The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 133: You're a cool dude, Buck.

Episode Date: September 10, 2018

Anchorage, AK - Steven Rinella talks with Alaska Master Guide Buck Bowden, along with his brother Danny Rinella, Chris "Ridgepounder" Gill, Dirt Myth, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew. Subjects discussed: becoming Buck, or a boy mangles himself with a knife; digging for money with nine fingers; hunting and visiting the obscure; candyass horses from lower-48 and their rough and rangy Alaskan counterparts; the big money makers in fur trapping; eating wolverines; cutting your teeth on sheep, moose, and grizz; becoming a Master Guide; lessons learned from three bear attacks; what makes a good hunter?; divorcing yourself from societal momentum; and more. To learn more about the ideas and materials referenced in this episode check out the show notes here. 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.

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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, underwear-less. We host 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. First thing I want to talk about, I want to revisit something we were talking about earlier earlier today danny i didn't know that when

when you uh i knew you shot a mule deer out of a tree with your recurve yeah i didn't know that you were in a tree stand you literally climbed up and shot it off the branch of a tree no like you're not into the whole safety harness scene and all that you're just like sitting up in the limb of a tree with a recurve yeah i mean mostly out of necessity but that's it's so old school man well is it cottonwood you know and had these giant horizontal branches and i mean it felt i had i was kind of surrounded by branches and real tucked in there. And it wasn't, I never felt like I was going to fall out of it. So how'd you like? Nobody ever does.

Yeah, I think it catches people by surprise falling out of trees. So how did you like pull back and swing the bow and everything up there? Just standing on a branch. Yeah, standing on a big, big, I've done a lot of that actually. That was my MO, hunting down south for a long time. Yeah, I don't know. I just make it work. How can you keep your balance and be in full draw, especially with a recurve?

But it's like, it was this cotton with a, well, dirt probably knows the tree, but. Yeah, in the field there. Yeah, where all those mule deer hang out in your dad's place but um yeah it's a big fat cotton when it has like a couple branches that swing out horizontally and then go up and it's just like this kind of natural tree stand it's just shimmied up in there settled in and shot a buck with your recurve i screwed in a few steps to get up there you know but yeah shimmied up in there and then you tie a little piece of paracord around i might

have i think i had a string to pull my bow up you weren't over there was one of those nascar harnesses no no five point harness that's all um uh buck bowden can you first off do you mind first off telling about uh how you how you got the name buck oh yeah because you were born mike bowden yes i was born mike bowden as a young child buck bowden of hidden alaska outfitters yeah that was my first winter in gnome um at school there it was right when locking buck knives had first come out. So there I am, the new kid in town in high school, and I'm taking this buck knife that I had just been given. Who gave you the buck knife?

I think it was my uncle. He was trying to get me to be an Alaskan native kind of a thing. So first thing, a young boy needs a knife. So he gets me this locking buck knife. And I'm at school and I'm flipping it around and catching it by the blade. So I catch it by the blade. So then I slice my thumb open, had to go to hospital. They had to sew the tendon

back together and then there i am at school the next day we'll hold back up because i i heard this story originally just because people can't see when you hold up your thumb i heard this story originally because i was watching you working with your chainsaw, and I asked you if you were double-jointed because I couldn't figure out why your thumbs were cocked off at such wild angles. Yep, yep. Hold your hand up for a minute. It's so weird. It's so cocked off at a wild angle,

I feel like people almost could see it through the— Right. You could feel it in the air. And ever since then, so. So they sewed the tendon. Yes. So there I am at school the next day, my thumb on the bandage. They had just sewn the tendon together.

And so me and all my infinite wisdom, there I am at school the next day doing it with my other hand. Okay. So and the same thing happened there. So there I am with, you you know still have the scars here to show it but um so there i am at school now with both of my thumbs bandaged up and ever since then they gave me the name buck and it stuck it was just kind of like the big joke in school and then it just followed me on even even on my there's like it all there's so many questions it brings up. No.

So what hand did you do it to first? I think it was my left hand because I'm left-handed, so I was catching it with my left hand. And the next day, you got the bandage on that hand, and you're like, I'm going to master that same trick with my other hand. Right, exactly. And cut it the same way. Yeah, the same. Yeah, trying to catch a blade the same way.

And, of course, me being left-handed, now I'm trying to do it with my right hand. I'm not near as coordinated with my right hand, of course. What did the doctor say? He actually said that I had the brains of a cabbage, he thought. So I remember that. So then they bandage that hand up. And when it comes out, you wind up with two what look to be double-jointed thumbs. Do you have full range of motion with them?

Yeah. I can't bend them forward, but they automatically spring back to the 90-degree position. I used to work for a place called Professional Tree Service, climbing trees and doing arborist work. And he cut off his middle finger i i assumed it was from a chainsaw but he cut it off on a log splitter oh really yeah but when he was holding the when he's holding his chainsaw he's always giving you the middle finger because the glove you know his leather glove would always be sticking out man quick side note the same guy he bought a house

and someone told him when he bought a house and someone said man the lady that lived here before you buried a jar full of money somewhere in the yard we don't know where and when when i would show up to work in the morning i think i'm supposed to be there at seven i can't remember he'd always be out digging around in his yard it's like his part of his morning routine would be to go out and dig around looking for this jar of money with nine fingers but was this a i mean was this an actual fact or is this just lore that they were told that was true yeah someone told him he ran a type of chainsaw called a sax dolmar you know that know that song? Oh, Sachs, absolutely. Dude, it rattled the teeth right out of your head.

Yeah, yeah. They run good, but they'll rattle the teeth out of your skull. Right. I think they're still German made, but I haven't heard of Sachs Dolmar for a long time. No, everybody has. Everybody runs Husqvarna's and Steeles. Huskies and Steeles, yeah. So talk about how you wound up in Nome.

Because you were born in the Midwest,west right i was born in the midwest i was born in the you know um i was not a model perfect child when i was growing up you know it was in the late 60s and uh you're part of the counterculture i was yeah yeah and there was a you know there's a lot of uh you know there were the peace marches going on. There was racial tension everywhere, you know. What town were you in? Peoria, Illinois. Okay.

Yeah. And so anyway, I was a little bit of a rogue, and I've always been, you know, had to be in the outdoors. And I just lived to be in outdoors, and I was frustrated, I guess, when I was a kid because I just didn't get near as much as I wanted to. So I ended up— Because your parents weren't into it. No, they—well, I mean, they knew I was always wanting to be in the outdoors. And I was always, you know, running away and going living in the woods,

and they'd have to send somebody to find me and everything else. And then at one point, I finally got to hanging out with some bad people. We broke into my grade school, went into the science room, and had our way with it, had fun with it. And so anyway, got caught doing that. So I was taken before the courts, the juvenile courts. For the vandalism. For the vandalism, exactly. And of course, my recent history had preceded me about throwing away. So apparently I was a problem child. They had to do something with me.

And I'll never forget that the judge said, well, we're going to put you in to the gift home, which is the boys' home there. And so I remember the judge looking down at his papers and my parents said, well, his godparents live in Nome, Alaska. Can we send them to Nome, Alaska? And the judge looked up, and he looks at me over his glasses. Then he looks over at my parents, looks over his glasses, and says, I don't care where you send him. Just get him out of my town.

And so there I am on the way to Nome, Alaska. So what did your parents think about that? What was their plan to see you again? Well, they just wanted to see me rehabilitated. They thought if you want to be in the outdoors, here. Right. Well, I don't know. Here you go, buddy.

So much sought that. They just saw that I needed some sort of a change. They needed to get me out of the element that I was in and actually, I'll tell you the truth, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. They put me up in an element that, it was nothing but outdoors. It was hunting, basically living off the land,

just doing all this off-the-wall stuff that I always just dreamed or read about. At what age were you when you hit up a note? I think I was 14. did you no no no i was 13 because i turned i remember landing in nomi was july 4th and i turned uh 14 july 24th so yeah i was uh 13 when i got there and were your parents that were there was there the plan that you would see your parents still? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn't a thing where, yeah, yeah,

where they just wrote me off and said, you know, good luck. You know, it was just, they stayed in touch. And then I think it was about a year later. No, a year and a half later, because it was in wintertime, went down and saw him with the family and was with the family. And ever since then, we're still real close. Our family is. So it wasn't like everybody just waved bye-bye and then forgot.

So when you were in Nome, you fell in hanging out with the native kids, the Eskimo kids, right? I did, yeah. What indigenous group is it in Nome? It would be the Inupiats. Yeah, the Inupiats up there. And that's who you kind of fell in with. Mm-hmm, yep, yep. And, you know, I instantly had a native girlfriend my first year there,

and I got to know their family real well, and I'd hang out with them. And it was just, to me, just the neatest thing in the world, being able to go and and uh you know eat traditional native food and i wasn't afraid to try it and i actually ended up loving it you know uh dried ugruk which is a you know seal uh that's soaked in seal oil i love that uh you know mucktuck uh ushuk um and then so i'd live uh you know, I hung around with them quite a bit, and their family, they spoke the native tongue more and more than they did English. So, you know, I got to learn a little bit about the culture and hang out with them.

And it was before the, you know, the, I could still at that point hunt seal with them and walrus and all that. So I was able to go on those kinds of hunts. And that was before the act. Marine Mammal Protection Act. Yeah, Marine Mammal Protection Act, right. So you could accompany them on hunts. Oh, yeah, yeah. How would you accompany them on hunts. Oh, yeah. How would you guys go out and hunt? I could actually shoot seal.

How would you guys go hunt walrus? Well, kind of the really neat thing was that my godparents, one worked, my godfather worked for BLM, not BLM, BIA, Bureau of Indian Affairs. And then my godmother, she worked for State Social Services. So they were always having to fly to the real obscure villages like Savoonga, Gamble, Diomede. And I was able to go along with them. And at first it was like, oh man, I don't want to go there.

But they wanted me to see all this stuff, which now, I mean, I have no idea just how fortunate I really was. So we'd go to, I remember my first walrus hunt, we went to Savunga and stayed with some people there. And they asked me if I wanted to go out with them in one of the umiaks, you know, the next day. So I did. Explain what an umiak is. Umiak, it's a walrus skin boat. It's a wood frame boat, and they take the walrus skin. They usually split it, you know, put it over the wood frame.

It dries, and it's just a walrus skin boat. So they wanted to take that and take you and go? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasn't a, it was just, they invited me to go. So I said, sure, yeah. So I went along and I did that a couple, once in Savoonga, once in Gamble, which is on St. Lawrence Island.

And real quick, how would they hunt the walrus? With rifles. They'd go, you know, we'd look for them on the ice flows, and we'd be going along, and then we'd, you know, binoculars, and we'd see them, and then they'd get as close as they could and then they'd usually take one of the bigger bulls because they were not only not after the meat but tusks were pretty important too. I heard

when you hit walruses you got to be careful because they'll sink, right? I suppose they do. I've heard that too but the ones they took were always on the ice flows. And then I remember there was one that actually did get into the water and they got up close enough

that they were able to tie a buoy to it before it sank. But they know where to place the shot. That's what this Chupik guy was telling us he was me and yanni spent some time with the chupac out on nunavak and they hung him with a 223 wasn't that right yanni i don't remember the caliber saying like yeah like a 22 250 or 223 it seems small and he said you got it you know and they placed the bullet just to get him right in the brain pan because they said if he goes in the water, you can lose the whole rawers. Sink down if you can't get over and get at it quick. So he says you got to slump.

He was saying you got to slump it right up on the ice. From what I was remembering, I think they were aiming for the eye socket. They were aiming for the eye. That was their favorite place to shoot them. You know, anywhere else, of course. You know, they have such a thick skull that the ones I remember, yeah, they would get them right in the eye. Did you like eating at Walrus? Oh, yeah. It's really actually pretty good. Would you go inland with them and hunt caribou?

No, because there were no caribou around there. That's a reindeer area. You know, like the Seward Peninsula at that time, it was mostly all reindeer herds there. And St. Lawrence Island, I don't believe they had any kind of caribou or even reindeer there. But they'd hunt birds out there, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, birds. And saw some of the most beautiful bird skin park as they'd wear.

And they weren't, you know, they would actually wear them because they were functional. You know, they shed water well, and they were warm, but beautiful at the same time, too. I mean, they were actually still that day in the 70s dressing in the traditional native wear, you know. So how did it work out that you got involved in guiding? Like, what was the first thing that started pulling you out of Nome How did it work out that you got involved in guiding? Like, what was the first thing that started pulling you out of Nome and bringing you kind of into the, you know, into the big game world? Right.

