The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 093: Big Giant Bucks

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

Somewhere in Colorado- Steven Rinella talks with Brody Henderson and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: Colorado: the land of hodge-podgey land ownership issues, lots of hunters, and big giant bucks; Frustration Tit; blaze orange cowboy hats; wildlife moments; old-school hippies; the danger of horses; gettin' up into the zone; spookin' timber bucks; buck fever'in a shot; Steve becomes a Colorado man; Pepsi challenging big meat bucks; flaggin' wild game; and more.Be sure to check out 12 Days of Gifts brought to you by MeatEater and Weston Brands. Steven, Janis, and the MeatEaters-At-Large came together to create 12 how-to videos that cover some of our favorite wild game preparations. This is our way of giving back to our amazing community. Head on over to the MeatEater website throughout the month of December for more exciting wild game recipes and how-to videos.  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, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Dude, I still, like, I was just telling Yanni about this.

Like, Colorado's a weird, like, from a hunting perspective, is a weird like from a hunting perspective is a weird state how so i'll tell you why okay one it's just a weird place right because here well i'll get to the running of some old hippies out in the woods later so there's like that kind of stuff but the main the domain and I'll talk about that part of it. The main thing that's weird to me is that you could have such like hodgepodge land ownership issues where it's just like such a weird mixture

of little teeny bits of public and teeny bits of private and it's real messy and public inside private yeah it's messy and that there are so many people hunting well and so many people just out recreating out in the woods but then which is not no that's not weird at all like that's just like normal right that's you'd find that anywhere like confused land ownership and shit loads of people is like readily available in the united states of america but you could have that but also just have huge

giant freaking bucks running around everywhere yeah it's i mean like how because it's, I mean. Like how? Because it's just good habitat everywhere you look. I mean, from, you know, the entire western two-thirds of the state is just mule deer habitat. Yeah, and I was going to say, too, you know, our buddy Jay's been checking out that new ranch down in, like, south central. And it's a big ranch. And he feels like there might be like it's like a 40,000 acre ranch and he feels like there might be 50 mule deer on the whole place poor habitat so not quite the whole state but like central western northwestern northern you know a lot of mule deer habitat you keep saying as as we drive around, you're just like, I can't believe it. Every direction you look, you feel like there's just a great patch of woods that would hide mule deer.

Yeah. When you get up on a high spot, you look anywhere. It's just like all mule deer. It's like all mule deer country. Yeah. Full of dudes looking for deer. I'll tell you what. That's not true.

But they can't. They don't get them all. There's still giant the fact that i spent i don't know 15 years trying to find a big buck in montana maybe not 15 a ton of years trying to find like a just like a buck where you look and go like holy shit that's a big mule deer you don't got to think about it it's hard montana. Yeah. Then, somehow like in Idaho and Colorado, you see them every day. But we talked about this. Montana runs that late season, and they're easy to kill on November 20th. You know?

Yeah. November 25th, whatever it might be. So, yeah. I would say when it comes to growing big, giant bucks if that's your goal um and i don't know and i'm not saying it should be because i like like the montana i like the montana system you get a general tag so you just go down to the gas station and buy your hunting license if you live there or online if you don't and you got what five six weeks to hunt including plus five or six weeks to arch archery if you if you want it you know it's like have at it son go hunting including the rut yep so

and i'm sure there's like genetic factors and habitat factors and severe winters and all that kind of stuff is playing into it too but yeah you can't be letting every time dick and harry go winding around out in the woods during the mule deer rut and think that you're going to have bucks growing to be old big old huge bucks and i don't really care because you know in that they they manage for opportunity yeah they manage for opportunity colorado Colorado isn't short on opportunity, but you get a week to hunt. Not six weeks. You get a week. And you got to pick your season.

And whatever they're doing, it's just... Man. Remember, too, I think... Picking big old bucks. I'm on a streak. I'm just glad you've... Most of these units around here only have a couple hundred of these buck tags.

Some units weigh less. I think they should make a rule that you need to wear a certain kind of hat, a certain kind of orange hat, or a certain kind of flag on your hat if you're hunting elk, and a certain kind of flag on your hat if you're hunting mule deer. Because if I'm hunting mule deer in my head, everybody's hunting mule deer. So anytime I see orange, which there is plenty to look at, like orange, blaze orange, off the, you know, on the other side of the valley or canyon from you,

I look and I'm like, that's some, he's hunting mule deer. But I'm like, oh, he's probably hunting elk. And if you had a little flag system, then you'd know who you hated and who you didn't really hate. Who you could go talk to and say hey i noticed you're all cunt you see any big bucks around yeah and i could be like just so happens i was looking at a couple bulls that once i started doing a little map reading i realized those bulls are on public land and i'll tell you about it if you tell me about the bucks you've seen but if a guy's on mueller i'm not gonna go talk to him because I'm going to lie to him. He's going to lie to me and no one's going to get anything out of that. He'll be like, see any

bucks? Uh-uh. You? Nope. Damn, this unit sucks. It's a little one, two miles off. Yeah, so I went back toward the truck. So, all right, we got to back up now. We got to get into Yanni's, how he's dying. We got to get into that, huh? You don't want to cover that? No, we can. I'm comfortable covering it. Yeah. You should introduce your guests. Yeah.

So, Yanni. Yanni, the laughing eagle. Putellus. And Brody Henderson. Say something for yourself, Brody. I love big bucks. Yep, and you cannot lie. Brody Henderson, who lives not terribly too far from here.

That's vague. Yeah. Lives not terribly too far from here. We're nowhere near the I-70 corridor this year. No, and Brody lives in the land of big, giant bucks. But we're not even near there. No. Just to make sure you understand that we're not at Brody's.

We're sitting in a little log cabin that is not owned by Brody. And if Brody lived by here, we'd be sitting in his house. That's right. So think about that before you try to get all sneaky, figuring out what's going on. But we come down here. I have a Mule deer tag. Me and Yanni are down here taking care of various pieces of business.

Got a few days. We had how many days to hunt? Three? Four? Four. It was supposed to be four. You missed one. Missed one. If Y even want to talk about how that happened you can go ahead but i'm not even gonna get into that a paperwork problem forgot some paperwork at home important pieces

of paperwork having to do with whether or not you're allowed to go hunting or not um so lost So we lost a little time there. And then we get into our zone and go out on an evening hunt. And we have a friend who's been hunting this area for a long time. And this friend's got a spot he hunts. He hunts a ranch, primarily, in some public land that comes up against his ranch but he's hunting there and we're not wanting to crowd him and he knows the area pretty well and so he throws us a couple tips about what we ought to be doing and as a nice gesture too he actually hikes back into a little glass and tit he likes and does a prelim check before we show up and he goes up there and and uh finds i think he found 15 does from this glass and tip this guy's strategy and

he's he's a he's a very successful uh big giant buck hunter this guy's strategy is he well brody can you explain the first second third fourth and all that yeah so colorado has four different rifle seasons first rifle season usually runs somewhere like october 10th through the 15th that's elk only then it's five days long five days then there's second season which starts a week after the end of first rifle. Days. No, that one's only a couple days. Yeah, it ends on a Wednesday and the next one picks up on Saturday.

So that one runs nine days. Then there's a week gap between second and third. And third usually runs somewhere around the first nine days of November-ish, somewhere right in there. Then fourth season picks up a couple days after third rifle ends and that's a five-day season but there's all like to help people understand that because if there might be thinking like oh so you can only hunt one week talk about all the tags you have and what they're all good for

um i had a third season buck tag so i just I killed the buck a few days ago. Nice buck too. Yep, pretty good one. And then I have a fourth season bull tag, which starts next week. And then I have a late season cow tag, which that runs for a month, like December 15th to January 15th.

And then you're walking around with a black bear tag that's good for like a whole long time. Right. They have this like, they just changed this a couple years ago. You can buy an over-the-counter with caps, which means there's X number of over-the-counter bear tags available. And say you have a buck tag for third rifle season, and you buy one of those over-the-counter bear tags,

that bear tag is actually good for all four rifle seasons in the unit you have a deer or elk tag for huh and then there's a separate like rifle bear season basically the whole month of of uh september which is a different tag and then do you uh did you do your mountain lion certification so you're a certified mountain hunter i did i'm gonna pack a mountain lion certification? So you're a certified mountain lion hunter? I did. I'm going to pack a mountain lion tag around during that late season cow tag hunt. Who knows? Maybe I'll see one.

