas and not seeing the sun for five days is nowhere near.
It feels like a trap.
Yeah, no, that cab ride to the airport,
it's almost exhilarating. You get out
there and you're like, fresh air.
What is that? I haven't smelled
that for a while. If you've ever seen
the Shawshank Redemption when Andy comes out of
the
sewer pipe, that's you coming
out. The reason
we have you boys here is
now we like to do things where we
deal with fan questions and now cal on the hand and i answered about a bazillion questions
yesterday on a facebook live session that was pretty wild we hammered entertaining it was
entertaining i liked it this is a this is a and we one, so we have picked ones here that are things that just seem to,
some we pick because they're kind of funny.
Some we pick because they come up often.
Okay, let me lay this one on you guys.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Why a lung shot over a head shot?
God, a lot of guys ask about this.
Because dudes, I found dudes in Southeast Alaska, for whatever reason, it's a culture of guys ask about this because dudes i found dudes in southeast alaska
for whatever reason it's a culture of head shooters head deer head shooters i have heard
that as well i think it's because the brush is damn thick the only thing you ever see is their
part of their head looking through the brush yeah you're through you're like at 40 yards away
so they just learn how to yeah if you're gonna shoot the deer that's all that's that's all you ever see
the damn things anyways yeah what's your take on it lung shooting head shoot that's a i know
exactly how i feel about it i i've i'm a i'm a lung shooter i mean to the to a severe degree
i don't even like quartered shots with with bullets anymore
because i'm like yeah i'm gonna blow up that opposite shoulder so i i'm i'm a lung guy but
okay so one time i was guiding a muzzleloader hunt and i watched the client shoot.
Deer out.
Mule deer.
Late season mule deer.
Miss the buck, hit a doe in the jaw.
Good.
The doe tips over, stands back up, you know, thoroughly concussed, I'm sure,
jaw hanging, runs off, never to be seen again.
So I can see that being an issue.
There's a lot of things on the head that don't equate to an immediate death
or an ethical death.
That's what I would say.
I mean, the head is a, a right there's less room for error
when you're shooting yeah shooting in the head that's one two it's a smaller target in general
they you know maybe similar to lung size on the deer or whatever but i think the bigger point in
the practicality of it is the head is a smaller target that's a mild manner i said yeah would
you rather try to hit a racquetball or basketball yeah and there's also there's got to be some level of decorum like yeah it is just you know much more polite to shoot him in the
lungs and in the head wait and think about it so if you if you just imagine your typical broadside
animal now if you're going in where you're back for the back from the shoulder blade but if you
go from the crease of where the shoulder blade like meets the rib cage and you go back a couple ribs from there and you're halfway up and down the deer
you can be off let's just say a whitetail deer you can be off really six inches in any direction
and still be where you're you're talking about a very dead deer very quickly i agree when
you're shooting at a deer's head you're talking about distances of an inch put you in trouble
yeah and there's a lot i mean there's bone there i mean that that has a lot to play with a terminal
impact there's you'd much rather shoot into the lungs,
that's just, you get punched through the hide,
you punch through the lungs, that's an easy task
for a modern bullet.
And then you have, like Cal brought up,
the meat damage, you know,
a broadside shot behind the shoulder
doesn't do virtually, does virtually no meat damage.
But I can see that being the pro argument for the headshot as well oh yeah i was gonna get to that okay no you tackle
that unless you're cooking some jowl meat well yeah you know i mean kind of comes back to that
everything's edible you should try something new and you new. We roasted that head one time, and that's fantastic stuff,
but not everybody's going to do that or see value in that.
Oh, boy.
I mean, you just see the error in a headshot one time,
and it, to me, is just not ever worth the risk of trying it again.
Yeah.
When you function on ethics,
say I want to kill that thing in the most respectful way possible,
and the thing that probably gets back to my own skill the best,
you're going to take the shot that has the best room for error.
I think it's that simple.
There's probably no other way to look at it.
I feel like we're less knowledgeable as hunters
about the anatomy of a deer's head
than its body cavity?
Yeah.
Oh, definitely.
The first deer I ever got was in the head.
They had to finish it off.
It was 10 feet away.
That's all I could see was its head.
It just come over like that.
I was on a little ridge,
and I was kind of like tucked down on one side of the ridge,
and it was coming up the other side of the ridge, so when it finally popped up, it was right there. I didn't know what I was doing. I was kind of like tucked down on one side of the ridge and it was coming up the other side of the ridge.
So when it finally popped up, it was right there.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I was 13 years old.
It was the same vein.
You know, the neck shot.
I've had several neck shots that, you know, that animal was not.
It was immobilized thoroughly, but it was far from not stone dead yeah my buddy uh ron layton who is
he's a head shooter will die a head shooter claims have never had a problem not anything
but stone dead deer it might be because he's you know he's a good marksman lifelong hunter
but the thing he points out if you are a head shooter he always runs over and
bleeds his deer because you know like in a lot in a slaughter facility when they're slaughtering
livestock you know they bleed the animals when when you shoot a deer through the lungs it self
bleeds i mean just the wound bleeds it there's no need to bleed the animal when you shoot if you
shoot something in the head it doesn't actually bleed out.
And there's a lot of blood left in there.
So you go and cut the, you know, you want to go cut the artery in the neck,
and you'll spill a lot of blood out.
You shoot an animal through the neck or shoot an animal through the lungs and go to bleed it, nothing comes out.
Because that blood's all just laying there, pooled up inside the rib cage.
If you want to come back to that, forward i forward you that email from uh aaron t from
south borough math yeah i'll get to it now this one this is a good one for uh callahan good one
for yanni and you might have run into it too are guide schools worth it oh hunting guide schools. Oh, I, you know, I.
Do you guys, let me start with this.
Do you guys ever go to a guide school?
I did not.
I taught one for fly fishing guides and rowing, you know, to learn how to row boats for, I don't know, maybe a half dozen years or so.
But I never did a hunting one.
I would say that the public opinion when I was getting into guiding was,
no, don't, they're a sham.
Because placement.
Like my very few interactions with it would be that you can go to school, but unless it has like a way to automatically place you into a position, that's what you really need.
That's what you're paying for.
That is what you really need because, you know, a lot of outfitters are pretty salty guys.
And they're going to be like, well, I don't care what that guy taught you.
I want you to learn it my way.
So, you know, I'm not necessarily going to take this recommendation
for any sort of value.
Now, I have heard,
now there's a good one out of Wyoming
and maybe a good one out of Montana,
but I cannot remember the names.
But I don't want to say anybody's running a shoddy business,
but I think just like anything,
there's probably some that do a really good job
and some that may give you some skills,
but no placement.
Yeah.
So let's say no.
Ben, you want to hear the question?
