The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 065: Miles City. Steven Rinella talks with his big brother Matt Rinella, along with Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.

Episode Date: May 25, 2017

Subjects discussed: Brigadier (or poseur) generals; mutilating the 7th Cavalry with knives and sewing awls; how Miles City got its name; race-ready huntin' llamas; moose pellet incense; packing large loads of wild meat; Jani-Aspen; being married; mountain goats falling over cliffs and getting frozen up in trees; cartin' llamas; llama vans; and more. 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. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. All right, man.

This is the first session we've ever done in Miles City, Montana. I've sat at this table for a few other sessions before, but not. Just general. General bullshit session. Yep. Moving to the big league. Miles City Town of 9,000 has had 9,000 people living in it for about 100 years. Just doesn't.

It just. It just doesn't. We're stable here. It just doesn't change, man. We're a stable place. So, I'm going gonna get to who's who that's my older brother matt's voice um but first there's a order there's a little bit of business to take care of okay and then the other thing is i don't know is a little bit of a uh discourse on the main negatives of um raising uh game animals for food oh yeah so here's the main negative there's aesthetics right which i care about a great deal but it's hard to it's like

it's hard to argue someone from the ground up aesthetics is hard it's it's like it's hard to argue someone from the ground up. Aesthetics is hard. It's hard to explain as someone who's asking a pragmatic question. So we'll leave aesthetics and matters of the heart and spiritual issues aside. Disease vectors. We have a lot of problem with moving wildlife diseases around. Wildlife diseases thrive in densely packed populations of animals that are having oftentimes unnatural contact with one another um and the way mad cow disease and other some other things has moved around is between contact from pen-raised

animals and wild animals um you put a bunch of deer in a farm, they all get sick. Wild deer come up, stick their nose through the fence. There you have it. It also raises some interesting historical questions. You can't just go out and catch a deer. You can't go out and catch a deer and make it yours. But at a time that happened you know so um it just kind of subverts what i think is makes wildlife beautiful and when you're selling wildlife to people you're sort of taking a

set a an established thing of value and it has value to us because it's wild and you're capitalizing on that value and selling a false version of it that's the aesthetic part yeah yeah i never thought about that but it's very true uh back to mile city so i'm gonna lay a transition on you guys it's gonna blow your mind so be prepared for that but uh mile city um takes its name from a fellow by the name of General Miles. Miles City sits in Custer County, which takes its name from a fellow named George Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer. And in Miles City is a place called Fort Keogh, which is a federal livestock and range research laboratory. And Fort Keogh takes its name from a fellow by the name of Miles Keogh. In around the time of our nation's, not around the time,

during our nation's, well, about a week ahead of our nation's first centennial, in June, late June of 1876, general, brigadier general, that means he's not a real general. So there was so much attrition of generals during the Civil War that they had to give some dudes temporary generalships thinking that they would stock back up, the army I'm talking about,

would stock back up with real generals. And then, you know, the brigadier generals would go back to being whatever they were colonels so brigadier general george armstrong custer who everybody knows has the long hair i didn't know i never knew what what a brigadier meant yeah it's like a poser general poser journal general uh custer coming out of his civil war fame famous also for having long hair but had just gotten a haircut, comes out to this area with short hair about a week or so prior to the nation's centennial. And his task is to be rounding up Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians who have not come into their reservations yet. And everybody knew that they were fixing for a big fight um and indians

who were living on reservations were so excited about the upcoming fight that some of them were even leaving reservations for the simple thing to go out and fight soldiers who were there to round up hostiles and bring them into the reservations just like now in the war in Afghanistan, we talk about the fighting season because the Taliban doesn't fight in the winter, generally. Summer was the fighting season. So Custer comes out to this area, has some Crow scouts, some Arikara scouts who were allied with the whites, with our army.

They were lifelong enemies, historic enemies with the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. They find a big enc enemies with the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. They find a big encampment of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, so big that turns out it was the largest collection of Plains Indians to have ever occurred before or after. The scouts found this and they're like, man, it's way too big. There's no way we can go down in there

custer didn't no one knows what he was thinking custer rides down in there a couple hundred of his soldiers seventh cavalry under his command and uh they just get slaughtered quick the indians later a lot of them became famous who participated the battle later they said when we were talking about custer riding down into our camp after it happened we all thought the only explanation was that they were all drunk it made so little sense a guy named Gall they asked him how long did the fight take he says it took about a long about as long as it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner is how long it took them to wipe out Custer and his 200 soldiers. Then they spent a long time mutilating all the carcasses. The next day when some guys were riding up the valley,

they're riding up the little bighorn, which the Indians called the greasy grass, and they get to the battlefield and they're assuming that Custer went in there and won. And they look off and they see all these white and red, bloody kind of things going on. And they thought, it looked to them as though the white, bloody stuff was buffalo carcasses and the brown patches were buffalo hides. And they thought, oh, Custer caught them in the middle of a buffalo hunt and run them off while they were skinning carcasses and they ride over there and what they were looking at the brown patches were dead horses and the white bloody patches were stripped human carcasses and they would do such things as they would want to make your afterlife miserable so they would cut your trigger fingers off so you

couldn't shoot they'd gas your thighs so you couldn't run. They'd cut your dick and balls off and stuff it in your mouth. Which is some cold-blooded shit. So you couldn't make love. A woman by the name of Big Nose Kate. Or eat, really. Yeah, because there you are every time you go to eat.

A woman by the name of Big Nose Kate claimed that she took a sewing awl, a Northern Cheyenne woman, and jabbed it into Custer's ears to puncture his eardrums because her father had warned him, do not mess with us. And she thought that he would have better hearing in the afterlife if she were to add an extra perforation into the side of his head. Other historians think that they didn't know it was Custer.

They knew Custer had long hair, but he just had a haircut. The reason I bring all this up. He's always portrayed with long hair. Yeah, but he rode into that battle with short hair. Remember that root beer stand? Yeah, Custer's last stand. Yeah, over by, where was that? Belgrade?

Yeah, we used to always talk about stealing that sign. I think we even went and sussed it out one time, but it was pretty well fixed. Yeah, very well fixed. Yeah, in in that he had long hair in movies he's always portrayed in long hair his he cut his hair off and his wife libby had a wig made from it um point being there's two bodies that did not get mutilated one uh was buried under a pile of dead horses and they think it just was too much of a hassle to drag them out of there and chop them up two captain miles keo was not mutilated and here's that transition i was telling y'all about and here's my brother works and works at

four keel okay four keel uh do you guys ever talk about miles down there? No, we don't talk about any of this stuff ever. It'd be interesting to see how many of my coworkers could even recite half of the facts that you just recited about the history of Fort Keogh. So is there any speculation on why they they didn't mutilate keel yeah he um had some he was an irishman a heavy drinker and he was wearing some kind of uh celtic i guess i'd have to look it back up, but some kind of like Celtic, Christian-y, combo-type emblem around his neck. And it speculated that, like it was like an adorned,

I can't remember, some kind of adorned cross or something. And it was speculated that he, they didn't recognize that. They speculated that he might have been some kind of religious figure. It's one thing that he might have been, had some medicine. Yeah.

Right. And they didn't mutilate him. Now there was a, so there was a guy, a Crow guy named Curly who claimed that he witnessed the battle and escaped. Most people believe that he left the battle and escaped most people believe that um he left the night before got

yellow and left night before gall the guy that said uh how long it took that took as long as it takes a hungry man to eat his meal um he later met curly and he Curly if you're telling me that you escaped after that battle you must have turned into a bird is the only explanation because he was not buying he said they killed everything but they messed up because a horse got away a horse by the name of Comanche got away with uh something like nine wounds. That's for Keough. I just learned something interesting about, was it Brigadier General?

Brigadier General George Armstrong. No, no, Keough. Was he just a- Captain. Captain, okay. So if you think about the years between the Indian Wars in the West and World War I, like if you think of the years. It starts to bleed together.

