The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 189: Boxing With the Last Grizzly

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Danny Schmidt, Chris Gill, Rorke Denver, Seth Morris, and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: More on the pros and cons of flip flops; getting your heel peeled off by an alligator’s back; Steve's annoyance with people being annoyed over people doing stupid things in a park; the immense hunting pressure in southern Colorado; strapping stuff to the outside of your truck; CO’s last grizzly; thru-hikers; elk feeds; the non-binary nature of hunting; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by OnX Hunt, creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.

Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Alright, folks. We're here in Southern Colorado. Are you introing the show, Yanni? I was just messing around, starting. I could, though. That's all I'm going to say about it. Southern Colorado. Yeah, that's enough.

You know what I was thinking about recently that I wanted to... I think I kind of told you about it already, but I thought you'd like it. I saw a dude. He had a shirt. You know people I was thinking about recently that I wanted to – I think I kind of told you about it already, but I thought you'd like it, is I saw a dude, he had a shirt. You know people will go to like the Super Bowl or whatever, or someone will win the Super Bowl? Yes. And people will have a shirt.

They'll say like, the Bears. Yeah, Super Bowl champions. Yeah. I saw a guy recently that had a shirt commemorating the fact that he watched that big solar eclipse. It was like solar eclipse 2018 or whatever.

I thought you'd appreciate that. I like it. I thought you'd like it. I didn't give a shit. I just thought you'd like it. You didn't give a shit? I liked it, but I didn't like it as much as I thought you'd like it. We should make something that just says like, Elk Season 2019. much as I thought you'd like it yeah we should make something to just say like elk season 2019 that'd be a good idea um remember we're talking about me saying that you'll appreciate this

Seth the flip-flop flesher me saying that I gave up on flip-flops because of someone saying, how are you going to rescue your family? Yeah. Or defend your wife. Or defend your wife if you're wearing flip-flops. I'd be curious to get your take on this, Rourke Denver. I have mixed feelings. I definitely appreciate both sides of it. I lived in Hawaii for about a year before I joined the Navy,

and flip-flops is like general attire. I mean, that's what you wear, whether it's a formal event or you're on the beach or heading to the beach and your feet become like belt radials. So I'd say because you get so much barefoot time over there as well. So if you had to rescue your family over there, they're probably prepped to go barefoot if need be. Just kick them off and go. Yeah. So I felt like at a time I probably had that capacity for work, but now I, I live somewhere in between. I do like having the kit.

If things go wrong, I'm off to the races grabbing one kid, my bride's grabbing the other kid, and we're surviving the zombie apocalypse. But I like a flip-flop, man. Still. I like a flip-flop, yeah, I do. I'm real torn on it, man. Like I said, I quit for a while, but I'm thinking about getting back into it now. It's wintertime now, or it's fall.

It's like the wrong season to get back into it. Well, getting back into it now. It's wintertime now. Or it's fall. It's like the wrong season to get back into it. Well, getting back into it when the weather improves. But I took a little break because my buddy Dave, my buddy Dave was telling, I think I told this story, right? My buddy Dave was telling a story where he was in, he's from Montana, but he was in New York and he comes into a comedy club with his wife

and he's got his flip-flops on. And the comedian on stage berates him. And he's like, where the hell are you from? Because he was like surprised to see a guy wearing flip-flops in the city. Yeah, I don't think you should wear flip-flops in New York City. Because you're not prepared.

You're not prepared. It's also dirty. No, he didn't like it. And that-flops in New York City. Because you're not prepared. You're not prepared. It's also dirty. No, he didn't like it. And that made my buddy Dave really question it. And then I showed up in flip-flops, and Dave was like, you are the last guy on the planet I thought would wear flip-flops. What is going on? And then I quit.

So after talking about this flip-flop thing, we got two pieces of feedback from people. One pro flip-flop and one con flip- people um one pro flip-flop and one uh con flip-flop or against flip-flop the against flip-flop guys talking about how last december he uh comes home on his lunch break and sees that there's a car park in his driveway and his side gates open and the french doors in the back of his house are open and he credits his leather boots with the fact that he was emboldened to run into his house and confront the intruder. And he says that if he'd been wearing his flip-flops, he would have been stuck out front calling 911. But he goes in.

He's sure someone's in his house robbing his house. house and is met there by a dude who, a burglar who is brandishing the guy's own 357. Like the burglar ran in and found his 357 and is holding his 357. They get into a scuffle and he knocks the glasses off of the guy and then hauls ass out of his house and runs away, leaving the burglar in the house with the pistol. Later, when the cops come over, they find that

the glasses that the guy knocked off during the scuffle and they're able to pull a DNA sample off the glasses

and catch a career burglar. Wow. Nice. And he credits his having not had his flip flops on. But another guy's talking about he takes his wife. This guy's from North Carolina.

He takes his wife to some fancy resort. And his wife goes into the bathroom and he's sitting there eating and sees that there's this rat scurrying around. And she's not happy about the rat. He tells the waitress about the situation eventually the rat comes by and comes within seven feet and he's got those big you know those big keen flip-flops like super heavy duty flip-flops he says he took that flip-flop and jojo killed the rat hucking a flip-flop at it so he said in that case it was his flip-flops that enabled him to defend his wife from the rat.

From the big, scary rat. And they gave him $100 credit. Oh, there you go. At the resort. You think he's going to go back to that Ratfield resort? So point being, it's inconclusive whether flip-flops, you know, are appropriate attire. If we're making arguments on the toughness of flip-flops, I will say when stationed on both coasts in the SEAL teams,

the west coast of the SEAL teams in mass wears flip-flops at a high, high level. Really? So if you're just trying to like evaluate the the the raw toughness of those people that wear flip-flops there's at least one subgroup that will live a large portion of their life in flip-flops whose toughness is probably unquestioned yeah and who are probably capable of defending their wives yeah uh you remember that book black hawk down you might be able to give some perspective on this i I know people that were there.

Yeah. I read the book, Black Hawk Down, and in it, the author, Mark Bowden, talks about some developing tensions within the ranks of people in Somalia. And one point of contention was that certain guys on this base were allowed to wear flip-flops while on guard duty. Military? Yes. Oh.

That they would, maybe not allowed, but they were taking the liberty to stand there with a flak vest. What do you call a flak vest? Yeah, a flak jacket. I mean, that's old term, body armor. They would have shorts, flip-flops, a flag jacket while standing guard. And other people from other units weren't allowed to do this. And it was creating some tension. Yeah. There would be some aesthetic of seeing somebody in that gear that would

appeal to me. And I would probably be equally pissed that they were in that outfit standing. So you'd look at it and be like, yeah, I get it. I like what this guy believes in and I would probably holler at him to go put some combat boots on.

Some pants. On the subject, on the ongoing subject of what to do with your dead body when you die, this guy writes in, he was talking about this with his wife and his wife proposed to him that she could take his ashes and integrate them into a salt mineral lick and then put like stir them into a mineral lick and put it out so that, that,

that's how his ashes could go consumed by deer so that he could give something back after all that they'd given to him like that i like it yeah i like that too uh another thing i want to talk about is yeah like i was observing the other day an emerging trend and this might not even resonate with people who don't live in sort of like posh mountain towns but in posh mountain towns there's an emerging bozeman being one of yeah yeah but i mean catch them like all the posh mountain towns sure there's an emerging trend of of having your pickup truck. And instead of keeping your shit in your truck,

you strap it to the outside of your truck. And I was observing this to Yannis, and it seemed to agitate Yannis that I even had the audacity to make the observation. You got pretty hot. You got pretty hot. I just am like... That's the part that got me, is that I couldn't believe it over such a thing

that you were affected so much personally on the inside like i don't really care if you like it or don't like it but the fact that it sort of affected you and that you were like really worked up that these people choose to do this whether it's fashion or for whatever reason it's fashion yeah it's fashion but it's just interesting to me to find that you, like, it affects you so much. Yeah. You, like, there's no way that, like, where I grew up, where everybody, like, you know, all the people that hunt fish where I grew up drive pickup trucks. There's no way that what you do, if you like to hunt fish, you get a truck and you put

a topper on it. And then you put your stuff in there. But wasn't there a subset of that group that would have some KC lights, even though they really never really needed them, but they had freaking lights on their truck? A roll bar with some lights would not be out of the question. Yeah, even though they never really cruised around

doing whatever you do with big lights. And we would weld up bumper guards that were excessive. Like you'd start with eight inch C channel and weld that to the frame. Not like you start with eight inch C channel, raft around and then just build from there. And looking, and at the time i didn't recognize it

as such but to be totally honest looking back on it there was a fashion element to who could have the craziest brush guard yeah now it's just uh who could have the most overlay what is it it's called overland is that what it comes from i don't't know. I mean, I think. It seems like it. Yeah, Overlanding. Overlanding. Yeah. Something like that. The other day I was sitting there and a guy pulls up.

I was looking out our office window and a guy pulls up. And he's, yeah, he looked like Yosemite Sam. Like all this shit. Gas cans, water cans, shovels, pickaxes, a jack,

all hooked to the, and and then like what's inside the truck i don't know room for the kayak or the stand-up paddle stand-up paddleboard probably i just feel like at my like like i don't know man at 45 years of age i'm just hitting the age where i look at stuff and i don't like it but i just look at the age like i don't know man at 45 years of age i'm just hitting the age where i look at stuff and i don't like it but i just look at the age where i just get like like things will catch my eye and irritate me a little bit that they shouldn't and you're not there yet because you're less you're younger yeah seth was saying for his rig you know he's got a an fj yeah so it's a little bit is all your shit strapped to the outside of your truck? No. I wish some shit was

strapped to the outside, though. How old are you? 28. Because you think it looks sweet. No. We had this conversation the other day in the car. And there was two things that I would put on the outside.

One being fuel canisters. Because it smells. It smells, and the FJ has such a small tank that I'm always hauling. Like, if I go hunting, I throw my hitch carrier in with a tank of gas on the back. Who makes your vehicle? I know your rig, but what kind of rig is that? It's a Toyota. Oh, okay.

FJ Cruiser. You think it's a hunting rig. Oh, it is. It's just a little small. That's why I need shit strapped on the outside. Gotcha. And you think it looks sweet. Oh, yeah.

I like it. Yeah. It's a badass little rig. No, I mean, you think it'd be sweeter if you had like pots and pans and shit hanging off it. No, no, no. No, I don't need that shit. Oh, okay.

But it's older. What year is your FJ? It's 2007. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not like the old.

It's not the old. It's not the old. Not the old Jeep looking one. Yeah. I could use fuel canisters and I wouldn't mind having a Tapui tent. Oh, really? Dude, tell me about the Tapui tent. Oh, really?

Why do you want it? Because he thinks it looks sweet. No. It's like you get one of those. Like, oh, I got. Now I'm going to head down. Now I'm all ready to go down to the brew sweet. No. It's like you get one of those, like, oh, I got, now I'm going to head down, now I'm all ready to go down to the brew pub. No.

Dude. Most of the time when I'm going hunting on the weekends, like I like to hunt out in eastern Montana a bunch, so we go out there. We'll roll up at like, you know, 10, 11 o'clock at night. You sleep under your vehicle.

When I was your age, we slept under our trucks. Oh, we do that sometimes. Or in them. It'd be nice if you slouched in the front seat and sleep. It would be nice when you show up, you're tired, last thing you want to do is put up a tent, you just pop up the tepui and go to bed.

You get under the vehicle and sleep down there. You know, coming from a guy that's uh been looking at buying a camper i have young children okay what camper though scamp i haven't decided yet maybe you looked at this i had to put it on hold i had to put it on hold come in the middle of this crazy i have young children too but i haven't gotten so soft as to consider the idea of a camper yet dude he's taking it damn man is he taking a dig at me i'm just putting it out there that like you know there's just sort of different levels you can't say just because you have kids all of a sudden now it's like okay to have a camper and because he's 28 and wants a tapui tent makes him soft he doesn't sleep under his truck okay here's okay i'm gonna put it to rest no i'm gonna put the rest but here's the thing this is the last you'll say

about no it's like this why and i bring this up i brought this up a number of times let me get some things why is it that that that uh left wing people tend to have more food allergies than right wing people like i don't know if that's true. Gluten intolerance is a left-wing ailment. Okay. Why do old people not like tepui tents? Tepui tents appeal to people to, they appeal to people of a certain age bracket who live in a certain kind of town.

Yeah, but I think that's just- I wouldn't argue that because- It's true. Because a guy that owns part of where our office is is an overlander and is at least 10 years our senior, maybe 15. Okay. And he rocks a Tupui.

I mean, but you got to have money to have one of those tents. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. I think overlanding and that's your hobby. You got to have money, man. I mean, you can do it on the cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I think it's like the Instagram sort of thing.

You know what I mean? Yes. That's where the young people's element of it comes in. It's like it's an Instagram thing. Dude, I'm an Instagram man, too. I love Instagram, at Steve Rinella. I love it. I love it.

