The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 247: The Miss and the Return

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Kurt Racicot, Rick Smith, Dirt Myth, Ridge Pounder, Chester Floyd, Seth Morris.Topics discussed: Harder than a woodpecker's lips; being dialed in on your system; a 10,000 year old footprint sandwich of early human, mammoth, and ground sloth; when a pelican starts a brush fire with a carp hanging out of its mouth; dippin' to deficate; free pouring powder and Daniel Boone’s ballistics; bed ticking and muzzleloader families; making your own bird shot by melting lead in a cool way; the extent of Steve's self loathing and the three main feelings; what becomes displaced on a goat when it tumbles down the mountain; the time when Steve shot a buck with his pants down; conceding that storming the ridge was not smart; a snail on a razorblade; a hot tip on where to find mountain goats: where ridges collide with benchy saddles; how Chester got married in a homemade bolo tie made out of elk antlers; ET's cocoon for Covid times; why Steve is a great dad; Jimmy Buffet's zero hangover cocktail; "if you're not learning, you ain't earning"; what a cactus buck is; walking away from your long johns; buying back the bear you killed in self defense; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Alright, we're here joined in part by Kurt. Was it harder than Woodpecker Lips or tougher than Woodpecker Lips, Roscoe? Harder. I think harder. Kurt, harder than Woodpecker Lips, Roscoe. Out of

Bozeman, Montana. Did you know that that was your that's a guy wrote in? I remember you mentioning that last time. Harder than woodpecker lips. I don't think we had the saying right at that point though. You got to trademark that. Yeah. And I know now that you have, I've witnessed it now,

your monastic, your sort of monastic food regimen. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Put it all together for one day. I don't view it as simple. Well, see, now. I'd call it hardcore. Oh, it's totally hardcore. It's harder than a woodpecker's lips.

It is harder than a woodpecker's lips. Everything about Kurt's shit is so dialed yeah yeah i've i've just taken notes all week i felt like my i was just a hot mess compared to really yeah just everything is his pack

his food he's a fussy little fella his like his clothing system everything just a fussy little guy just so fucking dialed yeah anytime i was drinking hot liquids i was like

god i'm weak. Yeah. Kurt's a designer at Stone Glacier. And like a founder at Stone Glacier. Yep. Yep, started in 2012. Bought a sewing machine. Bought a sewing machine, yeah, a few years before that.

Like a little old lady, sewing machine. Yeah. A few years before that. Like a little old lady sewing away. Yeah. Kurt had explained this before is that you would modify your backpack so much that you eventually wind up with sort of a different backpack. Well, that's really how it all started. And it took a while. It took probably a couple of years, but yeah, you keep tweaking on little things. Started with the bags and started with the frame. And at the end of it, you end up with something completely new.

So that, that was really where the whole company started. I want to detail his monastic food regimen is, and it made sense this trip. Because Kurt forgoes. See, here's where it gets a little bit like, this is where I kind of got thrown off. I was telling the boys last night, if I could. This is going to make you uncomfortable, Kurt.

You might want to leave. It's a compliment. It's a compliment. It's a compliment, but it might make you feel uncomfortable. I was saying if I could vacate my brain for a while and go live in a different brain, I'd probably go live in yours for a little while. And there's very, very few people that would say this about. about like if i could go occupy like i would live in my same house family like same all stuff but just have like be in your brain for a little while and be that um that here's what i'm trying to say dollars here's what i understand you don't like to when you're out you drink coffee at home yeah but you won't drink coffee out hunting because it's too inconvenient. And so you wake up and just eat energy bars, and instead of coffee, and it was there anyway, and it was kind of get dialed in on my system.

And so when I wake up in the morning, part of this, I'm really hungry. So the first thing I'll do is roll out of my bag and grab a bar to eat. And then when I'm getting all my stuff packed and getting dressed, I'm eating my bar. So you're eating one in your bag? Uh, when I'm starting to climb out. Yeah. So by the time I have my boots on, my gators on, I'm gone.

So there's no cooking. It's, uh, it's just kind of trying to be efficient and not having to get up earlier just so that you can make coffee. That doesn't, I'd rather lay in my bed or in my bag and get more sleep and be warm. But what was going on when you, um, you, uh, when even you, uh, snubbed our campfire?

I didn't know I snubbed your campfire. Oh yeah, no. Did you notice that? I don't know if you guys noticed. Rick or, uh, Kurt wouldn't go by the campfire. I didn't notice that. I didn't know I snubbed your campfire. Did you notice that? I don't know if you guys noticed. Kurt wouldn't go by the campfire. I didn't notice that. I didn't notice that. We were all hanging out.

No, there was a comment. He always stood off in the distance. The fire was staring at him. He didn't want to be corrupted. Yeah, the fire's too hedonistic. He didn't want to be, he's like, I don't want to become soft by going by no campfire. No, that second night, you were the last one by the campfire. Oh, he was.

I was appreciating it. Yeah. Oh, so you did. Maybe he just didn't want holes in his gear. Yeah, it could be. I was like, I want to have a ton of those spark holes. We'll get back to that. We'll get back to some of that stuff

I want to cover off on a couple of things. You'll appreciate this, Seth. Remember how we were just hunting in June? We hunted oryx at the White Sands? Yep. Missile range. Or not. I'll rehash.

Off range. In New Mexico, we had a whole show about this, but I'll just explain to folks real quick. In New Mexico, there's like two oryx hunts. It's more complicated than this, but just to simplify things, there's two Oryx hunts. There's on range, which means you get to actually hunt the white sands missile range. And it's real handholdy. Like it's like a 90 some percent success rate, but real handholdy. You got to go to a little seminar. They kind of tell you, you can go over there, but you can't go over there. And at seven o'clock, you got to be out of here and you can't start till it's this very like you know

it's like being in the army yeah and it's on i mean it's that way because on a military base oh we're top secret they got unexploded ordnance all around yeah they got aliens locked up it's like they got all kinds of stuff going on there. Yeah. So it's real hand-holdy, but you're going to get one. Like if you show up, you'll get one. And they call it a once-in-a-lifetime hunt. So once you draw on range, you can't ever draw it again. Meanwhile, the rest of the damn state is off range.

And that's a very low success rate. What was it? I don't remember. I don't remember either. What's the 10%? Why do they fail? Probably don't show up't remember. I don't remember either. What's the 10%? Why do they fail? Probably don't show up. Yeah, probably don't show up. Or they want a hog.

I have no idea. And on range, they got all this other shit. Like they got a broken horn season where you can shoot one with a busted horn. It's crazy, but I'm trying to speak generally. Anyhow, when you're hunting off range, you can hunt the whole damn state, but it makes most sense to hunt along the fence line. And the sumbitch thing is 130 miles north to south. We just kind of worked one, the western.

We kind of worked the western edge within zero, within leaning on the fence, which I always felt guilty about. When I leaned on that fence, I kind of leaned flat handed so that my fingers didn't go into the missile range. From leaning on the fence to five, six. We killed one, what, five miles off? Yeah. Five miles out of the range. Yeah. You'll appreciate this story.

Something happens there where footprints, thousands of year old footprints get solidified in that sand down there. Like when conditions are right, someone can walk through and leave footprints in the mud. That's what it is. When it happens to be wet, you leave a footprint and the way it dries and blows in, things that happen in the mud get stuck in the mud. Like what? Concrete sidewalk or something? Check this out. This is the coolest thing in the world.

I like to think Rick would appreciate it, but he, I don't know. You'll have to tell us, Rick. I wish Rick had one of those dials. You could just tell how. I want to get some dials installed in here where people that are in can turn it up if they like what they're hearing and turn it down if they don't because it would improve the quality of the show so much.

Yeah, but you'd be looking at the dial. You'd be distracted. Oh, that's all I would look at. Right now, I just look at the timer. No. If there was a dial and all the dials were- Minute by minute ratings. That's what you want?

Yes. I don't know if you want that. Everyone in here had a dial and in all those dials- People don't know what they want. All those dials were a dial and in all those dials- The people don't know what they want. All those dials were collated into a single meter.

So Kurt might be like, zero, zero, zero. Doesn't like the story. Yeah. And Rick could be like, I love it. And Ridge Pounder's like, 10, 10.

So it's throwing me a whatever. A five. Yeah. That's how you get mediocrity. I feel like when I tell you what I'm going to now tell you, that son of a bitch would be

code red. 10. Okay. They got some footprints. Hear this out. They have some footprints that I know are at least 10,000 years old in the white sands outside of the closed area.

They can't follow the trail into the top secret part of the missile range. They're not allowed to follow the trail in it. It's a long trail of a barefoot person. They feel it was a young male or woman based on shoe size. Carrying a child on their hip. Barefoot. How can they tell that? Just because they think it was carrying it on its left hip.

Because now and then they'd set the kid down. Oh, and they would have the footprints. So it's a youngish male or female carrying a child, occasionally setting the child down. The child walks with, when the child's not walking, the gait of the person changes in their weight. They're putting more weight on the left hip. Oh, man. They walked one way, and then they came back on their same trail. And in the time they were gone, a mammoth and a giant ground sloth stepped on their tracks.

No shit. No way. And they're able to. Yes. Whoa. There is mammoth and ground sloth tracks on the person's tracks. And then the person came back over the same trail, crossed the mammoth and ground sl tracks not carrying the child oh my god dude that's so cool not carrying the child not carrying the child oh not caring they brought the kid oh to wherever mammoth got someone's like hey

can you watch my kid and you're like i gotta go chase after the sloth. Can you like, whatever, can you watch my kid today? I'm having a date night. So if you don't mind, bring it back over to my camp later. What would the climate have been 10,000 years ago in New Mexico in that area? Cold, right? Still cold. They were barefoot. They definitely had.

There was mud. Yeah, there was mud. So it's not like. It wasn't frozen. But there's a mammoth. That's why they know the date. I think it's like, it's obviously like you got to

think it wasn't the last mammoth. Yeah, but it was. I highly doubt that it was the last mammoth that crossed her trail yeah so you know the clock changes all the time like the first humans to arrive here the fashionable number used to be like 13 000 years ago now they got sites

sometime around 20 000 years ago mammoths were largely gone by you know 12,000 years ago. Mammoths were largely gone by, you know, 12, 13,000 years ago. So somewhere in that window. There's a theory that, not even really a theory, that you couldn't have peopled the Americas prior to the invention of the eyed needle. Like they had to have had tailored clothing because they came through Siberia. Oh, yeah. So these are people that had to have had tailored clothing because they came through Siberia.

Oh yeah. So these are people that had to have. That's good. Had to have known how to make footwear. Had to have known how to make parkas because of where you know they came from. Yeah. Where's the meter at Rick?

Oh, pretty high. Into it. Tell me more Steve. He could go Roger Ebert and he'd'd be throwing a couple thumbs right now. Oh, yeah. That's two thumbs up for sure. Rick's meter is high. These tracks, the sand eventually blew away, and they walked in the mud.

I got the thing right now. It's like sandstone now. Yeah. Well, no, because here's the thing. I'm looking, I got the thing right now. So it's like sandstone now. Yeah. Well, no, because here's the thing. I'm looking at the article. I'm trying to not just have to read the damn article. But they walked in the mud and were sliding a lot in the mud. Wishing they had some Schnee's boots or something.

Yeah, wishing they had crampons or something. They were sliding a lot in the mud and dodging something. Like now and then we're veering and hopping. They throw out mud puddles or mammoth shit. Whatever. Huh. They had some hops. So, yeah, they'd set the kid down and rest down then.

The kid would mill around. What happens is, so there's 400 footprints. And they would make a track in the mud, and then things would dry and sand and blow in. The problem with, they've known about the tracks for a while. The minute you excavate the track and reveal it, it vanishes. Oh, shit.

Oh, man. So they- Film it or something? Purposefully don't, you know, go in and do them all. But they said it's full of, White Sands National Park, it's full of them. White Sands National Park. It's full of these old prints.

That's crazy. That's really cool. And there's a slight shift in coloration that'll reveal the tracks. When you guys were down there hunting? They call them ghost tracks. When you guys were hunting, was it that climate that you left your mark?