Oh, man. But just like in my mind, and I suspect this is the way for others, you think of them as being way far apart. but uh i guess captain keo was instrumental in uh in general jack pershing black jack pershing uh making his way through the ranks to become the commanding general in world war one he was like oh he's a promising young man really yeah because uh blackjack pershing is the guy that tried to go down and catch poncho via right they must have um uh collaborated on some kind of project some military projects in the west and uh and keo was a big advocate for for him now if you if you listeners get done with this

and you're like what should i do now if you want to hear a good song um go listen to tonight we ride which is about blackjack persian's pursuit of poncho, which proved fruitless. Rode down into Mexico. Yeah, you sent me that song. Yeah, rode down into Mexico into the mountain range known as God's Middle Finger, the Sierra Madre, and couldn't find him. And then Tonight We Ride kind of follows the lives of a number of people who ride with Pershing and don't catch Pancho Villa.

Pancho Villa, he lived until the 30s and then was assassinated in a car. So in Mexico? Yes. Oh. So llamas. How many pack llamas do you own right now? Boy, we just jumped right. We just kind of jumped into this whole thing.

Yeah, because I did a good segue earlier, and then I got just tired of segues. I thought there'd be like a 20-minute, where we talk about, this being my first podcast, I was just curious, did these get edited at all now there's cases in which it would get edited like if i said something extremely

racist or something yes that would be edited or if you which i wouldn't said something that was like way off and then you said man can you take that out like if all of a sudden i realized that uh like if i started talking about how much i didn't like our mother or something like that you might no i would unless you change your mind but let's say i was mom i love you that was just a hypothetical yeah but let's say i went and uh realized that uh kath and keo in, had been mutilated and had his junk stuffed into his mouth, I would probably be like, oh, man, now I got to go edit that out. I'm glad you guys are responsible like that and you try to keep it. What will often happen, too, is sometimes, not often,

but now and then we'll have a person on whose job it is to know something. Oh. And then in the asking of like 100 things, he might get something wrong. They'll get rattled or whatever, and they'll to know something oh and then in in the asking of like a hundred things he might get they'll get rattled or whatever and and they'll not know something and then and then be like dude please it's just so embarrassing yeah it's rare though it really is very rare and you've demonstrated you've demonstrated the occasional cuss word is not bad yeah but i wouldn't go out of your way right right um how about like um can i sing copyrighted songs if that's a very good question there's like a there's a there's a limit i know that there's a you know like if you quote a song in a book which i've done there's a it's it's spelled out in good detail um how many

lines you can use under like a fair use thing really now here's the interesting here's the interesting thing if you were gonna say let's say you uh were in a situation where you were gonna say you know it's interesting uh how llamas have been treated in popular music over the years and i'm now going to recite and sing a handful of songs in a way that will demonstrate a point and illustrate something about like the facile nature of culture and and sort of the collective experience we all have and understanding something then you would be able to go and rip through a bunch of copyrighted material and possibly be covered under a fair use thing oh because i'm using it for demonstrative purposes yes oh yeah wow it's very

complicated yeah it is and we don't have that kind of. So I remember once when I was in, I would have been in my late teens, early 20s. I went and saw a Blood, Sweat & Tears reunion concert. Yeah. And the guy was talking about how Milli Vanilli had just stole one of his riffs and he was all excited because he got enough money from the settlement to redo his kitchen

is that right you talked about that in front of everybody spinning wheel got to go oh i hope that's not too many lines no no you definitely didn't cross you definitely didn't cross the line there and it's usually good practice to credit it oh so even if you if you were writing a book and you want to share like some lyrics okay when i was doing uh i did a book and i wanted to talk about the song putting on the ritz right so in there you'd say like irving berlin okay wrote a song and in the song or said these words and you're attributing it and then you can't there's a then there's a limit on how much you can get away with you it's like the same way that you can quote um you can quote a book at length right oh right yeah but you can't just like quote be like a dirty

trick where you just say like here's a book for you here's a quote for you and then just put the whole book right right right yeah so are you are you now cool to proceed with the yeah i only know of one song with the llama in it and it's uh a frank sinatra song and i don't even know the name of it but he says something about llamas in peru or something like that do you know that's a good clean segue watch this yanni so uh aren't llamas native to peru i don't well the fact that you asked me oh why yes they are okay sorry i thought it was a trick question oh no second there because let me just tell you because i know that was quick but let me just say what are the main thing i want to talk about after a lengthy preamble i

want to talk about um like your sort of personal voyage with llamas not that that's the not that that's like uh the only interesting thing about you but i think it's just the thing that um i'm comfortable with my llamas being the most interesting thing about me. That people just generally do not know about. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think within that, there's a lot that brings out a lot of things about your personality, your approach to life. Okay. Your kind of journey as an elk hunter right i feel that it's like a

thing that sort of captures all that yeah yeah um do you want me to well yeah start with um sciatica abaca yeah i started uh i remember it was after um a moose hunt with you and danny and a couple other guys uh who was dan rafferty right hardcore jeffy yeah matt rafferty matt rafferty yeah um and after that i just i thought i had a a torn hamstring and after four or five months of physical that hurt oh pretty far down your leg from my ass to my knee and my left leg okay interestingly enough that it's it tends to afflict the left leg more than the right. Oh. For you or? For everybody. In general.

Because I have a pain right now and that just made me nervous when you said where it was. Mine's in my right. Well, that doesn't rule it out. You probably got a herniated disc. I got to run. I'm always fascinated by stuff like that. That's like asymmetric in the human,

or in the AI, I guess, in the human body. Because it's just, I know our hearts on one side, but like- What do you mean? Oh, that something would, restless leg syndrome. That it would tend to be in a certain leg restless leg syndrome is the same way it tends to be in the left leg and i'm like wow mine mine occurs in my right leg oh i wonder if my heart's on the other side

that's it yeah that that is that is puzzling yeah but your body, it's weird that your body is like a little out of whack and that your heart is displaced off center. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Neck problems are more common on the right, I've learned, because I have some neck issues now. I don't know. It's just I'm sure there's,

obviously there's good explanations for all this stuff, but it just makes you realize that things are more complicated than you. You're at a point in life where, um, where you're starting to kind of fall apart a little bit. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, I'm probably about 45% the man I used to be, but that's still more man than most people yeah but i don't think you're that low but just as far as having this disc yeah if that's if that's true then by golly you must be hard to keep up with 10 years ago oh yeah indestructible um indestructible no my problems have been well behaved lately. I'm feeling pretty frisky. Because for a while, Matt,

one of his arms shrank. It still has shrunk. It hasn't come back. You know how you do those where it's like a football throw where you got your hand behind your head and you're extending your arm upwards with a weight in it? Yeah.

On my left, I can do 10 reps of that with 35 pounds no problem but with my wilted arm because it's my tricep that's wilted it's 20 pounds and it's a bitch yeah you know so yeah it's still but the pain isn't as bad i don't know well we don't yeah but back up to the sciatica so yeah i uh i started getting uh this pain in my left leg it took a long time to diagnose and you thought you'd mess it up carrying moose quarters i know i did danny and i danny and you and i ended up at this moose carcass i I don't know how. I think he was up there and he shot it up off the river. We were camped on a river. Remember that?

He shot a moose. And I think you and I, he came back down and found us. And we all three went up there and carried a bunch out. And we loaded up three backpacks. And I don't remember. Somebody couldn't carry theirs and i ended up carrying theirs for him and we traded yes wasn't me i probably danny no really yeah and i was like i'll show these sons of bitches and it was so we've carried some heavy shit that

was like yeah but here's why i know that you're a little bit messed up. Because there was no situation where someone went and killed a bull and then came back and got people. I am telling you, it was the three of us carrying Danny's moose. He shot the first moose on that trip. I was laying right next to him when he shot it. Oh, well, then I ended up... And you were too. Oh, well, then he didn't come back down.

Okay, I was messed up on that. Yeah. But we were all there at the carcass together. We were all there at the carcass. I watched him shoot that. I have no recollection of that. I still remember. Yeah.

It came from way off. It kept coming, coming, coming, coming, coming. The spinal trauma of carrying it somehow rattled my brain. So you're saying that someone said, I can't carry my pack. Yeah, it was you. You said, it's coming back to me now. You said, take Danny's pack. He is struggling.