Well, I don't know. I'm feeling don't know I'm feeling the answers
I think the apprenticeship style
is probably the way to go from my
perspective yeah especially I think with hunting
and that's how it worked for me
and it was great you know if the outfitter's
got horses you're going to quickly learn
how to deal with the horses and you know
you're going to do all the shit jobs
first and then you know after sometimes two weeks and sometimes
two years you might actually be in the field guiding but at least you're there
in the camp spending those hopefully two three months you know doing what you
love now for the fly-fishing we probably hired 75 to 90 percent of the people
that went through the whole class so you did that course with us
then most likely you were going to be guiding that summer so it was almost like a training program
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y'all.
So the answer is yes.
Yeah, for fly fishing there.
It's yes.
So there's one out of Jackson Hole
or Victor, Idaho
that is
I got a nephew that went through that.
Did you?
Yeah.
He didn't become a guide.
I mean, that was a fly fishing one
as well oh i think he did like a elk one or something oh well that's it hunting got hunting
guy he's not a generic pursuit so like how do you yeah what does that really mean yeah you're out
putting 3 000 snow goose decoys in the field out in maryland or you're like packing into alaska i
would say that unless if you're okay if you're you're going to, you know, you're going to be a guide in Montana for big game and there's a big game
Montana.
I mean,
that would be to me a more,
you know,
more relevant thing to do.
There's no,
is a guide school a good idea?
Only if it applies to exactly where you're about to go.
Yeah.
It's not bartending school.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Here's,
here's a good one.
This is a real good question.
If you were to take the cost of hunting for your own meat supply and the cost Right? Yeah. Here's a good one. This is a real good question.
If you were to take the cost of hunting for your own meat supply and the cost of purchasing meat from the store in a one-year period,
which do you think would be more expensive than why?
I think that for 90, no.
I think that for the majority of hunters,
it's much more expensive to hunt it for yourself.
I've lived both ways I at a time when I
was living like in western Montana and we generally hunted around western
Montana and we shot a lot of we filled a lot of doe tags and whatnot we were
definitely being like very economical hunters yeah that's not like doing like
little jaunts sleeping out and sleeping bags you know and
like sleeping under your car in a sleeping bag waking up killing two antelope does coming home
with like shit loads of meat we were like you couldn't have bought that stuff and you're
processing it yourself processing yourself but like the minute you start doing any kind of like
destination hunting the minute you start throwing small game and do it you can't you have to find other there
has to be more to it than that if you're just hunting to save money um it can be done but
you're probably you're gonna be hunting you're probably talking about local almost subsistence
level hunting which applies to some people but but that kind of hunting leads you into being
curious about other kinds of hunting and pretty soon you're doing things that aren't so practical.
Yep.
That's it, right?
That's very well said.
Yeah, it's what's your motivation.
If your motivation is to save money and get organic meat, it can be done almost.
I live in Texas.
I go on ranch, and probably people would pay me to kill hogs and or go kill some call deer.
I mean, kill 10 call bucks and 10 hogs a year
i mean and process it yourself you're in an environment where you can where you can be
efficient with that but there's not a lot of other plate you know that i guess in out west you can
kill a couple cow elk and get a ton of meat yeah and you can do added value stuff too so the minute
you go get the meat and then you're producing like artisan grade sausages out of it,
like at a point, yeah, you can wind up really justifying it financially.
When I was in college, we didn't spend shit for money and ate a lot of deer meat.
And it would have been – it's to the point where if we weren't shooting deer and eating them,
we would not have been buying – we wouldn't have starved to to death we would not have been eating the quality of food that we
were eating we would not have been eating meat yeah no like hot dogs and shit you know i don't
even know what a steak i this is maybe a like what one costs a stushy thing to say but i don't know
what one costs in a store well that's the thing i think that we're probably undervaluing what a year's worth of meat
or however you want to break it down a week that you if you especially if you're buying the same
kind of quality because we are talking about some pretty fantastic bitching fairly organic most of
the time meat from the woods you go and try to buy that in a store i mean you could very easily be 20 30 40 dollars a pound
especially if it's if you're trying to buy game meat if you're trying to be like oh okay i'm gonna
go price out a bunch of elk loin yeah then it's gonna be way different than if you're probably
now like oscar meyer yeah i mean price out what we could probably figure out real quick with a half
of organic uh grass-fed beef costs but uh i'm guessing it's many thousands
of dollars you know we always used to say a lot of different grades of beef out there so like i
mean if you're choice versus select technically yeah here in vegas there is a lot i think you
want you want to spend 120 bucks on a wagyu you Easy. So, again, we're not a lot of definite answers.
Well, no, we had a very, the lung shot thing I think was clear.
Yes.
Now, here's a good one.
This one, I want you guys to think hard on before you answer.
Do you think wearing a helmet and maybe even some sort of armor could be beneficial in a bear encounter when
hunting now there's a movie about this called what's that movie called so fuck
it's one of the greatest movies ever made in in a way it's called um Grizzly
Project not Grizzly Man but Grizzly project it's a guy that got mauled
by a bear a canadian this is a true it's a documentary about him he was mauled by a bear
and that inspired him to make a bear proof suit so the movie follows him through the production
of a bear proof suit but when he finally gets a suit that he feels is bear proof it basically immobilizes him
and a lot of the movie follows him trying very hard to get mauled by a bear and not being able
to get mauled by a bear one of the problems being in the suit he can't really move after him enough
to try to antagonize him to maul him so he was never able to put his suit to the test
grizzly Project.
This sounds like the most entertaining move.
Dude, he gets the suit.
He has his buddy run him over in a truck.
He has his buddy roll him off a cliff.
But no, I think that's kind of, I think it's ridiculous.
And here's why I think it's ridiculous.
It's like, you're not going to get mauled by a damn bear.
You are not going to get mauled by a damn bear. You are not going to get mauled by a bear.
There are so few bear maulings.
When people talk about the scarcity of, you know,
the lack of likelihood that something's going to happen,
you know, they like to say, like,
you got more of a chance of falling off a ladder and dying.
You got more chance of getting mauled by your dog and dying.
You got more chance of getting stung by a bee and dying. You got more chance of getting stung by a bee and dying.
Okay, all that kind of stuff.
Within that though, I think there's high exposure groups.
Okay, if you are a bow hunter in Northwestern Wyoming,
if you're an elk bow hunter in Northwestern Wyoming,
you have, I never run the statistics on it, but you have a much, much higher likelihood of getting mauled by a bear than any other player out there.
Even then, I think it's so narrow that the fact that you would have a helmet on or armor on in anticipation of getting mauled by a bear, you can't even get people to carry bear spray.
But wait, wait.
You wear a seatbelt on an airplane, right?
Sure.
But the question is, the question posed is,
would you think it would help?
Oh, okay.
You're right.
If you could say, if you could get the bear to hit you in that exact moment. So if someone said, in a minute, I'm going to have this bear maul you.
Now, would you like to put the helmet and armor on?
Of course I'm going to put the helmet and armor on.
Well done.
I agree.
Yeah, be very beneficial at that point.
So if you could see the bear coming.
