The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 187: Tripping on Bear Skulls

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Anthony Licata, Doug Duren, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: drinking curdled mother's milk from a calf's stomach; bluegills on dip; Steve's sebaceous cyst as fish bait; the Fort Keogh gate situation; clearing the air with Doug over CWD; Cal's bugles; crunch-pfff; what happens when an elk falls off a cliff; Matt “MacGyver” Rinella kills a bull with the button from his pants; hunting with a marching band; “it’s legal!”; and more.Enter to win a chance to head to The Back 40 and hunt whitetails with Steve and Mark next fall! 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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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Yanni, can you tell everybody about your Roadkill Moose story? Sure can, Steve. Go ahead. I was on my way home. Hard day of work. Yeah, it was

late, actually. Working late. It was after six. That's what I like to hear. After six. Beautiful day, though. I remember because I was in my shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, and at that time of the night, it was still nice and warm. I was actually on my way to meet my neighbor because the post-production

team needed a piece of metal, sheet metal, or something of the like to put underneath some food that they were going to be shooting, and they wanted a different background, and as you know, my neighbor. You ought to plug his business for anyone living in the southwest Montana. Travis Barton of Barton Fabrication.

If you need any sort of welding, cool metal work type done, Steve had a, what's that thing called? It's a long list. He made my 316-inch thick garden boxes on a welded steel plate which are cool as shit yeah they look nice he made he he does like fancy houses i should point out but i have him do like low grade stuff so he did that he we i had a stainless steel trompo which is like when you're in mexico and they got the The big thing of pork That spins on a spindle

And you order a taco And they shave off They take like a machete And shave off hunks of meat Onto a street taco Yeah I think more people would Understand it though If you just said like a hero

Like if you had a Greek place And you look in the back And there's that big hunk of meat Yeah because that's where you like To go for vacation I don't I've never been I'd love to check out Greece though a Greek place and you look in the back and there's that big hunk of meat. Yeah, because that's where you like to go for vacation. I don't. I've never been.

I'd love to check out Greece, though. But I'm just saying, I think most people would, that's what you think of when you think of a big hunk of spinning meat, right, Cal? Well, no. Sure, if you do. Growing up in Missoula, Montana, there were three Euro places. The headlots. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Acropolis, Greek Euros. And they all had a Trompo. montana there were three euro places they had like yeah oh really yeah acropolis greek and they all had a trompo they didn't call it a trompo they probably call it some greek

thing yeah yep correct uh how would you say it if you're goofing on like a trompo trompo trompo i don't know if you put a greek spin on it. Oh. Trombopolis. Tromplicoccus. Anywho, he's welded up a bunch of stuff. Yeah, mine was hand, you had to hand turn. Ronnie Bain made it. We used it once at my wedding. But it was hand turned. And so he retrofitted it for a rotisserie motor. Did a beautiful job of it then he made me 12

i haven't do a lot of stuff that's way beneath him he made me 12 snare supports so welding galvanized wire on the rebar so that you can pound the rebar into the ground then position the wire right where you want it to hang beaver snares or whatever you're snaring um and then now he's doing something that doesn't even require welding where because he's got a hoist he's helping me mount a honda jet onto my hog island shallow water skiff nice and meanwhile he does all kinds of fancy house stuff barton fabrication ladies and gentlemen is, we can go on and on about this guy. I mean, I'm so lucky to have him as a neighbor. He is the world's

best neighbor. I mean, he just. He's a fire chief. He's a fire chief, so he's like home half the time and when he's at home,

it's like any problem you could think of at your house. You're like, hey, Travis, uh, my engine's got one of these.

Come on down, you know? Just bring the truck over. We'll put it on the lift. We'll just take those wheels right off right now. you're like, hey, Travis, my engine's got one of these. Come on down. Just bring the truck over. We'll put it on the lift. We'll just take those wheels right off right now. That's not true, though, because he failed us on a 36-inch chainsaw bar. Yeah, you're right. He offered up a crosscut saw.

Yeah. If you can't help me out, he has a good sense of humor. But yeah, in my house for our remodel i mean there's a ton of uh travis barton work handrails um what do you call the pieces the balusters you know we that all that is travis's there's some eye beams in there some shelving my whole kitchen table countertop is made out of steel and i can't tell a good weld but anybody that's ever come over that must have some sort of background in welding they look at that table

and they go whoever did this knows their shit that's funny because doug durin took a look at my garden boxes and the first thing he said is he made a joke about the welds meaning like he made like a reverse joke commented on the shitty welds meaning yes holy shit kind of like a dirt joke like a dirt myth joke yeah like he basically he was saying like what a phenomenal weld but instead of saying that he acted like he was he was like must have been this guy's first day yeah yeah. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. You know, I'm doing a horrible job. Yeah. Yeah. We get it though.

So I was on my way to Travis's house and right when I pulled off the pavement. Oh, I forgot. We're talking about. Yeah. Talking about my roadkill moose. Travis is there waiting for me on the dirt which i thought was odd and i was specifically waiting for you yeah because he i was going to his house to meet him but he knew i was on the way yeah i got you and uh he walks up to my truck and he just says uh you want a moose

kind of caught me off guard and uh but i quickly two and two together, and I looked down the road maybe 100 yards, and I could see a blue Ford pickup truck sitting down there. What kind of pickup was it? It was a Raptor? Yeah, Raptor, yeah. What's the reputation? Like when you see someone driving a Raptor, do you have like a thing like, oh, he like. I think they have a bigger gas budget than I do.

Oh. Just generally probably a bigger budget, because I don't think that's a cheap truck. No. Huh. But I'm not... Because I just bought a regular old F-150 a year ago. Yeah, man. You should have gone Raptor.

Really? Yeah, because it goes faster. Yeah, but I like to go nice and slow. and slow yeah me too i have no use for a raptor go on there you are they both probably go equally as fast one just accelerates and it's louder i like to accelerate slowly yeah kind of more angry looking more aggressive looking yeah yeah but i am angry something that's prime for like a big sticker on the back window our buddy jay runs one, he likes that truck. Yeah, loves it.

Go on. Big truck. Yeah, one of the first things he said as I was contemplating going to look at this moose, he says, not much damage on the Raptor. I'm thinking, well, that's probably good. Good for your moose. Yeah, good for the moose.

Probably not much damage on the moose either. He said it was a calf that had been hit. We went to check it out. And I had one other experience, which I've told you before, about with picking up roadkill. A buddy of mine, Jimmy in Colorado, once had gotten one from a herd that had been demolished by I think actually a bunch of honey wagon trucks.

And he pulled up and they actually had a four- You mean the trucks carrying honey or carrying porta potties uh just disposal trucks you know i think the company in veil was called anyways a bunch have been knocked off the interstate and they actually had like a bucket truck or something there's loading elk into people's trucks. Jeez. This is Jimmy Miller. Yeah. Jimmy Miller, who once found a buck,

tangled up. I think, you know when you unbale hay? Mm-hmm. Like a guy might unbale hay and throws all the cordage into a pile. Wasn't that what happened? Yeah, that's right. And found a buck all tangled up in the cordage. Yeah.

And went down there and caught it free, and then a buck all tangled up in the cordage yeah and went down there and caught it free and then the buck tried to kick his ass once he got it freed up you know fell right into his plan well-laid trap so there you are um well but back to miller's story real quick when we went i went to his house to help him peel that thing out and it was just when we peeled it out it was purple from nose to tail peeling it out being a way yeah yeah and uh so we turned as much as of it as we could into dog food and uh i don't think any of it was fit for human consumption and so uh i was a little leery, you know, going into it. But I looked at this

calf moose. It was unfortunate because I had the moose running around. We've been watching it since it was born. The thing was probably only six to eight weeks old. Oh, I didn't catch that either. You were familiar with this particular group. Oh, yeah. This cow-calf pair. Yeah, we had seen it maybe two days earlier. Oh, really?

I didn't know that. No, she had two. She had twins. This is part, remember the story I told about how I saw the cow elk come and cut that one calf out from underneath the cow moose with the two? You didn't tell me that story because I remembered it. Really? Yeah. I'm sitting there watching a cow moose one night with her two babies.

They come up the dirt road and they kind of get off on the edge and they're feeding along. And out of my periphery, I see something running and down the hill comes a cow elk and it's getting dusky. She comes down, goes right up to him and then just stands there in kind of an aggressive pose. And I didn't know what to make of it, you know. And the cow moose just sort of pinned her ears back, but like became subordinate. Definitely didn't stand up to this cow elk. And the cow elk sort of starts chasing them a little bit, and it's like half play, but half aggressive. And she sort of starts cutting between the two calves. And again, these

guys are like, they look like they took their first steps a week ago, you know? And it's getting darker, but eventually the cow moose runs up the hill with one of the calves and the cow elk stayed with one of the calf moose. Like an abduction? Like it was a pedophile? Kidnapping? It was like that.

Yeah, it was like in humans thought you're like, oh, she must have lost her her cow elk or her cow her calf her cow, her elk calf. And now she's trying to pick up another one from this moose. You know, who knows?

But it was very odd, very odd animal behavior. But then you said, Anthony, you better introduce yourself real quick because you don't join us all the time like Cal does. I'm Anthony Licata. I'm editor-in-chief here at Meat Eater. There you go. Welcome. Thanks. Yeah. Nice does. I'm Anthony Licata. I'm editor-in-chief here at Meat Eater. There you go. Welcome. Thanks. Yeah.

Nice to have you. First Meat Eater podcast. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. I've been. But you sat with us the other day. Yeah, I sat the other day, and I've been on a hunting collective a couple of times, but

I've been working remotely for the first couple months here on the job, but finally I'm here in Bozeman so you'll be able to editorialize yes in chief you bet oh um so yeah i had some history with uh with this calf so there you are ford rafter yep and uh it looks like the calf has like a blow to the head. And then one of its back legs is, you know, broken, flopping, like below the knee. And otherwise doesn't look messed up at all. There's not a lot of blood on the road. Traff is like literally.

Well, now why did he not want it? He's not a big hunter, not a big wild game guy. His daughter had actually witnessed it happen. It was kind of traumatic for her. She's, I don't know, not quite high school age. So I was like, well, do you want some of the meat? He's like, well, yeah, but just don't tell my daughter where it came from, you know. So I'm going to get him some meat.

But, yeah, that's just not his style you know not his style um eating stuff he found dead on the side of the road yeah or just i don't i just don't think they eat a lot of wild game in that house gotcha he's too busy welding fighting fires yeah um so yeah checked it out and uh sort of uh talked to travis about what it would take to get it. I kind of knew the steps. And I said, well, let me just call Highway Patrol. I think that's who I called. And Travis is the kind of guy, again, to sort of build his character out a little bit. I'm like, yeah, I'll call Highway Patrol.