So the third season, if we're just focusing on mule deer here. Well, elk. Elk are rutting during first and second. First. Like the tail end of the rut would be during first rifle okay um mule deer third rifle mule deer is like what i would call like pre-rut yes because like real close to the actual rut and fourth which there aren't that many like no fourth season mule deer tags are hard to come by yes because it's right yep third and they don't issue very many they're very tight with those yeah it might be like instead of being 200 it might be like what 10 to 25 yeah yeah that's what i'm gonna set my sights for is saving up enough points to get a fourth season that would be like hunting in montana for big bucks on

november 20th yes you know um so anyhow this guy that that gives us some intel some hunting info he is uh he really likes to hunt the third season and the third season depending on weather can be like real ruddy his hunting strategy his the way he finds mule deer is he hunts he says i hunt does now by that he doesn't mean that he's shooting at does by that he means that he is locates every little group of does he can find and sometimes big groups of does sometimes big groups of does and wakes up every morning and goes around and checks all those groups of does. Because the bucks are like, the does are going to be there in their little configurations, kind of like consistently. But the bucks are like, the hand, the deck of cards gets shuffled

every night. So he checks those does waiting to see who's going to show up, knowing that these big groups of does, even if they got a little buck with them, he knows that a big buck is going to find those does. So he finds bucks by watching does. He tells us about a little glass and tit that had some does by it, some on public, some on public some on private our first night we go in there right away find the five five does on private no they're on five does on public they're like 150 yards from us but the stuff around us is like real thick giant sage so it's you could have 300 deer walking around there but you're not

gonna see unless they happen to step in these little teeny openings but we got some where we know there's some you meant to say giant uh pinyon pine juniper right no that sage in the bottom real tall old sage down the bottom that sage six feet high yeah you're right so but here there's little little grass patches in the sage and you have to catch a deer out in one of those then you just realize man there's a million places you could put more deer and i wouldn't know they were there so when i say there's five you don't know really what's going on there's five that happen to be mingling around in a grass patch in the middle of all this sage which hides deer real good but what we're seeing is lots of deer lots

of elk on the private and where you're at it's like if you imagine if you could just shoot like imagine you could shoot a laser at any land feature around you i would say that 50 of those laser shots are going to hit private land if you had a laser pointer right and you're just like i don't know there there's a 50 chance that there is going to be private and a 50 chance there's going to be public you agree agree and there's a lot of mapping technology out there where you can kind of look at overlays to see what's what and you realize that from the spot you're looking at we're looking at deer we're glassing up a bunch of deer and some elk that are on private land and we're glassing up deer that are on public, but you would not be able to walk from your public patch to that public patch

because between there is a big barrier of private land. Yeah, you couldn't do it in a straight line. You'd have to make a J starting at the point of the J and go backwards first, swing around some private, and then go. You couldn't do it in that hunt. Probably not. Like in an evening hunt. Yeah, but you couldn't.

No, evening hunt, definitely not. In an evening hunt, if all of a sudden it starts to feel kind of like evening-like, which I always know the minute it happens, just like internally. The light changes. It just became evening, I just know. All of a sudden, there's deer. You could feasibly beeline it to them. But you have to go around, get on the road, go out to a highway, and hike in two miles to get deer right in front of you.

But if you saw a monster, you could come up with some kind of plan to get there later. Well, that was our plan. Yeah. That we would glass up a biggin' and then the next day go in there and put a sneak out. Yep.

But what happened was, we glassed up a biggin' that was just 100% absolutely not on public land and wasn't likely to become on public land. He's probably a mile away, right? Yeah, not for a while. What do you mean not for a while? Him coming onto public land.

He's probably going to take some sort of change in the weather. Sure. I mean, what I'm saying is I wasn't going to go and make that my morning plan. No. Yeah, you got a short amount of time. Because I would need to... I'm trying to explain this tit that we're on and how this tit that we're on works. Is that the chances of you actually taking a poke from the tit are slim yeah there is a small

piece of public that i mean we're almost perched on the edge of the public looking at a lot of private oh and at dusk that's right and at dus we glassed up another big one who was very easily walk-to-able. But by looking at my GPS, we had 460 yards of public in front of us. And that buck was at 640. Yep. And not looking in our direction, but watching those the other direction. And that buck would have been nearly impossible to go after yeah there's no way you could have gotten up on a little perch to try

to shoot down in there adam he'd have been very difficult to chase after am i setting the stage here you are i think you described the situation well and yeah if you sat there for seven days on that little eventually and you were like i'm just gonna shoot i just want a meat buck i'm here for a meat buck i'm gonna send this tit you would probably every couple days get a meat buck yeah because those does were right there hanging out yeah it would be like it would happen spend it was frustrating with me for me when i showed up because we went back into that spot i went in with you guys the next morning was we were looking at shit loads of deer but most of them you're like well i can't hunt those deer yeah drives me crazy

and looking at deer's fun but and then you you glass up another biggin yeah there was indisputably on private yeah fixing the leave private. But we're looking at the public land deer that you would have to go after another day. We were looking at over a dozen. Oh, yeah. With bucks. Yep. With meat bucks. Yep.

But here, too, my freezer is jam packed i'm like you know i like to hunt meat bucks but i was not and i was these couple these last few days i have not been meat buck hunting i'm like you've been okay going home without one yeah i'm looking at i'm looking for that one in a hundred yeah you know like buck where you're like oh my gosh look at that buck like that's the buck that you gotta you need to be a to have a special set of circumstances allow you. That's like the buck you strive to learn how to find. The next morning, we go back to the same tip,

and the same thing happens. Oh, another thing that was interesting is at one point, I see a deer. If you're glassing mule deer and observing them, you can tell a lot about what is around those deer by reading their body language. And a lot of times you'll find bucks by watching does because does are nervous around bucks during the rut. So a lot of times you'll see all the does like just

being very fixed staring into some little hellhole brush patch or something and they don't like it and they're always looking in there and after a while you might start staring in there with a spot scope and find what it is they're annoyed by and it's a buck you find a lot of bucks like that because the does will be up feeding around they're kind of like more a little more freewheeling about how they expose themselves and how much time they spend out feeding and the bucks they don't get to be big giant bucks by getting shot so there's a certain amount of like stealthiness that goes into being a big giant buck and i don't think that it, I think it's a little bit learned. And I think it's a little bit like if they were not that way,

they'd be dead. So I think that there's some that just are skittish. Like when you scare a mule deer and the mule deer's running away, eight out of 10 mule deer are going to stop. If they're going to crest a ridge

and be gone, they stop and look back. They're kind of like, do I really need to run this far? Like, is this thing really seriously threatening me? Bucks that do that don't live to be big, giant bucks. Bucks that, like, decide, I'm just going to run over the ridge, never stop running, and run way away from here before I stop. Or sneak, just creep out of there yeah or the real

the ones that are really born with a gift don't run with the dose yeah the does book and they make a big show out of how they're booking and then they get on a ridge top and stop and look back but that buck has taken some completely different route through a bunch of like brush without really running but kind of like trotting along and he's just like see you ladies i'll catch you after dark those bucks become big giant bucks what or the ones that live behind a private fence post for most of their lives. Yeah. Yeah. There's different ways.

You could probably be a dumb buck who's always out. Yeah. A dumb buck who likes to always be out in the alfalfa field eating. But if there's no hunting, he's going to, yeah, he might be just fine. Um,

Oh, well, I was getting at is I'm watching this dough and I can't figure out why she is looking at. So if you see a dough staring at something it's like you know there's something there that it doesn't like or it's staring at it buck and she just but i see this dough with the look of a dough that's like annoyed and concerned about something's presence near her but she's walking forward like she's walking at her object of interest and that caught my attention so i'm staring at her responding scope and i realized that she's chasing a bobcat

not chasing it but like like making sure it pushing it yeah where it is i'm keeping tabs on you just kind of like a like a like an old lady like yelling at some neighborhood kid you know like following him along sort of like like escorting him out of the area this bobcat uh so that happened big bobcat i got a question i couldn't i couldn't judge him i can't judge way off bobcats do you have you ever seen mule deer stomp their feet like whitetails do? Yes. Yeah? Yes.

Did she do that at all? Well, hold on a minute. Have I? God, I feel like I have seen them stomp their feet. I feel like they don't, but maybe they do. Well, they blow. Yeah. It took me a long time to figure that out.

But you know how a whitetail dog would stand there and stomp their feet. Man, I want to say that I've seen them stomp their feet, but the more I think about it, I can't think of an exact. Can you, Yanni? I can't think of an exact. Man, dudes are going to be writing in like a bat. Dudes are going to be writing in like a bat out of hell about this, man. I kind of feel like they don't, but we'll find out.

If they do, it's not as much as whitetails. I made the mistake one time saying how antelope go under fences and not over. Well, some go over fences, right? So people hate... I think there's people that don't like generalities, and there's people that just want to be helpful. Yeah. Yeah, antelope like to go under fences.

Yeah, but there's no absolute. Then you're going to get 10 videos of antelope going over fences. Yeah. 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. Whew.