Oh, I'm sure someday they'll dig it up and be like, they'll find me and Seth in there. Yeah. What's his Vibram logo? Some guy really knew what was up with some dude kind of. Didn't really know what was up. You can tell his tracks.

No, that's great. That's an interesting story. Now, with your meters high, this is going to make your meters go lower. I was telling a story about my kid getting a gnat, a red-legged fly in his ear. You ever have that, Kurt? No. That sounds horrible. I feel like you'd have that because you hunted in Alaska so much and stuff.

Well, yeah, the little no-CMs that climb around. You ever had one against your eardrum? No, not one that I couldn't get out. It sounds terrible. It was in there, and it was so bad, it was affecting his equilibrium and making him nauseous. Oh, man. How old was he when this was happening? Just this summer, hunting caribou.

Well, we were actually butchering caribou back at the air carrier. So was it alive in there and kind of moving around? Oh, I was freaking him out. I was with this dude, this old roommate I had, this dude named Dan one time, and he got a caddis fly. We were fishing. He had a hell of a night that night.

He caught a bat on his back cast, and he didn't like that one bit. Then he got a caddis fly in his ear and flipped oh yeah then he slept in his car and wouldn't get out to peaks he thought a mountain lion was gonna get him wow man hell of a night yeah um that reminds me real quick i'm putting this if you go and look on instagram you'll see this picture This dude just sent us a picture of a pelican That

Goes down in his ditch And catches a carp Tries to fly away with the carp But it's such a heavy load You can't get elevation Goes into the power lines Hits the power lines Catches on fire Oh god lands and starts a brush fire oh geez and he

sends a picture of the pelican laying there hung up in a barbed wire fence with a big fire scar moving away from it across the ground still the carp hanging out of his mouth holy shit that kind of day that's the kind of day this dude had and we got it out with a pair of fishing hemis like a hemostat oh you were able to go in and do it caddis when this dude dan had it happen to him oh and we practically had to pin him down yeah um when my boy got it someone's like put hydrogen peroxide in there and we dumped hydrogen peroxide in there and holy shit that bug come out in a hurry well our uh resident physician here at meat eater

adam lazaro wrote in advising don't do that he says on average he's an emergency room he's the podcast. Uh, when he was on the podcast, the thing I remember most is that you remember like for our whole lives, for our, everyone in this room, our age group, car crashes were our lead cause of death. It had always been that when he was on,

um, opioid overdoses had surpassed car crashes as the thing that will kill you. Jeez, man. Where's, is it cardiac arrest? Isn't that nuts, man? No, that kicks in next. Oh, so it's opioid. Yeah, between 30 and 40 or more, 30 and 50.

Yeah, it was like, it had always been like vehicular collisions would kick in at like 18 or something like that or 16. Yeah. And then up to a certain date, like that's's what that would be your lead cause of death and then it switches to like heart disease and all that shit oh okay gotcha but opioid overdoses for males opioids were killing more dudes than cars geez it's a real problem i got a bug ear thing I could add in. No.

Please hold tight though. Cause let me finish my thing. I just want it. Cause I need to point this out because he's like, he gets people four and five times a summer, um, in the emergency room, moths and whatnot in people's ear canals. He uses a very viscous lidocaine to drown the bug and anesthetize the ear canal.

Oh. So he does a one, because he's a doctor and he has access to all kinds of cool stuff. He like pain relieves and wipes out the bug. He suggests if you're going

to do this at home, dump mineral oil in there. Huh. It's hydrogen peroxide is too strong of an oxidizer. If you had a hole in your tympanic membrane, the chemical could possibly damage the

inner ear on the other side of the membrane. Also, you don't want that bug moving around vigorously. So is your son okay? You put that oil in there and he's like He's not like Is that why your kid ran into the truck With the snowblower this morning? Is he alright?

No he just ran into He also He also Just He doesn't look where the snout's pointing. Oh, yeah. I'm just right in my face, man. Yeah.

And then crashed into the truck. Oh, he's having a great time, though, I bet. Crashed into the truck. And then he sees the neighbor shoveling and abandons our whole project to go over there and save the day with the snowblower. I was like, yeah, go over. He's like, with the snowblower i was like yeah go over he's like i got go ruin that person's stuff does he got does he got a matching mini jigging onesie like you you guys are out there doing he doesn't wear a squid jigging onesie he doesn't um go tell me your bug story oh just on fire and seth may have known about this too but firefighters moss

in the air is is common because if you're doing like nighttime fire line cutting, all these bugs are flying around and you got headlamps. And so a lot of times they'll, whatever, for whatever reason, they'll right into the air. Oh, they're drawn to the headlamp. Yeah. So we had our superintendent on the shot crew got one stuck in for like a day. Oh. And it was just, yeah, like you're saying, just driving him nuts. Was it making him nauseous?

Yeah. Yeah, he was like out. Have you been glad to be not firefighting this summer? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No. I mean, you miss the camaraderie, but hell no. You don't get camaraderie hanging out with us?

No, that's what I mean. I got that, and that's all that I got from firefighting. That's all you liked about it? Yeah. Do you mind real quick sharing what's going on with you guys' little dipping, like where you're at with the dipping right now, the different products you guys are into?

Oh, well. Now that Kurt, you reunited Kurt's patch. That's one thing with that monastic bullshit that falls apart, dude, is Kurt has a nicotine addiction. No, but he's stuck to his program. I haven't had one today. That's one thing with that monastic bullshit that falls apart, dude. It's Kurt has a nicotine addiction. No, but he stuck to his program. I haven't had one today. That's not addicted. You haven't had one today?

No. It's performance enhancing out there. But I haven't been around these guys yet. And you still. Terrible influence. You stuck to not buying anything. Yeah, I still haven't bought anything. I won't.

Oh, so that's how you draw the line. Yeah. But it's a little chink in your armor, man. One of many. Like a sucker for some dip. Yeah. Yeah, what's the product you're using nowadays? I mean, it's Xen.

It's just, it's straight up science nicotine. It's nicotine powder. So there's no tobacco product. So it doesn't make you have cancer. That's what they say. But again, as we were talking about at the trailhead, it's only been out for like a year or something, a couple of years. So they doesn't make you have cancer. That's what they say, but again, as we were talking about at the Trailhead, it's only been out for like a year or something, a couple years. So they don't know. It's probably worse for you

than tobacco. Wait, but hasn't, haven't we proven that nicotine can, like nicotine itself can cause cancer? That's what, I had this argument with someone. I don't know, but I just assumed that that was a thing. No, I think, yeah, nicotine alone is a carcinogen or whatever. I don't know about that.

Yeah. Is there a fact checker? Yeah, fact checker. I definitely could be wrong about that. Rick, come on, look it up. Come on, look it up. But it's definitely less abrasive and more convenient. So I started them to quit chewing, and now I just double dab. Now he does both.

Yeah. At the same time. But you're doing the low dose right yeah the three see yeah

years ago Garrett was down in South America and his quitting plan was to didn't you bring like a a brand you were gonna quit while you're gone

yeah and the plan was to bring a brand you didn't like yep so you weren't gonna quit well yeah it was to yeah

you were gonna bring a brand you didn't like. And so you brought Grizzly. Yeah. And then I ended up finding. When I ran out, I went a couple days and then spent a week focused on finding nicotine. Did you find any? Oh, yeah. Sure.

I found the General At a Like Norwegian hostel Or something And then you got dope Yeah And then Garrett was saying He got back home And went into a gas station And the cans were talking to him

From behind the counter Yeah And buy me I said okay So your flavor now What's You like what brand? Skull Classic Long cut And But you also like so your flavor now what's you like what brand it's cold classic long cut and uh

um but you also like have some of that and then you just have straight nicotine yeah then you have some more long cut well i used to put them both in at the same time i mean if there's beers involved sometimes but usually usually i would go which you'll find surprising i'd only do two chews in the morning, two chews in the afternoon, and then cocktail hour is kind of game on. A cocktail hour, do you run one long one or you rotate it out?

Between beers? Yeah, one long one kind of. Is the two chews one right after another? In the morning and afternoon? Oh, no, one kind of. Is the two chews one right after another? In the morning and afternoon? Oh, no, no, no. It's up to me. So if I burn those two chews before 10, I got to wait until 12.01. I can't get used to Seth being down in the engineering.

Oh, he looks good down there. Oh, he looks great, dude. He looks like so much more authoritative. I know. I normally would just dismiss whatever he said. But now I'd be like, oh, you'll tell me more. I feel like I have power sitting over this board. Lights and knobs and sliders

in front of him. It's intimidating. But now, instead of having a break from nicotine, I pop a Zen in. Dude, I ran one of those Zens yesterday

for like four hours. It like disintegrated in my lip. We were up in all the steep stuff that I got all stressed out about i ran it for the whole day which may or may not have helped when we were you know framed in our studio here is my favorite possession in the whole world is is when dirt made the cover of dip

aficionado magazine rick's photo when we were in uh wyoming antelope hunting um i think was it chet was that you that gave gave Rick one of those zins? Oh, listen, there's one thing about this that cannot be spoken. What? Who was doing what dipping? Oh, yeah. It was a top secret dipping. My dipping was not top secret.

Oh, Rick's dipping is not top secret. Don't tell any stories about... Oh, I don't care what Chester Chica really wants. It's only about Rick. But I had it in for like a minute and I was like,

I got all lightheaded. I'm not a Nicky T. Did you have to defecate right away? No. But I know people use it for that reason. My brother believes

that his colon has a annex. That there's a colon... That his colon has an offshoot colon. That needs nicotine to... That's always loaded. Because he's like, I could... Taking a growler could be the last thing on my mind. Like zero need to take a growler.

The minute he has a dip there it is yeah so the only explanation is that there's a part of annex to his colon that is activated that's locked and loaded nicotinic receptors and the primer the primer the the the spark the the flint and steel, so to speak, is dip. Yep. Because then whoop, there it is. No, that's true, man. Pull the car over. Kind of there it is.

You had that happen at Wyoming camp. You were having issues. Yeah, I mean, it definitely keeps me regular, that's for sure. Really, is that why you use it? Yeah, I'm kind of like Yanni. Because the Lavian plug? plug yeah once you travel me and my brother one time we're on an elk hunt my brother is the same way and i swear we both didn't go for six days good oh my god it wasn't the family but our stomachs don't bloat it's just just like we eat and it goes somewhere. Into the anix. You just burn it all up.

Into the tobacco anix. But the dip definitely helps. The zins, just for my wife listening. It doesn't cause cancer. The research. Didn't they say vaping was better for you than smoking? No. They don't tell you it lasts too long.

I just looked it up. Nicotine, they're doing some research about its role as a cancer-causing agent. And if not itself, it metabolizes into some chemicals that are cancer-causing. Oh, after you ingest it. Just pure nicotine. They always thought that the other substances were the... Oh, but some of the gum and some other stuff could still... Yeah, but when they get like... If you go to like, it can't be like the California kind of cancer.

Yeah, because that's heavy. That's everything. That's everything. Everything I buy is a label. You already know it's in California. I buy food and it tells me it's going to get cancer. It tells you you're going to get cancer for getting on the airplane. Fishing.

Fishing's cancer. All. Known by the state of California to cause cancer. Yeah, you can't buy lead weights, man. Use a sinker. Yeah, but I think nicotine's probably in a more reasonable category of. Hey, it's better than opioids, though. Yeah, yeah, I'll buy it.

So I don't want to belabor the thing, but I was telling you, what I want to do is get into. Oh, the cha. The whiskey cha. Because when we were down in New Mexico, I had a dip off of a... Tell everybody what that was that I liked a lot. It was Morgan. Yeah, I can't remember that name. Mike Rule had it.

I'm going to remember it because Daniel Morgan wrote the best Daniel Boone, Robert Morgan. The guy by the last name of Morgan wrote the best Boone biography. So I'm going to remember, I like Daniel Boone. And you like dipping Morgan. And I like that dip called Morgan. I remember because I used to buy, well, I used to dip or chew Levi Garrett when I was in college and stuff, just like side hack. Was that a dude, Levi Garrett?