And he just rattles off the number. And so I call him, and the guy says, yeah, man, real easy. Just go on to the Fish and Wildlife Wildlife website and there's an application. Fill it out and make sure it's filled out and submitted within like 24 hours. Have at it. And so Travis and I try to put it into the truck as it was. It was too heavy for us to just two men get into the back of the truck. So I gutted it right there on the median.

I'm sorry, the shoulder. You had a good point. This thing's only a few months old. Yeah, maybe not even two months old. Huh. Yeah. The sweetest. That's an insane amount of growth.

Oh, it is. Two months. It's amazing. Amazing. Yeah, think about what that cow must have to do to produce those calories, to have two of them putting on that kind of weight. Yeah.

I mean, my mental picture of your neighbor is he's not a small dude either. No, he's a tough guy. I'd beat his ass. I felt like it. What an amazing amount of growth. So I got it right there, slide the guts down off the shoulders, kind of a steep embankment, goes down into the ditch, grassy area, kind of.

We slung her in there, went and did the, you know, like I said, the permit application there online. And I don't know, 30 minutes later, they sent me an email and said, here's your salvage permit. Oh, so no physical inspection. Nope, nope, nope. There was actually a, I think she was a sheriff

maybe that rolled in while we were working on it. She might've been there right at the end to kind of help push a little bit to get the moose in there and she didn't have much to say about it. She said, ah, good for you. Great. Now the, the awful, the guts with that salvage scenario. That's where Yanni broke the law.

Yeah, I was going to ask. What are you asking about? With the salvage permit, aren't you supposed to remove anything that could attract other animals to? There's something to that. Oh, that's the logic behind that. I had to put that together. They don't want then a bear. Predators and scavengers

getting whacked. That makes sense. They don't want then the bear, and then you got, like, this whole vicious cycle. Yeah. Yep. I was wondering where,

I felt like they didn't want people to see a gut pile. Yeah. And Giannis is just downloading salvage permits all year long. He's like, got a bear, a moose, a mountain lion. All in the same spot.

My truck's got, like, 250,000 miles on it, so, you so you know with another ding but you broke the law by leaving the gut pile there yeah yeah so i called in the morning and they said yep next time you know take the guts too and um don't leave me on the side of the road otherwise you're all set man so yeah we let it we butchered it up that night, quartered it. Luckily, a neighbor of mine had an empty fridge that was turned on sitting in his, it wasn't completely empty. He has beer in it. I was going to say, you might have an energy efficiency chat with that fella. Yeah, he's got some beer in there, staying cold.

But we moved some things around and we're easily able to get the whole moose in there. Yeah, let it sit for a week and then butchered it the next weekend. And I gave you a package of the ground did you eat it yet no it's some of the like you just sent me like a package i mean that's great thank you but just a package of ground huh well to be fair on the text message chain you were like no i'm not gonna come help but i'll take the tenderloins yeah and i i uh i will admit also janice called me right away and he's like hey if you if you can you want to come up and help oh did you ask for help yeah just with the uh just cutting it up summer evening you specifically asked for help and i said no no no no just cal yeah and i felt

like a dog trying to cut me out hey uh, Phil the engineer, what do you think about all this? I think I've never had moose. I think you were about to go into the taste of the ground, right? Yeah, well, just as moose in general. The smell, before we even butchered it, I got to talk about this because it was the sweetest, most grassy, fresh-cut hay, to the point where it was almost like so pungent

that it might turn some people off. But I think once you get through the pungentness, you just realize it's just like this sweet grass smell. And I don't know if it's from the extreme young age of the animal or if it was just his diet at that time. It was definitely haying. Right, fresh green growth time of year. Yeah, and that meat definitely, it's nowhere near as pungent, died at that time. It was definitely haying. Right, fresh green growth time of year.

Yeah, and that meat definitely, it's nowhere near as pungent, but it definitely carries that palate with it. You know what you could tell me if you wanted to impress the hell out of me? You'd tell me that you drank the curdled mother's milk from its stomach. Yeah, sorry, not gonna impress you. I lose again.

Yeah, so got a, I mean, I bet, I didn't weigh it, but I bet you we yielded well over 100 pounds. Are you serious? You had more meat than you would have gotten off a big mule deer buck. Yeah, no, it was definitely like a small to medium cow elk. That's impressive. Yeah.

I think I will take a little bit of that. Yeah, no, there's plenty. I don't know why I only threw in the ground. Maybe because that's all I was looking at when I was getting your turkey and the ground was sitting right next to it. Yeah. Yeah, because i remember giving you some real nice uh halibut fillets and salmon fillets right well when you get through that burger yeah choice cuts for some more choice cuts i wasn't like hey here's the guts off some salmon steve's choice cuts um good good on that yeah we got a lot to cover i feel good quick nipple biting story

they flood in you wear this anthony i am they flood in my guy guy was sitting in the lake i think he's in massachusetts he wrote in because we got to talking about other people getting their nipples bit by fish um which it started out we were talking about a woman tearing her nipple on a, she wrote in that she tore her nipple on a barbed wire fence. It was a mess. And then all these nipple injuries.

Because she was in a hurry to go hunting, which is what I really loved about that story. She got out of some kind of athletic event and was trying to get out in the dove field, hopped a fence gassed her nipple she said her ex-husband called it scar face she said she'd gut me like a fish if i gave her name which i never did i like her uh and then more nipple stories came in but the most recent one is a guy was he was sitting in the lake in massachusetts with his future with who is now his

wife and he said they were doing that thing where you got your elbows kind of like up on a dock He was sitting in a lake in Massachusetts with his future, with who is now his wife. And he said they were doing that thing where you got your elbows kind of like up on a dock. You picture what I'm saying? Like hot tub style. Yeah, hot tub style in a lake, elbows up on dock. And all of a sudden, ow! Looks down, his nipples bleeding all over. What's funny is he must not know a hell of a lot about fish because he said he thinks it could have been bluegills.

Because he had seen, here's where the story story gets weird but I believe every bit of it he had seen some guys spit and dip spit and tobacco juice into the water off the same dock and bluegills were eating it so he figures

you know what this looks like a good place for me and my gal to go soak them in it so that's funny but no that had happened before yeah i understand yeah he's aware that there's so he's i feel like a bluegill but a bluegill does not draw blood a bluegill does not bite your nipple and draw blood so there's got to be a uh kind of ab test go right it's like it will are bluegill more aggressive with a healthy dose of nicotine?

Oh, that's a good point. Maybe they get so jacked up on dip. But I think that, yeah, there's bluegills around. I think there's a northy

around, northern pike. And I think a northern pike gashed his nipple. But the takeaway is he suggested that you'd make a fishing lure to look like a nipple

and smelled like chew. Nipples look like bait. They just they just do yeah they do have a bait like appearance man i once had a cyst cut out of my head a sebaceous or whatever you call it like it was like on top it was on top of my like you don't want to assist in your skull yeah not in your skull between the skin and the the skull like a not scary one they cut it and it had some little hairs growing out of it still. And I kept it. I asked them if I could have it and I kept it in this jar of alcohol. It was about the size of the end of your pinky. And I'd get to drinking and get that thing out and tell people how I was going to catch a perch off that thing.

And it kind of over time dissolved. Well, that's too bad. I never got to fulfill my – i used to like to drink a lot more than i do now i still like to have a little drink now and then but it never goes so far that i get out my cyst and start i don't get out my cyst anymore dyed it chartreuse and rolled it in some glitter if it ain't chartreuse it ain't no use so there's that guy wrote in um oh anthony talk about the thing that we you were going to talk about real quick It ain't no use. So there's that. Guy wrote in. Oh, Anthony, talk about the thing that you were going to talk about real quick.

Bigfoot? Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite subjects, right? So we have this great report from the Proceedings of the Royal Society, some organization in Great Britain. And their mission here was to take all these samples of hair that have been collected over the years that for one reason or another have been identified as possible Bigfoot hair. Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, you know,

depending because they're all over the world. So setting it up here, I think this is really important. What I found was a very interesting point. They kind of lay out the theories of what these creatures could be, right? They could be some kind of remaining population of some sort of humanoid, you know, Cro-Magnon, not that exactly, but something like that. They could be some species of extinct ape. But here's the one that I never heard. One theory is that they are hybrids between humans and some mammal.

I hadn't heard that one, but I like it. I like that. I would love to know what kind of other mammal a human could breed with. What cold winter night. Like if you're out in the woods

and a bear comes by and it looks kind of like cow. Right. So I thought that was pretty fascinating. I like to think about that theory. Maybe it's changing my mind. Yeah, that one doesn't get thrown out. No.

The one that gets thrown out is it's like, I think the lead one is that it's some other primate. Yes, right. That has been hiding out. Exactly. Some primate that is unknown or one of those other things. So they had 57 samples of hair. Can I interrupt you real quick? Yeah, please.

No, you know what? I'll do it as a follow-up. Go ahead. 57 samples of hair for one reason or another. Some of them are kicked out. Some are carpet fiber, stupid stuff like that. So, but they're left with- There was a Bigfoot sample that turned out to be carpet fiber, stupid stuff like that. So, but they're left with- There was a Bigfoot sample that turned out to be carpet fiber?

Right. Plastic fiber. They think it was carpet fiber. Right. So, they end up with 37 and use genetic testing and all these other scientific methods to identify what they are. And these things came from Russia, from Arizona, from Washington, Texas, Oregon, India. Turns out they're all animals we know and well.

Polar bear, brown bear, horses, cows, black bears, a lot of black bears, raccoons. One of the samples came from a human. So it must've been somebody with very glorious locks, Bigfoot like locks. Um, maybe somebody with dreads. I't know um porcupine you can shave uh dirt's back and probably get pretty good dude if i saw if i wasn't with dirt i saw him coming through the woods that shoot i was like i got one it's real yeah coyotes cows dogs wolves uh but alas not a single bigfoot sounds like a conspiracy not one freaking bigfoot in the whole stack of hair samples nope not one bigfoot they had they

had three that they at first couldn't identify and they were thinking maybe it was like a hybrid between a grizzly and a polar bear but it turns out they were just polar bear hairs as well you know what the uh the the good part about this is what this will not change anyone's mind no no like big bigfoot dude's gonna be like ah never mind i guess they're right there is no bigfoot right there's no way there's somebody staring in their shoe box right now being like yeah but they haven't seen this one. They haven't seen what I found back in my yard. Guy rode in. Talk about his dad was going to buy a motorcycle.