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

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

onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So, Brody has to, after our second, so we did an evening sit on the frustrating, I'm going to call it frustration tit. Did an evening sit on frustration

tit. Did a morning sit with Brody, me, Gian me honest brody on frustration tit brody has a split late morning mid-morning and me and yanni have decided that we're going to travel into a new area and the land ownership where we are so screwy that we almost like travel through what i would describe as a channel of public land. That opens up to a bunch of public. It opens up to a bunch.

But we realized from our tit, from frustration tit, we thought we had to go back out, hike the short hike back out to the road, hop in a rig, go down the road, and re-access. But you get to look, and there's like a little channel of a narrow wedge of land that you can sort of traipse through. Through some steep stuff. Yeah, it was not fun walking. To get up into a big area of open public. And start traipse through there. See a doe and a fawn unit. A doe-fwn unit in there.

Hike up, get to talking about arrowheads and whatnot. Get up to the top and find a sweet-looking area that you could only hunt with a hot air balloon. Or still hunting techniques. Or if you had good, wet ground, you could still hunt it. Because you're always seeing these little like 100 yard 150 yard open aspen patches but you never are getting like the commanding view that i like is that where you saw the moose right yeah i saw moose like like we snuck in on him close enough

to shake hand i couldn't see it it was like one of those situations where i'm looking at it but i wasn't like comprehending it yeah i remember um uh i can never how's he the the africa writer tom mcintyre no yeah mcintyre is how he says his name i was gonna mess his name up he's talking about hunting being in africa one time and time. And the guy he's with, the guide he's with, all of a sudden is stopping him. And he's like, you know, there's an elephant. He's like, look and look. I can't see an elephant. Like, nowhere I look, I just see trees. Right.

Tree trunks. And he realizes that that's an elephant. Like one of the tree trunks. As he's peering under the brush, like one of the tree trunks is like a leg of an elephant. So the moose was just standing still. Yeah, he's like, right there, right there. And I don't know what I was looking for, but I was like, oh yeah, the moose standing there.

Little shit moose. He was obscured. Saw some rabbit sign. Went through some real nice open aspen grovey kind of stuff entered into

just a hell hole where it was a lot more like timber noisily bushwhacked through this timber yeah that's some nasty stuff up there didn't like that at all squirted a bunch of mule deer out ahead of us

I didn't like that at all squirted a bunch of mule deer out ahead of us i didn't like that at all and then bust out into and i could see it on my map bust out into the like most picturesque gigantic sage flat meadow like Like high elevation sage flat. Yeah, it was like 97. Yeah. Wasn't it 97, 9,700 feet? Yeah, something like that. The first thing I say is like,

talk about like a glass is half empty. We're like, holy shit, this is like amazing up here. And I'm like, yeah, but everybody know about this spot. This has got to be like the spot everybody walks to look at it it's amazing and even though we just kick some deer out i'm like all down on it because it looks too good and if it looks too good there must be a problem with it i think at that point we were probably getting on to being three miles from the rigs, from a road, from a trail. And that's like straight line miles.

There was a lot of up and down. And we had climbed over a thousand feet. So I was feeling pretty good about it. Yeah, you knew I was being pessimistic about it, about the meadow. We're going to call it the meadow. It's like an elk and deer playground almost up there like it looks perfect yeah just as a bit of foreshadowing i later had occasion to sleep on that meadow and i was laying in a bed my instead of i had a sleeping pad i didn't need

it because i was laying in a bed of elk dropping so we just cross this thing and get to where we're overlooking. And you cross the sage flat and you wind up overlooking this big canyon that Brody had told us about. Had you been up there hunting rabbits or were you hunting deer? I'd been up there deer hunting before and grouse hunting. Rabbits down low, down by where the rig was. Oh, and he tracked a lion and a bear through there. Yep. Yep.

So Brody told us about this bitchin' canyon full of aspens that's good glassin'. So we get to the edge of that, and by this time it's like the evening hunt. And I perch up on the edge. And before I even perch up on the edge, I realize there's two deer down below me. And they feed up towards us, and it turns into a three-pack of does, feeds up towards us. I sit down and just start watching for more deer, and pretty soon I pick up 20 does and a nice, not a big giant buck, but a nice buck. And Yanni's like, I'm going to go do a little scout up and down Canyon. Yeah, I just want to make sure there was no real nice vista that we were missing.

Yeah. Did the weird shooting occasion happen before or after that? Before. Were you sitting by me for the weird shooting thing? Okay, so a little bit of a weird shooting thing. Earlier I was talking about how Colorado's's weird there's always people around when we're on the edge where we're on this canyon rim glassing the bottom of the canyon and the other side like you could see the other side was like kind of public but mostly private yeah and canyon might be a little bit misleading big draw because i start to think about grant canyon when you say canyon

but there's no real like exposed steep rock cliffs in this canyon it's just like a a steep valley um but it's like there's nowhere where you can't climb down and climb right back up the other side sure that's your fit and it's too you couldn't shoot across it yeah it's a big one too far to shoot across but right when we get up on our little perch we're going to start just observing what's going on below us yanni picks up two dudes perched up on the opposing canyon wall i didn't know that valley wall yeah i told you the story across that big aspen draw across it but higher up valley than us are two pumpkins. And when I say pumpkins, I mean dudes wearing Hunter's Orange.

There's two pumpkins. And then a while later, we realized there's another pumpkin below them with an orange cowboy hat. And Yanni commented how he has a blaze orange cowboy hat. And I speculated it might be one of those covers that you can put. I said, I bet it's an orange cover. If he has an actual blaze orange cowboy hat, I like that shit a lot. Yeah. I mean, that's what Steve wears too when he's in Colorado.

When you're in Colorado, you wear a big cowboy hat and you put the orange cover over it. That's how we do it. See, a cowboy hat would have got me thinking about what kind of hunter it was yes it listen my friend ronnie bame has a maxim never wear a hat that has more personality than you do right that is why i wear baseball hats yep not flat brim to baseball no definitely not a flat brim hat and i definitely keep my ears outside of the hat band. How do you feel about these Stormy Cromers that we like to wear? I was going to bring that up. They work well.

I don't have that much personality. They work well for you guys. Yeah, but to stick to Ronnie Bames Maxim, I wear just baseball hats. See, I feel like a Stormy Cromer is almost a baseball hat. It's real close. Right? Isn't that how the story goes? It's written on the inside of the hat. The dude is wearing a baseball hat, but's real close. Right? Isn't that how the story goes?

It's written on the inside of the hat. Yeah. The dude was wearing a baseball hat, but his ears were cold, so his wife sewed on an extra flap. They're nice. Well, I do wear the First Light Brambini. Yeah. Which is a radar hat.

That's like a trimmed down version of a Stormy Kramer. I have that level of personality. I have the personality to support that hat. I do not have the personality to support a blaze on a cowboy hat. I just don't. There's two guys up high and we're having a conversation about

whether or not these groups, the one man group and the two man group are affiliated. Are they associates or not? All of a sudden blouch one of them shoots one of them shoots like from his canyon wall like apparently shooting over to our zone but not our zone because we're down valley but he's like shooting from his canyon wall

across canyon so those guys were like damn near a mile away probably, right? No, not that far? I could have walked over there in 15 minutes. Half a mile. Yeah. And one of them was down low enough down that he could shoot across. Yeah. So it's like, blouch! And I'm like, geez! And I look through my binos, and I can't tell what the cowboy hat dude's doing.

He's kind of like fidgeting around in some brush. But the two guys above there are just transfixed with binoculars to their eyes staring across canyon. Not even budging. And I'm like, they didn't shoot because they couldn't have gotten in the positions they're in that fast. It must have been the lower guy that shot.

So I start watching him anticipating that he's going to know run down do something dramatic and like you know usually a single shot's a good sign right well a couple seconds later he just picks up his rifle and walks back up the hill like no he wasn't he didn't go over to check for blood i don't know i have no idea what clean miss he they kind of like he starts headed up towards the other guys and I'm like okay so they are associates they drift off

and toward the setting sun and that's when I see a deer coming I'm like oh those jokers are spooking deer but I realize that's not the case and out comes this just string of freaking does and they come out and start feeding and there's a but I realize that's not the case. And out comes this just string of freaking does. And they come out and start feeding.

And there's a nice buck, and what I later learned was a dinker buck because they were fighting for a long, the two bucks were fighting for a long time. Yanni goes to take a look around, tell what happened on your little odyssey. Yeah. Yeah, so I left just to see if we could get a, if there was a better vantage of this uh

aspen canyon and so i kind of we you had perched maybe like 20 10 yards down off the rim so i pop back up on the rim i go not 50 yards up canyon and all of a sudden i'm looking at a doe and i look to my peripheral and there's a falcon horn, another doe, and probably like a pretty spindly, but I don't know, two or three-year-old four by four, you know, like a buck that gets your attention, but you're like, nah, probably not today, you know? And they kind of see me, kind of don't, and they get close enough where I could have shot it with my bow.