But yeah, you're right. You're right. Oh, yeah. We saw, yeah. You know, like my wife, she doesn't like me talking to waitresses and stuff anymore because I'm just too old, you know, to like have any kind of chit chat.

She's like, at your age, if there's an attractive waitress, shut up just like just order what you need just order what you need you can't banter anymore you're too old to banter with waitresses and i think i just need to stop talking about this kind of stuff but uh real quick um uh you want to do you want to try to sell your thing your car right now now, your Subaru? Oh, yeah. I got a 2018 Outback, 16,000 miles on it. It's got a topper. It's got a Thule topper.

It's in Los Angeles. They're not called toppers. Dude, you can't call it a topper. What do you call it? Cargo box. A topper? A topper's on a pickup truck. Oh, no, no.

It's like bad car talk. I didn't call it a topper. I used to call it a pod. It's a pod. A what? I got the pod. The pod on top. No, dude, you got a pickup truck. It's like bad car talk. I didn't call it Topper. I used to call it a pod. It's a pod. What? I got the pod. The pod on top. No, dude.

You got a cargo carrier. Cargo carrier. Whatever it is. A rocket box. Yeah, it's a rocket box. Yeah, it's in Los Angeles. What do you need for it? It's in Los Angeles.

Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chris Gill, Ridge Pounder. I'm trying to get 23 to 22 for it. You got any good pictures on your Instagram? Does your Instagram feed?

Do you have a lot of pictures of you adventuring? No. Overlanding. Yeah, can it overland? Is it accessorized? It's got stock tires and shit. No overlanding. So how do they find you if they want to buy your rig?

At Christopher Gill on Instagram. Send me a message. Do you want them to DM you? Yeah. What else we got, Giannis? I got one more. Yeah, we got to get to elk hunting. No, no, but I got one more.

I like to, now and then, I like to catch up on feedback stuff. A guy wrote in for me. This is a good one because this is a segue, Gianni. I'm ready. A guy wrote in. He works. He's security. He's like a security guy at Yellowstone National Park.

And he gets a complaint. He gets a complaint. He says, just last night I had to respond to a noise complaint from a guest. And the noise complaint was, can you please do something about that elk bugling near my hotel room? It's driving me crazy. And I thought that was pretty funny. And also at one point, someone asked the guy, at what elevation do elk turn into moose? But there's this thing, I think there's this thing that keeps happening to Yellowstone where it's a little bit confusing is where people, there's been a lot in the news of people getting too close.

Like this year, like some guy got his little girl, like super close to a bison in it, threw up in the air and it keeps happening and people keep, and it seems like when it happens, there's sort of this thing where people are very quick to condemn the individual and how stupid the individual is for doing something so dangerous, right? It's like it's the same story.

Like this guy in BC just got arrested or got in a bunch of trouble because he got out and was trying to have a, he was trying to box with a grizzly bear. He was trying to taunt a grizzly into a fight, you know? And he got in trouble. And so in like Backpacker Magazine, there's a big thing about what an idiot this guy is

and how horrible it is, right? How dangerous it is. But then like when I think about this, people talk about people being dangerous around animals. How can there be that like, there's a movie about a guy that free solos El Cap. It's exceedingly dangerous. It's the most dangerous thing you could do, right?

But then he's like celebrated for being dangerous. Why is it that you can do that and be celebrated and they're going to give you an Oscar and like you're the coolest thing on the planet and you can do all the talk shows. But if you want to box a grizzly, you're like enemy of the people i think because the dude that climbed that mountain prepared over a lifetime develop a skill set to then go do said exceptionally dangerous thing

do you know that the guy that won the box the grizzly didn't i don't yeah i don't guess it wasn't mike tyson yeah it's just like this thing that keeps happening i think i think but like i'm like is danger cool or not cool because if you want to get if you want to go pet a buffalo i'm like fine yeah yeah no i'm for danger it's not like you're wanting to stab it if you want to just go up and see how close and see if it'll gore you i feel like like i mean not with a kid that that was egregious and that was like bad call and i don't know anything about the kids parents but i just don't think it's like that bad if you if some person like an adult makes a conscious decision to go and taunt an animal and then the animal gores them i would i don't know man i look at it like yeah you know i think

people get upset because you're with an animal animal. Messing with an animal. You don't pose any danger to it. Well, I know, but it's like, I think there's, when you compare it to something like Alex Honnold, who's like, he's like an athlete. That's like his thing. And there's like that acceptance of risk that he takes, you know? And the people that typically do that, I mean, sure, maybe the guy was preparing for his whole life to box that grizzly bear.

Well, did you ever watch the movie grizzly project no but the guy that gets uh in a skirmish with a grizzly and then designs a suit that would allow him to survive yeah so that guy yeah but then he couldn't get a bear to attack him when he had his suit on it's a great movie yeah his buddy runs him over to pick up yeah just to test the yeah yeah i've seen that guy but go on i don't know man i think that i think people just when they see people messing with animals like taunting them to get attacked or something or getting too close i think they they get more defensive for the animal and get angry at the person for being, for like, just leave it alone, you know?

This, the best they could come up with in this article condemning the guy for wanting to box the grizzly bear, the best they could come up with was that it was bad because the grizzly bear then might expect to box other individuals. Oh, come on. Who weren't willing participants in the boxing. That's the best they could come up with.

And by boxing? With why it's bad to go and like. Do they just mean maul? Yeah, but then I'm sure that he's not going to box. It's just like, you know, and I used to do it too. Like when someone would get injured by an animal, I'd be like, oh, that idiot. But then I started thinking like, I don't know.

I don't think it's safe. I don't think it's safe to feel that way anymore. You know, like if you get up close to, if you want to go get up close to a moose and see what happens and the moose beats your ass, I think it should just be like, you know, I just feel like it'd be like, oh, that's a decision he came to.

It's your decision, man. That's like bull riders. Yeah, exactly. a decision he came to. It's your decision, man. It's like bull riders. Yeah, exactly. We celebrate those people. They hop on a, I don't know how, 2,000 pound bull that wants to kick their ass every time. Yeah, I haven't sorted it out in my head, but it just occurred to me only yesterday

when we were walking around. It occurred to me only yesterday. Why does it bother me when I hear about someone doing something stupid in a park? And I started questioning myself, but I don't think bull right yeah I didn't think about that example but yeah bull riders aren't um I think people could I think there's a large group of people that can that make the argument that no offense to any bull riders listening that bull riders have a they're not, you know,

playing with a whole deck of cards. Don't say this. Don't say this. I have like a lot of respect and admiration for bull riders. No, me too, man. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I'm just playing devil's advocate. I don't have any problem with bull riders.

Yeah, I think that's like, that is like what I would have liked to have done with my life, man. I mean, you want to talk about taunting of animals. Yes. I mean, that's some serious taunting there. Yeah, but I'm totally fine with it. And I'm fine with going up, if you want to go up and pet a buffalo and get smashed.

Like, I just, I'm done acting like, oh, those stupid people, because I get caught in that trap. And the thing is, there's like this thing going on where, there's this thing going on where people acting like, oh, those stupid people, because I get caught in that trap. And the thing is, there's like this thing going on where there's a thing going on where people are like, oh, and Yellowstone or whatever, and national parks, they're like, people think they're like theme parks. They don't realize that the animals are wild animals. But the same people who are most likely to point that out and the same institutions that create that thing

are actually fostering and developing that sense that wildlife is somehow a theme park you know it's coming from the same thing it's like you're creating this thing and then condemning people for sort of going along with what it is like you create an environment wildlife is totally habituated but then you get mad at people who think that it's habituated it's a good point yeah it's a hard it's a hard thing to um suss out man we used to chase moose i don't know why that's not smart no we were younger we would chase them yeah if you saw me chase and see how close you get to them well if you didn't know they were dang i mean no i knew moose don't seem dangerous No, when we were younger, we would chase them. Yeah. If you saw them, you'd chase them and see how close you'd get to them.

Well, if you didn't know, they were dangerous. No, I knew. Moose don't seem dangerous. We knew. A lot of people don't know that. It was like bull riding. It was like bull riding. Yeah.

All right, Yanni, kick us off on what we're supposed to talk about. Sometimes the bull chases you, though, doesn't it, Steve? Mm-hmm. Colorado elk hunt. Colorado Elkhorn. It's in Colorado. Can I throw out one more? You should. Listener feedback one. Last one.

This is the last one. This is a good one. I was talking about my brother-in-law hitting a bluegill when he was barefoot skiing. A guy rode in. He was at a ski tournament and he had a bad fall

and broke a couple vertebrae and he doesn't ski anymore. But he was at a tournament on Pearl River in Louisiana one time, and there was a guy doing some warm-up runs, and he ran over an alligator, and it removed the right heel of his foot. 40 miles an hour hit an alligator, peeled his heel off.

That's the last bit of listener feedback. Oh, man. I have to add that one of the greatest seeds of fear that I feel like was ever planted in me as a kid, as I grew up in the Bay Area, California, and Tahoe's up the hill in the Sierras, we'd go up there skiing and trout fishing and stuff like that. My dad shared a story with me. I don't know why it wouldn't be true, but that the rattlesnakes up there in the winter will find a den, den up, 100, whatever,

a couple hundred rattlesnakes in the den. They stay warm through the winter. And that somehow on Donner Lake- Oh, but they're cold-blooded. Huh? Do rattlesnakes keep themselves warm? I know they curl up in a bar. Or den up, yeah.

I might not have the right reason for them doing that, but they den up. Yeah, that's for certain. I've never seen it, but I've heard enough about it that it's like they like to ball up. Ball up. And that apparently Donner Lake, which is right before you get to Tahoe Lake

on the way up into the Sierras, some manner of the snowfall and runoff brought one of these balls of rattlesnakes into Donner Lake. And that, maybe this is one of my dad of rattlesnakes into Donner Lake. And that, maybe this is one of my dad that told me this. Now as I'm saying it, I don't feel like this is something my dad would say. But that a water skier fell into that, water skiing in the lake, fell into that, and the snakes just started lighting them up.

The snakes had gone into the lake. It's definitely not my dad as I hear myself telling this story. But as a kid. Stuck in your mind. Oh my, I mean, I never, never would I, I think in the rest of my life be up on a pair of water skis or up doing something on a lake where I have not at least committed a moment's thought to the idea of a ball of rattlesnakes being floating out there. So horrible, horrible. I probably, have I told a story about time Matt tried to catch a snake out of a hole?

No. My brother was hunting, and he sees a rattlesnake going into a hole. And he'd never eaten a rattlesnake. He'd always wanted to eat a rattlesnake. So he grabs the back end of the rattlesnake and tries to get it back out of the hole. But the snake breaks, and out comes a couple baby rattlesnakes no that attack him whoa yeah he says they come out of there and instantly are coming at him trying to out of the snake that broke in half yes whoa trying to bite him wait the snakes came out

of the other snake yeah he was trying to jack this snake up out of a hole. Couldn't get it out of the hole. Broke the snake. Out came some snakes who were then coming at him. And then he had the tail. And then it goes on from there. That's some nightmare stuff, man.

That was horrifying, man. Did he eat them all? I don't remember. He was reminiscing about this the other day. Yeah, he was telling me that story the other day. Am I getting it right? Yeah. So what you're saying, baby snakes pop out and they're ready to attack.

Yes. That is some total recall. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe they say those are the ones you got to watch out for, right? Because they can't control their venom. I've heard that might be a misnomer. That it is? Well, that maybe they can't control the venom, but that it is genuinely just builds up to the bigger the snake, the more venom is being produced inside the body, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Yeah. But I've heard that many, many times. Okay, Yanni, intro of the show. Intro of the show. I'm here with Steven Rinella. Nope, as I'm dealing cards, we like to do here. Danny Schmidt is on his first ever meat eater shoot. Cameraman. Yep, cameraman. Give us a quick career synopsis. Oh man, well. You do a lot of wildlife work. I do a lot of wildlife work. I do a lot of science work, SciComm, sort of science communication stuff. Oh, those science comedy.

Oh, yeah. It's all funny. It's kind of like rom-coms. SciComm. SciComm. Science communication. Science communication. Yeah.

I went to school for documentary film for scientists. So, yeah, I have a lot of background in communicating about science and working outside. And, yeah, first meat eater went pretty well. You like Thrasher's Instagram page? Yeah. Because you like to look at cool skate videos? I watch skate videos pretty much all day.

I haven't worked in skateboarding film yet, but I think it'd be sweet. You know what I didn't get a sense from? You've had a lot of, through your work, you've had a lot of intersections with wildlife politics and whatnot. But then I haven't gotten a sense over the last few days of you being

like outwardly opinionated about wildlife politics. Have you just been biting your tongue? That's where I was spouting off about how everything ought to be with animals. No, I mean, have I said anything that was deeply offensive? No, I haven't been offended yet. Well, I mean, it's not black and white. I think we've talked a lot about elk and the feed grounds in Wyoming. And I think that's a super gray situation. And you worked on a project down here about wolf reintroduction.

