The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 205: The Cazador and the Coues

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Kevin Sloan, Anthony Licata, Seth Morris, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: A Viking funeral for a severed finger; pressure washing bear meat out of your sinuses; Anthony's cartel run-in; Steve's almost negligent shittiness at speaking Spanish; where persistence meets movement; Kevin seeing the shine off a deer’s nose; the half-wild dogs of Sonora and the one that stole Steve’s heart; pickles; MeatEater's live tour; 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.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. For those of you joining us now, Yanni's telling us people who think Yannis has this glamorous life should know that Yanni was just explaining to us that it is in fact possible to do a quick stop

at Costco. Yeah, I don't mind doing Costco. Can you bump me up just a little bit? Is there a T in there or not a T in there? Costco is the international shipping. Yeah, there is a T. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? Like you see Connex containers that say Costco.

No, I think it's commonly said both ways for sure. People are just speaking of the big. No, you're not hearing me. No, I am. I'm totally hearing you. Okay. I know that there's both out there, and I think when people refer to Costco,

there are lots of people that just say Costco, and nobody corrects them. My mother's husband, who she married. I hesitate to call him my father-in-law because I feel like I'm a little bit old for her. No, no, stepdad. I feel like I'm old for that. Yeah.

He calls Barnes & Noble books and nobles. There you go. And he calls it McDonald's and Italian dressing. I was just saying that you could be an efficient. I've adopted all of that stuff, by the way. I do. I take everything from him that I. As soon as you got your reader glasses, you took on that stuff.

Do you receive gifts from this man at Christmas? Uh-uh. Okay. Yeah. You're clear of the stepdad thing then just i'm a little bit old to have a stepdad i think so too getting older every day you guys caught the the i didn't send this to phil the finger that had 15 inches of tendon attached to it was that an alarming photograph on ice i'd say the color everything about it i sent it to my wife she's like why are you saying this to me no she says i don't want to see this and i said no one does i couldn't figure out what it was yeah because the tendon kind of throws you off yeah

well i mean because we're all you know you talk about finger stories you get them in it's self-perpetuating that's his dad that's the guy over in Billings, the guy from Billings. He's going to be at the live show. I don't know why he's going to this one, but he's going to the Mesa, the Phoenix live show. Oh, is he bringing the finger? No, I'm going to talk about what happened to the finger. He's going to be at the show. I think about having him up on stage just to ask him a couple quick questions.

But his dad was a welder. Somehow got his finger tore off and it tore off 15 inches of tendon. Yeah, if you've ever done the little trick that we like to do with duck legs.

Yeah, Meteor Fishing Game cookbook, ladies and gentlemen. Where you just basically score the joint there right where the orange ends and the feathers start. You score it just enough to get through the outside skin,

and then you just yank the leg from the – well, carefully hanging on to the drumstick, I guess it would be, right? Not quite the thigh. You yank all those tendons right out of the drumstick. And it was just a big version of that. Yeah, I challenge – I don't want to use a like uh you know how the the problem i have are a lot of my like pop references are old feel like i if i want to say um like i would challenge lou frigno to uh do that with a canada goose leg what should

i say uh you're talking about he's like the 70s hulk right yeah like so i need like a contemporary do that with a Canada goose leg, what should I say? You're talking about, he's like the 70s Hulk, right? Lou Frigg. Yeah, so I need like a contemporary example of someone with Herculean strength. Dave Bautista. Really? Yeah.

What the hell's that? He was a wrestler, and now he's like a movie star. I challenge. The Rock would be a good one. The Rock's still relevant. No, I'm not doing a Rock reference, man. Why not?

Just not gonna. What's that other wrestler guy that's in all the movies? Rourke Denver was in that reality TV show with him. John Cena? John Cena. Yeah. Yeah. I would challenge John Cena to do that with a Canada Goose leg.

That's good. I saw Yanni try it. He's no John Cena. He couldn't do it. But I didn't try it by myself nonetheless. You tag teamed it with the flip-flop flasher. That's right. And it was not even kind of budging. It actually budged and then it

hit like a wall and it was not going any further. Do you feel that you and Seth could, if you were tag teaming With John Cena on the other side? Yeah, so tag team match. You, Seth, and John Cena. Would you be able to whoop him? No.

Really? I don't think so. Not if he's some kind of a fighter. I mean, those skills go a long way. We're joined by Anthony Licata. Now it'd be customary

to say like, hello. Hey. Ryan Callahan, Seth, or Phil the engineer is here, of course, Yanni,

and Kevin Sloan, first ever time on the show. Yeah. Well, you guys finally let me on. Congrats. Yeah. We usually try to lock the door,

but he crawled in. A couple of things. So he, oh, the finger, what happened? Working on a, he's a welder and they were in he got his glove caught in a drill press the the the the bit wrapped

around the glove the glove the the bit got the gloves the glove got the finger and pulled at 15 inches of tendon what they did with it is the guy that wrote in jay ethan um is his first names what they did was when he got married they they wanted he was got he got to reading about viking funerals and the night before he got married they took the old man's finger it was in his brother-in-law's freezer they took the old man's finger it was in his brother-in-law's freezer they took the old man's free finger and gave it a Viking funeral in a kiddie pool in the backyard 50 people in attendance so they burned it a Viking funeral they burn her finger in a floating in a little boat in a kiddie pool. Because like a Viking funeral, for those of you out of the know, it'd be they'd put you in a boat full of sticks and firewood and whatnot

and douse you in gas and light it on fire and shove you out. There was some cute kids movie, wasn't there? That was like the guy's last dying wish and the adults wouldn't let it happen and all the kids had to conspire to make it happen. At the very end they launched the last flaming arrow and land. That sounds, yeah. Yeah, you're right. And then the movie

Dead Man, he kind of does something. When he finally gets William Blake um you guys if you're not familiar with the Dead Man I'd like you to please leave. But I've been trying to watch that movie for like five years now. It's hard to find.

In the end of Deadman, I can't explain it. It takes too long to explain it. Moving on. Is this an old joke? A guy wrote in. I feel like this is like an old joke. I'm going to tell you guys what it is. So there's a great level of specificity in an email that a person wrote in.

Upper East Tennessee. He's saying there's a lot of farmers that have turned to raising sheep as the demand for tobacco has fallen. Does this sound legit? That sounds perfectly plausible. Influx of raising sheep has brought an increase in the

coyote population. Lots of people having trouble with coyotes. They have one of those meetings where all the different stakeholders come in and Fish and Game is there and there's farmers there and other interested parties all show up. And they're exploring these solutions. And the solutions include using donkeys to protect herds, the cost benefit of hiring coyote hunters to try to do a population reduction.

And it said that one lady shows up, an animal rights activist shows up, and she proposes that they set live traps for the coyotes and castrate the males and then release them. To which an old farmer says, lady, I don't think you understand the problem these coyotes aren't having sex with our sheep they're killing them is that an old joke that is an old one yeah it is yeah i thought it might be an old joke yeah um moving on so can i ask you guys are like a lame no people to hang out with. I thought there was going to be more of the story here. Okay.

Okay. So this person is saying that the tobacco, when it was all tobacco up there, it didn't support the amount of wildlife that would then have a neighboring large predator. Not a large predator, but a large population of coyotes being the predator. What I think is going on. And then add the sheep because nobody's raising sheep and making any sort of cash if they're letting coyotes eat them. But do you know the joke, the wild game cooking joke, where you describe a very elaborate process of cooking something, and then you cook it on a cedar plank, and the punchline is always the same? Yes. And then you throw out the duck and eat the wood, right?

I think it's that joke, but he's just spinning. Right. The tobacco, the tobacco thing is the setup. Like the setup being like, oh, I'll tell you how to cook a coot.

Yeah. You know, eat the board. Or, I'm sure there were plenty of coyotes there before, but it wasn't a problem until people started

raising sheep. Yeah. Then all of a sudden people cared. They didn't have to worry about eating the tobacco because it makes you sick. I found that out in fifth grade, me and Stanley Johnson. Me and Stanley Johnson, we were making agricultural maps. You had to glue ag products to a map of the U.S. And someone brought in a big old thing of longleaf tobacco.

And me and Stanley knew that that was something that people like to do is chew tobacco and we ate someone had to go home I was I was literally hallucinating throwing up but it cured you rescued by my mom I never became a dipper um another quick note oh I did that. Oh, this is interesting. Guy wrote in that they made some bear sliders, black bear sliders, and someone cracked a joke,

what's called a 10-10 joke. I don't know what that is. Someone cracked a 10-10 joke, and the guy snorted eating his bear slider and got so much bear slider up his nose that he wound up at the hospital. His sinus cavity packed full of a bear slider. What was the joke? It must have been a good joke.

A 10-10 joke. Is that bad? Yeah, I need to do some research on what a 10-10 joke is. That seems extreme. Yeah. They said they basically pressure washed the black bear meat back out of his sinus. My brother did that when he was a kid with a rubber nightwalker for fishing. My mom put him to bed.

He was playing with it. She said, oh. What's a rubber nightwalker? Like a rubber worm, like a soft plastic bait. You guys call them nightwalkers? That's what my dad calls it, so that's why I did it. Because I've heard my dad tell this story so many times, I told it the way my father would.

Yeah, soft plastic, six-inch rubber worm. When you were kids, did you have the kind that had the three gold hooks? Yes. And it was a purple worm, pink dot, and it had the three hooks. Oh, my God, those slay, man. They did. They killed. And it came tied like a snell.

Mm-hmm. Well, anyway, my brother was playing with one when my mom put him to bed. He was like three. And when she left, he shoved it so far up his nose that he had to go to the hospital and get it pressure washed out. Oh, that corroborates that story. Yeah, so that could happen. Jan, any news on 1010 jokes? Yeah, the Urban Dictionary. Can you say it on the air?

Yeah, for sure. Okay. I think so. Is it like a Yerma joke? No, it's something you use to Those are funny When you say There's a female with Voluptuous breasts

Go on So he made a joke about this And it caused him to get the bear stuck in his nose There's a good story a guy wrote in about His buddy joke about this and it caused him to get the bear stuck in his nose. There's a good story a guy wrote in about. His buddy, they're cliff jumping. And he knows a guy that jumps off a cliff so high. There's a lot to it, but I'm going to skip to the graphic part.

When he struck the water, his swim trunks captured a scoop of water that caused them to rip up the inseam, causing a small laceration between his legs. The hydraulic pressure proceeded to widen the hole enough that his pelvis broke into three plate pieces and folded outwards. The jet of water traveled upwards through his body with enough force to puncture his left lung, severing both femoral arteries, urethra, and scrambling his intestines. The only reason he did not die within seconds is that the ends of his arteries were pushed

into both sides of the fractured pelvis, which then pinched them shut. I don't know. What do you think about that, Phil? Why are you laughing? Phil, you're not even on the show. I was picturing you did a very good job of a very visual play-by-play of that, and I was running through it in my head.

You were trying to put it together. You were trying to follow. And in the end, you're feeling it or not feeling it or not feeling oh yeah for sure it was the the pinching that was that was a an ending for sure so you believe that that happened to that oh absolutely not it was just a good story no that sounds crazy right am i phil is not buying it yanni if i had to put my life on it yeah i'd say i'm not buying it. Yanni? If I had to put my life on it, yeah, I'd say I'm not buying it either. If it came down to it. Taurus swim trunks.

I can believe that. And it led to like a Rube Goldberg scenario. Exactly. Which is long. I don't know that reference. Oh, what? Yeah, Yanni knows a lot of stuff, but sometimes you'll find he's like kind of like mysterious little holes.