You had a little Sherpa to pack around that 10 or 20 pounds of armor
so we can definitively say yes
it would help
it's not going to hurt
no
think of when you get mauled by a bear
and everybody likes to tell you what to do when you get mauled by a bear
and they even tell you
if it's a black bear
there's plenty of this shit
if it's a black bear, fight
because if a black bear attacks you he of this shit like if it's a black bear fight because if a black bear
attacks you it's a he's doing a predatory thing the black bear has identified you as food he's
fixing to eat you if a black bear attacks you fight and punch and kick because his hope is that
you die so that he can eat you for grizz mauls you chances are and they're much more
likely to maul you because think about this like think about you know we have black bear seasons
and i don't know 34 states or something like that there's black bears are everywhere there are
hundreds of millions of people in this country who live in black bear country, right? And most years, no one gets mauled by a black bear.
You have grizzly bears in the lower, just speaking of the lower 48, you have grizzly bears in a small
portion of Idaho, not quite half of Montana, maybe less than a third of wyoming and every year you have a couple fatalities from grizzly
bears 1800 grizzly bears kill a couple people every year where's i going with this oh the
grizzly mauls you the thinking is don't fight you lay down protect the back of your neck with your hands, and play dead because it might be mauling you
because it's mad at you and wants to immobilize the threat.
Like that they have a reaction to threat
by attacking the source of the threat.
So if you're like, I'm not a threat.
I'm not a threat.
I'm dead.
They might just give you smell and walk off.
That's the popular thing.
So maybe armor is better for grizzly bear hunters.
Play dead.
And maybe bear spray for the black bear guys.
Play dead and wear armor.
Okay.
Now, here's one question.
This guy says, there's one question i could ask steve it would be what's
taken using photos of harvested animals for marketing materials oh this is that's heavy
i think it's i think it's totally fair game because i think that let's just i'm not i'm
not a marker and i look forward to hearing you guys have to say about this, because you guys have dabbled in marketing.
There's an aspirational element to marketing, right, where you're trying to present a figure,
doing a sort of thing that a fellow would look at and be like,
man, I wish I was in that situation.
Now, when I get an animal, when I hunt an animal and kill it,
I'm real happy. I don't, I'm not wishing
I could undo what I did. There's a level of respect and remorse for sure. But, but the
overwhelming thing is that you did something very challenging. You've succeeded in it. You're happy
in the moment. You have very strong, good feelings for the animal. You have strong strong good feelings for the animal you have strong good feelings for the
accomplishment you take a photo of it because it's something you want to remember and share
with other people the same way you would of you and your old lady like on the day you get married
i'm real happy that i married this lady i'm proud of the fact i'm gonna hire a photographer to come
down and take pictures of me
and the lady I married because we're glad about it happening. Okay. Now, if I get an animal and
I'm glad about it happening and I want to share it with people, it's like when someone asks the
question, it's like, what am I supposed to be like disappointed that I got it? That I want to hide it?
If I was going to be disappointed that I got it? That I want to hide it? If I was going to be disappointed that I got it
and wanted to hide the fact that I got it,
I wouldn't have got it.
So it just seems to me logical
that if you're in the job of marketing,
let's say a product,
that you'd show a person in a moment
that at least in the hunting world
is universally accepted
as a happy, triumphant proud making
moment that would be fair game yeah i think you're right i mean i think it's all about what context
that that you show it in and to me i always like i always stop and say if i'm marketing something
it doesn't matter what it is cooler gear doesn, doesn't matter. Is it honest and authentic?
Like,
is the way that you're,
is that moment you're describing captured in that image or captured in that
footage or have you endeavored to capture that thing?
Are you out there trying to get to what you're talking about?
Or are you just manufacturing or glorifying something that you think some
marketer told you some agency guy told you this is what all hunters want to get to yeah so now
give me that and somebody goes out and tries to manufacture that oh and they give you like a bogus
yeah bullshit attempt at something that so like you can smell that it's disingenuous if you had
never surfed before and and you said they said Steve, I want you to create a surfing ad.
And somebody said, you know what?
When a surfer hits that wave, this is the moment that they feel triumphant.
And then you went out and tried to manufacture that and advertise to that.
It's going to be disingenuous.
Maybe you're trying to make it as authentic as possible so what what
I think is important is that you are you will have it under a nuanced
understanding of the story you're trying to tell yeah and that should be it that
you're honestly trying to depict it in a way that that gets to get to do it a
point of depth and that's what when you're depicting a dead animal it's a
little more serious than depicting a a big wave or depicting something else that you don't advertise to.
So that story is more serious because it is more complex, has more depth.
There's more to it.
Yeah.
I imagine for your position, there's a lot more that can backfire.
There's a lot more that can backfire.
We were talking about this earlier today.
A friend of mine, a historian buddy of mine, sent me a photo from way ago in a magazine.
It was a gun ad where there's a dude
standing there the gorilla yes i've seen that i've seen that that wouldn't go over too well not so
much but that's also the same thing like you gotta you understand your audience right so i would just
assume that if you're showing a dead animal you're speaking to hunters right so that's so you're you've
got a pretty defined and dedicated audience but in my position when you're speaking to hunters you're
also speaking to everyone else because anyone could see that advertising and you want you know
you talk about this all the time you want any hunting communication to be able to be consumed
by someone that maybe hasn't experienced that and still have an appreciation for it maybe they
don't have the depth of appreciation for it that a hunter might, but it shouldn't come off as a glorification of that moment.
You know, a thing that's kind of similar, I remember there was always a debate when I was young about, is it okay to put a deer, like if you have a deer in the back of your truck, tailgate up, tailgate down.
And there's like two different kinds of folks right
you're down folks and you're up folks the up folks are like why rub if it's sensitive to some people
and some people don't like to see it why rub it in their face the tailgate down guys like i have
nothing to be ashamed of i'm not I don't have nothing to hide.
I'm not out to pretend like I didn't just get a deer.
But I'll take the main question, the marketing one.
Dead critters.
Gripping grits.
The person that wrote this question, I can totally see their perspective
that they could see it as a marketing ploy.
And I think at one time that was
that was very common I can I can tell you from what I've seen from what Ben's
been doing and what we do on our end you know it just isn't it we occasionally
put kind of that grip and grin photo up on our social media stuff
because it almost always I would say always is accompanied by a fantastic story of some
somebody who has purchased a lot of our gear and said hey thank you so much I couldn't have done
it without your stuff and by way, I got this animal and
there was this adventure involved and, and we'll post that photo on occasion and be like,
this person got this and congratulations. And, and, and it's more of a nod to their story you know it's and it's not to me at this point it doesn't fall into a paid
advertising category i got you does that make sense yeah that makes sense well also like one
thing i think of now like you look at where we are now with hunting and society i sometimes i
think if i put that dead animal in there is that changing
the conversation like if i can get my point across without the dead animal in there wouldn't i much
rather do that because i don't now don't have to uh defend that it's there or i don't have to
increase the complexity of my message by having some people that are going to see it
are going to say they're going to focus right on the dead animal and miss my message entirely yeah because we always say it's like that's the end of the hunt
yeah it's well the end of the hunt's not not that great yeah and i'm with during the hunt
yeah is super fun and the pulling the trigger is a absolutely minuscule fraction of time compared to the adventure part
so you know we've never really focused on the end of the hunt because that's like that's just a lot
of work yeah yeah we've got a film coming out here a yeti film coming out about sheep hunting
in the mackenzie mountains and the guide his name's tavis molnar he puts it pretty good he said
um that would be like reading a book
and only focusing on the last page.