I did. I can't talk a whole lot about it. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I don't like that. It doesn't matter what I think. Go ahead. Yeah, I worked on a project about wolf reintroduction,

the thought of wolf reintroduction in Colorado. Did you get into the pros and cons? Oh, for sure. I got you. Yeah. You did some stuff about feeding elk during the winter. Did a bit. My second year project in film school

was about the elk feed grounds in Jackson. And I went into that like, I think I had 5,000 bucks to make this film. Totally like went in. I didn't know a whole lot about it except that there's these feed grounds existed there's 25 000 elk being fed every year in wyoming and obviously that's going to present a lot of problems but man once i dug into it it was there's a lot more to it than

just stopping feeding elk yeah so well it started out as, as I'm sure you're well aware. Tell us why it started out. Well, it started out because the city of Jackson Hole, the town of Jackson Hole was trying to form. It was in the early 1900s. And it was kind of one of the last places where wildlife could live, bison and elk. And it was the era of teddy roosevelt and they wanted to

keep these animals around there was a conservation ethic that was developing and uh but they these farmers and ranchers also needed this great winter habitat to raise their cattle and so they decided they could feed the elk over here and still maintain these herds and keep the elk out of their out of their winter range and out of their hay in order to decrease tensions in order to decrease tensions yep keep them separate and so a hundred years later that situation still exists and there's less and less winter range for these elk and in that time the people of Wyoming have gotten used to having a huge elk population but every piece of alfalfa you put out there creates is essentially it's like making habitat that doesn't really exist right so not to mention the hunters in Wyoming love to have that massive herd. And so to undo

this hundred year policy of feeding elk all over the state is super, super tough. But along the way, these elk have, I mean, they're perpetuating a lot of disease, right? Brucellosis and scabies and foot rot. And of course the big threat is chronic wasting disease makes it to one of these feed grounds. And that's like a time bomb. Like nobody knows what that would do, what it would look like. Is it going to kill all the elk?

What's the prevalence rate in a herd like that? But wildlife disease experts will tell you, like concentrate any animal artificially with huge numbers in a place that can't hold them and you're gonna get diseases are gonna pop off so yeah i made this film it's on pbs oh it's called feeding the problem i got 100 dvds in a box that's a very leading if anybody wants a very leading title man yeah yeah you know you come right out punching with that title so i tried to make a box that's a very leading if anybody wants a very leading title man yeah yeah you know you come right out punching with that title so i tried to make a film that was that was pretty balanced

i interviewed a bunch of ranchers and outfitters and scientists and feed ground managers but obviously i went into it thinking you know i come from a science background i thought this seems like a bad idea it doesn't seem natural obviously it's a it's entrenched politically but there's got to be some way to sort of back out of it and find some middle ground so anyway i made this movie premiered it in jackson hall and that premiere was such a trip because i had like the whole anti-feed ground establishment come to this premiere it was at the wildlife art museum in jackson and then i didn't know this was going to happen but i had like the whole hunting guiding ranching community also show up they're pissed they were pissed good yeah i had somebody come

up to me we had a reception beforehand i had these guys come up to me and they're like you know we've been talking about stringing you up for making this film. And I'm like, holy shit. First of all, you can make your own film that says whatever you want. Anybody can make a film. And I wasn't throwing anybody under the bus. I gave everybody a chance to spout off about whatever they wanted.

Man, it was a good lesson. It was a good, like, my first foray into documentary about a sticky, controversial subject. And I think it moved the needle forward a little bit. I think it got the conversation going. They sell the DVDs in the National Elk Refuge gift shop. Do they? Yeah.

In the Elk Refuge gift shop? Yeah. I mean, because I interviewed like the elk refuge manager and like a you know it was a kind of a big deal during the year that we were filming down there yeah so when you're out filming with us now uh do you feel it's just like rinky dink fluff bs you can't really you're not gonna be able to answer that honestly i'm just throwing it out there no i don't think so you know i'm interested in any and everyone's interpretation of of experiencing nature yeah so whether it's a birder or an elk hunter or a scientist tagging buffalo

or whatever it might be like i think it's all interesting and part of the big picture of how humans and nature intersect so yeah you meet us had a big argument about Doug Peacock. Doug Peacock, right. Let's not recap it. Okay, as though dealing poker. Seth Morris. Howdy, folks. Flip-flop flasher.

The flip-flop flasher. Seth was just talking about his favorite sound is the sound of a hog pulling his head out of a feed bin. Music to my ears. Yep. I'll just leave that one. If need to know it you can write them in that's like dollars coins is dropping into the bucket

if you know it you know it I'll just say that Rourke Denver Rourke give people a quick recap you've been on the show before a long time ago when you were on it was a very popular show for us. Awesome. People liked it.

I liked that. Life of service. Yep, yep, yep. Explain your deal. Yeah, man. I feel like even though I'm not on the payroll, family member of Meat Eater now, I hope I'm on that ledger. Yes.

Met you guys through some work you and I, Steve and I have been doing with the knife company. And then we bumped our way into a show hunting bears up in Alaska and then have just stayed connected and built friendship and relationships with the whole crew. And my last life was a commander in the SEAL teams. So I spent 20 years, 13 active years, 20 total years with my time in the reserves, both running assault teams and then kind of running the training for the basic and advanced course of SEALs

and how they become SEALs and get to the battlefield and go do the nation's work. And I'm a writer, thinker, savage, gentleman. Tell the books. Damn Few is the first book, making the modern SEAL warrior, which talks a little bit autobiographical, but very much unlike, well, I shouldn't say that, I compared other seal books, very much trying to hit the high points of what I learned philosophically and what I believed in and what I think seals believe in and why they do what they do, why we do what we do, how we feel about our families,

how we feel about service, the country, how we impact the world. So I talked a lot about that. And then the second book is called Worth Dying For, A Navy Seal's Call to a Nation. And that one is a little bit more outward looking as far as, you know, where the country's going and security throughout the world. Talk about my experiences on the battlefield. Talk about, I have a whole chapter on killing, which is one of my favorite chapters. Just kind of organically came up in the writing of it. And, um, I take that pretty seriously. So yeah, those are

the, those are the reads. And now I do a lot of speaking in the kind of corporate space and trying to figure out what that next ridgeline is. I, I enjoy that. I'll keep doing that. If you, if you call, I'm coming, uh, you know, if you're the right, the right people to talk to, but I'm, I'm, uh, I feel like I'm at a transitional point as to what's uh what's the next adventure yeah you know what do two things too we talked about before we do it again yeah talk about the talk about the movie you guys had to do uh-huh which is funny not funny but like it's a funny story yeah like how it came about and the repercussions of it yeah and then and then talk about your speaking thing because people should know about that yeah uh act of valor was the movie

2012-ish a bunch of us were you were at the training compound running training for the SEALs. So you're in about as close to a nine to five job as you can get if you're a SEAL operator. If you're at the team, you're just preparing for war, at war, coming back, unpacking your gear, cleaning it, and getting ready to go to war again. When you go to a training compound, you're kind of that spot where you're raising up the young lines and evaluating them and figuring out who's going to make it through the program and get to the assault teams. And so, but that job is, you know, hard pointed there in San Diego and you're not going to, uh, you know, unless we go

to war with North Korea or something, then probably everybody's going, you're there. So you have an opportunity to do other things, I guess, if you want to do that in your life. And so this film company had come in to do just help upgrade a website, you know, the seals, this was all amongst, this was pre the Bin Laden raid right in and around the time of captain Phillips and all that stuff. So, I mean, I think the seal, the seal stock or, you know, kind of notoriety was, was becoming more, there's more awareness of it, but still pretty much in the shadows. And then, um, you know, the the line rate obviously blew it wide open. But our organization was actually losing more people or not getting enough new folks coming into the training program as we're kind of getting older and trailing off.

So we were having a recruiting problem. And there really wasn't enough about what SEALs do on the battlefield or what we do as a community that would lend to someone knowing, oh, I want to go do that for a living and hopefully the right people. A recruiting problem because what's the pass rate of people who even enter the elimination? About 20% make it. So about 75, 80% attrition through training over, you know, since the sixth. So you got to generate big numbers. It helps to have good numbers. The right numbers is probably the better way to put it. Like, can you get the right product to the front door, hoping you get more out the back door. We haven't figured out a way to skin that cat. It's kind of one of those things where we've,

we've had scientists and sports physiologists and witch doctors in that place looking at what's going to get, what's going to get somebody through training and nobody's, I mean, everybody has their own opinion as to what it takes. And, um And it's hard to kind of quantify because you have so many different personalities that come to that place. And so many different personalities come through there. There's obvious elements that you have to have grit, toughness, focus, no quit kind of in your DNA. But I mean, people come at that from a lot of different places. I mean, I came from a very healthy kind of growth and environment and parents and family, very, very competitive athletically. But I mean, I have buddies that had parents

that just beat on them and said, you'd never be nothing, you'll never amount to nothing. And they were pretty tough to beat in training too. So it's all over. I got an acquaintance who made it through and I was asking about what he felt that it was. And he said it was because he liked to surf a lot. He said he just didn't mind

sitting in cold water for a long time. If you can sit in cold water for a long time, that's going to give you a tremendous leg up. That's probably what gets rid of most people. So anyway, this film company came in to kind of help build a website and a little bit of this is who we are, what we do. And if you want to come do it, here's how to call us kind of thing. And then somehow that morphed into this idea of doing a bigger film. So the film company actually interviewed about 30 of us at the basic training compound just to do background knowledge of what makes SEAL SEALS, you know, where you came from, what you believe in, how you

feel about your family, the country, so on and so forth. Not very much in the weeds on operational stuff, but it drifted into that. Very casual. All of us went down to the beach, sitting in front of a camera, just like we did the past couple of days, talked a little bit about- But this is all something you're being asked to do. Told to do. Yeah. Told, okay. Told to do. Told to do. Yeah. That was not an invitation to go out on the beach and do that. But at that point, it was just, this is just, it's never going to be used for anything. They're going to film it so

they can kind of make sure they get it right when they go to make this movie. They were going to finish those interviews, go back up to LA and start trying to find the right Hollywood person to play us or play the guys. And when they got done with those interviews, went back to LA, LA, did all the editing. The two directors were like, I think it's going to be easier to teach seals to act than actors would be seals if we want to get this right. And so then they came and asked us to do it. Everybody to a man said, no, every single person that was in that film said, absolutely not. It's

not what we do. But then senior leadership put a little more pressure on like it's going to happen. And so one of my, one of my teammates that was in the movie, he made a really good comment one morning, we're getting coffee. He said, you know, he said, one of the problems I see that is going to happen is I know who you are, sir. Like I know your background. I know the way the boys feel about you. I know the way I feel about you. I know your combat record

and, you know, the teams you've been with, which, you know, are pretty serious teams that have done good things on the battlefield. And everybody that they've asked are those guys. If we say no, like if we don't do it, they're going to get six, seven guys to do it. It will be the worst people in the community that say yes. Like for sure, it'll be the guys that already have the Facebook page and an agent and want to go to Hollywood and will use that as a launch pad. And he's like, that is going to be a train wreck. We'll have the worst people in our community representing the community. And that,

that actually resonated. I had already gone back to grad school. I knew at that point, I was kind of ready to go make my way. I wanted to be around my bride, my kiddos, and it was time for something new I'd done. I turned over every stone I wanted to turn over in my, my, my seal experience, you know, everything beyond that, which is not to say I wouldn't have learned a lot more and it would have been purposeful, good work beyond that. It was just time. I didn't, I was ready to go. And so I didn't really think, oh, well, this movie will kick over tons of, kick open tons of doors. I mean, we thought they were going to make that movie and it was going to go straight to like the bottom bin of a DVD, like two buck, you know, Walmart. I mean, we're

like, there's no way this thing, it ends up being the number one movie in America. You know, major theatrical release and whatever. So yeah, we participated in that. We tried to get it. But you guys did, we talked about this before too, but I think it's the funniest part of the thing is you did it because it was all military pay. Oh yeah, man. We got military pay and three square meals a day, man.

You guys didn't get like. No. Really? It's so funny, man, that you get to be like this big movie it's in all these theaters all over the place oh my god man and you're getting your little not your little check but there's no like no no i mean i think uh i think all well i shouldn't speak for anybody else i felt good about it because it felt like since we were put on orders it felt like any other job that somebody would have asked that they would have asked us to do in the military

and being based on you know my job like hey go do that that's would have asked us to do in the military and being based on, you know, my job, like, Hey, go do that. That's what we get paid to do. So we're going to go do that. It happened to be making a movie, made a lot of other people, a lot of money. Did anybody that was in that movie, uh, launch an acting career? Um, you know, I got a lot of, I guess, offers afterwards or opportunity to go do it. It just didn't appeal to me. I mean, it wasn't something I like. I mean, I like doing stuff like this. I like, you know, speaking and talking. And, you know, I've done a TV show since.