Rube Goldberg would be like these contraptions, right? Like a ping pong ball falls and tips a lever, and the lever causes a little drop of water to drip in a bucket of water, and the bucket of water then tips. Did your kids ever play Mousetrap, that game? Yeah. It's a Rube Goldberg contraption. Is that named after a person?

Well, I'd like to think that it's named after Rube Goldberg. Rube. Like your real Rube. All right. Now, the other thing is, it's like this person would be so. The cliff jumper. Yeah, the cliff jumper is like a... Oh, can I interrupt you?

Yeah. The finger with the 15 inches of tendon, I have the photographs. I would love nothing more than to put them on Instagram. I feel like that that would cause me damage with the folks at Instagram and I would get my account removed. Yeah, it's something. Doesn't it seem like you would? Nah, it's not good. I know that medical Instagram pages have a lot of problem where they get censored, even though they're trying to be helpful. Yeah.

Yeah. I follow a couple of them that are pretty interesting. Go on. to the point seems so precariously kept together that no surgeon in the world would even attempt to touch the person. Like a Humpty Dumpty, almost like a Humpty Dumpty kind of level of. Yeah. It's a house of cards type of surgical. John, you ever heard of Humpty Dumpty?

I got it. Not the rapper. The Humpty Hump? Yeah. I don't think his name was Humpty Dumpty. I got it. Not the rapper. The Humpty Hump? Yeah. I don't think his name was Humpty Dumpty. No, it wasn't. He sang the Humpty Hump. It was the Digital Underground.

The Digital Underground. I can't remember the name of the rapper himself. The final thing, the final thing I want to talk about before we talk about what we're supposed to talk about. My great friend and neighbor, Patrick, he took offense. Yanni, you weren't here, but we were dogging on you behind your back about how you're not a true outdoorsman. He was texting me today about making some ski plans, speaking of Patrick. Oh, come on.

Now I'm not going to read his note. Come on. Bring it. Okay. He doesn't like... He takes offense by the idea that... I don't think... I know Yanni not to be a true outdoorsman because he likes to ski. Because a true outdoorsman wants to be doing outdoor. He wants to be hunting and fishing.

It would never take all those... waste all that time so uh my neighbor my beloved neighbor patrick who has a kiln he like throws he does ceramics work um he accuses me of commandeering the definition of a true outdoorsman and he doesn't like it He takes offense at it being limited to exclusively hunting and fishing year round with no inclusion of other activities that indeed require being outdoors and in the wilds of nature. Then he goes on to talk about all kinds of dictionary definitions of outdoorsman. One who spends much time in the outdoors or in outdoor activities. A person devoted to outdoor sports and recreational activities such as hunting, hiking, fishing, and camping.

And then he goes on and on about how, you know, it teaches everyone that you appreciate all the seasons and you're learning about all this kind of stuff. Now you guys are going skiing together. So if we were out, if I just happened to go backpacking, say this summer, is that also going to be a notch against my outdoors? Not if you're scouting. Right. Not if you're scouting. Got to be scouting.

Now my boy was just at ski lessons and he took note of a weasel, which people often do, took note of a weasel. So I would almost roll that into a scouting trip. He says, we should be celebrating anyone getting outside and enjoying our public lands, regardless of the means that brought them to that space. A true outdoorsman is simply a human being who, at their core, loves and understands the natural world and prefers to be immersed in it whenever possible.

Well put. Alright, freshly back. Here's what we're supposed to be talking about. Freshly back from Mexico, Coos Deer Hunting. I fear that I'm a little bit torn about top, but I feel like Coos Deer Hunting is going to become like a famous thing.

You're worried about ruining it. I don't know. That's what I'm torn about is because, one, the mentality of – I used to have a friend. I'm still good friends with him. They used to make these really good pickles. And they had like a family recipe of how they made the pickles. And people who ate the pickles had joy.

Like they loved the pickles. And they'd be like, how did you, I'd like to, you know, I'd like to make some of those pickles so that I can have more joy. And they would. Did you tell them you should pick up skiing? The family. Yeah. No, I was explaining the idea the other day.

I kind of put my finger on it where it's like a juvenile sport because it's like the sensation you're supposed to have is captured by the word wee. It's like children, like the way children would slide down things like McDonald's and stuff at the slides. But what was I saying? Pickles. Oh, the Dross. Yeah. He's been on the show, Matt Dross. The Dross family had like a pickle recipe and they were reluctant to give it up.

And you'd be like, but if people like to eat the pickles and it brings joy to their lives. And since you're not in the business of selling pickles and you're not depriving yourself of a revenue stream, and you know that the taste of these pickles brings joy, what is the motivation to deprive, right? Like, what are you getting out of people not having joy in their lives? Like, what is the benefit of monopolizing a good way to make a pickle when there's no financial stake? Just knowing that I have really good pickles and you don't? Please.

No, because, yeah, because you are the only purveyor of that pickle joy. Any recipe is that way that people are like, yeah, I don't think so. You know, like my wife is kind of wife would hold on to that adult cookie recipe that everybody likes so much, the one that she brings to the Christmas party. Because she wants to revel in the, she wants to be like, the joy that it generates,

I want to be the only person that can harness the joy. Yeah, you get to be the person. The gratitude. You get to be the person that's like, ooh, Jennifer's cookies. Jennifer's cookies. Matt's pickles.

Can you imagine if the medical world, if the medical world. They do do that. No, it doesn't work like that. Yeah, well, except they just put a price tag on it. Exactly. But they don't be like, oh, no, I know how to save your life. But I'm not telling. I'm not going to allow it to be published.

I'm not going to allow it to be published. It's just a different form of currency. Anyhow, the Coos Deer conundrum, the Coos Deer conundrum is that. It's like a really special thing. And it feels like right now is the good old days. We're talking about hunting coos near Sonora, Mexico.

Why do you feel today is the good old days? Because I can't picture that it was at some point in time better. Do you know what I mean? It feels like you're touching something

like almost perfect and pristine. Certainly pristine. I think that's one of the coolest parts about going down there. It feels like perfect. It doesn't feel like anyone could say like, oh, you know, when I was a boy. When we commented, we were down there, it felt like no one had been there since we were there last year. Kind of felt untouched.

Yeah. You don't get to experience that very often. No. It's an interesting landscape too, because just historically, there's never been a ton of people there. You know, I mean, there's mining has been the largest population driver in that area of the world, I think, historically. And, you know, there's just not that many people who have hunted deer up in those mountains all in all no it contradicts a point that the area so what we're talking about is sonora so it's not really the sonora desert because you're up in these things these uh

no they're referred to as a sonoran mountains. Sonoran Mountains. They rise up from the flat desert in these kind of like islandy mountain chains. Low down, like, you know, in the slopes leading up to them is, you know, just very sandy, rocky ground with like ocotillo, cactus. And then you go up and up and up, and eventually you get high enough, you get up where get up where there's some you know full-on timber like some pine trees scattered here and there have you guys described how nasty ocotillo is that that's a good context no but i used to like to fantasize about uh we used to sit there when we're glassing we would sit there and describe ways. You'd kind of be like, you know what would be funny? It's like if you took one of these and X, Y, and Z'd your buddy. Or took one of these and you and your other buddy did this to the other buddy. Steve and the mouse in his pocket were having this conversation.

No, we talked about making bull whips out of Ocotillos, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it's a great plant. It's nasty. If you were like a nefarious torturer, Ocotillo would be like a thing you'd have in your box of torture equipment. You'd be growing it in your backyard on purpose.

You'd be like, oh yeah, let me go out and get an oak teal. Coos deer seem to love to feed in it. Yeah, they like it. You know what, Cal? I was telling Cal that walking out in the dark there at night with packing a coos deer out in the dark, and we got to talking about, I was telling him how on other ranches I'd been in in Sonora

that were lower, you would find coos deer on these little humps loaded with oak teal. And there's always grass in there. And Cal had a great point, is that the cattle don't like to go in there. So the grass doesn't get grazed on the oak teal humps, which I thought was a very plausible. Theory.

Plausible theory. Maybe there's some sort of like safety from predators as well. Yeah. Like stuff doesn't want to go in there. Because it's a weird thing where it's thick and open at the same time. That's a good way of putting it. It can be covered in oak and teal, but yet you can see every square inch of the hillside. But you can't go running across that hillside.

Yeah. That's a good point. So where we're hunting is fairly close to the, I mean, you're looking back into the U.S. I think we should do a better job of describing Ocotillo. Oh, go ahead. It looks like a giant torture apparatus. It's like a, like a spaghetti noodle that's 12 feet tall. Yeah. I think it can be two inch diameter at the base, the giant one covered in very, very durable cactus thorns with a yellow flower, often a yellow flower, looks pretty.

Yeah, and if you took it and cut it off and then de-burred a section for a handle, you would have a formidable tool. Yes, and each plant probably has, I don't know, quite a few, 20, 30 stalks kind of coming out in V formation. I'm looking at, when you Google image it, it's all just pictures of it in the springtime when it's blooming and it actually has a beautiful red flower on it. But we never see that since we're down there in January. A point I was going to make about,

we're going to talk a fair bit about this, but a point I was going to make about a thing about the mountains in Sonora, so like just across the border from Arizona. It kind of contradicts a point I've often made about pristine habitats. I would often say in the U.S., we've gotten to a point where all the stuff that we have that's pristine is pristine because someone kind of like decided to have it be that way right like for a lot of our nation's history we had pristine places in spite of our best efforts to like get rid of them all and then we had a switch we like had a national mindset change and then now we kind of like have pristine things because we've decided that they're they should be that way right like we do things that may hope to help them stay that way protections but down there it's like

it just really i said every time we talk about this every year if we talk about koozer it is it is like traveling all you need to do like you cross this geopolitical this like very seemingly arbitrarily placed geopolitical boundary and crossing to Mexico and everything changes. Yeah, I agree. You cross a fence and there is a guy on the side of the road with a splitting mall and a giant pile of mesquite basically split to serve. Split to serve. Split to serve cooking wood it is a different place and then you go in the mountains it's like it's like off you don't see anyone for days and then you finally see some person riding on a trail off in the mountains with like three dogs and a lever action carbine and a leather scabbard on the side of a horse going lord knows where and he does that every single day with a burlap sack full of his stuff that he needs tied around the saddle horn it is a different land yeah and you look

if you look really hard there's some i'm sure, state-of-the-art surveillance balloon, you know, suspended above the border. And it's just so weird that that is there. And probably, like, all the technology on the frickin' planet, to some degree, right there. And then you have this handful of caballeros that are living like that stuff never existed. No electricity. I don't want to like, over the years we've hunted quite a number of, I'll explain a little bit. No, you know, Yanni, you do it.

Explain how the system works down there, Yanni. Do all the trimmings about like that the state, you know, they make an assessment. Jay Scott. Cal, I just have a quick correction. This did a quick little Google search on Caballero. I think it's...

Oh, Vaquero. Mexican gentleman is Caballero. Oh. Vaquero. Yeah, but people always criticize how we say Vaquero. They say it's Vaquero. Right. No, you're supposed to say your V's like a V.

Like venado is, you know, venado. Venado. We say venado. Deer. Venado. Guajalote is what, in Sonora, that's wild turkey. Well, Beto likes El Pollo Grande for turkey. That was his joke.

Yeah. Big chicken. Yep. Now, what do you want me to explain is how some wildlife management works out. Yeah, I want you to start with, I want you to start, yep, yep, yep. Nuts to soup. Best to my knowledge, a wildlife biologist that works for the Mexican federal government goes to...

