The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 229: The Atomic Oryx

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Karl Malcolm, Mike Ruhl, Jeremy Romero, and Seth Morris.Topics discussed: Jewel and being attracted to snaggle teeth; Teen Wolf; how the Flip Flop Flesher no longer fleshes squat; White Sands Missile Range as the original introduction site of the African oryx; mildly radioactive Trinitite for sale; use of the word skookum; getting stuff your mom makes vs. getting Nike shoes, Doritos, and Michael Jackson jackets, or how Steve's parents didn't buy their kids stupid shit; the etymology or etymology; a broken horn hunt and a once-in-a-lifetime hunt; the ins and outs of hunting oryx in New Mexico; hunting hogs at the fence doors and other fence stories; dragging around 300 pounds of ice in coolers; the Amish machine gun; kid Steve being gifted a model 94 like it's a favor; that time when Seth stepped inches from a coiled up rattlesnake; 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 Onyx. Okay, Carl Malcolm set the scene for us here. What's going on? Well, we are here at Oryx Camp 2020. We're in south central New Mexico at a camping spot that I've come to be very familiar with and fond of over a number of years now. I've probably been camping in and around this particular spot for close to a decade of hunting a variety of species. And over the course of those hunts, I have encountered oryx in this general area on a number of occasions. So we're here just outside the periphery of the White Sands Missile Range

in South Central New Mexico, which is the place you want to be if you're looking for the wily and elusive African oryx. I think that you might have even expressed at one point here that you intimated that you may have even seen one very near where we're at right now. If you were to take a straight line distance

from where our keisters are on these seats right now, I have seen an Oryx no more than 300 yards from where we're sitting right now. Man, right in shooting range. Tom Bodette's here. Howdy, Steve. Mike rules on the show before, and people wrote in. A guy wrote, Mike saw a comment where he said, man, that guy sounds just like Tom Bodette.

Hit it, Mike. Yeah, the guy said, dude sounds just like Tom Bodette. So do a Tom Bodette line. This is Tom Bodette from Motel 6, and we'll leave the light on for you. That's pretty good, man. Nice job. I really respect Tom Bodette, so I really took that as a compliment. Yeah, Mike is actually a Tom Beaudet fan.

I think that'd be fair, yeah. He's got a great backstory, Homer, Alaska, and it's tied in with the singer Jewel. What was her tune? She had one super famous tune, didn't she? She had a bunch of good ones, man. And you're a Michigan guy. She did some of her training at that Interlochen Fine Arts Camp.

I've been there. I saw Gordon Lightfoot there. First time I saw Gordon Lightfoot. But the Interlochen Camp is part of the whole story about Tom Bodette and Jewel and the connection. Oh, really? Yeah, Homer, Alaska is the hometown. Well, Tom Bodette's not from Homer, I don't think. He moved up there.

Right. And then they had a fundraiser to send this Jewel individual to- To Interlochen. To Interlochen, and Tom Bodette donated money toward it. Correct. I got one Jewel thing, one Jewel line that's rolling around in my head i'm pretty sure it's that who will save your soul that was her big hit yeah that's the i can't remember the name of the song but hearing her little her voice kind of cracking a little bit as she sings that

i mean i i totally had a jewel crush going on for sure did you really yeah she you know she had that like imperfection of that one crooked tooth on the up on her top top shelf don't remember she had won her trademark yeah it was like kind of like cindy crawford she had that birthmark right my wife's got one snaggle tooth does she so i found that i found that the fact that she wasn't just like this perfectly polished don't be staring at my wife i'm not talking about your wife talking about you start talking about my wife snaggle too no i'm talking about jewel but i like the fact that you know she's like in the in the spotlight of spotlight of Hollywood and she's just out there. I mean, she's a beautiful woman, of course, and very talented. And I always found it appealing that she had this imperfection that she was not

sufficiently vain to want to pursue a correction. I saw that as just a level of authenticity that I found to be very attractive. She's a big Jewel fan sure man i thought yeah i loved the music i loved her voice i thought she was just a cool person in the alaska thing too you know i'd never been to alaska at that point in my life but i was just like man shania twain too same kind of thing like this woman from the rugged north who's just beautiful and has an incredible voice and so talented and strong she's a northerner yeah yeah shania's out of alaska too oh no no she's she's canadian oh canadian okay but like that rugged northern thing and so talented and strong. She's a northerner? Yeah. Shania's out of Alaska too. Oh, no, no. She's Canadian.

Oh, Canadian. Okay. But like that rugged northern thing. It's not even American. That's all right. No. Really? Yeah.

My buddy Ronnie was all excited because Shania Twain has the same kind of dog he has. Okay. An Italian Braco. I wonder if she hunts it. Or as pretentious people Would say A Braco Italiano Yeah Jeremy

Can you say Are you allowed to say Where you work Yeah absolutely Hit it I work for the National Wildlife Federation I'm the regional

Connectivity coordinator Oh yeah Because it's not like The government Where you gotta be all sly About where you work All the time Right

You don't want to get in trouble No I'm happy I'm happy to talk about it. Yeah, that's right. I am a conservation professional. Not currently representing any organization on this podcast. Yeah. It's Jeremy Romero.

Correct. Yeah. And you're the New Mexico? Well, I work at a New Mexicoxico but i represent you know a regional level i work for the national wildlife federation out of the rocky mountain regional center so we have quite a few states that i that i work to promote and protect wildlife corridors and connectivity gotcha which is a hot thing in conservation right now yeah absolutely you know as we know wildlife move across multiple jurisdictions and so when you're gonna sit

down and really protect and prioritize these efforts, you really need to bring a robust group of stakeholders to the table. And that's something that's a pretty hot topic. And we've been pretty successful in doing here in the landscape. Great. And then, Seth. Yep. The flip-flop no longer flesher who's fallen incredibly behind.

Yeah. I blame it on COVID. Yeah. When you flesh beavers at the office and COVID comes, beaver fleshing grinds to a halt. Yeah. Which I could do in my garage, but it's just hot. Yeah. I like when people are complaining about it in the office.

You know, I recently played Teen Wolf for my kids. Like when we have movie night, I tend to, when we have movie night, I want to like, they want to pick, but I'm always like, well,

I'll pick. So I pick movies that I remember from being like in high school, even though they're in pre and element pre-elementary and elementary. Yeah. But somehow I donlementary and elementary. Yeah. But somehow I don't line it up right. So I'll be like, oh, I remember a movie when I was young. But it has some scenes in it. It's got some scenes in it.

Yep. And while watching Teen Wolf, this is the original Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox. You know about this movie? I don't think it's I don't think it's all the original Do you know the premise? It's a dude He turns into a werewolf Yeah

And then he gets Like people like him He's a dork But then he's a werewolf Yes And He's real good at basketball There's a girl

He really There's a girl That like the neighborhood girl Likes him But he don't like her There's a girl he really likes But she's too good for him he turns into a werewolf gets super good at basketball the mean girl likes him then he like self-discovers right yeah in the end he winds up with the neighborhood girl um watching it i was thinking that we could do that same movie call it the flip

flop flasher where it's like you're just a normal dude then you become the flip-flop flasher and think you're cool as shit right yeah because there's a big part of team wolf where michael j fox he can win all the games he doesn't even need his teammates but his teammates start getting bummed out so then in the end they play the championship and he plays it and he doesn't turn into the werewolf to win the championship. They just do it through regular old teamwork. So what would I win? Just win at Fleshing Beers?

Fleshing Contest or something. You'd just come in and you'd come in just as you and not the flip-flop flasher. You'd be like, I'm fleshing this one as Seth, bro. I like it uh explain white sand missile range in greater detail who wants to take that one we could probably tag team in a little bit i mean we've been doing a little bit of homework um it's an interesting story man it is

an interesting story so the white sands missile Range is this massive chunk of country in the neighborhood of 2 million acres. 130 miles by, what did we figure out? You did the math. 120 north-south. About 120. And east-west was roughly 40, I think. Yeah, so it's-

I can tell you it takes a long long ass time to even drive around part of it yeah yeah especially if you're like a midwesterner by birth and you get out here and just see like how vast the expanse is and that's kind of the point so when the department of defense was trying to figure out places to do things like test missiles detonate the first nuclear bomb atomic atomic bomb thanks they were looking for places where there weren't a lot of i can't tell you the difference between those two things i think maybe the same thing but i'm not sufficiently i don't think that they are man isn't like a fission fusion kind of thing yeah me i'm sure there'll be some physicist who weighs in on this and we can we can see what they have to say i

remember in 10th grade i uh was in science class. I can't remember what grade I was in. But I remember losing a lot of faith in my teacher because I was like, is it possible that you could be splitting firewood and hit it just right? That you split an atom? And split an atom and cause an atomic explosion. And looking back on it,

they were not able to answer that question. I think it's a thoughtful question. And I now understand that no matter how much firewood you split, you're not going to split an atom. You will not split an atom. Yeah. I don't know, man. Like if you were to say, drop a nuclear bomb and drop an atomic bomb,

in my mind. It's different. So that's something I'll take at face value. So they're looking for a place where they have enough open country to be able to do some of this stuff that would be real dangerous if you have a bunch of people in proximity. And so when it comes to the history of things like testing atomic bombs, a lot of that work happened in places like the Arizona Strip,

places like the Trinity site, which is not terribly far from where we are right now, the Trinity site being the place where they detonated the first of those bombs. And so the White Sands Missile Range is an area where there are all manners of testing of missiles, aircraft, and all kinds of other stuff that the general public, myself probably has no idea about but it's a vast chunk of dod country and it's also the site of the original introduction of the african oryx which is the species we've been hunting let's back up one step because i just wanted to tell people if you want to read a really fascinating story about american history and warfare the story of the manhattan project leading up to the trinity site test and the level

of secrecy and manipulation that had to go into doing a surface test of an atomic weapon while having no one know that you just did that. Even people that were in the military in the area at the time thought, I think that they thought it was a munitions train exploded or something like that. They had some cover story. Like they touched off an atomic bomb like the same bomb they used to destroy what it was like little boy and big fat boy yeah anyways the same bomb they used to destroy hiroshima and nagasaki they touched off a version of it

in new mexico yeah and kept and it remained a secret that they had the weapon. Yep. Yeah, and that spot. It was a different place back then. It was a different time for sure. And that spot where that occurred. So when I started with the Forest Service, I was down on the Lincoln National Forest where the headquarters is based in Alamogordo, New Mexico. And the regional office is up in Albuquerque.

So I'd oftentimes be traveling between Alamogordo and Albuquerque. And there's a stretch of highway called Highway 380 that goes along the north side of the white sands missile range and there's very little um human development along that highway it's pretty open country so along highway 380 the route that i would take between alamogordo and albuquerque you go along the north side of the white sands missile range and among the very few human developments along that stretch of highway is a rock shop and the thing that the rock shop advertises on the side of the road most prominently is that they have trinitite available for sale and trinitite is this mildly radioactive glass that was created by the detonation of that

first bomb test so you can go out there and there's like fragments of this glass at the bomb site and i've i've never yet had the opportunity to do the tour but i know a couple times a year um the white sands missile range offers public tours to go back and actually visit the trinity site oh really yeah especially on the anniversary i believe is that right yeah and i've heard that that you know the date's coming up and it hasn't lined up to where i could come down and make it happen and i feel like i've missed missed an opportunity a few times to do that but um that site is you know as the crow flies not terribly far from some of the spots we've been poking around looking for oryx do you understand why what's the story of how it came to be that they decided to cut some oryx loose

in the white sands missile range so the history is that the state of new mexico back in the late 60s and early 70s in an effort to try to provide more big game hunting opportunity was trying to identify portions of the state that could potentially support other big game hunting opportunities but were essentially unfilled um niches from a big game hunting perspective just too severe the conditions yeah and then and then essentially marry up the kind of ecological niche that was perceived to be available with a species that had the ability potentially to thrive in that portion of the landscape. So there was this kind of matchmaking going on and a lot of energy around the idea of trying to bring in exotic species to exist in portions of the state. And there's a handful of examples and, uh, the Oryx being one that they successfully introduced. It's like taking an African antelope suited to deserts. Yep. Yep.