I don't know. He makes jeans too, right? Or no? I don't know. Never mind. Strauss. You know what? I'll tell you something. I don't know. Never mind. No. Strauss. You know what?

I'll tell you something. Oh, go ahead. If like the Morgan shit was cheaper. So if I was running low on funds, I'd buy Morgan instead of Levi. Instead of. Oh, Morgan's cheaper than Levi Garrett? Yeah. So what this dude does. This dude.

Mike Rule. Quit Chew. but still choose. How does that work? Because he beat the addiction. No, same thing, Kurt. He beat the addiction so thoroughly that he can now just have a recreational dip and then not dip for weeks. It's kind of like a dude that quit smoking cigarettes, but like has a cigar every once

in a while. That's what it seems like. That's a great way of looking at it. Yeah. I'd argue that I'm a recreational dipper though. It's just timelines different. I know Ronnie Bame, who most of you guys know. Oh, yeah.

Ronnie Bame got addicted to cigarettes through cigar smoking. He went the other direction. Oh, really? He started smoking stogies. He might tell you this story a little bit differently, but from my observation, no, I think he'd agree. He started smoking old man type stogies, like big fatties. Then started smoking little dinkers.

And then was basically smoking stogies that looked like a brown cigarette. And then just went to cigarettes. It's like one of those things, like, you know, those like evolution charts where like a little monkey turns into a bro. It'd be like a dude turned into a little monkey his like path yeah so so he's off this because i remember on that i don't know where he's at right now but he was he was chain smoking uh swisher man. Dude, he like monkeys one off the other. Yeah.

Really? Sweet? Yeah. That's like smoking cardboard roll. It's like tobacco rolled in cardboard, man. Yeah. Speaking of Boone, here's another little thing I want to talk about. This is applicable to me and Seth because me and Seth seth are going on a a muzzleloader

flintlock we're gonna hunt with some flintlocks yep old old style hunting on a recent podcast we were talking about uh like did front did you did users of muzzleloaders not people who are like doing it for funsies but like people who are actually shooting muzzleloaders um did they free pour powder or did they measure powder and and when you're watching old westerns they're always free pouring? This guy wrote in, he said, there's this thing you need to consider about this. Part of measuring today is because we have standardized powder. Back then, he said it was way more art than science. And you're like, powder was all, was highly variable. And I'd forgot about this detail, is Boone would even make his own powder.

How's that? Well, the first time he went over the Cumberland gap, he was going on a year long hunt. He hunted and built up a small fortune of hides, otter, beaver, deer hides. The Pawnees stole them, stole his stuff, decided to stay an extra year, worked up another big load. They stole that.

Jeez. Came back empty handed. So he was gone two years. Ran out of gunpowder. And he got sulfur from a deposit. He got. Charcoal deposit. He got charcoal. No, sorry. Sulfur and phosphorus.

Burned willow. So he got bat guano for phosphate. Oh, phosphate, yeah. Bat guano for phosphate. Burned willow and had ash, which was some component of it. Got sulfur from like a lick, like a deposit, and then used his own piss. They would wet the mixture.

They'd make the mixture and wet it with your own piss. Ammonia or whatever? For the nitrogen? Then you'd spread it out and let it dry, and you'd make this powder. So anyways, this dude wrote in talking about- That's insane. Artisanal. That it like what all powder was different so the fact that you're like oh bessie shoots best with 100 grains of powder would be depends on it just wouldn't even be like in their thinking it'd be there's hot powders and shitty powders and powders that got wet too many times

and you dried them back out and it would just be just very touch and go all the time um so you'd figure out your powder amount for that batch that you had it was yeah just a very fluid and i think you gotta think about like now when dudes um now when people hunt with muzzleloaders or use any kind of like archaic, archaic technology. This is the thing I ponder all the time. It's like you're dabbling in a thing that was just what people did and knew. So if you, let's say your boon,

your father had one of these, you had one of these shot, one of these from the start, it was regarded as a technological advancement oh yeah it was a cutting edge piece of equipment it wasn't you weren't like fussing you weren't like messing with something you weren't like experimenting with something it would be the same as like their relationship to that technology would be like your relationship to your phone. Just very ingrained.

Yeah. Daily, ingrained, highly intuitive. It's like, it wouldn't, you know, it's not like now like, oh, we have this date set where we're going to go shoot flintlocks, you know, and blow our faces off. It'd be just like, you lived it all the time. Yeah. So it just probably didn't feel like how we think it felt. Well, I'm sure there was improvements within,

within each of those technologies that they're really excited about. Oh, totally. Like little small things like, like smooth bore to rifled barrels. Yeah. Big advancement. Yeah.

What are, what are you guys shooting? Is it rifled? Mm-hmm. What's the range for you guys' hunt? I guess it depends on the person, but I'm looking 50 yards and in. Oh, tick licker. What's yours, Steve? Like close. Like bow range? a bull i wounded a bull and lost it last

year with the not even a flintlock yeah you didn't even have an explosion go off in your face dude that thing hit the ground too that bull yeah but i just so they lose their the they just not they're not hauling ass yeah yeah they're not hauling ass i think you know when i hit that bull i think i you know hit it high up on the shoulder and like knocked it down but he just got up and left like left the country barely any blood either it was like very little blood it was like punching him yeah but no like getting shot with a bulletproof vest on. So I learned my lesson on that shit, man. Now I'm like Johnny Tight when it comes to, I mean, granted, that thing was, you know, whatever, 600 pounds. And that was like a bullet type, like what they call it, savvets?

No, I think it was true to bore, wasn't it? We're going to be running patch and ball yeah man i'm greasing my shit with bear grease too oh dude so you take like when you're shooting a flintlock you got well you don't believe me no no it's just funny no i totally believe you i doubt in my mind you get a little patcha it's a circle of cloth or you make your own out of What are you smirking about? I just I've never heard of this

You know the old Talk them through it Seth Seth's killed all kinds of shit This is great We used to make our own patches My meter is very high right now We used to make our own patches out of They called it bed ticking

Oh yeah It was like It looks like a prison It's like a prison suit It's like blue and white Striped shit And you Cut

I cut square patches Not round? Nope They were square patches I learned all this from Um Good family friend The Fetzer family

That sounds like An old muzzleloader family Yeah The Fetzers That's yeah That's who got Got me into it Yeah cause it feels like

The Van Fossenbergs I'd be like bullshit But yeah we would cut our own patches And grease them up And then they What did you use for grease? I think we used I don't remember exactly what it was Oh you know what we could use?

Bear grease would be sweet Python oil I bet no one's doing that shit No man we'll bring python oil remember exactly what it was. Oh, you know what we could use? Bear grease would be sweet. Python oil. There we go. Whoa. I bet no one's doing that shit. No, man. We'll bring python oil because I got a court burning a hole in my pocket.

Where did you get python oil? Oh, we had this snake biologist on that works in the pythons down in Florida. He gave me a court of rendered snake oil. Whoa. What do you use it for? It grosses me out. I'm not using it for anything.

What did he, grease and muzzleloader patch? He gave it to me as, he gave it to me as the oddity. Oh, not as like, here, cook your eggs with this. No, it's like a thing that you have. And then you, when people come to your house, you're like, see that? He sent it to me without tightening the lid down very tight. Uh-oh. Yeah.

But anyway. I think that stuff's like utterly disgusting. Does it smell gross? No, but just the thought of it. Yeah. Snake oil. Snake oil. Oh, yeah.

The medicines you're talking about. Kurt probably drank it. Would you drink that, Kurt? Absolutely not. Unless it. It just sounds foul. If it increased your efficiency, you probably would. I don't know.

I don't know, man. But anyway, they would pour their own own they'd cast their own balls 50 caliber the fatskers fetzers fetzers yeah really man we used to cast no i never cast my own balls we used to go down to the gun range we got to get to talking about what we're supposed to be talking about, but real quick, I want you to explain this more, Seth, but we used to go down to the gun range and sift through the bank, the berm. Get the lead. And we would cast our own sinkers. Oh, cool.

And Ronnie Bame makes his own birdshot, which is cool as shit. You ever see that, Dunkirk? No, I haven't. It's through a drop. It's just formed through the air. That would be cool. Like, they use, there's a thing called a shot tower. I've heard of that, but I didn't know how, how tall does it have to be?

Well, a shot tower is tall. You're just like dripping little driblets of lead, and they fall down this shaft and form into a sphere in the air like a raindrop. And by the time they hit the ground, they're cooled. Ronnie's little deal. Was he doing it into oil? Into water, I thought. Was it water or oil? I wasn't there.

I just remember seeing it on the show. I think he drops them into – I can't remember, but he's got this little thing. It's got a little aperture on it. You melt lead, get cancer, dump the lead into this bucket, and the bucket's got a little teensy-teensy aperture, or a whole bunch, like a series of, I can't remember, 20 or a dozen little apertures, like pinholes. And the pinhole determines the shot size. Right. So you dump the molten lead in, have a cigar, drink a whole bunch of beer. It's like the Ronnie Bame recipe.

Sit in a closed area or whatever. And out dribbles all of his, but I mean, this dude's like a, like a, he's a tinker. Like he's like, he could make anything. He's like, remember in the end of the A team, they'd always find like a sweet shop. Yeah. Yeah.

Like he, Ronnie'd smoke those dudes out from the A team, like to rig up shit in a shop. And out would dribble all these little dribbles and they'd fall through the air and land and whatever the hell he cooled it with. I don't know, some liquid. I bet water would. I thought it was water.

I don't think it was water. Well, water would cause bubbling in it, right? I think he dripped it in some kind of oil. But I don't remember dealing with a bunch of oily-ass shot. If Rick was any good at fact-checking, he'd have this shit figured out. So. Failing.

Go back to the Fetzers. Yeah, no, I was just saying they'd cast their own balls and cut their own patches. And grease the patch. You don't know what they greased it with. I forget what it was. I don't remember.

I think it was just some sort of oil. You just stack a bunch of them up and dribble the oil on them on them and soak through yeah so you take your empty bear you got your empty gun pour a shot of powder down there 90 grains put a patch we always put a ball then you got to seat that ball yep then ram it home yep so it's powder patch ball ram it home and then if you're in powder, patch, ball, ram at home. And then if you're in a Western and a dude charges you and you don't have time to take the ramrod out,

just smack him in the face. Arrow and shoot him right with that freaking ramrod, man. I always think of the last of the Mohicans when you talk about flintlock. Does he do that in there? Yeah. Shoots someone with the ramrod? No, he shoots an elk or something.

It's like the opening scene. Oh, yeah. He's like, oh, dude. Yeah, he's like chasing it yeah something it's like very out maneuvering it and that seems ridiculous when i did that when i did that gq thing where it like called the breakdown oh yeah yeah yeah that was we covered that scene um yeah sends that elk ass over tea kettle with that flintlock like it does like a triple somersault off a cliff. So, yeah.

And then there's a frizzen. Yep. What's a frizzen? Well, there's like this little. It's hard. It's like a hard steel that the flint strikes to cause the spark. Yep. And there's a little buckskin.

You got a little square flint, like maybe three quarters of an inch square, half inch square. Yep. And there's a little gripper, a spring loaded gripper. And you line that spring loaded gripper with a little chunk of buckskin for grip. Stick the flint in that little gripper. Cock the hammer. The hammer goes forward, hits the frizzen. Whap. Explosion. No.ack. Explosion.

No. Yeah. Explosion number one. Because under that frizzen is a little teensy quarter teaspoon about of fine powder. Yeah. Like the frizzen's covering up a pan full of fine powder.

So when the hammer comes down, hits the frizzen, it knocks the frizzen out of the way, but still causes a spark. And then the spark falls right into the flash pan. Dude, it's like the Rube Goldberg-ist contraption of all Rube Goldberg contraptions. So it whap. Yeah, and that's right. The frizzen is on a hinge.