State. State government. My understanding. Okay, so he works for the Sonoran state. I don't know. A government person. Yeah, they go to each of these ranches and they sort of do a game count

and they look at the habitat. And then from there, they say say this ranch that you guys own, you guys can have six or 10 or 12 deer tags, 20 javelina tags, and who knows what else. They give turkey tags. Turkey tags too. That's right. That's probably about it, right? Probably about it. Yeah.

Maybe you can speak to that, Anthony. You hunted ducks in Mexico, right? Yeah. It was a different situation than a ranch stone or a different state, so it may work differently. And then, yeah, in other areas of Sonora, they have mule deer, but we never see them where we go. That's right. And so they have these tags, and I guess the family could just take the tags and go hunting or they could just give them to friends. But what's happened because of the popularity of Coos deer.

I want to interject. Sure. Because I'm developing a theory about this. I don't think that they give a shit about the tags. I think if they want to hunt deer, they hunt deer. My sense. That could be too. My sense is like, oh, how cute.

You're going to give me deer tags? Okay. Which are valuable. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think that the vaqueros, vaqueros. I don't like saying vaqueros. Is that really how I'm supposed to say it?

Vaquero. Okay. I don't think that those guys are like applying for like, that they're like worried about deer tags. No, definitely not. So I think that the deer tags are. Yeah, maybe it's just for gringos. Yeah.

Just so that we can get them back across the border legally. So anyways, they're sitting on these tags. And how it works for us is that our buddy jay scott jay scott outdoors and the colburn scott colburn and scott outfitting team yep um they go and find they scout ranches they find ranches that have tags available and ranches that also have like there's different levels of the houses but some sort of lodging that you can stay at. And then they basically, by buying the tags, they sort of also lease the ranch. Because you've monopolized the deer hunting on the ranch.

Yeah. Yeah. But they're pretty pricey tags. You know, anywhere. Increasing dramatically. Is that right? Do you remember what the first one was that you ever paid for? But they're pretty pricey tags. Increasing dramatically. Is that right? Do you remember what the first one was that you ever paid for?

Haven't they gone from like $1,000 or $1,200? Yeah, but that might be over 20 years. Oh, okay. So if they've doubled in price in 20 years. Because I think now they're around $3,000 a piece. So yeah, $3,000 gets you a Coos Deer tag. And you usually have to buy, again because like Jay has to lease the ranch. He's going to have to buy all the tags, right? So you want to go to a ranch.

You can't just say, oh, I'm just going to go there by myself and I'll take one tag because he's got, you know, 18 K into it. Yeah. He's got many, he's got many years into developing relationships with some places. That's right. And I don't, I don't know that. I don't know what like the Dave, I don't know what sort of the standard arrangement is but he seems to make an

arrangement where you have some whether it's like some old bombed out hut or a really nice place like someplace to stay yeah and we've stayed in some places that are like a concrete shell yeah that's a good way to describe it with some sort of pile of rags in the corner. Running water, usually. Some mattresses that you'd just rather use your own sleeping pad on the ground. Or like gorgeous places that are like nicer than your own house.

Yeah. With some really awesome like Mexican saltillo tile work and stone work. Or some fake stone work in the hearth it was at this house that we stayed at yeah and this kind of weird con this weird sort of contradiction of like really big places that have no power yeah well you walk around the headlamp burning wood well they have power a generator and solar but yeah they're not like you know they're not hooked up to

the grid yeah exactly no um so yeah so once you buy them jay scott's got a a system set up it's like his diy coos deer hunting system our program and uh you can get a hold of him and he will basically sell you those tags and then also help arrange the whole process of you going from Douglas, Arizona is usually our port of entry or the crossing point where we go into Mexico. And so he's sort of like from that moment when you're going to go into Mexico, he kind of lines out every single step that gets you all the way to, to the ranch and coos deer hunting. And he has, he's like, and he's got locals that he's met there that he works with and helps them guide and do various things. Yeah. Probably a couple of them at least are like dual citizens, so they can travel back and

forth freely. They speak Spanish very well. They know the low down, what goes on in Agua Prieta. So it makes it a very like safe, because a lot of people have worries, you know, about going into old Mexico. I got a lot of comments just from the one Instagram post I did

where people were like, now, how do you feel? And now is this safe? Now, aren't you worried? And things like that. I've gone, yes. Yes, I am worried. I have gone, how many times have I gone?

Seven times? Something like that, probably. Have never had a single ounce of a problem. Yet, I'm always a little teensy bit scared, only in the transportation part. But have never had a problem at all. Anthony, on the other hand. Yeah, I've been twice. But not this area.

Not that where we were. Hundreds of miles away. This time, no issues. Where I was before, an area near, called Sassaby, I had a good coos deer hunting there. It was a beautiful area, very similar area, a little lower elevation. So terrain was a little different. We did run into some folks who were with a cartel on the property we were. I wouldn't say it was a problem.

You know, it didn't really cause any issues, but we were on the property. It was right after the election. Tell the whole damn story. It's a great story. It's a good story. Settle in, ladies and gentlemen. It was, this was in. It's got everything. It was right after the election. Tell the whole damn story. It's a great story. It's a good story. Settle in, ladies and gentlemen. It was, this was in. It's got everything.

It's got politics. Yeah, 2016, right after the presidential election, after President Trump had been elected, but before his inauguration. Did you know we were hunting and couldn't find out who won? Oh, really? Yeah. It's nerve wracking. So the ranch that I was hunting is a big ranch and it borders right up against the United States border. And the outfitter who set it up, you know, had said, you know, you may see some people crossing on the ranch.

They use the ranch to cross the border. And it also is close to a pretty wild area in Arizona. So it's a good place to cross. Said nothing to worry about, but, you know, just be aware. He said, you may see some army folks too, folks in the Mexican army, whatnot. Okay. This is starting to sound like that joke. Like, what should I wear?

It doesn't matter. It's just going to be you and me. We're gone um so uh in the course of a week of hunting we saw it had to be it was well over 100 it was probably close to 200 people who were crossing the border now this ranch were they in the words of the film jeremiah johnson molesting your hunt um no for the most part right you'd see him on the roads and now this this ranch was, I say the roads, it was like the ranch we were on. It's a big wild place off the grid, old, um, you know, a small stone house, cowboys on horseback, same kind of deal.

But you'd see these folks on the ranch roads, um, you know, about like a line of 20 people, you know, carrying their stuff, going across the border every water hole you'd often seen like water jugs and whatnot and so the outfitter who had been hunting that ranch for some time said we've seen people before but this is by far the most people we've ever seen and it was um after as i said after the election i was wondering if you were expecting a policy shift when you told me that story we didn't get to like why it mattered that it was right after all right so right so they're expecting a policy shift so there was a huge surge of people crossing the border I get it while the

gettings good it while the gettings good so we saw lots of people didn't affect our hunt and you know what would? Would you be seeing like sneaking or just? No, just walking. Just traveling. Just traveling. Heads down. They would be traveling. In a line traveling, it looked like it was almost organized, right?

Like somebody was leading and everybody else was in single file. Sometimes you'd see them on. But not like carpet taped to the bottom of their shoes. No, not sneaking at all. And sometimes you'd see a group resting, right? Stopping at a spot, whether they're resting or waiting, you know, I'm not quite sure. And so, you know, with people crossing, that's the flow of people is often controlled by the cartels, just like the flow of people is often controlled by the cartels, just like the flow of drugs. So, you

know, we knew there was cartel activity in the area and the outfitter had said at the beginning of the season, he sends one of his guys to talk to one of the guys from the cartel and says, Hey, we're coming to hunt. You know, we know you're here. We're going to be here. We're all good. Right. You know, and there's no problems. You know, and his philosophy is generally, you know, cartel people are doing their thing. They don't want to mess with us. They don't want to cause any trouble. So there was one day we were driving on the roads, going to a new hunting spot, and we ran into the truck from other people in our hunting party. You know, ran into each other on the road.

We stopped. We get out of the trucks, and we stopped to just chat and see, Hey, what are you seeing? Where are you going? And it was, we're doing that. We look up the road and we see this, this guy running, you know, kind of trotting at us. He's got, um, um, you know, semi-auto military rifle and he's in fatigues. And we think, Oh, here's a guy from the army. And when he got closer, we realized this is no guy from the army, you know, was not standard issue fatigues. So he came up speaking Spanish and, um, Hey, what are you guys doing?

And, uh, say, Hey, how are you? And we had a, a cooler of beer in the back of the truck. Not why we were hunting be clear, but for after the hunt, but it's, it's key for the story. We said, Hey, would you like a cold beer? So we gave him a game of beer and he asked for more for, he said, Oh, can I have some, this is all in Spanish for my boss. And he points up to Hill and we look up at the top of this plateau and you can see there's a huge encampment of men up there, a whole bunch of people. And so we gave him a couple more and then all of a sudden somebody comes and two other guys,

three other guys come down one in the lead and the man we're talking to goes, Oh, he's my boss. So this was the guy in charge. So he comes up and he's all smiles and we give some more beer even still. And he says, Oh, you know,

where are you guys hunting? What trucks are you driving you know he want to know what rigs we were driving where we're going to be he want to know if we're seeing any deer and he actually asked he said oh if you have some extra meat hang a quarter right here for us well yeah sure um did he give you any hot tips he did not give us any hot tips about where they saw you would have pried a couple out of them, man. But we said, you know, hey, we're hunting. We know you guys are working, and we're just working.

And all right, so long. And the one funny thing was, though, we had a guy who was with us, a really good photographer, had a nice camera, and pulls that camera up. They go, no, no, no, right away. They like get real serious. And we just put the cameras down, like no photos. They made very clear, no photos. And, uh, we went on our way. We just kept on.

Yeah. We just kept on. Didn't go running home. No, but we didn't go running home. We kept hunting. I wouldn't say like they gave us trouble or we felt threatened. Yeah. They were, you know, they, but you realize you're talking to people who would kill you

if it was in their best interest, but you're thinking, well, they don't really, you know, they're doing their thing. They don't want trouble with us. And so it's all right. But, um, we did keep the rifles in the house, you know? Um, yeah, we did not go out on the ranch roads at night. You know, we stayed in the, in the house. Yeah. We did not go out on the ranch roads at night. We stayed in the building at night. We did not go out after dark very much.

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the on x club y'all yeah i have a little bit of a hard time. Not a hard time with the story, but I always want to stress like nothing's ever happened. And Jay works. Yeah, nothing happened. No, I'm not saying that. I would count that as something happening. Yeah, that happened. That would be something that happened, but I've never had anything happen, yet I feel slightly uneasy in the coming and going.

Right. It's intimidating, right? Like it's not super clear what you're supposed to do at all points when you cross with a gun, right? I've traveled to multiple countries with guns before. Never felt intimidated like crossing the border there. Yeah, like it's somehow there's like a subjectivity to it. It's not like, oh, you do this, this, and this. It feels like at every interaction, it feels like there's a question mark lingering over everything.

You definitely go multiple ways at each interaction. And there's not like one interaction. There's interactions, you know, three, four of them as you go through. But I feel like that's been ironed out or smoothed out over the years and probably a lot has to do with just the volume that Jay takes through there with his business, that there's less and less of that. Yeah. Because I'm sure if, yeah, if it's quiet and there's like the right corrupt corrupt uh police officer then yeah they the lingering question is is hey you know can

you drop a 20 spot here to make things to get your stamp as opposed to just i'm supposed to give you the stamp because your paperwork is proper you know yeah yanni one time had to do like a side transaction with an official um the the rifle question comes up a lot it's always different but you way in advance way yeah yeah because you have to get a this is something i left out didn't leave it out just hadn't gotten to it yet but oh yeah you're supposed to be still doing your little chore buy that tag from the ranch you then enter into a hunting contract with the ranch. And that hunting contract, once it is signed, then it basically allows you to get a gun permit from the Mexican federal government. Yeah, I think this is one of the reasons why it's kind of an elite group of hard players who goes down there to hunt because it's not, you don't like just wake up one morning and decide you're going to go down there.