And. And then they took the Barbary sheep. Yep. The Barbary was another. Which is in North Africa, right? A mountain animal from North Africa. Yep. And then there were two different Ibex species,

the Persian and the persian and the siberian that they brought in all these are all like drought tolerant species and they looked at some and decided against it as well i think they looked at the kudu and the kudu was having some issues contracting diseases from cattle so the kudu didn't work and with the species that they did want to release what i've read is that there's a federal law that prohibits the importation and release of exotic wildlife and the way that the state worked around that was to bring them in and establish experimental populations and propagate offspring in captivity and then they were able to release the offspring of those imported oryx for example and there's a spot kind of on the west side of the missile range

red rock where they were doing the initial captive breeding and propagation of those first 90 or so oryx that they brought out and released on the missile range that's how many they cut loose was 90 yeah it was 90 90 ish and you know guys correct me if i'm wrong here you know brushed up a little bit on this 93 so and it wasn't all at once they were like adding them in kind of over time supplementing the population and then pretty quickly they got to be self-sustaining and you know ecologically one of the things that's cool about oryx is that you know they're able to reproduce year-round so they're very productive you know a cow will conceive carry the pregnancy deliver the calf raise the calf for some period of time then she'll cycle

again but they're not constrained by seasonality the way a lot of the ungulates that we're used to thinking about in north america are when did start? So they brought them in the 60s and 70s. Yep. They explode in numbers on this giant missile range, where there was very limited hunting. And then at some point, someone must have gotten uneasy with what was going to happen because they didn't just let them overrun the whole damn state.

Yeah. The history, I mean, initially the motivation for the whole program was to provide hunting opportunity. And the fact that they intentionally selected the White Sands Missile Range as the release site suggests to me that the intention was to have some hunting opportunity on White Sands Missile Range. And whether or not that's the case, I mean, i'm not super skookum on all the details here but it's certainly the case that the original population became very well established on white sands missile range and has provided a lot of hunting opportunity over the decades since and to your point the objective was to keep the population primarily contained to the white sands missile range gotcha so that's how we're here on what what in local

vernacular everybody calls the off-range auric sun uh can we back up a moment to your use of the word skookum yeah uh what's your what how do you define the skookum so i would think of skookum as being like you are totally on point on a given topic. In Alaska, particularly Southeast Alaska, where I think that word might come from maybe. I'd be interested to know the history, but don't. You should check that out, Seth, while you're sitting there. While you're sitting there with real bad cell phone service. It's good. Skookum is good.

Okay. You'd be like, that's a skookum rig for fishing. Someone's like, hey, should I try'd be like, that's a skookum rig for fishing. Someone's like, hey, should I try this? Yeah, it's a skookum rig. Okay. Good rig. I don't know what the hell it means. I was just curious.

Yeah, I've always. I've only ever heard it in Southeast Alaska. I've only ever heard it to mean good. So I took note when you just used skookum to mean like a good understanding of. Yeah. Like I think about it being like you're on point. So when it comes to nuclear versus atomic bombs, I feel very not skookum. No skookum. I'd want to learn a little bit more about that. I looked that up. What'd you look up? Atomic versus

nuclear bombs. It's different. Atomic bombs are nuclear weapons, but not all nuclear weapons are atomic bombs. Hydrogen bombs are thermonuclear weapons, which is a different category. Do you remember when Oakley sunglasses used to advertise as hydrogen bombs are thermonuclear weapons, which is a different category. Do you remember when Oakley sunglasses used to advertise as thermonuclear protection? No. You don't remember that? Uh-uh.

Yeah, like dudes that liked Oakleys a lot. Like a certain type of guy in high school liked Oakleys a lot and would have Oakley stickers on his truck and whatnot. And one of the stickers you'd put on your truck window would say Oakley, thermonuclear protection, as though the implication being that should

Whiskey Whiskey 3 break out, and you had your Oakleys on, you would not be blinded and would be able to see yourself shortly thereafter die of radiation radiation poison right and couldn't couldn't you argue that the sun is like a form of thermonuclear oh maybe that's what they meant there you go oh one thing on the on the oakleys you know they had those stalls in the mall where you'd walk in and yeah and they were like all the rage and then the grant the grand travers mall in northwest northwest lower peninsula michigan i was like begging my mom to

get a pair of those sweet shades when i was in late elementary school like maybe fifth grade and finally for my birthday you know she broke down they were just ridiculously expensive for our family budget and uh she broke down and bought me a pair and i thought they were so cool i could not wait for like recess and it didn't matter if it was raining out at recess. I don't want to have those sunglasses on to like strut around the playground and show everybody my rad Oakleys. I could name off. I could name off the dudes in high school who had Oakleys. Yeah, I'm not proud of that.

Elementary high school. I could name them off. And they also had this. They were the kids that got to have Nikes. Their moms would buy them Nikes. They were the kids that got to have individually bagged Doritos in their lunch. They were the kids that got to have

where they put the cheese in one compartment and the crackers in the other compartment. What do you call those things? Oh, Lunchable. Yeah. They were the kinds of kids that had actual Levi jeans, not tough skins and wranglers yeah they had nike shoes doritos like all kinds of store-bought shit in their lunch bag

and not like stuff their mom made you know yeah what about starter jackets dude i was gonna go starter jackets and the other one is not nikes but okay i want i want to back up i'll name them right now i don't want to give their last names nate stan steve i could name all these last names no i've got i remember them still today and they had michael and they had those michael jackson jackets yeah another thriller came out kenny chris kenny chris and george are three that come to my mind but you know the shades like the reason it's notable to me is it was such a stretch because we had typically not a bunch of the store-bought lunch ingredients, for example. But the other thing besides starter jackets, it wasn't the Nikes. It was the Adidas Sambas.

No. Yeah, dude. The Sambas. Where I was, I'm just saying, Sambas and starter jackets, those were the kids. The girl versions of the guys I'm talking about had Reeboks. Okay. We also had probably slightly different like cultural subtleties to our respective. Yeah, even though we're same state, plus I'm a little bit ahead of you.

That's true. I'll tell you, I want to get back to talking about orcs. Much as the next guy, but I'll tell you a horrible story. Okay. So I was never allowed to have any kind of nice stuff. I thought we were poor, but it turns out my parents just weren't stupid. Like I grew up,

no, I grew up thinking I was poor, even though we're like absolutely not poor. You know, we had like boats. My parents drove new cars. We had a big, nice house. But I thought as a young kid, I thought we were poor because I couldn't have stupid shit,

but it was not because they couldn't get it. They just were annoyed by it. Like we couldn't get, we wouldn't get, there's no way we're going to get an Atari machine. Like to play video games. Like there's no way my parents were going to buy one of those. There's no way they were going to buy like a nice television.

There's no way they're going to buy Levi's and Reeboks and whatnot. And I remember one time we went down to MC sportinging Goods and they had a pair of mismatched Nikes in a box for like no money. Because one shoe, the right one, I can't remember if it was right or left. One of them had red swoosh marks and one of them had dark burnt orange swoosh mark. And it was a subtle difference, but there was a difference. And we could get them for like 20 bucks from MC Sporting Goods. So here was, my mom's fine, like, if you want to have a pair of Nuggets, I'll buy those ones for you.

And I'm like, no one will notice. No one will notice. I wasn't in, I was in fifth or sixth grade. I wasn't at the schoolhouse five minutes. Someone noticed. Oh, Stan at the schoolhouse five minutes. Someone noticed. Oh, Stan, Nate, Steve. Yeah. They picked up on it like flies on shit.

They were just on it like they knew it. That's brutal. And they let you know. Merciless. Did you keep wearing them? I don't remember, man. Probably not. I do remember there being a little bit of a plan where my mom

was going to try to darken up that other stripe somehow yeah oh it's horrible well being a parent do you find that you have some of those same tendencies with your family now it depends why they want what they want but no i'll buy them like good outdoor stuff so if you saw a box of two two colored shoes you wouldn't oh i do lots of just to mess with them though like make them eat stuff they don't want it just i just do yeah i just do mean stuff to them just so they're like i tell them someday when you're in college you tell them stories about how mean your dad was you'll be glad i did this because you'll have a funny story there you go uh all right so they're welcome you're're welcome, kids. Where were we?

Oh, yeah. Oryx. Skookum good. Skookum good. Skookum, hold on. A Skookum story about Oryx. Am I doing a good job of using it appropriately? S-K-O-O-K-U-M?

You got it. Yep. Strong, brave, or impressive? Does it give the etymology of the word? You know what that means? Look up the etymology of etymology. Not entomology. You want to just tell me?

Word history. Study of words. Where they come from. The etymology of the word. People would say, what's the etymology of flip-flop flusher? I'd say, well, he flushes in flip-flops. Mid-19th century. Chinook Jorgen?

Oh. Chinook Jargen. Chinook. Yeah. Northwest. Pacific Northwest. Cool. That's a tribe in the Pacific Northwest.

Yep. That's why the guy I know it from is Simshan. And they probably used to take big canoes and fight each other, if I had to guess. The Simshan. And they probably used to take big canoes and fight each other, if I had to guess. The Simshan and the Chinook. But he's Simshan. His people must have picked it up from the Chinook.

Haida, Simshan. People should start using it more often. Skookum. You good and strong on a given topic. Impressive. The Skookum story of the Oryx. I feel semi-Skookum on the history of Oryx. Do you mind real quick for people just to ease us back into the conversation about Oryx? Do you mind real quick laying out what one of these things looks like? Who wants to do that?

Mike, you haven't said it. Tom Bodette will now explain. Oh, man. What does an Oryx look like? Dig deep into your bio biology training. Well, they are in terms of size, like a mature bull oryx is roughly the size of a cow elk. I would say, uh, they are probably slightly shorter in their body, but deeper. Like when you look at one, their, their, their chest, particularly like if you come up the leg,

they are very deep from the bottom of the chest to the top of their back. They kind of look like a, like a billboard. Yeah. You know, standing there. Um, and they have really distinct markings. So we, we say that they have like a clown face they have a face that is is black angelic white right with with striking white alongside the black

yeah is their face mostly white or mostly black i'm trying to think of it now it's got more a little probably a little more white than black. But what is the butterfly? Is that same black or that's white? The butterfly's white. Oh, okay. It's like two triangles that kind of meet at the middle of the face. Yeah, I just scunned one, but I can't remember. That white wraps around.

That's past tense for skin. Makes its way up to its ears real pretty. Their bodies are tan, mostly tan in color. Their bellies are white, but they have a black stripe that runs along their belly. And then as far as headgear. They got big sweat socks on. Yeah.

Oh yeah. They have big white socks, so black legs and then big white, like a big white band, like a sock band. Reminds me of the old baseball socks I used to wear in little league. Yep. And they got some horns.

And then the, yeah, the headgear is like a really striking element of, of them, uh, long, straight. It's like two swords. Sword-like horns. Coming off their head. Uh, and they're, they're, especially from a distance, I think that the horns look jet black.

When you get up to them. Once you've harvested one, I think they look almost a little bit more dull. Yeah. But maybe they're just a little dusty too. Once, you know, once that business is done. There's an age piece to it too, with the darkness of the horns.

Oh yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. The juveniles will have like a, a relatively kind of dusty looking horn. So the one, the one that you shot is a relatively young bull. We'll get into those details a little bit more. But when you look at the tips of those horns,

you can see where that initial sheath is starting to wear away. And if you get into one that's an older animal, it'll have more of a smooth and polished and darker kind of horn to it. And a long horn on an oryx. Like, Jeremy, you killed an oryx. 38 inches long. And some of the longest horns are females. Yes. Yeah, you know, the females

tend to have, in my experience, some pretty long, thin horns. And, you know, the bulls tend to be a little shorter, hold a little bit more mass like yours did. And like Carl said, the older they get, they get a little bit more mass like yours did um and like you know like carl said the older they get they get a little bit more polished the uh the female i was you know lucky enough to

harvest had some she was 38 inches long she flared out right at 24 not to put numbers on it but it was just a beautiful specimen she was polished all the way down and she even had a little bit of like ivory tips there at the tip of her horns oh Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Real pretty. And a big whopper is mid forties. Well, yeah. I mean, like if for bulls, if you shot a 40 inch bull, people would be like, that is, you know, that is the Oryx of, of a lifetime. Kind of like, you know, that's the, that's like a 200 inch mule deer.

Right. A 180ule deer. Right. A 180 white tail. Right. I think that 30 to 40 is what I'm seeing as being the average. Yeah. Yeah. And where were we? In terms of the one you got?