And even though you had that, like, that exposure to subsistence lifestyle, like, what was it that drew you into, you know, being out in the mountains and hunting moose and sheep and whatnot? Oh, well, I tell you what, even when I was a kid still in Illinois, you know, hearing the life of big game hunters and guiding big game hunters, it was always just kind of real romantic life for me. I always wanted to just hunt and fish. And so I always had that allure. And then when I actually went to Nome and was able to go out and hunt ptarmigan and moose and get the taste of it, I loved it. And when we moved to Anchorage. So you guys would hunt moose out of Nome?

Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. And so when I got to Anchorage, my buddies in school, we'd be going hunting snowshoe hare. We'd be going out hunting anything, anywhere, moose. How'd you wind up down in Anchorage, though? Well, it just ended up that my godparents, they decided they'd had enough of the bush life, and they moved to Anchorage. So I moved with them. So you were a teenager then or whatever?

I was, yeah. In fact, it was my junior year in high school, so then I graduated from high school in Anchorage. Did you view going from Nome to Anchorage as a major setback in your hunting life? Oh, I hated it. I didn't want to go to Anchorage. Skank Ridge, Los Anchorage. Man, I was having a blast. I had all these girlfriends.

I had honey and I had everything. I mean, life was grand, you know? And you got sucked into the big city. Yeah, I got sucked into the big city. I did not want to go. And then, of course, I did not want to go. It was just, and then, then of course, had to get to Nome and then,

or not, Anchorage, and then had to get adjusted to the, the big city life at that point, a big high school, you know,

the, the, we, we called it the green box in Nome. You know, the green box, it was,

you know, it was high school, it was, it was junior high, it was grade school, everybody in the same box. And they've already started the pipeline at this point. No, they haven't.

No. So that was 78? Yeah, they started the pipeline, I believe, 75, 76. Okay. So Anchorage wasn't really here in the way we know it today. No, no. I mean, the change, once the pipeline started up, Anchorage just, man, it just boomed. It was amazing.

I mean, I'm joking about Anchorage because the hunting around Anchorage is still pretty damn good if you're ambitious. Yeah, yeah. It's not a good place for lazy hunters. No, it's not a good place for lazy hunters. No, it's not. But it's also one of these things where we've got hunters that they get into Anchorage and they think, man, this is going to be a snap because they see moose walking around downtown Anchorage and even bears in downtown Anchorage. So they're thinking, wow, what's it going to be like when I really get out in the woods if there's this kind of animal movement, wild game movement in downtown Anchorage. But then what happens? And then they get out there, and they realize that it takes them a while,

but they realize, hmm, there isn't a moose behind every tree. There isn't a bear behind every tree. These animals really don't care whether I see them or not. You know, whereas the animals in anchors, they're used to people, so they're not a threat. Whereas, you know, they get out into the bush, all these animals still have that natural fear. And they're going to, you know, their ears and nose and eyes are telling them, you know, we don't want anything to do with you weird-looking animals. So what was the kind of hunting you guys were doing in high school?

High school, it was mostly small game, I guess, you know, off the road system. Moose season would come on, and we'd go moose hunting in September. But like during the winter, ptarmigan, snowshoe hare, spruce hen, anything to get out and just play in the woods, you know. We had, back then, there actually was still a winter season for sheep and goat back in the Chugach,

and it hadn't gone to permit area in there yet. So, you know, we could go in there and hunt sheep and goat in the winter. I never took one in the winter, but I'd go with friends, and they would. That's pretty tough, huh? Actually, no, it wasn't. You know, you'd go back there with a snow machine and wander around. And rightly so, it's a good thing they closed it. And of course now it's all permanent in there too.

So how old were you when you got your first moose? I was a, we were a gnome, I suppose, at 14. Okay. And how about when you came down here? When I came down here, I myself didn't take any moose until I went out to the river where I started doing all my guiding and really got into the hardcore bush lifestyle. So it was, and then it would have been that winter, my first winter in there, after all the hunters had left, then it was just me in there. I decided to stay the winter, and I was going to be the, I was going to trap for a living.

I didn't want to go back to town. I just wanted to live out there, take care. Hold on a moment now, because how old are you at this point? Okay, my first year out of high school, so I'm going to be 19 at this point. So then at that point, you said, I'm going to go off and live in the bush and try to become a guide and trapper. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's when the pipeline first started. When I graduated from high school, I had two choices.

I could go up, work on a pipeline, and become filthy rich like everybody thought they would. Or I could go out, live in the woods, take care of horses, and be a worthless mountain man. Hmm, let me see. Which way are the scales tilting? And they tilted to me going out and being a worthless mountain man. Man, I succeeded. You just found an outfitter to do some work.

Yeah, the outfitter that I went out to work for he was looking for somebody to uh rotten and take care of the horses and um you know it's like you know duh who wouldn't what what kid wouldn't wouldn't want to go live out in the woods and his main transportation being being horses living off the land. And I mean, that- So this guy was keeping his horses out over the winter. Yeah, we actually took the horses in. Yeah, the first thoughts were that we were gonna be flying, bringing the horses,

riding the horses in and out every winter. But that trip in with the horses was so miserable that we decided to winter the horses in there. But now this isn't the same trip that you went in to find your lodge for the first time. Oh, no, no. This is different. Yeah, this is early.

This is before I didn't really stake the lodge land until 76. This is after I'd already been established. Further up valley, about 25 miles up from where the lodge is now. So there's an outfitter that wants to get some horses back into the bush and he wants to use them to hunt sheep and moose with. Yeah. And, but there's no trail, there's no, what's it take to get the horses in there? Like what kind of journey is that?

Oh man. It's just, for one thing, Alaska, at least South Alaska, is really not good horse country. I mean, it's swampy. There's willows. It's just miserable. It's not like the west where you've got solid ground. Just go riding off anywhere you want. Yeah.

So, yeah, we started heading out there. We're having this vision of the mountain men heading off into the mountain. Everything's going to be rosy and ends up getting stuck in the willow patches, getting the horses mired down in the willows. We got to one creek where we had to, we couldn't cross it, the Kahiltuna River, so we had to go clear up to Mount McKinley, cross Kahiltuna Glacier, come down the other side,

and then... So how many miles does this trip wind up being with these horses? Well, as the crow flies, only about 120 miles. But if you follow the path, it ended up probably being 250, 300, just from all the detours we had to take. And how many horses?

We started out with seven. I gather that means someone didn't make it. Yeah. Yeah, we started out with seven. And then we had the river destination in mind where we were going to go. Because you wanted to set up a base camp to start guiding. Exactly. And, of course, I was just the gopher at this point. I was just one.

The other two guys I was with uh they were the licensed guides i was the new new kid on the block that was just there to help for for the adventure so they think at first like we'll bring these horses in 130 miles or whatever and then we'll hunt all fall and then ride them back to town. Exactly. It wasn't even close. Those horses never came back to town. Oh, no, no, no. And then all the other horses that we took out there, we ended up flying in, you know, to, there was a mine strip that was quite a way down, so we'd load the horses up into a caribou and fly them out and then ride them up the valley.

What in the hell are you feeding them out there in the wintertime? Oh, in the wintertime. Well, you know, when we'd have the beaver come out, they would bring clients, and an empty plane would come out to pick up clients. We'd fill the plane up with oats and, you know, compressed bales of alfalfa. And then I remember many times having to lay on top of bags of feed in the plane, you know, to get somewhere because we had to have feed in there. But then we supplemented for the roughage during the winter, I'd cut birch trees and

drag in whole birch trees, and they would eat the birch limbs, even the whole tree for their roughage. So I fed them once in the morning, once in the evening, a scoop of pellets, a scoop of oats, and then a leaf of alfalfa. Then when it would get really cold when we're talking, you know, 35, 40 degrees below zero, would supplement their feed with molasses, you know, that would mix in with it. And, you know, Steve, it was really crazy. These, these horses, the first horses we had, we, we bought them, they, they came from the Yukon and we bought them they were young

they didn't know what in the world to do but when we went out there I remember the first year we tried building them a shelter like a barn, makeshift barn to go and sit in they would not, no matter freezing rain, freezing cold

snow, they would not go into any kind of shelter. They would just come and stand with their butts up against the door of the cabin there. But they were so tough, so rangy, you know, that they were pretty amazing. And we actually did try getting some horses from the lower 48, brought them up, and two of them didn't even last the first winter. Candy asses. Absolutely.

Man, if a guy up here, if he wants a horse for the type operation, what we're going to do, if you can get it from Canada, that's the way to do it. So eventually it comes up like, well, someone's going to have if you can get it from canada that's the way to do it um so eventually comes up like well someone's going to have to stay here with the horses all winter because we can't ride them out and that becomes your job that's not my job it was my wish so then here you are now you're going to spend you're spending the whole winter out in the bush by yourself oh yeah man here's this kid from uh illinois all his life. He wanted to be Jeremiah Johnson. He wanted to trap and just be a mountain man.

And here's my opportunity. I mean, right down to the horses and sawbugs and having to use the horses to run the trap line. There were no snow machines. The only mechanical thing we had out there was a chainsaw that ran about half the time. You know, everything else was, you know, either on old wooden snowshoes running the trap line when it got too deep for the horses or, you know, the beginning of the season, I'd have the horses to run and go ahead and string the steel. And then I'd go, you know, use the the horses i'd build little lean twos that that uh uh you know out of um spruce trees you know i'd cut a crossbar put spruce trees on it and just just basically made

made a little cave out of spruce trees it would snow over the top of that and it'd be a shelter you know so i'd spend the night out in those. So I had three lines out. I had my up river line, my down river line, and my up mountain line. And the mountain line, it was only about two miles straight up the mountain. That's the one I'd take on what I wanted to break. And then the other ones were like they were like five miles long, so 10 miles round trip,

which when you have an established trail, snowshoe trail, I mean, you can scoot right along. But when you have a fresh snow, of course, you're having to break trails, so it can kind of wear you out a little bit. So you're trying to have a Pine Martin, Lynx, Wolverine. Yeah, my big money makers were Martin, number one, Wolverine, number two, Beaver. The price on Beaver were high then.

And first I tried trapping Beaver through the ice. All the romantic things you see in the books about cutting a hole and making your pole and wiring. You know, forget that. I just started trapping the bank beavers, you know. And when it was cold, you wouldn't see them. But as soon as you'd get a warm snap, the beaver would be out like, you know, they'd be coming out, you know, smelling the fresh air. And they'd be everywhere. And they were a lot easier to take then. You'd focus on them in the spring. I'm sorry?

You'd focus on them in the spring? No, in the fall, you know, early on. Before everybody got all froze up. Right, exactly, yeah. And then even, like I say, when there'd be a warm spell come up, you know, you'll have your Chinooks come in in January, late December, January, February, and a beaver will come out then,

and then they'll go back in once that warm spell's over. But it was more, I caught more in the fall, because usually I'd try and get out there um you know the end of February and try to hit the fur rendezvous and uh hit the fur auctions and sell my furs you know so were you making more money trapping or more money taking care of these horses well I wasn't getting paid to take care of the horses I had to I was just out there you know voluntarily I wanted just out there, you know, voluntarily. I wanted to be there. So I wasn't getting paid to take care of the horses. It was, if I wanted to make any money, I had to travel. But I had no expenses, you know.

They paid for my food, you know, what food they would give me. Of course, you know, all the prime stuff like uh uh butter and potatoes and everything it was always gone within the first month and then usually ended up uh the last couple months that i would be in there nothing but a strict meat diet you know i'd have to shoot a moose and and then i'd live live on the moose it was i had a grinder out there so it'd be like you know i'd grind up some moose burger have moose burger in the morning then then moose steak for lunch moose burger in the evening then moose steak for breakfast so kind of altered i'd always have some some kind of a moose concoction you know and you're eating beaver meat uh oh man beaver is really actually pretty good it is yeah um and

then i remember one time called links and uh i tried eating the links and the links was i was amazed the links is really good you know um and i've tried a few other things i remember uh one time well i'm gonna try some wolverine i take the skulls like like off the wolverine and i boil them down you know to keep keep the skulls. To clean them up. So I thought, hmm, this thing's been boiling for a while, so that meat's got to be pretty tender. So I pull the skull out, and I just kind of take it, look at it. Hmm, looks pretty tender. So I kind of bit into it like an apple.