And they're loading on a trailer and one thing leads to another. And one thing leads to another. And the trailer shifts. No the i don't know he's loading a motorcycle onto a trailer one thing leaves you another and his finger comes off his uh the the his ring finger on his right hand was severed between the distal interphalangeal joint and the proximal interphalangeal joint and the dude he was buying the motorcycle off of his dog ate it oh and he wants to know um he doesn't he's doing more than just telling the story he's like if this happened to you what feelings would you have towards the dog partial ownership

would you be pissed? He says. If someone later told me that, man, had you just grabbed that before that dog ate it, we could have just reattached it and you would have it now, I would be pissed. Could you get that? Could you make that dog puke or get it out of its stomach and put it on? That'd be even a better story. Dude, if my brother's dog, Shifty, ate it, you could have killed Shifty and cut it open and that dog would have been fine.

The finger would have been fine because that dog eats stuff and doesn't chew it. You could give it a big strip of like whatever. The other day I gave it a, we were out hunting and we had some smoked Canada goose breast and the dog was like dying. You can tell he's hungry as all get out. And I peeled away the skin off smoked Canada goose breast and the dog was like dying. You can tell as hungry as I'll get out. And I peeled away the skin off a smoked goose breast and it like didn't even pretend to chew it. It just gone.

Not even one chew. When I was a kid, I had a lab that I was eating a Popsicle, right? And I set it too low. Lab came out, boom, gone. Two days later, popsicle stick came out.

Strip the, strip the sucker right off it though. As looking at like, you could, like you could use it again or use it for a craft project. Send it back in for a refill. Uh, another guy real quick.

Um, another guy wrote in, he's talking about like eating his own dog would you eat your dog he's saying if my dog died I was thinking about eating it he said when he factors all the expenses he's got into that dog

he said that that dog the meat would be $270 a pound I don't know why. He just sent that in. No one's interested in that? Well, you've eaten dog. Depends on how it tastes, right?

I didn't like it. Yeah. I didn't like it one bit. Okay, one last thing. No one's interested in that story. I thought it was good. We had talked about, you know, we had Jason Phelps from Phelps Game Calls.

That's right. And his buddy Dirk. And we got to, we got to pondering, uh, who like kind of invented the diaphragm call. Yes. And a listener sent in a little clue. Yeah. We were guessing like 50s, 60s from, you know, some of the names that we kind of know that are still alive.

Like it must've been Will Primoz. Yeah. Or Carlton. Yeah. Or Wayne. And a guy wrote in with a clue. Yep. names that we kind of know that are still alive like it must have been will primos yeah or carlton yeah oh wayne and a guy wrote in with a clue yep he says in the uh nwtf museum which i've been in yeah i'd like to go sometime stands for national wild turkey federation there is a uh display a display showing a patent from February 5th, 1867, submitted by S. McLean for the first patent for a diaphragm type mouth call. U.S. patent number 61486. And there it is.

1867. And it looks like a current diaphragm, man. That's the crazy takeaway is that there's really nothing different from what I see in his little diagram from what we put in our mouths now to make elk and turkey sounds. What year did he do the patent? 1867. Man. Doesn't that seem odd? One year after the Fetterman Massacre.

That's crazy. Well, I mean, just think of- That's a brutal massacre story. Everything that was going on in the US, like it just kind of goes to show you that sometimes it doesn't slow down hunting and fishing. No. Because especially- Especially- Yeah, like when you hear a hunting story from 1943, you're like, shouldn't you have been off fighting in the war?

Yeah. What was that? What was that? 1867, especially if it's anywhere near where the NWTF museum is located, which obviously it has. Yeah, like shouldn't you have been just coming rolling out of the Civil War? Yeah, it's like reconstruction south. Hold fire, boys.

I got an idea. You ever heard this? Gap, gap, gap. That's what the rebel yell was. Since you mentioned it, can you give us a quick synopsis of the Fetterman Massacre? Oh, I shouldn't call it. It's Eurocentric to call it the Fetterman Massacre. I take that back. It'd be the Fetterman Fight.

It was in Wyoming. I believe it back. It'd be the Fetterman fight. It was in Wyoming. I believe it was the Sioux. There was a military fort that was very much imposing on their traditional lands. Trying to tell it in a way that would be

I don't know why I'm Why am I leaning so heavy into this? Yeah. There's a military fort, and there's like a contest that the whole West is in contention. Who owns the West? Yeah.

Well, the U.S. military sets up this fort. Which would be like an outpost. Yeah, and the brass, the top brass is like, hey, man, no matter what, don't go over the top of that hill and, you know, don't do it. But anyways, there's some sioux guys ride up on top of the hill and they're like hey screw you or whatever and then they run off over the back of

the hill and fetterman could be getting parts this round but most of them not fetterman like gets the bright idea to chase after him over the top of the hill and him and all of his boys vanished over the top of the hill and never come back and they eventually wander up there and i don't know how many of them are all laying there dead or dead and he was the one i wish i had the quote exactly but he was very confident and he said with his force he could ride through the whole sioux nation and that was you couldn't make it over the couldn't make it over the hill barely and and crazy horse was very involved in that battle oh is that right that's right he was one of the the ones who did the planning to set up that ambush and was one of the sort of decoys who came out and let everybody back in and it was a multi-day thing right like no this part of it

the this part of it was astonishingly quick i think really because i thought they had shown up on that hill a few days in a row yeah they had but i mean yeah the actual yeah there was like there was some preceding stuff they'd been taunting them and tormenting them and some guys went out to cut wood i think and they killed a couple of the guys went out to cut wood and one thing led to another but when the main thing happened it was a very well-laid trap yeah yeah we uh hand-to fighting. Drove out, Ben and I, Ben O'Brien and I drove out to that Vortex Extreme, which is in, was outside of Douglas, Wyoming this year. And so you, there's a lot of Fetterman stuff

out there. Oh, okay. So I was relaying the story to Ben. So I was just trying to. Fetterman and 80 of his men. Oh. Yep. If you talk to like any of your Wyoming buddies.

It's so funny. Cause I love that stuff. And like, you can just see like eyes roll back and people's heads, like every single year growing up in Wyoming, you got to go out to Fort Fetterman. I would have loved it, man. I would have loved it. Uh, why are we talking about that? Oh, he brought up the Fetterman mask. It was the same year as McLean.

Year after. I just have certain benchmarks in my head. Turkey diaphragm. Did this guy get rich off his game call patent? I mean, he should have been born about 100 years later, I think, huh? Yeah, a quick internet search did not reveal any more information. I do find it humorous. You thought of that being the rebel yell. Can you imagine 800 dudes clucking at you?

Turkey calls? From across the field. Yeah, go to the NWTF convention. What does 800 people simultaneously blowing turkey calls sound like? Probably rattle somebody. Oh, check this out. Watch this transition. Watch this pivot.

So Fetterman. buddy uh oh check this out watch this transition watch this pivot so uh fetterman right that was part of the sioux war okay and some of the participants at the sioux war you guys tracking stay with me some of the participants at the sioux uh some of the participants at the fetterman fight were involved in the Battle of Little Bighorn. At the Battle of Little Bighorn, one thing survived. Captain Keogh's horse, Comanche, had bullet holes, arrow holes in it, but it lived. Captain Keogh was one of, I think, two people whose bodies were not mutilated after the Little Bighorn Battle. One, because he was under a pile of dead horses, and it seems like they maybe didn't find him down there and mutilate him. And Keogh was unmutilated. And Keogh had some Roman Catholic clan type thing around his neck, some piece of jewelry around his neck.

And his theory is that they saw that and wondered if he was like a religious figure or something and perhaps didn't mutilate Keo. and during the punitive expeditions, when we came out to then enact vengeance on the tribes that were involved in the Custer fight, we set up a military fort in present-day Miles City, and they bestowed upon that fort the name Fort Keogh, which brings up the Fort Keogh Gate brings up the Fort Keogh gate situation the Fort Keogh fight the Fort Keogh fight well done yeah that was like well done you want to about some phenomenal hosting is there a Nobel Prize in hosting I was gonna ask is there an award situation is there like a Pulitzer

and hosting yes um Pulitzer Prize for hosting. Cal, go ahead. You're supposed to be all up to speed on this. Yeah, so interesting situation. There is a lonely but well-used or was well-used at one point boat ramp, river access that is actually on USDA property, which is part of, is it an experimental station out there?

Is that what it is? Yeah, it's a research facility called Fort Keogh. Yeah, Fort Keogh Research Facility. They're right outside of Miles City, but. Yeah, they do a bunch of great work, man. I mean, they do a lot of, they do cattle work, they do genetic work. Yeah, rangeland stuff. Rangeland stuff, invasive plants. they do a lot of, they do cattle work, they do genetic work. Yeah, rangeland stuff.

Rangeland stuff, invasive plants. There's a lot of valuable work that comes out of Fort Keogh. Yeah, full ecosystem focus. Really, I mean, really neat stuff. Even like, I know that there's research that comes out of there too, having to do with after a coal mining operation, best ways to reestablish shrubs and forbs and things when you're in the remediation process. So like, you know, clean up stuff afterward,

not clean up, but getting robust plant ecosystems back in shape and disturbed ecosystems. Yeah. And ecosystem, not like monoculture. Yeah. Tons of work. Rangeland. Rangeland.

Cattle and what cattle eat. Yep. Yep. And yeah, so anyway, there used to be, you know, general public access to this boat ramp. Then a couple of bad apples spoiled that access by doing what every Eastern Montana kid knows not to do, which is go out and drive around after it rains out there.

Hot dogging around ag fields. Ag fields, tore up the road. And, you know, as a lot of folks would do, they said, oh, enough of this, and they closed it off. And then a handful of groups got together, Walleye Unlimited, I think General, maybe there's a General Sportsman's group for Miles City. The community, a lot of community members for Miles City. A lot of community members, a lot of businesses within Miles City,

backcountry hunters and anglers all got together. They raised a little over 10 grand, I believe, for the very specific purpose of getting this river access open to the public again by finding a middle ground of installing a key code gate. So there's some accountability for folks using the access because you would have to call in, get a code, probably provide your license plate number, ALS, your fishing license number or something like that. And everything was good to go. Yeah, and did you cover this?

I feel like you did, that there's not a lot of reliable, there's not much reliable river access in this area because it the the the the river fluctuates yes it's a it's a wildly fluctuating water level yeah and so there's oftentimes not a good place to launch and this is like one that's like always no matter what the river is doing you can launch here yeah i want to say there's like 70 plus you got to go about 70 miles, give or take, to the next like very reliable access unless you use this kind of below watermark access. Which is like kind of illegal. Yeah, exactly. So it's always better to have these established things.