No. Oh. In terms of the story, I just wanted to real quick fill people in what they look like. Well, I think Mike's doing an awesome job of lining out the appearance of the orcs. One piece that we haven't talked about, though, is that paintbrush tail. Yeah. Oh! That's something that always stands out,

and especially when you're glassing for them, they've got this tail that, like the tip of the tail, it looks like it could almost drag on the ground. And it's got these maybe 12 inch or longer hairs that extend from probably halfway down the tail to the tail tip the whole the whole length of the tail is probably in the neighborhood of 18 inches or so and then those hairs extend significantly farther beyond that and it seems like when they're on their feet that tail is just constantly swooshing so a lot of times when you're glassing especially once the heat of the day has picked up,

and you're looking through that heat mirage, your search image is like that kind of cream-colored body. And if you see that flickering tail, that flyswatter tail kind of blacking out a portion of the shape in the distance that can be one of the telltale things that you're looking at an oryx as opposed to a similarly colored cow and we have encountered a number of cattle on this trip that have some striking resemblance to oryx in various ways but but the tail is one of the things that can definitely give them away from a long distance if i could spin back to a couple of the numbers, some of the population, just to throw that out.

So they said between 1969 and 1977, 93, as you mentioned, car were released. They expected that to reach about 600 animals on Whismur. Whismur being White Sands Missile Range. White Sands Missile Range. And by 2001, the population had peaked to about between four and 6,000. And now we're looking at it and they say

currently the population is between three to 4,000. Oh. And the information Jeremy's quoting is from a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish wildlife note. So if somebody is really curious what they look like, that would be a place to go and get a page

or two of information about works in New Mexico and see a picture of one. Does it, does it, do you guys know what year they started, uh, allowing people to hunt for them? Well, they said by already by the mid 1990s, the overabundance had prompted the game department in Wismar to start to create hunting opportunities.

Okay. So what, like when we say that I'm down here hunting right now or hunting for orcs, I drew what's called an off range hunt. And Carl mentioned off range hunts a minute ago. So orcs hunting, like in the general vernacular of orcs hunting, if you say like,

I drew an orcs tag, uh, like in the general vernacular of Oryx hunting, if you say like, I drew an Oryx tag, people in the know will know that you're talking about New Mexico. They will say to you immediately, off range or on range? Yeah. On range is, I don't want to say it it's cooler but on range is much more difficult to draw correct correct and why is that well it's because there is a whole bunch of them well there's a whole bunch of them and of course you know Sands Missile Range is an active military installation. And so there are a lot of things going on on that installation. And so any of the hunts that are on the range require really close coordination between New Mexico Game and Fish and the Missile Range.

And, you know, that level of complexity to kind of work hunts in around missions, I think makes it really difficult to hold lots and lots of hunts on the range. So there are much, you know, the hunting opportunities are far fewer on the range. And so there's more Oryx on the range because, you know, there, there's just not as many tags or as many hunting opportunities as what you drew here off range. When you, so if you draw an on range Oryx tag, which means you draw a tag to hunt on White Sands Missile Range, um, you and everyone with you has to go through a background check. Yeah, so my wife drew a once-in-a-lifetime hunt. Oh, but now we're getting, I got to explain that. Okay, I'm sorry.

No, I'll do that. I'll do that. I think I can handle this one. There are a variety of hunts that occur on White Sands Missile Range. There are broken horn hunts. And you can apply for this. Anybody listening to this show, I think, can go...

If they can pass a background check. You don't need to pass a background check to apply, do you? But if you get drawn... Okay, I'm saying they can apply. I don't know. You can apply. Anyone can go on here and fill out a thing and say, I want to apply for a White Sands Missile, an on-range hunt. You can apply. Anyone can go on here and fill out a thing and say, I want to apply for a white sands, an on-range hunt. You can apply for a broken horn hunt,

which means you can only shoot an Oryx with one busted horn. That is not once in a lifetime. Meaning you can get it again later. You can apply for a once in a lifetime Oryx hunt, which means you can pick any oryx you want then when you draw that you're done for your life yeah i've been over here shaking my head i think all of that was correct now can you go from getting the once in a lifetime to a broken horn yes so which which i think is one of the things if you look at drawing odds for broken horns

it's not like oh man it's you know it's really easy to draw an on-range broken horn hunt because everybody that's ever drawn once in a lifetime range hunt then becomes more likely to apply on the range for broken horn hunts yeah so. So. And then there's also hunts, as I understand it now, there are all manner of hunts that the military puts on. They put on a hunt. They have tags available to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Right. They have tags available to people that work there. There, there may be, I, I'd have to look at the, at the book there, there may be an active duty veteran hunt, although that. A special draw for that. There are also Oryx on some other military

installations in New Mexico, like the McGregor range, which is part of Fort Bliss. Yep. And so I get a little confused on the details sometimes regarding active duty hunts and, and the returning Iraq and Afghanistan veteran hunts. But there, there, there are a number of opportunities for military folks.

And then there, there are population management Oryx hunts that you have to have the clearance to go. You have to have security clearance to go on range, which generally means that you are somebody who in some capacity works on the range and has already passed all of the security. So if you actively hold security clearance,

there are sort of like these emergency hunts where you can go out and they use it to go out and get orcs that are getting in the way of stuff. Yeah, I don't know that I call them necessarily emergency, but they're used as a population management tool. Yeah. So when you apply and you land, so you apply and you get an on-range hunt, which is not what you have. You get an on-range hunt, then you got to submit and go through security clearance yeah you and your hunting buddies then you have a three-day season well so yeah i mean it's you do a number of things through that application process you know some pre-training

about being on the missile range where there's always a concern about unexploded ordnance yeah they told you if you didn't drop it yeah don't pick it up my favorite quote from the training was the guy was like pretty much this boils down to like if you didn't drop that thing don't even think about picking it up it could blow you up um but yeah, uh, my wife's hunt. So she drew a once in a lifetime hunt on the range. Um, we show up at the gate early in the morning. You know, they tell you when to be there. You end up in a big line of cars with all the other people. How many tag holders are rolling in there on that day?

I think around 50 is my record. And they all got two buddies with them or whatever. Three probably. Yeah. It's like the hunter and a maximum. Well, it is, right. It is a maximum of the hunter plus three guests. So it's basically never more than four.

Yeah. Um. So you should. All the guests have to do the background check too. Everybody has to be checked. And they like, you know, there's. This is all pre-checked. Yeah.

Yeah. That's all ahead of time. Then you show up at the gate, you know, they may. Man, what an enormous amount of work for somebody. Right. And you have to like, you have to do things like, uh, submit the serial number of the firearms that you're going to take. You know, you're, you're not allowed to take additional firearms outside of those.

You're limited to two rifles. No photos. No recording equipment. Right. Do they check your firearm when you get on range? I do not recall that we got checked, but I have certainly heard stories of people getting checked. I know I've heard stories of other, of folks

showing up like, and having their cooler cause they're down there camping or whatever, you know, and they have some beer in the cooler. Well, that's against the range rules. So they won't let you on with that beer. You know, you gotta, some beer in the cooler. Well, that's against the range rules. So they won't let you on with that beer. You know, you gotta, you gotta throw that away. So it's, you know, it's pretty rigorous right there at the gate, just getting on and they check everybody in and look at everybody's IDs and they do all that stuff.

And then you proceed to a little sort of hunt organization area and everybody gets out of their truck and and then you stand there and listen to a briefing so they really sort of repeat all the stuff that they've already provided you written material on you know about i mean a little bit about oryx and you know their anatomy so that you're effective at shooting them, which I think we'll probably get into. But, you know, also again about unexploded ordnance and being very careful. And they review a hunt map with you because there are places on the range that require, that either are closed because they are known to have unexploded ordinance, you know, and a high density of it and you can't go in

there because it's dangerous or that there's some active, you know, military exercise or operation going on. Like to do experiments on aliens and stuff. I don't know about that, but. Testing alien aircraft and stuff like that. Sure. But, you know, so, so there's, there's still a

number of places, even when you're on range, it's like, if you, if you are caught going in there, you will immediately be escorted off the range and probably lucky if that's the only consequence that, that comes of it. And even when you leave, they look at your phone. I've, you know, I've, I've heard, that's another sort of thing that I've, I've heard has happened.

Uh, it, it didn't happen to us. Um. Like no one reviewed your, your records. And my, you know, my recollection, and again, if, if you draw one of these hunts, don't listen to this podcast and, and not read any of the information they send you. You're like, no, I'm good.

I'm good. I'm skooking. I'm skooking on the whole deal. Let me go. I actually recall that they, they now, I believe, require you to have a cell phone so that if they lose track of you or, you know, some of their roads on the range are as rough

as things that we drove to this week, you know, if you get stuck back there, you have a better chance of, of getting help. Um, my recollection is they told us you can take a photo, you can take photos of the Oryx, but they don't want anything in the photos. Like they don't want big panoramic skyline kind of stuff. You know, it's like, if you're standing there kind of looking down at the Oryx, you know, with dirt, you know, junipers, whatever it is, kind of the ground, that's okay. But, you know, don't, don't drive around and take photos of anything other than your Oryx.

Don't take any video, period. And when you do take pictures of the Oryx, make sure that those photographs are just that limited to that sort of small field of view. And when you go through all this rigmarole, you drive out of there and all of a sudden it's just orc standing everywhere. I don't know that I would say that that was necessarily our experience. Well, the success rates are in the 90s. It's interesting because, of course, you, so one thing to come back to quick is you mentioned three days.

So my wife's hunt, that was what all that I just described was Friday morning. And then we had, I believe we had to be off range by the end of shooting light on Sunday. So, I mean, and really the briefing and stuff takes up most of that Friday morning. So it's really about two and a half days of hunting that you get on that once in a lifetime hunt. So there's some, there's some pressure, you know, I mean, by the end of my wife shot hers on Saturday afternoon and by Saturday afternoon, you're going like, you know, we want to make

something work out here because it, the once in a lifetime element doesn't have anything to do with whether you actually harvest an animal or not. So did she get like a big giant toad? No, she got one very similar to the, to the one you harvested this week. Yeah. But, uh, as far as what it was like, it's kind of interesting because of course now you've got 50 hunters, right.

At the hunt briefing area. And there's a, there can be a bit of a race to their trucks to kind of like get out there and find, you know, the Oryx close to the road. We, we kind of opted out of that. We were just kind of like, you know what, we'll mosey back to our trucks. We'll, we'll let this, you know, this rush of, of folks clear out and then we'll take off to some areas that, you know, we had gotten advice from people to look at. Yeah. We'll leave the light on for you. Right. And so we got, we, you know, we did get back there the first afternoon and got up kind of on top of the, you know, cooler in the bed of the truck and broke out some glass and pretty quickly found some animals and and uh

we spent i have actually probably never spent that much time within 200 yards of a group of animals that we wanted to harvest one of and and we never got a shot because of what uh they were in a really wide open area and we made a good stock but the the shooting conditions were such that the grass was tall enough we couldn't she couldn't lay down and shoot off of her pack so we had to try to get up just a little bit but but i mean like there's really nothing between us and the orcs other than, you know, 10 inch tall grass. And so trying not to be obvious, but, but getting high enough and a solid enough rest to get her a shot.