Well done.
You have to have read every chapter of that book
to appreciate not only the story, but the author.
And you wouldn't just read the last page
and close the book.
Yeah.
You want to, you know,
and I think advertising is much that way.
Like, any company that just glorifies killing and doesn't aim to just tell the story all the way,
I don't have a problem with grip and grins as long as it's a part of the larger story.
The grip and grin is a part of what we do, but it's not the only thing we do.
And if you've got a social media channel, if you've got a company and all you do is share grip and grins,
then you're probably doing it wrong yeah you're missing 99 percent of 99.9 percent of what's out there walking around
shot show there'll be always be some mug selling whatever and they'll have like the teeth you know
a lot of places put a tv screen up just run some non-continuous loop i was checking out one today where it's just, all it is is coyotes just getting smoked in the worst ways.
And like a glimpse of something like that is one thing,
but just to be like, again, again, again.
When we're doing meat eater, like we never,
I like go way out of my way to not fetishize kill shots.
And people, the fact that even has a term kill shot
i think that i think some of the hunting networks used to have a thing where
it was like you couldn't show it couldn't show a kill shot more than seven times in a row or
something i'm not kidding you man i've never seen something like that at a point it isn't man i mean
you're always like making you're always gaming it making sort of little judgment calls about you know
presenting a reality but not overdoing portions of it you know and when people complain like oh
there's no they didn't show the kill shot like okay so that hunt that hunt was seven days okay
there's 24 hours in a day that that was just like one second of the thing or one portion of the thing
so yeah i'm trying to like focus on all these aspects of what a hunt is like and the things
that go into it and every hunt i don't think the culmination of that hunt and that the one
second that really really matters is that one second and it is being a little bit aware of
people's sensitivities but it's also just like your own aesthetic. And I think too, that over time, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it,
you do feel after a while, like you get like a little tired of seeing it.
Absolutely.
Like it just, it's something in you changes.
Yeah.
I had a very, very, you know, one of the,
probably the faces of our industry, maybe I would say,
tell me that he just, it was was the killing is what people wanted to see
yeah he was like when the more killing we have the more dead animals we have in our show the
higher the ratings are I said I've got it you know he's like the more if we put up a
20 dead 20 kill shots in 20 seconds for turkeys he gets more views than if i really that's what he told
and he had the numbers to back it up and i said i could care less about that i could care less
about that i would never be driven by that but i think hunting tv you guys could maybe
know as much as i do but i don't think hunting tv for a lot of people is appointment view
appointment viewing except for a few shows your show being one of them there's a few shows people
turn tune into but i think a lot of people my dad is one of them that just turns it on and watches
and i'll say dad who are you watching i'm not sure who they were but they killed a big old elk yeah
i do notice that that's kind of i've seen people watch but i see people watch all forms of tv that
way yes you know i see so it's like i don't want to be exclusive to you know i don't know that it's exclusive to um hunting tv because i think
that there's just people there's like people who have tv on like if i have it on i'm if i'm watching
something it's because i've picked this thing that i want to watch and i am 100 focused on watching
it you know i don't have have things where I'm like,
oh, yeah, it was kind of like in the background.
I don't really know what's going on.
If I'm watching it, I'm watching it.
But I think a lot of people do watch
for just sort of on,
and in that way I can see
that it might draw people's attention.
But it's like, that's not the eyeballs I want.
Now, have you ever encountered
or killed a doe with antlers?
No, I have not.
They do exist.
Ever? I've seen them, but not killed them. not killed i've seen them seen them did it look goofy were you like what's up with that deer look
real goofy yeah and i don't remember i mean it was it was i was young young so i don't know a lot of
the details but it looked goofy i mean the the body type uh i remember it just being looking at
the deer even when it was on its feet and thinking
that's a gnarly looking deer
it's sick or it's you know
some sort of deformity
you'll notice in most states like
you rarely see a tag for a buck
a lot of times you see a tag
you know antlered deer
I know because it's a thing that does happen
now antelope tons of them have
tons of the does have horns but that's not antlers.
Cal, ever kill one, see one?
I have not.
I worked with some folks in the Frank Church that they desperately wanted to kill this antlerless bull
that they would find over and over again.
Why?
Because they were afraid that all of a sudden, years later, they were going to kill it.
Oh.
Apparently. Every bull in the valley. Apparently, he was very aggressive. because they were afraid that all of a sudden years later they're all apparently every bull
in the valley apparently he was very aggressive and they they had watched him chase off or fight
off antlered bulls i was not there for any of this but yeah and they were thinking he was going to
breed and breed and like produce a strain a genetic line of antlerless bulls.
Yes.
Gotcha.
But, I mean, wilderness outfit, right?
So you got to have something to talk about.
Okay.
Do lunar phases factor?
Man, this is a golden question.
A contentious question.
Do lunar phases factor into hunting?
That's always been the thing that everyone believed,
and I was raised to believe that.
It is on your GPS?
Yes.
If you want to find out if it's going to hunt or not,
simply consult your GPS.
It will tell you whether it's worthwhile going out or not based on the lunar phase now thinking is
full moon deer move all night and get all their activities taken care of
overnight because there's so much light out and then come morning you're sitting
there and you're blind during the crepuscular period you know the the
half-light period and
There's no deer out because they've all been out all night already. I
Don't know if they've studied many other species by no there and I have read and you know
I feel like like my friend Pat Durkin who writes a lot a lot about the science of whitetails has written about this
I know there's been a lot of work on it where you get yourself a collared buck
carrying a GPS collar deer carrying gps
collars and then you watch what they do during various lunar phases and things that i have read
about white tails have said that in fact nothing changes that they're not doing something different.
Now, it's not a simple yes, no question.
Because undoubtedly, on certain nights, waterfowl will fly all night.
On well-lit nights, things will migrate during nighttime.
So, yeah, I've been three trade shows in three weeks, so I've been talking to lots of people,
and the super moon keeps coming up as, you know,
it was a slow season, tough season.
Super moon, really warm.
Well, warm for sure.
That shit definitely matters.
Yes, but it seems to me like many, many people are blaming some slow days in the field on the super moon.
Slow day, super moon, that'd be a good book.
Now, Rami Warren, who I have nothing but respect and admiration for,
and who knows his shit inside and out, disagrees with me on this.