And if the right project came up, I'd do it again. Acting, like actual just acting as a, you know, character actor had no appeal to me whatsoever. I think, you know, a bunch of the, bunch of the guys were extras in transformers movies and all that kind of stuff, operators, not major roles, but in that stuff. But I don't think anybody parlayed it into an actual, um, career. I mean, a bunch of the guys stayed, you know what I mean? I, I stayed for, I stayed for two years after that. I thought I was going to get out right away. I actually stayed two years longer. Did people dog on you for doing it?

It, you know, the thing that was good about it is yes of course of course the nice thing was in general after the initial busting of balls and giving you a hard time it kind of came back to what that buddy of mine who's a mass chief now said they're like well i'll tell you what man if somebody's gonna do it i'm glad you were repping us as opposed to somebody else. I had some other question about that. Now I can't remember what the hell it was. About the fallout. Not the fallout, but just the repercussions of doing it.

Yeah. I don't know. You know, there are good arguments across the board on both doing it, not doing it. I mean, the back end of how many good young Lions now came to the program because of that. Oh, that was my question. Great. That's what I meant to ask. Was it regarded as a successful move for recruitment? Like overwhelmingly so.

Got a bunch of people in through the door. Yeah, like we had to start. At the door. We had to start creating. Well, what it allowed us to do is instead of having a pool of candidates that we didn't really know who they were once they entered the program as best we could evaluate them, we actually had to almost establish another program to weed and kind of pick the best 150 or some odd guys to go to each class. And there's only seven classes that go through a year. And so we were able to actually select now what we thought would be the best candidates.

So to try and get better people to the front door to get more to the back door. It moved the needle a little bit on graduation rates, but yeah, it worked. I mean, it definitely worked. No, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah. As though dealing poker.

Rich? I'm supposed to introduce myself. Yeah, and you're kind of like done working for us now. No, man, come on. I'm glad I got the last one. Chris, yeah, he's got some, he can't tell us what he's going to do because he's got some NDA.

Is that right? There's like an NDA. Non-disclosure agreement. Yeah, I can't talk about it. Kind of like Danny can't talk about his wolf project. Yeah. Yeah, signed it. I'd get in trouble if I start talking about it.

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slash meet OnXMaps.com slash meet welcome to the OnX club y'all alright Yanni kick it off this is kind of your project down here man yeah yeah yeah it was my project we've been trying to get this hunt done for uh a few years at least

three right i didn't know that yeah um and we messed up because we didn't know uh we didn't understand the colorado draw system well enough. Because you're a non-resident, Rourke's a resident of Colorado, and you guys are applying as a group, which what was happening in Colorado, there's a preference point system when you try to draw a tag that is a, what's the word I'm looking for? Limited entry per hole? Limited, yeah, limited tag, right? I was just going to say how good of a job you were doing.

There's more demand than opportunity. And there's preference points. So once you get preference points, if you have two and your buddy only has one, you're going to draw it before they do. And so however many people put in with the most points, they're going to get all the tags before the lower numbers. Well, when you guys put in as a group um you guys are taking like a double hit because rourke was being

put in as a non-resident because you go sort of go to the lowest common denominator so you were go he was getting put in as a non-resident because he was thrown in with a non-resident yeah and they didn't want to elevate conversely you'd have to elevate the non-resident to resident status which is going to piss people off totally and you had like two or three or maybe four more points than rorik to draw the tag but because you guys were getting put in together you guys were put getting put in at the lowest amount of points so whatever rorik had is what you guys were putting in the lowest lowest yeah lowest common they take the lowest status and apply the lowest points. Yes. Man.

Yeah. Real kicks to the nuts. Same thing that was happening at... I didn't realize that. Yeah. Paralleling this, it was happening to me and my buddy, Ethan, who now I'm going hunting with next month in Colorado, because we were doing the same thing,

putting in as a group. And every year, we're like, man, we should be drawing. What is the problem? And then as soon as we didn't do it as a group, we drew, as did you and Rourke. Oh, so we weren't in as a team? Nope. And how many, I can't remember how many points I had.

Four or five? Yeah. Man, that's depressing to think about. You burned that many points? Oh, man. The thing is, in Colorado, I don't know if you would have gotten much better. There might have been an archery hunt

that we could have done that would have been limited entry, and that would have actually limited people. But I think where I messed up in picking out this, I had a local, a buddy that lives here. I wish he could have joined us today, but he had to head back to Denver. But he hunts

rifle seasons here, right? And he's had very good experiences hunting during first rifle here. So we just figured, well, heck, muzzleloaders should be even better. Basically get to hunt with a rifle during the rut. Well, we didn't factor in at all, and he couldn't really speak to it because he hasn't been in the woods that much this

time of year. Well, it's not like hunting with a rifle, because, I mean, Colorado, we should point out year. Well, it's not like hunting with a rifle because, I mean, Colorado, we should point out. Yeah. It's not, but it's. Because Colorado doesn't allow you. You can't put a scope on your muzzleloader. That's right. Your muzzleloader has to be true to caliber projectile,

which means you have a pretty, you know, slow traveling slug. Yeah. And you got to use open sights. Yeah. So you're not like licking ticks with the thing you're not um but compared to the average archery hunter yeah you're should be at least doubling your range maybe tripling your range yep and you don't need to draw your damn bow back that's right when that thing all you gotta do is when that thing's standing there on high alert you don't need to

do a big elaborate movement right you can just get all ready yeah and not have to do what we didn't factor in is the archery pressure because in colorado it's over-the-counter archery in most units i would say that's gotta it's gonna change and it has changed it already did in some units um like where i used to live up there in eagle county um some of the units there. Like if you, I think you're going to draw it like this year, if you applied, you probably drew it, but you couldn't hunt anywhere else. Like once you drew that tag, that's where it was good for it. You couldn't hunt the whole state anymore.

So I think they're going to start doing that more and more. So yeah, it's just going gonna have to be limited opportunity i feel like they gotta yeah i think they're gonna have to reckon with um they're curious about like hunter satisfaction yes i think they're gonna have to i would imagine if you were to poll people who hunted over the last week around this unit about hunter satisfaction i think that you would find um yeah listen i posted a picture of us and just sent said that we were hunting in the uh san juan mountains on instagram and while we've been here i got two um emails from friends of ours that were here earlier in the season, just archery elk hunting, that had the exact same experience.

Just like tons of dudes everywhere. And guys that were on mules 10 miles into the backcountry, and were just like, holy shit, can't believe how many people we're running into. I've never seen anything like it. No, we've hunted some high-pressure stuff. And again, although we've hunted some high pressure stuff and again you know not having although we did have some local knowledge not having personal local knowledge of a spot

it's a huge advantage you know we all know that you know I mean I hunted heavily pressured Colorado stuff for 15 years and had pretty high success yeah once you get to know an area super good you just make the pressure work for you. Yeah.

You know? But yeah, this was, yeah, because I think we should sort of explain, like sort of paint the picture of the amount of pressure. But we were going to trailheads, or not even trailheads, but parking areas, the end of logging roads, four, five, six vehicles, camps with multiple RVs, tents. of logging roads, four, five, six vehicles,

camps with multiple RVs, tents. Gnarly roads too, not like just like a normal forest service road, like rutted out, tough to get in roads. And if it was like a better, like an improved forest service road, I mean, seriously, we did one, like it was the first night that we were out. And I mean, it was every possible turnoff to where you're like – it was almost like going down a river where you're, like, looking

and you can kind of see the next truck. And you're like, eh, that gives me, like, enough space to jump in the river and I'm not going to be, like, crowding this guy. That's how it was. It was like every half mile there would be another truck, you know? Yeah, Rich Pounder observed that when you're in Colorado, it always feels like you're in someone's backyard. Yeah. Yeah. No, we've talked about it before man it's ground zero ground zero here for uh loving it to death um and everybody hopefully all the other western states are

gonna be able to see how color handles it and be able to adjust and figure things out. It's a conundrum, man, because you got the funding problem where the state, they need to, like hunters fund Colorado's wildlife program. Hunters fund a lot of public land stuff, habitat improvement, disease research, enforcement. All that stuff comes from hunter funding. And the more hunters you got coming through the door,

the more funding you got, especially non-resident hunters. You need the money. I'm sure there's this thing that, man, we can open it up and have it be over-the-counter and hit revenue objectives. They can do it here too because they still have twice as many elk as the closest state as far as elk population goes. Yeah. But they're good at hiding. Yeah. have twice as many elk as the next state, the closest state as far as elk population goes, right? Yeah.

But they're good at hiding. Yeah. And I think in rifle seasons, it's worked. I mean, second season, it'd be interesting to see this year because I think back in the day, like out of the 260,000, what was that? I can't remember the number now.

I think it was that we get a quarter million non-resident hunters or hunters in total here in Colorado for big game. And like 60,000 of them would all come during second rifle season. It's like a major chunk of that whole number all came for the same week, right? Really interesting to see this year

if like that got spread out a little bit over the archery season. Because we heard anecdotally that a neighboring unit, a guy from a taxidermy shop or a license sale shop, where was that story? The guy that said that stuff. Oh, my buddy the other day killed a bear and took his bear in to get checked.

Yeah. And got to yakking with the guy that checked, the warden that checked his bear. And the warden told him, but I don't know what the point what the baseline point was that the warden told him that archery tag sales were up 7x but i don't know 7x from when 1970 or i don't know i don't really know what that means there's no way they're up like 7x from last year you don't think i'd have a hard time believing it i mean seven times more people

from a year before. I don't know what that means. Remember what happened when Colorado dropped there. I mean, this is again, just applications, right? But when they dropped the, the non-resident requirement to send in a $2,000 check to apply for moose,

goat and sheep, they did that for one year and it went like, it wasn't seven X. It was like 300 X. Oh, do a better job of explaining that one do a better job explaining what it so yanni's a tag consultant not really i'll do my best though you're tearing it up man you had that one little thing you missed you couldn't think of uh

i can't remember what couldn't you think of ridge i don't know man you're not fantastic he's already getting DMs about that Subaru. He's like 22 and you got a deal. Cash, though. When I first started applying for Moose, Sheep & Goat in Colorado, and I was a resident, but non-residents would have to send in a check for, I think it was roughly $1,800 if you wanted to participate in the draw. And most of the time,

you're just participating to get a preference point until you build up a certain amount of points. And then maybe when you send in the check, you're actually hoping that- Yeah, how many points are you sitting on right now? You might draw. The two I've kept up with, I kind of quit doing goat. The two I've kept up with, moose and sheep, I bet you I'm at close to 10. Okay. We're in there. Yeah. So there's a chance. At least with, we won't get into that. But so anyways, used to have to send in. So if you wanted to do, so when I moved away to participate in moose and sheep, I had to yank out $3,600 for a couple months. And when that hits the bank account, your gal's like,

hi, what? And you're like, oh, no, it's coming back. Don't worry about it. But it's not like you could just stick it on a credit card. They didn't accept credit cards. You had to send in the money so that if you drew, they had your money, they'd give you the tag. Because then they don't got to be like, hey, you won.

And then the dude's like, oh, I actually have no possible means by which that's right hold on a second i gotta sell my subaru and then um yeah so that limited a lot of people from applying especially non-residents from applying and gaining points so for whatever reason i think that colorado probably felt like they were limiting the amount. They wanted more people to be participating. And so they... No, you know what ended up actually happening is that what it was

costing Colorado Parks and Wildlife to do the processing and then mail out all the refund checks was such a large sum of money that they were like, this system isn't working. And so they reworked it all. There was the conspiracy theory. Right. Prior to.

It was funny because people would say like, oh, the reason they do that is how much money they make in interest. Where for some two months or whatever, they're sitting on

all these millions of dollars. And then it comes out that it costs them an enormous amount of money to process all this stuff, issue paper checks. Like there's no money making going on. Yeah, just the postage to send everything back.

So one year, they drop it to where it's just wide open. Everybody can apply and put it on their credit card. You still had to put up the money, but you could put it on a credit card. And I think that the fee was only a few dollars. And it went up something like 300% the amount of applicants. Like everybody just got in. We're like, sure, we can apply now and it won't cost me but a couple of bucks and a little bit of interest on my credit card for a few months. And so it just flooded them. So then the next year,

then they changed it again. And so I can't remember because now it's only been a year or two with the new system. But now I think that as a non-resident, I'm paying, I think, maybe $100 per species per year to get a point to participate. And so they try to find a middle ground. They're still getting money coming in, but not as many people swamping the system. Like I said, I'm doing my best here. I'm sure that there's some dude at colorado parks and wildlife oh i'm sure there's people at colorado park no you know what i think people at colorado parks and wildlife are thinking when they listen to this and and a bunch of them do i think they're thinking like yeah man it's like there's like something that needs to be sorted out yeah yeah yeah yeah there's a there's

a and again it's just the amount of people and it's a great place to hunt and you know people want to come hunt here but there's the whole thing that's called preference point creep here in this state where like and that's why we by saving too many points if you're starting out now in colorado doesn't do you much good because the again the amount of demand that's that's that's there every single year if this unit this year was five points let's just say for the muzzleloader hunt next year it might jump up to six point minimum and then seven point minimum so if you have three this year and next year you have four but the cap is at seven it just moves along ahead of you and you're never going to catch up. And there's a lot of units in Colorado

that that's happening in. And it pushes people to the open units. Well, sure. But they're just, people are just like, they're upset and they're frustrated because they're like, man, I have, you know, some people have 20 years of applying and money put into it.