And I took it. His whole pack? Well, he took mine. He just ended up with a bigger. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's more plausible. Yeah. And it was the next day that i was like things

are different with my body and you know i i i live for that stuff you know so uh for going in the back country and hunting that's like that's what keeps me going so i knew i had to change something and when i started getting when i started thinking about llamas i was thinking of them as um just a quieter version of a quad runner that you could take into a wilderness area i was thinking of them as uh just an instrument for carrying heavy items yeah because you don't have a lick of at the time you didn't have like a lick of uh of of livestocky interest well you've developed i had at that time that i got those llamas i had two chickens oh yeah that's true and i fell in love that's true i fell in love with those chickens and and you initially kicked around the idea of um more traditional pack stock

did i or did you not seriously consider it i thought i thought you thought about mules thought about me oh yeah maybe i don't remember but uh pretty quickly settled on now what i don't like about a mule is um i find that that a lot kind of like hunting horses and mules and stuff is like the kind of thing that if you don't grow up around it it's very i think it would be very hard to catch up oh yeah to someone that did more i mean horses i know are from my wife i know are extremely dangerous my wife has a guest ranch and she strongly discourages me from interacting with horses for packing purposes. But I know mules are supposed to be way more dangerous.

I guess they have some kind of joint configuration that allows them to kick in not just straight back, but to the side. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. They scare me. And the thing it is like in time i've spent with people who grew up around them when they're looking at one they're seeing something a lot different than what i see when i look at one that oh i think they're cute but oh yeah but they're like oh no he's like in a kind of bad mood oh yeah yeah yeah

like he's i wouldn't use that way yeah you can tell he's got like he's a little bloated kind of in a bad mood and i'm like you're just looking at me yeah yeah yeah looks like the same mule that was there an hour ago yeah um i was in this guy's shop getting something welded if this is like 10 years ago and he had all these pictures if he had riding mules that he hunted in the mountains with and uh he i started asking him about them he said yeah last last year i don't remember two years ago he said i had to get rid of them all and he he was borderline kind of breaking down a little bit right in front of me and i just had met the man and he said yeah it's just too dangerous when you're get a little older and you're

and your reflexes aren't as good really yeah it's like hunting he spent his whole life with him and he's like but no sounds like he's hunting with mountain lions or something instead of yeah one of my earliest uh i don't really call him a hunting mentor but when i moved to colorado he was a fellow that owned a small like hunting and fishing shop and uh like a retail space yeah and um he gave me good advice early on where to go find some rabbits. One of my favorite fishing stretches. Devolged his rabbit spot. Hmm? Devolged his rabbit spot.

I don't know. I think he could have cared less. But he did divulge a really nice trout river. And anyways, he sold his business. I think like within months was on a horse lost it hit his head died oh is that right really good thing you got that rabbit spot when you did he'd have carried it with him that's coincidence but you know, kind of proves that point. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing

on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxm maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all can you matt can you real quick can you real quick this is a this is a segue, or not a segue, but an aside. Can you real quick explain how you came to realize that burning a moose dropping smells like incense?

Oh, yeah. There was no creativity or sense of exploration on my part. It's not like, hmm, I'll try burning. Let's try burning to see what smells like i the guy that the guy that married me and my wife he's kind of a he's a long-term term friend of my life but he's kind of a a grizzled like guru naturalist kind of a fellow and a grizzled a grizzled fellow who works with grizzly bears he does work with grizzly bears it works not with him but looks at him yeah yeah um he i was at his

house one night and he all night there was this very pleasant smell in the room it smelled like you know how willows and aspen have that smell in the spring like you go down to a river when they're starting to leaf out yeah you're talking to johnny aspen over here yanni aspen yeah and then if you take one of those buds it's real sticky and you smell it smells so freaking good that's what it smelled like but this was in the winter and finally he didn't say anything about it I just looked and he's like lighting one of these things. Moose pellets. Yeah.

He teaches at a wilderness school and one of his students, this retired airline pilot, he showed that pilot that trick, and the pilot started a company called Moose Scents. No. In Missoula, Montana. No.

Where you can get online, you buy a little incense burner, and they send you some pellets. So is your buddy pissed? No, he don't care. He wasn't looking to cash it out. He wasn't thinking of it as an entrepreneurial thing. Yeah. I don't know a whole lot about business,

but that's got to be kind of like a fringe business. I can't imagine he's making more doing that than he was as an airline pilot. That'd be interesting. So there you were. You had a lot of pain between your ass and knee. Got to thinking that the good times are through. Right.

You had to start hunting whitetails out of trees. Right. If I could hobble up a tree still, that maybe I could rescue some fraction of my hunting lifestyle. But then llamas came to the rescue. Haggy? My first two llamas were haggie and timmy like rescue rescue the rescue you came to the rescue i came to the rescue they were a kind of a ad hoc llama rescue center in idaho and i started communicating with a woman there that sold llama it was called llama

hardware is the name of the company is still in existence but as a different owner about I don't know why I started chatting with her about saddles and gear before I even had llamas but she was the one that found these two llamas they were brother and sister uh and those were my first llamas i remember i was with you when i first laid eyes on them over by we went and went to a fellow named jerry's place jerry hansen in billings montana lives on the yellowstone and if i'm not mistaken, from his window, he was showing us an old spot where he, I believe, I could be wrong, that an old spot where Calamity Jane. Oh, I don't have any recollection of this. Calamity Jane had domiciled or something for a while. I could be wrong.

And those things came off. I remember they came off that trailer. And they were as wild as if you went down to Southica and climbed up into the andes and found a llama and at the end of the day jerry had clipped their toenails put a saddle on them and walked them around and crossed some creeks cross creeks yeah yeah and uh quickly they went from being uh get uh grass-powered four-wheelers four-wheelers to being just uh pets kind of i mean they didn't think of themselves as pets they they got tame enough to pack but to me i just i just marveled at them i thought they were you liked them oh i liked them so much yeah it became and even now it's more this way even now like i do

most my hunting alone and a big part of the attraction is being out there with my i have four pack llamas now being out there with my my buddies um i want to get just a couple i do want to get back to that but just to i want to give people a little bit of a sense here so you got them because you like to hunt uh in the back country yeah and and and and the end there's fake back country but i mean like by any like by any working definition from the lower 48 we're talking like some of the most some of the most backcountry stuff outside of areas that you might encounter in the frank church or bob martin yeah five to eight mile back like you know back in and then you know when you kill elk you're moving you probably know better than anybody now i do because you got a scale you're moving, you probably know better than anybody. Now I do. You got to scale.

You got to get the, you put some meat on one side, some on the other, in a thing called a pannier. And it's got to be with a llama they recommend within one or two pounds. Oh, look at that. There's a woman across the street picking wild asparagus. Oh, I was going to ask you if any asparagus is popping in. Should we go yell at her? Well, I don't know.

I could, but it's somebody else's property. Matt, just another side note. Matt, you know what? No trespassing signs. Matt, you're on Matt's property. He put along the road signs that say trespassing allowed. Yeah, nobody has taken me up on that. And oddly, he had a hard time finding a sign and had to commission his own.

He had to custom make his own trespassing allowed signs because they are not for sale at Walmart. You don't say. That cragged me when I pulled up. Oh, yeah, this is the first year I've had those. I love those. Trespassing allowed. I've gotten some compliments on them. People kind of understand what i'm going for with them

you know do you remember the gnar old man and eugene groters if someone put up no trespassing signs they would go and just take them down well it was ridiculous up where eugene up where this guy, this is a guy we idolized as children. He was just a crazy, funny as hell guy that was kind of a hunting, fishing mentor to us, and he had a cabin, quote unquote, up north from where we grew up. Which seemed like you were driving, it seemed like it was a million miles away.

Into the great beyond. It's like an hour away. And it seemed like you drove to million miles away into the great beyond it's like an hour away and uh yeah but you were it's like you drove to alaska and went up there and then now when you drive you're like this is where it was yeah yeah i went there a couple years ago to see the old cab and but uh those guys were ridiculous i mean they had a no trespassing sign on every freaking tree on the border of their land. Yeah, so. And you know what I was thinking about the other day is how crazy it is that, how quick it is that when you eat asparagus, it smells in your pee.

