The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 362: First Lite and the Cosmos

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Clay Newcomb, Sean Weaver, Ford Van Fossen, Kevin Harlander, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: The cosmos theory and dust particles; when the cosmos was forming; First Lite's brand new store in Hailey, ID; way back when Cal was one of First Lite's first employees; when you dive into a vault toilet to retrieve your phone; ritual opposition--when you dick with your friends all the time; the pangolin snail extremophile; when you need to protect yourself from your own drool; the incredibly confusing regulatory structure of hunting and fishing in Alaska; what constitutes subsistence; big announcement: First Lite waders are coming!; the importance of warm, dry feet; what Hawaiian shirts can represent; First Lighters; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go go farther stay longer okay everybody we're coming from uh downtown haley idaho the first time ever in the new first light store well now we if you haven't picked up on this in the past we will record and then and then we should record and then release the episode like some time later at Corinne's whim. So we find ourselves in one of these issues where there's our reality and your reality. And our reality is not open yet. But in their reality...

To everybody who thought this show was live, your dreams have just been crushed. Oh, they know. In their reality, it's open. My wife's been trying to explain this to me because my wife's hip on this new idea about how no one's actually right or wrong. Well, that's wrong.

That can't be true. She's trying to explain it to me. It has something to do with how big the cosmos is and there's a lot of ways of looking at stuff around the cosmos. She's telling me that all the things that we're adamant about are just like um like we're adamant about stuff but it's just like this little teeny like imagine you have like dust in the air right and there's sun shining on it your ideas are just one of the many little places where light hits the dust.

Do you follow me? No, I told her it's stupid. Yeah, because it doesn't work in real life. Yeah, if you weren't going to say how stupid I was, because it doesn't work for real life. It's like, yeah, well, maybe noon isn't noon somewhere else, but for here, it's like you just got to accept that it's noon or 1.30. That's a terrible example for today, it's like you just got to accept that it's noon or 1.30. That's a terrible example for today, Sean, because it's actually tomorrow. We were at, what's funny is she's laying this all out on me.

We were up at this little inholding we have. It's like this little five-acre inholding, and my buddy has the one next to mine. And on his place is this old probably like i don't know man like a giant water tank in the past someone's gonna bottle some spring water up there so there's like this giant water tank and we'll climb up on the water tank and you can watch for trout down in this beaver pond but the water tank's yellow and i'm standing on the water tank with my boy debating with my boy whether or not like i'm gonna haul the water tank out of there and make a hog roaster out of it to which he thinks um it's a good place to stand and look off of

and meanwhile not even we're like having an argument about the water tank and she's not even paying enough attention to us and she's laying this thing on me about how our things are nothing wow this is not even there yeah and so i told her but where does that leave you i'm not gonna run around acting like i don't think what i think because it's like a little dust particle yeah no you got to go through it like it's all logical and rational. Yeah, it's just one of those ideas that doesn't have any... I like it, but it just doesn't change anything for me. Yeah, if your idea... She's trying to reduce your octane, I think, a touch.

She might be, man. Take the edge off. She could use a little reduction. If your idea was a flash of light, you could, in theory, look at that flash of light through the James Webb telescope like 30 years later and identify that thought out in the cosmos. Yeah, and I'll be like, I'm still right. I'm still right. What's going on right now, but not for you, for us, in our reality, on our dust particle, is the first Light Hootenanny is taking place right now.

Who wants to explain that? Which of you guys feels best equipped? We have three First Light representatives here. Yeah, I can take that one. Okay. Bridget, Kevin, and Ford. This is Kevin Harlander. Kevin Harlander.

You've been on the show like twice, three times, four times? I think just a couple. I think, yeah. Yeah, we run this thing called the Hootenanny every year. It's simply like an ambassador summit, right, where we get everybody together preseason, go through a bunch of gear, talk about the future, and just really kind of celebrate what I think is a pretty remarkable thing.