And then kind of what would happen would, would be, there were enough animals that one that we would want you know would get out in the perfect spot and by the time we got set up and she got on that one another one would walk in front of it or it would walk back into the group so it just it was one of those weird kind of situations where you're you know you're just like for two hours you're like any second this is going to all come together this is a comfortable range you know this is really sort of competent shooting area for my wife who's quite handy with a rifle but um it just never happened and then we as it was getting dark we tried to get a little bit more aggressive. And of course, that was, which, you know, I tried to get more aggressive and get it to come together and it didn't. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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but they have a very interesting anatomy that is substantially different from north american deer species yeah i mean they they do that that deep chest that mike was talking about i think it leaves you a lot of opportunity to place what you think is a good shot and have it not end up being lethal and and they're also just a tough animal you know so that that build that they have um the advice generally that that you hear when it comes to shot placement on an oryx is if you think about like on a white tail for example putting those crosshairs sort of tight behind the shoulder you'd want to be farther forward with that and maybe even a little bit lower and then when you take that first shot

if you're fortunate enough to put the animal down i think it's very advisable based on a lot of anecdotes i have both heard and personally experienced to be ready for a follow-up shot because i have i've personally seen animals be knocked down off their feet by a shot, lie there on the ground for a handful of seconds, and then kick their feet a few times, jump back up, and then run to the horizon. So a high degree of conservatism with your willingness to follow up, like err on the side of multiple shots, I would say yeah be liberal with your follow-up shots be liberal with your follow-up shots that's

a good way of putting it yeah and conservative with your um celebrations yes for sure yeah so we had so that breaks down that's pretty good job on on-range. Oh, you got some more to add to the on-range? To Carl's anatomy lesson there, I would say that, I would add that in addition to their chest being very deep, their necks are very deep. And the location of their spine actually dips kind of far down into their body. Yep. So this big hump of shoulder that makes up, you know, the, the, the depth that you're looking at them in profile has processes or like almost fin rays of bone that stick up off of it. And I think that it is not uncommon. Spinal processes, I think they call them, right? Yeah. I think, I think it is not uncommon for them to get hit up high in those processes of bone sticking off the spine and that

kind of creates shock in the spine knocks them down gives them the appearance of being stone dead and then as a lot of whitetail hunters even have experienced you know if you shoot just above or just below the spine with a rifle like you you can have that happen, right? The deer just looks dead for a minute or two minutes and then just pops up and runs away. So I think, my suspicion is that that is a kind of a common thing that occurs with Oryx. So we had, we did not have the on-range hunt. For everybody else who doesn't have an, like the other thing you can apply for when you go online to apply, you apply for like the broken horn on range,

the once in a lifetime on range, yada, yada, or you just get a straight up off range tag. And the off range tag is good for the entire state, except the range. So basically it's good for anywhere.

There's not a bunch of them. Yeah. And those and those other military installations and of course- You can't go on those. Places that are specifically excluded. There's some research areas and- Gotcha. So it's good, yeah.

It's good for not on the military installations, not on any kind of thing that would otherwise be closed to hunting, but it's good for all public lands in in the state though the activity in the population is kind of centered around the missile range um private land off-range private land anyone can go buy a tag at any time and shoot an orcs on private land year- round i didn't know that little detail till yesterday yeah so when you get an off-range tag like what i had it's good private or public off-range and they run the hunts they used to run the hunts year round so every month for every month, for every month, they issue about 150, 160 tags.

They now only run it 10 months out of the year. April and May, they take it off for whatever reason. As you want to go turkey hunting. They take turkey season off. No, I think it's associated with the draw because you have to apply for the license. So there has to be a period where, like, so our draw was in April, right? Well, they couldn't, we couldn't call, they couldn't call you up in, in April basically and say, oh, Hey, it's the 20th of April.

And you drew an Ork's head. Yeah. But it's easy to sell. That's not the answer because if that was the case, then you would just do the draw and issue April and May. For the whole year ahead. Yeah. But you wouldn't have a valid hunting license

because the hunting license expires March 31st. You think it really is related to that? That's been my understanding. Again, I may be not totally skookum on that element. Now that you put it that way, I like it. And I think that you would have, without divulging details about you, I think that you would have, without divulging details about you, I think that you would have reason to understand.

Sure. Through proximity. I have a lot of conversations about hunting and fishing. He talks a lot about hunting and fishing in New Mexico. With people who are very knowledgeable. So every month, 10 months a year, they hand out right now, like what, 160? 160, I believe. They give out 160 tags,

and your tag is good for one month. So in a lot of areas where you get used to like deer seasons, whatever, it's a month long, two months long, it is always orc season. And those orcs that are off range seem to be very aware of the fact that people are trying to get them because they live with it year round.

It's always Oryx hunting season. And they really, really overreact to sounds of trucks. Or you could say they respond appropriately. They respond appropriately. A dude perched up on a safari rack in the back of a pickup is cause for leaving not only the area, but cause for leaving the county. Draw a proportionate response from the Oryx. Or returning to the range. Exceedingly wary.

And perhaps they have a sense of where it's safe to be. It would seem that way, yeah. Relatively safe, anyway. Yeah. They have a sense of what direction to go when you get after them. So we showed up to hunt, and I had what these guys have called themselves, and I stand by it, the O team, because I was probably the first, not sure I was the first. I'm a first time Oryx hunter who was being able to hunt with three friends who all are

seasoned Oryx hunters. Like how many hunts have you been on Jeremy? Probably about a half dozen, six or seven. And how many have you gotten personally? I've gotten one personally. And you? and how many have you gotten personally i've gotten one personally and you uh i've gotten two and probably about a half a dozen others other hunts that were successful yeah i would say i mean similar so i've shot one and i've probably been out with half a dozen

hunts total and you know i certainly would acknowledge there's a ton of people who have like infinitely more experience but the team that we've assembled i think there's a ton of people who have like infinitely more experience but the team that we've assembled i think there's good chemistry and a just a good degree of um like the right personalities and some people that have good game eyes so i would say like we're probably not like the varsity level in terms of oryx experience but we're we have a trio here people have spent a lot of time glassing and know what we're looking for um so i'm sure there's a bunch of people listening to this who would be more skookum than we are when it comes to oryx hunting but we're

i would say like at a at a proficient level how describe oryx hunting well to be honest with you the time I've spent looking at Oryx, um, has, I probably spent more time looking through glass at Oryx when I've been hunting deer or elk than when I've been hunting Oryx. So, um, a lot of the same strategies, like trying to get out there, find a good vantage point. Um, you know, i think in an ideal situation you would identify the location of oryx before they see you i know a lot of people spend a

lot of time driving driving roads and looking for them from the vehicles i think you know and we've spent a lot of time driving around just because the area is so vast and the places that we want to hunt are far from each other but i like the idea of getting out away from the vehicle getting up high looking through glass hopefully finding an animal before it's detected you which is one of the downsides i think of essentially road hunting you know oftentimes you're going to be jumping up in oryx with the truck and and hoping to bail out and get a shot at it and to me like i would prefer a hunt where you're standing on your feet looking through a pair of binoculars on a tripod finding an oryx planning a move and getting

in there i think mike mike put it really well he said something like getting in there and tangling with them oh you gotta mix it up mixing it up that was it you just gotta get in there mix it in there and mix it up i think that that puts it really well, man. And that's, you know, for me and I think for us, like that's the way that we like to hunt, man. But that gets a little bit complicated because of the landscape. Oh, yeah. So the first. Big time. And the conditions.

Yeah, the first Oryx we found on this trip that wasn't on range. So we're up on a glass and knob where, I don't know, man, half of what you're looking at is on range. We're actually like staring down the fence line from on high. And you're like, you're looking down, there's a fence line that's been cleared, like a very clear demarcation line. And half of what we can see is on. And half of what we can see is on range, half of what we can see is off range. And there's a big difference.

I mean, there's a bunch of orcs on range. Maybe, I don't know what we saw. At first afternoon and next morning, we saw 16. Yeah, I mean, there was 17 at one point in time all visible. On one side of the fence. Yeah, Jeremy and I were confident we had 17 at one point in time, all visible. On one side of the fence. Yeah, Jeremy and I were confident we had 17 basically at one time.

And then Mike finally finds one, maybe 200 yards on the other side of the fence. Right. We saw it from three and a half miles away. And you think like, wow, if you can see it from three and a half miles away, it must be wide open. That's not the case. It's like you get glimpses of stuff from way far away if you're up high or whatever. You just get these little glimpses. And you realize that you might only, the thing might only be visible like 5% of the time, 1% of the time.

I don't know. You can watch for hours. And there's like one moment when there it is and then it's not. But then you get down on its level and there's nowhere to get up and like, kind of like snipe in at them. There's just nothing you can do. You just got to go in there. It's all stuff higher than your head. And even though you caught some little random glimpse through the gaps and the stuff, at the end of the day

you gotta get in there there's like no place to go wait there's just, you gotta go in there and find him he's not gonna come to you yeah you gotta mix it up it's not like you're gonna get him at the old crossing I mean what's difficult being kind of

somewhat of a spotter too you see these animals the hunter and whoever else takes off after the animal to put on a potential stock. And as a spotter, you really want to be, you know, dead set on that animal and provide the most intel to that hunter to make sure that they can have a successful stock. And when you're sitting behind the glass, you you know the contour of that landscape looks so flat but when those animals start moving they just almost instantly disappear you know and so it can get real frustrating as a spotter as you're you know trying to lay down the groundwork for that hunter closing the distance but you lose sight of those animals and you lose sight of

them for I think Mike and i you know as you guys were hunting as you were stalking in on your oryx there were moments where we would see the oryx completely broadside you know as plain as day and then he would disappear and we would for 10-15 minutes have have no idea where he was and you would just be panning across and every now and then you know going back to carl's you know the polishing of the horns you would see these yuccas going back and forth and shaking and then you would just see a little shine with the tips of the horns and you would occasionally glance that you know and then the oryx would move and then there was a couple instances where we were like well i think they're gone you know like i don't know what we're gonna do but all of a sudden you

would see something barely you you know, flicker, and you would think that it was the wide open, and if there were an Oryx there, you would see it, but he's just behind the contour. That makes him almost invisible. Yeah, the one we got onto where we went in after it, we spooked that probably 50 yards. I think when it jumped up, it was probably sub-50,

and when it crossed out in front of us at a gallop, and I like i like that verb because when that thing moved i mean we knew we were getting close to where we'd seen it and there were probably three or four seconds of hearing galloping hooves before we could see the thing and there was no question like that's the oryx right right? It's not going to be a beef cow lumbering out of there. It was like the brrump, brrump, brrump. And it came across a gap at 50 or 60 yards in front of you. You had your rifle shoulder. Just an insane looking animal, big long tail flying out behind it.

Yep. And that was a big bodied bull. He didn't have very large, like very long horns, but the body on it was like a tank of an Oryx. And, you know, you made a good decision in that situation not to shoot. And one of the things we talked about after the fact is the tendency of that animal to want to look back at whatever spooked it. You know, kind of like when you think about a mule deer stotting away and wanting to pause and look back and occasionally give you a shot opportunity.

Oryx are notorious for kind of wondering like what the heck was that and so you know that particular individual did stop unfortunately in an area where we could not see it and as we pursued the direction that he had galloped off we ended up spooking him again at a farther distance and watched him you know disappear again into the vegetation which in that particular example was some kind of scattered fairly thick juniper trees one seed junipers were the the thing giving us fits it in that animal jeremy and i stayed up on the glassing knob to try to keep an eye on it. And, and we lost that Oryx about 20 minutes after you guys left, you know, to cover by vehicle and then foot this three and a half

miles, which we knew would take at least an hour. Um, and we lost it, but where you jumped, it was probably within a hundred yards of where we had last seen it. Where you last saw it. It just disappeared. But you never even saw it spook, though.

No. We never saw it. No. After we spooked that one, we decided to go check out the other side of this little ridge and went over there and popped into one, the second one we saw. And this one was at 400 yards, already dead on us. Yep. Just staring at us.

And we're just creeping up over the top. It's at 400 yards and locked onto us and gone then i was like man this is not going to be super easy because a lot of really hard to draw tags wind up being easy but this is not the case yeah i think this is like a really interesting tag to hunt because it's not easy but when you look at the success rates they're not bad it's not like you know it's not like killing but when you look at the success rates, they're not bad. It's not like, you know, it's not like killing a bull elk in Montana in the general season. 20% success. Right.

I mean, 14 to 20 or something like that. Yeah. You know, so I think this hunt is like 50 or 60% success rate. So like if you hunt them, if you really, you know, if you put days in and you kind of grind it out. Yeah. you hunt them if you really you know if you put days in and you kind of grind it out yeah you know and you will very likely have an opportunity so it's not like it's not hard from the sense that like you never see an animal you know what i mean but but it's very hard from the sense that like you have to make a lot of right correct decisions you know in in the whole process to really get it

to work when the state posts success rates for the hunt are they only giving you last year's success rates or is it like an accumulation of years probably just last year's success rates right yeah you can look it up year to year and we're talking like if you look last year i think it's like a 40 to 60 percent window across those 10 months of off-range hunts is kind of the ballpark another factor there is that you got a month to do it you know and you and i were chatting a bit when you found out you drew the tag you're like what would you what would you recommend i said well you could come down here we might end up getting one in a day or two but i think like a week of grinding it out if we hit it

hard you will very likely have a good opportunity if we hit it hard for a week. And we got one on our fourth day. Fourth day. Yep. Another thing that happened to us while hunting is oryx don't jump fences. Oryx go under fences. And they're big and they don't fit just under any old fence. And so the thing that's well known among oryx hunters is that you need to find that they'll use they'll know of crossing spots to get our fences so whether it's a fence that

would put them back into the mist into the safety of the missile range or or just range fences out on the open out in the blm land like everything around here is blm it's ton of blm so range fences out on blm land um they'll have known crossing spots. And it seems just from my observation, it seems like they like washouts. Yep. Where flash flooding or whatever scours out and makes a significant gap under a fence.