And they're seeing this point creep happening. And they're like this point creep happening and they're like, there's no end in sight and I'm never going to draw a tag because there's, and you can look at all the numbers. If you have 21 points, you can see that in whatever fancy unit you're applying for, how many people applied with more points ahead of you and how many, how big that pool is. So there might've been 5,000 people that apply with 23 points. And if those 5,000 people keep applying for that same unit and there's only 10 tags issued a year,

it takes a lot of years until that pool falls out. And people are going to die with 30 points in Colorado. What do you think about that, Rich Bounder? You never put in for a tag in your life. No, but you know what I do think about it? It sounds a lot like airline status. And playing that game, man. And I play that game hard.

Yeah, like when you get, like I could go into the Delta lounge now. Oh my God, yeah. The most crowded place in the Air Force is Delta lounge. Oh, it's the best though, dude. You go there, it's like, hold on, how is everybody? Why is everybody in the Delta Lounge?

I got some fancy lounge now too through Amex though, but Steve and I are always flying together. That's like priority pass or something. Yeah, but it's like, what are we going to do? Like land in an airport and Steve's going to go to the Delta Lounge and I'm going to go to a different one? Usually, if one of you has access to a lounge, they let you have a buddy.

No, 29 bucks. What? Yeah. The Delta? So if you're going to go in there, if you know you're going to go in there and have a meal and have a buddy no 29 bucks what yeah the delta so if you're gonna go in there if you know you're gonna go in there and have a meal and have a couple uh brewskis wait delta charges you 29 bucks to bring a buddy to bring your partner or your wife or your kids dude i'm sticking or like an alien probably 29 it. Yeah, that's a little off topic. So, yeah, a lot of pressure here.

And that, I was not expecting it, man. No, we thought we were going to be into some, because, man, we thought we were going to be in some rip-roaring bugle fest, man. Yeah, with muzzleloaders in hand, nonetheless. Burned all my points. How many bugles do you think you heard? I'm going to put in for a point refund What's that?

Heard a couple bugles Yeah Four Not many Watched a bull silently bugle Yeah That's cool to see I think that that happens

It's been I mean First time I saw it was Probably close to 20 years ago Do everything but make the noise Yeah And the way I could tell, because I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. And it was the night before season. I was just out with

a client or two for just a walk. And we decided to sit in this place called the cafe. Everybody used to meet there for lunch midday. That's how it got that name. And we're sitting there. And of course, night before season, just the whole herd pops in. The winds swirl in every direction. And they're like, ah, we don't care. Just out in the middle for like an hour. And the temperature dropped just enough to where when he would make that posture, you could see the steam coming out of his mouth.

Like he should be bugling. You can see he's pushing air out of his mouth. Yet there was no sound. I think eventually he did that three or four, maybe a half dozen times. And eventually I could just hear like a... No kidding, man. Yeah, there was some sound coming out.

Because again, they have to bugle at those cows, right? As they're trying to court them, hair them, whatever they're doing, you know, push them around, trying to breed them. I think that there's a certain, without trying to anthropomorphize too much, but there's trying to show some respect to keep them around, to not run them off, you know.

Really? Yeah. But if you bugle real loud, every other bull in the zone is like, oh, you got a bunch of ladies down there? I'll come check that out and try to steal them and mess with you and, you know. Yeah, like if you're like a, you know, if you're a bunch of ladies down there i'll come check that out and try to steal them and mess with you and you know yeah like if you're like a you know if you're a young single guy and you go like you stumble into the bar at night and it's you and like 20 women right

you're gonna then call your buddies and be like hey guess what you'll never guess what's happening down here. Maybe one. If it was 20 to one, I might call one or two of my best friends. But yeah. You'd be like, turn my phone off. Two interesting things about sand. We can speak generally about the San Juans. Oh, for sure. Two good stories about the San Juans. One is the grizzly bear story down here

where, you know, grizzlies once upon a time, 150 years ago, could be found all the way down into Sonora, Mexico. Right? They ran from Northern Mexico all the way up through the Western States,

basically from the 100th Meridian on the Great Plains, around from the 100th Meridian West all the way to the Pacific Coast, up through the Western Canadian provinces, all of Alaska. And then they kind of got gradually in the lower 48 whittled away

to just a couple little enclaves and and Idaho Montana Wyoming Colorado had them until you know they had him into the 40s and then starting in the 50s like one would pop up now and then like like out of nowhere grizzly kill a sheep and some old trap or go out kill the grizzly. And it got to be 1950, was it 53? I think in 1953 the state declared grizzlies extinct.

Gone. And then in 1979 there's a dude by the last name of Wiseman out bow hunting in the San Juans with a recurve. I Juans with a recurve. I think he had a recurve. Some bitch doesn't.

He gets mauled. Most dudes probably had a recurve. Yeah, for sure. Gets mauled by a grizzly. There'd always been rumors of some around. Gets mauled by a grizzly. There's some controversy around what exactly happened,

but the bear winds up dead. His story is that he kind of accidentally cornered it on a ridgeline somehow, and it was a sow, and she starts mauling him on the leg and then starts mauling him on the shoulder, and he sees his quiver laying there, and his arrow's spilled out of his quiver and according to his story he takes an arrow and starts jabbing her with it and she eventually stops mauling him walks off a few yards and lays

down bleeds out and dies they don't keep the body somehow like winds up the they skin it biologists were able to look and not only is like here's this female grizzly that supposedly been like the species has always been extinct from the state for 26 years but here she is and she had like the the color of her uh the color of her that she had like stretched out teats and the coloration on them suggested that she had reproduced in her life. And that brought on this big search that ran all the way into the early 90s

of people coming down. The writer and environmentalist David Peterson was involved with it. The writer, Rick, somehow it became like a literary thing, I guess. The writer, peterson was involved with it the writer rick somehow it became like a literary thing i guess the writer rick bass got involved with it the uh contrarian doug peacock got involved with it of coming down and trying to establish the presence of grizzlies here and kept at it till the 90s and i think now there are still a lot of believers

that there are grizzlies in colorado um i know some of them personally but they're new grizzlies different grizzlies yeah because that's the point out because this is the southern we're in the like south of the state so people are trying to establish this idea that there had always been some now there's a new idea that some are, and it's not unreasonable at all, and it will happen, that some are going to drift down from Wyoming and absolutely, like in 20 years, if I had to make, in 20 years,

I'll just come out, yeah, I'll just say it. In 20 years, if trends continue, you will have grizzlies in Colorado in 20 years. Wolves are showing up. It's just going to happen. But the idea that they've been here and surviving in this mountain range now despite some people that still believe because then some kid claims that have had one come out and false charge them and basically like dance around him

and stomp the ground around him and he's got this whole elaborate story that happened to him in the san juans um and so but it's kind of like a thing like people like to believe it. But back to this Wiseman dude story is that a lot of people felt that a more reasonable explanation would be that he stumbles upon the bear, sinks an arrow into it and then gets mauled. And then it mauls him and then dies from the wound. But the dude took a polygraph, right?

Took a polygraph and passed the polygraph. He got mauled first, then jabbed it with an arrow and killed it. There was only one jab mark? I don't know how I know. I think he jabbed it a handful of times around its neck. Gotcha. What do you think? I can see if there was just one hole.

It'd be like, oh, maybe he did shoot it. I, man, again, maybe he did shoot it. I, man, again, like if someone said, if someone said, hey, I'm going to ask you a question. If you get the answer right, you live. If you get the answer wrong, I'm going to shoot

you and kill you, right? And he said, did he shoot it, then get mauled, or mauled it, then stabbed it? If I had to do that, I would probably go with, I think he shot it and then got mauled. I never met the guy. It's a tough story to believe, man.

Well, the book talks about they did an autopsy on this bear and one of the wounds they think the wound that probably did the most damage the the it showed the entry of an arrow is like creating a really round hole and and puncture mark in the body as opposed to some jagged stabbing motion oh interesting like it's just the last grizzly in colorado happens to but what does he think he's gonna do if he shoot like i think he's creeping along the woods i mean again someone's got a gun in my hand i gotta get right or else i die right this is heavy stakes right i got children um i don't know he's creeping along and obviously he's like holy but his first inclination

is to shoot it and then have to deal with the... Maybe he thought it was a black bear. That's, yeah. I was going to say. Maybe, yeah. What season? Was he hunting bears?

Was he like walking around and burying... Archery elk. Is that also a black bear? Probably. Yeah, I'm sure. Oh, interesting. Well, if he thought

it was a black bear, why wouldn't he just be like, I thought it was a black bear. That's why I don't think that's a possibility. Because there haven't been any grizzlies in your state for possibility. Because there haven't been any grizzlies in your state for 30 years. There haven't been any grizzlies in your state

for 20, they were declared extinct 26 years ago. It's not even on your mind. Like if I knew some guy in Michigan that had a bear tag and he's stumbling through the UP, oh no, let's not say Michigan because it historically didn't happen. A guy in South Dakota, okay? Do they got a lot of black bears in South?

Help me with a good state, Yanni. Help me with a state a lot of black bears in South? I don't know. Help me with a good state, Yanni. Help me with a state. That has black bears and used to have- There's a guy- California. Creeping through the woods in California. California's a good one.

Creeping through the woods in California. Got a bear tag, burned a hole in his pocket. And lo and behold, there through the brush is a bear. Yeah. Is it his responsibility to be like, hmm, I wonder if somehow there's a remnant surviving population of these bears that no one's known about for 26 years

and maybe I better investigate quickly before loosing my arrow or is he going to be like, holy shit, a bear, shoot. No, he's going to shoot. What I'm saying, I don't think that could be the story because if that was the case, he would be like, I thought, yeah, I'm having a hard time taking you seriously because you're so low.

You're like that Jonah Hill. I can't see your cowboy. I can't see your cowboy boots and your and your armpits around the resting on the table, but go ahead. Well, yeah, just the current situation here around the table. No, I think if that was the case, he would just be like, I thought it was a black bear. I shot it and it mauled me.

It turns out it was a grizzly. Unless he was trying to just sound like a badass, you know, and he wanted to have this story about, you know, I don't know. Dude, I know. We're rehashing something that's been hashed. What's pretty wild about the story is the story of the surviving. Like his night out is pretty wild.

He was hunting with his guide, hunting with a client. Yeah, he was the guide. Sends his client out of the woods to go get help. And I think as he retold the story, he's just thinking like, well, if they go, like they'll probably be back by like 10. Well, 10 p.m. comes. The guide had collected a bunch of firewood for him, you know, and started a fire.

The client. The client, yeah. Wait, not to interrupt this, but to go back, if there's another witness there. No, they were split up. Separated. Oh, yeah. Wait, not to interrupt this, but to go back, if there's another witness there. No, they were split up. Separated. Oh, okay. What year was this?

79. Is the dude still alive? I don't know. Maybe. Could be a good podcast, yes. I hope he, I mean, I'd love to have him on. I don't know. I don't know.

He could be. You know, we're just talking about a bunch of stuff we have no idea about. I just want to remind listeners that we're just... I know. It'd be good to talk to the dude. Yeah, it'd be great to talk to the dude. Yeah.

But anyways, he survives all night. Firewood runs out, but he's incapacitated to the point where he can't go collect more wood. And so he basically shivers and bleeds and makes it to daylight until they get the rescue crew in there to get them out. Very easily could have just slipped off, slipped away. Yep, and that was the last grizzly. You know what's crazy is this happened on September 23rd. Yeah, what date right now? September 23rd.

You are kidding me. No shit. 40 years ago today. yeah what's the date right now right now man september 23rd you are kidding me no no shit 40 years ago today if you didn't believe in like uh ghosts and whatnot i don't know what that tells you i can't find anything that says he's still alive though he's alive in 2014 oh he was um what was the other interesting thing about the san juans oh there's another thing i want to talk about about the san juans it kind of pertains to some things. Some of the same characters are involved because, again,

the hunter and environmentalist David Peterson. Is he alive? When was that article? Today. Yeah. He's 86 years old. Dude, call him up.

Still kicking. In this photo of him, his hands are bigger than his head. We'll put Corinne on it. Well, you know, yeah. I mean, he's at that age, you kind of, you know, I don't know if you really need to. I mean, it's up to him. Yeah.