Bad idea. Like the muscle on that head? It's not very good, yeah. The muscle on that head is not very good. No, it's not. Now, would you eat pine squirrel, porcupine, camber robbers? During the summer for meat, usually what I do in the spring, I would shoot a black bear, and then I had a makeshift smoker

that I'd smoke up the black bear meat. And then for fresh meat, it would have to be, I ate a lot of grayling and rainbow out of the river, but I'd also eat a lot of porcupine, you know, snowshoe hare, grouse, anything, you know, of course we wouldn't take any moose or anything because it just wouldn't keep or any weight to preserve that.

But a lot of small game. And then, eventually, fall comes and it's time to guide. Right. Yeah. And that became kind of your,

you kind of, your your passion yeah yeah that yeah not not only the passion but uh uh you know at some point to a guy said well you know i need i need to make make some money so uh yeah my first uh first first year your guide i was um really scared and nervous but but uh once the guy guy got out there, he was from Hungary, didn't speak any English. Your first client was from Hungary? He was, yeah. Yeah, he didn't speak any English, and so he pretty much depended on me. And it was kind of like, you know, wow, there's somebody out there that depends on me.

I kind of have his life in my hand. I felt powerful because I was really secure in that I can take this guy out and take care of him. He sure couldn't take care of himself. Were you calling Moose then? Yeah, yeah. And I learned from the guys I first started with out there. I'd listen to them. And the first time I saw it happen,

I was like, wow, this really works. And then a lot of it came to- Rip a cow call for us real quick. Ah. Ah. Oh, it gives me a little chub. Now, do a bull call. And you'd have to try and project.

Everybody wants to go out there with the birch bark cones and everything else. But to me, that's just ridiculous. That's theatrics. Yeah. And then there's other systems. You know, people have these, make a hole in the bottom of a coffee can and pull a rope through it. None of it ever sounded real to me. And a lot of what I would do, I would actually be out there and actually hear the cows or hear the bulls and then just try and mimic that. You know, I've yet to hear a cow do a cow call.

Never heard a cow do a cow call. Oh, man, no. Hear bulls. Yeah, yeah, bulls, but every year. Pretty common. I mean, me, I mean, but. Yeah, I remember I've been laying in the sleeping bag at night in moose camp hearing cows calling. It's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, in the middle bag at night in moose camp here in cow's colin it's pretty cool yeah yeah middle of night even

yeah oh yeah you know what i say that man but i gotta check up my older brother my other not danny here but my other older brother because maybe the more i think about it i think that i gotta talk to him about it i think years ago we did elk hunting. Yeah. I got to ask him about that because I have like the vaguest recollection of it. But back to this chat from Hungary.

This is your first guiding experience. It is. My very first hunter. Does the guy get a moose? Yes, he did. Yeah. And it was so funny. He was scared to death of horses.

And, of course, all the horses had different personalities, you know. And so I tried to put him on the most docile horse we had. But still at the same token, you know, a horse can really sense an inexperienced rider. You know, an old punky,'d kind of look back at with her eyes and she said yeah i got this guy's ticket i know what i can get get away with and we we'd go off up the the trail and punky would take him underneath branches you know and yeah and of course you know he's uh like with the reins, you try and teach him, well, the horses are neck reined, but of course, you know, he's got the reins, and he's trying to pull them, like, you know, pull the head one way or the next, and she didn't like that. It was like, you know, my life had enough, you know, is what she's thinking, and he just couldn't get it.

Great guy. It was fun fun it was a fun experience and being able to just have somebody else's you know life in my own hands and and being able to to take him whatever it was they were looking for was fun did you did you like being responsible for someone because you'd always perceived yourself as a troublemaker and a derelict? And here was sort of a way of proving that that wasn't true? What do you mean that you liked having that? No, that's a little deep. I never really thought about that. Yeah, but it might be a little deep.

I mean, there's got to be something going on. Why did you like having? I never really tried to analyze it, but to me, it was just, you know, I didn't see it, you know, from my faults as a kid. I just saw it, just enjoying taking this guy out because I'm really good at what I'm doing

and something I've always wanted to do. Did you like the teacher role? Did you show someone something you liked? You'd show someone something you loved. Yeah, I guess I really enjoyed, especially being at that age, somebody looking up to me, you know, somebody that's older than me, a senior looking up to me and asking me these questions, well, how do we do this? How do we do that? Or just seeing me as, you know, the expert in what I'm doing. And that felt good.

From the client's perspective, it was probably really cool to be hanging with someone that was that connected to the landscape. Oh, yeah. Because I think at least in this day and age, and maybe then too, so many of these guys roll in

just for a few weeks here in hunting season from somewhere in the lower 48. Yeah. And plus, I suppose I probably looked the part too. Here's this guy with the longer hair and the clothes I wore. Not that I was trying to address the part. It's just that you naturally fall into the look and the mystique, the movement you do of just somebody that's lived in the bush.

And, you know, you get these people that come in that are pretty much city born and, you know, dwell in the city. And they can see that you've been out in the bush and you're comfortable out there and you're confident. And, yeah, and that they don't have any problem in putting their life in your hand. How long did you guide for that outfit before going off and trying to start your own outfitting business? Oh, I was with him until, I think, clear through the 80s. And then I got my master guide license. And then I went into business from, I think my first hunter were like 1990, 1991,

somewhere right around there. That's when you first started going off by yourself. And at that point, you already had experience guiding the things. The main things you like to focus on now are doll sheep, moose, and brown bears, right? Right. Doll sheep, moose, and brown bears, right? Right. Doll sheep, moose, brown bear, grizzly. They're what we're most noted for in that order.

Tell me the order again. Sheep, moose, brown bear, grizzly. And that's basically more what we had out there. But what I cut my teeth on in our area just has a good population of all those. So when you went into business by yourself,

that's what you focused on? Right, yeah. Yeah, we advertised more for, you know, and if you want to take care of Boo Black Bear, they're out there and, you know, and if you want to take care of blue black bear they're out there and uh you know you can go ahead and and uh take them and no no extra charge out there because i've

always been a firm believer if you book a 10 10 day hunt you ought to be able to stay out there and hunt hunt for 10 10 days you know but those times are changing now oh boy big time yeah yeah 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 sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services 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. slash meet on x maps dot com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all yeah no one wants to hunt hard anymore no they yeah and and that that's it you just can't convince a lot of these people that very rarely do these animals come in and surrender. I mean, you've actually got to go out there and work for them. You have to get wet. You have to get dirty. You have to, you know, you've got to be uncomfortable sometimes. And you have to work hard at it.

And, you know, you have to be able to accept disappointment sometimes, you know, that animals aren't always going to move the way you want. And a guide can be out there and he can have all the experience and the expertise in the world. But sometimes, you know, there's, you know, that's not enough. These animals don't care whether you see them or not. They're going to do their very best to avoid you. And you were, but you were involved in Alaska hunting at a time when there was still a bit of like exploration going on, right? I mean, not like big, like map making,

but I mean that you could pioneer new hunting spots back then. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And that was part of the fun I had when I went out there too. To me, part of my job or my obligations too were to take the horses and just head that way, see what's over there. And there were still areas that are wild where nobody was hunting in. Nobody had really been in there and tried it out. And I'd take the horses and I'd head up into the mountains for days exploring new places.

So did you find a lot of little sheep spots and stuff that people just hadn't hunted sheep? Yeah, well the area where we hunted, it was before the Denali National Park and Preserve was implemented. So we'd go up the head of the valley and we'd always heard there were sheep up there. And, and so, uh, we took the horses up there, took, uh, you know, about three days, went up there just to check it out and, uh, saw that there was sheep up there. So we went ahead and booked a couple hunters and took them up there. Before that, it was just, you know, I guess

people would fly up there, but we'd but we didn't really have access to airplanes or anything like that. So it was just all, everything we did, exploring we did, were off horseback. And what would be a long hunt for you guys back then? 10 days. Yeah, everything is usually based on 10 days.

But what about when you just stopped messing around by yourselves? Me, as far as my hunting goes? Yeah. I don't know. I'm pretty much just hunting every day. I mean,

if there's a time where, like during trapping season or whatever and I needed moose, I'd just go out there and I wouldn't get hardcore. With the clients, you know,

you're obligated to hit it hard all day, every day and I just, when I was out there by myself hunting on my own, I'd just do it With the clients, you're obligated to hit it hard all day, every day. And I just, when I was out there by myself hunting on my own, I'd just do it at my own convenience, if I wanted to or needed it or if I got hungry. What's a master guide license?

Well, it basically just holds the same weight as a registered guide license, but it's a longevity thing that you qualify for. I forget how many years. You've had to have been a registered guide for so many years, had so many favorable recommendations, been approved by the guide board before they'll issue you a master guide license. So it takes a minimum of at least 22 or 23 years to become a master guide because you've had to have done your initiation as an assistant guide, which takes three years. Then you can apply to take your registered guide test.

At least this is back when I did it in the 70s. And then you've had to, I've been a registered guide book, so many hunters had so many favorable recommendations from them. And then you can apply for your master guide license. And how many master guides

do you think are in the state now? I'm not sure. I know master guides do you think are in the state now i'm not sure i know um uh they they don't reissue a master guide license number i've got one of the one of the lower active master guide numbers right right now and in fact i remember uh it's it's 80. uh I remember when I took my- So you were the 80th guy to become a master guide? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember, and of course, they've all died, you know, a lot of times you reach the master guide status, it's, you know, you're not around much longer after that. But when I took my registered guide test in 1978, it was one of the, you know, biggest accomplishments of my life up to that point. I remember I did the written, and then I passed the orals. And when I came out of the orals, I was out in the hall waiting,

and the gal that was giving the test that worked for the state, she came out. And she said, Mike, she walked up to me, looked at me. She said, congratulations, you're the youngest registered guide in the state. So I was the youngest registered guide in the state at that point. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I thought that was a real. So I took her out to dinner that night. Is that right?

Yeah, there you go. That's what I'm talking about. Can you give us an example of like a question that you had to answer in the orals or any questions on that test? Yeah, yeah. I remember, okay, for instance, some of the, what was some of the question? What are the four mammals in Alaska that remain white year round? That would be a question. Let me do that one.

I got three of them. Year round? It's always the four, yeah. the port yeah oh yeah i got it i got it there's a key there's a key word in that trick yeah it's a trick question yeah but i got it okay you got it and now i'm goofed up because now i gotta think about the question again the question what are the four mammals that remain white year yeah dirt, you got it. What are the four mammals that remain white year-round? Dirt myth, you got it? I think so. Ridge pounder? You don't know.

We say mammals? Well, don't overemphasize it. So I'm guessing there's a whale that stays white. Yeah, we were just talking about dead ones a minute ago or an hour ago. Yes, the beluga whale. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what the other three are?

It's amazing how so many people, and they're sitting in my lodge, and some of them are hanging on a wall, and they're thinking, and they're looking up in the air. You got a beluga hanging on the wall? No, but we got a goat, and we got a sheep.

And then, of course, the other one, polar bear. And then, I remember one of the other questions, too. What are the four animals that change color with the seasons? Ptarmigan, weasel, snowshoe hare, arctic hare. No, arctic hare, snowshoe hare. Well, there's three ptarmigans, so there's three right there. No, come on, you bonehead. Okay, so weasels.

Weasel is one. Yeah, it goes from a weasel to an ermine. Yeah. Tarman goes from a regular one to a white one. Right. Snowshoe hare goes from a regular one to a white one. Right. What was the one I just said a minute ago?

It's the arctic fox. Oh. Yeah. So those are the ones. There you go go what did i say that you didn't like um oh uh arctic hair arctic hair snowshoe hair they're all hair gotcha yeah that's a trick question yeah danny did you have all those um what was the last one that's what i hung up on yeah i didn't have Artifacts. Rich Founder, did you feel like you did good on any of those? I did good on the first one. You liked that little mammal part? Yeah, the mammal part, I got it.

Yeah, because you were like, oh, mammals. And I do remember one of the questions I thought was a trick question on the registered guide test was that, and I got it wrong too, but the question was, when you're standing around the campfire uh where where does the smoke go and you know it was like but you know prevailing toward beauty yeah and and uh the one that i thought thought was the the stupid answer was uh because obviously when you're standing around a fire, the smoke's blowing in your face. Because you're creating a little.

You're creating a backdraft. Well, I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking, well, they're just trying to be funny. But there actually is truth. Yeah, your body creates a backdraft and the smoke, you're up in smoke, and smoke goes up in your face. I was reading about when guys used to use the strategy you're talking about, the lean-to, and you build a fire to try to fill it with some warmth, that oftentimes people will build that lean-to that the pitch is pitched

into the wind, thinking that you got a wind protection yeah but how that causes all that smoke to peel up and you actually want to build it so the wind's moving across the across the mouth right and not lean too so it's not just so you're not just filling the whole thing with smoke the whole time not only from smoke too but uh drifting snow too i mean it don't do the same thing with snow. You know, a lot of times what I do. How'd you keep them just freezing your ass, man? You don't.