So it was a nice little encounter. A little wildlife moment. I go farther up. Don't see much else. Don't see a better vista. Turn around. Come back and walk all the way past where Steve's sitting. Start to look over more of the canyon. I think I saw

between looking down in the canyon and doing a little loop, another two does and another fork and horn. And no more mugs? No mugs. Well, way off in the distance. I was almost assuming it might have been the same guys that had left and they had just done a loop and then popped out lower in the canyon. Because there was another two guys standing together.

You could glass up this. Over on private, you could glass up this little cabin that had all kinds of trucks parked around it. They were headed down Canyon. Yeah. Yeah. And just as some foreshadowing, boy, did those boys get some shooting in later.

Just as foreshadowing. So Yanni comes back. Yeah, we got like an hour left when I get back to Steve. It's prime time. And you say, I'm all geeked out about these doles that are way far away and you say um there's not enough time even if we were to find a big giant bark there's not enough time to put a move on them anyways let's take our little bit of daylight over the backside and just do a little because it's a real nice trail yeah do a little still hunt down this trail since we noticed a bunch of deer starting to pop up top here and we're going along nice and easy and it starts getting like borderline

find some of the deer again first find some of the deer again first. Find some of the deer you saw again. Keep moving, marveling at how amazing this area is up here. And all of a sudden, spook some deer. It's kind of like borderline too dark. Probably like borderline end of legal shooting light. Like within minutes of the end of legal shooting light. Well, I mean, I was watching the clock because I definitely wanted to get to those, like to where I knew we could look over into those sage flats.

And we had about 15 minutes left. And it was kind of light with your naked eye. Yeah, you're probably not seeing real well. But, you know, with optics, you could cleanly kill an animal, no problem. Yeah, well, I'm not talking about whether I could have because I've been in a lot of situations where you could cleanly kill animals way outside illegal shooting light with optics oh because of moon or something snow snow moon yeah anyways we're within i was watching we were within full moon and snow

underground it's like around the clock that's true so anyhow we jump i hear noise and see flashes of deer and yanni runs ahead to try to get a look at him before to get away and sees yeah they had kind of bailed off this edge and so i run down the trail maybe i don't know 40 50 yards thinking i'll catch him just down below because i'd have been there just an hour earlier and there's a big sage flat well this was you know now harking back to how we were talking about bucks that grow to be big and old is these but there's i think a doe and two bucks i think again it's pretty pretty dark a buck and two does throw in the other buck to to explain why in the dough two bucks in a dough but it's in this talk about the buck who is not a contender to grow into a big old giant buck all right because well yeah just throw that in i'll come back to him but these two

quickly put binoculars on they have already made up probably 200 yards, I'm guessing. Maybe more. And, I mean, they are just flat out. There's no stotting. And if you don't know what that is, it's basically when they prong, when they're hopping. Bounce. They are just like flat, ears pinned back, like rumps low, just burning sage. And they're like, I catch them in my binos,

and a half a second later they're into the timber. And I just remember seeing like no ant. And a half a second later, they're into the timber. And I just remember seeing like no antlers, a whole bunch of antlers, and then a little bit less antlers on the rear one. I'm like, holy shit, they're in here. But we just bumped them. Then Steve catches up to me and we're overlooking the sage flat. He's like, oh, there's another deer.

I'm like, yeah, keep looking, keep looking. Maybe there's more. And yeah, he's not a contender for getting old because what was he? Was he just just a fork yeah a forky who's like yeah yeah what's everybody running for how are you guys doing he's like i'm not gonna get all excited about these guys coming through here with a gun those guys look like trophy hunters what could possibly happen to me so he's not he doesn't have that special little thing but maybe it takes time maybe that dude will get paranoid that yeah so that i was trying to yeah i tried to add that in earlier that some of it's learned yeah he that uh you have a handful of your buddies get shot out from next to you

and it probably starts to instill in you some of that paranoia. Then we'd just take a hike in the water. Then we'd take a long hike in the dark. My only comment on the hike was that throughout the day we'd climbed over a long period of time

quite a long ways. Once you condense it all into just a late night, in the dark, march down the hill, it seemed like we were traveling downhill longer and farther than I ever imagined we'd gone up. So we did a big loop.

Yeah, you had me worried because it's like, man, it took like two hours to get down i'm like 90 minutes 90 minutes we were like practically running down the damn hill and then we hit the we hit the road and had a ways to hike back 1.7 miles from the chart but when you said it took 90 minutes to get down i was like i don't well we got ever taken that long to get up got a little turn around the dark neither of us had ever been here before. It's dark.

It's not the best trail. It winds around. There's a few spots. Well, you guys did it in the light today, so can you follow it? There's a couple spots where it... What happens with trails is... When you're on a trail,

the trails are usually good in the shitty areas and you get in the good areas and people just fan out yeah so every time that trail hits a meadow people are just like they kind of scatter and then you gotta yeah because that's the spot where you can actually talk to your buddy and walk with it so yeah your buddy walks up next to you and you guys talk about what you're doing yeah and then you got to get to the end of the meadow and you got to like pace around trying to find out how the trail leads. Enter some false trails and we got off in the dark on a dry wash thinking we were on a trail and we're not on a trail, we're on a dry wash.

And eventually come down, find a little creek to get some water because we're out of water. There's five 270 cartridges laying there, which I have no idea. I don't know. Some dude crouched down to get some water and then dumped out his pocket full of ammo. I don't know. Five.270 shells laying there.

It looked like Remington core locks. Were they still there when you came back? Yep. I stuck them all nose into the mud and made like a little installation art with them in the mud, except some guy with a horse must have kicked him over because three of them were laying off but they're still there um hit the road and indiani walks it was 1.7 miles and gets the rig and comes back and fetches me. Now, we're staying in a little cabin,

and we make a plan. We set our alarms for 3.45 a.m., right? Mm-hmm. And Brody, you were going to come meet us. Yep. And... No, you weren't. You had bailed.

You had to take the kids in. Oh, that's right. No, he had bailed you had to take the kids in oh that's right no he had bailed yeah set our alarm for 3 45 a.m so that we can get back up in the zone before it gets light out up on our perch canyon perch but all night i'm not sleeping well because like yanni's just rummaging around and eventually i'm like what's going on and he's having like a heart attack i wasn't having a heart attack thank goodness but talk about your problem this is gonna be like an episode of oprah because we're gonna talk about like uh you having like a health scare and the triumph of finding out what was going on but we still like uh unfortunately we don't have that who's that guy that was always like oh yo take some rhubarb extract it'll cure that garrett no dr oz no i was thinking dr oz go

ahead this is like a dr oz episode garrett probably give us some of that tincture that he likes to put on his tongue when everybody's sick around him. Yes, I've been dealing with these symptoms for I don't know, 5 to 15 years. 15 years ago was the first time I remember having something that where I was in Belize

with my wife before we got married. Angling. Angling. Doing some bonefish angling. Staying at my buddy's place who owns the Blue Water Grill down there on, what's that key called? Ambergris. Ambergris, yeah.

If you're ever down there, it's the only place you need to go eat. Go to the Blue Water. Hold on real quick. Brody, did you used to guide down there? No, I just fished down there no i've just fished down there yeah brody used to do some uh hosted trips yeah yeah i hosted no yep down there um yeah so we i'd been angling in the hot sun possibly gotten dehydrated or whatever and i sort of had a uh like a fluttering heart feeling maybe like a

missed beat something along those lines and um i couldn't kick it and so i ended up going to the doctor down there in belize which like was kind of scary in and of itself and just because you're in another country yeah they speak english though yeah and um they couldn they couldn't really say what it was. They're like, you need to go check it out. They gave me something to calm me down. I was fine. And when I got home, went to get my heart checked out, had the EKG. I can't remember what other test they ran and said I was fine.

No problems. So like 10 years probably went by. And one night, just wake up in the middle of the night and sort of have like an increased heart rate, and again, sort of this like fluttering heart feeling. And when stuff's going wrong with your heart, man, that's got to get your attention. Yeah, that in and of itself, again, is not that, like there's no pain associated. It's not scary.

No, but I'm no doctor. I'm no doctor. But I know that when your heart stops. You're an author. There's a hitch in your giddy-up. When your heart stops working, that's not good. No. If you can feel it.

Yeah, so it makes an immense amount of anxiety when you feel that. But like I said, there's no pain associated with it, you know? It's like, it's funny because I've had a lot of injuries over the years and, you know, I've had both knees blown out and fixed in the last few years and none of that stuff really makes me nervous because you're just like, whatever, it's like bones and muscle and it's like, it ain't going to kill me, right? But when your heart's fluttering, you're thinking, what's next?