For the simple reason that you have to like do, you have to, there's a process. Yeah. But it is like, it's, I don't know. Go through the process with like a truck, a gun, explain all that. Well, and the gun process, the length, because we turned in our weapon information well, well, well in advance. Yeah. Yeah. Summertime.

Yeah. I mean, Jay likes to have his I's dotted and T's crossed and just like kind of everything done and in the bag two, three months in advance. Because if you get a permit back, like one time happened to me and one of the numbers on the serial number it was off by a number and it cost me well it cost me two days of hunting on that trip because I had to basically hang out in Agua Prieta and wait as my new gun permit had to go all the way to her Marseille the capital city of Sonora and then come all the way back and it doesn't go via fax it's got to be original down there and it went on a bus and it came back on a bus and our um this is the only way to do it because our serial number issue this time was a lengthy ordeal and that was on our rental car or VIN number rather.

We had a VIN number issue and that was the same deal. It's like you want that stuff. And it just speaks to how the world is different down there once you cross that border. It's like you can't really understand why they need what they need, but they want it. And it's got to be done the way that they want it. A lot of originals, as far as documents go, you know, we make copies just in case you need it for a backup, but like, they don't really like the copy thing. They want to see originals.

So yeah, most people will just take their own vehicle through. Cause I think I would guess that most hunters that go through Jay's services are from Arizona or within driving distance of Arizona. People who know Coos Deer, too. The DIY guys, yeah. Guys that are fired up about Coos Deer. Because it's the good old days. Yeah.

Right now. The driver that's going through, the vehicle has to be in your name. The registration has to be in your name. The registration has to be in your name. VIN numbers have to all match up. Same thing goes with the trailer that your side-by-side is on if you're using one. And it's a crucial piece of equipment. And it all has to just match up. For us, it's a little more difficult because we're flying into Tucson because it's a long drive from Montana. And we rent vehicles that are allowed to go across the border. You get to get Mexican insurance and you get to make contracts from Enterprise and

Alamo, the two companies that let you take vehicles across. But basically their contract says that you actually get another form that says permission to enter Mexico with this vehicle. But the most important part is that the contract itself, with your name and Enterprise on there, has the vehicle's VIN number. Well, it just so happens that Enterprise doesn't put their VIN numbers on the contract. Especially the system. I know, because now they don't even know what the hell car you're going to take. No.

You do all your paperwork, you just walk out and drive one off. There's no... It's just not important. Right. They have whatever system of checks and balances they have doesn't include the VIN number. I'm sure it's like in the system, but they don't need it on the contract. Well, the Mexican government that issues you a vehicle permit wants that VIN number on

there. And they don't care how Enterprise operates. Yeah. So you just sort of had to go into Enterprise and say, hey, this is very important. Whatever you got to do, make sure the VIN number's on there. And unfortunately, we had doubled VIN numbers as opposed to Ryan and I were the two drivers,

and instead of having separate VIN numbers. Those new brand spickety new Ford Rangers. 2020. Which are funny to see because I think of like Ford Rangers, I think of dudes in high school. Like when I was a kid in high school. Yeah, or an old rancher. To me, that's like the classic old rancher truck.

Yeah, it's an irrigation truck. Yeah. But yeah, and then the Mazda. What was the Mazda version of it? Yeah. Like the B2 or something like that? There was also the Chevy Love. You remember that one?

Oh, yeah. That's an irrigation pro. Those were nice. We can talk about those trucks later. Yeah, we can. I like those trucks. So, anyways, that's kind of what it takes to get a... So, once you hit the border...

Do we want to start there? Hell yeah, man. With the 4457? Yeah, this is public service stuff. I don't even care if it's not interesting to people. There's a form called the 4457. Y'all don't even know the form number. Beautiful man with a form.

He treats a form with respect. Not disdain. He treats it with respect. But the only reason, because if you don't, then the people that you show the form to are going to laugh and turn you away. Then you don't get to go coup signing. But a 4457 just set, it's basically telling the U.S. government that you are leaving the country with goods that cost money, that are like in excess of some value, probably $500 or more. That way, when you come back with them, there's no funny business about that you left it or you sold it or whatever.

It's just trackable. Or that you're bringing stuff down to sell. Exactly. No, I'm sorry. Or that you bought it somewhere else. Sure. Because we used to put all of our optics and stuff on there too, but now we just do rifles. Yeah.

It could go both ways. I used to do my scope serial number, my binos. They never care about that stuff. No. Because the gun thing you want to show that like you didn't pick up a gun down in Mexico. Right. So they basically want to see the gun, check the serial numbers, and you're on your way. That's not high stress.

No, pretty easy. You go into Mexico and the first stop is at the aduana, which I think is just how you say port of entry. Cal, tell me what aduana means. I don't know the first letter of that. Edwana? A-D-U-A-N-A.

Okay. And it's kind of all clustered together. You have the police, and then you also have the tourism office, I guess is what you'd call that, right? Maybe immigration office of sorts. And then you also have another office that deals with vehicles. And it's kind of all together in one, one and a half buildings. Customs. Almost a model of inefficiency.

Oh, buddy. You go to a dude and he does a thing. Then you go to another dude and he does a photocopy of a thing. You go to another dude and he does a thing. Then you go back to the first dude and be like, look!

It's a room with four doors, three walls of glass with people behind the three walls of glass. The other wall is just a wall with some posters on it that says you can't smuggle rare reptiles out of here. And yeah, you go to one, you get it, and they're like, yeah, go see them over there. And then you go over there, you get a stamp, and then they say go over there, and the guy makes a photocopy, and then you go back to the first window, and you go, hey, here you go.

Here's everything you need, and then here's some money. And then they say, okay, thank you. You're out the door. It'd be like if you went to Subway, and every one of the little bins of condiments had an attendant. Yeah, and they were in different areas of the little bins of condiments had an attendant. Yeah, and they were in different areas of the building. Bell peppers?

Yes, please. Okay, you will now go across the restaurant. For your mayo. And talk to the gentleman with the mayo. So that's pretty much just to get your tourist visa. Then you go at the same window that you paid for the tourist visa. You got to get your tourist visa. Then you go at the same window that you paid for the tourist visa. You got to get your vehicle permit. That's where we had to run in with the VIN numbers.

That's always the trouble spot. Always a trouble spot. Yeah. And so once we knew we had to just redo the contract, wasn't a big deal. Very nice gal, Pamela. She gave Pamela props because she knew what to do. Unfortunately, there's some haste. In classic situation too, she's like the senior person there simultaneously training. Which I feel like at Enterprise, they're constantly in training mode. Someone tried to pick up Yanni in the customs in Mexico. Not this time.

Last time, someone called him. Two times ago, someone called him. Is this what you're talking about? El Guapo. When you say pick up? Which I thought was an insult. Just sounds insult. Guapo?

That doesn't sound good, but in fact, it means handsome one. Yeah. Handsome. That wasn't El Guapo, but she looked at his passport. She liked what she saw. Again, I think that was a little instigated, but it was by Jon Snow. But either way,

the vehicle permits, they need to go out, look at the number on the vehicle, come back inside with you, then you do some paperwork, you get some stamps, you make some signatures, you leave, go make some

photocopies. And there's a lot of rigmarole about the weight of the vehicle. Yes. So we even met a guy that likes to make around his trailer, he makes a fake weight plate and tries to make it all official looking and rivet it onto his trailer

in a really easily to locate place so that he can be like, look. Here's your GVW. Yeah, he just made a make-believe one to not have to argue about it so much. Yeah, it costs you a little bit more. It sounds like, from what Jay can understand, they're trying to restrict commercial vehicles that are not permitted coming down from the U.S. And as soon as your truck has four doors instead of two, it jumps some class and whatever. It ends up costing you another $10 U.S.

It's not a big deal. So far, we've done a good job of not making Coos deer hunting too popular, if that's what you're worried about. That's a good point. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, no, this, we give ourselves a day, and we start at the butt crack.

McDonald's is barely open, because you want to get your last- That's when Johnny gets his annual McDonald's fix. Yeah, you want to get your last McDonald's at about 6.30 a.m., and then you head to the border by 7, and, you know, I forget what time it was. 2.30, I think. It was 2.30 when we left.

Is that right? Oh, the Eagles alcohol-free year has ended. And he's entered into a sugar-free quarter of a year. That's right. I think I'm feeling better after two weeks of no sugar than I did after a whole year of no drinking. You found out the real thing. And I'm funnier according to my old lady. Yeah, Yanni was doing a year end review with his wife to see how everything's going.

And she commented he's just not as funny as he once was which cuts deep man that cuts well she did it with a wink yeah because you were yeah because you never had you never like lightened the load with a beer or anything you know no no uh but there's one world i don't think it was 2 30 quite yet because we probably had to make one it was probably 2 30 when we actually started driving so after oh we're not done yet at the first stop, at the Edwana. So you get your tourist visa. You get your vehicle permit. Then you have to check your guns with the cops. The cops.

So you bring them out over to the cops. Say, you need to check our guns. You have your... Your cartouches. You have your cartouches with you, too. But you have your... I just, I, I just,

I want to interject here. Like I feel, you found there's a fact problem. Steven, who, who, you are the problem, um,

has this amazing knowledge of how language works through many years of study and practice. Yet that is true. through many years of study and practice, yet it is subverted by this old man, Michigander mentality of like, man, it's just too late to learn Spanish. I missed my chance. So I'm just going to willfully remain outside of even attempting to try. Job security, Cal. Job security. I formed a sentence that I'm still proud of.

Yeah. No, that was a good one. What did you say? Jokes are the best of the long. I said, something to the effect of que es no familia vivir en este casa.

And that's totally wrong. But they looked at me for a minute and a light bulb went off. And they knew what I was trying to say. It'd be like if someone came to you in English and said something to the effect of, um, why is no family

to live in that house? Meaning the one I'm in. Meaning the one I'm in. And when Steve saw the light bulb of recognition go off, it basically spiked the football in the end zone ran down the tunnel and went home my work here is done oh gracias gracias yeah yeah it's really a shame and I gave up really early. I gave up early.

I wasn't even... I gave up 15 years ago. It's all on to the next generation now. My children are in Spanish. They've always been in Spanish. It's like I can't do it. A man, as my friend Matt Cook will remind you, a man's got his limits.

I'm sorry, Giannis. No, quite all right. So, yeah, the cops. Was that a jab because I just said cartouches? It just needed to be said, Stephen. Esteban, please. They look at your, you have your gun permit that came from the federal government and

it has your rifle. In my case, I had a rifle and a shotgun on there with the serial numbers, the make, model, and then all the gun permits say a hundred cartouches, which means you have 100 cartridges. No one cares about that. That's one number no one cares about.

Again, they don't care about it, but I feel like early on, the first couple of times I went, they would always want to see the cartridges. They would look to see that the cartridges were of the same caliber that your rifle was. But the last few years, they haven't. I had them checked when I crossed a couple of years ago. Oh, you did? Mm-hmm. of the same caliber that your rifle was. But the last few years, they haven't. I had them checked when I crossed a couple years ago. Oh, you didn't?