It's like 20 minutes. There's something in there. I've read that it's related somehow. In Harold McGee's very wonderful book, The Science and Lore of Cooking, he talks at length about why asparagus makes your piss smell. I have the same thing with coffee, though. Do you guys have that? It makes your piss smell like asparagus?

My first pee every morning, if I just left it, you'd go in there and be like, someone poured a cup of coffee in the toilet. Oh, really? I know what you're talking about. Yeah. You're leaving a lot of coffee goodness on the table, it sounds like.

I remember. Is it still brown? No. You know why beer goes through you so quick, right? I don't. Because it doesn't have changed color all right so yeah how many pounds an out you chop up now so because i'm saying because you know better you

know everybody's always speculating but you have to measure your right i know you have to weigh the pan ears boned out i used to say all the time i've never gotten a big bull um but a young bull like a four point five point youngster maybe two three years old uh 200 pounds i've shot two bowls boneless meat boneless meat i shot two a little older bulls six points that were 250 cows typically 160 and that's what i've been saying for the last several years so you're talking um uh all the meat off the bone yeah so boning out all the ribs not taking any no bones packing the heart bones about it packing the heart out and then uh gross shanks yeah leaving on the ground guts bone hair yeah all right um and uh that i love it if people are listening if you you hear people say like oh, I had a 100-pound pack. A 100-pound pack.

That's a lot. Yeah. You can do it. You can do it. We used to do it. Now I know. I didn't even know what they weighed when we were doing it. Yeah.

But now I know because I've weighed a lot of elk. We would take out a whole elk. We would move a cow elk and our camping gear in a trip. No. That's not true? No. We'd always go back for our camping gear a couple weeks later after we could walk again.

Yeah, you know what? I remember one year we left it and didn't go get it until rifle opened or something like that. Yeah. So those are 280-pound packs then. You say you get 160 off a cow. Well, but we carried out bulls in one trip. Really?

Yeah. Now you're taking out antlers. Yeah. So I think that first bull you got with your bow, that was seven miles, and we took out the whole animal in one trip and came back for the gear a different weekend and i remember oh yeah that was a different one but i'll say that was the one where we went back

and grizzlies had eaten all the that was a different one yeah but that so people say like oh i had a hundred pound pack yeah it is possible but it is it's like it is is not good for you. No. It is. No. No. Don't guys in the military carry that kind of? Yeah. Man, they should change that.

Like, it's just you're compromising your later years. Yeah, I think they say in the military that you're expected to carry half your body weight. I think a fellow wants to tell me. Especially in those areas where you got to carry a lot of water, where they're carrying water. And you can just imagine how heavy ammunition is, you know. But when we first moved out here, we were so excited to hunt in the mountains, and we just didn't care.

Yeah. Painful pack-out. Oh, man. It'd be like you'd get to a thing that used to happen to us in the area we hunted. We had to drive. It was probably about maybe like a 30- or 40-minute drive to the closest gas station. And you'd get down to the trailhead and, like, load your elk into the rig, get in, and then drive to the gas station,

and you'd oftentimes be locked up. You'd be stove up by the time you got there. I remember walking into the sports lodge for dinner and walking like a cowboy going to a gunfight. Very hard to get out of the vehicle, very hard to go in there and order a bean burrito and a Gatorade at the at the brown food station of the gas station and um yeah it's grueling man have you ever heard that story like ryan callahan's on your podcast a lot i know about um a guy i think it was a he was an

outfitter that ryan used to work for that shot a mountain goat no oh you've got to hear that story i could tell right now but it'd take three minutes and then heavy packouts ensued yeah is it worth it oh it's such a good story please please um so i don't really give a shit if we covered this llama thing but i would like to wait how much how far in are we now not at all okay um so ryan's boss shoots him a mountain goat eight miles back he told me this at the cabin when we were fishing last summer okay shoots a mountain goat eight miles back in the mountains and he's gonna carry the whole son of a bitch out which we all three know is a lot of weight if you're taking the high school yeah and he but he's like i'm gonna take

my time you know um and he's finishing up and processing it getting it packed up and here comes a grizzly bear and he puts his pack on and starts to get out of there and that bear is following him and that bear merciless mercilessly followed him the whole eight miles back to his car. Huh. Smelling that blood. Yeah. So instead of taking his time, the guy was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I'm freaking not stopping. gets in his car, and drives into,

oh, it's right by Clearwater Junction where my wife's ranch is outside of Missoula. Why can't I think of the name of the town? But her staff. Sealy Lake? No, it's just east of there. Like Connor? No.

Oh, it's just east of there like connor no oh it's ridiculous but anyway it's the it's the it's the second closest bar to the ranch and her staff goes there it's there's a bar there called trixies not not green oh no um there's a bar there called trixies in this little town that's where all her staff goes they always have bands there and stuff like that. Yeah, and you go there. Yeah. I remember when we got married, Fitz and Pooter, your college roommates, went there, and they thought it was like Dusk Till Dawn, the bar in Dusk Till Dawn, that Quentin Tarantino movie. And so he pulls in there, and it's in the fall when nothing's going on

and sunset no twin creeks no ovando ovando yeah so he pulls in the driveway and his legs won't work at all and there's no one in the bar you can tell because there's no one in the bar, you can tell, because there's no cars in the parking lot, and he lays on the horn, and the barkeep comes out, and he has her get him a six-pack, and she goes and gets it. He pays for it, and she sits in the truck with him, just chit-chatting,

and they end up becoming a couple. Really? Yeah. That's a good story. in the truck with him just chit-chatting and they end up becoming a couple really yeah that's a good story because i think we're telling are they married oh yeah are they married now no they ended up splitting up i guess yeah i was hopeful when i asked i asked did they get married no i don't think so oh yeah um yeah why is it why is it that makes the story just a little well because we're romantic guys i guess people want a story like yeah i can think about it like you'd be like oh yeah you know

this old you know this guy and he goes like whatever he's in world war ii i'm just making this up right gets gravely injured and this nurse comes out and slowly nurses him back to health right yeah towards the end you're like oh so they yeah yeah but now they got 19 grandkids and four and you're like no no they dated and broke up it's just like yeah just doesn't have the punch yeah i love my wife i very very much um but even if i didn't i think i'd try to make it work just so i could have a romantic ending you know that we because you wouldn't want people to be like no it'd be for myself yeah just my own myth you know that we pulled it through and made it work i don't know do you remember when you drew of course you remember you drew a mountain speaking of long walks you drew a mountain goat tag many many years ago and we got up pretty early

at a trailhead yeah mike mullen interesting fellow this mike mullen because he came to my wedding that was the first time i'd seen him in 12 years just a couple years ago i'll tell god i stopped talking about marriage and being i'm sorry you got mentioned itis about your wife so it's good so well as much as i love her i'm not gonna i'm gonna try to abstain from mentioning the rest of this so conversation uh interesting fellas mike mullen and i just touch on this before i talk about the the mountain goat you you got everyone knows now because of like grizzly bear issues and grizzly bear recovery and whatnot in the greater yellowstone ecosystem the thing you always hear like it's like a i call it one of those like malcolm gladwellian phenomenons where

people love to act like oh it's really going on with grizzly bears you see who's malcolm oh he writes those books where he's like oh if you want to understand the whole world you just got to understand like dog leashes oh that'll explain it okay you know or like whatever i've never heard of i could picture that yeah it's like he traffics in these like the sum of knowledge through yeah like oh everything you ever want to know about x you just gotta hockey right out so he um um he had he had a he's very popular writer he's a very popular writer. He's a lot smarter than I am. But Mike Mullen.

Oh, sorry. People talk about grizzlies. The thing they like to bring up is that the grizzlies don't have access to cutthroat trout anymore. And that always struck me like, well, okay, you got a Yellowstone Lake. You used to have a population of uh anadromous cuts right that would come out of the lake and run the rivers in the spring and grizzlies would eat them and everybody's like oh that's why the grizzlies are you know whatever they never make it because lake trout got turned loose in yellowstone lake and the lake trout deaths you

know non-native so the bears are getting testy because they don't have no no anymore you don't know you don't know this whole narrative? Yeah, I'm just helping you. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. So lake trout get introduced in the Yellowstone Lake. They decimate the cutthroat population. And now people talk about this thing that, like, you know, this big driving factor in grizzly dynamics is the lack of cutthroat trout that are coming up out of that lake.