Oh, yeah, man. It might kill me, right? But when your heart's fluttering, you're thinking, what's next? Oh, yeah, man. It might kill me. Right. So, but until two nights ago, I'd always just calm myself down, walk around, make a phone call to my wife. It's always seemed that sort of like talking to people or engaging somehow sort of takes my mind off of it and i would get rid of the flutter you know because it would be like a every three or four breaths at the end of an exhale you just feel like this little like extra just enough to be like what what was that what the fuck what was that you know yeah for sure and um And so the other night, it happened twice.

We went to bed like 9, early, and like 10, I wake up, I'm feeling it. I'm like, fuck. Well, Jennifer's at home butchering my deer that I had left her. So she's been sending me texts like, what about this and what about that? So I knew she was up, so I called her. So she's chatting me up and kind of talking me down and it goes away. It's fine. I'm like, all right, I need to get some sleep. We're getting up in like freaking three hours or something. So go back to sleep and at 2 AM, wake up, same thing. And I don't know still to

this day, like what's the, um, like what caused it? Like what, what day what causes it, what kicks it off, right? We're sleeping in a small cabin. Steve's got too many logs on the fire. It's like a sauna in here, so it's hard to sleep. My body might be stressed from that. We did a pretty big hike, so I could have been tuckered out or just, what's the word I'm looking for? Just after some strenuous activity.

Yeah, it's awkward. Yeah. Like, in the past, does it happen like mostly at night when you're sleeping? One time I had a during the day episode. I was actually elk or deer hunting in Montana a couple of years ago.

And same thing, I kind of just started going back down the hill and got my mind off it and by the time i got to the truck it had gone away and i ended up actually just driving to a different different trailhead going hunting for the evening but anyways two night twice in one night and i had had enough so i've been there multiple times where i'm like, man, I should just go to the doctor right now, go to the hospital, and get it checked out. So I'm sitting here. It's like 2.30 in the morning. Because you want to catch it where the doctor can actually see.

Right. Because you couldn't even tell. You were even entertaining the idea that it's just something that exists in your head. Yeah, right, because it's so minor. And after now talking to the cardiologist's PA, I can now back that up because she's saying that like, so, well, we'll get back to that. At 2.30 in the morning, I'm like, yeah, Steve,

I kind of feel like I want to go to the hospital. Steve's like, well, let's fucking go. I'm like, all right, let's go. It's about time. So we drive to the nearest hospital. I proposed the hospital visit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no.

Well. Yeah. I was just curious to see what's happening to you. Yeah. But I think I had said that like, I'm kind of like thinking about, anyways, that is not important. Yeah. Because I just had a morbid curiosity.

I just wanted to have, I just wanted to know. You wanted to go nap in a hospital chair for a couple hours. Yeah, it's funny. As I'm sitting there all hooked up to the machines, they're like, yeah, you're all set. If you want your buddy to come in and hang out with you, that's fine. I'm like, no, he doesn't need to. He's like, yeah, well, he's sleeping out there anyway, so he probably shouldn't wake him up. So, yeah, we go, and, you know,

they just do the normal checkup and ask me what's up and hook me up to all the machines that monitor your heart rate. I don't know what they're just a regular monitor is called, but, you know, you get a couple tabs on you, got the little pulse dealie on your finger. They hit me with a saline flush, which I think I've had before. But you know what's really interesting? She's like, yeah, you're going to taste it or maybe smell it.

I'm like, huh? And she's telling me as she's doing it and immediately my mouth is full of salt. I'm like, holy shit. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, she's like, yeah, it happens. Can't explain it. And they gave you some Ativan. Yeah, well, they also hit me with some liquids and then it kept it was good because the symptoms kept going so

they were able to seat on the monitor they set me up with the ekg which is basically just like the next level of heart monitor so now instead of having like two things attached to you you've got 10 you know you sort of tentacles coming all off of you. And before they gave me the Ativan, I'm like, but you don't want to do that, do you? Because it's going to mellow me out and the symptoms will probably go away. She's like, nope, nope, that won't do it. So it's just like an in-your-head.

Yeah, it just helps chill you out as you're thinking that you're dying. Yeah. You're dying. Yeah. You're like, yeah. Yeah, which was odd because I'm normally having a very nervous reaction to the symptoms. And to have the symptoms happening and in my head just being like, yeah, whatever, heart flutter, no big deal. I know that medication because when my old man was dying, hospice gave us liquid Ativan and liquid morphine to put with an eyedropper into his mouth when he was struggling for air so i was familiar with that adivan when he told me that story 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

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out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. So, and they diagnosed you with something.

Called? Three things. Three possible things? Well, two for sure, one possible. Later, when I talked to the cardiology PA, she said that on my EKG report, she didn't actually see the SVT, which is the acronym for supraventricular tachycardia. But she did see the palpitations and premature atrial contractions. What she also said, which is interesting, which backs up my thought earlier, my hypothesis that I had that it could have just

been in my head. She's like, in most rooms, nine out of 10 people have palpitations and premature atrial contractions and basically like fluttering or extra beats or missed beats, but they might only happen once a day or once a month or once a year, or they could be just like so slight that the person does never notices it. So she's like, it's quite common, but most people just aren't noticing that it's happening to them. You just, when it happens to you, you just happen to be very acute to that sense. And you know, immediately what's going on and it wakes you up in the middle of the night. She also thinks that I might have shortness of breath. They kept asking

about altitude, which would cause sometimes shortness of breath. Yeah, well, Belize is zero. Belize is zero. That's right. And I live at five. We're only at six or seven now. So, yeah, I mean, we don't know exactly what's up.

Now, she said that I do not have the SVT, or at least she didn't see that. So she recommends I go see the cardiologist. So I'm hoping to have an appointment next week in Bozeman. But see what's up. She did tell you no more hiking around. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah i was hoping to tell though here's the weird part because the paperwork says that lifestyle changes are a good idea and it says to exercise yeah but then they tell you anything so they give a piece of paper that says

exercise but tell them don't do anything yeah it's funny man because it's like it's it's always like that in the hospital because you look around and most other people don't look like you. And what I mean by that is I'm no podium athlete. Yeah, you're not like Lou Ferrigno. Yeah, I try to – Dennis Hart Exploders. I do my part in trying to keep myself healthy. You're very healthy.

When you're in the hospital, a lot of times you're surrounded by people that aren't that healthy. It was the same thing two nights ago. And so I think this paperwork is sort of written most of the time for the average person. Because the paperwork is like, what the hell? A little exercise is not, whatever you're here for, it's not going to hurt. Yeah, it's going to help you it's gonna help you know help you out to walk around a little bit more whatever so yeah so the morning hunt is blown morning hunt's done yeah because we come back and we're sleeping when we should be home and they've told yanni now

that until he finds out what's actually going on with his heart be sure to stay well hydrated, rest, no strenuous activity. So when I was talking to the cardiology gal, the PA, I'm like, what exactly is no strenuous activity? Because we've got this hunt planned. It's going to be three to four miles, a couple thousand feet elevation. Carry the big old buck back down in the backpack. Hopefully. Define strenuous. She's like, probably not. Not not a good idea you need to go figure

out what it is so um we can leave it at this she thinks that uh it's most likely benign and then i just have the the flutter like everybody else has and i just feel it more and most likely a cardiologist is going to give me some sort of a drug that so when i have these sort of episodes i can take this drug that will basically like like smack my heart and knock it out really yeah it's like a pill form of a defibrillator so that's kind of what it sounds like i can that's one word and again all you doctors and nurses don't need to write in about it um i'm sure i'm not saying exactly this isn't this isn't verbatim from what she told me, but we'll check back in on this. But I'm going to go get checked out.

There's two words I struggle with. Superfluous, which I just said that time, but sometimes I can't. That means more than necessary. And then what's the thing they zap your heart with? Defibrillator. That word is hard for me to say. So the morning hunt is shot. And bagel.

You have a hard time with bagel. Yeah, dude. I just avoid it. I say like, you know, you go to them round doughy deals, you know. Yeah. Starts with a B. You put cream cheese on them. So you were waffling on your plan at that point well yes i

was because we'd spent so much time on yanni's little health scare that i didn't know if i really had i don't know if i had time to get up into the zone right but and i'm into the zone and set camp up or get up in the zone and have like a reasonable evening hunt and then a reasonable morning hunt and after much vacillation and trying to trying to cajole brody into joining me on my hunt but it was i was springing on him a little too soon for him to make proper plans um with family and work issues and all that. So I rush. I finally pull my shit together enough where I'm like, okay.