We've got a great group of people from all of our companies and outside our companies talking about gear and kind of getting set for the year ahead. You know, we're right in it right now. I mean, antelope season opened yesterday here, right, Ford? The 15th. Yeah. So we're in it, and we got everybody up from all over the country

and sharing some beers and some good food and some good conversation and kind of leading into the season here. Okay, who wants to explain what direct-to-consumer means? Ooh, Ford. Why did you put that on me? You've been here the longest, I think. That's true. Direct-to-consumer means we sell clothing directly to consumers.

To elaborate. That's a great explanation. I thought it was something totally different than that. That's like a big dust particle that's hard to deny its existence. No, practically it means we don't have retailers you can't go to an archery shop and buy uh first light apparel you gotta go to our website www.firstlight.com is the only place to get it cutting out the middleman exactly except now except now there's a wrinkle in your dust particle except we've introduced the middleman because now there's a wrinkle in your dust particle except we've introduced the middleman because now there's a wrinkle in the dust particle because now first light has its own store indeed we're sitting right here and it is it's beautiful owned and operated by first light but

that's why we're in downtown haley you can come to the first light the first thing i thought coming in here is like you know i know about everything but like to see it all i'm like holy cow there's a lot of stuff yeah corinne was just saying you know when you look at a digital catalog on the website you know there's a lot of stuff there but yeah spreading it out on hangers and end caps and on tables it's it's impressive to see it kind of fully merchandised me and Cal were reminiscing about um Cal was the first besides the two founders cal uh we'll speak to it cal oh yeah boy bajillion years ago um when when the cosmos was still forming that's your opinion that's your opinion just like your opinion man uh yeah as the first uh employee so they're the two founders scott robinson kenton caruth

and uh and myself and oh yeah towed a 1971 terry camper trailer down here to catch him that i was using to work and guide and kind of live out of at the time and put it in the garage at the third office space that first light had and we all worked right above it and then at the end of the day i'd go for like a light jog and then wind up back at my terry camper trailer and go to bed yeah i just i want to restate that cal lived in a camper in our office for like six months probably six months yeah and then scott got real he was very annoyed with the presence of the camper because it wasn't like hip and cool and then he would get even more annoyed whenever anybody would come in the office

because to a person everybody would be like holy cow sweet camper and he'd be like oh my god you got to get that thing out of here um you know i had to had to uh yeah go through this gap in the fence that's not there anymore and shower at the ymca or over at uh our buddy uh brick's office and other than that things were pretty easy peasy but uh you know things grew and uh casey hawks was was our actually it was ross copperman and then casey hawks um and yeah so you know it was just like this slow incremental growth of kind of getting over these humps and um very experimental right it was like okay if this were year works out then like if we do another year exactly yeah yeah and it was like that like that for a long time so yeah it started out with just merino wool base layers

and then like a kind of joke it was like like the Ford model of like anything you want, as long as you want it in black and it was just black merino wool. And then, but like the secret sauce was the fact that, that really Kenton through a bunch of research and tying people together, um, through the, the power of the internet figured out how to print on merino intricate patterns like there were people out there who put in like very basic logos on merino wool but nobody could figure out how to make something like intricate that wouldn't like bleed or eventually wash out or feel like real crap on your skin so i keep that nice soft merino wool feel still breathe but

have for instance a camouflage pattern on on there so um that was a huge thing and and the sales pitch at the time was like well you've heard of smart wool we're like the smart wool, the hunting world. And it was hilarious because I would literally once a year get a phone call from smart wool, Boulder, Colorado saying like, Hey, you guys make all sorts of stuff and camouflage. How do you guys do that?

Oh, and I'd be like, what now? They'd be like, yeah, can you tell us how you, and I'm like, well, you know, we kind of compete against each other.

So I, you know, I don't think I'm going to do that. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. You guys are hunters. Like, yeah, you guys aren't in the, in the, in the outdoor space. And it was just like a weird thing. So you could have asked them, what are you trying to hide from?