And it turns out they had done some analysis on this, and about 10% of the bears in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem might have utilized cutthroats. Oh, I didn't know that part. Because that would have struck me like- You hear the same thing about pine nuts from whitebark pine. Which is much more plausible. I could never get on board with the idea that losing an ephemeral,

like some small fish for a brief period of time being available in a stream, in a couple streams, I'm like, that can't be enough. You're intuitive that it wasn't. Now, pine nuts, I was like, if you'd have told me that every bear was going to, when the pine nut epidemic rolled through that region,

if you said all bears will die now, I'd have been like, yeah, that sounds like... Right, right. I agree with that. It's a much more widespread food source that's available for potentially a longer period of time. It's incredibly important. But it's not that important.

If you listen to the interview we did with Frank McMahon, he's like, they're too adaptable. They got prop. They have vulnerabilities, but that's not one of them. Anyhow, so there's a big thing to like go kill off all these lake trout. And they drop where there's no bag limit, no closed season. And I think you're not even supposed to. You're not even.

Back to Mike Mullen. Yeah, back to Mike Mullen. You're not even supposed to turn one of these lake trout loose if you catch them. And Mike Mullen gets wind of this big late trout epidemic. And what's it called when there's too much of something? You wouldn't call it the epidemic, would you? What would you call like a swarm of locusts? Yeah.

A plague. That doesn't work? Maybe. We'll just call it. Whether it works or not, we'll just all agree that it was a late trout epidemic. Mike Mullin gets wind of this and goes down. He's like, well, I'll do call it. Whether it works or not, we'll just all agree that it was a lake trout epidemic. Mike Mullen gets wind of this and goes down. He's like, well, I'll do my part. And starts going down there and catching a lot of lake trout.

But then realized he likes lake trout fishing so much, he starts to worry for the future of these lake trout, which everyone's trying to get rid of. And one day I'm talking to him, and he's talking about how he caught a couple and turned a bunch of lewis i said i thought you weren't supposed to turn those lewis and he told me well i'm just real afraid of damaging that fishery he came with us on this goat hunt and we walked who else is there colonel no matt moyson oh yeah that's right it wasn't yeah absolutely right and we got up pretty early and walked

nine miles and climbed a lot of footage and i remember getting i remember getting where i felt like by the time that goat was on the ground i was feeling like i was gonna vomit oh yeah yeah altitude sickness was setting in but the magical thing about it i don't want to give too much away but there's an area that has there's an area where matt still frequents a little bit that um if you go in this area in like september say there are no elk there no and we've made a mistake don't think this is an interesting story there are no elk there okay they just not. I've gone in there twice now. They're just not there. They're not there.

But then the first week of October, there they are. Mm-hmm. And we discovered that when we were up hunting that goat at 10,000 feet in the mountains. No, we discovered when and how. Right. No, no, no. That's when we discovered when and how. No, no, no. That's when we discovered that it even happened. Oh, is that right?

Absolutely. Because my girlfriend, after that hunt, all day we're up there at 10,000 feet in this craggy pass where no elk ever lived. They would just go through there. They wouldn't live up there. And it was snowing. And it was foggy. And it was October 7th. and we're gutting that goat.

It was October 7th. And we're gutting that goat and skinning it and you could hear, do it, Yanni, the way off bugle. I'll buy it. Sounded like the Rickola guy

a little bit. Hit another one. That wasn't your best. No? I don't your best. No? I don't like it. You're not doing this because you know how we do it. Hit one more. That's what you're talking about?

You're doing it better than I can. He can do a way off bugle. Yeah. Do it one more. Yeah, I need a good caller for anything. Oh, very good caller. Do one more. Yeah, way off bugle.

Yeah. yeah way off bugle yeah and through the fog and snow we see elk going over that pass and through that pass that was always remember that yeah and then the next weekend i hiked into where i thought they were going with my girlfriend and it was your girlfriend back then Elizabeth yeah and Elizabeth Roberts think about you once in a while love you baby that's not true but so we hiked in there, and you and I had already hunted in there because we went in there in June. And there was elk all over the place. We thought, oh, this is the place to go elk hunting. And that was when we first moved out here.

Because they calved in there. You're right now. You're right. You're right now. And then we went back in there. I remember we sat there one time and counted. We were back there in June. We were leaning against a tree that had a chickadee hole in it.

Saw a black bear. We were in there with our other girlfriends. Counted like 200. And Bridget. Counted 270 elk. You saw a mountain lion. Yeah, streaking down through there. You're right.

Then we went in there and tried to we were like oh this is the spot where all the elk live and we went back in there in september there was none because they just are there in the spring in the winter yeah that's right that's right and then we found so uh what i want to tell about that is that night we went up and didn't want a grizzly to get it, so we wrapped that goat up in a tree, up in a subalpine fir. Yeah, right by our camp. Yep, but it got real cold, and that goat hide froze up in the tree. Do you remember how long we were up there climbing up that tree trying to get that thing back down?

It was stuck to the tree. We had it all wrapped up in the limbs and it froze like a rock and we couldn't get it back down no i don't remember that i remember we were packing out we ran into four dudes up there that were fishing those lakes up there i don't remember that i was like really you guys came all the way up here in this freaking frigid snow and ass to fly fish yeah not even a goat tag in their pocket yeah another quick gold story that i'd like to share is this happened to a friend of ours come out of the air force named chuck roberts he shot a goat and it spilled off a cliff and um as they're wanting to do and and uh he starts trying to climb down there to try to get where he's going so he came up one drainage went to the ridge line shot the goat and

the goat fell off the other side starts climbing down trying to go down and find the guy again remember that dude the first time? I think it was the first time we ever went caribou hunting on the North Slope. That dude out of the Air Force. He used to paint. Oh, yeah. He used to paint. Chuck.

Yeah, he used to paint B2s, and he wouldn't answer any questions about B2s because it was all classified. Right. Remember, like, how do people fit in one of them B2s, Chuck? Don't know. That guy was an accomplished outdoorsman, no yeah he was he had all he like his gear was impeccable because he had worked he had worked pack and moose for a guy out on the peninsula i thought he was good not not an experience not an experience outdoors he had

spent some time good guy maybe not experienced but good yeah he might have just had been good from the outset he had he had gone out and packed meat for an outfitter out on the peninsula because i remember he had um he had what surprised me is i remember he had a a loophole spot and scope and some loophole knockers which is yeah in a car yeah um he you know i hunted him, just him and I for a couple days, and he was definitely the boss. Like, I deferred to him. Yeah.

Like, I was just doing what he told me. Yeah, I'm not trying to say anything bad about him. But anyhow, tries to go down to get the goat. And climbs, climbs, climbs, climbs. And it gets dark. And it was so steep where he was that he took some paracord and tied himself to some alders to sleep. Wow.

Yeah. And he ended up, wow. Gets daybreak. Continues down looking for his thing. Finds it and there's a bear had just eaten it. Oh, my God. Really? Punches tag.

And now he's in the other drainage so he's like out the hell and i could climb back up and go back the way i came and walks out that drainage and why i can't already said he winds up 13 miles from his truck or something man it's peeled way off went off some other direction my father-in-law um the father of a person i'm not going to mention the rest of this conversation. He shot a goat in the... Louie did? Mm-hmm. Really? This is like six, seven years ago now, in the Beartooths.

And freaking... Juanita's dad shot a goat? Yeah. It's in their house, mounted like the head. I mean, not that it's surprising. He's not a hunting type dude a he's like a team roper and oh yeah yeah he's more of a cowboy than a hunter type dude but he does a little of the hunting so he went like a got up put in for a tag draw with a friend of his they went back on horses

he shot this goat and like as soon as the thing hit the, there was a grizzly on it. But they ran it off and got it. They got it. Yeah. I had a goat fall 1,200 feet. Yeah. Yeah. I know you did. It?

It was like a, you told me that it was like a bag with bone fragments and meat inside it. Yeah, it's, the horns were gone. The head was split open um the brain was gone the lungs were tucked up in the between the shanks and the hide the hide was completely loose you just had to make your opening incisions and the hide fell free yeah yeah that's crazy and abs not a just you know what i took that hide so we went we dug through it and got a little game bag full of meat and whatnot out of there to you know this burger and i took that hide and assumed to be destroyed and i went we went down and i threw that hide in a creek and threw a big rock on it.