And rush in and pack up my overnight gear. And Yanni drops me back at the trailhead. And I got my overnight gear. And I want to get up in the zone. And I start hiking up. And the whole time I'm following lots of horse tracks overlaid with two sets of boot tracks that were not there the night before so i'm feeling like enormous amounts of stress that there's a bunch of mugs up in the zone and i'm assuming like horse hunters are out and boot hunters are out and i'm like three quarters the way up to the zone and i find out who the boots belong to

as i run into a couple old hippies who are out hiking describe i want to hear what two old hippies are to you describe them bearded dudes or with like bandanas around their heads? One had a Hawaii themed baseball hat. Blue with palm trees and suns on it and stuff. Like a Hawaii, like a hat that I wouldn't have the personality to support. A Hawaii themed baseball hat. In an orange vest and one had a orange bandana tied around his head with hair you know long hair and a beard like are you you're saying that i don't know an old hippie when i see one no of course of course you do but i just get a kick out of it like because when i say old hippie

i mean that like a guy who was in the counterculture right at the time when being in the counterculture was countercultural so like he was in his 20s in the 60s yes okay and that if you embraced that lifestyle at that time apparently it's very hard to shake and you carry with you visual cues into old manness that key me to that and also you can't shake the lineup of the age right so you were in your teens in the late 60s and these things click and i look and i'm like I don't think you were a big conservative in the late 60s. I feel like you were left of center in the late 60s and doing drugs. That was my read on these fellas. Were they smiling and cheery?

No, but they were talking real loud. So I was planning, I was hiking up, listening to them up ahead of me and thinking they're hunters, and I'm thinking, like, is it okay for me to say that you are BAH, bad at hunting? And I said, hey, fellas, just generally keep it down. But I get up, and it's just two dudes out enjoying being alive in America on a hike. And it was a beautiful afternoon. It was.

And he says to me, is it hunting season? And I said, yeah. And he goes, it hunting season? And I said, yeah. And he goes, are you sure? And I said, yeah. And he goes, good thing I wore this orange. Then he said, I got a friend one time, hunted all day, and it wasn't even hunting season. Didn't know until he got home at night. Then he said, it's good to see someone out hiking without horses.

And I said, yeah, we do a lot of walking. And the other guy goes, well, even if you do have horses, you still got to hike a lot if you're hunting. And with that, we bid our farewells, and they went down the mountain. Well, it was nice. I mean, no negative input whatsoever. Nice guys. No. I'm glad I ran into them.

Yeah. Glad I ran into them. Just like a regular old Colorado hunt. Yeah. I feel like that age hippie, because there's newer, younger hippies. They weren't in their teens in the 60s, but you know who I'm talking about. But I feel like that era of hippie is not anti-hunting. No.

These were guys that were hunting probably. Or whose relatives were or whatever. The old kind of hippie now okay i have relatives that were hippies and they lived in teepees and ate porcupines and stuff they shot with longbows yeah because there was like back to the land there was like a back to the land element to being a hippie and also you you get a commune, you raise chickens and pigs. Right. The animal rights movement didn't really take hold until a little bit later. You know, with Pete Singer.

Well, yeah, we recently learned that it was almost an offshoot of the civil rights movement. Civil rights, yeah. So, yeah, when I see an old hippie i don't go like oh this guy doesn't like hunting i mean some bitch probably used to as far as i know used to hunt likes to hike wasn't he's not so avid that he keeps track of when's hunting season or not no but they like the connection to the land yeah they like connections i'd rather see those guys than some damn mountain biker or something like that. Hell yeah. Of course. I'd rather see those. Yeah, mountain bikers. That's Brody Anderson speaking.

I love mountain bikers. I do too, but I don't like seeing them on hunting trails. I would rather run into non-hunting old hippies on the trail than dudes who are out pounding the ground with high-end optics finding all the bucks. Sorry, mountain bikers. I was relieved to find out. The last thing i wanted was

to turn out to be like two young whippersnappers out there like pounding the ground i'd be like how man i gotta deal with these guys so you old you are old enough to call young hunters whippersnappers no no but you know what i'm saying right i do just get back to my point all the time i'm behind boot tracks thinking that I need to overtake or whatever, that I'm on tainted ground that's already been hunted. It was a rage building? No, I just was real eager to find out. I was eager to see when their tracks split from the trail. Turns out, the tracks lead me to a pair of old hippies who are headed back downhill.

So then I'm a little bit excited because I'm getting up into the zone prime time but our tracks in the night have been obliterated by uphill horse travelers so I'm real worried about these horse guys now see that doesn't usually worry me because they're usually going in further Yes, that's what I was banking on. And I find that guys don't do good spot and game from horseback. No, there's too much other stuff going on. Because you're paying attention to other stuff. You got horses. It's an unstable viewing platform, so movement. Just like a guy blasted through on a horse, oftentimes,

and this is not general, I mean, this is not true across the board, but just generally speaking, I think of a guy on a horse as potentially missing game. Well, you got to make sure you're going to stay alive on a horse, which is rule number one. That's the weird thing I always see. People are paranoid. I always kind of have a little chuckle about people who carry weapons

because they're afraid of mountain lions and black bears. But you'll meet guys on a horse who have a pistol, and they're not in Grizz country. I wish Grizzies lived everywhere. But he... When you see a guy on a horse with a pistol,

for Grizz, or for black bear and mountain lion protection i'm like the safest thing for you would be to shoot that horse between the ears because what's going to wind up happening is that thing's going to kick you in the head or maybe maybe not this year but next year or the year after that you're going to get beat that horse is going to beat you senseless man yeah horses are dangerous no we were hanging out with a guy here um oh yeah what's the thing with two days ago met a guy here broke five ribs yeah he was all crippled up from i love horse i'm not down i'm just saying like like if i was gonna say like what's more like

it gonna injure me in my life a horse or a lion absolutely a horse so but now it's getting on towards the good time. Prime time. And I get up into the zone. And I get to where we spooked the big bucks. Timber bucks. Timber bucks. I get to where we spooked them. And I didn't realize quite how close that place was. And even Yanni felt after we spooked themooked was we spooked him but it was dark and no one shot at him and the wind wasn't really in their favor i don't think they spooked spooked

they were just surprised i think we bumped them yeah and yanni was even saying i wouldn't be surprised of those bucks he was steering me he was steering me to go to that exact and watch the sage flat they were by i I didn't like that plan. But it just gives you an idea that Yanni's take on it was that Buck, he didn't leave the county. But you also needed a camp somewhere. Yeah, I could have slept anywhere. But Yanni's like, the Buck didn't move to Wyoming or something. He's around.

And I get up to the big queen mother what i just said we're going to call the meadow and the horse tracks are still going no sign any horses anywhere and they could have been anywhere and all day long and i get to the big meadow and i got maybe 15 20 minutes of legal shooting light left. And I ponder the idea that I would still hunt the edge and reject that because it just seems a little bit like I'm going to spook game, that I might want to be there in the morning.

And I ponder the idea also of going over and looking off the pier and ledge where we watched a guy who took a poke the day before with his rifle but decide instead to go into a little stand of timber that's kind of like an island out in the middle of the queen mother of all sage meadows and i'm going to set up there so i get up to where i'm going to be and i make a plan that i'm going to get my tripod out and set my shooting V up on the tripod. And I'm just going to sit for 20 minutes, this metal, see what all is going on.

And, but I'm getting cold. Cause I got all sweaty climbing up the hill. So I kind of hunker in and, well, first I do is like glass. Everything around me is like nothing there. And I kind of get down,

I'm digging around my backpack. I'm going to change my, and i even got my pants my belts open my pants are undone because i'm thinking i'm gonna add a couple things and tuck them add a shirt and tuck it into my pants and get all cozy for the evening six it's getting cold and i'm in the middle of that look up and all of a sudden now where nothing was a minute ago is a very nice, a big old buck. 100 plus yards going directly away from me. He'd come out of this little finger of Aspen's and was going away from me. And without even fixing my pants, I just raise my rifle and lean it on a tree. And this thing is just walking, walking, walking, and showing no sign of doing anything other than,

he's grabbing a bite now and then, I think, of grass. But he's not even kind of turning. He's just going dead away from me. And I think I'm going gonna have to follow him and try to veer side to get a broadside shot because i wasn't going to take a shot the going away shot on him but then like no because the minute i step clear of this timber he's just gone like face me or not face me he's going to just sense my presence so in a i don't have buck fever yet i don't think but in a panic you had decided you wanted him though right yeah like nothing you've ever wanted in your life because when i threw my

scope up i knew i could just see the frame and when i threw my scope up i could see all these extra points sticking out of the points. That usually does it for most guys. Little teeny bucks. Because what did you say? Little teeny bucks don't have little teeny points sticking out of their points generally. If you see a big frame and it's got little teeny stickers, as they say, which is a term I do not like. Extras.