Would love to hear that story. And again, me talking about this whole thing about what happened, I have no idea what happened. I'm just talking about, there's different perspectives on it. And if just looking at it from an outside, purely like outside looking in thing, there are, I'm not the only guy to bring up like,

what, what now? The other interesting thing, this also involves David Peterson because he's promoted this idea is that one of the things we're seeing here is that one of the things of like, that there's, this elk herd here is declining. And there's a lot of contention about why this elk herd is declining. The thing that they're finding is, one of these guys that was involved, that was very involved and wrote a lot about and commented about this search for the last grizzly in the San Juans

feels that, I think he makes the argument that increased hunting pressure in the San Juans is interrupting the rut. And it's making that bulls don't bugle and cows aren't getting bred. And that there's also this addition of muzzleloader hunters in here. And that is what's causing a decline in the elk herds. Biologists don't, on whole, biologists don't agree with this assessment

because pregnancy rates are not down and calving rates aren't down but what's down is calf survivability meaning calves are hitting the ground but they're not reaching maturity yes and some people look and say you know what that means is that we have a predation problem which flies in the face of, which flies in the face of people, which flies in the face of an individual like David Peterson, who would argue that we have been waging this hundreds year long war on predators and to now blame predators on declining elk numbers

is to once again, look away from the reality of our own impacts on the landscape. Well, just coincidentally, this happens to, did I say that wrong? It just happens to coincide with the fact that Colorado's fish and wildlife has realized that they think that their bear population, that their numbers were off by possibly as much as 50%. They think it might be twice as big

as they thought it was just five years ago. But there's new models of counting. Exploding population of black bears. To the point where they've actually, this year they dropped the non-resident bear tag price from $350 to $100 because they really want people out there hunting black bears and reducing the population

for all sorts of reasons. I mean, this being one of them that possibly might be affecting elk herd size, bears and reducing the population for all sorts of reasons. I mean, this being one of them that possibly might be affecting, you know, elk herd size, but, uh, you know, there's just black bears. I mean, you guys were last night in a small rural town here. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. Tell me about that, Seth. Yeah. We just, we rolled into a town to fuel up, and we went to the gas station, fueled up, and we're coming back, and you couldn't be any more downtown, and there was a black bear standing there on the sidewalk downtown.

Crippled. Crippled. His front right paw was holding it. Got hit by a car or something, probably. Trying to get into a dumpster. Yep. It's one of those funny situations where you look at these kind of like guys

that have been talking about hunting for so long and talking about wildlife for so long. Like, you know, these people we keep mentioning, like David Peterson and Doug Peacock and everything. It's like, you get into, people get into this thing where you have this set of ideas that you become very invested in, you know?

And then time marches on and your sets of ideas don't evolve with the new reality. And you wind up having like these like somewhat antiquated notions. and how people's agenda can inform, people's personal agenda or personal biases can inform an interpretation of science, which we all would hope that science sits in this objective position where we can talk about like fact and not fact. But you could be like,

I've been bow hunting the San Juan Mountains my entire life. I used to have the place to myself. Elk hunting's going to shit. I love bears. What could be causing the problem? It's got to be other hunters. And someone else who might be like invested in hunter participation or a guide or whatever,

his thing's like, oh, that can't be it. I make my living off hunters. It's got to be the damn bears. And we all like go out and run out and push whatever version sort of reinforces our reality. I shared this thing with my brother not long ago. I was talking about why, did we talk about this?

Like why big scientific advancements are typically made by young people? Yeah, but I can't remember if it was on the podcast. But yeah, you definitely mentioned how better science is usually done by younger scientists. Yeah, I was reading this book by the, he's coming on the podcast, but this guy, Justin Schmidt, who's an entomologist,

and he came up with this thing called the Schmidt Pain Index by which you can index out how the severity of insect bites. And he just put like, it's like one, two, three, four, four plus, and he's been bit by everything, every insect that can sting you and ranks them. And he studies toxins in insects. And as sort of an aside in his book, he's like talking about why young people

make scientific advancements. He's like talking about why young people make scientific advancements. He's like, they make scientific advancements because they haven't yet entered that stage of their career where they're defending old ideas. Where it's like, you put forth an idea and it's novel and it gets a lot of attention. And then people start focusing on, well, look at this person's idea. And they start adding to it and questioning it and questioning its assumptions and challenging it. And then you either like, you know what, damn it, you're right. I need to evolve my feeling or you become entrenched and you spend your career being like, yeah, but it sure was a good idea. You spend your career loving it. It's hard for a person in this position to be like oh

you know we need to stop this war on predators to then later be like you know what man we gradually sort of did stop the war on predators and now we've got a shitload of them you're kind of right it's tough 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 our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing

on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. What else, Yanni? Man, I was trying to come up with a good segue because I think one of the things that dominated our conversations, at least for the last couple days, was we did some hunting on the Continental Divide Trail or off the Continental Divide Trail that runs through the San Juans.

And it wasn't until like the third day up there that we ran into our first thru-hiker. This is a world I didn't know existed. Exactly. So we've had a lot of fun chatting about it. And then we ran into another thru-hiker, Denali and Soda. They're two trail names. Which I knew about trail names. I didn't know how they came about.

We still don't know how they come about. No. Yeah. We have an understanding of it. Yeah. We got a grasp. You guys did some research? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah, you're with a group of people on the trail, and they just give you the name. And the caveat, remember the thing, the little blurb I found on Google was like, if you respond to it only one time, you're stuck with it forever. Oh.

Yeah. So if somebody calls you something, and you like- Ignore it. If you ignore it, it doesn't count. You just keep saying, no, my name is Steve. Mm-hmm. Oh, so that's how you don't get stuck with a trail name.

Yeah, you ignore it. Because one dude we met's trail name is Soda because he likes drinking pop. Mm-hmm. I'd have called him Pop. And then another trail name, yeah, Denali. We don't know how she got it. No, should have asked.

A thru- hiker is someone who will uh do the appalachian trail the pacific crest trail the continental divide trail and they do it top to bottom canada to mexico and they're the elite trail hiker or mexico to canada you don't have to do either way or you can just nickel and dime it over time we met a guy yesterday who's just nickel and diamond that's right he We met a guy yesterday who's just nickel and diamond. That's right. He had a lot to say. You know what?

Actually, did not. Yeah, it's funny. The dude nickel and diamond it had a hell of a lot more to say than the dudes that were just doing it. Certainly did, man. The dude I spent time with that was doing the through hike was the least bragging, most unass he's like yeah he told us he was he was being lazy because he didn't have a fishing rod yeah i'm like dude you're walking

the entire 3 000 miles north to south of the whole united states and you're saying you're being lazy a dude from yeah a dude from london a pair of Solomon sneakers, 13 pounds of gear. That was his pack weight of no food and water is 13 pounds? Might have been less than that, man. That thing was light. Yeah. He had like a Sawyer water purifying bottle, a half bottle, or like a couple licks of Dr. Pepper, a zero degree bag,

some kind of tent, which I can't imagine fitting that pack, a boonie hat, a pair of sneakers, some nylon pants, and some track and poles. And that son of a bitch was walking from Canada to Mexico and acted like he was, if you'd have run into him, his demeanor was as though he was walking down to get a beer. Yeah. Like it was just no fanfare whatsoever. Yeah.

And I was expecting a bigger answer because you questioned his motive. And I liked his answer. He's from London. And he's basically like, you guys have unbelievable wildlife and scenery and mountains here. And I don't have anything like that where I came from. And it's just great to walk through it. And that was it. And that's why I'm walking from Canada to Mexico.

Damn good, man. Yeah. And you kind of expect like, well, I got divorced. Yeah. And I'm down and out. And I needed to clear my head to do something big. And here I am, you know, finding myself. But no.

I just want to see the cool shit man just want to go see big mountains oh he had no he was like one of those dudes there's dudes who are badass and want you to know about it well there's dudes that aren't badass and want you to think they're badass there's badasses that want you to know they're badasses

then there's like badasses that that know they're badasses but they intentionally underplay it as sort of a move. And then there's a dude who's a badass who doesn't even know he's a badass. Soda Pop's one of those. Soda Pop. He fell in the last.

Soda Pop. It hasn't even occurred to him that he's a badass. Dude, I wish we could have that guy on a podcast. I know, man. Just a walking son of a bitch. He said some days he walks 30 miles. Yep. Just plops down wherever he is wakes up just keeps walking the only parts he doesn't like was when there's no water

which is yeah he had some nasty stories going through Wyoming right drinking out of stock ponds yeah drinking out of stock ponds in Wyoming how sick you get of that manure flavored water yeah he said it's not fun when you have to force yourself to drink the water because it tastes so bad and smells so bad. And he talked about an interesting kind of hunger. As he says, you get hungry to a point where hunger wakes you up in the middle of the night, which is an interesting kind of hunger. Yeah, I don't know if I've ever felt that.

I've never woke up and having to be like, the thing that woke me up was hunger. Yeah, and he was packing ramen noodles and rice. He says freeze-dried is too expensive. Yep. Rourke and yours. He's a tough dude. Days, have you ever been out of food long enough?

You know, when I finished SEAL training, they sent me to ranger school, and Army ranger school's kind of system for making you crazy uncomfortable is doing a lot of packing and humping through mountains and things like that, but it is starvation. They give you one MRE a day

when you're operating at a very, very high intensity level. I wouldn't say I woke up from hunger. We thought about food constantly. The entire time you're in the field there, you're probably thinking more about food than the combat scenario that they're running. How many calories in an MRE? They're pretty calorie dense.

I mean, they're made to be, you know, rations for troops in the field. I don't know what the number is, but I mean, one is not enough for what we're doing. And if you were on a patrol, you could be on a patrol at night, you'd have 50 people in your company. So spread out, you know, 600 yards apart,

somebody drops like a Skittle that they'd squirreled away from their MRE. Like you could smell it from, you could smell it and be like, somebody is eating a Skittle and somebody might have dropped a Skittle. And I'm going to be looking for it. And I, and everybody knows,

everybody knows what's in the MRE. I got pneumonia during the course. And so they pulled me from, from the, the block of trainers. And they sent me to the block of training I was in. They sent me to the hospital. If I don't finish this course straight through,

I won't start with my advanced SEAL tactical training team to earn my trident, to actually become a SEAL until six months later. If I got back from ranger school on time, I get to start with that class and become a SEAL, like real deal with the team. If I get bumped or rolled in this ranger class and delayed that extra, whatever, three weeks, I would have to wait six. My SEAL dream was now six, eight months further away. So there's no way I wasn't making through this course. They

take me to this hospital. Doctor's checking a bunch of troops coming to me. He's like, yeah, pneumonia, got to pull you. I was like, sir, please. What's the worst that happens if you don't pull me? He's like, you know, you'll pass out. You'll be in big trouble. I was like, sir, please. What's the worst that happens if you don't pull me? He's like, you know, you'll pass out. You'll be in big trouble. I was like, well, can we make that deal? I'll come back. You see me again.

I'm willing to run the risk. He's like, no, I got to pull you. He walks out of the room. Nurse comes in and was like, what did the doc say? I said, I'm good to go. She's like, yeah. I was like, yep. So she takes me out to the waiting room where the ranger,

you know, whatever folks would bring me back to the class the whole time. I'm just praying I don't get made. She sits me in a little lounge area and there were some bags of candy, like just little bags of candy. And there were peanut M&Ms, which do not come in MREs. So I pocket one of those things. Van takes me back to my company. I get back out. And that night, I'm back with my team and my squad, like my four little dudes in this gun nest in this patrol base, this triangle patrol base where you'd set up like, it's old school tactics

where you'd set up three, you know, the apex of the triangle. You'd have a big machine gun nest and everybody spread out in a triangle around it with defensive positions, leadership's in the middle, like making plans or whatever. I break out those peanut M&Ms, you know, pass seven, eight of them to each guy. And like the two dudes that weren't in our gun nest that are like sitting there can like smell the peanut M&Ms.

They're like looking up and they know for sure peanut M&Ms don't come in an MRE. And I'm looking over doing this to him like if you say something to an instructor that like i brought these peanut m&ms like it's over for you it's over for don't rat me out because like if you got if you got caught with something you were supposed to have you get kicked out of the program but i made it through and got back to my team but i was hungry man and the thing you want the thing you want when you're that hungry is sugar sugar is the thing you want more you know that hungry is sugar. Sugar is the thing you want more than anything. You know what I want when I get super hungry is the shit that, you know when you go into like a big gas station off the highway

and they got those glass cases full of like all that brown food? Corn dogs and fried chicken. When I get like real hungry, I think about going in and smashing, going over to the side of my truck where I keep my pickaxe mounted to the outside of my truck and coming in and smashing that glass case open

and eating all that brown food out of the inside of that thing. Why don't you just open the door to the case? It's got to be the- I'm just that hungry. The drama, yeah. You don't have time to-

I want shattered glass all over. All over the food, yeah. To get into one of them brown food cases. Because sometimes they take those things, it's like you make like a burrito and fill it full of a real low-grade barbecue meat and then deep fry that thing and then put it in that case under that red glow lamp for a few days oh my god those things look good i feel like maybe this is just for a personal deal with me but i feel like for me, it was much worse when I was younger. Like we went and did our honeymoon in New Zealand

and backpacked around for like five or six weeks. And I felt like that's all I could think about. As soon as I get on the trail and we'd be out there just long enough to be away from restaurant food, I'd just be like, next meal, next meal. What's in the pack? Oh, I can't wait to eat that, this, that, and the other.