Did you have a good bag? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had a, I remember my mom, one of my first gifts she got me when I first moved up there my first year was a North Face north face um expedition bag uh you know down and i've still got that to the you know you know this day up in the loft at the lodge yeah but uh a lot a lot of times and it's just i'm sorry feet your head toward the fire um i think usually my head you know whenever i'd lay down that you know head's sticking out. That's what felt the warm. But my favorite one, Steve,

where I'd be on the trail and I'd decide I'd be spending the night and then the snow is usually five, six, six feet deep and you get it. You find these big spruce, of course. The snow's falling on the branches,

bringing the branches down and there's a big void, the snow's falling on the branches, bringing the branches down, and there's a big void at the base of the tree, and there's all the dry, dead grass underneath there, you know. You mean like a tree well? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you'd cut spruce boughs, you know, laying on the bottom, and you'd crawl

up underneath there, and you'd kick some of the snow out you know and at the well you'd get a fire going down there and you could actually get some pretty good warmth coming up underneath there because the fire you know the um you know the the branches would actually hold some of the heat down in there because the branch would have snow on them too and and you're you're surrounded so basically uh a really a nice shelter and then i'll never forget times just uh uh falling asleep you know because i'd cut the spruce boughs and lay on top of the spruce boughs with a sleeping bag and just the smell of the spruce and the dead grass and smell the fire it's just i mean right

now i can still visualize it and sense it and it just really brings back some nice memories you know that kind of stuff would you ever come across uh critters in those those situations where they're down bedded in those warm spots or no i i can't say as i ever remember any of their uh you know times that that you'd go along and you'd actually, you know, either see Martin or Wolverine, you know, scare them up. But I've never actually chased one out of a hole like that. How many times have you been attacked by bears? Three times.

How many skirmishes have you had with bears? You mean close calls? Yeah. I don't know. Quite a few. I mean, there's all black bears. How many skirmishes have you had with bears? You mean close calls? Yeah. I don't know. Quite a few. I mean, there's quite a few. I've had a brown bear that I was tracking, a wounded brown bear, and he had circled around and was coming up behind me in a willow patch.

I had a brown bear that had a client. We took a brown bear that was off of a moose carcass, and the minute we shot, there was another brown bear that was sleeping in the alders right next to us. We didn't know about it. It came bounding out. It was probably 15 feet from us and came bounding out, and my client and I had time to turn around,

and I'll never forget the sound of that. This one still just makes a hair stand up on my neck. When she was coming at me, she was slobbering, and when she would pick up her paws, you could hear the claws clacking when she'd pick up her paws and she was running at us. And she was, I have never in my life seen such rage in an animal as this brown bear had. We had time to shoot from the hip. We had turned around and shoot from the hip.

And when she dropped, fortunately, it was actually the client's bullet that hit it in the head. But when she dropped, her nose landed on my hip boot. And I'll never forget after that, him and I both sat down and we just started shaking, you know, the old what is, because she was, if she had gotten hold of either one of us, we wouldn't, you know, one of the others wouldn't have been here today.

I've never in my life seen that kind of a rage out of an animal. How'd you get tagged by three black bears? Let me see. One of them had my godparents come out when I first went out to where I was, you know, staying. They came out one summer and brought friends of theirs from Texas. They were from Texas. And it was, you know, a little solid roof cabin

that we had built that, you know, we're spending the winter. So I just let them have the cabin and I slept in a tent outside and it was in the middle of the night. All of a sudden, I was sleeping and all of a sudden, you know, I'm just being shook and drugged.

I was like, what the hell, you know? And I'll never forget looking over. You thought it was that lady from the guide class. I'll never forget looking over and seeing the imprint of this bear's nose. I mean, it's still so vivid. Through the tent fabric. Yeah, through the nostril holes. You can see them.

And he's backing up, trying to drag me off into the bushes. And I was sleeping with my.44, and I just grabbed it real quick and, you know, shot it in the head. Through the tent. Through the tent, yeah. Yeah, and it fell on top of me. And there I am all tied up in a sleeping bag and tent. And I'll never forget my godparents, they came out and my Aunt Mary kept saying,

Lee, Mike's being attacked by the bear. Shoot it, shoot it, shoot it. And what it is, I'm trying to push the bear off me. So the bear's humping up and down. I try to push it off. And I'm screaming, no, don't shoot it, don't shoot it, don't shoot it. Because of course, they're from Texas.

They weren't real wood savvy. They're just looking at shooting that bear. They like to shoot it. They don't realize that a bullet can go through a bear and into what's underneath it. Yeah. Did you have any, when you were trapping the wolverines, did any of those ever, you just hear about how aggressive they are,

like had scratched up by them? Yeah, there was one time I had a wolverine that I had gone on. I just had my 7 mag with me. I was doing the upline trail. So I took the 7 mag with me looking for a moose. I went back in the cabin there, and I've got, I don't know, about half a mile away, and was sitting at this mineral lake, hoping to see a moose come in.

So I sat there for about an hour, did it, and said, well, I'm going to go ahead and check my traps while I'm coming up here. And the night before, it had rained, and then it had frozen hard, you know, next morning. But I got up to my, actually got to my first set, had a Martin in it, and then got up to the second set, and it was on a dead snag. I had a number one and a half tied to the end of a dead snag.

And the snag was broken off when I got there. I thought, wow, what happened to this? I was looking for tracks to see where the trap and everything went, but everything was frozen, so I couldn't really see much in the way of tracks. And then off in the distance, I hear this snarling, and I knew right away then what had happened. A wolverine had got caught in the number one, broke up the snag and had taken off.

So I started beating feet over to where the noise was. And I got there and there was a wolverine that was caught by one toe and he was tangled up in the willows. So I got my seven mag. I didn't want to shoot it with a seven mag. So I started looking around for a stick to hit him in the head with. Well, he was just going nuts, you know, trying to pull out of that. And I couldn't find a stick. And then all of a sudden, he pulled out of the trap. And just for a split second, I'm standing there and he's standing here. We're probably 10 feet apart. We both just stared at each other.

And then all of a sudden, he came running at me, and he started, I had Carhartt cut coveralls on, and he hit me, and he started climbing up my lace, just shredding the car. And the only thing I had was my 7 mag. So I had it by the barrel, and I started swinging at it like a baseball bat with the... Like the Alamo, man.

By the barrel. Yeah. Well, no, but the other time. And it ended up breaking the stock off, you know, the end of the stock off the 7 Mac, you know, when I hit it. Did you get the Wolverine? Oh, yeah, yeah. It knocked him out.

He was in 10 on. Holy cow. Yeah, so that's the only time I He was in 10 on. Holy cow. Yeah, so that's the only time I've ever had a wolverine get a hold of me. So I want to get to some more stuff about your business and whatnot, but what are the other two black bear attacks? The other one, let me see, had one where when I was building the lodge and they had the plane come in, it was full of lumber. And before we left, I always bring my 44 with me.

And so the plane lands and a pilot who's a real good friend of mine now, when we taxi up to the bank there, we got out and we were unloading lumber. And all of a sudden he said, look out. And I turned around and there was a black bear that had come over the bank and was coming down onto us there. And then he stopped. It was a false charge. And then he turned around and went back up into the shed where we kept all the horse feed. And that's what he was doing. So anyway, Jeff said, you going to be okay?

And I said, oh, yeah. I got my 44 here. It'll be okay. So he said, okay, well, I'll go ahead and take off. So he took off and then went searching around for my 44, looking at everything. I was like, man, well, I'll go ahead and take off. So he took off, and then I went searching around for my.44, looking at everything. I was like, man, it's not here. Where is it?

And come to find out, I had it underneath the seat of the truck, and I just forgot I got to get it. So I went, ah, no big deal. You know, usually you can go up there and just yell at them, and then, you know, they'll go away. Well, went up there and yelled at them, and he come, stuck his head out of the door. He had chewed a hole through the door

and was eating horse feed. And then he came charging me, and the only thing I had was a tree to climb up to that was right by the lake. So I skinnied up the tree, and he hit that tree, and he tried crawling up after me and he made sure I was there. And he would, as long as I was there, okay, he went back in. And every time I would try to come down out of the tree, he would hit it again. And he actually got a one

point and I was having to kick him in the nose. One time he actually got up there and grabbed a hold of my foot and was trying to pull me down out of the tree, and I was kicking him in the face. So I said, well, I'm just going to stand here. Let him get comfortable in the shed. So he went back, and there was a cabin that was about two miles away. I knew it had a rifle in it. And so I finally, after 20 minutes,

I'll never forget standing on the branches there and my instep just really getting sore. I just couldn't hardly take it anymore. So I jumped down. Now or never, I jumped down. And, man, I just started running for all it was worth to this cabin. And I looked behind me, and he wasn't following me.

So I went there. It was a.308. He only had three shells for it. Came back up and stuck my head up over the bank. And yeah, sure enough, he was there eating all the food that I brought in. But he looked so much smaller. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, maybe he looks smaller

because I've got a gun now, you know? So I went ahead and took care of it. And then I leaned the rifle up against the tree and I started carrying lumber, made one load of lumber and came back, got another load of lumber, a tube of six on my shoulder. And when I came up over the lip, all of a sudden, the big bear that had me treed, coming around the corner, started running at me. And I just took the two-by-six, threw it at it real quick, and then put on the brakes trying to avoid the two-by-six. It didn't give me time to grab the rifle and shoot it.

Get the right bear, yeah. Yeah, but it was really like, wow, big man, I've got a gun now. The bear shrinks. Yeah, pretty, pretty funny. So I got to know now, the third one that attacked you. The third one. I thought that was two and three. No, no.

One was an innocent bystander. Yeah. I was replacing a piling underneath the barn, and it was out there. So I had dug out the piling, and I was laying prone on the ground, and I had my head and my shoulders down in the hole trying to dig out loose dirt from the bottom. So I'm just laying there prone. I must have looked. I wasn't moving or anything, just my shoulders. And then all of a sudden, next thing I know,

something's pulling me back. It's like, whoa, something just grabbed a hold of me, just like I was on a bungee cord. Started backing up. I still got the scars on my shins from it. And turned around, and it was a bear had hold of my leg. He was backing up. Another black bear.

Yeah, another black bear. He was backing up. Another black bear. Yeah, another black bear. He was backing off. But, you know, in his defense, he just thought I was dead, you know. And I rolled over and just started kicking at him. And he was as surprised as why I was. He dropped me like a hot potato and took off through the woods. So he lived to tell about it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it wasn't his fault. I was just supposed to be dead. Once he found out I was alive, he was like, okay, okay, I'm just kidding. My bad. Yeah, my bad. And then there was one other time with a small grizzly in sheep camp, I had, during the spring, I had, and this was one thing that I thought was really cool. During the spring, I had broken my leg,

and I had to be medevaced out of the lodge with a chopper and all that. And so anyway, I go in, they get the calf, they set the leg and all that, and I ended up going back out to the lodge because I needed to be there. That was home, you know. And usually, you know, in the summer, you know, there are bears in the yard every day just about. And you just get out there, you get along with them.

You know, you don't approach them. Everybody gets along just fine. But I got out there and the first bear that comes out, oh, look at this, a bear, you know. And I'm out on the deck. He saw me, and all of a sudden, he started chasing me and ran into the lodge and closed the door. And he hit the door. Then he got off the deck, and then I went back out. And again, it was like

he was going to get me, and finally he went away, and that happened like two other times that summer. I'm like, why are these bears so mad at me all of a sudden? Then I go out to sheep camp, and the hunters are out on a sheep, and I'm at camp. I'm in kind of the kitchen area we have set up in the base camp. And all of a sudden, I see this little straggly grizzly walk around the outside of the weather port, and I don't have my rifle with me. So we're kind of the same distance from the tent. I run to the tent real quick while he's going over there. He sees me start heading over that way.

I start heading over there, grab the gun, start running back into the, so I can get some distance between me and him, back into the kitchen area. And next thing I know, this little grizzly had got, and he had reached over and knocked me over with my paw, and I fell on the ground and then rolled over and shot him. And I stood up and was like, what is going on? Why are these bears all of a sudden so mad at me? And then the light bulb came on.

It's like, ding, ding, you look like a wounded animal. I'm in a cast. I'm hobbling around. Oh, yeah. Nature at its finest. And I thought, yeah, that's what's going on. I'm just hobbling around. They're seeing me as an easy prey, wounded animal.