It's just better for everything. Centralizes the human impact on areas. So everything was going around well. And then the USDA came to the conclusion that it had to be done through slightly different means, and it really slowed the process down. And meanwhile, people spent a lot of money specifically to address the problem. And they had the goal line, like right there. It's like, this is going to be done by this date. Yeah. And we have this money very specifically. It's not just going to this general pot. It's going

to this very specific thing that everybody wants and everybody's behind it. And here's this date coming down the road. And, you know, government just doesn't move that fast um and so they're trying to get uh basically an easement through usda land that i believe montana fishing game would then be in charge of that easement and yeah people trying to work through sort of a legal process by which this could happen and this donated money could get put to purpose. But as you can imagine, if you're Joe Walleye or definitely Joe Ducker Goose Hunter and the season's coming down the pipe and you were all fired up about this access and you probably pitched a couple of bucks in the pot at a pint night or something. Now you're starting to get pretty pissed and fingers are starting to get pointed. And, um, so what would be very, very helpful if you like to recreate, uh, in a smart state,

like the state of Montana that has awesome water access laws, I'd be very helpful if you contacted your duly elected officials or, you know, if you happen to know a guy who looks like or knows Sonny Perdue, or if you know Sonny Perdue, you may want to give him a call. That would be extremely helpful. Here in the state of Montana, if you got a hold of Steve Daines, Senator Tester, or Greg

Gianforte. Yeah, so Senators Tester and Daines, Representative Greg Gianforte, and ask them to try to help work with, uh, FWP, your Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and the USDARS Regional Plains Office in Fort Collins, Colorado. Be very helpful. to try to navigate this

thing and figure out something that's going to work for everybody and this is all like a very positive thing is just moving slow and and um we got a lot of really good intentioned folks with their money tied up yeah it's not like there's not like a bad guy in it it's just a matter of you know you got to have mechanisms in place to do this kind of stuff and i think that at this point it just seems like a little bit of political muscle would go a long way and help and grease this up because yeah again man you get people to come together with like this real common cause like who can argue with you know the the importance of good river access man like people came in and pitched in the morning it's just kind of a shame to have that pot of money sitting there yeah and again And again, like anybody who's built anything, like, you know, eventually you hit a few speed bumps that slows down that, uh, finished

construction date. Um, and that's really what's happening here. So, um, but phone calls, emails, um, you know, and again, if you, uh, know some folks who know the folks, um, don't be afraid to give them a shout. It's a real good deal. Oh yeah. You know, there's one more thing you can do. If you go to www.backcountryhunters.org forward slash open Fort Keogh. And, uh, I guess it's important to note that Keogh is spelled K E O-O-G-H. There's a bunch of good information on the whole story that I just told you, and I think it'll even give you some outreach options. Ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Callahan. Oh, if you want more from Cal, Cal's Week in Review.

Yeah, check out Cal's Week in Review. It's the only good thing on the internet. It's the only thing on the internet that's of any value is Cal's Week in Review. Oh, thank you. It's now being used in school curriculums. Is that right, Cal? Yeah, we got... I would, honestly, I would love, love, love, love if the person who wrote the iTunes review for Cal's Week in Review that says you are

making this mandatory listening for your high school science class. Please reach out to me. Yeah, Cal's Week in Review is a weekly roundup of wildlife and science news. It's fun and hopefully you learn some good things too.

Kids love it because it's got good sound effects. Yeah, courtesy of Phil. Phil's a sound effect guy. Phil the engineer. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. Boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Okay, next thing we have to talk about is I got a, if you came to me and said, who's the person you would, who's the person that you would least want to be unhappy with you? I would say like the Mossad, Israeli Mossad. And then I'd say Doug Dern. Like if it was personal, that's like what I would, that'd be the order. I want to know where I fall on the list.

Oh, you've been mad at me before, haven't you? I don't know. Yeah, if someone told me Yanni, if I came into work and someone was like, Yanni's mad at you, I'd be like, I'll talk to him. What could it be? Yeah, I wouldn't be worried about it. I feel like we'd get through it.

Yeah, for sure. Doug's all mad at me because we were talking to, and we're doing something we don't normally do, is Doug Derns joined us by phone. We kind of ambushed them we we were talking to some guys some qdma on a on a recent episode i think it was called the episode was called managing bambi we were talking about a lot of stuff around whitetail deer um oh because it's kind of a crash course in all things whitetail deer in the news and whatnot and i made a mistake i made a regrettable

i made a regrettable i i was you know when you're trying to make a point now and then and you kind of oversell the point there should be a word for that i remember limbaugh would uh rush limbaugh once said something it's not quite it he said like demonstrating absurdity by being absurd meaning you like when you're like arguing, you float some like intentionally like absurd point as a rhetorical strategy. And I had said how, and I somehow got on CWD, chronic wasting disease, which is very serious.

And I made some, I made a comment that I regret. It was like, it didn't capture my sentiment. And I made a comment I regret where I said, the only thing I't, it didn't capture my sentiment. I made a comment. I regret where I said, the only thing I'm worried about was CWD is that someone would catch it. That it would jump the species barrier. And I had said some stupid thing like, oh, there's all kinds of stuff that there's all kinds of stuff that kills deer.

So who cares? It's just one more thing that kills deer. And the point I was trying to make, and I didn't make it well, the point I was trying to make, I guess is like, it was that I was saying the thing that really, really scares me. The thing that really, really scares me is that hunters would contract chronic wasting disease from eating deer meat.

Like, that is extremely scary to me. And somehow some people interpreted that to be that I don't take CWD seriously, or I don't think it's a serious thing, or I'm somehow not concerned about it. It's like, that's definitely not true. Uh, but the thing that most scares me, the thing that most scares me was that deer meat would somehow be determined to be or would become essentially inedible from infected animals. That super, like that, like I feel that you could hold that belief. And my feelings on Cedar deer are more complicated than that, but you could hold that belief and use just that as a thing for all the reasons in the world why we should be researching, fighting, stopping prevention of.

So I don't know how that got taken me, like, let's say, uh, God came down and said, I hereby, uh, declare that humans cannot get CWD. I've designed this disease to be, uh, incapable of infecting a human.

Why would people, uh, why, if you knew that to be true why does cwd matter well first of all i'd like to say that um if i was to make a list of people who were upset with that i wouldn't want mad at me the first one would be my wife and the second one would be Steve Rinella. Yeah, but the Mossad will kill you.

Well, not my wife. So to answer your question, the other thing you said is that there's all kinds of stuff that kill deer, and that is very true. And all of the different diseases that kill deer don't do it in a pretty way. EHD doesn't kill them in a pretty way. It kills them quick. CWD doesn't kill them in a, you know, there's no pretty way of deer dying. So beyond that, CWD has an impact on the resource that isn't just short-term. Because it persists in the environment, because it persists within the herd, once you have it, you essentially don't get rid of it. So that then goes on to, if you don't have have it you don't want it in your area yeah it's not like meaning like ehd or what you know people call sometimes referred to as blue tongue like it

passes through it passes through deer get sick some deer die it goes away and then maybe you don't see it again for 20 years right and it's all dependent on weather and that midge and drought and all of that and interestingly one of the things that I've learned recently about EHD was that there were deer that were taken from northern climates and taken to Texas and places like that for breeding purposes. And those deer were insured, their lives were insured, you know, by Lloyd's of London or some insurance company like that. And they would take those deer to someplace like Texas where they didn't really have a problem with the HD because the deer had developed an immunity to it over time.

They'd take these bucks down there for breeding purposes, they'd get HD and die. And then they were collecting on the insurance policy, and now they don't insure deer anymore. But, of course, what also has changed is they now take those deer to a breeding facility in a little tube. They actually take semen there now. So that's one of the things that they've learned in that. So that is a big difference, that the HD dies out.

And then the conditions have to be right for it again to appear again, that drought condition. Actually, Spencer wrote a really good summary about EHD the other day that I read on your website that I thought was really good. Yeah, at TheMedia.com, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, yeah. So that's the biggest thing. Once you have it, you have it. So then it will then and then can have an impact on the resource both in the short and long term. talked about this on that uh with the qdm guys that prevalence has gotten real high we saw the we have over 55 prevalence in bucks um one of the landowners down there who um has reached out to me

and i've spent some time with bought his land for to manage for big bucks and and balance hurt all those qdm ideas um and his essentially says now we don't see big bucks anymore. They don't get food. 55% of the bucks on the ground at one given time are infected with CWD which is always fatal. That is

always fatal. 55% of prevalence is of course based on the data that they have and the number of tests, and they're able to extrapolate all these numbers. That prevalence is at 55% in bucks, 35% in adult does. It's less both in yearling bucks and yearling does, but it's even shown up down there in floans as well. So, an always fatal disease that's going to kill that deer in two years

or something related to that disease. It's sort of like cancer or any other kind of thing. You get sick from it and as your immune system, your body becomes weaker and you end up dying. Maybe you don't die of cancer or you don't die of, you don't die of lung cancer as a smoker, but you die of, of, uh, you know, something else that pneumonia, pneumonia, exactly. And that's actually what a fair number of deer, um, with CWD die from is things like, uh, pneumonia, um, uh, you know, um, uh, choking on their own spit and vomit, or not vomit, but their own bodily fluids, that sort of thing,

because they don't have the ability to do it anymore. So that idea that, well, deer didn't die of CWD, it died of pneumonia, or it got killed by a predator more easily because its defense system was downed. Because of what it does to their brain, they do walk it out on the highway more or something like that. So there's a whole number of things, both sicknesses and other things that can happen as a result. So if you want to... Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead, Doug. But because that deer thinks, but because that deer is going to die of the disease within two years, imagine a year old or a yearling buck or another buck, he's not going to make it to be a three-year-old deer. And that's what we're starting to see now.

So even though in our area they predicted, or south of here, the endemic area, when they predicted that 17 years ago, they being the Department of Natural Resources and some of the other efforts said it's going to have a huge impact on the deer, our deer population is still going up. But what's happened, because we just have such a great place for growing deer, that the models didn't maybe take that into consideration. But what is happening is it's trending to a younger deer population. And then, of course, so there's that.

I mean, that's really the bigger impact on the resource is my concern. And I think Matt from QDMA, who did a great job, and I actually talked with him fairly regularly about this and some other issues, did a great job of sort of explaining, you know, some of those things after the fact. So if, I know you're out working right now, but quick question for you. And we'll pick this up because, you know, you're on the show all the time. We'll talk more about it. But real quick, like you've emerged as like a CWD crusader, right? Like you're like, you might even be like some people in your area might think you're like the crazy cwd guy because you're really driving awareness in your area and i don't

i'm not trying to joke because you're doing it in a very constructive way of really looking for striving for solutions and striving for consensus but i just want to ask out all fairness because you were like pissed at me about what i said, because in some ways it would be that you've kind of made this in a way your life's work and then someone like demeaning that. But if you knew if you were in the scenario where, let's say you're a 10 right now, you're like on a number one to 10, you're a 10 in your fight on CWD, if you knew that there was no chance for human infection, do you think you'd still be a 10? Or would you honestly be down in the 7, 6, 7, 8 range? One, I like to think I'm a CWD Avenger. And two, I would be a 10.