From an elk perspective, I think, I hope I'm not messing this up I
think he feels that movement patterns are affected by moon mm-hmm
how's that what's a man I wish Pat Durkin was here cuz I'm telling you it's
like so the other thing is white tells me different now another whitetail thing
that everyone believes is that a rutting buck this is in some of the same papers that i
read this thing about lunar faces people think they're rutting buck is all willy-nilly going
crazy places a rutting buck goes to the just he goes to the same places he always goes just more
often he doesn't pioneer new he doesn't be like oh I've never been over there. I'm going to go over there.
I have always heard that the whitetail buck's range is very, very small.
And then when the rut kicks in, it expands by three or four times. No, they don't pioneer new spots.
I read that exact same study.
And they had GPS collared.
I don't know how many bucks.
It was a good number of deer.
And what they found out was they do not expand their range.
I think there may be some fallacies inside
what their original ranges are.
But they don't expand their range,
they just move more frequently in different areas.
Like if you look at him throughout the year,
he'll be like, he's got some little spot he goes,
and he goes there every week, or every two weeks,
but he'll kind of go into some area and check it out.
Then during the rut, he's just kind of back and forth, going to all these places he already knows about.
He's not patternable in that time.
That doesn't mean he's going to new places.
That doesn't mean he's not there.
And they were saying the same thing about the October lull.
It doesn't mean that deer does not move at different times.
He just moves in different places
you know and in different frequency and then you look at the the pattern of a buck from when they're
just in feed mode until when the mass crops fall and they change you know i grew up that was acorns
fall and the deer patterns changed i killed more deer in early october growing up just understanding
where the acorns dropped and where the deer would move into and when than anything else rut anything so you guys would specifically like hunt acorn
crops yeah i had a lease in maryland i would hunt i would hunt acorn crops i knew exactly which
which grove of trees i knew exactly where to go and exactly when the deer would be there
based on when those acorns fell that's cool yeah i mean so but but I think those GPS collar bucks, it just shows that those deer rarely, if ever, expand their range unless, you know, there really is no hot does in the area.
But, I mean, whitetail populations, there's always going to be a breeding does somewhere within their range, I would think.
I think those GPS collars were messing with those deer.
Yeah, it could be.
Maybe deer with GPS collars act weird.
Speaking of expanding uh ranges though
in whitetails did brody send you that picture too those whitetails no yeah i didn't look at it yet
though yeah so he lives uh in steamboat springs and was traveling south and uh basically smack
dab in the middle of colorado ran into a six pack of whitetail does at probably seven to 8,000 feet,
just feeding in the sage.
And like the nearest place I've ever seen a whitetail
to that exact location is probably well over 100 miles,
like up in North Park, Colorado.
We had a biologist in Colorado tell us
if you see a whitetail, put your tag on that.
I would be sorely, sorely tempted to burn my tag on a whitetail purely for the preservation of the mule deer in our area.
I do not want to see them come in.
Yeah.
They really, like, just for folks listening, mule deer have many problems.
Not insurmountable problems they have problems one of their problems
is whitetail deer uh the whitetail deer is generalist they do very well uh that they
handle stress better than mule deer handle stress and whitetail deer um because of agricultural
practices and other things whitetail deer are always expanding ranges into new areas and they come into competition with mule deer and oftentimes they they
went out and guys like whitetails might be sweet but you know we're not gonna
run out of whitetails little white rats in the mountains that's that's cool but
okay how do you here's ago, I like this one.
I've never seen this one before.
How do you fight fear at night?
My brothers and I do a lot of backcountry hunts,
but we struggle with falling asleep at night.
I don't want it to sound like a bunch of wussies,
but it really pisses us off.
It doesn't matter how far we hike in or how tired we are the fear
settles in every time just curious how one fights that i think that um exposure
for me personally i think that everything that you're afraid of exposure makes the fear go away. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.
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I used to be afraid of taking my
skiff outside of the arm
out in the open straight.
I don't even think about it at all anymore.
What happened was I just kept doing it until I wasn't afraid of it anymore.
And yeah, man, when I first started hunting the mountains in grizzly bear country,
I'd go up and be laying in bed at night and be a little scared.
Now it's the last thing on my mind.
I don't have any psychological.
Yanni might have some kind of psychological trick.
Yanni's got a lot of
little mental tricks
not for this one
not for this one
but I think
I agree with you
I mean
across the board
you know
I was just thinking about
how like
I was kind of scared
and nervous
the first time I came
to a shot
you know
with you guys
and talking to big wigs
you know
and then like
you just learn how to be
comfortable in that situation
and you know
it's just not worried about it anymore you know, and then like, you just learn how to be comfortable in that situation. And you, you know, it's, you just not worried about it anymore. You know, it's just exposure practice.
I wonder if those guys have a specific instance that they're like, that they've heard of,
or something that they call back to that is causing that fear, that trepidation, like
something, the buddy got mauled by a bear or what? Yeah. Maybe they hunt some back alley in Tijuana.
Maybe somebody pulled a shank on them in the mat. I't know but i would just say that you know do you get
scared in the mountains yeah absolutely just of the unknown just of the unknown but you can't like
that's any fear like you said i mean there's no better way to put it you can't dwell on that fear
yeah it's just your ego and you're in your head your little ego yeah and and again it's the
instances of something bad happening when you're in a two-man tent in the back country is very
slim yeah you know i think i think too is about fear and stuff is like when you're not afraid
so when you're just sitting at home and in a comfortable place. If you sit and say, you know what?
From this perspective of being home and safe and comfortable,
I do recognize that it's an irrational fear that I'm feeling.
I think that once you recognize the fear as being baseless or irrational,
I think you almost have a personal responsibility to conquer it.
Because you should,
at all times in your life,
be on the lookout
for irrational shit
that you do.
Those guys should ask themselves,
I keep coming back to
what leads to that fear?
How do you,
is your development as a person,
what leads to allowing that fear
to have a causation
where you can't sleep?
Yeah.
Because I have fear sometimes when I get tired and go to sleep.
I might be a little scared.
I might hear noise, but I'm there to do something.
I'm going to go to sleep, and that's what I'm going to do.
I'm not going to let that fear regulate that,
but is that part of your personality that you let everything you're scared of
have a cause and effect in your life?
Run your life.
Run your life.
I just don't think in general
that you should that's not how i live my life wouldn't do it hunting wouldn't do it raising a
child wouldn't do it in any in anything but i know i know people that do let their fears
you know run their lives and if they think all the the uh west nile virus is going to get them
if they see a mosquito they run yeah to me i I think what's the odds I'm gonna get bit by a mosquito with West Nile virus. I don't give a shit
Go ahead and bite me. Let's see. Let's test the odds
Yeah, because that's I mean there's people canceling trips because something happened 400 miles away from there. Yeah
gal
Not real inspired by that question. No, I
Man, I do not recall ever being afraid of sleeping outside.
I've had far more restless nights sleeping in my bed,
thinking about all the stuff I forgot to do at work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So there's a price for doing everything, I guess.
And if you want to sleep in a really beautiful, And if you want to sleep in a really beautiful,
or if you want to be in a really beautiful spot
the very next morning, you got to sleep there.