Now, I feel like I haven't had those thoughts on the trail for years. I don't get it on the trail i get it as soon as i stop hiking you start thinking about food smashing the gas station glass case and raiding the brown food sure well i'm just saying in general when you're out in the woods like i just don't and maybe i'm just better at feeding myself i don't. The sugar thing is interesting because we got done with a pretty big hike the other morning when we were sitting there and we met Soda Pop.

I think his name was Soda. Yeah. I know Yanni referred to his face as old Soda Pop. Yeah. But his real name was Soda. Soda. His trail name. His trail name was Soda.

Yeah, we met Soda. We had a giant bag of gummy bears that we bought when we went grocery shopping like we do before all these trips. And those went fast, man. Like, did you notice that Soda, you tried to hand him a handful of Pro Bars and he wouldn't take them?

Yeah, he refused food. I just offered him any, just a snack because the rest of us were sitting around eating and I figured this guy has been working on ramen and rice. I felt like he wanted it but wouldn't take it. Wasn't he going into town? Yeah. I felt like he

wanted it but didn't take it. He was fixing to have a good meal in town. Dude, all we had to offer were bars, man. He's been hiking for four months. I don't think he wants to look at another bar when he knows that there's a cheeseburger in his future. Do you want a bowl of rice? Yeah.

So we've been dogging on it. There's expectations. Oh, I was talking about this the other day with this ecological principle my brother just introduced me to. The optimal niche. Do they teach about this in forestry optimal optimal niche and realized niche or niche niche yeah as some people might say i don't say i don't remember where do you go with rorke you're good at yeah you're very good one of the things you're very

very good at uh pronunciation and enunciation. That stuff's important to me, but I have a little bit of a, like I don't like when people use, it's like the one word out of character that they use that whatever the standard variant of, they pick the one that's a little bit cooler. Give me like, that's a good example. Our last president being like, Pakistan. You know what he'd say?

It's Pakistan, man. We all say Pakistan. I know they might say it, but that's not the way we say it. Yeah, I got you. For me, I say niche. My wife is leaning on me very heavily to stop saying Iran. She has a friend from there. She's like, please. It's not Iran. I'm like, please, it's not Iran.

I'm like, I just think it is now. How do you pronounce it? Iran. Iran. I can't do it. New to me. I can't say Chile. Yeah, exactly.

I feel the same. Chile. Sorry. Yeah, I don't walk around saying, you guys should all call it Latvia. What does it say? Lat call it Latvia. You know what I'm saying? Latvia. This has nothing to do with anything,

but I think it's a really interesting idea. We're hiking up Elk Hunton back home, and we're looking at, there's a lot of just shitloads of raspberries. And it just so happens that I've been clearing a place in my yard to start my own raspberry patch, and there's all these wild raspberries. And I was saying to my brother, who deals in plants, he's an ecologist. I was saying, hey, what do you think, if I took these little shitting raspberries and brought them home, would they be like,

this is the greatest place on earth and grow into the giant raspberries that you grow in your yard, would they always be little shitting mountain raspberries that you grow in your yard, would they always be little shitting mountain raspberries? And he said, I don't know the answer to that. I could see it going both ways. And he said, but there's this thing, there's optimal niche, I think, yeah, optimal niche and realized niche. Meaning there are probably many plant species that would like to be in a certain place. Like ideally, they would occupy this niche. But because it's suitable for a lot of plant species and is very perfect for plants, there's a lot of pressure there.

And plants have varying degrees of being able to deal with stress, and they have varying degrees of being able to deal with stress and they have varying degrees of being able to combat other plants through the production of toxins and aggressive rhizome structures they don't do well in battles so they wind up growing not where they should grow but they grow where they can grow and he was saying it may be that this plant stature is the result of it's not where it really would love to be it's just where it can be it's a low pressure low stress environment for it to be and if you had some little plot of ground and you plucked every freaking weed out of there and made it perfect and put them there he might then realize his full potential of what he like

quote should look like, which I thought was an interesting idea. Very. I bring that up because we had come into this with high expectations. You'll see that this is a horrible segue because it's not the same shit, but it has to do with like the realized thing. And you had an observation last night where you're like,

once I got over the, of being in this unit elk hunting, once I got over the disappointment of it this unit elk hunting once i got over the disappointment of it not being what i realized what i wanted and aligned my expectations about it being okay like i want to be in an okay place to run run around it just took five days to get over the oh man yeah truck, another guy. In the end, you're like, that was pretty fun. And I gotta be totally honest, man. On day one, on day one of the hunt, we

heard a bugle, wrote it off as being a mug, kind of wrote it off as being a mug, had to be a person, got in there. Well, we might have heard the person. Oh, could be. Because we only heard one.

The rest of the crew was listening to what sounded like a bugle battle. Day one, we do get into three young bulls and they're half spooked. And so we're calling at three young bulls and then kind of see this other bull, which want to be in one of the three young bulls, but anyways, moved and then bumped an elk

that was like under our feet and that could have been there's a high likelihood that was another bull for sure that was coming up to check out because we had bugled and whatnot could have been our bull he just never made any noise and it could have been that we would have not moved up to see and he popped out and it could have been right right? We were in with a bull. Then there was kind of a very, like there's a sort of peculiarity of this place that these elk were, and it kind of made sense of like, it was like a little hidey hole.

They had a lot of pressure below them. It was sort of like a spot where you could picture they kind of found a little solace. And watch this full circle. Not in their optimal niche, but they found some solace in a realized niche. That was good. Freaking cliff face. That was good.

Not where he wanted to be. If it was up to him, he'd be laying out in the biggest, grassiest meadow down in the valley bottom. But he couldn't because of pressure. Yeah. He had to go to his realized niche which was like a cliff face um we went back in there and found a bull and had like six days of hunting this is this is in defense of this area six days of hunting and if you said to someone you're gonna hunt out for six days and you're gonna have one like unbelievable encounter what would most people say

i feel that they would say deal you're going to have one like unbelievable encounter, what would most people say? I feel that they would say deal. Six days for one unbelievable encounter. Yeah. And then, and then sprinkled other encounters. Sprinkle. Yeah. But one like, yes, the average hunter would say deal. Yep. You're going to hunt. You're going to work your ass off for six days. You're going to have some days you don't see shit. You're going to have some days where you have a half encounter. Then I'm going to present you with one great encounter. I feel a lot of guys would be like, yeah, that's reasonable. I'll take it. Everybody knows that

I think success rates with a gun, I don't know if it differs between rifle and muzzleloader, but I want to say in Colorado it hovers around 30%. Being that we had two hunters in camp and that you just almost killed one, we almost beat the yearly average.

Yeah. We went up with our bivvy stuff, our camp out stuff, and went up to this little ridgetop that sits at, I think the ridgetop's 11,400 feet. Yep. And got there at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, man. Looked down into this kind of like air the same kind of it was a couple miles away from where we ran to those three bulls but

like the same feature the same landscape feature and same basic setup and went down in there four o'clock in the afternoon here's a bull playing grab at or following a cow and a calf and he might even put kicked her up out of her bed, but he's following her along. So we gradually, gradually get down in their zone and try calling here and try calling there. And then we get to where we know, like the meadow we know they were in and start calling. And right away, a cow pops up at 80 yards, looks, watches for a long time where the sound's coming from, goes back into the woods and comes up and parallels us very close, goes out of whatever happens to her. Then all of a sudden there's a bull down there and he comes out the same gap and has a look around. And then pretty soon another little shitting bull comes in alongside and sneaks in to get a look. Probably not legal.

And then all these cows come out and a bull comes out and we're calling that the bull. He's at 100. I had said to myself, like we always talk, oh, like 100 yards for a muzzleloader, which is far for open sites. He's hanging around 120 yards. We start bugling at him and he's like raking mud up, raking hunks of grass up. up finally he comes over to chase a cow and comes into 80 yards and i get my shot opportunity and i pull off what everyone warned me not what everyone what multiple highly credentialed individuals warned me about was shooting muzzleloaders. Meaning Giannis, Brody, and Remy Warren all said, you have to hit that thing just right with a muzzleloader. Don't shoot him in the shoulders, whatever you're saying.

Because if you hit him, you think, Remy made a joke. Oh yeah, they go down hard and get up and they're gone. And this thing came, like I said, it came to 80 yards, turned broadside. I drew a bead on it, but it's not a precise, like with open sights. I know the guys that shoot in their whole life are very good with them.

Like they're great with them, but I didn't do, in hindsight, I didn't do the practice I should have done. I mean, I grew up shooting open sights at 22s, open sight 22s at squirrels and stuff, but that was a long time ago. I've been like a scope shooting open sites at 22s, open site 22s at Squirrels and stuff, but that was a long time ago. I've been like a scope dude for forever, but you can't use a scope in Colorado. And I should have done way more practice.

I leveled off, felt good, pulled the trigger. He goes down like, like. He went down like. Insert favorite like, hit by lightning, hit by a truck, hit by a train. Sack of potatoes. And back up and gone. And we found some blood that night,

a little bit of blood that night. Ran it down to just a pin drop. And we had only moved the trail. I mean, what did we move the trail? 100 yards, if. Yeah, if not. Not even a freaking drop. Came back early in the morning. Not early in the at daybreak after daybreak uh i don't know i got down there 7 38 a.m maybe 8 a.m maybe later i don't tell it was it's cold got down there

started trailing again and it was a cold night so i was feeling like if we could find this thing the meat's gonna be fine because it was a chilly night. Pick up from that last pinprick of blood and never find another pinprick of blood until probably 150 yards later. Just by following every possible elk trail, every possible elk track, I finally find a pine branch, a busted off pine branch sitting at shoulder height, high shoulder height that had a little blood wiped on it. And then we followed from there every elk track, every possible trail,

back and forth, in and out, never another drop of blood. It was rough, man. Sounds like you hit the void. Yeah. It's crazy, too, because like you,

like how hard he fell and hit the ground, it's like you'd think game over. Yeah, but you know what? If Rourke cocked back and punched me in the face, how hard would I hit the ground? Just like that bull. But would I be dead?

No. Maybe. Maybe. Depends on what kind of day Rourke's having, I imagine. Yeah. It probably depends on the angle that he hits you at. Did you know Rourark told me a story one time about you guys are doing some kind of raid and he sees a dude running out of the

he catches a guy running tell that story my guy i let my my junior officers run that raid so myself and my my boss my task you can matter good buddy of mine we're sitting outside the compound but inside the security blanket of our gun trucks. We're in a pretty good spot, but night vision on, still in the tactical environment. And we had a squirter, which means a guy that got over the fence and was running, but he was on the target.

And he jumped over this fence and I was on night vision watching him unarmed. He didn't have a weapon on him, but he could have gone right, which would have served him well, because I do not believe with all my battle gear on, I would have ever caught him. But he hung a left and was at a jog running straight at me. And I stood up, he didn't hear me stand up and took about a five to eight step linebacker, Lawrence Taylor-esque run and put my shoulder into that dude to just knock him down,

and his body exploded. Oh, my God. I thought I killed him. I thought I killed him. I actually felt bad. I didn't know. You know, I didn't know. He might have just been like the teenage son of the guy we were going after or whatever.

But, I mean, I've never hit anybody harder in any sport game. But we picked him up and grabbed him, got him off all all right but i don't think he'll ever forget that hit but uh yeah like again man to go back to this thing like someone's got a gun in your head and you had to get an answer right and they said is that is that elk uh alive right now or dead right now i would go a lot i would probably like in that situation, I would, I think I said this the other day, I would say alive, but I would half expect to hear the gun go off. I just don't know. It was confusing enough where there's a thing

I feel like I should start doing, haven't typically done in the past, but I kind of like, I'm interested in the idea, is if you get a wound, if you wound something where there's a good likelihood that you killed it, I'm interested in the idea. And there's some units where this is how it works.