Really? And the reason for it is the impact on the resource it's conservation i yes i concern myself about um eating venison um and and people eating venison but the fact that what it does to what it does to individual deer but then also the impact on the resource um i really would i mean honestly some of the things, I mean, you know, I used to do buck management. We don't do that anymore. I'd love to be able to do that again. Um, and could I, and could I do that? Well, sure. We would still have, and we, we killed some nice bucks here last year, but, um, we would still that, that would continue to happen. But

as that prevalence gets higher and higher, we, dying, and they're not reaching those older ages. So we're not getting to that older age class. We can debate whether deer actually need to have age class, deer across all the age classes or not, whether that's important to the resource or not. But I'd love to see that again. I mean, there's nothing like seeing a big giant buck. And so, yeah, I would be concerned about it. And I would like to continue

to, no matter what, I would want to control prevalence. So the percentage of deer that have it, but then also the spread so that it's not going on to the next place. You know, one of the analogies that people have used is you keep your kid home from school when they're sick so they don't go and infect other kids. And we're kind of at the point here where on the north edge of the spread of CWD that I'm trying to keep kids home from school so that folks north of us, so their kids aren't getting sick, so their deer aren't getting sick. Does that make sense? No, it makes total sense, man.

Again, Doug, you're on all the time. We'll have you on again to talk more about this. Forgive the having to do it over the phone, but like I said, I got an email from Doug that said, this is an email I never thought I'd need to write to you, which is not how I like to start my morning. Doug, we still love each other, right? I love you, man. I really do. And I appreciate this.

Appreciate the call and the opportunity. And I apologize for being a little heavy handed with some of that, but I, um, you know, as I think I told you, I've gotten a lot of contacts about it. And every time I did, I got a little more upset with you more than I should have. And I tried to get people and I hope some people have written to me either because I said, look, let them know, not just me. So, um, yeah, it was a dumb thing to say. It was um, yeah, it was, it was a dumb thing to say. It was, it was, I was, I was making a point.

I should have said what really scares me or what especially scares me, but yeah. Yeah. And I, um, I also want to say that in the, of all of the work that you've done in conservation and everything you've done for conservation and the voice that you are, it's pretty hard to fault you when we're talking about 30 seconds of time in really a lifetime career. And so I guess that's part of the deal. But I appreciate the opportunity. And, you know, I love you like a brother,

as is the case with some of those other guys there. So thanks very much. All right, thanks, Doug. We'll talk about it more. I just wanted to clear the air because I haven't been able to sleep at night. Me either. Thinking you didn't love me. All right, talk soon, Doug.

Bye. All right, we're whittling the way out of here, man. We got that taken care of. Now, Cal, do you want to tell your elk story or should I tell my elk story? Depends on what you're looking for. You know, mine's a big, fancy, private land scenario. Yeah, let's hear your one. You're an everyday man over the counter.

Mud under the nails. Blue collar hero. Yeah, let's hear your fancy one. Um, so I, I got like very spoiled, spoiled kid, um, chance to go hunt a big private ranch that is owned and operated by the Nature Conservancy in Eastern Oregon. It's called the Zumwalt Prairie Preserve. And their mission statement out there is to

preserve, um, the last, um, largest contiguous chunk of bunchgrass prairie, um, bunchgrass prairie ecosystem. And it is, uh, really gorgeous. It's right outside of, uh, Joseph and Enterprise, Oregon, um, which I understand are getting like more popular with, um, like, uh, your, uh, Portland tourist crowd out there. So folks are kind of starting to discover that area. And I actually have some friends with a ranch in that same spot. So I've been traveling out there, uh, you know, every other year or so. And it is big, uh, like feeder stream tributary country for, uh, Snake River Hell's Canyon.

Oh, okay. And it's like big, so you have those big flat top plateaus and then these big banded kind of cliff band grassy drops all the way down into like really dried, um, kind of desert country. Yeah. It's that stuff that it's like those, one of those areas where you feel like you're in the mountains cause there's so much topography, but then you realize there's no like uplift. Oh, yeah. It's just like a big flat thing.

It's like a flat thing that's been washed away rather than a jaggy thing that's been shelved up. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, you could travel the tops in a mountain bike, you know, with no trail almost. So, but so there, it's this big private junk with an access component. There are, uh, cow elk hunters starting out there, um, the same time I was the opening day in that, uh, area is August 24th. Really?

August 24th. Dude, that seems like early to be hunting, man. It is, but, um. Like in Alaska, they're full swing by then, but here it seems, feels weird. I'll tell you. Colorado starts archery elk in August. Are they hard horned?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, we spotted a few that were like still had plenty of velvet hanging off of them. Yeah. You know, but they had started to shed. It was cool. But big bachelor groups of bulls and. Not all playing grab ass yet.

There is like a little bit of that winding up. And it, I mean, I would tell anybody who can, you know, I mean, you got to diversify and like watch those animals every opportunity you get. Cause it's just like really neat, interesting herd dynamic stuff when all those bulls are together and where you can see like how everybody beds down and the biggest bulls are like so covered up by everybody. Oh really? Yeah. Like I'll take the middle boys.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know that spot right next to the rock that you can't really see what's coming up behind you? Why don't you take that? I'm going to be down here in this hole. And then, yeah, like they'd get up and stretch and then they'd like look at each other and go over there and like

gently gently tap antlers together for and then they'd be like i'm gonna eat some more yeah um and then but then get like real aggressive on a tree and then somebody it was just interesting you just like see the wheel starting to turn like oh god that makes me want to do something but i know it's not quite time yet and it's super fun and i'll tell you you never felt like such a bugling pro because every i would say 80 percent of my bugles were responded to. Like they're just getting to where they feel like they want to bugle. Yeah. And so you'd like, you'd bugle and be like, but you know, nobody's like, what did you say?

It's all like, yeah, I'm over here. But they're not like running toward you. Oh no, no. But they like, they like doing it. Yeah, no, no. But they like doing it. Yeah. I mean, it was fun. And certainly not a situation where you have that monkey on your back like, boy, I only got a couple of days and I haven't found elk yet.

Yeah. You know, like it was pretty amazing. One spotted a couple of raghorn bulls underneath a tree, went over there, checked them out and started looking around. Got close to them? And there's like 16 bulls in there. Man. 16.

You know, you're just like, oh my God. Like giants too or what? Um, so according to, uh, Chad Dotson, who is a preserve steward. So if you have an antlered tag out on the preserve, you have to be accompanied by a preserve steward. Okay. Um, for what purpose? Uh, I think it's, it's purely because those tags are, um, such high value

because they're, they're used as, um, uh, fundraiser tags for, um, uh, all these local. So basically it's set up, um, like a grant. So all the, uh, charities in that area can basically apply for one of these tags to then use as a major fundraiser for that group. But they want to prevent what from happening? Well, I think it's, it's more of like, hey, you have this very special thing.

We want to make sure it's a special thing for you to kind of maintain the value of the tag. Um, and so the preserve stewards go out and they're like, you know, I would probably hold off on shooting that bull because if we just look a little bit longer we're gonna find something bigger and something older yeah presumably they know all the property boundaries and yeah yeah definitely know the property boundaries and and um the uh they get elk living a long time out there too and individual elk get old yeah and they um part of the time out there too. And. Individual elk getting old. Yeah. And they, part of the deal out there, like if

you're a rifle hunter, you got to use non-lead ammunition. Everybody's required to, there's a big survey questionnaire that you got to fill out after the hunt. You got to send in a tooth so they can biopsy it. Gotcha. And yeah, I mean, it's all, tooth so they can biopsy it. Gotcha.

Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it's all, it's super neat stuff and, and really cool program. Didn't you trip and fall and almost land on a bear skull? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which was just like a total.

So the interesting part here is, yes, I, I shot an elk, turned out to not be a good shot. Like the interesting stuff here is yes i i shot now turned out to not be a good shot like the interesting stuff came after and um so i shoot uh the bull it was a 24 yard shot how was it not a good shot i thought it fell right off yeah. But this is like all this after the fact stuff. So, you know, I have this great shot. I have all the time in the world. Take my time. Well within my comfort range.

Hunt with your recurve bow. This was with the longbow. Okay. And I shoot, the bull reacts. The sound of the arrow hitting the bull was very familiar as like, that sounds like a very good shot. Um, like sounded like bone and lung and, you know, cause it kind of had that like crunch kind of sound to it. Um, that was my like little deflation type sound.

And, um, and this is a huge bodied bull and he's got this really distinct old man bugle um but then when he stepped out he's like not that big of a antlered bull um but it was you know too good to pass up and uh the bull reacts like he is immediately falling over and he runs and this is on a very steep slope like i said like on that edge of the canyon and uh he reacts like he's falling over the whole time and running faster than any healthy animal would down this slope then all of a sudden somehow hits the brakes makes a 90 degree turn takes a couple of steps on this what turns then all of a sudden somehow hits the brakes, makes a 90 degree turn, takes a couple of steps on this, what turns out to be a game trail and disappears from sight. At that point I'd ripped a big bugle. Yeah. My theory is like bugle,

particularly with big bulls after they're hit, because I find that they react better to like their anger, sense of anger. Like thinking you might pause them. Thinking that another bull hit him. Yeah. Right? And so, and he turned and hit that trail, went out of sight and I'm waiting. And then I hear crack.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. out of sight and I'm waiting and then I hear crack, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I kind of like laughed to myself, like, yeah, it sounds like you fell all the way to the bottom. Har har. And. And he had. He had. Yeah. So the, the, and there's a lot of logistics talk on this.

Busting antlers all the way down and whatnot. It is pitch black by the time I start trailing, but because of that crashing noise, I'm very confident that I'm going to recover the animal. You know, up until now, like everything's like out of a dusty playbook, right? I'm like, oh yeah, this scenario. So, go down. I, I find it was actually easier to track in the moonlight, um, oddly enough, or not in the headlamp light.

Um, because like there's so much elk sign over there, but like the big digger marks of this bull running so crazy just seemed to pop out more in the headlamp. More in the light. Yeah. And, uh. More in the headlamp or more in the moonlight out more in the headlamp more in the light yeah and uh more in the headlamp more in the moonlight more in the headlamp it was pitch black there is no moonlight yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry i misspoke and uh so i'm tracking him then i find the arrow and i'm like oh that's not good first of all i'm like i am the best tracker in the world i found

the arrow on the pitch black and then i look at the arrow and i'm like, I am the best tracker in the world. I found the arrow on the pitch black, and then I looked at the arrow, and I'm like, I am a terrible shot. Where'd you hit him? I ended up hitting him in the front low on the front left leg. So, I mean, the bottom, basically like the bottom of the shoulder, above the elbow. Um, and, uh, that leg broke. Oh.