Yep, flies forward. Moves forward. This little quarter teaspoon of fine powder ignites. And there's a thing called a touch hole which when your gun doesn't work it's probably because your touch hole is plugged up with the fine powder yeah that little bucket that little quarter teaspoon the wall of that bowl has a pinhole through it that leads into the breach of the flintlock one of those sparks from that little thing going off hops through the hole and he's like surprise and then like he lights off everybody

in there so it goes like clack boom boom so this is a tree got to hold steady the whole damn time. Yeah. So is it what you guys are doing like tree stand? It's like boom. We're going to do a little bit of both. Because that sounds good. And then do some mooching, some driving. You don't know this, but i killed a bull buffalo um with a flintlock really no

no shit yeah we're on a reservation and they had like they do like these controlled harvests on this reservation and like reservation members can go out like however they want to do it, they'll go out and can get one. And just kind of, I don't really, it was a little bit like, it was kind of like a weird, sort of like, like an experimentation with a live thing.

I don't know if you want to sort that out right now, but anyways, we went out and I shot it in the heart. Nice. I shot it in the heart at 90 yards.

Dang. That's pretty good. Yeah. It was like a luck, it was. I remember, anyways, it went, it took about eight minutes, went and laid down and died. No shit. Dang. That's pretty good. Yeah. It was like a luck. I remember. Anyways, it took about eight minutes, went and laid down and died.

No shit. Yeah. I remember one of the Primo's truth about hunting. One of the elk hunting ones. Will shoots a, I think it was in Colorado or somewhere. I think it was with a flintlock too, but he

shoots an elk with a muzzleloader. It was either a flintlock or precaution but old like old school i thought it was cool shit yeah chester you were gonna say something about the greasing well it wasn't very important it was just about lead and uh water i used to build boat anchors and anytime lead hit water it was just it like explode on itself that's not well oh that's right because remember yeah i was not explode but it loses its form yeah like pops and loses its form it it forms into weird shapes just like lat yanni's laughing yeah oh yeah remember when we all had to throw the lead in the bucket to predict our future?

Yeah. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. You know about this, Chris? No. What's that? On New Year's, Latvians melt up some lead and throw a gob of it into a bucket of water.

And it tells you. And then you take that gob and it forms crazy shapes. Yeah. Then you get a light and shine it at a wall. And hold that gob of lead, that misshapen gob of lead to the light. And it casts a shadow. And you twist it and see what you see in there. And that tells you what will happen to you, or it could inform your year.

I generally tended to see old arthritic imagery. Oh, so it's kind of like a Rorschach thing. Like what you see is what is going to, okay. So what's coming. Yeah. I'm going to try that with my, I got a Latvian's what's coming. Yeah. I'm going to try that with my, I got a Latvian neighbor across the street from us. I'm going to try that this year with her. Yeah.

You should test her knowledge about it. Oh, she knows. She hangs out at some like LA Latvian camp. She like, it's like the Latvian. Oh, her and Yanni should get together. Yeah. Her name's Inga. She's nice.

She has some questionable opinions, didn't she? Yeah. Let's get into that. Yeah. She's nice. She had some questionable opinions, didn't she? Yeah. Yeah. Let's not get into that. Yeah. She thinks I had to walk away from. A couple of convos you had to cut short.

A couple of convos. I was like, well, you have a nice day there, Inga. Go back inside and lock the door. Not talk to you for a week. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join, our northern brothers get irritated.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. All right. Now, Kurt, I got to tell you, I couldn't sleep last night. I slept, but I woke up many times. Understandable. Just, I've never been so, not have been, just distraught. And largely, I was telling these guys last night too, I'm having three feelings.

Anger and disgust at myself. Well, I missed the mountain goat. I'll tell people, I was caught to the chase, I missed the mountain goat at three. I'll tell people. I was caught to the chase. I missed a mountain goat. 300 yards. Nice big billy. Kurt feels that it was an accident.

I think he said, that was a mighty big billy you missed there. Yeah, I missed the mountain goat at 300 yards. Just missed, right? Nicked him. Or not nicked him. Shot some hair off it. Shot some hair off its mane.

I know, we'll talk about why I think that happened. Not that like, I'll talk about why I think that happened i but not that like i have excuse like there's an explanation of the mistakes i made right but the three feelings i've been having one is anger and disgust self-loathing two is why am i not more disappointed than i am um because i feel like i should be even more have more self-loathing and anger and disgust. And three is just like, I'm really feeling that I let you down, Kurt. Oh, no. Because I started trying to draw a mountain. I first applied for a mountain goat tag in 1998.

And finally, in 2020, I drew a mountain goat tag. I've drawn them in Alaska, but I drew a mountain goat tag i've drawn them in alaska but drew a mountain goat tag and uh we really poured the coals to it for five days under kurt's leadership uh snow cold elevation. Just struggles with visibility. But like finding goats. But just like it wasn't like a walk in the park. It was kind of like, ah, fog and whatever.

Just the annoyance of cold. And then there, like, just a chip shot. Yeah. And I would have felt like, yeah, the primary feeling I had was that the primary, like, if you weren't there, I would have felt not as bad as I felt. Just really horrible. Waking up and just, it's like burned in my mind. I don't know, man. Those things are all, I feel like they're part of the hunting experience.

You have to have the highs, you have to have the lows to kind of have the full experience. Just like if we would have walked in there and found a goat on the first day, walk up on it, hunts over. That was 22 years you put in for a tag for one day. That's not much of an experience. You're like, you know, now you have the whole process, and it's not over. No, it's definitely not over. That's a good way to look at it.

I like that, Kurt. Yeah, it is, man, but it'll mean a lot more. Yeah. Well, here's the thing I think about, though. I'm 46. I'll point out that you're 48. Thank you for that. I was like the other day, I was trying to like, as we were walking out, you know, like the walk of shame, right?

Walking down the mountain after missing them. I'm like, man, really valuable lesson. I'll point out a handful of things. Again, not excuses, but a guess at where I screwed up. They got their winter coats. Yep. And I failed it, and Kurt later pointed out, when you're looking at the outline of that goat,

there's a six inch buffer that's not a goat. No, especially this time of year, because it's kind of that, even though they're starting, as you could see, they're starting to come into their winter coat, especially on those billies. The hair isn't so long that it's falling over. Because when it, when it starts to get really long, it kind of splits down the middle, like a hairline. Like on a musk ox.

Yeah. And it starts to drape. But right now it's short enough. Like he parts his hair down the middle. Yeah. Yeah. No, like right now it's, it's like a buzz cut and everything's sticking straight up. So it could have been more than that.

There's a bunch of goat that's not a goat. Yeah, a bunch. Yeah. And I was, when I killed one, the only mountain goat I got before was a nanny I shot in Alaska. alaska and uh when i hit it it had enough umph left to take a couple steps and go off the abyss like 1200 feet you said right yeah i mean i can show you like yeah where this happened i remember creeping like how could i was like i could show you exactly how it fell that far me I mean, like a face like you wouldn't believe. And then got so much inertia going that when it did hit the slope below it, it just continued to go down the wet snow.

Anyways, it was demolished. Its brain was gone. Its skull split open. The horns were gone. The brain was gone its skull split open the horns were gone the brain was gone one of its lungs was tucked up into its front right ankle oh geez the hide came loose but didn't come off and somehow when the chest cavity erupted in the

fall it like sent a bunch of that stuff through and so it was like up against its knee dude that's gnarly yeah oh huge anyways something to try to avoid so then it's like don't you don't want them you if you hit them you don't want them taking a step it's not like like generally big game hunting i just play it safe and give myself a huge margin for error. And I typically, like my typical hold is halfway up and down, two or three ribs back from the shoulder. It's like, that's, you know, and granted it's going to, whatever, it might take a step or two or whatever, but it's just generally like done me very well as a, as a, just a, you know, general little aim spot. Um, maybe a little lower than halfway, but either way, I was like, got it.

I was going to want to hit it in the high shoulder, hoping that it would not go off the cliff behind it or wherever, walk off and fall off a cliff. And then zeroed my rifle at a much lower elevation. And the higher elevation is, you know, there's less friction. So that's going to make you a little bit higher. I was shooting for a little bit, a tad longer than it was maybe. Maybe. And just sent two of them through its...

Right over the top. Does that steeper angle too? You're at a pretty steep angle. Sharp angle, yeah. Yeah. does the that steeper angle to you're at a pretty steep angle sharp angle yeah yeah which becomes harder to get an exact range because it really depends on exactly where you're picking yeah well to a factor that we were talking about last night is mean, we were posted up for a while waiting, which in my mind, for me, not being near as successful or tenured as you as shooting would mess with me. You know, with scope on the animal for 30 minutes or whatever.

That wasn't it. No. Okay. I was aware of, we should back up. Well, I want to back up and tell the story a little bit. So, but yeah, to get to that part, it was bedded and we were having to wait for it to get up. And I was nervous about getting chilly. Yeah, sitting in the snow.

And then the little gap of visibility was so narrow that you couldn't like go and start the process of trying to put a warmer clothes on because then you might get i killed a nice buck one time my pants down not like what you think putting trying to get my long johns on yeah trying to get before the zippies before the zippies yep i hiked up to a spot got where I wanted to be for the evening sit, got to the evening sit, thought I'm going to get bundled up because I'm going to start freezing my ass because I was all sweaty

and got my pants off, started putting my LJ's on LJ's around the ankles and then kind of like had my LJ's up was getting back into my pants and all of a sudden looking here's the buck I was trying to find. I got him, too. I had to pull my pants up to run over there.

But didn't want to do that because I was afraid the goat would stand up and move while I was one arm in a coat. So I was nervous that I would start getting shivery. I wish I could say that I got shivery, but I never got shivery. Oh, my God, I feel like such I got shivery, but I never got shivery. Oh my God. I feel like such a loser.

Oh, I was trying, when I was pointing out our ages, let me get back to that. Now I'm going to walk through the whole story. Pointing out our ages is when we were walking out, I was like, what a learning lesson. What a learning lesson. But then I'm like, I feel like learning should be about wrapping it up. Like my kid, he did his first two big game hunts so he's 10 he got a mule deer and a caribou this year he's in he's learning right i did a lot of learning in my 20s i feel like the learning is about done no Nah, man. Mm-mm. Never ends. No, because at a point, your performance goes.

It's like I should be at the apex. You are. Stuff still happens. I should be at the apex because I still have my physical abilities. I still have my cognitive abilities. abilities and I have a, like a tremendous amount of hunting experience that I've been, um, able to get through my career. Right. So I'm probably, I should be, this should be like at late forties should be like, like you'd think that right now would be this moment of just perfection and you don't make mistakes.

It was damn close. Right. I mean, it was, that goat was in a real tough spot to get on and it took us a lot of patience to work through that country. It, that,

that wasn't a slam dunk. That wasn't a let's climb up over this ridge. And as soon as you look over the top, it's a done deal. How long did it take us to get in a spot where you get a shot? Five hours. Five hours. Is that what it was? A five-hour stop?

I think it was five hours. Yeah. In and out of view for a majority of it. So there's a lot that can go wrong in that. So yeah, I mean, to your point, yeah, we should, you feel like you should have every base covered. But then in hindsight, I look back and given the information we had at the time, I wouldn't have changed anything that we did. Oh, absolutely not. When I was sitting there, when we finally found him 300 yards away and just had to

wait for him to stand up, I was sitting there being like astounded by the good fortune because there was a lot of ways when we were trying to put that little puzzle together, there was a lot of ways. I also wanted to point, I almost called in the middle of the night when I was sitting there awake.