And then they'll use those spots. I was talking to an outfitter who was saying when he's seen people successfully archery hunt, did he ever say, he says he's seen people get shots. He hasn't had any clients off range. He hasn't had any off range clients get one with a bow.

But on range clients get them with bows. But I think he's saying off range he's had people get shots and those have been by finding a crossing under a fence and then just posting up and waiting on that crossing under the fence and the thing that they like to do he was explaining this thing they do is they brush out all the crossings so you can tell the vintage of tracks coming through

they'll also just take tires and stuff and drag tires down the road to scrub the road of tracks and then the morning you go drive the scrubbed road i've seen people do this by pulling old box springs behind their like uh just like bed springs the same way you might groom out a baseball field or whatever yeah a chunk of chain link fence yeah yeah scrub it all out and then the morning go drive and pick up a track because the peculiarity of this area which would not this would be hard for people to picture they live in other parts of the country when you're following a track in the desert you can pretty much run you can pretty much run and follow a track once you know what you're looking at there's not so many tracks that it's confusing it wouldn't be like following white

tails in the snow where you know they're crisscrossing and zigzagging and here's another group of six and then seven more across the track and then he started hanging out with five of them and split off and you can never do it's like it's sparse enough there's a few enough life forms around that when you get on that track you're gonna run that track down and one day we're driving along and we hit where there's a whole little, little hoedown in the road. And we got out and sussed it out for quite a while. And eventually found where the track, he'd come in,

mingled around the road a long time, went under a fence. Then we got on that track and followed that track. And you're just, most of the time, you'd have like a maximum shooting distance of 50 yards most of the time like for like a clear shot but you're just able to follow that track i'm following this oryx track he went to i we were calling bedding areas but they're like scent post areas he went from one to the next i think he went to four spots yep and the spots were all the same big shade tree tons of shit scattered around the shade tree

pawed up ground and obvious beds and then that track would leave and he'd go off in some other direction he'd hit another one of those spots and we followed him in a gigantic backwards s that's exactly right at which point it was like 103 degrees and we gave up on the track yeah that s i mean the way you described it is exactly if you imagine just the mirror image of a giant s that from top to bottom was about 1.4 miles tall so the length of that s we probably tracked that thing for two two and a half miles and it was this securitist route that intersected with a number of those scent post spots along the way and it was cool because there were other you know like other places where multiple animals might have come together and broken off and split apart yeah

made it hard and i felt like at one point we might have got off on a bigger and we upgraded because all of a sudden the track we were on, like, you'd get confused at these scent areas. Yeah. And Carl felt, and I think he was right, I feel like our track

is, like, ever so slightly bigger than the one we were on earlier. An interesting thing about it, the reason it was hard to keep optimism about the track was that we found where a coyote

had stepped in its track. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, okay. Did a coyote step in its track five minutes ago or are we on a day old track from the evening before? And then we found where it bedded. But where it bedded, a lizard had walked across. And I'm like, okay, did he just get up and a lizard happened to then just run across

or has that been there a while and that you know i mean that shook my confidence a little bit yeah and on the flip side though we had a couple we found a couple of fecal piles that you know if you chipped away at the top down at the core there was still like some mucusy moisture down in there and and the way that sun is cooking down like i don't think a pile of scat like that could stay put for 24 hours and not get baked to the core dried all the way out because that i mean they were out in the wide open so you and i like independently i think we reached a similar conclusion that that the tracks we were looking at were probably from like the afternoon or evening of the day before and then you're wondering like okay you know the gate of these things if they're just cruising

obviously they can cover a ton of ground but if they're in the process of you know like kind of checking out these different scent post areas bedding down from time to time feeding like maybe we're gaining ground but one thing is sure in your mind you're like i know beyond the shadow of a doubt at the end of this trail yeah there is an oryx and i don't know how far that is and if you had the stamina and and it didn't get over the fence into the range like you would eventually spook it or find it yep uh following that track another interesting thing about it is like when you're up glassing so jeremy explain your safari rack well i think I think, I think you guys, you know,

bring up a great point, right? That there's no perfect way to hunt Oryx. You know, we did, we tracked, we got up on knobs and we glassed and we cruised the safari rack. And, you know, about 10 years ago, when I first started hunting Oryx with some friends of mine, we've kind of fell into that same scenario where we were in the vehicle, you know, trying to track, trying to get to knobs to glass, and we just weren't being productive. We weren't turning up a lot of animals. And we realized, you know, with the contour of the landscape, we needed to get a vantage point. You know, the habitat is so expansive that, you know, in order to cover that ground, you want to be doing it efficiently. And so we, you know, I have two really good friends, my two buddies.

They, you know, put in a lot of hard work in creating this safari rack. They took an old ski lift. Mediocre welders. At the time. At the time. You're so wild. I'm joking. I'm joking.

Hey, this is coming from the world's worst welder. Well, no, there's people that have never welded. And then there's me, the world's worst welder. And then everything up from there. well no there's people that have never welded and then there's me the world's worst welder and then everything up from there i feel like i could give you a run for your money on that title my high school ag teacher more or less just like asked me to stop please mike yeah like this is i would like you to stop using the welder you i will just give you a passing grade but i don't want to do it anymore i that is really a accurate portrayal of my my experience in welding i think not to beat the welding thing to death but there's like form

and function right and when it comes to function that rack held two of us you guys are i know that we're insensitive we're in sensitive times we're in sensitive times and everyone right now and i'm talking nationally everyone right now is over sensitive and we're struggling with our sensitivity i'm just making a joke about some globby ass looking welds on the safari rack and i'll point out that i was very aware of these because the roads are very rocky and when you're up on the safari rack and the driver tips a little bit to the right because it's a thing you're like on a in the what do you call it in a tuna boat a tuna tower you're in the tuna tower yeah so two foot seas in a tuna tower feels like it's eight foot seas it's good but someone down on the deck is like no it's two foot seas like how could it be two foot seas i'm

swaying 10 feet side to side see i think See, I think you're looking at it. So the welds held. The sea clamp didn't. Here we go. At one point, the sea clamp inexplicably broke in half. I thought, well, it must have come loose. No, no, it broke. I think it got too hot.

Yeah, I've never seen that either. I think it got too hot from the heat of the sun. Yep. And it burst the metal. But listen, man, it's a sensitive time i understand everyone's sensitive about everything the welds they might hold great i'm not saying i could do better the welds are shitty i'm not gonna disagree but they held and it just struck me as funny absolutely to be up there swaying back and forth looking at that welt yeah for a

lot of hours. Absolutely. And that back bar, that back bar, man, it's not very comfortable. Well, it's the type of thing where, you know, the first time you make it, you've learned what you can add to it to make it that much more comfortable, and it's just unfortunate that we haven't had the time to make it that much more comfortable. No, what better could you want? He found a former ski lift bench.

Yep. Yeah, and it fits perfectly. And affixed it to the top of a contractor rack. Yeah. It fits perfectly. You know, and it gets the job done. The idea is when you're trying to get to point A to point B, you know, get on those high spots, use the extra, you know, six feet on top of that rack to just spend some time glassing.

Puts you up in the breeze, too. It does. You know, you get the driver to cruise at that 15, 20 mile an hour range, man. It's the only time you're comfortable. You get the wind blowing through your hair. Otherwise, you're just comfortably miserable up there. But, you know, it's been something that has helped us tremendously in covering ground and being able to turn up Oryx. But like you guys said, you know.

But the point being, what I was getting at about the safari rack, and we'll move on to other hunt methods. But when we were tracking in Oryx, we never got terribly far away from the zigzagging around. We got, what, a mile from the truck? 1.4. We got 1.4 miles from where the truck was. You're up there and you're glassing. And you're like, oh, there's nothing here. I've looked.

None here. Let's move. And then you get down into that shit. And the safari rack on the truck is how high it's probably about seven feet i would say you get down into that shit you're six feet tall yep the safari rack is probably high yes the safari rack seven feet tall and you realize that almost at no time can you look and see that thing. Right. And you're like, I think Carl put it like, he said, I think that when we're glassing this stuff, we're probably, maybe we're seeing 10%.

We're having like, if there's an Oryx there, we go to a spot you guys had hunted before. And we're looking out on just solid, like, you know, over 180 degrees of, no, 180 degrees of like great stuff. We're kind of up by a stock tank. We got 180 of just flat. And we're nice and high. Nice and high. It's so flat that i noticed that jeremy when jeremy glasses you don't even really mess around too much binoculars it's so

flat you can just take your spot and scope and you can basically get everything from 150 or 200 yards out to infinity in one frame so you can just take your spotting scope, paste it out, and just move it back and forth. There's no up-down movement. You just got the whole damn scene as you swoop along. We're sitting there, all of us, glass and glass and glass, and all of a sudden,

an oryx is 700 yards away, standing on a sand mound. No one saw it it's right in front of us so everything to the left everything to the right no one caught a glimpse of wherever the hell it came from it popped up in the frame of my binoculars as I'm looking

in my binoculars seeing no Oryx all of a sudden an Oryx just emerges from below full body up on this knob looking at us. In order to stare at us. In order to look at us. At 700 yards, it's already very aware of us.

Yeah. I have a theory that that Oryx was way closer minutes before that or seconds before that. It was cruising along towards where we were posted up. Heard us, whatever. Heard us, saw us, bolteded and then was doing that like what the heck is going on back there from 700 yards away and that's when i saw it because that for it to pick us up like we went back down it seemed impossible track it just didn't make sense so

that's my theory on that one so we went out go ahead well i was just gonna say and the oryx you know if you imagine the way that we're looking i mean the oryx is at 12 o'clock yeah like it you know it's not like off to the side it it no actually the way that everybody is faced so unless it had been waiting there unless it had been waiting there all day it somehow passed traveled through some amount of stuff in front of us emerged became visible then gallops off no one catches a glimpse of it leaving we go out and strike its track and follow its track and what does it do it doesn't look like from the where we found from where we picked up the track it looks like it trotted in a b-line and crossed into the missile range it was like it had a particular spot in mind. And when we got to that place, it was a spot where, you know,

that bottom strand of that barbed wire fence on the edge of the missile range ordinarily is probably like shin high. And at that spot, it was like mid-thigh high. And that Oryx, like without breaking stride, just ducked right under at that spot. As we were like following the track and I could see the missile range boundary coming up, I'm thinking that we're all thinking, like,

it'll hit the fence, but then it'll obviously have to travel, and I'm trying to figure out, like, is it going to cut left or right, and maybe we'll catch it going down the fence line somewhere, trying to find where it can cross. But it had already knew where it was going to cross and hit the fence at a crossing. And boop, back to safety. And it and it did all that and then i was like these sons of bitches man

like hard it did all that with any without any of us seeing it cover like what 400 yards while you think you're sitting there glassing the area right right and meanwhile you're glassing it so well in fact that one can run through 400 yards of the stuff in front of you and no one lays an eye on it. Right. It disappeared off the sand mound. Jeremy picked it up one place to the left. So we knew it was going, you know, that direction. And then nobody ever saw it again on the five of us.

I mean, and we were looking in the range too, right? We expected that animal to make its way in there and do the old fashioned look back, you know, and an hour later, we're still looking for that animal on range and never found it. Jeremy and I continued to spot from where we had originally seen the animal, you know, while you guys tried to put a track job on it

and nobody, neither of us ever put eyes on that thing. That's the thing I speculated on a couple of times. I wondered about the relationship to the fence in two ways. I wondered about the relation to the fences. How onerous do they view, like how annoying is it to cross? Because if you're hunting pronghorn, you'll often find that a spooked pronghorn will get really confused at a, you know, like a four or five strand fence. If they hit, if they're out of their normal routine and they get bumped or spooked somehow in a way they don't want to be spooked and they hit a fence, they'll be like, because they don't, I shouldn't say they don't.