But it didn't break on impact. It broke when he, this is all right. My assumptions here of the data I collected, but it broke once he took a couple of steps on that game trail. Yeah. And I, you know, I have the bone with the broadhead in it and there's a big spiral fracture up and the break was actually below the impact of the broadhead.

And then that sent that bull tumbling downhill. That caused him to fall off the cliff. And he fell off three cliffs and I'm, you know, I'm picking my way down through this stuff, but that whole bull, and this is the biggest bodied elk I have ever, certainly ever taken myself, but that whole bull was, you know, somewhere between six and 10 feet off the ground

three different times. Oh. And. I had to have with a mountain goat one time. We wound up with like 13 pounds or something to meet. This was the, I wish I could, I do wish I could somehow contextualize this properly and then, and then show the pictures online because the, the trauma is, is just ghastly. And, uh, I did make the comment. I'm like, man, I wonder if Oregon Fish and Game would slip me a cow tag. Cause I don't know if any of this is going to be usable, but the rock slides, um, that

the bull had to have gone through, he was traveling so fast that there was very, very little blood. Um, there was zero hair, which I found just unbelievable. Um, but I, at first, like, I'm like, well, this is the way he had to go. And I can't find any sign of it's all active rock slides. So they're all smooth. Yeah. And, uh, and then I see this rock that looks like somebody hit it with a hammer, you know, like

all chipped white and broken. I'm like, what is odd? And then I look and I'm shining the headlamp around and I can see the bright white inside of, uh, an antler, like the core of the antler is shining bright white. Yeah. And it's like reflective almost.

And I'm like, oh, okay, well here's a chunk of an antler and then there's a chunk of an antler and then there's a chunk of an antler. And then I can see like more busted rock, just same, same way. Like you're just whacking it with a hammer every 10 feet. And then I can see the roots of a tree tipped over and i'm like oh that's fresh and then yeah that was like really every bit of 10 feet but i'm trying to like like his body hit the tree and uprooted the tree

yeah and then off this major cliff and then and i have to like jump down probably like a five foot drop section and i'm trying not to fall and slide off and i look between my feet and there's like a pinky size tip of a horn tip of an antler tip right in between my feet and i'm like oh one piece at a time um like that johnny cash song and uh can't stand that song it's fitting under these circumstances man and uh and yeah so then i continue down the slide path but it's just so odd right and it's like that when you're tracking at night i'm like okay here he's gonna be and then he's no out i'm like there's just it's not i have dropped so much elevation right and i'm always like very hesitant to drop elevation unless i really know

but i'm so i'm crossing little side gaps off the list and then going down and then all of a sudden go through this next cliff band and I slip and fall hard. And I look over with my headlamp and there's this bear skull just grinning at me. Jeez. It's awful ominous. Bad omen. Oh, man. Warning, warning. It really gave me a stop, right?

And it's like that bear had laid down and died right there because it is just perfect and like the canine sitting there eyes looking at me or the eye sockets looking at me and he says your bull is gone and i was just like you know i just it was like what put you and me here at the same, same time? Like you should spot, I shouldn't be here or something. And so, yeah, that kind of just threw me for a loop. Um, cause when do you ever see that? And, uh, I'd go a little bit further at that point. Um, uh, Chad and, uh, Lauren had, uh, gotten all the way around to the bottom so they'd gone all

the way to the back and i was like hey grab my chainsaw um grab you know here's like the list of things how do you want a chainsaw for because i didn't know the condition of the two-track road in the bottom oh um if we could use that saw to like cut some dead timber out of the way or just make things easier you know and they had to go through there anyway. So I figured why not? Um, and you know, at this point I'm like 200 yards off the bottom, like the bottom, bottom

and Chad starts hiking up and about a hundred feet from like the actual Creek bottom is that bowl all piled up. and so he actually got to him before i did in a total mess yeah in in a in a total mess man and just yeah so that bowl could have been a six by six but now it's a two by three two by four if the way it broke you would count like the continuation of the main beam as a point there's the sheared off part of the main beam as a point yeah so um what a disaster yeah and the thing is huge like it is a huge bowl and man start cutting that thing and like and i made the comment i'm like man it looks

like you got shot with a shotgun because it's just like peppered from that ride down the mountain and uh so i i start at the anus right and i'm cut up and i start peeling that hide back and it you know all these bulls I've been watching through the phone scope and like watching for days and I'm just remarking the whole time how fat they are. Oh my God, look at the fat. Like you can see it ripple, you know, and

that's just not something you see even early in that typical archery season. So they've been doing a lot of running and, um, and this fat is like obliterated. It is particulate fat. Oh yeah. Like that was the cushion and it is a mess and it's God awful and I'm just sick to my stomach. But, um, then you kind of get through that, that layer of fascia, um, right above the meat and everything started looking clean.

Um, but I just, uh, yeah, the, the pictures are, yeah. I mean, I sent you guys, I think Giannis is like, what am I looking at? It's just like, but like the anus was blown out of it. All the ribs were broken, uh, right below the spine on one side. On the opposite side, when I started to cut the loin out, um, I made like half a cut in that fascia layer and the loin just dropped into my hands. Like it had completely. Separated. It had detached from the spine and the ribs.

Um. You know, I think I told you probably 10 times, but when I had that mountain goat that fell 1200 feet its skull was open its brain was gone and i found its lung tucked tucked up between its shank and its hide no way on his ankle yeah man no skinning no necessary skinning because the hide had completely separated was just held on by that hooves. Wow. Yeah. But yeah, so I didn't, this is just kind of one of those things, right? It's like, who knows? Like the thing.

There's not a lot, there's not like a lot of lessons to learn here. I think the lesson is like, had you just taken it at face value and like not been a heart eater, you would have been like, oh, slipped her through the shoulder and whacked him in the heart but i dug the heart out and i'm like there is definitely not a broadhead hole in this thing um i did find bruising inside the heart and i asked a emt buddy i'm like you you figure like if there's a cardiac arrest type situation, they'll be bruising inside the heart. And he said, typically it comes from a blockage outside the heart. And so there's not bruising inside the heart, but maybe somebody can write in and let us know about that.

I'm like, really old elk freaked out, had a heart attack. And that's, you know. So you're saying this because you don't know what killed it. The arrow placement may have killed it eventually, but it didn't kill it that fast. He slipped and fell. The lesson to be learned, or the takeaway for me, right, is like you aren't as good as you think you are with that bow

because you definitely made a mistake. No. So, um, that's, that's a good lesson. And I got really fricking lucky, man. So did you try any of the meat yet? Uh, all I've, all I have eaten is the heart. And then, uh, I had a couple of friends in town, um, that weekend and they helped butcher. And so I sent them with some of the meat, um, and they, they were there for the butchering job, but like inside those loins, there would be, um, just if they, it looked like actual, like burst blood vessels in there.

Yeah. And so they, um, they actually, um, they were camping, they're like camping across the country and, uh, they cooked it up and they said it was really good. Exceptionally tender. But yeah, man, I mean, and that's. I'll take a pack of that. That's yeah, definitely. The, I don't know.

I, I, I want another takeaway is like, you just, you're never, as long as you hunt as many of these scenarios as you see they're all unique and you're never gonna get to a point where you're like oh yeah i've seen that let me tell you what happened you know so i like that part of it last time i had a big bull fall off a cliff yeah but we figured um you know every every bit of 600 vertical feet that bull went. So yeah. Yeah. You think about that Phil the engineer? Uh, I don't know if it were on tracks, it'd be a fun rollercoaster. That's what it sounds like to me.

That's the best Phil's got. Wow. Did you like that story? Yeah. Yeah. It was great. I had heard some of, some of it before, but, uh, the bear skull is new. Like you like that touch. That, yeah, it was great. I had heard some of it before, but the bear skull is new. You like that touch?

Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. So you're enjoying yourself down there? Yeah, having a great time. Good. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. And it's so hot you know we got that thing back and got the meat all hung up cooling um uh 3 a.m it was probably in bed by 4 a.m yeah that's that's what you sign up for when you're shooting bulls at night in the, in the heat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I hate doing that too. Like I've, I've called her quits early many nights cause I'm like, man. Just don't feel like doing that whole situation.

Yeah. Man. Um. I know next week when we're hunting elk together, I sure hope you kill one in the morning. It makes life that much easier. It does. That's the story I'm going to tell right now when we're hunting elk together, I sure hope you kill one in the morning. It makes life that much easier. That's the story I'm going to tell right now about me and my brother went out elk hunting.

You could start off by saying, let me tell you how it should be. Let me tell you how it should work. So we, opening morning here, just not too long ago, a week ago, whatever the hell it was, a little over a week ago um no a week will be tomorrow week tomorrow well it opens on saturday and we on friday night not filming just out monkeying around like the old days we on friday night

in the afternoon start we had we had uh his llamas with us we had four pack llamas and we started hiking up into the mountains to an area he wanted to go and hit um and we start in the afternoon it's raining it's all muddy and just kind of nasty but we knew he had a good day such nasty weather that i was even looking at you guys going man you might want to change directions you know change locations because it looked like a real shit day to walk into the oh start when you got to like get it when you get out of the truck and it's pouring rain and you're going back in for a couple nights it's like oh really but then you can't back out because then what's the point of being alive so we start going um and we get into an area where he thinks like he's expecting we should be seeing something seeing hearing something seeing

something but then it's like hard to rule out because like well it's raining at first he's like man rain's really putting them down you know like they're not out but then all of a sudden it was like like the the skies part and it's like this beautiful evening and we're sitting there as it gets dusk and we got a good vantage and just like nothing, nothing. So when it gets dark and we kick around like, man, you know, maybe there'll be out in the morning, but we decided to keep walking. And we walked another couple hours through the dark and, um, got to the point where we were about seven miles from where we parked. And then we, we were starting to hear some ripping um like good bugling and set up and slept there for the night got up in the morning and just kind of like

got out eight in the morning not eight in the morning but we ate breakfast in the morning you know we ate you know uh god it was pretty damn good, man. Was it a bunch of sinew and scraps? No, it was like normal Matt meal. No, because I brought it. It was that, what's the Heather's or pantry? Oh, Heather's Choice. The breakfast?

Dude. Dude, they're like rocket fuel. Dude, that was good, man. Yeah. That was good. We ate some of those. I brought some of those. Yeah, Matt and I would be eating like sinew.

Oh, you know another quick Matt story? He doesn't normally eat, I don't think. He doesn't like to eat. He still uses an old school alcohol stove, which I like. I was like, hey, want me to grab my Jetboil? And he goes, no, because I like it to be quiet. Because when I'm cooking, I want to listen for bugles. And he uses the alcohol stove because it makes zero noise.

Like a Jetboil is loud. Yes, but the alcohol stove because it makes zero noise. Like a jet boil is loud. Yes, but I would argue that it's such an inefficient use of time that a loud jet boil, sure, you might be not hearing something for about two minutes, but at least you get to eat before 10 p.m. Because you're waiting on that alcohol stove, man.