My flirt, once we got up there and looked, when I was flirting with storming his ridge top, would not have been a good plan. Once I saw what it was actually like up there, storming the ridge would have been like, you never know when you go storm a ridge. It could go like know you never know when you go storm a ridge it could go like you never know yeah but wouldn't have been a great ridge storm it would have been like you could have killed him with a knife it would have been like either didn't get him or got him with a knife yeah by the time you like

popped into his zone when you when you arrived in zone, you'd have been like on him and presumably he would not be there anymore. But let's say he was sort of deprived of smell and let's say he has no sense of vision and no sense of smell or sorry, no sense of hearing and no sense of smell. It would have been a knife fight. And you would have gone off the other edge to

your demise. So yeah, I wanted to point out to you, Kurt, that your feeling that storm in the ridge was not smart um was not yeah you were that that perspective of yours was validated by the actual layout which was not quite how i envisioned it yeah it was a lot smaller up there everything just looks a little bit larger for example we thought that he was 60 or 80 yards from that pinnacle and you get up there and find out that man it's only 10 or 15 yards or 20 yards it's just it's weird how perspective from that lower elevation as you're working up into that country how it changes so much man um dirt had pointed out on this billy

goat we were stalking uh dirt had pointed out he was bedded on a knife ridge so it was like kind of like the primary range not even the range divide it was like sort of the primary ridge line there's like a very steep night uh finger ridge that comes off it and he's better there where he can look everything to the right everything to the left and then straight ahead is just sky but it doesn't matter because nothing come up that thing. And, uh, he's bedded on a ridge that's no wider than him.

Yeah. He was like, his body consumed the entire width of the ridge top. Was like laying on a knife. Yeah. That was impressive. Yeah. And if he rolled a foot, you know,

the opposite way that he was looking, he would have fell several feet. I wouldn't be able to sleep up there. No. No, you'd roll off. Those things like heights. Yeah. We slept on a goofy little ridge like that one time,

sheep hunting, and my brother Matt said, if I'm not here in the morning, throw my boots off. Can I ask Kurt a question just to your point about, you think you should get to a point where you're not learning? I mean, you've accumulated so much knowledge. There shouldn't be learning process and experience. Did you learn something new this week? Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think the communication portion, I thought about that where we were in the spot where you were set up and I was trying to, one of the things that we hadn't talked about is shot placement, especially to your point about hitting them in the shoulder. And when we were trying to kind of communicate back and forth

that both of us were on the same page to try to hit in that shoulder, afterwards I thought I should have communicated more on the hair. If you had done that, I'd be picking blood off from under my fingernails. I know. So really it's my fault I hope you woke up two in the morning yeah when I woke up last night

I was like I was up for a very long time and I remember looking at my phone being like how is it only two I'm already like up just up

obsessing and it just turned into anger for Kurt. I won't be answering my phone now. I see how this is going. If it rings at two this morning. Yeah. In the end of Apocalypse Now, Kurt, doesn't he talk about a vision of a snail inching along a razor's edge?

Fact check. That might have been Redux. It might have been the extended cut. No. He talks about floating the Ohio River. This is when he's out of his mind. When Willard and Kurtz finally meet. Yeah.

Kurtz talks about floating down the Ohio River and cause Willard, Captain Willard's from Ohio. Kurtz talks about that he floated the Ohio river as his father and he remembers all the smell of the gardenias. Talks about a snail on a razor blade. Talks about a concept hitting him like a diamond bullet.

It's good shit, man. Anyways, that goat was laying out there like a snail on a razor blade. To back up, describe the area we went into, Kurt. It's in a very long drainage. I'm going to say the entire drainage is probably close to 20 miles long. There's a road that runs up somewhere in the 10, 12 mile range.

So there is a major portion of the upper end of that drainage that doesn't see a lot of foot traffic. There's a lot of cliff bands, old growth timber, or I wouldn't say old growth, more like dark timber patches that run down through. And then there was a burn that had rolled through a portion of it as well. So it's really good goat country. A lot of escape cover. And then because of the burn, there's a lot of feed because a lot more of it's open right now than say it was 20 years ago. And it ties into

the backside of a, of a lot of roadless area as well. So you see these goats being able to use multiple drainages and move between them where you have a fairly large circumference of area that doesn't see a lot of traffic, especially once there's snow on the ground. And most of it's in the nine to 10,000 foot range where the goats are living. And they're typically later in the year, like we're at right now, there isn't a lot of elk population or deer population, which also doesn't, you don't see a lot of hunters either, primarily because of that. And access becomes very difficult when the snow gets deep. So it's, it's country, but can get a little bit tricky late in the season.

The lack of other game is really noteworthy, man. It is. It is. And I've been hunting that area for 25 years. And as we had spoken about before, I've seen a very noticeable difference in primarily elk populations. It used to be phenomenal elk hunting. And I think that there's lots of different discussions about why some people would like to point the finger at wolves. There seemed to be a transition somewhere along that line. I can't for sure say that that's exactly what it is.

But as we were driving into the area, I think something that was very telling was down in the valley floor in the farmland, there had to be 200 head of elk out there, out in farm ground that you would, 25 years ago, you would have never seen that. And so whether migrations are changing or actual what they're preferring for habitat, it's kind of anybody's guess. But back to your original point, it's really neat area in the fact that it doesn't draw a lot of people in after say September.

And so it's, it's a pretty cool experience being able to go on these types of hunts where you're not seeing other boot tracks. Um, and you're just not seeing a lot of pressure. Yeah. It just takes 20 some years to. Yeah. 22 years. And then we saw a number of bighorns, and there was like one tag.

How many tags were in that unit? Yeah, I think one tag in that unit. And that'll take a lifetime to draw. Oh, for sure. Yeah, if you're lucky. We went in there, and it's like, there's a thing that happens this time of year. I guess it could happen this time of year. I guess it could happen anytime of year, uh,

to film hunts. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of logistics and crew and people got to plan for it. Right. And you need film permits. And when you get a film permit, you need to like apply for certain dates,

right? It's, you wind up where you have, you like settle on a date window and there's a lot of, uh, that date establishes a lot of inertia, right? It's like, like that's the date, you know, because so-and-so we got, you know, camera guys booked and we got our permits for that date. And then as the date gets closer, then you kind of go like, oh yeah, I forgot about the whole weather part of this. And as the trip's coming up, it just gets like, just the picture just gets bleaker and bleaker of early kind of, I don't want to say freak.

It's definitely not freak, but a significant early snowstorms, A series of early snowstorms. Yeah, two winter storm warnings while we were out. Like actual weather service winter storm warnings. Yeah, like advisories for the area. Yeah, and today, we shouldn't be sitting here right now. We should be up there, but we're supposed to get 15 inches of snow there today. And we already got like what a foot in town yeah overnight oh yeah no visibility it would have been yeah and then the and as this as the as our goat hunt's coming up and i'm looking at the weather there's sort of

like comfort and there's a comfort factor which i don't want to sit and act like isn't a thing it's like of course it's a thing, you know. You can talk through it and have the right gear and make it, but it's still like an issue. Comfort's an issue. Not nearly as significant of an issue is difficulty in travel. So you're already in very precarious, just steep shit, right? You're in a lot of steep shit,

and there's a lot of routes that you can't take. There's a lot of places you'd like to get to that. You can't just go in the way that would, you know, just like go to it. It's a lot of like this and that, and you know, down when you should be going up and around and you should be going straight in

order to arrive at these like points you want to get to because of cliff faces and, and other things. And you add snow on there and it just adds this like little it's like a level of stress and like even that level of stress is like a real thing um you can tough through it and have the right gear but it's like just a thing that's there and it's it just changes the experience but the primary thing is visibility um when i talked about getting that killing that nanny that i killed some years ago we went into an area and sat in the fog just got to our hunt area sat in the fog for three days then all of a sudden poof it was gone and we realized that rimming the canyon walls above

us was mountain goats that had been listening to our conversations. I mean, this week, yesterday was the only day that we had visibility all day. It was. Yeah. Every other day it was a window of clear. Yeah.

We went in and hiked in and just right away, we went in during good visibility and right away, just like seeing goats. And when you draw a goat tag, you're allowed to hunt a nanny or a billy. You're allowed just like a goat, right? A mountain goat. They would prefer strongly. I shouldn't say they people that want there to be a lot of mountain goat hunting opportunities, um, and state game agencies, which I really prefer that you shot a billion. They'll actually make like, like make instructional videos.

I voiced, I didn't like come up with the material, but I voiced a video one time, like read the script for a Rocky mountain goat Alliance video about how to, um, how to tell a nanny from a Billy, they want you to kill the males. And I even read some statistic once that if goat hunters of mountain goat hunters only killed males only killed Billy's, I don't know. This is a statistic I heard. I don't know if it's how valid is if they only killed Billy's there'll be four times as many mountain goat tags. I don't know if that's, I don't know if that holds up i read that somewhere they don't want you shooting the females um i voiced that video which i'll point out like i voiced it but i'm not uh good at it i'm not like great at identifying um i sit there a lot scratch my head looking at a lot of goats uh for me it's like when you see a kid like a nanny with an offspring i'm

like that's a female other than that i'm like damn my mind tries to turn everything into a belly well i didn't realize which i'm sad to say that the nannies had significant horns i don't know if many people know that they got a they got a horn i mean they look it was tougher than i ever imagined to distinguish other than there being like you said a group of them then it'd be like oh those are nannies yeah kurt pointed this out and it's actually i remember just being in the past is like another time i drew a goat tag on the keen eye and didn't get a one because we pass up many opportunities females females. But I remember every female you look at, you're trying your

hardest to turn it into a male. But then you see a Billy, and it's like, there's a Billy. And I remember we had that same thing on the Kenai. I eventually saw a Billy and we're like, oh, all the time we've been spending trying to talk these nannies into being Billys, like, that's a

son of a bitch and Billy. And you just know know it knows that was true on this one yeah uh but seeing all kinds of nannies man and then the second day the homie woke up and you couldn't see shit anything till like what time of day one two yeah yeah it was one o'clock fourth thing and then you're just seeing parts and pieces what was, it was funny. The funniest thing about that day that really sticks with me is that we went to a little glass and lookout. And we just went there. We couldn't see anything. We just went there anyways to sit and see if we could get some clear windows. And Kurt knew about another little looking spot he wanted to go check out that was a 20-minute walk, if.

Yeah. At most. Just like wrap across the ridge top in the upward direction and you get a look into this other bowl that actually drains down into a different drainage and uh at one point let's go check it out let's go verify that it's too foggy so we verify we walk up be like oh wow it's foggy over here too, just like we expected. And walked back, and we get, and here's a set of tracks, solo, a single set of mountain goat tracks that not only walked through our, like literally walked through where we were sitting.

We later learned walked between two of our tents and actually followed our boot prints in our absence in the in the 40 minutes that we were gone came through our tents followed our boot tracks through our glass and spot and then walked and wrapped around a hill yeah literally like if it was two inches to the right it would have tripped on my guides on my tent. Walked? Like, walked next to the tent. Within three feet of our fire ring?

Yep. Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, there must have been so much scent in that zone of us that it just walked right through it. That's Murphy's Law. I know it's overdone, but that is Murphy's Law. I don't think that's Murphy's Law. That's Murphy's Law. What know it's overdone, but that is Murphy's Law. I don't think that's Murphy's Law. That's Murphy's Law. What's your impression of Murphy's Law, Dirt?

If it could go wrong, well. But that's not wrong. No, actually, I'm going to adjust that. If a goat, in my mind, Murphy's Law, if a goat were to walk through camp in a glassing knob,

it would happen while we're looking. Oh, yeah. That is Murphy's Law, dude. It is Murphy's Law. Yeah. You're looking. Oh, yeah. That is a Murphy's Law, dude. It is a Murphy's Law. You're right. It is a Murphy's Law. It's a little... It's never going to walk through when you're sitting there. Just minding your own business.

I think that they... I think the only thing they... I think they care a lot about what they see. The smell isn't as big. I think their whole groove of how they stay alive is based off, I'll see the problem and I'll go to a place where nothing's going to mess with me. Yeah. Well, and that saddle, that pass that we were in when I had the tag last year, the exact same thing happened. It was just over a longer course of time.

I had left camp, went up where we went, but then I'd gone up over the peak, down the backside, and was probably gone for three hours. Came back, and there were three sets of tracks that came right by my tent, right through that. So it's a little goat magazine. It is. It is. And that, that, that bull that we saw was coming right up through there as well.