They, they will. Okay. For all you people that are going to send in videos of antelope jump. Yes. A pronghorn will jump a fence. One in a hundred. Yeah. They'll jump will. Okay. For all you people that are going to send in videos of antelope jump. Yes. The pronghorn will jump a fence. One in a hundred. Yeah. They'll jump fence.

Do they like to, do they do it normally? No, they generally want to go under fences, but they, they are capable. Yes. Of jumping fences, but I've watched them hit fences and then run for a mile down the fence, almost like second guess themselves and start coming back and running down it's almost

like when you when a deer is going to cross the road and hit your car that they'll just start paralleling your car now and then and it seems so illogical i see them do crazy up against fences like very disoriented so i was like what is the oryx's relationship to the fence in that way and what is its relationship to knowing that the safety of the other side of the fence and i think that uh they're not terribly annoyed by getting across the fence because they have spatial awareness where they know like the crossing and i and my just little pet theory which is like completely like an amateur theory is that they are um they're aware of that they get screwed with less over there. Which every other kind of big animal definitely figures that kind of stuff out.

Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think they understand, you know, that they're safer on the range side of the fence. I've seen those animals cross in front of us at a fence line and they will cross under a fence almost about the same speed that they're approaching that fence. Oh. If they're in about a gallop, I've seen those. It's amazing how fast an oryx can dip down to the ground. You know, we think about ourselves trying to crawl under the bottom strand of the barbed

wire, you know, and you're on your knees and you're, you know, things are hurting. I've seen those animals just dip and they're under that fence and they're maintaining the same momentum out of there. So they, they're pretty athletic. I'll share with you a fence story that I've shared before, but it's worth, it's worth telling it again. We knew this guy in Florida. We were down there turkey hunting in Florida one time, and we ran into these guys that like to run pigs with dogs. And they were like,

oh, you guys should come out with us tonight. And this guy's family's cattle ranch abuts a nature preserve. And the between stuff that's been traditionally grazed, the difference between what's been traditionally grazed, the difference between like what's been traditionally grazed, which is all these hammocks.

So it's like just grasslands with these palm hammocks in it. Very open, grazed very low. It's just been, you know, grazed for whatever, a couple hundred years. I don't know.

The bird preserve is a comparatively a jungle. So it was amazing to see this juxtaposition between something that hasn't been grazed in however many decades and something that traditionally is like a very different landscape so on the border between the cattle ranch and the preserve is a fence the cattle ranch has uh a problem with hogs digging it up too bad. So he put a hog proof fence. Someone had put historically, someone had put a hog proof fence, but there are other people argue, well, there really is no hog proof fence,

but it's like kind of a hog proof fence though. They're always finding ways to get in and around it. What this guy would do, because this guy liked to hunt pigs, he put little doorways into the hog proof fence this is the rancher's kid he puts doorways into the hog proof fence in order that the hogs can come onto the ranch and let he lets him get used to the holes. So when we go out to hunt hogs, the first thing he does is, well, let me go close all the doors. He then drives down this big-ass long fence,

closing all the doors once it's about midnight. Then we start hunting. And guess where the dogs catch the pigs? At the doors. At the doors. At the doors. So, yeah, this is a little hunting method. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians

whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

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

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX x club y'all there's a research preserve i used to live on um in southeast michigan when i was an undergraduate at the university of michigan and there was a deer herd on the property it's a famous deer herd the george reserve is the name of this place and the fence had fallen into tremendous disrepair and i worked one summer helping to repair that

fence line and there were some places where white-tailed deer trails were coming on and off the reserve and one day in the middle of the day i just closed up a portion of that fence and there's a mountain bike trail that goes along the outside of the reserve and a mountain biker had spooked a white tail doe and so i'm standing there along the fence just mending mending a portion of the fence and 20 yards to my left is the spot i just fixed and this doe comes tearing through the woods and smashes into that spot in the fence oh really backs up smashes into it again and then stands there looking at the spot and then races off the other way down along the fence line so they get keyed into those crossing points that's interesting man she's like this normally works i mean she hit it hard like i'm standing there at the fence and

you know if you imagine like an outfielder going for a home run and crashing into the fence that's what it sounded like that big ching of the you know the the chain link and then and then backed up and did the same thing again like i know this is the spot without a shred of doubt in her mind i don't know why mountain biker comes by oh really yeah i was like what's she running from you know and then there's this 10 second delay and here comes a dude on a mountain bike i don't know why i'm thinking this right now but i want to get back to what we're talking about but i got a buddy who's a surveyor and he was surveying in michigan's upper peninsula and he put up those little contraptions

that you use to look at each other, the two surveyors. Yep. And he said that it's in the wintertime and all the deer are starving and shit in the wintertime and they got to go through and cut a sight line through the hemlocks. And these big

like cedar swamps up there, right? Is it hemlock or cedar up there? I call them like cedar swamps up there right yep is it hemlock or cedar up there i've heard i think it's cedar swamps okay yeah so they cut the sight line and then he gets on his little thing and the other guys on his little thing and he said they're having chainsaw running while they cut the sight line those deer just showing up they hear the chainsaw and come running yeah so he said you'd get set up to do your work and you had to hustle because then all of a sudden all the deer would be filling in, eating all the junk they knocked down. And someone had to run along trying to scare the deer, herd the deer out of a way enough to then go back and try to do your survey work.

Anyways, orcs hunt. I'd knock cedar limbs down to catch deer as like a bait source when I was darting deer for my grad project. Oh, really? Yeah, you could just trim a couple low limbs that were just out of reach of the browse line, and it was just as good as having any other kind of bait out there for bringing them into dart range. And then tranquilize them. Yep.

Huh. The one we got. The one we got, the oryx we got, was very similar to hunting. It was very similar to an antelope hunt situation, at least for me i would agree in general terms other than the vegetation no but in terms of there's some yep generally drifting like a caribou antelope kind of setup i feel like like there's some pretty far

away yep generally drifting in some direction on a somewhat identifiable land along a somewhat identifiable vegetation zone. Yeah. And you strike off at an angle and try to get to where you think they will arrive. But again, far off, it was like, like oh there's some orcs moving along and there he is and there he is and there he is and there he is and then you get down in that shit and it's

like i have no idea what is going on and we were using this far off power line like who spot you spotted again mike daniel yeah well yeah i mean it was a game it was a real group effort though to keep up with that. Well, no, but you were the first one to pick it off. Yeah, right. And way off in the distance. But it was real obvious. I mean, this one was like an easy one.

It just sort of like Carl's where it was like, you know, scanning something, you scan 10 times, and they're like, oh, there's an orc standing, right? Like, no question. Like, well, right there's an orc's broadside. Yeah, and way the hell off was a power line, and you were able to be like, there's a trailer you could see. You're like, count eight power poles.

And so when we struck off, we just went at an angle and at a point got lucky. Because we're sort of getting like, you know, one where they are. And then we eventually catch a glimpse of one. And we had it being like, let's say we're facing some way. And we had it be that they were going to be appearing at one o'clock, if we're lucky. And we're recognizing at this point that like everything's very far away. You can't see shit. Like not thumbing your gut knife to check if it's sharp.

You know, you're like, who knows? But, and we had a little cow, like an antelope antelope hunting blind cow blind looks like a cow set up and our line was off or they changed course and all of a sudden carl's got one at what distance i would say at that point it was probably like 150 picking us yeah picking us off at 150 And most, you know, our attention had been focused. If you imagine looking at like 12 o'clock is where we're thinking we might see these Oryx. I was trying to make it a point to do like a 360 every few minutes. Cause we were also seeing a lot of fresh sign in there. Probably the most tracks we'd seen.

Yeah. And I was thinking like, we've got these, this group that we've seen of three or four and who knows what else is in here. So I was trying to keep heads up with what's going on around us. had even said like we're just gonna all of a sudden have one staring at us yeah when we're sneaking in there and what caught my attention so again if you're thinking 12 o'clock i happen to be looking towards like let's say 4 30 off over my right shoulder and spotted that sword-like horn immediately dropped down without any question in my mind about whether or not that was an oryx and i whispered to each guy individually i'm like do not move because that thing was dialed dialed in and it went from what i saw was the like the parallel of one horn and it turned and gave me

the two horns so i saw you know the the fact that the fact that the skull is facing at us. And I never, I could not see the face at that point. I could just see these two, they kind of remind me like antennae of an insect. Um, and I could just see the tips of those two sword-like horns and could not see the face of the animal. And I'm just kind of like peeking up. So I tell the guys like, you know, don't move. I've got Steve on my left with the rifle.

Got Seth on my right we're all kind of packed in behind this decoy and uh i start trying to get the shooting sticks set up i've been carrying around a set of shooting sticks because that's one lesson we've learned the hard way you know about trying to get steady from a standing position you're always trying to work through all that vegetation so my chief responsibility this trip has been chasing steve around with the shooting sticks so they're at the ready so i get the shooting sticks set up at a good height for steve to be like in a kneeling position he sneaks around behind me peeks up over the top and as we rise up you know i'm thinking there's

probably like a 20 chance that the oryx is still there because there's been quite a bit of commotion right and he's like hey that cow's got a gun yeah that cow's got a gun sticking out of its back so so yeah um you know i'm i'm thinking i know like exactly where this thing is i don't initially relocate it but within a couple ticks there are two oryx trotting from left to right and at that point in order to gain like a good shooting lane we abandon the decoy we get up on our feet and we shifted to the right what do you think like 15 15 yards maybe? Yeah. And we get this nice gap where the Oryx are now stopped doing the Oryx look back. He did what he shouldn't have done.

Yes, he did. Did what he should not have done. Yeah, stopped at 230 yards and stared. Yep. The problem was, though, the shooting sticks were set for the kneeling shot at that point. So we drop a couple of the legs. That still wasn't quite stable enough

we got the third leg out got him ranged steve took his time blouch blouch and the thing was the thing that was interesting about that is uh you know my ears plugged trying to do a good job of protecting my hair that was annoying and yeah you're asking me for a range of my ears plug the range what's the range what's the range well let me ask you range with my ears plugged. What's the range? Let me ask you this. I turn back and Carl's got his ears extra plugged. Let me ask you this. What range are you zeroed on that rifle? I don't know how big they are.

200 yards zero. I'm looking at that thing like there's no question you don't need to worry about range. Just shoot that thing. Me being a novice, Oyx hunter yeah and not having sort of like a very fixed mental image of how big they are yep and hearing all these stories of how big they are yes uh i was like i if you had said 350 i wouldn't have been shocked. Okay. That's good to know. And it's a very disorienting. Landscape. It's like flat ass desert with brush in it.

There's an animal. You don't know how big it is. Yep. You can see it from like the brisket up. Yep. And I just was, you could have said three 30. Yep. Well, so my thought process in that situation like in that instant i was thinking like

don't you're not worrying about adjusting anything like that that animal in terms of where your point of aim would be if you're zeroed at 200 ish that animal somewhere right in that ballpark so i'm just yeah i would only be a minute i would be a minute low and yeah in hindsight maybe but no that was the thing I wanted to know. And so I noticed your lips moving and I've got my ears like plugged with my fingertips and I unplug my ears. You're saying range 228. You're like, perfect.

And don't, you know, I imagine don't adjust anything, right? Didn't adjust anything. Aim dead on. So I've got my ears like plug plugged, like fingertips over those little ear flappers pushed way down in there. And when you pulled that trigger, the sound of the impact was what stands out in my mind.

It was such a distinctive whop. And I wasn't exactly sure which of the two you might shoot at. The one that you shot was the one I expected, but I thought you might shoot at the one that you shot was the one i expected but i thought you might shoot at either one potentially and they were close enough together that i saw one of them run away so i wasn't certain like which you know what exactly had happened at that moment but i definitely heard a very distinctive whop our buds who were back on the glass heard that too you i liked the whop yeah and i liked that only one ran away yeah and there was a there was a big cloud of dust to like instantly there was this plume of dust i

don't know if you saw that but i did not see the big brown plume of dust and you know we you were in the right mind space at that point because you're like we need to get to where i can be ready for a follow-up shot and i was sitting there with a good line where there were a couple sort of like semi-distinctive bushes lined up where i felt like we could we could keep a good line to get in on that thing but we kind of split up a little bit worked our way into the area where we where we thought that oryx might be and you very quickly identified the location and that animal had not taken a single step from the time. They went right down.

The trigger went right down. We did shoot him in the neck. Yes. Because it was hard to tell. We were very, you know. Yeah, I'm a little. A little trigger shy. Well, I think.