Dinner's late. Yeah, but he said, I pressed him on it. He said, I'm never in a hurry. And when I'm cooking, I want to listen for bugles. He just likes his alcohol stove. I didn't argue with him. He likes his alcohol stove.

But he told me a great story. He carries with him a portable bow press. Have you seen one of these? Oh. It's like a cable with a little screw attachment on the hand crank he carries a portable bow press with him out in the woods somehow he got he had ran into some problem and wished he had one oh he was with his wife one time and something happened and his bow popped off the came off one of the cams and him and his wife were able to wrestle that bow back into

submission and got it restrung. So then she goes out and buys him a portable bow press, and he's working a group of elk. This is just him alone. He's out working a group of elk, and he had his portable bow press that his wife bought for him with him. He's working a group of elk and slips on a rock in a stream channel and falls down and busts the peep site off his bowstring. And he carries like basic stuff like anybody was, but he doesn't care.

Like who carries an extra peep site? Maybe I'm sure thousands of people do, but he doesn't have an extra peep site. Check this out. He's way the hell back in the mountains. His peep site broke. He starts looking around through all of his gear and realizes that the button on his pants has like that little rim around the periphery. Okay. Hollows out the hole in the button on his pants.

Takes his portable bow press and installs his pants button in as his peep sight, and then shoots and kills a bull with it. Wow. Oh, God. That's some real MacGyver stuff right there, man. That's some woodsmanship. Yes. Kills a bull with his pants button.

Never say quit. Never say die. So anyhow, we get out in the morning, and we start working these bulls. It was like you know like those days it's like the days you dream of having right no one around and we got three bulls out in front of us ripping and all of a sudden we're like trying to keep track of who's where cows going off and also there's another bull coming from behind us we reposition like this new bull just like shows up out of nowhere bugling

he kind of sweeps through and sort of bypasses us but like he's bypassing us because there's this whole circus going on out in front of us right and he's like coming to join the good times but the main good times are the bulls that are in front of us not us

but he still comes through passes it 100 yards goes in to join the whole shit show going on out in front of us not us and he kind of but he still comes through passes at 100 yards goes in to join the whole shit show going on out in front of us eventually like some of these more vocal bulls they seem to go up this slope we're kind of looking down into a bottom and we were like they kind of bugle up and over and matt he knows the area a little bit he's like man he goes i know i bet i know where they're going. So we circle around to try to get out ahead of him, thinking like, well, just get out ahead of him and try to set up again.

And then we look across the drainage and find this other bull bedded down out in the open. And it's overcast. It's a cool day. And he's just bedded out in the open with two cows feeding right next to him. And we get to looking at him. And we're

like man that thing the way he's positioned like the land features are such that you just know right where he is like it's like so obvious where he is and there's this cliff band behind him and we just drop everything and circle back around it takes us about 30 minutes and we just know exactly where he is because the landscape features are like you just can't mess it up so we go back around and get up on this cliff band above him and we know that we're 110 yards we can tell we're 110 yards from where we know that bull's bedded and i'm on top of this little rock pile cliff band it's not big you know you could throw a rock you know and hit a grouse off the edge of the cliff band it's not too far far. But I'm up there, and Matt creeps down to the foot of the cliff band, thinking there's no way.

It would take like an act of God to call a bull up through this thing. But he gets down in there, and he realizes once he's down there, he goes, man, I feel like I could, he says, I could recognize the tree that bull was on. Under. And I even thought I could see part of it, but wasn't sure I could see part of it. And I ripped a bugle and he said, he's still like, he's still trying to be like, is that the bull? And he goes, the minute I bugle, that thing just stands up and bugles and is coming. Like just coming.

Coming so hard that he draws his bow back. It's because he doesn't want to have to get busted when he goes to draw his bow back did you even try cow calls you went right i was doing the whole litany i was doing a yanni putellis but it wasn't until you bugled that he came you were first thing i did i feel like the first thing i did i know the first thing I did was rip the bugle. I was doing a combo Yanni Phelps. The only thing that made it not a Yanni Patel is I wasn't beating brush yet, but I was going to get to that in a minute. You probably didn't want to roll any rocks

if you're laying on your brother's head. No, and I got his damn dog tied up. So he hunts that little dog, and the dog's such a low-riding dog, that little corgi, the elk can't usually see it anyway. And the dog is the most obedient dog in the world. He goes so much to that dog, and that dog stands behind him and walks behind him.

The dog knows what's up, and he knows you're hunting elk. He's part of the team. Oh, part of the team. But because we got two of us, and I'm calling, and Matt's going out ahead, I grab that dog's collar and the dog attacks me because he doesn't like to be far from Matt. So I took a chunk of paracord and tied a slipknot around that dog's neck so he couldn't get away without strangling himself,

and I tied him to a bush. And at one point I was trying to get a look down in there to see what's going on, and I leapt forward and it broke the dog's heart because he's like, now that my owner's gone, now this guy's leaving too and I'm tied to a noose. So then I backed up because I felt so bad

for the dog just giving me this horrible look. But yeah, as soon as I bugled, then I was calling too because then he starts bugling and I can hear him down there

just ripping. So then I'm doing the whole, I'm just making the whole show. And Matt says he draws back, the bull crosses in front of him at 32 yards and he's going to walk right through. And Matt just he draws back. The bull crosses in front of him at 32 yards. And he's going to walk right through. And Matt just

gave him a little whistle noise just to stop him. The bull stops and Matt shoots. And I hear like the shot. I hear the pumpkin thump. And I'm like, hell yeah, man. I come running down and Matt's all distraught. See, like he

didn't see the arrow hit. And he's like, man, I feel like if it didn't hit where I was looking, I don't know where, you know. He's all worked up. The dog keeps trying to trail the elk. The dog's already gone because this dog trails elk. This dog's incredible, shifty. So he's telling his dog to get back, And we went and took a nap on a rock.

And I'm laying there taking my nap. And at one point I'm looking at dogs. He's got his nose up in the air. And his dog is like dying to go. And he's like just sniffing air. And I sniffed too. And I'm like, it smells like a dead, whatever a dead bull smells like. It smells like a dead bull.

It smells like hot blood bull. It's like the strongest, most potent elk smell you could smell and even the dogs like dude what in the world what are these guys doing and matt's like curled up and think about taking a picture of matt sleeping on a rock into the fetal position and you know you always go to negativity you know because it's the best place to go yeah uh and meanwhile that thing's just laying dead right there like it wrapped around the hill and fell over dead. And so when I'm laying there thinking like, my God, that smell, like the wind would shift and I'd just get the smell.

I'm like, that has to be like an elk right there. We're laying like 40 yards from this elk. 40. I mean, it's just like right there. Yeah. Because the way we went to find a rock to sleep on, like when he shot the bull, the bull wrapped around a little mound and we kind of went on the mound. Do you know what I'm saying?

Right, get a flat spot. Then we went back down off the mound, found the blood trail, and basically wrapped around in a half loop to back around where we just were. And we're going, at first there's no blood, Matt's like, I knew it, I blew it, I'm the worst person on the planet.

Then all of a sudden there's a big pile of blood, and I'm thinking, because I'm already in a spot of negativity, feeding off his negativity. You know when you get a bad hit on something that there's like no blood, but then you find blood and it's only because it stood there for an hour trying to figure out what's going on. And you

find that pile of blood and you're like, this will be the last blood we find. Because he stopped and stood here for 45 minutes seeing what's going on. And then he clots up and walks off and it was just a muscle wound and we see this big pile of blood and then i almost got like a more negative feeling because i was like oh he stopped and stood it's never good when they stop and stand but then i look and the dog's licking up a pile of blood looks like the size of a tv tray

and the dog's like eating blood. And then the dog moves along. I look and here's the bull all tangled up. I mean, this thing was like, we were like taking a nap on it. It was just like, it's all like very confined. It was all this right there. He's just like laying there dead or dead. I don't know how we didn't hear it pile up. Got it all cut up.

And Matt have any. He gave me a hug. Memorable response. He gave me a hug. He wanted to have a hug. That's awesome. He gave me a long hug. Meanwhile, the damn. He wanted to have a hug. That's awesome. He gave me a long hug. Meanwhile, the damn dog doesn't even realize the elk's standing there

because the dog likes to eat all the blood as it goes along. So it's like laughing up blood, bulls laying there. Everybody's all happy. He had a big hug. Cut it all up, went and got his llamas. Brought it back to where we were sleeping. Hung it up in a tree. Get the elk hung in a tree. Decided decided let's go have a look worked another bull

screaming his face off he comes in i couldn't see him the way he came in he probably came 70 70 yards before he ghosted off slept woke up and here's where the here's where the bad part of the story happens all night i can't sleep because the bull's ripping like it's like they're it's like they're ripping in our in our tent man and then cows keep getting like they know we're like sleeping there so like you're like you fall asleep and then all of a sudden go like morning barking you think like they're all gonna leave but they like don't leave oh it's a weird night and i'm just like dude this is the most amazing thing and we get up and we have to be hunting this place there's a weird night and i'm just like dude this is the most amazing thing and we get up and we have to be hunting this place there's a there's like there's seasonal motorized motorized

use through this area and it's this this is kind of such a weird story man i almost hesitate to get into it there's an outfitter that hunts this area but he does drop camp stuff but he has this very big ass drop camp and he generally hikes in hike hunters and, but he does drop camp stuff. But he has this very big-ass drop camp. And he generally hikes in hike hunters and sets up this big drop camp and guys hunt out of this big drop camp. Somehow this guy, he used to not allow dudes to do this, but somehow he opened it up and allows motorcycle guys now. Like a horse pack-in drop camp inhabited by guys on dirt bikes. Yeah, that doesn't fit.

It's just, right, whatever, whatever. He used to not allow it, now he allows it. Right. Okay. So he'll pack in a big, he'll pack in his wall tents and everything, establish this big base camp where he can go fetch elk on mules, but then guys can ride into the camp on dirt bikes because they're scared of grizzlies so they like to have a big elaborate place to go sleep at night

where they don't have to be scared of grizzlies they don't want to sleep out like just out in the mountains they want to sleep at like a big place with all this hubbub going on yeah and he's got a big uh he's got a big electric fence around the camp. Yeah, so these dirt bike guys are scared of grizzlies, but they want to hunt the area. One of these guys was saying once that he can't even go drop a deuce without bringing someone with him. He's so scared of grizzlies. Oh.

That's not a comfortable experience. No, and we're in this meadow, and he's elkman ripping all night in this meadow, and we get up in the dark, and we go up into the edge of the timber so we're looking down and we're like okay as soon as the light comes up we're gonna see what's going on and make a plan and also and again man this trail is open up until something it's seasonally open not like it's seasonally open to dirt bikes and matt. Probably like September 15th or something. It's seasonally open to dirt bikes. And Matt's like, he just wants to drift off the trail. And I'm like, I'm like mildly annoyed.