I think it's almost like a funnel. Yeah. I think a little hot, like a little hot tip is where a bunch of ridges and whatnot kind of like collide together in a low benchy saddle, shit's going to come through. Yeah. It's just like a little funnel.

Yeah, there was what, three or four, three drainages that, or, you know, the backside. There was a lot coming to that saddle. There was. But yeah, we lost a half day there. Did you have something to add there, Chester? Yeah, that happened actually multiple times, not just that one time. As I was going to glass that night,

there were more tracks in our tracks going for the opposite direction, like four sets of tracks in our tracks going right up past our camp again, right in our tracks. Yeah. Have you been telling a lot of people that you got to play guitar with Luke Holmes?

Did you get to play Luke Holmes' guitar and sing? Chester's nodding no. No. Haven't told a lot of people. You haven't leveraged it socially? No. He's got a wife. Yeah, he doesn't need to.

Yeah, that's why he doesn't need to. Yeah, I got a wife, and I like being a little incognito. Do you, real quick, how have you been enjoying your marriage? You've been married how long now? I've been married since August 29th, and things are pretty good. I haven't got kicked to the couch yet or the doghouse, so I feel like I'm doing pretty good. Did you guys know Chester got married in a homemade bolo tie made out of elk antler?

No. I didn't know that, but did Chester make it? I didn't make it. Oh. Well, you're an artist, though. Who made it? You're like such a little craftsman. Seems like a little bird, too.

One of Danielle's friends made them for us. Seth has one, too. Yeah. He was in my wedding. When I saw a picture of Seth, he was basically, I saw a picture of Seth in that wedding, and he was basically at the point where some uncle has his necktie tied around his head like a headband. I barely even recognized Seth in that photo, man. There was a lot of chest hair out in that photo.

It was very late in the night. Oh, it's fantastic. He had a cloud of smoke around him, like one eye open. He probably, it looked like he just caught the garter belt. I think if there had been a series of photos, like a burst of photos, it just would have been that picture and then another following frames of Seth just slowly tipping down to the ground. If you'd have had a necktie, it would have been tied around your head.

This is like dancing, like Seth was's ready to dance on a table. No, I had been dancing very hard. He was like, I hope they play Moany Moany again. I was ready to do anything at that point. Yeah. He's like, oh, if they could just play Celebrate one more time. If they turn on Mambo No. 5, five i'm gonna burn this place to the ground that's probably the most tuned up i've ever seen you seth oh is that right oh man i'm bummed i

missed it was a good reason to party man yeah just you're getting married yeah seth was saying he wants to um seth i don't know if you caught that but seth was kind of wants to go to a bar with me oh yeah no yeah all of us yeah yeah all of us one but Seth kind of wants to go to a bar with me. Oh, yeah. All of us. One of my life goals is to go to a bar with Steve. When we go to a bar, do you mean that because you think that would mean I would be real drunk? No, no.

I just like going to dive bars and I think it would be cool to just go to a bar. What would you want me to do there? Be drunk and start a fight? No. Yeah, I would like that. Hit somebody with a stool. We could if you want to, do there? Be drunk and start a fight? No. Yeah, I would like that. I mean, we could. Hit somebody with a stool. We could if you want to, but no, I just. Like Chet and I go to dive bars all the time, just have a beer.

Oh, I would love to go. I want to set a date to go. After you get your goat. I'm going to have a bloody mirror when I go. I thought we were all getting a shot. Oh, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. Right down the street.

You got it all picked out? Yeah. Just cross the, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. Right down the street. You got it all picked out? Yeah. Just cross the railroad tracks, we'll be set. I can't wait. Perfect spot. Oh, yeah. That place. Oh, yeah.

Oh, so we lost, I want to get back to this thing, though. But no, I'll go, I don't go to bars, but I'll go to a bar. We could buffer you, too. But I don't want to get the C-19er, man. What's that? I'm going to wear my mask with a straw. C19er? Oh, yeah. My brother thinks they ought to rebrand it to C19er. He likes the sound of that better.

Sounds more aggressive. I'm going to get a mask and poke a hole in it and run a straw. Drink my shots like that. That should be mandated. Yeah, I'll be like disease-free drinking how do you close the gap you're gonna have to like need like an over a cop Chester cock he's a he's a crafty guy it is a bummer coming back into town after being in the mountains for a couple days like oh shit you do forget about kovat and like all the crazy stuff going on you're

just like yeah that's all still here. You know what's better than a straw is a big hood where you can do all your hand functions in a thing. Like a bubble. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And there's like a little pass-through port where they can hand glasses in.

Yeah. What's those balls that you shove people in and you push them down a hill? You know those? Yeah, that'd be great, man. Yeah, I want one of those. Remember when E.T., like when he got all sick yeah they put him in that thing right yeah it'd be like go to the bar and that i'll go down there

and get wasted oh yeah but i don't like have the part of the reason i quit drinking a lot like the part of reason i quit getting drunk um was because i didn't think it was fair to my kids who didn't ask to be born. Yeah. Right? They didn't like request to be born. I didn't think it was fair to them to be hung over in the morning. Yeah. That's some, that's good parenting.

Yeah. Good day. I mean, and I found myself being like irritated on days that I'd be hung, like on a Sunday or whatever, Saturday, whatever the hell, be hung over and sort of like irritated by their presence when they were little because they were needy.

You don't have to get drunk. And the minute I had that feeling and be like, dude, they didn't like ask to come live in the house. Yeah. It's like you had them and brought them here.

Yeah. And now you're annoyed at them? I should have made some different decisions man yeah that's when i wanted to quit being drunk no that's that's smart yeah a lot of people don't do that sick of being hung over man yeah but i had two little cocktails last night yeah i had a coffee you had a little coffee i had a coffee liqueur yeah and then i had a giant uh rum coke rum bacardi and coconut water.

What do you call that? It's called a Jimmy Buffett. Oh, Jimmy's. I was reading an article one time in a magazine. It was about like what celebrities like to drink. And I took note of those. Jimmy Buffett was being featured. And he was saying how you can't get hung over.

Coconut water. Yeah. You can't get hung over with a coconut water and rum. I've disproven that. I've disproven that. but it's a safe bet. Yeah. Zero hangover this morning. Oh, yeah.

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Tons of nannies. A lot of shot opportunities on nannies. Stalk opportunities. A lot of me thinking nannies were billies. A lot of me trying to talk them into being billies. Just at least giving them the benefit of the doubt. Yep. But then what was it?

The second or the third day that we ended? Third day that we spotted the one billy that we believe that it was one that we got on yeah three days later so and there were a couple of goats obviously that were in spots that were so far off the by themselves that you'd suspect that they were billies but you just couldn't verify it. Weather rolled in on a couple that were up high. Do you think, uh,

trusting that we can get it worked out and you're able to adjust your schedule and go back out again? Um, I feel that we would, if we, if we spent, and we should spend a day or two on this, I feel that we would find that Billy again. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I, yeah. As long as he, I don't know that I would make that my plan, but I wouldn't be surprised. And it would,

you'd never really know. No, you'd never, but I wouldn't be surprised that you'd be like, oh, he's like back in one of those zones that we know him to inhabit. Oh, that would not surprise me in the least.

You know what you said when you spotted him? Huh? Well, yeah, I don't think you can say it here. Oh no. Holy. No,

you had just spotted a Ram. And then you said bingo. Oh yeah. Yeah. Which is totally family friendly. That is family friendly. Yeah. You said bingo. He said, bingo. You would know if you shot that goat probably if it was the same one

because there might be a little tuft of hair missing. Got a little bald streak like that bear in the great outdoors with the bald head. Bald butt too, right? Yeah, bald butt, yeah. Oh, my God, man. There's six weeks. There'll be a part two To this There's six weeks of season left

I just Really Am Just so Disappointed with myself I was really disappointed For you at the time I am just so disappointed with myself. I was really disappointed for you at the time. You offered to give me a hug.

I would have too. I'd still do it. But. I looked that down. Yeah. I think, I think it's just a little bit of perspective because back to when we were talking about it earlier, when you put in for something like this for 22 years, I think it's safe to say that you don't put in for it because you want to go. Yes. It's not like I'm doing this like to make an exchange. Yes. It is, it is vastly about the, the experience that you have, uh, the memories that you make, the things that you learn. And kind of, at least for me, one of the things that I really enjoy about this style of hunting

is that it's always pushing your envelope just a little bit. That you're staying out when it's colder. You're accessing country that maybe you don't feel a hundred percent comfortable in. And every time you push that envelope, your envelope becomes larger and you become more experienced and you become more confident. And you don't, I don't necessarily get that with other styles of hunting that you do with the Alpine style. And so where your experience putting in for this for 22 years could have ended at five days. It's almost like a gift. You know, you get your tag again, you get to go

again, you get to go have those experience because it's so much different than, than any other style hunting, at least that I do. Well, sheep hunting is very similar, but I don't know that I think that's why it's, it's my favorite, favorite time in the outdoors. And it's not always the most fun at the time. It's often the most challenging.

I had been in on a couple of one day go hunts and it was a little bit of like my impression. My old girlfriend, Hester the molester drew it once and we got it in a day. My brother hunts. And it was a little bit of like my impression. My old girlfriend, Hester the Molester, drew it once and we got it in a day. My brother drew it and got it in a day. Yeah.

I feel like they can go either way. I've heard, I've heard lots of stories and, and the odds definitely go up if you go in on the earlier season. Everything becomes more complicated in the late season. You have to have a different kit of gear, the travel's different. Obviously weather, locating them becomes, as we

have seen, extremely tough. What makes you want to wait, just for people's awareness, what makes you want to wait is that they get that big crazy hair. Yeah. Because no one in the world is going to get a mountain goat and not have the rug tanned. Yeah. Because no one in the world is going to get a mountain goat and not have the rug tanned. Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure it happens, but that's generally like, it's like a musk ox hide. You don't like throw it in a dumpster. Oh, hopefully not. No, it's like a thing of great beauty. It is. Yeah, it's like a thing of great beauty. It is. Yeah. It's amazing. And especially, uh, this time of year, they get that thick wool. Cause they end up with the, the longer guard hairs, the hollow guard hairs.

And then they, they get that real fine wool, uh, right next to skin. And yeah, there's nothing like it. It's beautiful. Oh, Ridge, are you willing to talk about your uh your um oh yeah talk to lay out your little decision making process here today well so yesterday we got into uh going up to get that goat that we spotted and we got into an avalanche shoot and And I don't really know what happened, but we got to a spot where we had kind of tucked around this like pretty mellow climb. Right?

Yeah. Like you could have gone up that in view of the goat, but that stretch was like wide open. It was almost like pastry, like very mellow, but it was in view of where the goat could have been so to avoid going up that and getting spotted and blowing the goat out we wrapped around the edge of that which happened to be one side of a pretty steep avalanche chute and below is just like a river of timber and then a little creek below that and a river of down timber like a debris field from an avalanche yeah like plungy

sticks of like giant breakers yeah um and we like started going up that and then i think kurt spotted the goat right you guys were pretty far away from me And Garrett, I think Garrett was in front of me, and then we had to down climb that I don't know what that was like 70 feet or is that too much? I don't know. Gauge in that? I think it was pretty accurate. Yeah, and that was I don't know what was the angle? It was steep. I remember looking at Garrett and being like this looks damn near vertical man Yeah, you stick your arm out and you're touching the ground. I mean, if you stick your arm out horizontal.

Yeah. Yeah. And we had crampons at this point and ice axe. We weren't on ice. It was still like soft soil. So you had purchase. Snow. Snow though, wet snow.

So it's slippery. And I don't know what happened. Like something just gripped me and I just got like way out of my comfort zone. And I've never had that happen on any meat eater shoot. I've been shooting the show for five years and I've never gotten like totally freaked and just not, I just felt like out of my ability to keep moving. And there's a thing like in climbing where you just like freeze and you can't, you just like, don't know how to make your body move and that happened to me like multiple times on that down climb and it was just so weird you're like a hummingbird's lips yeah yeah not a woodpecker and uh so we find i get

down we get down to the this little spot where there's this frozen waterfall and yeah i was just like i feel totally out of my ability to do this and then you guys were all you know super super nice and very supportive and and we're like if you know if you don't want to do it you don't have to do it and i i made the call to to leave and it was a really hard decision. I felt very guilty. Really? Extremely. But then you shared with us that you'd had this feeling of something bad was going to happen.