At least that's my theory on the whole thing. It just seemed like it made sense to me all of a sudden. Because I'm a nice guy. Why else would they be mad at me? Yeah, you're like an old gunfighter, man. I don't know about the old gunfighter. So talk about how you go off to start business by yourself and ride off on a horse and go make a homestead and start a lodge that you're going to guide out of. Well, that's...

Because that's shit that just doesn't happen anymore. Maybe it does. I don't know if it does or not. To me, it was just... Yeah. Well, on that note, I was going to ask you, did you ever, through all these years, did you ever meet someone that was like a peer to you? And you're like, oh, you've kind of done the same thing that I have all these years and

became buds with them or knew of them? I actually did one time. And he's pretty high profile. He's dead now, but when I was doing my float instruction, I took the float plane to meet him once. Yeah, because you got a pilot's license. Yeah, Dick Perenke. Ever since I was a kid, I admired what he did.

I liked what he did by hand and drug everything in by hand. Of course, he didn't have any horses or anything, but he had just gone out to Twin Lakes and built that beautiful cabin out there, lived out there by himself, and that's what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do. I guess he was somewhat my inspiration. I remember when I first got to know him, I read the book

One Man's Wilderness. Yeah, and I met him and nice guy in the world too. You know, it wasn't like he was some kind of crazed hermit, you know,

that you show up and get off my land. He was just really a very, very nice person. He's kind of older too when he did that, right?

Oh, he did, yeah. He was in his mid-50s or something. How do you know he him, Pounder? I don't know how I found out about him, but I used to, there's like a,

you can watch like 10 minutes of Alone in the Wilderness. It's like a PBS documentary about it. Oh, like some old dude washing gravel for his floor and whatnot makes a cabin? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's dad likes that movie. Yeah, man.

So I found out about him through that, yeah. How do you spell his last name, Bunk? What's that through that. How do you spell his last name, Buck? What's that, no? How do you spell his last name? I can't spell it for you. P-R-O-E-N-K-E. Buck can even spell podcast. Isn't there an H in there somewhere?

Might be an H in there. I was going to ask you about him, because everything that you're saying sounds exactly like similar. Yeah, yeah. When I was a kid, I about him because everything that you're saying sounds exactly like similar. Yeah. When I was a kid, I just really, really enjoyed that book. I just lay awake. In Nome, I had to sleep in a broom closet.

That was my room. So it was a little room, and I'd read my book, and that was one of my favorite books I remember. So there you are. You ride off into the woods to go set up your own, to find your own property. Right, yeah. And that's when Jay Hammond was our governor. And as Dan knows, he's probably one of the best governors Alaska's ever had. He's got a good reputation.

Well, he sure does. He was the— He's like the Ronald Reagan of governors. Yeah. I mean, he He's like the Ronald Reagan of governors. Yeah. I mean, he was all for the people. You know, he wanted...

And of course, he was a guide. He was a pilot. His nickname's Bushrat, right? Bushrat Governor? Yeah, Bushrat. But he was dead set

on every Alaskan being able to have the opportunity to have their own piece of Alaska, have their land. So he came up with a land program called Remote Parcel. It was a remote parcel program to where you could go out, you could stake up. They had certain designated areas that they set aside just for this program.

You could stake up to 40 acres. You had to put your four corners in. You had to pay for the survey. And then after the state approved the survey, you paid what the state considered the fair market value. Now, you got a discount. You got a 50% discount for being a long-time Alaskan. You got a discount.

If there wasn't a road to it, you got a discount. If there wasn't power to it, discount, discount, discount, discount. You were saying there's even a discount. I think you were telling me this. Even a discount for whether it was a southerly or northerly exposure. Oh, yes. Yeah. And that was one of the – and they listed the discounts that I was given once I got the title to do the land.

I had a percent taken off of what they considered a fair market value because my cabin faced north and not south. They were doing everything they could. Yeah, the no power discount, the no road discount, the long time Alaska discount. Right. So what did you pay for the place? So it ended up that I didn't, I thought I had a lot more than 40 acres with what I staked because I staked the whole south side of my lake. But it actually only ended up being like 26 acres.

So you screwed up? Yeah. You were allowed 40, you went up to 26? I was, what, 21 years old. I had no idea what 40 acres, I thought, man, this is more land than I'll ever use. So anyway, and I was shaken. I'm just a poor trapper out there. I mean, I don't have any money.

Because you went off and found this place on horseback. Yeah. Just looking at a map. Right, yeah. That was before GPSs and all that. I just loaded up all the horses and, well, let's go that way. It's got to be over here somewhere. So we were snaking our way through the trees,

and all of a sudden I kind of saw an opening in the trees. I said, that's got to be the lake over there. And the lake is actually a glorified beaver pond. It's real small. It's got good grayling in it. Oh, man, grayling, rainbow, yeah. And so took the horses and started wandering over that way and um remember i came out of the north or the uh the upper end of the lake and when we came out of the tree bright beautiful sunny day

there was a moose out there this was the end of july there was a moose out there. This was the end of July. There was a moose out there. He'd be going underwater and he'd come back and lily pads were dripping off of his antlers. It was just funny. I was like, this is it. This is where I want to be. I wanted the southern exposure. I took the horses and I started riding around the opposite side of the lake

but it was just all swampy. It was like I don't know what, 40, 50 yards of swamp before you actually got to some dry land. And it was just really disappointing. And finally made the whole circle of it. Then I came to the outlet of the lake and came on to the only place where you've got dry land all the way down to the lake.

And that's where I went ahead and decided to stake the land. And when I staked it, I didn't know at the time that it had that nice little bench, you know, where the lodge is now up above the lake. I didn't find that out until later. And it just ended up, you know, all the planets aligned, and it just kind of made a dream come true. So you staked the whole thing out and sent your form off in the mail, and you're sweating it, thinking it's going to be a shitload of money. Yeah, I'm thinking, how am I going to come up with $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or whatever? And I opened it up in the envelope, and it ended up being $600.

After this time, I said, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I can scrape up 600 bucks somewhere. That's just a couple of Wolverine. So you like start dragging, cutting logs and dragging them with your horse and build a whole damn cave. After that, of course, I'm walking on cloud nine. I've got my own land, you know.

And actually from where the lodge is now, you couldn't even see the lake because it was that heavily treed. So I started dropping trees and pulling them in to start building the lodge and just clearing the land. And just everything started snowballing. I just started working on it. Because when you say lodge, it's like it functions as your hunting lodge, but it's a cabin. Yeah, it's basically a cabin. And you got outbuildings.

In Webster definition, it would be considered a lodge. It's a gathering place. Well, because you have other cabins you built for guests over the years and built a barn. And plus, I say it's a lodge, so it's a lodge. Yeah. build the barn and and plus i say it's a lodge so it's a lodge yeah but i feel that like people hear lodge and they think that that kind of like fakey you know that kind of like fake faux western kind of lodge where you where you cut out little caribou moose out of sheet metal and whatnot and hang on everything yeah have flamingos pink flamingos in the yard that kind

of thing no it's like a it's like a bush cabin, man. Yeah. But very comfortable. Oh, you pretty much have all the comforts of home. Yeah, you drink rainwater. It does have an outhouse, but for totally off the grid, I've got solar power with inverters,

so I'm not having to run generators to supply everything. The refrigerator freezer runs off propane. You know, the stove, of course, is propane. And you fly in and out in your own float plane? Mm-hmm, yeah. Gave up on horses? Yeah, we got rid of the last horses in 95. Because they just died off.

Well, yeah, and, you know, they were always just glorified pets anyway. They were worth the weight in gold in August and September. Other than that, they were just a pain in the ass, you know, and just a glorified pet. And, yeah, I mean, they all had their personalities, and we, you know, really enjoyed them. You stood the lodge using horses, though. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You used them to haul the logs in for the for the lodge yeah and lift them uh lift them yeah and have a rope pull over uh you know one end or one one side of it and then on the other side have we'll have old poncho you know to pull them up uh you know skids from one side of the other yeah how long would the horses last uh during those like were as a working functioning animal years wise uh well i had i'd heard that i'd heard the poncho uh he didn't die until he was like 30 something you know years old so he was pretty pretty tough as far as the you know all the other horses i'm not sure when they died but when when we got rid of them, they were probably 9, 10 years old.

And they were still good, rangy working horses. Yeah, wow. Did someone come get them or how did you get them out of there? Yeah, let me see. Ended up riding them over to the other side of the, up through Rainy Pass and up on the other side there. And then we actually sold some of them to Rainy Pass as well. So some of those horses, it wasn't just a one-way ticket. Some of those horses made it back out.

No, no, no, no, no. It was a one-way ticket. They never saw town again. Okay. So they stayed in the bush.. So they stayed in the bush. Yeah, they stayed in the bush. They just went to the other side of the Alaska Range. You know, rode them over there.

How did you learn how to build your cabin? Watching that old movie about the guy washing gravel. Alone in the wilderness. I remember getting a book. Who's the guy? What was his name? Tom Walker. You remember?

He had a book on a how-to to notch logs. It was actually a how-to book. Yeah, he kind of wrote as a how-to. But Tom Walker, he was actually more noted as an outdoor photographer. But he did kind of the same thing. Him and his wife went out and built a place out in the woods. They just wanted to get off the grid and live in the woods. And he made a book about it and had a lot of pictures.

Fortunately, he had pictures in it. So you're scribing and saddle-notching and all that kind of. Oh, yeah. And actually, there's nothing to it. It's got pictures in it, you know. So you're scribing and saddle notching and all that kind of. Oh, yeah, yeah. And actually, you know, there's nothing to it. If you pay attention to it, there's nothing to it. You can make, you know, you have to make sure that you cove the inside of your saddle notch, you know, so when you compress them, it compresses together real well.

And, you know, you can do the full suite of scribe it which which i didn't do you know i'd lay lay the logs on the ground so i'd have three logs on the ground take a chainsaw run in between them to uh get get them closer to you know to where they were they were matching and then you'd put one up and then you'd scribe your uh saddle notch and then you'd scribe your saddle notch and then you'd uh uh first uh rough it out with a with like a sheet sheet rock knife the line you know and you'd use your chisel and chisel out the wood and then use a the chainsaw to gouge it out and then um roll it over and there it is yeah you chicken with moss the old school way or No, I used strips of fiberglass. Okay.

Yeah, I didn't want to do the moss thing. I can imagine. And actually, Dan, they were doing that method of just running the chainsaw bar right in between when they're close together. They marry up better? Yeah.

I can picture that. And then you use log dogs to hold them together and do it again. Log dogs? Yeah, they're called log dogs. It's like jaw dogs, right? They're bars that are hooked at each end. You drive them in and it holds the logs together. Yeah. Yeah. When you talk about, and I don't want to present this as though you disparage your clients, because you certainly don't.

But when you talk about how hunters are becoming more and more cupcakes all the time, are you doing it because you're comparing it to what you've been through, or are you doing it because you're comparing it to other hunters from the past clients yeah i guess i guess i still still live old school i know what i went through i mean if it would uh if it was raining and misery you know and and i, I'm not, in those days, there was no fleece or anything. It was either wool or blue jeans, you know. And me, I'd hunt in blue jeans. I'd just get wet and I'd stay wet and just didn't care.

And maybe it was just because I don't enjoy that now, but at the time I didn't even think about it. But it just. Being all wet all the time. Yeah, being all wet all the time or having to slog through the alders or eat your food while water's running off your hat. None of that stuff ever bothered me.

A lot of the... Hunting has changed a lot in the old traditional hunting ways. And I kind of, for some reason, want to blame it on the, since the electronic age has kind of taken over. It's just, things have just become too easy, you know, for hunters. And, you know, there's a couple of forces that are working here too. Explain. A lot of them, these hunts have gotten to where they're so expensive.