Is that the right word? Liberal with the follow-up shots. I mean, the stories you hear. We heard another one that day. Yeah, we did. And that's heartbreak. one that day Yeah we did and that's heartbreaking Later that day we were talking to another Oryx hunter He wasn't hunting right now but he had hunted Oryx in the past And told us another story

Yeah You want me to recount that? Yeah The guy was talking about being out with his so called friend And knocking an Oryx down That's right Stop being friends over it I don't blame the guy, man.

And I'm sort of haunted by the situation with my buddy too. And I'll tell that very quickly as well. But the situation the guy told us was he shoots an oryx. The oryx is on the ground. They walk in and they're trying to determine whether or not a follow-up shot is necessary. And his friend unexpectedly decides the best course of action is to throw a stick

at the downed oryx no the guy wanted to shoot it yeah he's he's like maybe we should take a follow-up and he's like no i don't let's not take a follow-up shot it's dead and instead he chucks a stick at the downed oryx at which point the oryx jumps to its feet and runs to the horizon never to be seen again you know and just real quick while we're on the topic i've got one of my dearest hunting buddies um guy named ryan who we were out on his off-range oryx hunt and we worked hard we suffered together we earned a shot opportunity where he hit an oryx knocked it off its feet and we were both so elated and so rookie in our oryx experience that we're standing there you know just like giddy looking at each other like yeah yeah and the oryx is laying there and the next thing you know the thing kicks its feet back under itself and just gallops to the horizon and we're never to be seen again

we went down there found a couple little spots of blood and that oryx i mean we followed it like you said the tracking conditions you can basically walk at ax i mean we followed it like you said the tracking conditions you can basically walk at a fast walk and we followed it for miles up and over hill after hill and it never even slowed down so they're yeah the uh idea of being liberal with follow-up shots makes sense and when i got around to where i could see what what was the exit point of your shot it was up at the base of the neck. So you'd made a solid shot on that Oryx, and I do not believe that Oryx would have gone anywhere.

But when I saw the hole at the base of its neck and the fact that the Oryx was still breathing a little bit. You could have been stunned from this blow to the process. When I saw that hole on the neck, I just said, shoot it again. And we went back and forth, I think, three different times. We were on the neck i just said shoot it again and and we went back and forth i think three different times we're like really like shoot it again just just be safe and that's that follow-up shot you took it didn't do a ton of meat extra meat damage shot in the neck yeah and so i feel like a shot in the neck then for a minute was scared that i just blew the

horn off exactly i could carl told me it doesn't matter. I did say that. And I stand by that. Because I was like, man, one of those horns. Yeah, that was one of the most sickening experiences with my buddy Ryan. And I take responsibility for that

because I should have just said, the same thing I said to you is chamber around and just keep your crosshairs on that thing. And if there is any question in your mind about whether it may or may not get up, like if it blinks wrong, take a follow-up shot.

We spoke to a guide who expressed to us that the glory days of off-range oryx hunting in New Mexico are waning. That it's getting harder. You don't have the big ones around anymore. And it is like, I mean, is it fair to say they're kind of whittling away at them? I mean, you just read the numbers.

There's a thousand fewer. And when we're only talking about four or five thousand, a thousand is a lot. But we're still over the objective, right? I'm not saying we're not objective. I'm saying that the good old days are waning. I mean, for one, I can't speak to the good old days because I wasn't fortunate enough to hunt at those times. But the hunts that I've been fortunate to be on, you know, we've, we've turned up Oryx and I can't tell you, it's a lot of Oryx. It's a little Oryx.

I don't know how to, you know, quantify that to past experiences in the nineties, but I think, you know, um, the, the direction of, of, you know, the way the population is being managed, they want it to be at a lower target rate. But I think the hunting is good still. I would find it hard to believe that it's dwindling down to the expectations that we might have gotten from the individual. Yeah. Well, let's say you had $2 billion. And then all of a sudden you had one billion and i observed man you have uh less money you would then be like but a billion is a lot and i'm like yes but you have less that's all i'm getting at i'm not saying it's bad i'm just

saying he seemed to think that it used to be like wham bam maybe that's not even true there is like a real good old days problem that hunters suffer from right in general and i think you know i've never it might even as simple as like everyone remembers okay just me now i'm thinking back to last turkey season in my mind all i did was call back and forth at hot gobblers how much does that happen a couple times yeah but in my mind all i did was call back and forth at hot gobblers how much does that happen a couple times yeah but in my head it's like dude right you know you forget about all that like the days nothing happens in your mind it's like turkey on oh yeah it's great man working hot working you know so whatever uh it might just be his you and he wouldn't be the first guy to tell you that things used to be good.

Right. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, he spent a lot of time hunting in those good old days and I'm sure a lot of has changed since then, as far as tag allocation and pressure and those types of things that could be, you know, there could be many more contributing factors to, you know, maybe that,

that dwindling down of the, of the experience. And, and I've, I've never looked at those data, but we do post harvest success data that includes because, so like you'll have to report on this harvest and identify the sex of the animal that you killed. I don't think they'll ask you anything about the horns, although I can't recall. But they will ask you how many days did you hunt. So you could, I mean, from a quality of, I'm not talking about necessarily from a number of animals in the population standpoint.

But if that's a corollary to the quality of the hunting, I mean, you know, the good old days, you could look at those data and ask how, you know, what percentage of people are being successful and how long is it taking them to be successful? Yeah. So that information exists. So you could find this all out. And the range, on range hunts, uh, they do record the length of the horns on the animals. So you can see if there was a drift. Yeah.

You could see if there's a drift there. Yeah. Right. So, you know, maybe it wouldn't tell you anything about off range. Although I, I think, I think the animals that you see on an off range hunt, many of them also spend a lot of time on the range. Yeah. I don't think they have, I don't know what their home range sizes are. They don't divide each other up into, okay, you

guys are off range, we're on range. Right. I don't get a sense that there's like a really high level of, you know, fidelity to a particular area. It's just like, or show up in one place and if they don't get bumped, they hang around there for a while.

Yeah. But then they might just all take off walking and go, you know, 10 miles back onto the range or wherever. Yeah. I'm not like bad mouthing the experience. I mean, we had interact, well, except for the day we got here and only went out in the

afternoon, we had interactions and like opportunities. Yeah. We even had an opportunity the day we got here. Right at dark though, we ran out of daylight. Oh yeah. We found one. Right. It was like, you could have walked there. Anyways. Multiple opportunities after that too. Yep. opportunity to the day we got here remember right at dark though we ran out of daylight oh yeah we found one right it was like you could have walked there anyways multiple opportunities after that too so like not bad mouthing it i'm just i'm just sharing a thing that a guy said and take it for

what take it for what it's worth yeah and i was just trying to sort of offer the approach that if some you know that if if we're really interested in that question, the information's publicly available. Yeah. So we had opportunities every day. Got one the morning of our fourth day. You could say, this is going to sound like you're giving away something, but this is something you can find. The most basic internet search would reveal to you

that you want to hunt within, I don't know, 10, 12 miles of the missile range across the Northern and Western sides. And if you think I'm narrowing it down, I'm talking, uh, 180 linear miles of a 10 mile wide stretch of ground. So plenty of place to hunt. Yeah. And side too i mean right seth wasn't there some a story somebody reached out through some

guy sent me a screenshot of an on of onyx i had to like go on onyx and kind of figure out where it was but it was on the east side oh he said look here if you're struggling. Really? Yeah. Okay. So maybe there is 130, 260, 290, 320. By looking at Onyx. 320 linear miles of a 10 mile

wide strip. That's my hot tip. By looking at Onyx though, it seems that that east side, there's not as much ground to hunt well it seems to be a little bit more checkerboarded yeah um but you know they've they've seen them you know really far north too they've seen them you know south as well so that 360 degrees around there i think that's a that's a really good yeah my hot tip would be like five to seven miles around the entire perimeter of the missile range yeah the potential to bump

into them and there is an enormous amount of blm land yeah there is no need millions of acres yeah there is no need to feel like you know you don't have spots i mean state blm plenty of space yep that's right another hot tip is they're pretty serious about that missile range boundary so having have an onyx you know or or some other mapping app to uh so you're confident where it is it's pretty well marked but yeah it's so bad that i leaned on it one time i leaned on it and and quickly withdrew my fingers, realizing that my fingers had wrapped around the barbed wire into it. Probably a photograph of you.

I was like, oh, man, they're probably reading my mind right now with some kind of contraption. And, of course, there are some private inholdings around, some ranch inholdings, you know, and amongst a lot of BLM and state lands, and you've got to be careful about those as well. I think one of the biggest tips I can give to folks that may be lucky enough to draw that tag is not only do you get a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, from. But get it tuned up. Get it tuned up. You know, from a map, it looks like you can get from point A to point B very easily. But once you're there on the landscape you'll quickly understand that you know time really erodes those roads and a quick thunderstorm can really have a lasting impact yeah flash flood flooding is serious issue absolutely

especially this time of year in june you got monsoons and they just like make the rivers turn into the roads turn into rivers right these guys travel with um lots of water 20 extra 20 gallons of fuel and fuel cans all your repair stuff shovels and whatnot pickaxes and then you do want to have like your your camp gear and just keep your stuff in your truck. So you can roll from. Yeah. And I have an extra spare tire. Like I bring two spares. You have two spares.

You bring two spares. I have two spares. And he knows that he's running 10 ply Kevlar sidewall tires. Those mesquite thorns will puncture tires. Yep. Sidewalls and tread side. Like good solid tires are are a huge advantage yeah my buddy who built that uh safari rack one time we were hunting and he popped a tire

put the spare tire on a couple hundred down a couple hundred yards down the road he started hearing some air and sure enough he popped that that same tire that we just replaced so multiple spares we were out of tires and we had to make a trip back into town to get those tires fixed i also have an air compressor and so like a little we've got two air compressors plug kits all of it so you gotta be rigged if you rig up like that if you rig up where you got a good baja truck and rig up with fuel water food camp gear i got one more for you okay if we were to count up the number of full coolers of ice that we've been hauling i was just thinking i forgot it's 100 it's 100

degrees in the daytime we probably have at least half a dozen coolers with us some of them are giant that we had hundreds of pounds like we probably had 300 pounds of ice i i had 250 in my head no but yeah i i think 300 i forgot that detail and that is because you got a picture putting uh at the top end you got a picture putting a 400 450 pound bowl parted out and if you want to keep the hide they're sweet that you need to be able to ice that thing because you're a long way from any kind of town and you're a long way from replenishing ice. And so you need massive amounts of ice and

coolers because it's a hundred degrees. It really, you're right. It's, it's, I mean, over a lot of this hunt, it was over a hundred degrees in the middle of the day. So if you shoot one at 11 o'clock. Clock's ticking. You got to get that thing cooled down.

Yeah, you're just not going to be like, if you got to carry it a mile or two, and then get it in your truck, and then drive into, you're screwed. Right. Like the bull you killed. Absolutely. Jeremy and I, again, had hung back to the spot and you guys went in and killed them. And then, you know, normally it would have,

like you guys took a couple of quick photos, I would imagine. And then, you know, till we were able to make our way there, you guys were, you know, in the middle of it, of getting that animal apart. And, you know, I maybe would have been a little offended in some situations like, oh, I would have liked to get a picture with the animal.

Like not like that thought never crossed my mind. Like, no, the, you just got to get to work and get that thing taken down. It's alarmingly warm. Yeah. I mean, those quarters were off and it's like, put them in the bag. Let's go.

Let's take a load. As Carl was gutting that thing, just the,, like, second by second, it seemed like, was just growing. Ballooning. Yeah. Yeah, like in my hands. It was huge. I'm opening that thing up. Yeah, time is.

By the time. Jeremy had a cape spoil in two hours, right? Yeah. The Oryx, I was lucky enough to harvest in August within a couple hours, and it was nowhere near as hot as it was when we were able to harvest yours. The hair was slipping. Yeah, the hair was already slipping. You know, I took the cape home and I wanted to donate it to a taxidermist and I called him and he said, do me a favor and go ahead and take a clump of that hair and just give it a pull. And I pulled it and I was pulling off handfuls of hair off that cape within hours. Oh yeah, he was like,

when did you kill it? I said about 3.30. It was, you know, 4, 5.36, somewhere around there. He said, go ahead and just pull some hair. I pulled it and he's like, is it coming off? I said, yeah. He's like, throw it away. We took a giant cooler, put 60 pounds of ice in the cooler and then put down a contractor bag and then laid the hide meat side down.