Mm-hmm. So again, it could just depend on the port of entry or whatever. But they check that. They take your passport for a minute. I'm guessing they make a copy. They give you a stamp. Or maybe they check your name, make sure you're not a wanted man in Mexico. They come back, give you your passport back,

give you a stamp. Then, you're finally done at the aduana and you head over to the military, which is right across from the gas station that used to have a great taqueria inside. That place went to shit, man. It went from being like a crazy Mexican gas station with

great food and kind of like a little bit puzzling what was going on to being like it's like a 7- gas station with like great food and kind of like, it was like a little bit puzzling what was going on to being like, it's like a 7-Eleven. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing that's not

in a plastic bag to consume. No, it used to be like, kind of like, what is this place? Oh shit, look at those tacos. But now it's like,

now they have taco donuts. Yeah. Yeah. They got like the rollers with the hot dogs. Just, I don't know what happened, man.

Yeah. New ownership, I guess. Bathrooms are cleaner now, maybe. Yeah, taco. Anyways, it was a taco donut. You park at the gas station. I was like, I got to get one.

I don't understand, but I need one. This is probably, I think, I don't know, as a newcomer, Kevin, you can maybe, well, you've done it twice, and you've done it twice now. Cal, too, you're on your second trip. But I always felt like the parking at the gas station and walking over to the military, that's when

I started to have the feeling of like, okay, this is getting a little bit different than what I'm used to. In the beginning part, everything's pretty official. There's cops and it's tight. When you park in a gas station parking lot... It's a very truck stoppy gas station. A lot of activity.

There's no parking area at the military. It's just right across the street. You park and grab your gun case and walk across and enter a military compound. Yeah, and you have a gun with bullets, cartridges, and now you're just going to walk across

the street in old Mexico and into a military compound and the thing is in in the u.s if you go into a military base you there are you know i mean there are many people in there who are will deploy and you know will do service right but the base is not like a thing that's fighting doesn't happen there no but when you enter a military base here it's like it's a military like it's like conducting missions it's like a base it's a base like a military that's conducting missions in its own country which we don't do in the u.S. You don't do that under very special circumstances.

But these are guys who are sort of like actively engaged in a, I don't know, it's dramatic to call it a civil war, but I mean, like actively engaged in sort of like combat operations against armed militia equivalents. Yeah, and you'll be kind of reminded of that a lot of times, because a lot of both the soldiers and police that you'll see, especially when they're out in trucks, they're wearing masks. Yeah. You know,

covering their faces. Just a very different kind of military base. It's like an outpost. It's interesting. I never thought about that. That's just to protect their identity. So when they're not at work. That's right.

Interesting. So, yeah, you walk in there. You tell the fella at the gate that you're there to check your rifles. Or we usually have with us a fella by the name of Beto, spelled with a B. Incredible arm wrestler. Incredible. I couldn't even beat him. Nope. Beto could have been a linebacker. B. Incredible arm wrestler. Incredible. I couldn't even beat him.

Beto could have been a linebacker in his day. And so he's with us as well as, well, we had another fixer with us to cross the border too named Salsa. And they're just there in case things go a little sideways, like you have a doubled up VIN number and they're there so that in case someone on the Mexican side doesn't want to try to speak English with you or try to work it out in sort of a Spanglish broken, you know, English Spanish way that they can step in and say, okay, what needs to happen to keep this thing moving on?

So Beto's with us. He says, hey, we're here to check our guns they say okay go over there and stand in the it's like a little outbuilding basically cement or brick walls tin roof and they used to be a mannequin in there that was dressed in a in a military outfit yeah then his pants broke yeah well you were poking him and his outfit and his pants fell down. His pants fell down and everyone was uncomfortable, but I didn't want to put his pants back on him.

So he's standing there with his pants around his angles and had like a broken finger. You know, I bet you they had a GoPro running. And that's just one of those behind the scenes Mexican TV like they like to do. It just gets you to squirm. You're sitting there looking at the mannequin with no pants on.

And his hand was broken away. He's giving everybody the finger. I remember taking a picture of that, but I never used it. But then they replaced him with two rocket launchers. Yes. Now it's decorated with rocket launchers. It's pretty cool. It is so much more tidy now.

Again, I think it might be because of the volume and why it's the good old days now, but it's just like now, and it used to take sometimes an hour plus there, and now you go in there, the dude comes over again. An officer comes out. Yeah, you show him the paperwork. He checks the serial numbers.

He takes your passport. He leaves with them for five or ten minutes. Comes back with a stamp on your gun permit that's basically saying you have entered the country and you have your rifle. You're good to go. And now the cops and

the federal military know that you and this gun are here. That's right. And you walk back across the street and get in the vehicle and follow Beto to your ranch. Then you go hunt. And then a magical thing happens.

You drive down like a highway, then a dusty road, and another dusty road, then like nearly impassable roads. And then all of a sudden you're on a place that you you can't scratch the surface of nothing's around but just like quiet wild yeah we should ranch is the size of national parks. Yeah, the quiet. We should talk about that. It's like all that apprehension and all of a sudden you're in an environment, a place that you just are not going to replicate. No. You can totally relax.

Oh, look at that tree has 35 bluebirds in it. That's nice. It just goes on and on and on. I think so, yeah. It goes on and. It just goes on and on and on. I think so, yeah. It goes on and on and on and on and on and on. Do you think 100 years ago there were more people in that country than there are today? I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe.

I don't know why, but I wouldn't be surprised at some point for whatever economic factors that used to support more people than does now. Yeah, just general urbanizations happened in the last 100 years. For sure. It's a hard place to scratch out a living. Yeah, and the mechanization of running those copper mines that are there probably had more folks working in them prior to right now, I would think. It legitimately might be more pristine today

than it was 100 years ago when you get in those ranches. Yeah, like certain counties in the American Great plains like lose population but i wouldn't be surprised you see a lot more um stuff that was once something and isn't anymore than you do things that are being made now yeah absolutely there's just like things like you guys i guess that used to be like a thing yeah that's a good description yeah where. Where people hung out. But just, it's really stunning to be down there. It's definitely worth the hassle. I love it.

Love it. It's great. And there are, and you get the sense, there's a thing we'll talk about like in West, I guess it's true everywhere now. It's true in a any kind of um i shouldn't say any kind most kinds of like i would say most kinds of big game hunting in in in this country there are so many it's the i would say it's the norm to have it be that someone lays eyes on most animals. Like someone sees most animals. Like in heavily hunted deer areas,

someone sees every deer, right? Often. It's just like kind of like expected that someone else has seen it. But you just get the sense too, there's like, you get the sense that there's like just deer that go unseen. Oh, there were parts of that ranch,

especially up behind the ranch house, there are deer dying of old age in there, no doubt. For sure. You can't see them. You can't see anything. There's whole mountainsides you can't see. Yeah, you just can't get advantage in some of that stuff. But there's deer sign everywhere.

Yeah. But no one ever goes on that hill. There's no reason for anyone to ever go there. We had a rancher once tell us on another ranch we hunted, we had a rancher once talk about a part of the ranch and said that he hadn't been there in three years. Wow. Yeah.

That's, that's amazing. Yeah. I think they, most of them probably have one Baccaro that rides almost every day and it hits, you know, probably takes them two weeks to do the loop, right? Through the whole place. And then annually they have a party. It's a party.

It's a get together. It's a work thing. They have a name for it, but basically they hire a bunch of hands and they, it's like moving cattle day, roundup and moving cattle. Trying to get cattle out of the mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Around here, it's called the cattle day, roundup and moving cattle. Trying to get cattle out of the mountains. Yeah. Yeah.

Around here, it's called the shipping party. There you go. It's not called a roundup. Well, the roundup happens, but that's not a party. Once you ship the calves, then you get a party. Oh, I got you. Yeah.

That's when the work, work's done. Yeah. So there's not a lot of people not a lot of you don't you just don't see a lot of boot tracks if any any i don't i don't know that we did see any tracks no the way you hunt the stuff is you hunt it um i would describe it like it's very good sort of gross to close. Not gross like, oh, that's gross. But gross meaning like whole entirety where you kind of go down these spots and the first things you want to do is just start out being in anywhere where you can just see tons of shit, right? Just get up and you want to see a lot. Looking at hillsides.

It's not so much to your – I think every time we go you get to a point where you're looking in a targeted fashion but early on you're just trying to like you're just looking where you can see and what you can see is hillsides

like when you're on a hillside looking at a hillside like the things laid out for you like flat ground is hard to observe what's going on it's not that they're not there I'm sure they're there, but you go to the places that are like most easily to survey and you get up high and look and just try to find areas of activity. And then over the days, if you have, you would be

probably, I would not do it. Um, I would not do it with fewer than four. Days? Yeah. Oh, no. I would even say seven. No, I'm saying I would not, I would be like, man, I'm not, you know, it'd be fun, but four

would be light. Yeah. Five, we did five just now and it was light. It takes, Giannis and I did a lot of talking over just glassing on the way, you know, back to Tucson from the ranch. And, you know, I still find it very hard to properly wedge into my brain the actual scale of the animal. Like it is so small. small and then that the size of that animal in relation to the you know the flora down there all you know is that a big ocotillo is that a small ocotillo you know it's just not that familiar yet

and then i i am scanning the hillside the way I would a mule deer, scanning for a mule deer at that speed. And it's too fast for the scale of a coos deer for my, for my eyes. And I, and I would know it, but I'm so, I spent so many hours looking for mule deer that that's still, I can't differentiate between the two yet. then i'd have to like stop and janice uh you're talking about your technique because you kind of agreed with that like you're just moving too fast well tell people your observation about you know whatever the hell skill is oh yeah my uh this is an old, but a buddy of mine who likes to gamble always says, luck is where skill meets opportunity.

And I found for me, locating a coos deer is where persistence in glassing meets movement. Like if that deer is not moving. Once you said it, I was like, to be honest, I would say that 75% of the ones I spot or maybe more are because I pause and catch something move. A tail flicks, it steps. It's because like I catch something move, I catch a movement. Yeah. I mean, it can be, I mean, those are like the big movements that you catch, you know, like an actual body walking or the tail flick is a pretty big one. But a lot of times you pick up like them chewing their cud and that movement right there is what tips them off.

Yeah, you have to, you can't just scan. You don't do it moving. You have to do move, stop pause observe it bothers your eyes to do it but i roll my i go and like check everything i stop and don't just look like you could get in the trap of like looking at the sight picture through your binoculars but rather than looking sort of like studying the sight picture you then are moving your eyeballs around so as you're looking through a pair of binoculars at a hillside, whatever, a thousand yards away, which would be kind of close, actually.

But you're looking, and you have this round, despite what the movies will tell you. When a person in a movie looks through binoculars, they're seeing two circles that are shadowy around the edges. You're actually looking at a clean circle. And within that circle, you have to move your eyes around and check everything. You check under every tree and move it it's taxing on your eyes yeah but typically it's like that all of a sudden something moves oftentimes within my sight picture through my

binoculars i will in my peripheral vision see a movement and then i don't move my binoculars i just like move my eyes over it sounds funny but I just like move my eyes over. It sounds funny, but like you like move your eyes over to that part of that site picture to see what it was that moved. And you'd be like, oh, it was a bird. Yeah.

It's like that level of movement, like a bird flicking in a bush. I think this is what you're talking about. I think the most important piece of gear you can bring on this thing is a tripod for your binoculars. Yes. Because you have to do the movement.