We, uh, we were punching out of our weight class is, is the thing. So like we were getting a lot of attention, real small company. And then, um, yeah, just that slow incremental growth. And then eventually, um, you know, right. I mean, right when, uh, you came along, Steven Rinella came along through a couple of different channels, which was really funny, is when we were actively working on outerwear. And the outerwear was like totally against the business model. It was supposed to be this nice, tidy business of merino wool base layers and that's it follow like the smart wool or icebreaker model but strictly in the hunting space and we learned that we were so limited in regards to our marketing budget wise and and otherwise because

people couldn't always see your base layer and so all sorts of people wore the stuff but nobody could see it and if you can't see somebody wearing it it's like a tree falls in the woods type of thing or is anybody right type of thing is it reality yeah um and so that was a huge part of the push like breaking that business model um you know for the first time then uh to get in into outerwear because it allowed us to say like see you can see it like people are wearing this stuff and and it's really good and um it yeah just kind of snowballed from there and then obviously steve you uh got in and started wearing the stuff and and we gotta start making more and addressing more needs you know and i feel like that's always been the backbone of the brand is versatility for sure like tackling a giant temperature range with, you know, relatively simple garments. Um, and then trying to address

the issue first, right? Not address the marketplace, but address the issue that occurs on the mountain. Right. So it's like, well, I stink. Well, merino wool is not stinky. What else can we do on the, in the outerwear world that would mitigate smell as well? Or, um, boy, I sweat like crazy. What can we do to mitigate, um, you know, uh, enhance breathability, mitigate, uh, all that moisture loss in your garments, keep you dry, uh, when the temps drop, stuff like that, address, address the issues. Staying warm. If you do get wet, climbing into your sleeping bag at night and being like, Ooh, that feels good. And not feeling like a clammy ass mess. Yeah. Or, you know, spending a ton of energy. And that's something that we learned

certainly like working with a lot of folks in the military space is just how important it is to actually be comfortable. And it was a really interesting, like dual conversation that was going on at the time, because we're like talking to lots of, lots of folks in the military world that were talking about comfort. And at the same time, the hunting world was like talking about being tough, but on the military side, they were like, boy boy you can get a lot more done if you know you're taken care of like you're not wasting a bunch of energy combating all these feelings of boy am i actually gonna make it through tonight like boy it's sure cold boy i'm sure wet boy all this

stuff's chafing me you know so once you address that that comfort and find like those those prime ranges for um breathability moisture wicking um insulation weight weight to insulation ratio so you're not carrying around a bunch of superfluous layers um then you can really start performing beyond what you thought you were capable of because now your brain's like free and easy to just concentrate on the task at hand. And it grew on a sheep. And it grew on a sheep. Yep.

Yep. The last place you'd think to look. The extremes, right? So like very cold nighttime temps, hot daytime temps and uh an animal that isn't capable of changing its clothes oh i love that sales pitch it's so good on the fridge you know on the consumer show floor you're like well just think about a sheep can it take its jacket off sure can't wear that same jacket you show me the sheep that takes its own jacket off. They start pulling out their credit cards.

Cal, what I'm hearing is that there should be a bronze statue of you in this store. I mean, you were the first employee. They could use it like a mannequin. Oh, boy. We still need to sell things. You've got to keep the lights on clay um but yeah you know it it was really wild and it was cool to it was really like a work environment that was so kind of hectic and busy that there wasn't time to kind of like look outside of our, our own little world for a long

time. So there wasn't a whole lot of like, what's, what are other companies doing? It was going off of a really like personal experience and the knowledge that we could only build in very small increments. And it was like, Oh, we need, here's our need list that far exceeds what we can build year to year. So what we build has got to be really good and it's got to address the most needs out of the gate. Uh, and I think that was a super, super healthy foundation to have like very scrappy. Um, and, uh, we spent a lot of time like toiling and testing over you know what that next garment is going to be because this could be our last year right so clay what all you've been up to well been uh been traveling a lot for bear grease

really excited about Some of the Series And different stuff That we're gonna be doing Been That's mainly what I've done This summer

Traveling for Bear Grease We try to do In person interviews With every Every podcast we do So I'll Travel and go meet somebody