And we had found an old placer mine. Wait, why did you do that? Because it was like all it was was just gravel. Oh, you were trying to clean it up? I was trying to tell what was going on. I mean, it was just gravel. We drug it down. It was just like gray.

We couldn't find the goat because the goat had turned the color of the of the rock yeah and it landed down and like the scree slide tapered out and like became more granular you know yeah and at the bottom of the scree side was just like a pulverized shale and the goats high was just so impregnated with that stuff and we found an old abandoned plaster mine and took took a propane tank and had a weed burning torch on and we were aiming it at rocks we're aiming it at rocks we get the rocks real hot and bring them in our tent to warm up but anyways um it wasn't just like 80 degrees there oh yeah you get a high but it wouldn't last but uh so after a while i dragged that hide out

and the funny thing about it the hide was angelic and not a nick on it oh really well i've seen it yeah it looks great just but everything else is just trash didn't chuck end up getting married or getting a girl pregnant and marrying her but he didn't really like her very much that rings a bell. 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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Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. It was shortly after. Yeah. Yeah, it was like some kind of like, I don't know, a prognosticative thing that him hanging off a willow tree. Maybe he should have thought about the way his life was going. I don't know. But really liked the child a lot.

Yeah. Because he moved. He reached out to you not too long ago, didn't he? Not well. And then you put him in touch with me. Yeah, years now. But he moved he reached out to you not too long ago didn't he not well and then you put him in touch with me yeah years now but he moved to portland um so how many pounds will a llama carry 80 80 80 i put 80 on mine i think you should be way more conservative than that. No. The first elk I packed out with my llamas, with Timmy and Haggy, they carried 80 pounds apiece. And they were carrying it down.

And something was like, it was so freaking steep that you were more sliding down it than walking down it. I remember you saying that, well, that mountain that you killed your first bull with with a bow, I killed my first bull with a bow freaking 50 yards from that same spot. Remember that mountain? Yeah. I remember we made the...

That's the sound of Timmy and Haggy's hooves, man. Freaking... I remember that we made the mistake on the next hill over of putting boned out meat in game bags and thinking we'd roll them down the hill. Yeah. And one of them burst

and we spent a long time looking for scraps of meat up and down that hill. The thing you got to realize about a llama, a pack llama, is that you told me once that a llama will go pretty much anywhere you can go where you don't have to use your hands and i think what you have to realize about their psyche is that it it defies like um human constructs it's not their psyche is just so different than a human being's that it takes a long time to be able to identify with them.

We're talking about an animal that is not snuggly, doesn't want to be touched, hates people. And I don't give a shit what anybody says. Maybe not hates. I feel like if I, you know what I'd like to do sometime is have a, they make heart monitors that you can hook up to cattle for research purposes i know this because of where i work as a cattle research place i think that if you hooked up a heart

monitor to my one of my llamas and i go off hunting in the morning and you graph it that they're that i could be wrong i could so easily wrong. But I think that their heart rate goes up a little tiny smidge, maybe one, two beats per minute. And then in the evening when I come back to camp, it goes back down. Yeah. I'll buy that. I think there's more to it. These are animals that when I try to catch them,

they try to run away from me and I have to corner them in the pasture. But there's probably a big gray area between being around you and being touched by and being like tied up to a rope yeah yeah i think it's like how many dogs want to be out and around but that doesn't mean you want they want you to grab them and shove in the box right right right they don't yeah um they know it's work time but But I think that they, and another component is the same animal that wants to run away when I'm trying to catch it, doesn't want to be pet.

Man, there's pride and workmanship with those things. I swear to God. You're getting way too complex. You get this game face, this almost imperceptible game face when you put weight on their back and really oh i feel like you're misreading i probably am now there's a thing that you brought up about llamas a long time ago we used to go do a little turkey hunting with the llamas more for like no it was nice because you could bring some nicer camp stuff yeah but

a big motivation for it was you got to exercise them that's bs i don't believe that anymore no like i you damn sure used to believe i sure did but now i just say this i just say what it really is i like hanging out with my llamas a little bit so you don't think that a llama needs to get be exercised these four i have right now all they do well either they're at peace most 90 of the time they're at peace but i'd say 10 of the day they're wrestling and that wrestling is way more energy expending than packing stuff i mean they go at it they're trying to bite each other's nuts off and rolling on the ground.

Yeah, yeah. Twisting their necks around each other. Putting one neck, one puts its neck underneath another one and lifts it off the ground. They're incredibly strong. I'd like to see that. They're doing a lot more

than if you just took them out for a hike. Oh, yeah. But the thing I was going to say is on these little jaunts we would do for turkeys with the llamas carrying pretty nice candy. You could bring like beer and we'd bring fresh food instead of backpack food. I remember you saying that you felt that they kind of liked just being out walking. I think they do and the thing that you brought up is that that that you can one way to read a llama and don't it's really you probably have many cues you're looking at but for me i'm

looking at its ears right right when he's got his ears cocked back he might be fixing to spit on you which is awful they spit like a they spit their stomach contents up at you. It smells. It's horrible. I only had it happen one time where I really caught one flat-ass square in the face. That's bad luck. They're spitting at each other all day long, right? They spit at each other all the time. Two day holds each other down.

But these four guys, these four I have now, it's like all they do is fight. Like if I stop on the trail, they start fighting. Yeah. I only spent, what, it was four or five days. If you're hiking, they're fine. But you stop and give them two minutes and they're like, oh, I guess I'll start a fight. But that's what I was going to say.

Like walking on the trail with them, they get their ears forward. And they're like, they're not like moving. Like a lot of times the line was moving because you're behind it right and he's like so he moves you know but they kind of like get going down the trail and he really looks like a dude walking down the trail who's real intent on going like yeah picture you're walking down a long trail it's all shitty and you're just in thick timber and then you get out like some big metal you know along a stream right and there's trails and you can find look around you're just like that's what the llama's seen oh yeah he's like a dude who's like oh god there's gotta be something yeah yeah i want to see something

yeah and these four i like unlike my first string um who like sometimes sometimes weren't real anxious to go these four i got now god there's i don't even know they're back there they're just always loose rain right there with me they just want to freaking make tracks what's a llama what's a good race ready llama cost because you had some shitty llamas and then you got good llamas well i don't don't know. Haggie was probably my favorite. She was 50 bucks from that rescue center. So Haggie proved to be a good llama. She was fabulous.

She was as good as the high test llamas that you have now. Yeah, my least good llama. Haggie was every bit as good as the ones I have now. But you pay considerably more now. Well, it depends on which one we're talking about. I got one of them out there. I paid an eye-popping $2,500 for. Yeah, I remember that.

And he's probably the worst one. He's the cutest one. So I really adore him. He's super cute, and he's got a lot of character. But in terms of a pack llama, he's the cutest one and i so i really i adore him he's super cute and he's got a lot of character but in terms of a pack llama he's good but he's not any better than the other ones one of them i got for free one of them i got because i lent my llamas to a guy for the summer so and that llama escaped for a packing business and lives up in the the Tetons now. No, no. That was a different company. Oh.

That was Haggy that still lived at large in the Tetons. But that's given her the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. Haggy, who's a pile of bones up in the Tetons. So one llama I paid $2 i paid 25 bucks for one people just gave to me these people lived up by seattle just gave her kim to me jay they call it they named him journey which i think that's dorky so i call him jay um for free they said quote unquote he They said, quote, unquote, he needed a job. And it's funny.

I went over to get him. They were, he lived up by Seattle. You drove over there to get a llama? No. Oh. I did. I drove to, I drove. They were like, well, we're going to go to Coeur d'Alene with our llamas.