Because you can't do what we're talking about. And I totally agree with you guys. Like that's how a tripod for your binoculars. Yes. Because you have to do the movement. Because you can't do what we're talking about. And I totally agree with you guys. Like, that's how you found them. They're moving. But if you're hand-holding binoculars and you're scanning a hillside, you'll never catch any of the stuff

we're talking about. No, because when you're scanning, you don't catch birds. Nope. I'd pick up roadrunners, all kinds of little birds. You pick up rodents. It's like all movement.

Not only do you just see one, but a lot of times it's just that. It's like something. Lakota picked up a pair of does, two does. And these are like gray, you know, gray colored coos deer, if you can imagine. Their backdrop is gray rock as if they changed color to meet, to match the rock perfectly. Um, and they were 400 yards away maybe. And I could not see those does.

Yeah. And I just could not see. Yeah. Oh God. They're incredibly difficult animals to spot. They, they really are. And what you said, Cal, about the scale, that was the one thing I struggled with. That and moving my binoculars too much, too much scanning.

But there'd be spots. You know, you look at spots and you think, oh, I can imagine seeing a deer there, right? And every once in a while, they're okay. There is one coming across this yellow open slope. But what I was looking at was much smaller than what I was imagining. You know, you look at the plants next to it and you realize your scale was all off. What I was looking for was something much bigger than what is actually there.

I often question my range finder. Like two nights ago, I crept up to where we knew one was bedded and I was like, man, it's gotta be like 600 yards away. But I kept getting that it was three. I'm like, this thing's gotta be messed up. I'm like, man, it's got to be like 600 yards away. But I kept getting that it was three. I'm like, this thing's got to be messed up. I'm like, tapping it. And like mentally you're like, okay, it can be a little off,

but not half off, not half the distance. Well, it's amazing how 300 yards, sometimes you pick one up, glass in, and you're looking at them, and it's pretty close, you know, and you're like, oh, sweet. And then you just pull your binocs down, and you look over the top of them just to see where it is with the naked know, and you're like, oh, sweet. And then you just pull your binocs down and you look over the top of them just to see where it is with the naked eye. And you can't.

You think, well, there's no way that at 300 yards I can't see this animal. Put your binocs up. There he is, playing his day, broadside, binocs down, just gone. A common conversation is someone will be like, oh, there's one. Someone's like, where? I don't know. I don't want to take my eyes off it. And then I'll like, then I'll want to explain where it is.

And so I'll like really like market with a bunch of shit. I'll like, okay, there's a bush, a tree, a stump. Then I'll like go up real quick to the skyline and pick off some feature on the skyline and then zip back down to find my deer. And then be like, it's under a whatever, you know? Yeah. And your heart's like frozen. Cause you're like, ah, they hope it's there when it comes back. He's going to vanish.

Kevin observed finding one not moving, and it was that you saw its. I saw its nose, the shine off its nose. It has nothing to do with my skills. What's that shiny black thing? Yeah, there's no shiny black things in the bush. That deer was so unlucky. Yeah. And, uh, Coos Deer Nose for reference would be about the, let's say the base of a pop can in, in size, like the shine off the

base of a pop can at, how far were you? It was, uh, 260. 260. Which close, close for one of these, but yeah, I saw jet black, a jet black spot in a bush. That's what tipped them off. If it's not movement, it's also sunlight at certain angles on their hide. Yeah, give them a shine.

Will betray them. Some of the best conditions to locate them are when the sun blasts in a hillside in the morning. It can make them pop. And then there's conflicting theories about this, but they're not – they don't have a wide comfort. I don't think they have like a huge range of degree... What am I trying to say? Their window of comfort for temperature is narrow.

They seem to play the sun a lot. They play shade, not shade. On cold nights, when the sun hits the hillside, they just really seem to like to bask in it. To where the sun hit a hillside, you're looking and looking and looking, there's nothing there.

All of a sudden the sun gets kind of intense on the hillside and all of a sudden one's just there and you're like, oh, he must've just stood up because there's no way he walked in there. And they'll stand, turn sideways to the sun with just kind of like this, like relaxed look on their face, not doing anything and just like absorb the sun for some period of time. Um, but then they don't like that and then they slip around the other side of the hill to get in the shade yeah i don't know i wish i knew what that comfort range

was for a koozie but yeah if you're gonna set your thermometer for that it's like an old grandma yeah yeah they like it between 68 and 72 Or whatever the joke is Something like that for sure They don't have any fat on them Thin hide, no fat Tons of surface area Relative to mass Hey folks, exciting news for those who live Or hunt in Canada

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. We gotta talk about uh your last your last night of hunting and just the how comfortable the other question for me would be to truly determine how comfortable or confident these deer are in their hiding ability. Because it seems to me like once they find a spot to bed down, they're like, nothing's going to find me. So they can walk as close as they can. And Kevin, you had the, on, on the same day as that you found your buck by

looking at the spot on his nose, right? You had, um, Yeah. A vaquero come up. Yeah, a vaquero come up and, and, uh, I'd seen a really nice buck and I'd seen three does and I kind of made a push halfway up that ridge to, to see if I could get closer and get a good look at him.

And I get there and I hear someone talking and it's, it's a guy on a horse, like kind of in the middle of nowhere hanging out. On the hill where you get a cell signal. Yeah. Where like the one, the phone booth, as I refer to it up there, is like the one spot where you got two bars on your cell phone. And he was sitting there talking away. He got two dogs running around with him.

And after about 15 minutes, he kind of rides off and was a little perturbed that I had made this push in these deer. And I guess it was Giannis and Anthony, I think, kind of slid lower on the hill. And that guy wasn't gone 15 minutes and those does stood up. They'd never moved. They were about 110 yards, 140 yards from him, somewhere in there.

And he sat there on his horse with two dogs running around and he rode out right next to him and they sat tight in that bush. They never moved. Yeah. And the buck I ended up shooting, he saw me. Right? That's one of the only deer that I found in this bush.

He's like, I see you, but you don't see me. He was pretty confident that, you know, he saw me, but I didn't know where he was. Well, it's really hard to see him when they're bedded like that. It was a good spot. And when they are under that brush like that, an oak bush in the shadows, it's very difficult to see them. We spotted over the course of the week, very

few bedded deer. The ones that we did kind of gave themselves up. They were skylined or whatever, but very few like, you know, mule deer hunting and things like that. You pick them out underneath the bush or a shrub, these things vaporize, you know, right in front of you.

Sometimes you're looking at them, they step behind a bush, and then they never come out. No one ever sees them again. I've been in places where they'll bed up on open hillsides, but they'll get under a big oak or something to bed, but these guys just go in. They're like cottontail rabbits. They disappear. Yeah, they go into it.

We've been toying with this idea. There's a thing called rattling a deer in for people who aren't super familiar with all this stuff it's basically um at a certain point in their cycle their annual cycle and they're getting i think particularly when they're getting ready to go into breeding season they're doing a lot of sparring you know different bucks so these kind of like casual fights you know they'll get into just sort of measure up who's the man who's not um and they fight a lot and a way to lure deer in is to make the sound of things of deer fighting uh it's particularly like associated

with whitetail hunting you clack you like literally take two antlers and bang them together and make the noise of deer fighting and deer will yeah probably out of like a lot of curiosity maybe it means that there's a doe over there and they're fighting over. Anyways, they'll come in. And we keep toying around with various situations of trying to rattle to see how these little desert whitetails will respond to rattling. Cal and I were watching a deer in its bed at

900 yards away, and we're like, let's watch him and then rattle and see if he likes it. And Cal starts clacking away, and the second Cal starts clacking, I'm watching his buck and all he does is one, not both, but one of his ears moves

back and then goes back to where it was. And like he just doesn't care. I'm going to take note. I'm going to write it down. But I'm not getting up. I'm not getting up. And that deer, we had found a deer that was that distance away and started to stalk it. And it got up and moved at one point.

And I got into where I was 300 yards away from where the deer was bedded. Could not pick it out. And it was our last ever hunt. It's getting darker, darker, darker. It gets to be around 5 o'clock. It's dark at six. I find another doe with a smaller buck. And Cal is through in a spotting scope watching the buck I'm supposed to be getting.

And that buck's not a hundred yards away, 150 yards away. And I shoot the other buck. And Cal said, all that buck did was move his ear. Yeah, the buck in the bed that I've been burning my eyeball out on hoping he would stand up to give Steve a shot. When his compatriot there on the hillside. Or his rival. Or his rival got ultimately killed by Steve. Um.

You make it sound like it was drawn out. In, in a very close to his bedded position. Yeah. All that buck did was move an ear, take note, and then move the ear back in position. And that was it. And I never, never got an inkling of like oh he's gonna stand up it was just like he took no he's like 900 yards to my left some jackasses making a loud noise and then 100 yards down there my buddy just got shot and killed yeah noted. Noted. I'm going to stay in my bed. That's why you don't stand up.

Like I was saying, I just stay in my bed. It's amazing. Amazing. But yeah, I mean, between the, it's just,

it's such a nice feeling down there. You just feel, you get, get a good primitive feeling, feeling, you get a good feeling of like being in the wild. Um, lots of bird activity. Um, seeing the javelinas kind of randomly do

their thing is very entertaining. Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's a bizarre landscape because some of the hiking is so pleasurable. And then you hit the wrong slope and it's just like walking on, you know, softballs. It's like walking on baseballs. Yeah. Yeah. I fell, when we were packing your buck out, I fell five times on that slope. Dog ownership.

I was wondering when we were getting the dogs. I want to touch on this a little bit. Dog ownership, there's a different dog. The human-dog relationship is, I don't want to, it's not, I don't want to, I definitely use the word antiquated. There's also just a shifting perspective on dogs. There are on these large cattle ranches, there are like packs of dogs. Yes. Dogs that you, I am assuming do have not been named.

Agreed. There are large groupings of dogs that kind of just like fend for themselves. They almost have a relationship to the property almost like a... It's a mutualistic. Like a hog, yeah. Like a hog might have, like he's like, I don't really give a shit about people, but I'm here. There's food. I hang around here and there's food around here.

Yeah, it's a mutualistic relationship, right? Like the dogs are going to bark when something strange shows up. They are going to... Probably give coyotes hell. Yeah. These ones definitely had a herding instinct. Yeah, there were some there watching those sheep,

for sure, in that sheep pen. Oh, and I'm sure they love nothing more than chasing cattle around. Yeah. And then I think the dogs get uh you know some sort of feed um not not in the way we do it not in the very very soft way we do it i've seen they feed them almost like how, yeah, like how you slop hogs. This is just an earlier version of domestication. Yeah. And so there's a benefit there. And then there's also, I think, a benefit too. There is a very serious coyote population out there.