So, you know, if you're having trouble sleeping,
and I'm not knocking on these guys at all,
but, you know, if you're having trouble sleeping,
take a long nap in the middle of the day.
You know, it's like.
Oh, get your sleeping done it's like oh get your sleeping
done then yeah get your sleeping done then you'll be fine yeah i i like thinking about uh
fear is like a pet subject amount i'm interested in it um so this one's for ryan callahan specifically
no i'm not gonna do this nothing it's not what you think what is the first light logo supposed to be
it's very easy but i'll just hear him out i've had arguments with friends over this
it always looked to me like the sun peeking over a mountain hence the name first light
a friend thought it was the letter f laying sideways i don't see that I would say you are correct it is it is the Sun
coming up over the top of a mountain so first light first light of the day and
yeah many people get confused by it which I kind of enjoy because people ask
questions about it and I think that's kind of a good marketing tact and the name first light i'd
i'd get a good laugh out of it every year multiple times because our competition has to say our name
because every good hunting story has first light right at first light there i was there's a great
book jim harrison it's a collection of jim harrison writing his all of his essays on
hunting and fishing literature and food all of his essays up to a certain point in his career
are all collected in a book called just before dawn so if you ever do a spin-off company called
just before dawn well yeah at first light i saw a yeti it's perfect yeah right first light big old yeti it's all a big okay here's a good one this is a heavy one
heavy i feel like this fella's got an axe to grind he says how do you access wilderness in quotes
if you have i don't know why it's in quotes how do you access wilderness if you have, I don't know why it's in quotes. How do you access wilderness if you have lung cancer and cannot hike?
Are an amputee and cannot walk?
Are older and don't have stamina?
In short, what you want is a place where a tiny percentage of young people can use while their parents and grandparents cannot.
There's many ways to explain that.
I'll point out one, that if you came to me, let's say you took a favorite patch of wilderness
that I like, let's say some pure ass wilderness, and you said to me, Steve, we're going to, you got one of two choices.
You could never step foot on the North slope of the Brooks range again, ever,
on penalty of death, or we're going to road it all up.
I would say, okay, I'll miss it.
So it's bigger than having wilderness is bigger than just saying like i
want it for me and me exclusively it has tremendous implications for wildlife clean air clean water
sanctuary it's like it's doing more than just being a place for people to go if there are
activities that we can conduct in wilderness
that do not damage the integrity of wilderness,
all the better.
I don't think the goal of every patch of ground on Earth
is to increase its accessibility to all folks
and all forms of use.
That's one way that I would look at that question.
What aspect? I mean, he's looking at it from a purely personal aspect. that's one way that I would look at that question what aspect do you
I mean he's looking at it from a purely personal
aspect yeah he's like if I can't be there
why have it yeah and I
think all of us here would say
we think about the land and the animals
before we think about ourselves
like if I think about well
where can I go first or where can my dad
go or where can my grandfather go or where can my
the people in my life go
I probably wouldn't treat wilderness with the respect it deserves but i think what
as you said what's the best thing for that that piece of ground you do that and if that means
elderly folks or you know people with disabilities can't get there i'm sorry we're doing what's best
for that piece of property for that ground for that land for those animals population
jim posowitz the the
great conservation writer do you remember the story yet tell the story i'll do my best but
yeah that's what i was running i saw you shaking your head when i said poswitz oh yeah but uh
yeah he put it um what was the what was it do you remember the name of the fight or the mountains
that was that was it was based upon upon when the guy got up to speak?
No, I don't remember.
They were arguing over a patch of wilderness area.
Yeah, whether some roads should be shot up into there.
I think the gist of it basically came as like, you're saying the time when he stood up and said, I'm like 80 years old.
Yeah.
And I'm not going to take away
from the current young generation just so that I can have my time in there now as an
old guy.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I need to, we need to preserve it so that those young people do have places to be scared
at night and sleep in the tent and be wild and free and to experience that and just
because i've aged out of that and by the way he stood up and said i'm 80 some years old and i can
still get in there so age has nothing to do with this yeah but yeah he was he was kind of respect
was like a place he'd always spent time as a young man and another guy was arguing like well now i'm
old and i can't get in there more so we need roles to let me get in there. Yeah. And that was his reply.
So you want to deprive all future generations.
Of what you had.
Of what you hadn't loved.
Do you think this guy asking the question is a millennial?
Do you think he's sub-30?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's hard to say.
I mean, this guy could just be playing the devil's advocate with wilderness.
Sure.
I think maybe that idea that, you know, why not me?
I'm 31, and I guess I'm a millennial for better or tense purposes.
It's like the generation I'm in, that why not me?
Oh, yeah.
Why not the thing that I want to do?
Why not my personal sensibility before the betterment of the thing that I say that I want to do that I love?
Yeah, you mean to tell me that these younger little whippersnappers.
What in the Sam Hill is whippersnapping?
To have a myopic view of the world.
That's a good question.
Real quick point.
Oh, yeah, please.
I have taken many old, infirmed, amputeed people into the wilderness on fantastic trips.
That's a good point, too.
Many.
Hell's Canyon Wilderness.
Bob Marshall.
Most people that enjoy the Hell's Canyon enjoy it from a boat going through the Hell's Canyon.
And what they're looking at is panoramic views of wilderness.
Another quick point.
You go Glacier National Park.
Gorgeous, stunning panoramic views, waterfalls,
plenty of wildlife.
The vast majority of visitors to Glacier National Park,
they see that park from the going to the sun road only.
They may leave the vehicle but it's to
go step out on a you know a concrete viewpoint to just go stop and look at the scenery you cannot
tell me that those people don't appreciate that scenery because they didn't hike into it yeah and it given the choice
i can't imagine those people would say ah probably don't really need this yeah because they can feel
it yeah you can feel it in its proximity it's overpowering the main thing i think as well is
the reason i'll always be a wilderness advocate is i'm is I don't think we have any real chance of running out of non-wilderness places.
I do not fear for the future of roads.
I do not fear for the future of concrete.
I'm like, get it now.
Yeah, we will not run out of that shit.
We will not run out of places to drive vehicles.
Excellent point from our view in Las Vegas.
We will run out of places that do not have those things.
So I will always believe in the preservation of those last little vestiges of wilderness that we have. places can be you know live a lot live harmoniously along low-impact activities
all the better I'm gonna keep beating on that source
they lay it on us we we have no idea the value of what these places are gonna
have especially 50 to 100 years down the line I've had this conversation a lot
lately with people where we take it for granted now we like we go we go hunt wilderness all the time. We get film permits to go on great
tracks of national forest to go do our business. And it's very, I want to point out which we pay
for. Yes, gladly. And, um, we, we literally take it for granted. It's something we go and just do
it willy nilly. And as populations grow and we have less and less of that,
I feel like in 50 years, our kids,
there might be a point where wilderness is now
that we just walk, you just park at the trailhead
and walk into, you're going to have to start
drawing permits more and more
just to access those places.
Because to a point, when there's too many cars in the trailhead,
that will start to affect the wilderness.