Ah. This was summer 2016 and um so i was like oh bring jay and i'll get him there from you then because that's way closer 12 hour drive still and what i did is i didn't want to take my horse trailer all the way over there so i took the back seat out of my pickup truck and drove over there. And the reason they were there is they were carting their llamas. It's all these retired couples. What's carting a llama mean? Like they got little llama chariots and they drive them around this part,

which I got to do and was a freaking blast. And when I'm a retired person that's going to be my stick totally like ben-hur yeah oh yeah yeah is shifty girl oh this one woman had a little art you're not allowed to have dogs off leash in this park it's like a huge park with trails all over for horse riding and there's like llama signs like this is a llama trail this is a horse trail which i couldn't believe that she has this little arm coming off her cart with a clip off of it and that was for her dog like a sidecar except the dog had to run you know it's like uh but um so that's where i got jay for

free one of my llamas i got for free because the people- Because he sucked at carding. No, they never tried him carding. He just wasn't being used for anything. Well, you met that guy that was his owner. Remember, I had you give him some seafood for him. Oh, that guy? Yeah.

Yeah. So- Oh, yeah, nice guy. Yeah. Yeah. So. Oh, yeah. Nice guy. Yeah. Super nice guy. Arnie, $2,500. No wonder I liked Arnie.

Tad. Jay, a sack of seafood. Tad, I would have bought for $1,000, but people bought, or $1,500, but people bought him for me because they lost haggie um jay was free and louis i got for free because i lent my other llama my llamas to a guy for the summer did you name that llama after your father-in-law no you he came pre-named i guess he named that for louis and have you ever named a llama it'd be a good name it's a it's like he is if i had to pick a llama that is like my father-in-law i would pick him though is that right he's super you've never gotten my father's full-blood filipino and so he's short but he's like very he's in his mid-70s

but he's very athletic and tough. And this is like a short squat little llama. Louie's not squat, but this llama's short. When he says he looks like a hippopotamus, doggone it, I didn't mention my wife again. But he's super tough. He does remind me of Louie. Yeah, he's cool.

Louie the llama or Louie the man? I haven't met Louie the man, but Louie the Llama is my favorite. And then I think that Arnie was my second favorite. Now, you used to have a llama that had gotten hung up in a fence. Majel. And got his jaw jacked out of alignment. Awesome, awesome llama.

So there are pictures. If you want to see pictures of mass llamas all you got to do is go by the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game volume one and you'll see the that's our guidebook you'll see that was kind of a sly little play yeah yeah me uh magel i when i got all these boys and i now I got four boys, it would have been a... Because they don't know that they're fixed. Oh, man. They would...

They're always wrestling and fighting now. If you put a girl out there, it would be game on. They don't know they're fixed. So it doesn't take away urge. No, no. I didn't know that. Arnie, for a while I had Arnie and two girls. Oh, man, he just freaking ride him constantly.

So in the old days when they would make eunuchs, they would take humans and make eunuchs to guard harems. The eunuch would feel all those urges. Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe something's different with the camelid physiology. I don't know. I'm just saying. All I know is Arnie is a freaking stud without balls.

Yeah. So now when you're out hunting and you kill it when you're by yourself and you kill a bull, like when you're walking into the mountains, you're not carrying shit just your bow and arrow i well i got my camp but why why not have the llamas carry they're not carrying anything oh me personally yeah yeah like you walk i carry a backpack and with a few like because if you take a bunch of shit out of one pan you're then you got to balance them out and all that so anything i need for the day i have it on my back yeah and when you kill an elk if you got four llamas

you can move one elk by yourself with how many llamas and not have to carry anything well except you can't i've done it with two are you like i say to me and haggie they packed out my first archery bull but it felt a little bit um irresponsible too much weight for but three no problem now i got four and that feels rock solid so if one of them died would you replace it or would you be like sweet three is good no well i think i i think it's always i think i would always have four it's just no harder to have four, and that way if one of them gets sick or, you know, just a little bit of it,

it's just not any more hassle to have a fourth one. I feel like one time we took those llamas and carried out three deer on them. In down Custer Forest or something? forest yeah we're going somewhere i remember you shot a whitetail doe on the way in yep yep then we killed a buck shot some other deer put them on there got dark had an argument about how to get out of there swung through and picked up that doe i think we had three deer on here yeah and our backs. Now, transporting the llamas, you used to carry your llamas around in a van,

a 12-passenger van. All those retired people, when they were doing that llama carting last summer, all of them had vans to carry them. Llama vans. Llama vans. And my van tricked out ones. Like, my... But I want... want okay go ahead but i'm live

yeah we'll get back i i might cover this in the course of this so yeah i want to cover how piss flows through a llama van oh we're not gonna get into that because what i was gonna tell you is yeah my my van was full of piss and shit but um but yeah they're basically just like what you'd call like an Econo line, right? His was a Dodge, but yeah. Yeah, like a 15 passenger van, windows. You can get a stubby Econo line. I got so much attention on the expressway in that thing.

At gas stations. Dude, if you went to get gas, you had to plan on having a marathon bullshit session with at least four or five guys. Just getting gas and getting going um yeah and then like on the interstate you know you'd see somebody coming up to like pass you and then you'd lose you'd lose i'd lose them in my blind spot for like a minute and it's because they're like just freaking gawking at the llamas. But these people, these retired couples, they had nice vans, carpeted. And these llamas, because they spent so much time with them, it was like compared to my llamas, these llamas were like just ridiculously tame.

But they must have gasketed the... They take their llamas out every two hours at rest stops and let them go. But did they gasket the area? Because, you know, picture a pickup truck bed with no liner. It's not corrugated, but it's like a corrugated... There's troughs. Right. Well, to put it in rifle terminology there's lands and grooves right and i remember

you tech you tech screwed a piece of angle iron across there but it didn't that wasn't that wasn't to keep urine out of the front of the van oh that was just that was because i had an expanded metal grate between me behind the seat to keep them llamas from slamming into the freaking, I don't know, the front of the van if I hit the brakes real quick. Yeah, so if you do hit the brakes. What I had was laying, I had along that piece of angle iron, I had some beach towels. That's right. Yeah yeah to try to to keep so if you're if urine started riding up that way yeah you'd slam the brakes and the urine would kind of come up and get up

and then you'd take off and the urine would flow back away from you yeah the thing i like about this is i feel like your first date i know i'm bringing her up this time your first date with your wife did you show up with that van full of llamas she met me at a motel and i had the van there and i had the llamas in a corral outside the motel and your first date you guys were introduced by friends and your first date she got into that van full of those llamas you guys went up and killed a bull no second date we killed a bull the first date we struck out that's pretty interesting yeah but she grew up around livestock horses high test horses she loves the llamas um i'm often like why don't we because i'd

like to do it like go on horses once just see what that's all about like and i was like why don't we take some of the horses and go and she she can't even conceive of that she's like think of those horses that way she no because they use them for day riding it's she's like why in the world would we do that when we can take the llamas but she likes likes llamas more than horses. Oh, they're too much work. And she's right. You know, a horse, you got to take it to water twice a day. Llamas don't give a shit, man. I've had my llamas out for eight days at a time,

and I always lead them to water once a day, you know? But I've had them out for eight-day trips where they didn't drink a drop. These llamas, they're happy. If you park them next to like a standard dead juniper, they're like, that's cool, bro.

I'll eat this. Or a dead tree, like I'll just eat these twigs. That's cool. Have you ever had like a train wreck? You know how people talk about like, and I've seen it with pack strings, right? I never did too much of the packing, but the wrangler would be packing up gear or clients

at the base camp, and we'd be hunting the metal. You'd see him ride through. Then an hour later, all of a sudden, here comes Zippy the mule with the lead rope dangling in the wind, stuff just coming out of panniers you know and then like an hour later here come the wrangler and we'd help him pick up the trail right of stuff like are llamas capable of that kind of mayhem yeah no no the most drama i've had is haggie used to when she would get loose she thought it was funny to run back to the car. And if

you could be way back in there three miles and you could hike in there the whole way freaking off trail. One time I was in a boat I put him in a boat Timmy and Haggie in a boat

and we drove five freaking miles and packed in three miles and she got loose and she ran back to the boat. I remember losing that damn llama and finding it at the car.

Yeah, yeah. Thinking there's no way it found that car. Yeah, yeah. But no, nothing like that. I saw it. We saw it. Oh, yeah. Was it?