Oh, like, yeah. And so these dogs, instead of being on hyper alert all night, if they were outside fending for themselves, they're in a spot that's got enough mark of man to where the coyotes and the cats and stuff are kind of giving them a whiter birth. Yeah. Is my guess is how that kind of trade-off works. We struck off from this ranch house one morning on foot. And right away,

there was like this little dog with us. And we holler at it and be all mean to it. Throw rocks. Yeah, not trying to hit it. Trying to spook it. But the dog knows the rock throwing routine enough for when I went to pick up a rock

and it took off. Yes. He's spent his whole life getting pummeled rocks. Yeah. And then we're like, okay, we took care of that problem. And we'd walk another half mile and then hear this dog be again and we do the whole thing over again

then we did it three times three times like legit ran the dog off and eventually he just now we're two miles away but he's still with us and then we're like all right you can just hang out when he slid in at the two mile mark it had been every i mean every bit more than an hour since we'd seen that dog yeah he'd blood trail you and we had moved a long way or sent yeah not blood sent trail you and we eventually let him hang out and he hangs out as all day nicest dog in the world we're petting him hanging out i'm trying to like think about looking up how to bring a dog home cows like just bring it home and act like you had it coming in i'm explaining that i'm just not in the position anymore to like lie to authorities um so then we're on a ridge that night and you see that son of a bitch catch like his nose goes up in

the air and catches wind of a deer and holy shit man that dude knew what he was doing it wasn't like he saw it. He caught wind and ran up and down the ridge a couple times to narrow down the location. Plunges off the ridge, hauling ass. Pretty soon he's barking. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Eventually I see a doe squirting out across the valley floor

and up the other side, and that dog's still on him. And we thought, we thought like a pro deer runner man is this yellow dog or the black the black one and then he came back just like we did it he's like i told you i told you i was great no one wanted to believe me good hunt good hunt Good hunt. Good hunt. You guys didn't think I had it in me. And Steve and I felt like we felt shame. We felt like we'd been duped a little bit. We'd been had by the dog. You guys were suckers, man, because then the rest of the week you're feeding them.

We packed out the- Never fed the- I don't know. Did we feed the dog? Yes. We packed- Cal and I packed out the lower leg. Oh, Cal's feeding the deer. The four legs on his buck.

Feeding the deer legs, yeah. Feeding them deer legs. But never in the field. Never got fed in the field. Yeah. I was laughing because those two dogs, his yellow sister, they followed our truck the morning before, like all the way to the north. Miles. Miles. They followed our truck the morning before like all the way to the north miles they followed the truck and janice is trying to out drive them which you can't do even baja yanni can't outrun them

yeah and i set up my spotting scope on the side of the road and sit down and i have just like two puppies on top of me and part of me is like this isn't productive of me. And part of me is like, this isn't productive. And then the other part of me is like, but it's pretty awesome. The way that dog acts a little bit was, I remember one time I came home and I had Tracy from work. She was over. We were trying to film something. My kid climbs out of the car. He's with his nanny and all the kids.

And they climbed out of the car and he's got a McDonald's cup and the first thing out of his mouth is you're going to be disappointed in us that's what that dog every time that dog would show up he's like I know you're going to beat me I just know you're going to beat me but I can't help it

just let's get it over with I tried to persuade Steve into taking the dog because I said, think about it. You can tell your kids that they have to learn Spanish because the dog's from Mexico. And it's the only thing he understands. Oh, they would learn in a hurry then. Anthony, that was your first successful coup de sance. Give me some impressions um i mean they're they're beautiful deer man you you get up you know they're white tails but

they're a little different and by name only yeah by name only right but when you get up there and you really get close to one and you know hold it in your hands and look at that fur that fur is so different there you know everybody calls them the gray ghost right but then you run your hand over that fur and see all the white in there and see the size um it's just real cool to hunt a whitetail that is so different but still a whitetail yeah oh uh what made him more familiar kevin saw one full-, I'd never seen this. He saw one work a scrape. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, in a scrape, we think it, I think it literally might be the same tree we saw one work a scrape last year. But, you know, he came in, worked a scrape, peed in it, kicked the crap out of the bush next to it, scraped it some more, beat up another bush, and then just like cruised on out of our life had like the licking branch and had the licking branch he did everything in about a minute that you ever see a deer do in the rut and then over the back of the ridge never to be seen again yeah um yeah so that was the first one yeah um yeah it was it was fun and you know what's what i think is really fun about the hunt, we've talked about the terrain and how beautiful and different it your chances so it's like you kind of you always feel like you're in the game or that any minute could happen cal and i were hunting and we hadn't spotted a deer in a couple hours and got to that point of the day we're sitting in the sun where it's like a nap sounds pretty good so i laid out and put my hat down had a nap for 15 minutes talking about what we're gonna do and then it all happened real quick you know we see a doe running a smaller buck chasing his buck came in you kind of always had that feeling

that it could happen at any moment that's a good that's a good point i never thought of and trying to explain why i've come to like it so much is it's a really nice blend in this area it's a great mix of effort and reward yeah where we hunted in texas not long ago on a on a big private unhunted ranch that had a lot of nil guy and the mix was unusual zero often is in texas yeah you remember like uh the unabomber did you read the unabomber's Manifesto? I have, actually. His problem was, what he didn't like is he had all human activity broken down in these classifications of effort.

And he said, like, staying alive used to be like, it took level 5 effort to stay alive. Level 5 effort was try as hard as you can and you had a chance. Right? And that's what he thought human, that's what we thrive under. We thrive under is try as hard as you can for a chance, right? And that's when he thought human, that's what we thrive under. We thrive under is try it as hard as you can for a chance.

But technology had gotten it to where survival is level one, where you don't try at all, and you're guaranteed to survive. So his gripe with technology, then that gave us all of our neurotic behaviors and our unhappiness. So what he wanted to do was use technology to wage war on technology and then discard the implements of war as you could until it was a battle of sticks and stones and that he would unibomb us back to level five survival. Try as hard as you can and you might survive um

down where you're hunting texas it was like try kind of not at all you'll be successful and then there's whatever there's like hunting doll sheep in the fog right which is level six try as hard as you it's still not gonna work um but it's a really nice like try hard and you're gonna be rewarded just enough to really hold your interest it's like it's like a it's like a sort of like this uh vending machine almost you know it's like there's sort of like this like a known I'm going to put five bucks worth of effort in, and I'm going to get a $5 product. Right? But it's not a dollar worth of effort. It's five bucks worth of effort.

Every day it feels like that. It's like, we're going to work, work, work. And then it just could happen. It's a really great blend. Main goals going down there? It's been a long time since I've got a good nap on the mountain in the sun. And I was so looking forward to that. And the neuroses of spotting that deer, I got, I think I got one 10 minute snooze in,

and in the five days. And I was with you, and I'd made the mistake of resting my head against some branch on the tree I'd leaned up against. And eventually the branch broke and snapped me back into consciousness. And I turned and glassed the hillside, and my eyes were kind of coming into focus and this uh koo's deer doe walked right into the into the into the fuzzy black circle at that point and um but it was yeah i'm captivated by those things so i was like i couldn't i just couldn't comfortably sleep because i was like yeah luck is where skill meets opportunity. They're rare enough that everyone you spot has a little element of like, holy shitness.

Yes. It has a little element of like, you're pleased with yourself. Yeah. Everyone you spot, you're like, ha, damn it. Yeah. I still got it. I still got it. To the point that where when somebody else spots a deer, eventually, if there's five guys on that hillside, eventually all five are going to be like, can you walk me into that deer?

Can you show me where? There's not so many that no one cares. Like every deer, everyone, like you'll be like, okay, that's cool. He sees it. I'll keep looking. But a couple minutes later, like, you know that deer you mentioned? Yeah. Where exactly was he? For me, it's like almost like okay recalibrate look at a live one look at one that that is there for sure

and then get a good dose of that a little bit of extra dopamine you know and keep looking again oh go ahead what's really telling about this is when you're sitting back with three of us glassing and someone spots a doe, all three people ask to get walked into the doe. If you're looking at whitetails in the Midwest and someone sees a doe, everyone's like, whatever. In this case, someone spots a doe and people are getting spotting scopes out and everyone wants to get on the doe. Yeah, because it's the rut. Right. So, I mean, it's like, you know, oftentimes that's what you, you find one and you just got to stare, stare, stare, stare, stare, stare, stare. And eventually you get like, she's by herself. But sometimes you're expecting like El Macho Grande.

I had one other observation about, oh, I think, I think we debated a long time ago. Probably the last time we were all high on Coos Deer was the value of a unit of measurement in describing things to people. I've come to believe that establishing a unit of measurement in proximity to the thing you're trying to describe is valuable. You find a tree and we're like, the width of that tree is our unit of measurement. Go seven units to seven o'clock. I've become a firm believer. Despite what J-SAC, what's that called? The guys that call air? Yeah, there seems to be some discussion among pilots and J-SAC, like guys that call strikes.

I think there's some disagreement in that community about we had a J-SAC operator talk about his method of establishing a unit of measurement. And a pilot said nothing sucks the energy out of a cockpit more than a jay sack operator suggesting a unit of measurement but i'm a believer in the coos deer woods i'm a believer in the unit of measurement well we had a conversation you were like 30 yards to my right and we're trying to talk about where that deer is bedded i'm like like, okay, now this oak has a white trunk. This one's not snapped off the base. This one snapped off like 10, 12 feet from the base. 10, 12 feet up the trunk it snapped off.

And I hear Steve go, well, I don't agree with the height, but I know what tree you're talking about. Okay. Okay. Yarny, Yarny but I know what tree you're talking about. Okay. Yanni, Yanni, you know what, Yanni? I don't mean to tell you what to do, but talk about Jay a little bit. Jay's an interesting dude. I feel like he's an anomaly as a guide. Do you?

Anomaly? I just think he's like, he's just like, so like just very organized and even keeled and predictable. His actual business acumen I find is a 2% type of guide quality. He's in the 2% but he's a business person. Business like, like an Ebeneezer Scrooge kind of business, but just like a customer care. And that even sounds weird. I don't know how to describe it. You just feel like you're in very good hands.

Yep. Yeah, he's dialed. Yeah, I don't know if it's OCD, but like. No. You think so? I mean, there's elements of that. Well, but the same way that you have it for keeping your garage organized, you know? No, it's OCD. He just applies that to

getting his forms all tidy. I mean, he's like delivering. I feel that he, I feel that J. Scott really besides what it might mean for his business, I feel like he has a, he feels a deep sense of personal obligation that when people that are interacting with him in that relationship

i feel that there's like something beyond money or whatever like a like a personal sense that like he owes that person a level of care and service over a bunch of years of interacting with them. Yeah. I think he's just doing a good job. He absolutely is. Yeah, but over a lot of years of dealing with guides and outfitters, I'll tell you there's only one person

I've ever shown up to and had them hand me a manila envelope with my name on it with all the paperwork and duplicates or triplicates in there. In sample forms. In sample forms on how you fill things out, yeah. He's got a real passion for those deer, especially for big versions of the bucky kind.

I mean, that's why he does it. And he likes to spread the joy. He's not holding back. He's not holding the pickle recipe, Matt Drost. You know, I want to say that the Drost, um,

for a long time, it was his, Matt, it was, it was his family's pickle recipe. And, and, and,

and, and it was shared. It was shared. Good. It was eventually and, and, and it was shared. It was shared. Good. It was eventually shared. Do you have it? Yeah. You read it out loud on the mediator podcast.

I'm not going to give you the pickle recipe. Talk about. Kevin, what are your, you know, your overview? You know, this is round two for me.

Last year was the first time I got a chance to go chase these things. And, um, I remember last year when we were, we were packing up to leave, um, you know, we talked about coming back and I didn't hesitate to say, sign me up, right? I want to do it again. It's, it's a really special hunt.