And I stop and express my annoyance to the dirt biker. But it's like, I feel bad about it because it is legal. But it's like, it'd be legal for me to be up there with a marching band. As long as you guys are just out having fun. No, if I determined that it was most effective to hunt with a marching band, it would be legal for me to be up there with a marching band. It's not illegal. As long as you're not having like a gathering for... Oh, because I'd be oversized?

Yeah. Okay. I could legally be up there with a five-man marching band with a trumpeter like uh i could have a trumpeter i could have the cavalry i'm not breaking law so it's like we're not debating legality it's not it's like sure there's all kinds of stuff that's legal but is it smart when you're in like the prime and i know where their camp there's elk we're in it the elk eventually move out but they're in like the prime and I know where their camp, there's elk, we're in it. The elk eventually move out,

but they're in it. Like, is that smart? Like, or is it better to maybe wait till 11 in the morning and do your travel on a motorcycle and not blow through? And you can't, here's the thing.

It's hunting spots or hunting elk, right? It's like you, when you're, when you're on it, you can't hear bugling. So you're when you're on it you can't hear bugling so you're blowing through you're you're like you're blowing through a meadow where elk are ripping you don't know they're ripping yeah it just yeah but the guy the guy's hunting a spot he's not hunting elk right

so he's like i go to this spot and there's usually elk there so i got to get to that spot and by making that choice you have then eliminated for most circumstances you've you've eliminated hunting elk in the transition zone between trailhead and the the spot that you're going yeah no i feel horrible about it i feel horrible about it. I feel horrible about it. Did you ask the guy? Yeah, I said, where are you camping? I said, right here. But did you ask the guy what his motivation was to be ripping on the dirt bike? He said he's headed off. He goes, oh, don't worry because we're headed.

But yeah, I mean, how would he know? I just feel bad about it. I feel bad about it. It is because I've been at trail heads. I killed a bull. We at, uh, trailheads. I, I killed a, a bull. Not, we're nowhere near, we're nowhere near a trailhead. Um, but I started at a trailhead with.

Oh, okay. A guy unloading his motorbike and I throw on my backpack and start as if to go down the trail. And the guy's like, well, where are you going? I'm like, well, I'm heading down the trail until I hear a bugle. Well, I was going down this trail. I hear a bugle well I was going down this trail I was like man you can

I knew that country very well and I'm like you can drive 150 miles on this trail I'm like it just goes and goes and circles around I'm not going to get that far I'm like I'm sure you're going to get further than I am

you know and it's pitch black and I'm not, I'm not going to get that far. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sure you're going to get further than I am. You know, and it's pitch black and, and I never did see the guy that, that day, but went about several miles further than I should do. And I killed a bull that morning. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I still don't know. I feel, like I said, I feel guilty about it.

Cause like, you know, I feel guilty about it, but I also feel like, come on, man. Yeah. But, I mean, that's the nice part, though, is you know that they're going to miss plenty of opportunities using that means of travel, and they're going to find opportunities that you're not using that means of travel. Yeah, the smart thing would have been just to do it, just to slip off, just to ghost off the trail.

And then rip a big old bugle. What if he wasn't hunting and he just decided to be at dawn i wouldn't have cared at all right there's plenty of dudes in those little evil knievel suits driving those trails and during the daytime and motorbikes i wouldn't it's like that's not even that's not my business it's like yeah there's plenty of pleasure riders but the thing the assumption you make is like they're usually in the cold gray light at dawn they're not out right they kind of go they're like they ride out in the daytime pleasure cruising that's what struck me as weird like you're hunting you're hunting that zoom wall deal we would get up at normal way early archery elk season hunting

time you know 4 a.m wake up and then basically have get our gear ready get uh sandwiches ready for the day have a couple cups coffee wait for it to start getting light, and then get going. Just based off the fact that we know if we tried to go anywhere at night, we'd be bumping out the whole time. Yeah. You know. Me and Yanni were in the exact opposite situation yesterday where we went out in the morning out to a state chunk to do some rifle shooting.

We met up there at 7.30 a.m. to do some gun shooting. And it turns out there were some dudes trying to bow hunt the state section. And they came and expressed, one of them came and expressed

his displeasure. Yeah. 7.30 in the morning? You got to come out shooting guns? Yeah. Early September? Fair point. That was the season. Multi-use come out shooting guns? Yeah. Early September? Fair point.

Multi-use. And we're kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you, I got you. It's like, I wasn't like, it's legal. I was like, yeah. Those kind of make me feel a little bad. It kind of makes you feel like a dick. No, for sure.

And the thing is too, if there had been any sign, I think, that somebody was haunting it, we probably would have made plan B. Definitely. But we had no idea. No, and if I had known, you know, but then I was like, you know, you have these weird interactions. It'd always be better if someone could

tell you, hey, tomorrow, you're going to have a weird interaction, and here's what's going to happen. Then you could plan out, like, oh, here's what I'll do when I have that interaction. I'll real cool yeah and i'll have you know i'll express this complex that wouldn't be much fun no instead you're like yeah it's legal ah one last question here i know we got to wrap it up yeah i'm I'm done. But did you miss your production crew? No, no. Just your brother and Shifty?

No, no. Didn't miss anything about it. I took some cell phone videos. It was so good being back out with my brother. Yeah. Dude, it was so good. That's why I didn't even want to shoot. Just wanted to, you know, let it, you know. Oh, it was fun. Part of you party wasn't thinking if i just nose over this cliff a little bit i might be able to snag that bull out from i was enjoying myself

so much i didn't want to shoot that's awesome i love it dude it was fun man he's a good hunter man yeah he's good hunter like just because like the just the grrr i love map it sounds like a head case out there an enormous amount of grrr sounds like a head case though sounds like he does a lot of like dude he's bulls have him beat before he gets on the trail a lot of times no he's like mad jack remember grizzly adams yeah he's like Mad Jack. Remember Grizzly Adams? Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's like a crazy guy wandering the hills, man. I'm sure there's people like, oh, and there's an insane person

that wanders the hills out here. You'll see him. He uses an alcohol stove and takes his time cooking. Yeah, likes to listen for bugles. He's got a button for a peep. He's got his pants buttoned for a peep sight.

You'll know his camp because there will be 50 half-gallon bottles of vodka and gin strewn about. But he's not drinking at all. No, he... Just for carrying water.

That's one of the things I laughed about is because when he packs in his lounge, they don't have that much to carry. So he packs in tons of water and he drinks gin and tonics. And so all of his water bottles

are two-liter tonic bottles and half-g half gallon vodka bottles and if you look you can see the ratio when he empties his panniers out you can see the ratio of like his ratio of vodka like it takes him like three it takes him like three two liter bottles of tonic to get through a half gallon of vodka so the the ratio is like fixed. It'd be like six half gallons of vodka and 18 bottles of tonic all full of drinking water in a pile. He just like throws them in a big pile. Your boy's looking to have a good time, are you?

If you rolled in, you'd be like, what are these alcoholics? But they're all like, you can tell he's been using all these bottles for like a season or two. Years, years. I one time got him turned on to these army water bottles he had some reason he didn't like them but he didn't like that he's like he much prefers a good two liter bottle with the label still on it dude he's a good hunter man he's a good hunter he's a good hunter because he's like methodic he's just a good hunter because just like the gir, he just,

just goes and goes and goes and doesn't care. It's like, you could be like, Oh, you know, if you woke up and someone stole his boot, right? He'd just be like,

Oh, yeah, but he's prepared for it. He's prepared for that. Too bad my boots gone. And he would just still hunt, man. You know what I mean?

He's prepared for that with the way at the too bad, my boot's gone. And he would just still hunt, man. He's prepared for that at the rate that he loses pieces of gear. He usually has two or three pairs of footwear with him. Yeah, he'd like kill a llama and rap its hide around his foot

and hunt another couple days. Yeah. That guy cracks me up, man. Gets it taken care of though. Yeah, good job.

That's probably the first bull you've ever called in for a kill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good job That's probably the first bull you've ever called in For a kill Yeah Yeah good job I learned everything I know from Yanni It's a pretty sweet Montana homecoming

Right that's your first Cause we used to go out and just try to get out And we killed elk like that but just go out and get out in front of them And that doesn't work and get out in front of them But dude it's so much more fun So much more fun cool cool so much more fun things last longer oh yeah when i first met you you thought that calling elk just made him run the other direction well it did for us we had those the same primos bite and blow call everybody else had we didn't

know how to use it you'd like blow that it was the answer of the whoa you hear that oh that's good yanni that was a good morning do your morning call again oh oh send shivers on my spine do your far off vehicle There it is. There it is. Oh, hey, real quick, Anthony, can you plug Whitetail Weekly? Yeah. If you haven't signed up yet for Whitetail Weekly, go to themeateater.com and do so. This is our new weekly newsletter that is all things Whitetail. We're going to be ramping up a ton of deer hunting coverage this fall.

If you get this in your mailbox every week, you will see the cool stuff, what's going on, videos. We have a whole bunch of series coming out, a lot of good stuff. So Whitetail Weekly, go to TheMeatEater.com and sign up. And also the final episode of DOS Boat, our fishing show available on YouTube. If you go in and type in like like Das Boat Meat Eater. Yep. You'll find it. You'll find it. Six episode series.

Six episode series. Yeah. You can find it on our website or you could go to YouTube, find it there. Last episode will be coming out or it probably will be out by the time you hear this for sure. And then you can just, you don't have to wait. Like all the suckers that just started watching it when we started releasing it. You can binge watch then you can just, you don't have to wait like all the suckers that just started watching when we started releasing.

You can binge watch. You can just go and binge it, man. Get it done in one night. Yeah, you can Netflix that shit. I don't mean that, but I mean you can go watch it all. That's right. All right.

Thank you. You guys don't know about it yet, but we just kind of are announcing this today that we here at Meat Eater bought a farm. What we're going to eventually do with this farm is a surprise that'll come out in time. But what we're doing first off is we're going to take one lucky winner out to hunt with me and Mark Kenyon on this farm. It's in Michigan. We're trying over the next couple of years here to turn it into a wildlife paradise. Not just turkeys and deer, pollinators, birds, everything, man. We want to make it bloom. We want to

hunt there with you. If you want to hook up with me and Mark Kenyon and win this hunt and come hang out, we'll eat wild game at night. We'll hunt all day. We'll do all kinds of fun stuff for a few days. Go to themeateater.com slash win a hunt. And then you'll be able to come out and hunt our new farm with me and Mark Kenyon.

And we will have some fun and hopefully get some good action in. Check it out. TheMeatEater.com slash win a hunt. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law,

but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.