You know, there's some of the guys that can't afford to go home without having been successful on their hunt, you know, simply for the fact that they couldn't afford to do another one. They've saved all their life to do this. And so they have to have it. Well, you guide some of the more expensive stuff. We do, yeah. Sheep and moose now, it's grown to be one of the high-dollar hunts,

and of course, brownberries too. So guys save up their whole life. Yeah. And so the whole, you know, the pressure's on them when they come up not to enjoy their hunt, enjoy their whole surroundings, go out and just, you know, legitimately hunt the animals, look for them. They need the animals to be there. They can't go home without one. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people, they're the, you know, loggers, farmers, blue-collar workers,

that that kind of money is a lot of money to them. And, you know, how in the world can they go home and face their family, face their wife, face their friends with them thinking, you spent all that money and you didn't get anything? Yeah. So they're coming into it with a different set of expectations. Exactly, right, yeah. And then there's the other force, too,

that there's the ones that, you know, that kind of money is just pocket change. You know, they leave, you know, they leave up there, and they're shooting a predesignated sheep, one that's already been picked out for them. And then they shoot the sheep. The next day, they're right back down to cocktail hour with their friends. So if that person doesn't get a sheep, there's the humiliation factor. How am I going to face my friends and tell them that, you know, I didn't get a sheep? So a lot of people, you know, the fun has gone out of the hunting because the pressure is on for them to be successful. Talk about the technology issues.

Well, you know, back in the days when I first started, the plane dropped you off. You waved bye-bye, said, see you in 10 days. And now you've got the in-reaches. You've got the satellite phones. You've got the GPSs, ePIRBs, everything. I mean, you can't hide anymore. And it's a thing where, oh, we're not seeing much.

We need to call somebody to come in and either move us or look around. Or, you know, it's too easy to quit. It, you know. Because in the old days, you were there whether, you were just there. Yeah, you were there. No option to get out of there. If you got, if you were sick, you know, and I've had a hunter recently

that after two days he wasn't seeing much so all of a sudden he was sick and he needed out and just as soon as he got out it was a miraculous change. He was just fine,

you know. But I guess the point being is that it's just, it's too easy to give up where it, you know, back before the electronic age, if you have this ability to come out, to call somebody to, you know, come in and get you, you either hunted or you sat there and you pouted, you know. So what else are you going to do? And then, and get you, you either hunted or you sat there and you pouted. So what else are you going to do? And if you're not seeing much, you just keep on it. I mean, you just don't quit. And eventually it's going to happen.

But I feel like you're saying saying i understand you're saying two different things but i just want to clarify the two things because on one hand you feel that it's gotten so expensive where a sheep hunt a doll sheep hunt if you're if you're coming in you need to hire an outfitter guide doll sheep hunts what well over $12,000, right? Well over. We're on the lower end of the scale of the price of sheep hunts. We're probably about average to lower end. There's some sheep hunts that these outfitters, they have a complete air force, you know, super cubs, so they have to pay Air Force, you know, Super Cubs,

so they have to pay for a day. So their sheep hunts are going to be a lot higher. They're going to be up around $25,000, $30,000 range. Whoa. Yeah, 10 days. Yeah, but you're... And they do a lot of pre-scouting. Yes, before the season.

Yeah, and, you know, and I'm not going to begrudge those people to them. I mean, if they have that ability, and something has to pay for all those airplanes. Something has to pay for all that. And they're catering to the people that they will not take no for an answer. They paid for a sheep hunt. They're going to get a sheep.

I guess that's a question I don't really understand because you're saying that with the money, people come and they have to get a sheep or else it's humiliating to them. Or it's like an ego thing and they got to get a sheep. The hunt's a failure if they haven't. Yeah. But on the other hand, you're saying it's too easy to quit.

Yeah. So how do those things coexist? They have to get a sheep, but then they don't have what it takes to get the sheep and then they feel disappointed by the experience. Exactly. So then when that happens, then they're having to pass the buck to somebody, you know. Got you. So then it's, well, I didn't get my sheep because the river was high,

so the outfitter shouldn't have had me going when the water was high. Or I didn't get my sheep because there was no mayonnaise in camp for my sandwich. I'm serious. I mean, they'll come up with all these ridiculous little reasons why the whole hunt was a failure. And they'll come up with all these little things that culminate into one big thing to where the hunt was a failure. And a lot of this stuff, instead of being honest with themselves that they physically weren't able to do it, or it was beyond their physical means to actually do

it, even though the outfitter provided a good sheep area, provided them with a fair, fair chase hunt. You know, we had a tough first couple of days. We didn't see any sheep. So obviously, you know, I've been here two days, and I'm an expert on the sheep movements now. There aren't going to be no sheep here. You know, get me out of here. And it's just all them going back and convincing the people that they didn't get their animal

because they themselves had quit on it. It was somebody's fault, you know, because. And you feel that it's like, that there's something's happened where it's different than it was 20 years ago. Yeah, I mean, because. You're seeing people coming with different expectations. Yeah, I mean, because it was,

you didn't have the, you know, and another thing when you were, in those days when you're going out, you had to pretty much put everything, everything in your back and you had to go. A lot of the expectation then, they went in knowing full well that they were going to be miserable for 10 days. But they were going to hunt. Where now it's that with all the new equipment, with all this and that, that everything's perfect.

People feel like they solved the uncomfortable part. Yeah, and people feel like after having spent this money that they have bought this animal. Just the whole... I don't know. There's too much of this thinking that these animals are going to come in and surrender because they know they paid this much

for this hunt. But you still like the business, though. Oh, yeah, I do. I mean, you can't even... If people don't want to book a hunt with you, you can't even book a hunt with you. And that's not all hunters, either. There's still I mean, you can't even, if people want to book a hunt with you, can't even book a hunt with you. And that's not all hunters either. There's still the hunters out there that, yeah, I mean, that's what,

they could be millionaires, but that's what they're wanting to get away, get out there and do the fair chase. They don't want a plane to fly around and spot that. They want to find that sheep on their own. They want to be the one going around the corner. Hey, nobody helped me find, you know, them and their guide. Nobody helped us find this sheep. You know, we hunted it on our own. Give me a bag of granola bar. Let's go out there. Let's hit it. Let's, let's, let's sidewash up on the side of the mountain. Let's, let's, let's sleep underneath a tree. Let's sleep wash up on the side of the mountain. Let's sleep underneath a tree. Let's sleep under the stars.

And this day and age, I'd say that's maybe 30% of a lot of the hunters you get that are actually. And when they get their, I'd say probably 75% of the hunters now, once they get their animal, it's, okay, get me back to town. I got to get home. There's still a good proportion of them like what we get that I don't want to go home. I'm on vacation. I want to stay out here. But those kind of hunters are getting further and further away. In your mind, what makes a good client?

And what makes a good hunter? A good client is one that is going to go out there and realize that everything is not going to be perfect. There's going to be times when they're going to be uncomfortable. There's going to be times when it's going to rain. There's going to be times, you know, dealing with some of the elements. You know, more than anything, it's, yeah, dealing that they're going to have to deal with elements that are going to be uncomfortable.

They're going to have to realize there's going to be times when the game isn't going to be, in a particular area, isn't going to be as plentiful. I mean, there's no fences around these areas. They have to go in there knowing that they're going to have to hunt for their animal. The animal's not going to commit a surrender. So what makes a good hunter in your mind? One that has a positive attitude every day. And that when he's out there hunting, he's happy and just having a great time and not stressed out thinking,

I've got to have this animal. And when's it going to happen? So you feel the contentment pays off or the happiness pays off. You know, the hunter that wakes up, walks out of the tent in the morning and looks around, sees where he's at,

sees a mountain, whether it be in moose country where you're either in a swampy area, but you're outdoors. There's more to the hunt than killing the animal. Do you feel like optimism helps get animals killed? You're speaking Yanni's language if you say yes.

Well, I mean, optimism helps. I don't know if it draws the animal in. Oh, look, there's a happy person. I'm going to go talk to them. I don't think it's anything like that. But you know what I mean? I think you just said it. What Yanni means. Prior to that, you said

that you've got to have a good attitude all the time. I think an attitude problem, maybe there is just some something out there that you know, that a person Like cosmic forces. Yeah, a person is rewarded for going out there and having forces. Yeah, a person is rewarded for going out there

and having a positive attitude. A person is rewarded for going out there and just enjoying being in the outdoors. And maybe it's that attitude too that naturally makes them get out there and hit it harder and enjoy it more. Now you're speaking yanni's language because yanni believes that uh you tell him what tell him tell everybody what

you believe i believe a lot of things can you narrow it down a little bit how you feel that um that you're not sure what the controlling mechanism is. You're not sure like what forces in the universe control this, but you feel that radiating an optimism. Oh no, no, no, not at all. I feel that like optimism directly correlates to your success because you go

out there and instead of being like, probably ain't going gonna see shit today and walking through the woods not you know not like not expecting to see something over the next hill not being ready to see something over the next hill not being like all constantly thinking like oh it's about to happen and actually being ready in the moment and and like foreseeing it in your head just like they say like even though you've never done something, if you run that scenario through your head a gazillion times, you're going to perform better when that moment happens.

So constantly in your head, being ready and being positive. Because if you wake up and look out of your tent and go, probably not going to see any sheep today. Well, guess what? Probably not. Probably not. You know, Steve, he's really set a mouthful. I mean, I think he's on to

something because it really does feel that way sometimes. And you know, it kind of affects everybody in camp too. When people have that attitude, you know, it can kind of slough off onto the guys or whatever. You just kind of

get a little discouraged sometimes. But keeping that positive attitude, it seems like, yeah, maybe. Here's where it falls apart. Let's say there's a sheep hunter or whatever. There's a squirrel hunter, okay? And he's like so positive and so optimistic that he's like, I'm not even leaving the tent.

It's in a comedy. I know, I know that if I sit right here looking out the door of this tent, a sheep will come up here. And then you're just a dumbass. You know, you may laugh, but that's probably actually happened. And it's happened with us a few times where we've gotten lucky.

It doesn't happen all the time. Oh, everybody's got those stories. Oh, I know. Yeah, but they're so far between. But you remember them. But Giannis used to, when Giannis was guiding, he would have to give,

he would give pep talks to try to, he took it upon himself to feed the client the type of optimism that he felt was necessary to articulate it for him. Did it work? I thought so. He used to do little pep talks for me.

But for some reason, quit. Don't do crew pep talks. Ran out of pep. You still got a little pep. You'd be lost without Giannis. Oh, yeah, man. If Giannis quits, I quit. He rains you in every now and then I bet

yeah no if he got out of the biz I'm getting out of the biz 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

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you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com meet. onxmaps.com meet. Welcome to the

OnX Club, y'all. You already got a job, Buck. I'd let you. You're the only qualified candidate. I got a job? Meaning what? Hitting the last golf hitters. Yeah.

So let's say someone wants to come hunt with you. They're kind of shit out of luck, right? Unless they want to wait until 2030 or whatever it is. Oh, no, no. We've still got openings here and there. We pretty much stay booked up on the average for a couple of years in advance. I mean, we've got hunters right now

that are booked out into 2022. How do they know what they want to be doing in 2022? I don't know. And that's actually what I asked this guy. And this was like two years ago when he booked it. It's like, we can be dead by then.

And of course, you need to put a deposit down to hold a hunt. So he's like, in five years or four years, I would like to go sheep hunting. Here's my deposit. I said, why are you doing this now? He said,

well, I just want to lock into price now. And you know, it's a good thought too. Maybe he's retiring or something. You know? Oh, so you honor that

if he books it now. Yes. Even in 2022, he gets to pay the 2018 price. Right. Yeah. If he books in 2018

for the year 2022, I'm going to honor that. Dude, but he could be divorced or married married i don't know what he's got going on there's a hundred things that could happen yeah so a hundred things that could happen to me too you know what's mostly causing the these big increases in the prices is it just gas and i think i think it's just because they can. I mean, people pay them, you know. And then, you know, I do the shows, and yeah, there's a lot of this. God, I can't believe how much these hunts cost now, you know. And they keep going up and say, yeah, I know. And if you don't keep up, you know, keep with the going trend, the going price, then there's something wrong with you as an outfitter.

Why aren't you charging as much? Something must be wrong with you if it's not. Yeah, exactly. No one wants some bargain basement, huh? Yeah, so it's not that I'm greedy. I'm just trying to stay with it. And I've had other outfitter's come up and say, man, you need to raise your prices

because they see that. And of course, they don't want a quality outfitter giving away a cheaper hunt. Have you, I feel like you told me this, you've kind of lost your, you've lost your taste for hunting personally. Yeah, not so much. You like guiding more than taste for hunting personally. Yeah, not so much the taste of it. You like guiding more than you like hunting now.

I just kind of lost the enthusiasm. Yeah, the enthusiasm, I guess, because I've hunted so much and just have taken everything and gone through the whole thing. Myself, personally, going on a personal hunt, it just doesn't thrill me as much as it used to. Just like trapping, too. I trapped for years and years and years and loved it. And that's not that I, but now, been there, done that,

that doesn't really hold that much appeal for me anymore there's a lot of times at the end of a hunt i'll have have a client say hey you need to come down after the hunting season and come whitetail hunting with us and you know sitting in a um sitting in a tree stand at you know 20 degrees in the midwest looking out over a cornfield. Man, last thing I want to do is, you know, after hunting for a full season, go hunting again. I'm going to go lay on a beach in Hawaii or something. Yeah. Well, at what age did that start to fade, the enthusiasm's fade?