They're, they're a great critter. It's in an awesome spot. Um, it's beautiful down there, right? Going in the, up in the mountains in the desert that time of year, fantastic. Um, so all of it is like, it's a great experience all around. an awesome spot. It's beautiful down there, right? Going up in the mountains in the desert that time of year, fantastic. So all of it is like,

it's a great experience all around. You know, people talk about a one and done hunt. No, this is not. No, like musk ox or the North River

goes like musk ox hunting. I'm sure some people do, but it's like, you go once, you know. Yeah, I could go do this every year. Yeah, but it's not like, it's not,

it's a thing. For me, it feels like turkeys. As soon as it ends, I'm like, dude, next year, now next year. No, it's not like it's not it's a thing it's for me it feels like turkeys soon as it ends i'm like dude next year now next year no it's addictive oh man it is it feels a bit like you know to me it's it's a different critter but the hunt's really similar it's it's kind of like hunting odd add like in the west texas mountains reminds me a lot of that the hunt's really similar um it's a team sport too i think that's another really cool part of it. Um,

you know, almost sharing a lot of relevant information and yeah. Um, which is kind of fun, right? You know, the traditional whitetail hunting, especially if you're an archery guy, that's a, that's an individual sport, right? You're not hanging out. It's not social sport at all. This is, this was really fun. You know, I love, I love this hunt and how, how this hunt goes down with a great group. Yeah, it really is. It's kind kind of that's a good point about it it's not like a loner thing i'm sure there's probably some guy that does it that way but it really invites because there's a lot of space to go around there's a lot of information to get shared hunting together is very effective um there's so much ground that like two guys can sit next to each other you're not overlapping

yeah you guys are probably gonna see twice as many deer as one guy would. Yeah. It's great to have another set of eyes. I mean, a week of five hours a day behind the glass by yourself would be, you know, one, your eyeballs would fall out and two, your head would get probably pretty scrambled at that point. Right. So that's another part of this I thought was you know that i love about this hunt this is absolutely kind of a team sport type hunt yeah i don't know even what capacity i don't know the

full capacity of how many uh um how much more you know how many more people could go you said you have like i don't know well it depends on how many tags you have at the ranch certainly if everybody wants to have the opportunity to kill one. It wouldn't matter to me, really. Just to go down and hang out, I would have – I'd be like, oh, cool, I'll have to deal with the forms. I'll have to do the rifle form. I'd be like, sweet, let's go.

You'd just have to get a tourist visa. Yeah, I'm just in it for the glasses. I had a recap call with Jay this morning. he just called to see you know how it went for us and uh we got to talking about just how important it is to it speaks of the team effort i mean how you cannot like once you find one and if there's even sort of this idea that you that might be the one that you're going to then continue to pursue and try to kill. It cannot leave someone's eyeballs at all times. Once you've made that decision, you have to have a hunting partner that when you say, are you on that deer? They're like, yes. And that means I will not pee. I will not snack. I will not look to the top of the ridge. I will, when it goes behind a bush for 20 minutes, I'm not going to start to look around

for other deer. I will look at that bush until that deer walks back out. It takes that level if you want to be constantly successful at killing bucks and especially mature bucks. Do you remember years ago, you remember we put Dirt Myth on Washington deer?

Big open hillside, one juniper on it. We're like, Dirt, there's a deer behind that juniper. Don't take your eyes off it. And hours go by, and we come back. It's like, it's still there. I'm like, Dirt, there's no way it's still there. And he let it slip. He scratched his eye, man.

We never went over there to check. He missed it. Phil, so let's say you do your hunter safety. Are you scheduled? No, not yet. I'm still waiting for Ben to come back so we can have a talk about what the plan is, I guess. You go do hunter safety. That's a good point. Is Ben

on paternity leave? Yeah. I mean, I haven't gotten an update, but his child should have been born yesterday. Anybody? Oh, really? His wife is a little sick with an infection, so they put. Anybody? Oh, really? His wife is a little sick with an infection. So they put off the C-section for a couple days. So she's going in every day and doing that. So hopefully any day.

Good luck to them. Why don't you talk to Maggie and Tracy? They'll tell you how to do hunter safety. Yeah. I'm doing it. So let's say you did do it you're doing it yes are you sold not sold well I had a talk with Cal and Ben

about this I have zero expectations but I'm looking forward to it are you sold on would you go down to Mexico specifically for Cusney are you not there yet I mean I don't think I'm there yet. I think everyone would probably agree. But, I mean, it sounds like a killer experience.

It sounds great. Yeah. Especially for people who have been doing this their whole lives and still get, like, jazzed about something like this. Yeah. Good. I'll put you in touch with Jay. Let's do it.

Can't wait. You know you're going to be the oldest guy in Hunter safety. Oh, yeah, for sure. You're going to be there with a bunch of 12-year-olds. They'll score better. That's fine. That's fine. How old are your kids?

Six and one. Oh, so they're not doing it yet. No, not quite. Any final thoughts to add? Well, if you are interested, ColburnandScottOutfitters.com, right? Yeah. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, we keep talking about Jay, but I don't want to be like the unsung hero, but his partner, Dar Colburn, who I love just as much.

Yep. Yeah, he can glass them up every bit as good as Jay can. Yeah. We just didn't see him this trip, so he wasn't top of mind. No, no. I don't even know if he got it. I think he took his boys down for the first time to Mexico right after the holiday. That's another thing I like about Dar is he's very devoted

to training his kids up and hunting. Well, I think the training's over, man. He's living the fruits of his labor right now i mean i think he's really like he planned that and like you know not everybody's kids grow up to be hardcore hunters but like he sort of you know guided his kids to that and now they're like that's what we want to do and we want to do it with you dad and you know i think as a father he's just like yeah nothing beats this like I did it he didn't name him

Hunter either did he no but one has the middle name of Coos oh we can't leave the final thing we gotta leave the conversation

but I know that some number of people are like no there's no there's one guy just one guy screw him you know what I'm

gonna talk about I think cows cows cows yeah No, there's one guy. Just one guy. Screw him. You know what I'm going to talk about? I think. Cows. Cows. Cows. Yeah. It's not worth it. I've talked to the guys.

Yeah, it's not worth it. And I like the point. For those of you who are like, what are you supposed to say? It's cows. I've talked to the individuals who I know. I know this empirically, who have said the word and written the word more than anyone else in the world and they say coos deer and one of them told me and i will say it until i die it's not cows or whatever call what you want all that matters just don't don't write us about it is that you

know what we're talking about it's like oh sorry what did you little gray deer that hides real well that one yeah okay they used to call it the arizona deer didn't they at one point long time no but elliot cows cows elliot cows uh he had some strange beliefs he believed in like levitation and all kinds of stuff interesting dude read up on him sometime uh that was how about that so people have to write the the the email about uh that um the severed finger with all the tendon i can't decide if i'm gonna put it on instagram or not probably not so don't buy looking for that uh probably have to say um just mention uh a big thank you for everybody who's already purchased tickets for the meat eater off the air tour damn it cal yeah that's that's a good one been getting a lot of emails on that you know i used to have i used to be i used to not like ads

you know when they'd run an ad like you don't run ads ads. You know, when they'd run an ad, like, you don't run ads for free on TV, right? And they'd run an ad being like, hurry up and buy now! They're going fast. And I'd think, well, if they're going fast, why would you wouldn't still run the ad?

Because you'd be like, those are there. Limited supply. Sure, but I don't buy it because if it was limited, if they were all out, you wouldn't. Pure marketing. So I'm in a trap. I'm in a trap because tickets are going

fast. You're telling the truth. It's not marketing. Yeah, you know what? I'm not lying. Tickets are going fast. Portland sold out in four hours. All the VIP tickets are gone. I would guess, because we're talking about Sonora and that borders Arizona. I would guess when it hits, you could probably get Arizona tickets. Mesa, Phoenix Market. I haven't checked.

I was just saying, thank you very much. Well, you're not selling. Tour's off to a great start, and we probably need to, it's not really an apology. We can't be at every city everywhere. But, you know, hopefully eventually we'll come see you. And don't take it personally that we don't have a venue booked in your hometown right now. It'll happen. And I had a feverish dream where I conceptualized this thing called

Dollar Dance with Cal for $20 for conservation. So if you do have a live ticket to come to Meteor Live off the air, bring $20. Because you might need it. If you want to dance with Cal in a little spotlight.

And we're going to be marching. Cal's going to... You better think about getting some better shoes, Cal. Let's say you had to dance with a couple hundred people. Cal's speechless. Yeah, man. The logistics of this... You want me to cancel it?

How could you cancel something with a name like Dollar Dance with Cal for $20 for conservation? I mean, that's like the stuff. That's a great name. Yeah, and I'm a sucker for things that go to conservation, so we can't cancel it. We just got to figure out a way to make it function. What it's going to look like.

Maybe little kisses. Like kisses. It's going to be 99% male. It doesn't matter to me. Kiss Cal for $20 for conservation. Just a big old kissing line. Anyway. It's your chance.

I'm going to be there chaperoning. I don't want anyone goosing them. I don't want anyone goosing them or grabbing them in any kind of untoward fashion. Detroit. When I say these, a lot of times it's like the market. Detroit. San Francisco. Los Angeles.

Boston. Phoenix. Philly. Pittsburgh. Boston. D.C. D.C. Minneapolis. Did I say that? No, we're going back to many. That's cool. Portland. Minneapolis. Did I say that? Yeah. We're going back to many.

Yeah. That's cool. Portland. The Frederick, sorry, the Frederick, Maryland. Is that the DC show? That's right. Okay. In the parlance of tour agents, that's the DC market.

Oh, yes. But it's not in DC. Yeah. And. Yeah. A lot of love on the last time this tour, it's a lot of love to people who live in, in, in areas where their lifestyle doesn't get a lot of support. I feel. Right. Oh, like they're not out.

Yeah. Like Denver, Salt Lake City. It's like, yeah. I mean, like, you know, gazillions of people who like hunting fish, right? But I kind of like that doing LA, San Francisco, Portland. Oh, yeah. And it's funny because those are the places where tickets go fastest, which is the weirdest thing. Because it's like, oh, thank God.

Remember in Spinal Tap, that dude was like, civilization. Did you get that reference, Philil you too old for that too young uh absolutely not no you didn't get it no you don't know absolutely not i'm not too young for that oh okay so you get a good spiral test one of my favorite movies turn it up to 11 never laughed harder in my life than when they bring the little stonehenge monument down and it's tiny crank it to 11 oh sorry did you mention the la market oh yeah we talked about it down and it's tiny. Crank dancing around. Crank it to 11. Oh, sorry.

Did you mention the LA market? Oh, yeah. We talked about LA. All right. Good. Good. Just checking. Make sure.

Chicago? Oh, didn't mention Chicago. Yeah. Is Anaheim LA or what do we call LA? That's right. Anaheim's LA. Anaheim's LA. I tried to reach out to the cashmere killer to see if he can come out,

but I haven't gotten a hurt. I got to prompt him. Oh, Brian Callen, come on. All right, guys, thank you very much for joining. Don't go koozie hunting. Don't want to ruin a good thing. But do go to the live shows. Yeah, tell Jay you won't. By now, tickets are going fast.

Tell Jay you won't pay more than $2,500. Jay's going to be at the Mesa. Oh yeah, we're going to have Jay on stage in Mesa. Yeah, give you some real... I'm going to have Jay come out and Jay's going to give us his top five Arizona hunting tips. Or he can do fishing tips too. He fishes a lot. He fishes Colorado. Yeah.

How about top five Arizona hunting tips and top two Colorado fishing tips? And Yanni's going to learn how to do a drum roll. I think we should let him do top 10 he's got a lot in that cabeza of his that's good Spanish that's good Spanish you know vaca means I do baño but I think it's pronounced vaca casa I'm still getting it guajalote Yep Banado Got it Carne Banado

Embra Solamente What's embra? Remember that one? It's more Spanish than he spoke all week No I don't know that one man That's dough Oh damn it dough?

Yeah I always laugh because one of your favorite stories is Cabeza de Vaca Yeah but I know laugh because one of your favorite stories is Cabeza de Vaca. Yeah, but I know all those words. All right. Go do something else. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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