It won't be as pristine.
And so, as that demand grows,
like you see with anything,
the price is going to go up.
You know, there's less,
there's not going to be the supply.
So I just feel like-
Become like bighorn sheep tags.
Sure, exactly.
Get it now while you can.
Because our kids are-
Come on now.
Fight for it now while you can.
No, no, no.
But I'm saying,
but we're not going to stop the fact
there's going to be more people
that are going to want to enjoy those places.
Yeah.
And so it might not be as accessible as it is now.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
It's not a replenishable resource.
You know what?
This person posed the wrong question
because I emailed you over the summer.
I taught my 88-year-old lung cancer surviving
one-lunged grandmother how to fly fish.
Not because I wanted to teach her how to fly fish.
I didn't force her into it.
She said, hey, I want to learn how to fly fish this weekend.
She's determined to learn how to fly fish.
Because there might not be a next weekend. She's determined to learn how to fly. Because there might not be a next weekend.
Yeah.
You know?
So it's like, maybe if you think you can't go into the wilderness,
you don't want to go in the wilderness.
Yeah, you might surprise yourself.
Yeah.
You know, a thing that baffles me about politicians
who sort of aggressively go after wilderness and who are like antagonistic to the
idea of wilderness is where if the goal of public service and the goal of being alive is to do good
work that will be remembered well okay that you will have you'll build a legacy for yourself
if you just look at american history there there's no example of a well-remembered, great-legacyed individual who made it their life's goal to destroy wilderness.
We look now at Yellowstone National Park, and it's like, what is Yellowstone's approval rating. It's like this great act of genius, right?
That in, what was it, 1876 or 1877 or something,
that someone would have stepped and said,
let's set this big chunk of amazing landscape.
Now we're like, what foresight?
What genius on their part?
And then Roosevelt, he's going to set aside,
oh, what the hell is 11,000 acres of land per day in
office. They go and carve his face on a big damn mountain. They write books about him. There are
scores of biographies about Roosevelt just with his relationship to wilderness.
He is one of those guys that everyone points to. Democrat, Republican, everyone wants to liken themselves to Roosevelt.
He's an American hero for what he did for national forests.
So just by looking at the way history has gone,
how do you think that you're going to now be anti-wilderness
and be remembered well down the road here's here's a good one how do
you handle a gut shot deer really no different for me except i clean everything out real good
if anything's spilled inside oh you don't do gutless method automatically you know what man
i know i'm like an old timey fella on this itimey fella on this. I do not like gutless.
No.
I've got to hear more about that.
Because I'm from the East Coast.
We gutted everything.
Yeah.
Everything we killed, we gutted.
And now everywhere I go, if I don't know the ins and outs of the gutless method, I'm not.
They're like, what's wrong with you?
Well, then they do the gutless method, and they're still digging around the damn guts
because they want to get the liver and the heart and the tenderloins out.
That's my biggest problem.
You're getting the tenderloins out, you still got to dig down.
It doesn't take me that long.
I have the guts out of the thing so fast that I can sit down, make a fire, have a snack,
drink some coffee.
I'm not sitting there watching it slowly bloat.
Just get the guts out of it.
I will compare my tenderloins against anybody's gutless method tenderloins
any day of the week they look like two completely different pieces of meat yeah
because you're getting them out real nice yeah yeah you don't mean you're tender you're hunting
with a bunch of hacks that man i can't argue there's some great i hunt with some great hunters who like the gutless
method but it just i like and yanni youtube yanni put out a video youtube yanni made a video like
how to go how many people have watched your gutless with yanni gosh i haven't checked
probably over a year i don't know let's just say i want to hear quarter quarter million watch the
gutless with yanni gutless with yanni this
was how to do the gutless so yeah yanni break it down gutless uh kenton and i went out one morning
i was telling you about the mountain bike kenton and i mountain bike into this spot and
he ended up shooting this buck um first shot was a little bit back and
he's like we should probably do the gutless method
I was like I can salvage it
and the creek's you know
not too far away
and he still says
to this day
that some of that meat
was very poor
and he ended up
as a precaution so he didn't you know bias his children
grinding it all and turn it into sausage because he thought it had some gut taste to it yeah
no gut like a gut just to speak about gut shot deer anyone who says they never had one you're
kind of lying because all that needs to really happen is if it's quartering slightly in any kind of direction you could you could center punch it it still wind up
as soon as you break the abdominal uh you know as soon as you kind of like break through the diaphragm
you're gonna hit something's gonna go on you know so we can say paunch yeah if you hit the
paunch that's a gut shot i gut them out i take my water bottle you know if it means i'm gonna be
thirsty i take whatever i got for water i. It means I'm going to be thirsty.
I take whatever I got from water.
I clean everything up.
I use snow to clean it up.
I trim all that business away, wash the whole thing out,
and then proceed on as though it never happened. Are we making the assumption that this person is saying you have gut-shotted
deer that is dead on the ground?
Oh, maybe he means he gut-shot it and it ran off.
Like, do you leave it?
Yeah, in that case, wait.
Do not pressure it.
Let it lie down and die.
If there's even an inkling that you might have got in the guts or far back.
Yeah, a cautionary bow hunter,
no matter what hit he gets, is not going to follow that animal for an hour 45 minutes an hour if he's like i it was first rib
back from the show couldn't have been better he's still going to sit tight for fear that that thing
will lay down and that will go a little ways and lay down and then he'll come trouncing through
the woods and it'll jump up and then cover one mile the next handful of
seconds and give him all hell finding it so if you know you got a gut shot you
want to wait as long as you can push it when considering the air temperature
other factors could lead to spoilage don't go chasing off after it cuz it's it's going to go and lay down, and then you're going to jump it up,
and it's going to run like holy hell and become very difficult trailing,
very difficult to blood trail it.
Definitive weight.
Yeah, weight.
How did you get to do what you're doing?
What should I study in college to be able to work in the outdoor industry
yeah i used to get that a lot about writing and i'd be like i just never meet i've never met
like no two writers has the same story there's no like template if you're like how do you become a
lawyer you're kind of like oh well study poli sci and undergraduate then you go to law school
and then like you take the bar exam,
and then you're a lawyer.
But in the outdoor industry, it's not like that.
Here we have four people that work in the outdoor industry,
radically different stories.
Well, think about the outdoor industry.
I mean, it's not, are they asking specifically to do what you do
or to do what any of us here do?
They just say outdoor industry.
I mean, the outdoor industry is gigantic.
You could be a customer service rep in the outdoor industry if you wanted to be
and translate that into a career.
You know, I'm assuming they want to have a career where they can hunt as their job.
Let's say that they mean spending a bunch of time outside.
Yeah.
And we all spend a ton of time outside.
Yeah.
I mean, to me, it can be as simple as finding your way into a company like First Light.
Finding your way into a company.
It's probably better as a smaller company.
Finding your way into a company like First Light and getting yourself noticed.
Maybe you're an assistant.
Maybe you're a customer service rep.