There's blackberry units in Alaska where if you wound an animal, you notch your tag. Yeah. So with that, I was like, you know what, man, I'm done. I'm done. I've never done that in the past

when I had something get away. Never done that in the past. And I don't know that i'll always do it in the future but in that moment i was kind of like man because rorke still had a tag i was like i'd rather put energy into having rorke have an equal opportunity rather than racking up two opportunities you know what i mean yeah i don't know that i don't know that that's like a rule for me but that i just felt like yeah maybe some black bear is going to go into hibernation in extremely good shape because of that bear because of that elk carcass i don't know the thing i talked about too when we were making the show and i talked about this was i got a buddy i don't want to say where he works but i got a buddy that works for a big

grocery store chain one day he sends me a picture picture of those dumpsters. What do you call those dumpsters that you carry on a flatbed semi-trailer? I don't know. They're huge freaking dumpsters. It's like a semi-trailer, but it's a dumpster full of packaged pork because someone had screwed up taking a refrigerator truck and put it in the wrong spot so it didn't get offloaded. And he was like, they wouldn't even let him take it home. And they took all this packaged pork was in this giant freaking dumpster going to a landfill. And you're like, what a waste of animal life. You know, like what a waste of life to go to a landfill wrapped in plastic. And then this thing I always come to, like, if you hit something and lose it out in the environment, you know,

my brother pointed out one time, it's like, if you think it's wasteful, then you really don't believe in nutrient recycling because it's like there in its place. It's sort of like, eventually the animal is going to die. Eventually that animal will die and will become food for other things um and maybe that's what happened there and it died and it becomes food for other things i'm not saying that this excuses it i'm just saying like it's one of the many complicated things that rolls through your head where you're like you feel like like one you screwed. You didn't aim carefully. You didn't prepare.

You got excited. You did all this stupid stuff. Now you've caused this thing like pain and there's no sort of human gain. You don't gain the resource. Like you screwed up. And then you go like, yeah, but maybe I'll feel better when I roll these ideas, this collection of ideas through my head about, right,

some bear is loving or not, or some elk is having a very, very bad winter. Yeah. Yeah, it sucks to think about the suffering they may or may not go through. That's a pretty big hole most likely because it went through, I'm betting, both sides, you know, through the top of the ribs.

I don't know if it would have bled. Yeah, if it was a big hole, it was like no blood, man. No blood. Because that's the void, man. That's the spot between the spine and the top of the lungs. There's just not blood pumping through there. If I was able to just probably to take a knife, I think, and puncture your ribs

but not go into anything farther. Just do it. I want to see. You know, but like your ribs and your meat right there, you know, unless you go inside and catch something internal, but just your chunk of ribs.

I feel like you, because you even made the comment like, oh, I guess your hand has a lot more blood in it. Oh, I said there would have been a lot more blood if someone cut their finger. But feel like you, because you even made the comment like, I guess your hand has a lot more blood in it. Oh, I said there would have been a lot more blood if someone cut their finger. But your hands are,

yeah, you got a lot of stuff going on there. Dude, my brother cut his finger the other day. We couldn't get it to stop bleeding. I know. He's blood all over

the damn place. And imagine too, it's shaped barrel-like. Yeah. And if it's up high, that blood has a chance to like, one, it has to be pumped

up and out of that hole. And then as it's coming down, it's drying, you know it's drying coagulating what happens yeah and then you just didn't hit anything vital i don't know anybody that's ever quit hunting over it but it's like you know if you're gonna go out in the woods i guess you just gotta there's gotta be a certain amount of thing if you're gonna go out in the woods and shoot projectiles and stuff with the intent of killing it, you better be real frank with yourself about the palatability of that not working out. It's not binary.

I was listening to this gal talking the other day about this antelope hunt she'd been on. She talked about how she, like, she's, like, quote, missed nine and then got one. Whoa. I'm like, I have to think that it wasn't binary. That a couple of them got hit. I mean, do you really go nine misses, but then all of a sudden you kill one? Yeah. Or is there some gray in there? There's got to be some gray. It's not binary. That's the thing. The first time I took my wife hunting, she never factored in.

I took her squirrel hunting. She thought you either killed it or hit it, and she hit one in the ear. It ran up a tree and messed with its ear for a minute, and it looked like when a deer gets caught on barbed wire, you could see it. I mean, we were in my mom's yard, I should point out. But you could see him up there. He's like, totally fine. But she's like, it never occurred to me there would be anything other than one or the other.

I thought it was like on, off. I didn't know there's a middle switch yeah yeah but what about like I don't know this is probably a little controversial but please well when you get into like we're gonna talk 2020 presidential bid oh absolutely not well hit me with the controversy like I don't know after the after the couple bow hunts we went on which which nothing bad happened but just the hitting the elk and then finding it the next day that was my first experience with that because every other meter i'd done was rifle and you i mean you're a good shot so you hit it the fucking animal drops and that's it and we go and clean it

up and we start eating it yeah and it's a whole it's that's the binary And we go and clean it up and we start eating it. Yeah. And it's a whole, it's, that's the binary thing. It's like that happened and now we're enjoying it. And now with muzzle loaders too, like it happens where we shoot one and it goes away. So like I'm having a struggle accepting those as viable means of hunting, like ethically. Like, I know, I know people can miss and you can do it with a rifle but in my experience based on what i've seen it's like if you are if you practice with a rifle you're a good shot you like the animal is done quick and it just seems very clean and ethical and like how it should be and when you introduce these like traditional things it just seems more of like an ego thing that people are after like

oh i can get it with a stick yeah you know it's like well that's great for you man but now you just interrupted this thing and you know because well you know you know what helps helps answer it what the only there's more in the equation than animal suffering. There's efficacy. Because again, you're dealing with a finite resource. Yeah. And the way to enable a larger pool of people to have an opportunity to extract from a finite resource

is to regulate efficacy. There was a movement some years ago, Yanni probably will remember when, when all of a sudden guys were discovering the efficacy of using 50 cal BMGs. Is that the right word for it? And there was like YouTube channels, right? Yeah, I don't know if I qualify it as a whole movement.

It might have been. There was like a thing. Can I say stir right? Yeah. I don't know if I qualify it as a whole movement. It might have been. There was like a thing. Can I say stirrings? Yeah, sure. There were some stirrings of guys realizing the incredible efficacy of the 50-cowl round to hunt elk. Mm-hmm. Rigged up with big, heavy, big, heavy tack drivers

with 50 cals and the fact that you could bowl an elk over at 900 yards or whatever, right? So, and some states came out and said, you can't do that. You can't use,

if a 12 gauge is effective on waterfowl, imagine how effective a 10 gauge would be or how effective an 8 gauge would be. You can't use 8 gauges. You can't buy a damn 8 gauge, barely. So, if it was just if game management came down to what kills animals the cleanest i think that we would welcome any and all technologies into the

game but the minute you enter any and all technologies into the game efficacy goes up and participation will have to go down. If you have a population of, let's say you got a population, you got a hundred panda bears and someone's like, no koala bears. There's a hundred koala bears. And they're like, we can kill 10 koala bears. And then next year we'll have a hundred again because they'll reproduce. And you're only going to really have 100 because there's only so many eucalyptus trees. So we know that 100 koala bears is a great number.

Every year we kill 10. Next year, imagine we got 100. If we didn't kill any, we'd still have 100 because that's just the carrying capacity of the landscape. And if you had a way that a guy has a 100% certainty of killing a koala bear, how many dudes get to hunt koala bears? One dude.

No, 10. You're right, I tuned out. There's 10 tags. Okay. Let's say you say you can only use red riders. Yep. And we find that people shooting red riders only have about a 10% success rate on koalas

because they can soak up BBs. Okay. And we find that people shooting red riders only have about a 10% success rate on koalas. Because they can soak up BBs. Okay? How many dudes now get to go koala hunting? How many do you need so that 10% equals 10? It's 100, Chris. It's 100. Right, right, right. 100.

Right. They all get to go. But they're all out shooting red riders at koalas. And they're absorbing those BBs. And they're sucking up BBs. That's wildlife management. That's a good point. That's a good note to end on.

Yeah. That's good. You liked it? Yeah. I'm going to start doing everything as koala bears. I think that's what really worked was the koalas yeah you were um now you still lost chris well i was thinking about my concluding thought in that case please in that case have you gotten through it yeah okay in that case please uh ridge

i would love to hear more than anything in the world i would like to hear your concluding thought it's not that deep man but i just liked uh can't push your subaru again no no that's that'll get sold i'm sure uh i just like watching that elk being elk man that was cool i did there's a lot of people i know and hang out with that never ever get to see that and that was cool see that thing getting all throwing the mud yeah kicking around yeah responding to the call interacting it was just really cool screwing that up will forever taint that i always wish you you know now like in hindsight obviously i wish you just stayed at 100 yards. Yeah. Gone about his business. Caught our wind.

I wish you would have caught our wind. But the wind was in our face, man. Dude, it was a good wind day. That whole day was a good day. We were going to run out of daylight, but. Yeah. Yeah. Rourke.

What's up? You got a concluder? We can come back to you. No, no. No, I have something to do before a concluder and then give you my thoughts on a concluder. Can I ask you a quick question? Please.

Why does your shirt say orange on it? I was a Syracuse orange man. Oh. Huh. Gotcha. Yep. I thought you liked oranges. I do.

First, thanks, as always, to take me out and get to run amok with you guys. I would say not to go into like my personal life. I've struggled a little bit post being in this league of extraordinary gentlemen. That was the military to find folks not in the military and kind of beyond that part of my life that I really liked being around. And the media crew is that crew, you Yanni, the rest of the rest of the gents here and everybody so I appreciate that greatly yeah I even saw you get uh Rich Pounder's phone number yeah you did man

even though he's leaving correct correct uh so I appreciate that I appreciate well thanks no I mean sincerely I mean the thing that I meant to get into, but we didn't, but we talked about it before. Well, next time you come on, we'll talk about it. We're out of time now, is that you're knowing the way you knew yourself and knowing that there would be a void. Yeah. Having the self-awareness to know that there would be this kind of void

that was going to get filled with something when you left the military and that you sort of consciously, I mean, you grew up outdoors, you grew up fishing, skiing, hiking, but you knew that you're like, there's going to be a void and I'm going to consciously fill that void with something that taps into some of that same stuff because I don't want it to be filled in a way that isn't under my control. Oh yeah. And there's a whole lot of people filling voids with the wrong stuff from our line of work. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's good. So that's first. So thanks. On concluders, there's almost nothing since I love literature probably more than anything when

it comes to stories. I love storytelling. Nothing makes me happier than a story well concluded. And almost nothing bothers me more than one that doesn't end well. Mm-hmm. You should meet our friend Dirt Miff. well concluded. And almost nothing bothers me more than one that doesn't end well. You should meet our friend Dirt Miff. So it occurred to me when I've listened to your podcast, they get the concluders, whenever next I was going to be on it, this would be my answer. Not like I prepped this in any major way, but was that I'm not going to give a concluder because I feel like this story is about these relationships and I hope that story goes on for perpetuity. So I'm not going to close,

even though I know that's a little esoteric. No, I like it. I'm not going to give a concluder because I don't want this story to end. What makes a great concluder is that it's well thought. Seth? I like those pigs. I love the sound of a pig yanking its head out of a feeding trap.

Boy, that takes me back. No, it was just cool hanging out with you, Rourke. Hearing your stories, man, that's awesome. Dude, Rourke's got some stories, man. Good stories. The boomers, a lot of them can't leave the woods, but I wish we had another week. Yeah, no, you and me both.

Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, this is Danny. I had a thoroughly entertaining had another week. Yeah, no, you and me both. Yep, that was fun. Yeah, this is Danny. I had a thoroughly entertaining, interesting week. I appreciate it. Thanks for bringing me on to this. If your footage turns out to be good, I hope you come back with us. Thanks, I appreciate that. Yeah, it was an interesting experience for sure.

If the footage is no good, you'll never hear from us again. Sounds good. Second closer, I think, is more of a pro tip. The first half of my week i would say it was fairly miserable because uh wrong foot i came out here with the wrong footwear and every camera guy has like 10 pairs of shoes that he travels with because you never know we never know you need rubber boots or yeah hiking boots and so i brought a lot of four and so the first one i tried for the first three days put put 30 miles on these things.

Man, I thought my foot was going to fall off. It was a blister that looked like a gunshot wound. Oh, dude, it's messed up. Yeah, I didn't really say anything about it because it didn't matter. I had to keep on walking. No, that earned you a lot of credit. Oh, thanks. Having never heard that the problem existed and then seeing the problem, I was like,

the fact that he hasn't brought that up, that's good. That's good stuff. That's soda pop level shit right there. Yeah, yeah. I pushed on my big toenail one night when it spiked out and a bunch of yellow pus came out of it, and that was aside from the blister on the back of my foot

that was the gunshot wound. And so, yeah, I guess to kind of bookend it from the beginning of the conversation, I would have traded anything for a pair of flip-flops that night. I would have done the rest of the shoot in flip-flops, but I had a backup pair.

So pro tip, don't go on to one of these things with a pair of boots that you haven't thoroughly walked in. And bring your flips. Yep. Yanni? We have a plane to catch, so thank you for listening very much and we'll catch you next week boom Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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