Yep. Kind of loosely folded to get it cool. Shifting it around to get all that safety. And packed all, like, you know, you hear a lot of people say, oh, I hesitate to even get into this. You hear people say, like, don't put meat in water. And sure, in the perfect world, like, if you go into a slaughterhouse, they don't put, well, they cool poultry, as we now know, and ice baths.

But no one in a slaughterhouse puts meat in the water to cool it off. But I've found that in really hot places, hunters don't hesitate to put meat in the water because wet meat is better than rotten meat. When I hunt in Hawaii, everything goes into ice water. To take a shitload of ice, put water on it, submerge it. Because like, well, I don't like it when it's rotten. I'll take wet. I'm just thinking of us loading our water bottles with ice. I mean, you would fill an allergen container full of ice.

And by the time that sucker hit your lips, it was already all melted. Yeah. And the meat's highly regarded. Oh, man. You know a lot of things are good, but everybody says they're no good? People be like, oh, big buck mule deer. I love them. My wife likes them. Everybody likes them. But some people like to shit talk them.

But, uh, Oryx, everybody says it's good. Oryx, Axis deer, Sika deer, everybody says it's good oryx axis deer sika deer everybody says it's good yeah it would be like a really common reaction like if you ask a non-hunter in new mexico like oh do you like wild game meat they'll be like i like oryx it i mean that's it's got that good of a reputation i think it's more i think it's just really mild yeah yeah i wouldn't say i mean i'm glad you said that because i would not say it's my favorite for that very reason too mild

i feel like it's a little bit too mild i think that's why i like mule deer i like a you know i don't mind a robust flavor yeah yeah i mean i you know people like to say horn you know if you like to talk about wild game being organic Yeah, I mean, I like pronghorn. You know how people like to talk about wild game being organic? Yeah. And the vast majority of wild game eating in this country is not organic. Not even close. Orcs, no way they're not organic.

What would be a thing that would make them not organic? Maybe if they got into some of that, one of those cattle spots where there's some kind of supplemental out there, that could be. But I agree with your point, but there may be the occasional exception. And the ones that are on the missile range, probably almost to the individual. Because they don't graze any livestock on the

range, right? Not to my knowledge. So organic. Yep. You're dark. You're mallard. Nope. You white mallard. Nope. You're whitetail.

Probably not. But these are organic works. Yep. Certified. Yep. What else, man? Fill me in. Anything we missed?

Well, I think on that logistics piece, we talked a lot about ice just now. And the fact that, I think on that logistics piece, you know, we talked a lot about ice just now. And the fact that, you know, I think this kind of hunt really lends itself to teamwork in terms of the hunt itself, but also logistically. I think going out into that country with a single vehicle, you know, I would put like, I would put like an extra vehicle in the mix as a valuable piece of car because if you get buried like we've all got toe straps and there's just peace of mind like some of the stuff that we were driving over there were some places i thought i thought that one night that jeremy's truck was going to tip over in that in that washout man and if something like that happens and you're way the heck back in here and there's some places where phone service is spotty and you cannot you cannot exaggerate the vastness of the landscape so having an extra vehicle i think

is really smart and then also you know just having another person in case something goes wrong you know there's snakes it's hot there's all kinds of stuff that might happen from a health and well-being perspective. So I would suggest not doing the hunt solo. That'd be my other piece of advice. Yeah, but if you rigged up properly, two rigs, a couple buddies, outfit them all the way, you could, like we talked about this thing being 130 miles north to south, you could finagle your way just on washed out two tracks and whatnot finagle your way for days sitting up on top of the top or whatever the hell you're doing stopping at every high spot to look and just spend your time yep it and it might be worth noting you know somebody

who has no idea what they'd be you know what this landscape is like in the vegetation like if you bring a brand new sixty thousand dollar pickup down here you're gonna get some pinstripes you may end up sending steve an angry email yeah you get arizona arizona pinstripes you just you get scratches it's it's real good to have a capable truck that's already broken in broken in and got a few dents and scratches because you're going to probably. Yeah, you guys took offense when I called them Arizona pinstripes. That's right. Yeah.

The best thing I heard lately is, what was the rifle we were talking about the other day? Those old Remington slide. Those Remington. Remington pump. Those Remington slide action rifles what were those the amish machine guns yeah they're like seven were they seven seven sixties and seventy six hundred dude i remember guys that like if you were when we were kids man like you know

yet like a lot of people like your hand me down was a 30 30 right or whatever yeah but the thing to get was if you could get one of those rammington slide action rifles yeah and then get the look through mount oh yeah so you had the iron sight yeah like a buckhorn sight on the bottom and then you're right like these like plastic mounts you could look through then you had your scope on top so it was like a brush gun and a field gun yeah i grew up machine gun man you get a lot of rounds downrange quick yeah seth and i both grew up. A rummish machine gun, man. You get a lot of rounds downrange quick. Yeah. Seth and I both grew up in Pennsylvania, and I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to say in the heyday of our deer camp when there were 20 plus guys there, at least 50% of the rifles that people were hunting with were slide pump action Remington rifles. And the other 50% were lever action 30-30s.

Yeah. I mean, some guys were starting to hunt with bolt guns i was old school i had third i had a model 94 32 special with a peep sight nice and it had that reducer so as you always had to carry that reducer around your pocket you know yeah and um in the morning you had to take the reducer out because it was too dark but then once it got good and light you'd kind of like screw that reducer in because it'd give you the extra accuracy. Then it started getting dusk and you had to take the reducer back out. But I put some doughs down that thing. I put down a buck or two.

That 32-win special was a good one. Man, I was so stupid I sold that thing. And it was given to me. There's this guy, one of my mentors as a kid, this guy Eugene Groders. And he was in his 80s. He made a point to have a gun for every year he'd been alive. And he kept them in these big overhead racks in his house. So his house was like the ceiling, instead of a drop ceiling, it looked like a, like

what his like den area, it looked like a drop ceiling of firearms, 83 of them or whatever up there. And super generous generous nice dude um i remember he used to have like he was a big admirer of these are all world war ii guys you know but he's a big admirer of like centerfolds from uh you know like old whatever the hell playboy precursors were tiger magazine or whatever you know like and he had always decorated everything with these and i remember being a little kid and you know wandering around there you know like man am i supposed to look at this or i can't really help not look at it oh my dad don't catch me looking anyways he had

all these damn guns and he was such a nice dude the way he instead but but uh he gave me a model 94 and instead of him saying I just want to give this to you as a nice guy he presented it to me to be like I got to counting and realized that I have an extra gun oh man what a guy

and I like to have one for every year I'm alive so please take this and positioned it to me as a kid that I was doing him a favor by taking that gun. That's such a cool thing. And then I took it, shot a bunch of deer with it. I remember going out in the yard and someone filled a milk jug up full of water and put it out there at 75 yards and hit the milk jug full of water. And that was like the test, you know, and I was like, it's a hunting gun and then later um sold it to a dude that had a uh

uh wood stove a gun shop wood stove shop sold it to him and he gave me 350 bucks for it because i wanted a trapping gun of those uh 22 22 20 gauge over and unders. Oh, Savage? Yeah, Model 24. Yeah. And then later realized that I was grossly underpaid. Yeah. For that Model 94. Yeah. My fault. Anytime you sell a gun later on, I'm like, dude, what was I thinking?

Because you forget what it's like to be out of money. And then you just think you were being stupid. Oh, I'd like to have that thing back. I got something we forgot. Go ahead. Well, it's still fresh in my mind. Carl mentioned snake. I just happened to look across the table at Seth. I don't want to take your story from you.

Yeah, be careful where you step out here. I think we were just pulled up to a glassing spot. I swung the door open and stepped out and walked over. Between a bush and the door. Between a bush and the doors.

Not very much space. And I walked over to Jeremy's truck that was in front of us. And we exchanged words and stuff. And I turned around to get back in Mike's truck. And right where I had stepped out is a coiled up rattlesnake in a little dish in a little dish it was like an old I think it was like an old cattle track or something that just you know got washed out and just made this perfect little dish and uh yeah I stepped inches from it I mean it really would be difficult to step closer to the snake without actually stepping in.

He didn't give a shit, though. No. I put a video on my, if you go to Instagram, at Stephen Rinella. Yeah. Is there one? At? Signs underscore West. There'll be photos of it.

You should change your thing to Seth so people can find you. Or at the Flip-Flop Flesher. Yeah, I don't know. Or at Seth. I gotta talk to Seth. Because who would know? Who would know how to look you up? I want to talk to, we can just type in my name and it comes up. Oh. I want to talk to someone about that, about like

if that makes a difference by changing your... Yeah, because Seth's a photographer, takes beautiful photographs. Thank you. You can go on there and follow him. At Sines West. Sines. Underscore West. Yeah, so it's not his name.

It's just Sines West. Yeah. Underscore. Maybe it needs updated. I think you need to update it. One last thing. Another good Sethism is tagged out. I'm going to call this, we should call this episode tug out.

Because rather than saying we tagged out, Seth would say to call this, we should call this episode Tug Out. Because rather than saying we tagged out, Seth would say we tug out and scun it. I think that's a Pennsylvania thing. That's where I came up with it. That's where I heard it. Well, tug out. Tug out. Yeah.

We're all tug out. Like, I don't know. That sounds perfectly normal to me. All tug out. Love it. All tug out. Okay, Jeremy, thank you. Well, tell people how to find, how do people go if they want to look at the work you guys do?

Well, you can go to the National Wildlife Federation or nwf.org. You know, from there. That's a hunting friendly conservation group. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, the National Wildlife Federation focuses on a lot of conservation issues, but one of the things that I and a lot of my, you know, team prides ourselves in doing are, you know, conservation that's related to sportsmen and sportswomen.

Advocating for things like Land Water Conservation Fund, the Great American Outdoors Act, access for sportsmen and sportswomen to public lands. A lot of those issues that we hear a lot about on this show, National Wildlife Federation and the team that I'm fortunate enough to work with, you know, really does a great job of, you know, working hard to protect these traditions that we, you know, value that allows us to be here talking about, you know. And so folks want to learn more about, as you know, the National Wildlife Federation itself is a nonprofit, but we're also made up of state affiliates. So, you know, if you're in New Mexico and you draw an Oryx tag and you want a little bit more information, you can always go check out the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. But, you know, go to nwf.org and you can really start to see kind of all the different angles that we focus on in conservation and kind of start to, you know, learn from there and kind of really divulge into the many different state, you know, affiliates that are also focused on more specific issues. Yeah. When I say a hunting friendly conservation group,

that's like a thing that I think is really important for you to understand because when you support hunting friendly conservation groups, you're in, you're getting in bed with people who want there to be a, they want there to be great habitat. They want there to be a lot of wildlife and they support your right to use that wildlife when there is enough of it to warrant some consumption and other conservation groups that might really

support the habitat and support the wildlife and uh want to starve you out and so i think always lend your support to the hunting friendly ones. Cause if not, you're just, you're, you're helping the long game, but screwing the, screwing yourself in the short term. That's my two cents. You think Mike? He's got nothing to say.

I got nothing to say. Any concluders, Carl? Uh, I would just like to express gratitude to my two buddies you know

these guys taking time off of work and beating the crap out of their vehicles and you know

cooking some incredible food and you know just like I think you guys both have an appreciation

Steve and Seth at this point for they rolled out the red carpet absolutely yeah but they rolled out the red chili sauce I think you guys both have an appreciation, Steve and Seth, at this point. They rolled out the red carpet. Absolutely. They rolled out the red chili sauce, man. The point I want to make is it's not because you were the guy coming to hunt, but that's just the kind of guys they are.

And if you were any other old Joe buddy of mine coming from out of state to go on an Oryx hunt, they would have gotten the same kind of treatment because I'm lucky enough to have friends like these two. Great. Appreciate you guys. Jeremy and Mike, thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys. If anyone draws an Oryx tag, Jeremy and Mike would be happy to take you out. The OT.

No, I mean, you guys. Don't even worry about bringing a truck. You guys are thoroughly welcome this was this was an absolutely enjoyable five days of just bombing around with with people that you know really feel like old friends at this point and so absolutely really an authentic experience and just a heck of a lot of fun so i you know i appreciate the time together this was great yeah thanks guys Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada.

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