I don't know. I guess I really first noticed it probably six, seven, eight years ago maybe. And it's not that if I go out and do it, I enjoy it. And maybe it's because too that I live that lifestyle every day. I've got it any day of the week I want. So maybe it's just kind of a thing where I'm not, it's not something I'm never going to be able to do again. And there's times I'll get up,

just like we were talking about moose, I still get just the biggest thrill about going out and calling in moose. I mean, that's fun. Yeah, well, you're all excited about our hunt right now. Oh, absolutely I am, yeah. You act about other people's hunts the way people act about their own hunt. Yeah, because I know what you're going to be seeing when you get out there.

I know where you're going to be, the country you're going to be in, and me knowing you the way I do, it's right up your alley. You're just going to be pleasantly surprised what you're going to see out there. The country, the beauty, the ruggedness of the whole thing. So how much longer do you think you'll run your business for? Probably till I die. I mean, the only way I can afford

to retire is if I die. Yeah, but how much money are you making off those birch bowls you make? I'm not making much because I give them away to people like you.

I know. And Giannis oh we feel guilty about it and we made up a deal today we made up a little wager by which we would determine which of us got first picks out of the two bowls

I thought you already picked out the one you want no I know the one I want but I haven't picked it yet and then you know I caused recently I caused great physical harm to Giannis

and so that's weighing on my mind but then we made this side wager by which we would determine who gets which bowl. And the wager kind of fell apart, so we're going to keep struggling with it. Yeah, but Buck cuts burls off old-growth birch and hollows it out into beautiful bowls. Do you ever think about selling them online, direct, instead of selling them to tourist shops? I've actually, yeah, really thought about doing my own website with it. Dude, it'd be so much better. Here's the thing.

When you take that beautiful bowl that you made up at your lodge, okay, and you bring it to some tourist shop, and some hoser comes off a cruise ship and buys it, he don't know you, he don't know the story buys it. He don't know you. He don't know the story behind it. No, you're right. He does it. Then he dies, and this kid brings it down to Goodwill.

If you had a place where you sold them for more money, I'll sell the damn things for you. Where it was like, here's the story of the guy that made this, and here's how he goes about it, and this is a buck-bolding damn bowl. It'd be way better. Because that way it wouldn't be falling into the hands of the undeserving. You're probably right there.

It wouldn't be as likely to fall into the hands of the undeserving. One're probably right there. It's likely to fall into the hands of the undeserving. One of my guides that has been guiding with me, he's been with me for, this would have been his 23rd year. He makes knives now. And each knife- He's the European, right? Yeah, from Sweden.

Every knife he sells, there's a little biography with it that he goes and puts with it and tells a little bit how it happened, his background on making knives and everything and how the knives came to be. So, yeah, I think you're right. I don't know that. I don't really know if that's what. Yeah, something.

But it is. I don't know that people are like, I don't think they're picturing how the bowl came into existence. Well, because, yeah, isn't it the whole backstory of the, like the birch in your area happen to have more of these burls? Well, they're old growth. Yeah. Basically, a burl is just a fungus, you know.

And so there'll be, you'll find pockets of them. So the tree creates the burl as a reaction to the fungus? To the fungus, right, yeah. And they're actually pretty rare, but, you know, when you find a birch that's going to have a burl on it, it's just like hunting mushrooms or something, you know. Stay right there and look around at the other birds because there's going to be probably other birds that have them.

You'd be in their pocket of burls. Yeah, yeah, because that fungus will have affected those trees in that area. What kind of markup do these cruise ship tourist shops, what kind of markup do they put on your birch bowls? I have no idea. I just know that it's just like they get 39%. Where did they come up with the figure 39%? I don't know. Three-niner.

But that's where they make up. Yeah, sell the bowls. Do you sell them direct? But it doesn't. There was one time that this guy that makes the knives I was talking about, he talked me into getting a booth at the Saturday Market there. And I just finished 30 bowls. So I thought, okay, I'll try it.

And I'm thinking I'm going to have to go there and just sit there and maybe one or two bowls or something. But I went there and sold like 25 of those bowls just in one day, just like that. A few hundred bucks a piece. Some of them were, yeah. But, I mean, they went just like, I was amazed at the reaction of them. See, that's more acceptable to me to do it that way. Yeah. And some guy throwing off a cruise ship.

And it was fun, too. But I've never, since that time, been able to get ahead enough with that much of an inventory. How many can you make in a year? I mean, if I dedicated myself to right now. I should say, how many do you make in a year? Back before the fire, I've been recently consumed with the last few, few years and doing some rebuilding out the lodge after the fire.

But I could probably, if I dedicated just going full time on making the bowls, I'd probably at different stages, about 100, 150 in a summer probably I could do. If you had to give up moose hunting or give up carving birch bowls, which would you pick? Give up moose hunting or give up birch bowls? Yeah. Wow. I don't understand why I would have to give one

of the other of them up. Because God came down and put a gun to your head. Yeah, he said, okay, yeah. Damned if you do or damned if you don't. Yeah. I guess I would- You don't like that kind of question? I guess I would just have to give up the,

well, yeah, because it just doesn't make any sense to me. I could shoot a moose and come back and make a birch bowl the same day. That's fair enough, man. That's fair enough to question the question. Yeah, I suppose I would give up the moose hunting. What? I'm sorry. I just really enjoy making those bowls.

They're beautiful bowls, man. Oh, they're works of art. I've seen them. And I like it because I look at it and I think about, you know, I look at it and think about you, you know, and the stories you told me and kind of like your place and big pile of burls you got laying everywhere. Oh, yeah, you saw them too, didn't you? When you were out there, you saw them.

Tell you what, I don't know if you remember this. First time I went out to your place, there was a moose shed antler laying right, basically right where you park your plane. Yeah. And then when you had the fire, that antler got all burned up. It did, yeah. It did. That is displayed, that burnt.

Charred moose antler. Charred moose antler, which stank to high heaven. Danny, you remember this. Yeah. When I brought it out, but eventually out in danny's wood shop yeah that is displayed in a very prominent place in my home like where well the one piece of heirloom sort of furniture that my wife has from her family is this i can't remember what you call it man uh armoire yeah it's not a word i use lightly an armoire it's up on top of that and i've had people try to buy it from me but why i mean it's a crazy burned up giant moose antler man you look at it and you're like i haven't seen one of those before plus it's a crazy antler and the way it's got that weird extra time yeah that drop time and so it's like a it's like a flame itself because that drop time

holds it up so the the paddle the paddle reaches up to the sky but it flames out in the shape of a flame yeah and it's flame scarred and burnt and people come in and i just had someone try to buy it off me wow for why i mean my process selling during the process selling my house what was the appeal of that thing to him then because it's crazy looking yeah it's beautiful it's like uh it's found art man you don't know what you gave up and why i want it back now i was gonna say you might as well throw all your sheds into another building that you lighted up. Yeah.

Oh, and man, that was so sad when the barn went up because the whole upper barn, the loft, was just stacked with years of sheds that I'd found. There was a whole pile of them up in there valuable sad i guess i don't know from what they are but but to me it was more and more sentimental thing all these years of these sheds and now they're gone and then i remember i had just uh there was 113 of the birch poles that i had back in the barn done that i would yeah they were almost done i just had to finish and just uh finish sanding on

them all up in flames man yeah hey danny talk about the great antler theft you suffered yeah i uh i had been accumulating both shed and shot moose antlers and i had quite a stack of them quite a stack of them yeah, my friends call it the pile of shame. The pile of shame. And when I moved over to this house, they took up residence under the eve of my workshop out in the backyard. He used to wrap them around a spruce tree. And he had a stack way up the damn tree.

Where'd you find them all? I mean, just in your travels out there? Yeah, just traveling for work and traveling for hunting trips. and a lot of them were just moose-eyed shot or bad people with people yeah it's caribou antlers and you name it just a great big pile antlers out there somebody just walked in and stole them all yeah somebody came over the fence from the park out back and you know there's a market for them now for the like the dog chew trade you know and it's been a hot ticket for theft around anchorage man and i a friend of mine that lives right in the neighborhood here he had

something he came home from work one day there's a guy on a ladder trying to take him off inside of his garage then oh hardcore jeffy got ripped off that's what i'm talking about you better put a chain around that one you got outside your door up there then oh every time i come home i check and make sure it's still there. Yeah, I love that. I love those antlers. That's a nice rack. Rig a hand grenade up that side of the house and the pin to the antlers, man.

Yeah. But yeah, one morning, I was just knocking around the yard and something didn't feel right. Look, the whole pile is just gone. Just gone. How many would you estimate were in there? Oh, maybe like six or eight sheds and then probably, no, more than that, man. Including caribou antlers, probably maybe a couple dozen sheds and then probably eight or ten just like sets of antlers together

on a skull plate that were shot. Just gone. Just gone. Yeah. Some therapy dog somewhere chewing on your stolen antlers. Yeah. Hardcore Jeffy got interviewed for an APRN story that ran locally here on the radio about stolen moose antlers. And that got picked up nationally.

We packed that bull out and he was yeah yeah we helped pack that bull out that got stolen off his garage and then uh yeah and then he told that story about his buddy who got all the antlers stole out of his backyard and that was me so that kind of story made the rounds yeah yeah no so watch your moose antlers man what do they what do they uh these people take what what you said dog chews are they are they because some of them are pretty popular for carving too right i mean yeah that could be the same market i don't know yeah i think that the market well well and also chandelier shit the chant the antler chandeliers became fashionable, enough where they started casting antlers, fake antlers. But antler chandeliers started to establish a market.

And then there's the Asian aphrodisiac thing too. That's not velvet, but that's like a- They raise, in New Zealand, they raise red deer to harvest velvet. When I was living in Nome every summer, they'd come up there and they'd bring the reindeer herds in and have big old loppers and take their antlers off. And there'd be a lot of the Asians standing around buying them. I mean, they're standing there buying them. And then the chew toy, they just take,

they buy elk antlers and chop them up in like three, four-inch pieces, and they kind of sand the edges off. Yep. Dudes walk in and, you know, it's like each little chunk, each little chunk, $7, $8, $9. I mean, it probably depends where you are. This friend of mine that makes the knives, every year him and his daughter go up there early summer. I guess it's early summer.

Yeah, early summer up off the hall road. They go in there and they come back with a big truckload of shed caribou antlers. Okay. And that's what he does. He has a bandsaw. He just boxes and boxes of these little cut-up. What in the world do you do with these? And he has these little packages, little dog treats.

Wow. That's a hard-working dog that can get through a caribou antler. Oh, I know it. That's a way different antler. I know it. And I was like, wow, where'd you come up with that idea? He said it's the going trend. You know, that's what the.

And I think, too, I think it's like, I don't want to belabor this too much, but I think it's as those markets emerged and they became a dollar value. This is my own personal theory. As the markets emerged, the chew toy, the chandelier market, et cetera, and there started to be a dollar value placed on antlers, I think it also drove interest in recreational antler pickers

who just pick them for their own collections. And I brought this up before, the same way like morels. I think that with a market for morels, where morels are like worth, you know, X dollars or $25 a pound, $30 a pound, on up and, you know, dried mushroom prices. I think people are like, oh, wow,

I'd like to go find some of those and eat them if they're that valuable. Valuable, exactly. And so it's like, it's just kind of funny the way that the antler, like antler collecting in our lifetimes has become this obsessive thing. Because it used to just be a shed antler. Now all of a sudden there's this attention that's drawn to them and they're considered a valuable thing to go after.

Yeah, once upon a time people walked past Indian arrowheads and didn't stoop over to pick them up. Oh, I know, yeah. You just looked at it like a beer can laying there. Yeah. Dan, you got any last things you want to ask Buck? Comments? Questions? No, it's been an interesting conversation.

I am very excited to get out in the Alaska range and poke around your home turf a little bit. Yeah, I call flight service. It looks like we're going to have a good day for flying tomorrow, so we're actually going to be able to get out. Good to hear. This is not how I envisioned spending my day. No, I know.