People call it trash, junk. That would mean it's stuff you don't want. You don't want garbage, right? You get rid of it. I want these things badly. I've decided to call them gold. Little golds. And I want to shoot them real bad. So I say to him, to the buck,

I say, hey! And it works like a charm. Kinda. I'm thinking in a perfect world, he's going to stop I say, hey, and it works like a charm, kind of. He doesn't spin. I'm thinking in a perfect world, he's going to stop and spin broadside. But what he does is he looks back and turns enough, and this is the point where buck fever happens. I now officially have buck fever because he turns slightly,

and I think to myself, oh, you can sneak one in there. Like I got enough exposure where I could sneak one in there, that last rib. And pouch! And the deer humps up, like jumps humped up and kicks like a hard shot. That's what I think happened.

I think you're in the, i think i put one in the boiler room because when you hit a deer in the heart it humps up if you hit him too far back he slumps down if you see a deer arch like a cat what's that move in yoga not downward dog but upward it is cat is cat cow. Cow, cat cow. If you see a deer do like a yoga move where you arch your back up, or like a cat hunches back up fast, he's hit good. He does a thing that says to me, after a lifetime of watching such things occur,

it says to me that he's hit good. And he turns at a 90-degree angle. He's probably like 170 yards out. Spins at a 90-degree and starts just hauling ass across me now, broadside, looking at his right side as he's running. And I'm expecting him to tip over. And he's not tipping over. And he's not tipping over. he's not tipping over and he's

going to vanish into an aspen patch so thinking i've already hit him and i'm now dealing with a wounded deer i swing through him i come from behind him so that my crosshairs and my scope pass through the center of his body and just like i'm leading the duck i pass through and touch that trigger at the end of his neck because he's already wounded and that way if you're off on your lead you have a whole lot of room to be off yeah at that point you're just trying to get more at that point just trying to bullet into him yeah and pouch and he just goes down like like down like he's been hitting the spine yeah and i go over there and sure enough he's just like as ryan callow would say dead or in a wedge as jerry clower would say graveyard dead just. And he's got a hole in his neck, and that thing doesn't have another scratch on him.

I totally buck fevered my first shot. It's weird that he jumped. I wonder why he jumped like that. Well, you were there. You skinned him. I know. There is not a scratch on that deer. Maybe he felt the breeze of the bullet.

I don't know what it was. I don't know. I would have never. Well, maybe he jumped out of the breeze of the bullet. I don't know what it was. I don't know. I would have never. Well, maybe he jumped out of the way of the bullet. Yes. He felt the bullet coming. He could be that. There's a certain bigness and oldness the buck gets

where not only does he know to run away when to run and when to sneak, but he also knows when to jump out of the way of bullets. In a million years, I would never have taken a full-on run shot at a buck. It's just not something I would do. I'd do it on a wild pig, but I wouldn't do it on a cherished animal. Because the chances of you getting a bad hit are so high.

But if you've already wounded it and you've got to go find it anyway, it's like, yeah, it's like, you know, then you don't have like, you know, like pursuing a wounded game, you don't talk about like ethical shots. Once it's wounded, that stuff's all out the window. Now it's just get it dead. So I don't even deserve the buck. I don't know about that. Yeah, it's just get it dead so i don't even deserve the buck i don't know about that yeah that's a little harsh so i go over there and there he is dead and there's no cell phone signal

anywhere i don't have a vehicle because i got dropped off but you've got a beautiful sage flat to camp in yeah so i uh got the deer and then there's something in you that always wants you to drag. There's some part of you that always wants to drag shit over to a tree. Like psychologically. Gutted them out. Drug them over to a tree. And I didn't want to leave them there overnight because I thought coyotes would get them. There's a lot of coyote tracks around there.

So I weigh all this out in my head. And in the end, and I know that Brody's coming up. Brody had made a plan to meet me up there around 8 a.m. for the day's hunt. So I just make a fire, cook some house, then go to sleep like ridiculously early,

like 6.45 or something like that because else it's like dark. An hour after dark, yeah. And I don't want to leave my deer to get eaten, so I just set my tent like literally like next. If I rolled up, I could like spoon the deer through the tent wall and just kind of want nothing getting at them.

Set my alarm for 3.45 a.m., wake up 3.45 a.m., wake up at 3.45 a.m., make a cup of via, and run down and actually catch Brody 10 feet from his truck heading up the trail. Six o'clock in the morning. We have a cup of hot cocoa. You surprised Brody?

Who's that guy with the headlight? Yeah, because I got up so early, I knew I'd make it back way before god day yeah have a cup of hot cocoa and go back up and here's the thing we get back up there and it's nothing but dudes oh we were surrounded like how i don't understand and all down in the canton, my beloved Aspen Canyon. I think they were actually below the, they were where it opened up. But yeah, same canyon, just down lower.

It is just like, it reminded me of hunting at Doug Dern's on opening day in Wisconsin. Bouch, bouch, bouch, bouch, bouch. At least a box AM I got shot. Bouch, bouch. And no one shoots once. No, it was three or four or five at a time. Volleys of shots and there's three dudes perched up magically who like somehow weren't there the night before there's three dudes perched up on the big magic meadow yep they must have been having a deer drive down i heard i like i heard one boom thwap, you could hear the pumpkin strike.

But even that guy did a volley. Then he just shot some more just out of the joy of the general trigger happiness of being an American. Yeah, I thought those guys heard Nelk back on in the private or something. For a while, they were shooting so much. Brode even threw that idea out. Really? So there's three guys observing the medal. Two are kind of together, and one's off in the other side i just want to explain too if it sounds like weird to maybe if you're an eastern

listener that we're like so like upset about all these shots because if you're like if you're a dude from the other side of the mississippi you're like yeah it's like opening day or opening two days like you hear shooting all the time in the whitetail deer woods out west in the in the greater expanses it's just simply not like that the shooting was so voluminous can i use that here that there's so much shooting going on down there and eventually we get to where the deer's all butchered out except for just skin in the head and brody has the just out of curiosity wander over to get to the edge of the canyon to see what's going on down there all the cracking and blouching yeah and i sat up and so we got all the meat like the

meat's all done all the meats well we kept so we had the four legs whole took the back straps off boneless took the tenderloins off just as tenderloins sawed the rib cages saw the rib cage off so we just hauled out whole rib slabs. Necros. Took more to the neck we could because I'd done a number on the neck. And then I was skinning the head out. You know what I was thinking about today? I used to take a multi-tool. When you're skinning a deer's head out, it's hard to skin around the base of the antler. Is that getting us?

Yeah, it's a truck. No big deal. Yeah, the pedestal. Yeah, when you're skinning around the pedestal, it's a bastard. I used to take a multi-tool screwdriver and pry it off there.

Now, for my skinning knife, I use a really and i see you like you use you use a version of this too a really like stout short yeah the blade that hidden canyon bench made is like my new favorite knife see mine's like a little bit different than that shorty yeah yours is like a shorty yeah like you could stab a dude with yours and he'd be like man what's he there for like a very short blade but it's like nice man yeah and it's stout like you said yeah and i got pride you know ball joints and stuff exactly and mine's a little bit longer it's called a steep country well i like it's got a blaze orange handle on it

which helps you when you've gotten deer you spend a half time trying to find things get lost all the time every time you like get a leg free and then you go like take care of the leg and hang it at tree and you come back where's my knife everybody looks for your knife for a while so it like cuts that down a little by having a blaze large handle on it but with that thing that short stout fat stiff blade i can just smoke that hide off those yeah antler bases yeah without ruining the blade and you can still pry a little without worrying about like just blowing your edge right off exactly you can kind of like you don't want to like get scraping it against but it's just like a more it's a sturdier hardier yeah blade yep i like that thing a lot that that's my kind of favorite of the knives they make. But then cut his tongue out, skinned him.

You got back. We popped the eyeballs. I had popped one eyeball. Popped the second eyeball. Popped the lower jaw. I told you about the Sika deer I killed that was missing an eye. Got poked by an antler. And Brody asked the same question everyone asks.

Was his dead eye facing you? And I point out, no. I was dealing with his live eye. I was not getting the unfair advantage. And that was it for chopping that deer up. As we're finally getting done scanning and loading our packs,

here comes what looks like a Western movie. Oh, yeah, man. It plays orange. Here comes like seven horsemen in a pack string come by. Don't even give me and Brody the time of day. No. One little buck on a saddle. Six or seven, six hunters.

Well, yeah, no shit. They didn't give you the time of the day. You guys are the assholes in the middle of Magic Meadow at daylight with a campfire but i they were coming through like they were coming through like mid-morning and i get the feeling they had probably packed camp up early morning like they were way like they're you want to my serious well you're gonna say this what go ahead and say what you're gonna say no, I just think they'd gotten up. I think they were way in past, hunting past where we were.