Talk to them for a couple hours No Zoom Go home All in person Man Of the 60 something episodes We've made i've done like three zoom interviews wow oh you lose something man well done it's it's i feel like it's really

important oh yeah yeah we got uh um someone just texted this to me today but but but corinne's been reading up on it too did you hear about this dude that that was brody sent it to us you know when you go to a fishing access site and they got the like what they call a vault toilet right so picture like a like a fishing access john so there's a there's a thing called a vault toilet right and this looks like an outhouse but you go in and it's got a tank underneath it and they'll have all the signs being like hey man don't throw weird stuff down here because we can't it's hard to pump and in montana fish wildlife parks they have a very like their vault toilets are are sort of branded like you just know one when you see one story came out about a guy they tracked him down a guy in southwest montana who dropped his phone down in the

vault toilet so he strips down oh. Gets the toilet seat off there and gets down in there, but he can't get back out. Oh, you're kidding me. You know what? It's the thing you think about every time. And he's got the door locked. So they break the handle off. No, he couldn't get out of the hole. He's stuck in the vault.

You know, one of the craziest parts of that story though is that he can't get out but somehow they managed to get a camp chair down in which makes me think the reason he couldn't get out is because he couldn't lift himself out not because he was wedged otherwise how else did they get the camp chair down there he was down too far to get a grip so they had to damn they had to break into the toilet. Passers-by. He spent three hours in there. First, it was like it was an overnight adventure.

He spent three hours in there. He must have hailed a passer-by. That's a surprise. The passer-by. The weirdest thing is he didn't get his phone back. All that time he was down in there, he didn't come out with the phone out once you finally get down there i mean how much digging are you really gonna do my daddy's telling me a story well let me return plus wait like where do you hold if he ditched all of his clothes where does he hold on to the phone in order to climb out right you can't put it in

your mouth at that point i don't think this guy thought it through that much but if he finds the phone he can call somebody or well he's probably i don't i don't know i'd thought it through that much. But if he finds the phone, he can call somebody. Well, he's probably out of service. I don't know. I'd like to, if Corinne had, you know. That microphone's a little soiled, man. If Corinne did her job, he'd be sitting here right now. And we'd ask. He climbs down into the vault toilet,

spends three hours down in there with his clothes off, apparently hails a passerby. The passerby damages something to get in there. Wait, wait, wait. Can I stop you, Steve? The passerby, was he going to use... He was knocking on that level of detail. Certainly, he knocked on the door.

This is going to turn into an investigative podcast. It'll turn investigative. I'll find him. Please don't. Please don't use this right now. So, pictures came out. And like the Montana Fish and Game, like they recognized their own pit toilet. Not only that, they recognized what access point it was at.

So someone was able to track the fellow down. To rescue him, it was on the Big Hole River. To rescue him, they passed the lawn chair down to him he was able to stand on the lawn chair and then get a grip on the lip okay so that's how it worked and pull himself out so you're saying he came out of there without the phone i hate to see this to say this because i i love montana and butte montana uh a lot but i'm assuming the dude's from butte big hole river that's yeah that's butte butte america's fishing river i gotta ask what like what shots do you got to go get after that what kind of i mean

all kinds of stuff you'd probably go on You'd probably want to, what is it, Hep A? What's the kind they don't vaccinate you for? Hep A? I can't remember. I don't know. Salmonella, E. coli is all in there. I would be in the shower for so long. I don't know if the brother's down there eating and stuff, man.

But we'd like to find him. I mean, he likes to fish, apparently. I'd love to have him on the show. And not to goof on him. Not to to find him. I mean, he likes to fish, apparently. I'd love to have him on the show. And not to goof on him. Not to goof on him. What do you want to know from this guy? Why he didn't find the phone. So you know...