I didn't walk away from that feeling great. That may have saved us. I know. The last thing you left us with was, I have a feeling something bad is going to happen I remember looking at you guys just being like Be really really fucking safe

Something just felt fucking weird About the whole thing man I think it was totally in my head But once you get in your own head about stuff It's hard to get out of it I noticed I could see It was funny because Just having been with you in a lot of Well well, I mean, just a lot of situations, including a bunch of situations of steep stuff, wet snow.

Yeah. And just skipping along. No problem. Have you go lucky. I, it was like, I watched you sort of have, like um, like I was like, you would, you, you're totally fine. Like I've just seen you do this so many times,

but you just had like a thing entered your head. Something happened. I, yeah, it was really weird. And like, not to, not to say you shouldn't pay attention to that.

No, no, no. You have to pay attention to it. But to your point, like the day, the last day that we had camped before we rolled out, cause that big storm was coming in. We had gotten up on that one glass and knob that was like, and we were out on the end of it, man.

And if you had fallen off, you would have been toast. And we were skipping around up there filming shit. And you were disappointed that. Oh, in that time. In that area. Yeah. We were like mindful of time. Didn't want to go down in the dark yeah couldn't really see any reason to keep going it was like very dicey to keep going for like no reason it wasn't like we were stalking something it was just like trying

to find the source of a set of mountain goat tracks yeah and you were like wanting to keep going and in my mind that would have been like kind of like borderline stupid yeah because we weren't like after something yeah it was just to the point where like i i would go if there was a thing there if there was like a shot opportunity like if we're like okay there's a billy let's try to get a shot then i'm like okay let's just go but i would never be like just to get another 20 yards of visibility over the top of the ridge it just wasn't worth it to me yeah yeah that didn't go that didn't freak me out at all yeah but then you entered a little mind space there was just something about i just kept looking down at that that avalanche shoot and just like i could just like see my body all crumpled up like that fucking goat you shot my brain's fucking gone

your lungs but by your wrist my lungs by my wristwatch i just like yeah man i just got like so rattled and yeah i don't we sat there for a long time and you got like we gotta be like the goats not gonna wait around all day it was a hard decision man it was a really i came down bummed i came down and talked to these guys. They saw me come down the trail and they were all worried all day. Chester ran up and thought everybody had died. Oh, yeah. I mean, the look on Chris's face, big, wide open eyes.

Like, I mean, in some ways it kind of has a symmetry to Steve's missed shot in that there's this sense of like I i let the the greater hold down oh yeah definitely definitely so uh yeah i mean yeah chris you were obviously like very frazzled by not the decision but the fact that you made the decision of that makes sense yeah and it's not like i'm not afraid of like not like i'm not trying to be macho and be like oh i can just do it and what it was just like i don't care about that the thing i care i just don't want to not one do the thing that i'm here to do which is to film a show and also not have this experience that i love having with all you guys so like it was yeah it was just a it's weird man it's i'm gonna be thinking about it for

a long time much like your goat thing Call me when you wake up 2 in the morning I'll call Kurt Let's talk Let me patch Kurt in Damn Kurt why didn't you tell me about that That's a hair thing Go ahead Chester

We're going to wrap her up Because then we're going to part 2 man I'm going gonna call that episode the return this episode will be the miss the reason why i think these guys all like passed away up there is because you didn't hear what i said you were walking down the trail chris towards me and i said is everything okay and you kind of had this you shook your head no and you had your head down and at that moment. They're all dead. Don't even look for them.

Well, I tried to give you guys a thumbs up because it entered my head that like, oh, they're probably thinking something bad happened. So I tried to be like, no, it's all good. They've gone to heaven. Up. They're up. Yeah, man. Yeah, it was weird.

It was a weird one. Long time left. Yeah. I just am so. You know when celebrities do a thing and then they got to apologize on Instagram? They make the apology video. I'm doing a lot more listening than talking these days. That's like one of the things.

And you also have to be like, I'm very humbled. I'm humbled. Yeah. But I didn't do anything bad. No. I didn't do like a celebrity mistake. I didn't do like a celebrity mistake. I'm just humbled. Humbling terrain.

The whole deal is humbling. I'm humbled about the miss, dude. I know, but it's all part of it. The miss. The miss. Yeah. I say if you're not learning, you ain't earning. Oh, yeah, buddy.

Put that on a t-shirt. That's what I'll call it. Dirt poetry. I know. How's that go again? If you're not learning, you ain't earning. That's what I'm going to call this episode. That's a good one.

And then the next episode will be the second miss. No. Or it'll be the fall. Of the goat. The lost body be like an everest an everest character all right man we'll be back with a dead goat with noble steve so struck with grief and saddled with self-loathing. We knew he'd have to try again, or else he'd risk imploding. So we mobilized the cavalry,

the whole meat-eater crew, and sent Noble Steve back on the hunt. Here's the story of attempt number two. Okay, we're back for part two. The only difference now is that you'll notice a slight sound difference because we're not in our studio. And also, this is part two of the Mountain Goat deal. And Chris Ridge Pounder Gill is not with us.

Other than that, refresh everyone's memory who's here. I'm feeling a lot better. I feel a lot better. I feel a lot better. Like all of us do. Rick? Yeah, I'm happy that you feel better because when you feel better, that means we

don't have to keep going out there. Because I know, yeah, people were worried. Chester's still here. Chester? Still here. Seth, even though to you the listener this this part one just rolled into part two but what you don't realize that uh it's a long time later summer came back summer came back winter just showed up seth's girlfriend shot a testicle this deer yep real nice cactus buck fatty right fatty dirt got a deer

body yeah kurt hasn't got shit andrea got a deer too nothing there kurt's good prospects though on a nice prospects yeah um uh we'll get back to the mountain goat and conclude our saga but but talk about the explain the cactus buck deal. I think people think this is interesting. Yeah, so this is a crazy story. My girlfriend Kelsey, she was last week. No, a week and a half ago. We spent a week out in eastern Montana deer hunting,

first week of the season. And the one night I went out with Kelsey to try and find her a buck, and we were six miles from our camp. And we found this really cool cactus buck, still in velvet. Its right side was somewhat normal. Left side was just like six points sticking out of the base of its antler where like an antler should be yeah this is like a hormonal imbalance right yeah and um for whatever reason we couldn't get on that buck that evening we'd like crest the hill and he'd be a thousand yards away and then go over hill we'd get to that and he'd be a thousand yards away and then go over a hill we'd get to that hill he'd be a thousand yards away he's out trying to find his testicles maybe i don't know

he's not gonna find them oh i'll you know you know i stopped the other day to take my ljs off what you know how i took the other day i got hot and stopped and took my long johns off yeah left those sons of bitches laying there no oh really yeah who walks away from their long johns i guess you're walking away from a trekking bowl yeah to get really stand up and walk away from your long john oh yeah it's more priorities so someone's gonna be like oh it's weird for long johns maybe if i'm long johns i start looking for the corpse yeah that would be a sign a hypothermia anyway um so we didn't get on that buck that even the next morning we decided to go on a quick bird hunt in the morning rather than deer hunt because there's birds everywhere and we're back at our camp and we

left camp and walked over this one ridge and i glassed up on the hill. And sure enough, there's that same buck. Six air miles from where we had seen him the night before. Who knows how far, like, with, you know. He could have walked 12 miles that night. Hard to say. And it was so distinct. And it's without a doubt. Yeah, because it's such a weird.

Like, how many, like, bucks in velvet with a weird growth. Yeah. Which the weird thing was that area we had seen seven different bucks in velvet. That is odd. There's a thing on Kodiak. There's like an area that's famous for these hormonally imbalanced cactus bucks that like have weird formation and the velvet dries on the rack. Yep. When you say cactus buck, I mean, I got that.

They get these thorny looking antlers. Oh, okay. These like clubby, goofy. It's nothing to do with. The whole time I've been alive, I didn't start hearing. It's like I never heard about this. Now, every didn't start hearing about it. It's like, I never heard about this. Now every other day I hear about it from somebody. And just by thumbing through Instagram,

I've seen several deer that have been taken this year that are stone velvet. Different states too. Montana, Utah. Deer are getting less manly. Crisis of masculinity in the deer population. And this deer you know this someone should write a book about it oh man some academic papers could all the bucks that we had

seen that week were hanging out with other bucks up until this point that was the only buck that we had seen that was hanging out with those well the flakey just thought he was just one one of the ladies you know and then his then his berries were, I was saying that he had lost them, but they were dwarfed. They looked normal. He had an intact sack. Okay. And when I felt that, it just felt like there was nothing there. There was nothing in there.

Not descended or something. He had the sack, but no labels. Oh, you know what? Maybe that's what happened. It didn't even feel like there were any little raisins in there, you know. He had the coin first, but there was no what happened it didn't even feel like there were any little raisins in there you know like he had the coin first but there was no change it didn't drop you can just go on and on with these metaphors it's endlessly amusing yeah it's really interesting man um anybody if you want to read up on this just go type in like cactus buck there's all

there's way better explanations than we're providing but it has to do with like it not having its uh the proper dose of its masculine hormones yeah and for somehow it like leads to weird antler growth and then the velvet tends to dry yep them. You could see a, the funny thing is at six miles that it traveled, you could see like a really ruddy buck, you know, cruising that distance maybe. But why, you know, hermaphrodite deer or whatever you want to call it, traveling that doesn't make any sense at all. I don't know why he picked up and moved that far that night. He was looking for you. was a poor poor choice on his part because he didn't begin pushed around by some other more manly bucks yeah maybe he gets his ass kicked all the time

maybe he just doesn't have the same amount of one of the biggest body deer though i've ever seen in my life yeah that's the odd thing too just huge did you guys taste it yet um i don't know we we didn't do a good job of keeping track of oh once you got home everything got all mixed up yeah yeah um so we went back like ended the mountain goat hunt in despair i had a midlife crisis and it was winter it was cold cold yeah i went through a midlife crisis it's over now i didn't buy a car or anything but i had a midlife crisis yeah it kept you awake at night kept me awake at night not only that my wife noticed the difference in me she knew that it did missing hurt me hard i heard she was making fun of you for it.

Made fun of me. I felt embarrassed whenever I was around Kurt. When Jimmy, a real ego blow. I bet Kurt, if I only could know, my wife is friendly with Kurt's wife, so I'll eventually find out what all Kurt said about me. How he truly felt. What about your boy, that comedy oh jimmy was not

yeah my little are you disappointed in your dad my boy was not happy just very like what mr pierce doesn't understand how it could happen turn into summer again turn back in the winter yeah and um we went back into the same vicinity and it was just like it felt to me like i mean there was always it felt to me like a lot of mountain goats had moved into that valley for whatever reason yeah or i don't know didn't it oh? Oh, yeah. They were just everywhere. They were everywhere. Yeah, how many did we count that first day in the zone that we were in? Yeah, and we were only in one. A couple dozen.

I mean, it wasn't a small draw, but it was just a fraction of that area. What, 25? Yeah. So we went back, had a great, beautiful weather window, got after one billy that laid up in a spot that made it very difficult to shoot at him. Almost like he tensed it. Almost like it was his notion. Yeah.

Almost like he meant it. Didn't work out. The next day went out, and we realized something was happening that I didn't really even, going into this, wasn't aware of, is that you enter into the you start getting close to the mountain goat rut yeah so the we found two bands like two groups of nannies what like six to a dozen I don't know yeah and each of them had a billy mixed in yeah and they were close to one another they were only five six hundred yards apart yeah like definitely like like the groups would definitely be aware of

each other and and you know like interacting in some way or another yeah and it made it uh after a lot of frustration and looking at billies that were hard to get to or wondering how you're going to get to them and wondering where you're going to shoot from if you do get to them, it was as though one laid it out on a blueprint. You're talking Saturday. I'm sorry if I'm not being clear. Yeah. The one we got was so perfectly positioned to where if you imagine like a little crease in a mountain, it's like on one side of the crease in the opposing ridge.