Yeah. Well, I tell you what, it's actually a good thing, though. I mean, if it's going to be this way, that you're stuck here and not stuck out there you know on the airstrip just sitting there waiting for the you know oh yeah get in yeah we did a little group exercise today we had nice dinner the ping pong tournament ping pong tournament yeah it's been fun dirt you got any uh final thoughts it might be too long to get into but i'm curious with the rebuild how uh has there been some nostalgia with

rebuilding your cabin you know decades after you did the initial build or you know i mean just the has there been some positive out of that experience after the fire oh actually yeah i mean i was um i was actually actually able to build something to improve on probably what, you know, some of the drawbacks I saw of what I had before. I was able to put something up and, you know, improve on what was there. But I'd still much rather have the old barn there and have the time that I've had to invest in rebuilding. I was just perfectly satisfied with what was there.

But at first it was overwhelming trying to start doing a rebuild. It's like, man, where do I start? And then now that I'm seeing the end of it too, it's kind of rewarding and satisfying knowing it's almost done. It's almost back to the way it was. But man, you lost all the stuff that it was filled with too. Snow machines, blower runners. There were so many people, and they're right, rightly so. After the fire, they said, well, at least you didn't lose the lodge.

But the real value of the place wasn't the lodge and what was in it. The real value of the place was everything that was in the barn and the shed. I mean, if you're talking monetary, if the lodge would have gone up, it would have just been a bunch of food and a bunch of dead animals on the wall that would have burned up, you know. But the barn and all those snow machines, the four-wheelers, the airplane stuff, I mean, just on and on. And I remember after the fire, we're sitting out there on the porch of the lodge, just exhausted.

We've been fighting it all night. And I thought, man, I needed something. And I needed the chainsaw, I remembered. I'm going to go grab the chainsaw. I'm jumping up out of the chair and running back to the barn. And I was like, oh, wow, there is no barn. There is no chainsaw. And then it was funny.

I needed a screwdriver. Something simple, a screwdriver. Everybody has a screwdriver laying around. I needed a screwdriver. I didn't have a screwdriver to just a simple little thing that I needed right then. Anyway, just the stuff that you're used to having on hand, like a hammer and all.

I had no hammer. I had no nothing. I had a fork that I had to use to try and, you know. But anyway, that's all. Thank God I had friends, family, that helped with the rebuild too. There are a lot of generous people out there that donated time and money.

Family, they got together a benefit to help raise money to rebuild. I'll never forget that. That was really something I had everybody banded together to help me rebuild. Pounder? You're a cool dude, Buck. I like your new hat.

Dude, I like that hat. I wish you'd let me trade you something for it. No. It's a genuine Hidden Alaska Outfitters baseball cap. I like that hat. I just want to see if there's any truth to all this resiliency I hear about you. No, it's all. Dude, he's got a tremendous amount of resilience, man.

You think we'd call him Ridge Pounder if he didn't? No, we'd call him Chris Gill. Yeah, well, there you go. Let's bring over Chris Gill. Yanni? There you go. Just bring over Chris Gill. Yeah, honey? What's the longest you ever stayed out there without going back to town? It was about six months. I think it was about 76 or 78, maybe even 75.

It's when the volcano, St. Augustine blew. St. Augustine or Mount St. Helens? No, no, no. It was Augustine because there was all this ash in the air. Is that a well-known volcano up here? It's a cooking inlet, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, we were,

I was actually scheduled to come out in December after being in there trapping. Then when the volcano blew, all this ash was in the air. Planes couldn't fly. It was pretty thick. I got stuck out there until February, so it would have been September through February, I guess. By your lonesome.

Yeah. I'm perfectly happy. I mean, I didn't have any, you know, sweethearts in town that I was missing or anything. I was out there with the dogs and the horses and just happy with, you know, my everyday meat diet. It's just fine. Man, one of the craziest things I'll always remember that still to this day I just picture it.

After that time, after being out there for so long, when you're out in the woods, you see no right angles. You see everything is symmetrical, there's curves, compounds. There's nothing you ever see that's naturally a complete right angle. And I remember jumping in a plane. After living out there, jumping in a plane, all of a sudden, we fly into Anchorage.

I'm flying over Anchorage, looking down, and wow, everything's right angles. Square buildings laid out on square grids. Everything just looked so unnatural. It was really surreal. It just really felt weird. Yeah, and I'll never ever forget thinking, wow, it just looked like a science fiction movie or something.

And it just dawned on me, you just come from a world where everything's round. Everything has a curve. And I it just dawned on me, you just come from a world where everything's round. You know, there's, everything has a curve that, and I kept trying to think, what have I seen out there that is a natural right angle? And I couldn't come up with anything, you know,

in nature that's a perfect right angle, like the streets and trails, you know? Yeah, the Mesoamericans, they like the, they like some hard edges you know but even like most uh most of the native american groups all the structures they lived in round structures oval structures no corners yeah you couldn't lean anything in a corner but can can can you think of anything natural that's in nature that has a natural complete right angle? My tooth. Just that tree branch that Danny was standing on when he shot that deer.

Danny's tree. No, you're right, though. It's funny that we stumbled culturally. We hit on this idea that we really like, though. Yeah. It's funny that we stumbled culturally. We hit on this idea that we really like a corner. Yeah. But I imagine it comes from, it's not that we really like a corner. I imagine it just comes from, yeah, it just comes from a structural, right? Structurally.

Yeah, probably, I guess. I don't know. But it just hit me just really spooky. For sure. I was not expecting to see that. I was just, hey, go into town. And then I said, wow, this is so weird. Everything is just a checkerboard.

I went to a lecture one time by a, this is my concluding thought. You good on concluders, Yanni? Yeah. I went to a lecture one time by a guy who'd done these uh huge canoe expeditions you know like he paddled the whole north shore lake superior and did all these other crazy canoe trips and he's saying that he was asking the audience he's like you know when you go out in the woods for a week how everything kind of slows down right and your senses pick up and you feel that your hearing kind of either improves or becomes

more in tune and you smell things you didn't smell and there's sort of you keep you kind of fall into this slower more contemplative deliberate rhythm yeah over the course of a week and he was saying uh he says you know when you're out for six months it still keeps happening at that same pace yeah like he hadn't found the end of it yet. Right. Which is, uh, you know, something I think most people aren't going to experience. No,

probably not. To see it go, to see that quietness go that long. Right. For me, um, it was the terrorist attacks. The 9-11.

9-11 stuff. Yeah. Changed, um, really changed things for me about being gone on longer trips. Because you got this sense. We one time went. To where you didn't. That something was happening. Yeah.

And you didn't want to be gone longer on the trips? It became like, I became more aware of the fact that you might have stepped out, but the world moved still. Yeah. We went on a float trip for deer one time when they were trying to settle the Gore Bush election. And they didn't know know we actually put off departure waiting to see how the election was going to go so well we better go anyway um went on a float trip got back they still hadn't figured it out yet you know and then you had and then the terror attacks uh and then it became like being i just remember like being away was just different different because you worry about that something had happened that some horrible thing had happened

and and you weren't in tune to it and then that kind of segued for me into having kids and then when you have kids and you've gone on long trips, there's always this nagging sense that something would happen. Something would go wrong and you wouldn't be there or whatever. That became harder to divorce yourself from this sort of societal, cultural, global momentum that was going on.

And now it is, man. It's like, it's not difficult to feel at peace. There is a peacefulness still, but it's hard to, for me, it's hard to just get the sense that like everything stopped and I'm just here now. Like I have this like thing in my head that something could be happening something horrible could be happening right yeah and you have no control over it either you know yeah it's just a thing that like you know it's part of the

falling from grace right that i think about especially with kids, man. I found that there's a huge element of guilt that goes into having kids entails a level of guilt that becomes uncomfortable. Just self-imposed. I think that I'm just governed by it in a way. Governed by it in a way you know governed by it in a way with kids right that like i don't know it's not nice but it is because it's

like i guess that's what keeps you on track that's what keeps me on track different people have different things to keep them on track and it could be and i've talked about this before i think like it could be that i'm not using the right word. That I'm like, oh, it's guilt, but maybe it's just commitment to your obligations. And I'm just articulating it wrong. Maybe it's just like a sense of duty. You could make it sound better

than just like this vague sense of guilt. Yeah, sense of duty, sense of obligation. So being gone is different now. Right. And I'm not talking six months shit either. I'm talking quickies. You know? Yeah.

You got any last thoughts you'd like to add, Mark? No. I think I'm about ready to hit the rack and get up and get everybody out into the woods. Sounds good to me. All right, man. Well, thank you for sitting down with us for so long.

I know that you don't have... Thanks for having me. I've had a blast with you guys just in the last two days I've hung out with you. Well, thanks, man. Great dinner last night, and then this thing tonight, first time. Yeah, you had a little captain's platter,

a little Danny Ornella captain's platter last night. Halibut, salmon, hooligan, shrimp. It was everything. No hush puppies. Yeah, those were the hooligan that you had deep hush puppies. Yeah, that, what were the, those were the hooligan that you had deep fried, right?

Yeah, yeah. You like those? they were, oh, they were delicious, especially when they're fresh out of there

and the tails were crispy, you know? Yeah, yeah. Hey, the trick is baking those for a while after you deep fry them.

Is that what you did then? Yeah, a lot of the grease comes out and they crisp up real nice like that, man, but yeah, we eat a lot of them like that.

My kids especially just love them. I could have sat there all day. Did you grease your boots with that oil? Did you ever use that oil for anything? No, no. Is it pretty rank oil? No, it's probably fine. Yeah, I think they were the star of the show, really.

Yeah, they were. They're a crowd pleaser, man. What were the longer ones then? Because you had, didn't you, were those a candlefish? Yeah, same thing. Yeah. Yeah, those were all hooligan, yeah.

Okay. One was just smoked and one was fried, right? That's what the difference was. Yeah, yeah. Some were smoked and some were fried. Yeah, and the smoked ones had their heads on, so they were bigger fish that way. Well, the fried ones, they had the heads on them too, didn't they?

No, Giannis, he was looking for a chore. I told him to head and gut all the ones we were frying. Oh, okay. Yeah. But, yeah, man. And then the king salmon chunks, and then I think you had halibut chunks there too, didn't you? Yeah.

I mean, it was just a real smorgasbord of sea fish. Bunch of ocean fish. Calf's platter, man. Dave, you want a hooligan dipping next May? Get in touch, man. We'll go out. I would love that. After having that last, I'd already seen everybody gathering around the creek down there doing it.

I said, you know, what's up with this? What's the big deal with this? You're the only white guy down there, that's for sure. You know what he does, too? He takes those hooligans down. He takes those hooligans down. He takes those hooligans down. Well, we were catching burbot on hooligans through the ice up in the interior. Yeah.

And then he takes the hooligans down and catches... Halibut? Halibut, salmon. Halibut and salmon on hooligans. Yeah. So there's good babies herring, then? They're real oily like herring. So they put out a good scent, you know.

But the thing herring have up on them though is herring have that real shiny flash to it. Right. You know, and they're just like a dollar. Yeah, their shape's just different. It's more like a herring's kind of a more usable shape. Yeah. Yeah. For mooching and whatnot.

And they got that real nice sheen, you know, that catches the sun. You see that herring spinning like when you're mooching? Just looks good to eat, man. Yeah. Man, they got that real nice sheen, you know, that catches the, when you see that herring spinning, like when you're mooching. Just looks good to eat, man. Yeah, I know, man. A lot of times I'd be, you know, we'd be hooking up herring on there, and I'd be looking around, would anybody see if I ate one of these? Because, man, I'd want to eat the bait.

My brother, he spends, our other brother spends a lot of time down in the Bahamas fishing. And he heard a story about he was talking to this guy down there that does a little guiding and he goes out with some he's talking about taking some italians out fishing and pulls out some squid for bait and those italians like would not bait a hook with that squid why because they eat it oh they're like you're not gonna put that down and just give me squishing food yeah let's just eat that squid and go home yeah another one is a octopus too octopus makes good bait but man they are sure sure good you know cooked up too i really like you know i don't know if we've ever we used put octopus, chunks of octopus arm on halibut hooks.

I can't think of anything. I haven't seen anyone do that in a long time, yeah. The nice thing about it is that the octopus will stay on the hook pretty easy too. Yeah. You know, that's the thing about it. Yeah. We use a lot of salmon fins too, man.

They got some staying. You get that through the skin and through the sort of the fin rays and they got some real staying power. Yeah, they'll stay on. You can put a herring on a halibut hook and then tip it with a salmon fin where you run it through that cartilage.

And it's basically like a retainer. Hold your, yeah, holds it on. Where'd you come up with that idea? That sounds pretty cool. I can't claim just. It's not a Rinella original? I think it's something that's been thought of thousands of times.

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