No, you know what my theory is? We'll never know. I think they were. On the other side of the meadow. I think they were. No, I think they were camped up somewhere. And I think maybe they packed up and rode down. And on the way down, decided to do a morning hunt.

Slow. By the meadow. A slow roll, yeah. It doesn't totally make sense but i could you could have i mean there was yeah seven or eight hunters i gotta say though man if they were rocking like full canvas wall tents that you'd have to almost be packing all night long to pull that off for the morning didn't look like they're well that's all no it didn't look like they're geared up like that when you guys were kids they call other tents you had wall tents and pop tents pop tents i remember yeah puff tents for what we call backpacking tents yeah i don't know why i thought dome shaped yeah i feel like they were i feel like they were hunting like yeah so

then we just uhoseyed down. Moseyed down the mountain with my big old giant buck. Found a couple horseshoes on the way down. Yeah, found horseshoes. But you know, yeah, Brody kept a lucky horseshoe. You'll always be able to point at that horse and be like, I tell you who didn't get a buck. Yeah, those guys. It's the guy riding them horses.

But dude, I'm on like a mule deer streak. You are. is that three years in a row yeah nice but i'm just glad because i remember like before last year so you killed a big buck in colorado last year but before that you were kind of down on colorado dude way down you had a bad experience because all i knew about was the parts about weird land ownership and tons of mugs. I didn't know about the part about big giant bucks everywhere. Now I'm like Joe Colorado. I'm going to get a Colorado hat.

I'm going to get an orange cowboy hat that says in big bold letters like I heart Colorado on it. You should. Dude, I'm a Colorado man. Yeah. But I think that some people don't hunt here because of the mugs. And that's a... Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

I have friends that are like, look, man, yeah, I know. You guys are killing bucks there. Other people do. I just don't want to deal with that stress of hunting big bucks during an open elk season. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, the night you killed the buck you didn't see a soul you know that's the thing yeah it was like i was it was like i'd flown into it's like i'd flown in in alaska and last year we didn't have a bunch of dudes on top of us like if you walk

you're not because you had because you got a lot of hidey holes yeah but here's the thing i hunt all kinds of places i hunt places where you couldn't find someone if you had to right okay so like we hunt areas in alaska where you fly in and a pilot drops you off and if you needed to find help you can't or even prince of wales you're not gonna see anybody there you know and i hunt places where it's tons of mugs but they can't they're not really messing with you because you're on Doug's farm. Yeah. And you know all the neighbors, and they're all hunting. But it's civic.

And you tell Doug, oh, I want to go there. And Doug's like, well, I think you should go there. And then you go there, and you know that you have your little spot. And if you stay in your spot, you're fine. And there's people around. So there's all these extremes. This is just another version. hunting comes in many forms the hunting pressure comes in may be just like another kind of hunting pressure and i i think here it's you know a large part of it is being able to buy over-the-counter bull tags in second and third season like there's just going to be a lot of

especially non-resident hunters that are coming just, you know, it's easy for them to get a tag. Yeah. So if it was, if you're hunting elk, you have to have on an orange cowboy hat. I think they should wear yellow and we should wear orange. Just so you know. Or something. But I'm telling you, man, I'm fired up.

What do you do if you have both? Like I like to roll in a lot of times with the OOTTC bull tag and my buck tag. Then you got to wear an orange striped cowboy hat with a yellow stripe tied around the hat band. Maybe a big old feather. If you want to see my huge buck, we'll put it up on the show notes.

Lots of meat on a buck like that. A big meat buck. That's what we were talking about today. Because someone was like, oh, it's terrible. The bigger the antlers, the more the meat. Because it's terrible that you'd go out and try to find a big, huge buck when it's all about the meat. But we were observing today that the best way to tell if he's got a ton of meat is to look for big, huge antlers. Dark ones with extra bling.

Because then you know that he's going to be the size of a cow elk. Yeah, I mean 300 pounds easily. So if I see a big frame with lots of little stickers sticking out of it, I'm like, that is one meaty rascal. That's a big backstrap and a fatty ham. Big package. And for those of you out there saying that we don't know what we're talking about, those stinky old ruddy bucks can't be eaten.

You got to grind the whole thing. Or if that's what someone told you, all I can say is learn how to cook. Learn how to take care of your meat. We Pepsi challenged last year. We Pepsi challenged a year and a half old meat buck with a big buck.

It's like, it's such, if you get a buck. But I think not only that, but you could Pepsi challenge it with an elk or a whitetail or whatever and this whole like sagey freaking it's such gaming yeah if you take that buck and when you're stripping the hide off that buck and you find he's got an inch of fat laid out over his room he's in shape. It's like that deer's in good shape and it's going to be good meat. It is the best meat. My wife rarely will flag meat. I could cook a played out house

cat. My wife's not going to flag it. She has flagged moose as being like something's peculiar. It's something about moose she doesn't like. Every time I serve big, huge, mealy buck meat to her, she'll comment. She usually doesn't comment at all. mealy buck meat to her, she'll comment. She usually doesn't comment at all.

She just eats whatever we make. She'll comment on moose as being like, something's weird about it. It doesn't click with her. When I cook big old buck meat, my wife's always like, God, this is good. Yeah. It's just freaking good. And I've shot bull elk in mid-November and had them like there's just something a little you know, a little tough, a little off about them that time of year.

So it's, you know, and elk's arguably the best. Yeah, elk has that reputation of being the best and they don't make a bad-tasting elk. You can get tough elk but there's no bad-tasting elk. I had a buck, the worst piece of wild meat i ever ate

was from a muley buck but circumstances circumstances he slid down the mountain on the snow and landed in a sinkhole and boiled in the sinkhole we couldn't get him out of the sinkhole till way later got him out of the sinkhole until way later, got him out of the sinkhole. And he was in like very insulated in a little dirt coffin at the bottom of a, you know. And maybe he was alive when he went into the sinkhole. Well, yes, I know that he was. And here's what happened. So it was like unbelievably cold.

I shot a buck. He slid down the mountain. And I go over to try to find him. I can't find him anywhere. Then I realized it was like a size, he fell into a sinkhole the size of a manhole cover. It was kind of hourglass shaped, and I could see down in there,

I could see that he was moving a little bit, and so I blouched down in there, and the shockwave of the sound came back and hit my ears so bad. Now my ears are freaking ringing, man, and we're camped down valley from there. And now it's pitch black. I think I got them. Go down.

We come up the next day with some ropes and stuff. We peeled off our canoes, like the bow lines of our canoes, and tied them together. My buddy held my ankles and lowered me down in the sinkhole. And I was able to get a lasso around his antler. Then we all got on the rope and dragged the deer up out of the hole and drug up what looked like if you had a – it looked like if you pulled Bob Hope up in his latest years.

Like this dude was like – Covered in mud. Just like frail, and his muzzle was just gray gray gray and he had the rack when you know you get a big rack and then your rack shrinks and it's like different than a like a rack a deer's antlers on his way downhill in life are different than on his way uphill so he could be at the same mat he could be at the same measurements but just there's a different quality they're like softer like they like softer edges yeah it's like a different like his like his he's getting too old he was still throwing racks off but they were like bad yeah old man racks emaciated and gray muzzled so he was old

and he'd been in the sinkhole all night, insulated with his guts in him. When we started butchering that deer, me and my brother were butchering that deer, and the meat smelled bad. And then we started to think that it was getting in our heads, and it wasn't the meat, but it was just like other, that the flavor, it was just like something about the smell of the meat was messing with us. I remember it got so bad at one point that we couldn't tell if we were like really smelling it or not. And we thought that everything to smell and couldn't tell if like actual part, what cuts actually smelled.

It got to the point where we were heating up butter in a pan. And one of us went outside to wait outside in fresh air. The other one of us cooked a piece of backstrap in a pan in butter. Floated it in butter. Cooked it and took it to the outside person who's now been in a clean atmosphere.

That person would eat that buck meat and be like, that buck meat is bad. Yeah. By the way, this buck was in good shape. No, that was the only way this buck was in good shape no that was the only bad buck meat i've encountered happened to come off a mule deer under extreme circumstances so yes if you shoot a buck and then let it rot in the back of your truck yeah and then say that mule deer tastes like x y or z okay don't gut it for you know a couple extra few hours because pictures are more important. Cripple it up.

Drive it to a spot where you can get a good picture. Cripple it up so it runs for 45 minutes before you find it. Then dink around. Don't get the guts out of it. Drive it somewhere else to take a nice picture of it. Hot sun.

Sure. Going to have to grind it all into sausage. Alright, thanks for joining. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes

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