You could just sneak up, walk up, pop over, shoot across. Everything perfect. Yeah, when there's six of us versus just two people, it's like a whole different footprint for travel. So having that goat in a good position. Otherwise, it's just like six people are going to, you know, even if you sneak around pretty good, something's going to Did you guys end up seeing another Billy

when you popped up? No, did not. Kurt looked for it too. I find that there's some poetic justice maybe that's not the word that the shot difference it was the exact same shot and I didn't have my struggles this time

oh yeah didn't miss what was a little it was 305 right 306 but i found out in the days after whiffing my shot and contemplating it i found out a number of things a bunch of little perfect like a bunch of small things that added up i went and i had a rifle that i had set at a 200 yard zero without actually making an actual 200 yard zero like i arrived at it through math what my 200 yard zero is and in that process screwed up so that my 200 yard zero was already high anyway then i had like a a dope chart you know like a drop chart and i think that i think that when i pulled that chart up i was being lazy and maybe even um i don't know if it auto filled at sea level or whatever i don't know but i was alreadyfilled at sea level or whatever. I don't know. But I was already high.

My little dope chart was off to make it more high. And then I was trying to shoot the mountain goat in the high shoulder, not accounting for the massive amount of nothingness beneath the hair, so that I was probably already kind of aiming at not aiming at the mountain goat anyways and yeah just shot over his back and this time it went back to normal aiming got him yeah that was a good group um yeah i forgot what you said when we walked up to that goat, but when we skinned him, you said, like, that looks like a pretty tight group right there or something. Yeah.

Yeah, a couple shots, a few shots there that all seemed to be, like, terminal. But he didn't show, like, Kurt confirmed the first hit was a hit, but he sure didn't show the signs of that. Yeah, he soaked up some rounds. Yeah, I was surprised. Tough, tough animal. Four and a half years old. I just this morning took it to get it checked.

With a mountain goat, you have to take it in to get it examined, and they pull a tooth. And by looking at the the tooth eruption well looking at the annualized so you can count growth rings on them and kurt you had it pegged at four and a half years like you can see the lamb tip or whatever the kid tip i guess like its first year growth and you see the annuli rings kurt pegged it at four and a half um the biologist also felt four and a half based on the annuli and then the tooth eruption the dental pattern also backed up four and a half but then they'll send it off for like a cementum analysis and an old goat is like 10 years old

right kurt shot one it was yeah i shot one that was eight. Yeah, I shot one that was eight. And yeah, I've heard of multiple goats being in that 10. And I think from what I've seen, very similar to what you'll see with sheep where they can get 12, 13. Wow. But I know it gets really tough to count those rings when you have a goat that old because they all stack up right there at the bottom and yeah it's not like a sheet where

it's spread out over 36 to you know 40 inches or whatever no so this thing's horn its long horn was nine inches and its shorter horn was i think eight and five eight six eighths or something like that eight and five eighths i can't remember very very sharp horns on it very long like long winter coat but not old like not a giant tasty very tasty and when i was down today getting my thing checked a guy i don't know if i told you guys this the guy was in there with two bighorn deadheads. Very old. Looked the same vintage. Looked like the same wear on them. One of them had a little bit of sheath on it still.

And he was getting them checked so he could keep them for himself. Oh, he just found them. That's cool. Brought them in to get them certified. You used to not be able to have it at all, right? No. And now if you find one, you can get it checked. Did that change this year uh last year it was either last year the year before

gotcha yeah it's just just a recent very recent i think this is the second hunting season where if you found something you could take it in everywhere because i was telling you guys we found that one on uh grand canyon and you couldn't keep it. State by state. Yeah. And I believe it's obviously different between types of land, national forest or public ground opposed to, well, I wouldn't even say public ground, but like parks and that, that's outside of that realm. So you'd have to check that.

I one time did a thing at the new mexico fishing game has this fundraiser where they sell they auction it's like for the it's like for a group that's sort of support i can't remember how it works new mexico fishing game department like some affiliate organization or them they have an annual auction where they um they auction off like tags and stuff governor's tags when i think they do it at this but they also auction off all the shit that gets hit by cars all the poach stuff all the stuff that people find and they had all kinds of bighorn heads down there that was for whatever you found it laying um confiscated stuff. I heard about a guy one time that had killed a bear in self-defense and had to turn in the hiding skull.

And then later went down to the auction just as an anonymous person and bought his bear back tenacity and he had skinned it in some weird way so he he had like made the cuts in some unorthodox fashion so that he knew for sure it was the one because they then got it tanned and he went down and bought it at auction and knew it was his because he'd skinned it in some way to leave his mark on it so now he's got his own totally legal but got his own thing back what are you with your goat you're gonna how are you gonna have that finished out a rug with the head in okay i had a i had a tar a himalayan tar like

that that i gave to a buddy imagine like a classic bear rug with two horns sticking out the top. Nice. On the floor, is it going to be draped on the wall? The horns are too sharp. Yeah, danger. I got a mountain lion I did like that. That's on a wall. I got, like I said, I gave that tar away.

And then, yeah, I'm going to hang it on the wall because the horns are. Yeah. Your kids can't be running around on that. No. No, trip on that thing game over dude it's sharp sharp i was surprised by that yeah you attack it to the ceiling maybe so now um no i'm gonna put it on the wall yeah you don't got much wall space i got a little spot for it oh real quick you know that giant buck d Doug Dern shot all those years ago?

The buck they call the standard? The standard, yeah. And Doug took it down to the taxidermist. This is a good story. He takes his buck down to the taxidermist, and people are out dropping all their stuff off, but the taxidermist is like, get all these cars out of the way. Let this guy pull in.

Priority. A guy asked Doug what he's going to do with it. Doug's like, he'd never taken anything to a taxidermist before. He's like, I don't know. I guess I'd just like to get the head mounted. He said, this guy goes, if that was my deer,

I'd stuff the whole damn thing and I got a place where I could put it. All right, we had agreed that, wasn't it? We're supposed to have a shot? That's Chester's rule. This is like a Wisconsin celebration. Yeah, kind of. If we were in Wisconsin and you shot a buck,

we'd have some kind of drinking celebration sure that uh that conversation remember we were talking how we would like to go to a bar with steve yeah but i don't go to bars but you don't go to bars i will and then this it turned into chet saying if you get one we need to have a shot yeah yeah when i get c19 or it's not gonna be because i got it at a bar yeah i wish i could say the same i want i don't want it to be that it was like oh yeah he got c19 or at a bar yeah no what are you what's the cheers yanni was here he'd probably have a Latvian one. To a successful hunt. Do you got a good Scani cheer?

To the good ships, the bad ships, and ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships, and may they always be. Big box. Big box. Big box, big goats. Pretty sure that's an irish thing not with scotch my problem is i was going to slurp mine just to make a loud noise so people could have the experience with me but holy shit that's smooth right there it is he's already looking at the bottle

yeah what was that that's boone and crockett whiskey ladies and gentlemen boone and crockett Club whiskey since 1887. Seth gave me a bottle of that for my birthday. Steve was over there that day, and I think we finished the whole bottle off that night. Okay, we were saying earlier, I first applied for a Mountain Goat tag in this state. 1998, and finally drew kurt you i don't know what you you probably applied since you were a little kid is this your first mountain goat tag last year or had you drawn

before in montana yeah it was the first one and you had you been at it for forever i hadn't because the whole time i lived in alaska it was a registration so we you just hunted goats yeah just yeah so it wasn't until i moved back got you started putting in getting points but um I hadn't because the whole time I lived in Alaska, it was a returation. You just hunted goats up there. Yeah, so it wasn't until I moved back. Gotcha. I started putting in, getting points. But you're prohibited after you draw. You're prohibited from even applying for seven years. Correct, yeah.

So you got six years to go. I'm entering my seven-year hiatus from even applying. It took me 22 years to draw last time. I'm 46. I can't do that level of arithmetic. No. 68. If I wait the seven and then go 22, who's good at math?

75 plus 29. 75 years old. 75 plus 29. 75 years old. 46 plus 29. You better start looking into an easier unit. Even if you only go 10 or 15, you're still

in your sixth decade. Yeah, I don't know how many more years I got left in me. That's a tough one for the... Well, I like it that Kurt's older than me because he's fine. Oh, yeah. He's better than I am. He's more spry.

You guys are both real spry. I was real happy to hear that you were feeling bad because that helps the candy guys. Well, Dirt diagnosed me not having enough oregano extract. I got some in the rig. I'm telling you, man. Steve was complaining about jello legs as we're going up 3,000 vertical feet. And, I mean, you got to take your time no matter what. But that helps me out, telling along the camera.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a big hike Friday. That was the biggest hike of the trip, I think. Yeah. No. Big and slow. As far as gain, I think so. Oh, Friday. Yeah, Friday. Yeah. trip, I think. Yeah. No. Big and slow. As far as gain, I think so. Oh, Friday.

Yeah, Friday. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'll buy that. Not Saturday, yeah. Okay, I'm going to have the rest of my shot. All right, everybody out there listening, rest easy. My midlife crisis is over. I got my mountain goat.

Seven years, I'm going to be back into the game. Or like Sid, get the kids. Take the kids out. Listen, man. How many points do they have? My five-year-old has two points. How many points does Jimmy have? Two.

Oh, he does? Yeah. I have four. Is it going to be a while yet? Yeah. My kid will turn 12. When he's first able to apply for a limited permit, he'll be coming into the draw.

I can't do that level of math. I don't know. He'll have nine points. I did do it. Yeah. Is there an average on how long it takes? Is 22 years common? What this state does is they square your points.

So let's say you accumulate a point. Yep. One times one is one. Oh, interesting. So you're in the draw once. But let's say you're a fellow like me who's accumulated every bonus point you could get, and I don't know when they put the system into effect, but it was a long time ago, in the teens.

So you have like 15 times 15 points. Dang. Sure odds are way better. times 15 points. Dang. Sure odds are way better. Exponential. Yeah. But then everybody's like that. So everybody's in there. Everyone's name is in the hat like some odd 100 times.

Yeah, you had 225 name tags in there. So I have 16 points now. 225 is a ways away. 15 times 15. What do you have, Chad? You probably have more than everyone sitting here. I don't know. You've got 256

bonus points. My kid's got two. No, he's got two times two. Four. Cuatro. Yeah. So you still got slightly better draw odds than he does. Oh, yeah. But still, it's going to be a while. All. Cuatro. Yeah. So you still got slightly better draw odds than he does. Oh, yeah. But still, it's going to be a while. All right, everybody.

Rest easy. On my behalf. Oh, plus the mango tasted real good, man. Oh, yes. Very good. Hot tip. If you want to have you being people out there, if you want to have something good to eat,

Danielle Pruitt. What's it called? Whiskey. Like, Danielle Pruitt. What's it called? Whiskey butter. Danielle Pruitt. Go type into your phone. Not you, Chester, but people. He had it up on his phone.

Type into your phone, Danielle Pruitt. You can just do this. Pruitt. P-R-E-W-E-T-T. Whiskey butter heart recipe. Makekey Butter Heart Recipe. Make that. Make that shit.

But also put it on like backstrap, tenderloin, whatever. Seared venison heart. You can put it on anything you want. Here it is. Seared venison heart whiskey butter recipe on the MeatEater site. Yep. So the MeatEater.com, Danielle Pruitt. She's kind of becoming, it's a little bit like,

I'd never say this in front of Jesse Griffiths, but she's kind of becoming my favorite wild game coach. Don't tell Jesse I said that. I just ate at his restaurant the other night, so I'd feel pretty bad if word got out. He's been replaced. He's been replaced. I like Danielle better thanielle better it's not like

anybody listens to those podcasts no when i was searching up that thing you know what i found that was surprising is there's like a thing that happens where if you like autofill if you write in danielle pruitt guess what the number one autofill is danielle pruitt husband all right everybody thanks Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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