But being passionate about hunting in an environment where there is opportunity, it can be as easy
as that.
Get into a place where you can get noticed by
people that can pull the pull the trigger on you having a job where you can go outside yeah
yeah it's it's a lot easier there certainly is no degree for it for that specific purpose
yeah there's no magical one you can't major and want to be outside all the time
no but man field biology gets you outside a lot i came into it where i wanted to be
like i like to hunt i wanted to be an outdoor writer because i thought that would allow me to
do a lot of hunting and fishing and in fact i was correct and um just put up with a lot of years of
a tremendous amount of uncertainty and then being really like really, really, truly, honestly broke.
Not that I had fear.
Not that I was going to go, like, unfed, right?
I had the luxury of always having, like, plenty of things I could fall back on,
family that was there.
Like, it wasn't like I was going to wind up homeless, right?
Like, a big support network of people who were not going to let me nosedive
and burn out, but a ton of uncertainty about how this is all going to let me nosedive and burn out,
but a ton of uncertainty about how this is all going to play out,
but just keeping going on it.
Not being seduced by easier, though less attractive options is something.
Well, Outdoor Ready specifically is not a profitable venture.
No.
Not at this point.
Yeah, I want to be really lucky in that way.
Now I live this really very comfortable existence that I never would have thought I would have gotten into.
I always used to see the stream flow,
the USGS stream flow survey setups on the side of the river.
Go, man, I need to work for the USGS.
I can just have my fly rod with me all the time.
Check all these years stream flow charts.
Give me that job.
About just doing maintenance on those, right?
Sure.
Yeah.
What do you think about all that, Yanni?
Yeah, my wife is a wetlands ecologist,
and there were many years when I was, you know, guiding hunter fishing trips
and then guiding 80 or 90 days hunting every year.
And yet she still was spending more time
in a tent than I was in the course of a year.
So yeah, go be a field scientist.
I want to point out-
That might not be outdoors industry,
but you're going to be outside a lot.
He didn't clarify,
or if he did,
we don't have that with us here right now.
Have I told the story about you and me
and sitting in Bozeman
and you watching a guide go by?
Yes.
I told it on the podcast?
No.
Never mind.
Sorry.
Okay.
Here's the last one.
This is a heavy hitter,
never done.
Where is this here?
Sorry.
That's a good one. I'm not going to ask it. that's a good one i can ask it this is a good one i'm not gonna ask this one it's a good one it's hunting a right or a privilege oh that's a good one
oh privilege
damn it oh as much time as you spend in the wilderness do you feel the presence or calling
of god or of a certain belief or spirituality the wilderness gives me a
yeah the the the wilderness gives me a sense of um of it like it in of itself, the wilderness in and of itself
gives me a feeling of being higher than man.
And I do feel like I have been moved to tears
by wilderness experiences
where let's say you're going to define spirituality
or something as a belief in something
that can't be understood.
A thing you accept sort of on like a notion of faith yes i do feel uh like overwhelmed by its
power overwhelmed by an immense sense of time of the path like of the quiet passage of time
that happens in wilderness.
Anyone else care to take that one on?
Yeah.
My family is kind of built on,
I would first say the wilderness brings me closer to creation.
And I think religion is us trying to figure out creation,
trying to intellectually and emotionally figure out
how we were created
and what that means and what that means for our world so like when you're out there and you're
among this thing that you can't explain that was created you know in concert with you
it brings me closer to that concept closer than vegas yeah i mean yeah i don't have spiritual
feelings no i never there's I never there's a few things
you could do that could fake that but no I that to me it brings me closer to
creation yeah so that's where I connect through that creation in my my father my
mother and my father they're there they were raised religious or their parents
were or very religious and they both kind of got away from that.
And now they go every Sunday, they go down to some national forest
that is near my house in Maryland, and they walk on this stream,
and they call that church, and they just commune with nature.
And when someone dies, they go there, and they take some part of that wild place,
like whether it's an animal or whatever, and they assign someone who died to some part of that wild place like whether it's an
animal or whatever and they assign someone who died to that animal or to
that place that way they can go back and always visit that person yeah yeah they
try to you know assign some characteristic of that person to that
animal or something so when they see that animal they can they can then
think remember that remember that person so they've used you know wilderness as a vehicle to explore their religious beliefs and figure it out my dad is you know kind of a song
writer in his own line he writes sing songs about it writes about it is that right huh yeah
artsy fartsy little family yeah man you gotta have him on like you gotta have him on i'd like to he's a proper redneck though so oh okay good good good
gail like it yeah man i yeah i mean short answer is yes of course like that i think if you're not
having those connections um you may be out there for the wrong wrong reasons or you haven't got it
yet or it hasn't clicked yet because you know i i I was raised Catholic for at least half of my upbringing.
And I truly enjoyed going to church.
But it, you know, dawned on me eventually that what I really liked about going to church was just kind of quiet contemplation.
And, you know, I was kind of going through the motions, everything else.
And as you may know, I kind of was like, yeah, don't be a dick.
Got it.
And so I'd just sit there and think, and it was a great time to think.
And yeah, I need like a good week alone in the woods,
and I can get all that in for a year.
So yeah, the quiet contemplation can be found in wild places.
And yeah, so yes.
Yes.
Straight up, oh yeah.
Big yes.
Care to expound on that? No gotta cut you off well let me do my
quick concluding thought please now i have many many times dogged on our very own meat eater
story but that son of a bitch is up and running up and running we even got a Meteor podcast t-shirt coming out.
We got men's and women's t-shirts,
hats, all kinds of shit.
Even sweet rapid rifle cover,
rifle covers that you see on the show all the time
with the Meteor logo on them.
Get over there.
When you're done doing that,
go to Yanni's t-shirt company,
hunt to eat.
He's got a sweet Meteor t-shirt up on there.
What else?
You got how many states?
Thank you.
Thousand? Yeah yeah thousand states i don't know the exact amount of states now but we are up to uh 40 different products yeah they got a new they got a new sweet one called four seasons
and it kind of like in four nice little logos spells out a good hunting and fishing year yeah
it's even got a winter cottontail on it bank concluding thoughts concluding thoughts i mean
you got some deep deep audience members dude i'm telling you these are these are cold these
are called which i appreciate but still still appreciate the appreciate the people that listen to this and watch you care about it, man.
Curated, I should say, not cold.
Curated.
Curated.
But that's, you know, people asking good questions because they'll know you'll give good answers to it.
Oh, thank you.
I just wanted to close with pumping you up a little.
Please, I love it.
You're a fine, fine human being.
Kel?
I agree.
I think a good thank you is in order. I've been getting an incredible amount of feedback
ever since Meat Eater
hit Netflix. It's crazy.
I mean, it's the fan
feedback and the range of fans I've never seen
attached to anything hunting related you know
it's like over and over again I get uh you know it's the only show my wife will watch my little
girls watch this episode over and over again yeah like it's amazing so yeah uh thank you and
keep asking questions good Good. Yanni?
No concluding thoughts today.
All right.
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