We had these guys, these horse guys coming through, and we were backpack hunting, and we got uphill the trail, like you're supposed to do, and got clear. And their horses got even with us. And they were elk hunting. The last one was a mule,

the one that freaking freaked. I mean, rolling down the hill, shit flying everywhere. Wooden panniers banging off the trees, splintering. Yeah, wooden, old school wooden panniers just bursting. And I remember, do you remember what that guy yelled up the hill? What the fuck you guys got on?

Yep. Backpacks. Yeah. We said elk. Some of your horse wouldn't know what it smelled like. I think we actually said that. Yeah, it's funny how a that on a man will freak a horse out oh i've heard that many times now i feel bad i don't mean to be laughing at the brother's

misery but his response of what we got on is though there was like some like deeper explanation yeah i think he was an outfitter and he was trying to be like to his clients like my they these guys are messing up it's not my stock that's messing up. Our brother, our older half-brother, who was an elk guide but did a lot of other kinds of auxiliary hunts, he was saying that when they would kill a lion, he had a houndsman that he worked with, and when they would kill a lion, those horses would not want to pack that lion.

Obviously. They don't want a lion on their back. He guided lion hunters. Yeah. I remember him telling me that they would cut a track. Now I know guys do this. Him saying, oh, yeah, we won't call the client until we cut a track. I remember him telling me that he had a client in Dallas.

Called that guy. Says, we cut a track. The guy flew up. But he was saying he'd go up to the line or whatever and just get his hands drenched in blood and then go up and rub that on the horse's face because then he can't tell where the smell's coming from. Then once he calms down, you can put the thing on his back because he just can't tell what he's trying trying to get away from anymore you ever had a llama

they didn't want to pack meat llamas don't care about that at all they'd pack a lot they would yeah you could put satan himself on a llama's back he would not care man they don't care about that all right man we've only got a third the way. We've talked a lot about llamas. No, I know, but not all of it. I don't usually like to mix business and pleasure, but I'm here with my older two youngsters, and I need to go get them.

Oh, I thought you were saying we hadn't talked about llamas, though. No, no, no. I want to talk about llamas a lot more. I would continue to talk way more about llamas, but my my my boy and my girl are with one of my closest friends. Yeah, and they're here to fish catfish with their

Uncle Matt and I got to go fetch them. You guys are definitely going to be fishing catfish by the looks of the Tong River. Dude, that river is swolling. It's good, though. It's good. Yeah. For catfish and for, I think we're going to catch some sturgeon.

I'm optimistic, man. Sturgeon? Yeah. High water, good sturgeon fishing. Shovelnose. Yep. Not pallets. Yanni, concluding thoughts?

That was it. It's podcast interruptus. Yanni, concluding thoughts? That was it. It's podcast interruptus. That was your concluding thought. Yeah. Yanni was, you know, Yanni's Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation. He was scouting squirrel spots today. Yeah, man. Yeah.

And how far is that? That's probably 30... No, an hour from here. Closer. Oh, not even. If it was Foresight, it was 45 minutes. No, I'm farther. Oh, don't be telling. No, it wasn't that place. Oh, why are we

naming towns? I don't know. That's stupid. Yeah, we're going to have to bleep that out. Yeah. But anyways, yeah, I found squirrel sign and turkey sign. Good. Matt, concluding thoughts? I know we didn't cover everything. No, this was fun.

I thought that we would – I was afraid that we wouldn't have anything to talk about. No, no, no, no. That don't happen. Something about putting on a headset and having it be all official like other people might listen to it makes it makes you a little chattier yeah it does and then the the that has the quality of pardon me i'll be here to say that it does not make you guys any chattier oh really we're like this normally, you think? Pretty much, yeah. Pretty chatty gentleman.

You got any concluding thoughts? That was it. Oh, that was a concluding thought. My concluding thought is... I think it's pretty polite of you to ask if we had concluding thoughts. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of times something you want to say

that you just can't quite wedge it in there. And you do it. But my concluding thought... Concluding thought. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of times something you want to say that you just can't quite wedge it in there. Right. And you do it. But my concluding thought. I had an interjection I wanted to drop in earlier, but I didn't quite get a chance to say it when we were talking about. By all means, interject. How you guys thought you guys were going so far when you're going up to that guy's cabin. That was an hour and a way.

Up north? So last weekend, we're telling our kids we're going camping to Lewistown. Or Lewiston. I don't know how you pronounce it. Lewistown. Why are you dropping like every single freaking spot town? Oh, yeah. What's the deal with this? Lewistown, New Hampshire, right?

No, listen. You can go camp a gazillion places. Lewiston, Idaho. Okay. But you know what I'm saying? You can go camp a million places in this state. They all have names. So we're just going camping.

Everybody can go camping in Lewiston, okay? But we're telling our kids we're going camping in Lewiston, and my youngest says, is that North America? Yes, it is. Montana, North America I don't think I have I mean I got like it doesn't count I have too many concluding thoughts because I feel like we didn't get everything

but I would like to say that it's been really fun to it's been fun to watch all the uh the all this llama stuff take place over the years yeah and being involved it started out as like a they started out as instruments and then they became a like a just part of the family yeah and you've just learned so much yeah Yeah, yeah. I feel like now... Still learning. Yeah, but I feel like now,

you know, I feel like now you've gotten to a point where you're almost like probably finding out things about them that people don't know or that Americans don't know. Right. I feel like I've got some insights on there

that I couldn't have got from my Lama mentors. Yeah, and that's the interesting thing. In the field of when discussing just the idea of expertise, it's interesting to see someone cross the threshold where you spend a long time accumulating what's known right and then you start to delve into yeah and then you cross this thing and you and you start being able to say like what you found yeah eventually because like a interaction between the way your brain works and i guess in this case the animal you're dealing with you know which is

unique to you you know it's not something that can be taught anymore at that point exactly um in talking to kevin murphy uh i know it's like i know that he has found out things like he knows things about squirrels and squirrel dogs that are not known by other individuals right and i've become friendly with a guy named tommy eidson in in seattle we started out as email and text buddies but we met recently and like his he likes to fish crappies even though he's from the pacific northwest born and raised likes to fish crappies and um talking to him about crappies you're like he's crossed that threshold he knows stuff about crappies, you're like, he's crossed that threshold. He knows stuff about crappies that other guys

don't know. He's found out stuff. And then he can be the kind of jackass who thinks he knows stuff that other people don't know, but he don't, which is insufferable. Yeah. I don't think there's any motivation like that with me and my llamas. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody. I don't think there's any motivation for me like that

with me and my llamas. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody. I'm never even around other llama people. I just want my llamas to be happy and well cared for. That's all I care about. But you use the term the llama community.

Yeah. And you talked about being ostracized. Not that you were but that it would be possible We too used to talk about because I've had a few that I had to get rid of because they didn't work out as pack llamas. And I had a lot of anxiety that they'd be hard to get rid of.

That turned out to not be true. You'd be ostracized by the llama community. But then I was like, man, I'm going to have to butcher this thing and put it in my freezer, which would be heresy in the llama community. To eat one. Did I tell you that I ate llama? Yes, you did. Stringy, as I recall. the llama community to eat one yeah did i tell you that i ate llama yes you did yeah stringy as i it was just like in a it was in a it was in an andean it was outside of salta argentina

and it was in like an andean version of uh i'm spacing name what's that dish uh you know people associate with Mexican food? It comes wrapped in the corn husk. Oh, tamale. Tamale, yeah. It was in like a- Which are good, man. Yeah, very good. It was in a sort of Andean, a tamale with kind of an Andean spin, I guess.

And there was llama meat in there. And I mean, it could have been a person's meat in there. You wouldn't have known it. I mean, just- Right. Other than being stringy and light. There's a- Not offensive. person's meat in there. You wouldn't have known it. Other than it being stringy and light. Not offensive. There's a regional chain in town.

There's a restaurant that's part of a regional chain in town in Miles City here called the Ribbon Chop House. And once in a while, they'll have something out of the ordinary. I had alligator there a few years ago. But I know for a while they had llama on the menu for a couple weeks yeah i ate some horse once i'd like to try that everybody says that's delicious all right yanni any last little did you pick up any last little concluders no no matt you good i'm good thanks for joining us man it's been a great discussion

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