Like what was going through his mind. You're not as worried about when he was out of the toilet and the thought process that got him down in there? There'd be three areas I'd explore. I'd explore... Four areas i'd explore i'd explore uh four areas i'd explore um how i'm guessing it's obvious how it got down there but is there anything unexpected about how the phone got down there yeah that'd be interesting two um you're making a call right like you're like you're gonna do this or not do this so what's at stake why the sense

of urgency um and certain decisions around that what was the cleanup plan right like that area what were those three hours like what kind of thoughts went through your head and then the fourth area i'd explore in the interview would be, where's the phone? You know why it's pertinent is every time you use one of these government buildings, as we call them, there's that sign that says, don't throw X, Y, and Z down the toilet. It's extremely hard to get out. And every time you read that, you have to take

that mental journey of boy it'd be gross to be down there like what would it take um but there's a possibility like what if this dude from butte is into like waste management right and he's just like not he's like i've done a lot worse for a couple hundred bucks type of thing corinne if we put this episode together you know it'd be a good guest to have on as well be kevin murphy who worked in waste I've done a lot worse for a couple hundred bucks type of thing. Corinne, if we put this episode together, it would be a good guest to have on as well. It would be Kevin Murphy who worked in waste management. So we got the guy.

Oh, they have a great dynamic. We got the guy. We get someone from the phone company. We get Kevin Murphy. We can solve the mystery. To talk about what could be down in there. I have a vindication and a major correction. Me and Cal have a major correction to

make um the vindication remember we covered we talked extensively in callahan you were there we talked extensively about the actor nick offerman's writing an article about uh bullying about bullying and aggression on this podcast. Yes. His perceived bullying. Him thinking that coming from the host of the podcast came from a background of bullying and aggression for having pointed out my feeling that the late Henry David Thoreau was a candy ass uh and then we were trying to think of who was it that who was the get because he says i

jumped down a guest's throat and you said i think the guest was brent west yes from From High Peaks Alliance. Yes. A Mainer. From Maine. Yep. So Brent West wrote in. So now we've heard from the person that I was aggressively bullying, Brent West. Brent West says,

what I don't think Offerman understands, what I think he's mistaken for bullying and aggression, is a thing called ritual opposition and he sent me an article about ritual opposition ritual opposition is basically what you're doing when you dick with your friends all the time then if you're like dog on your friends or give your friends a hard time you're engaging in ritual opposition and it's argued the ritual opposition is the same as hugging somebody that it's like a necessary component really good at that it's a necessary component of how people embrace those that they that they're fond of ritual opposition not hugging is your dog on them right like dogging on each other so it's the language version of your

michigan hello he sent me a whole oh yeah yeah yeah that's why like i i greet people by giving them the finger yep exactly what's up what's up wait it's uh it could it's also potentially cultural steve the way that you manage people like inside of like a podcast or relationships i really think it is what i got to tell a story bear honey magazine i own bear honey magazine for years and one time i had a guy call me from the northeast and he was upset about something and he was just like pretty much yelling at me and i pulled the classic southern just like i'm so sorry blah blah blah really soft with him and that even made him more mad and what i learned was when the guys from the northeast called were upset about something

you came back at them hot and they you got the problem solved real quick see what i'm saying fighting fire with fire yeah well i mean it was it was a i feel like it was a cultural it was a cultural misunderstanding to how to get a problem solved. And I think our friend Steve runs into that sometimes. And you can give Offerman a little break here if you'd like and say that maybe it's a secondary type of appreciation people have for you when they learn your um opposition tactics well it

even goes on in this article that the guest sent me is um the the it says uh it that it's common for men to use fighting as a way to explore ideas i didn't write the article i uh we should say uh high peaks alliance uh brent there just completed a a big bridge project on a very popular hiking trail up there um so if you're uh traveling the main big main woods you should check out high peaks alliance they do a bunch of great work and um i kind of personally want to thank offerman nick offerman for introducing you got a real soft spot for him huh well what i have a soft spot for is that line of um where the thorough uh appreciators point out that he often hiked in wet shoes no he he like so he was pointing out like just how tough the

row was yeah and he would hike long ways sometimes with wet feet and i get uh i've gotten a lot of had little use for people that couldn't keep up which i think is mean as shit as i pointed out on a previous episode but i think he's a bully i've gotten a lot of appreciation just thinking about that line when somebody is kind of posturing up you know i think to myself i bet that guy even hikes and with wet feet that's how tough they are i bet he has little use for those who can't keep up um here's a letter you don't want to get cal is speaking to you now too. This is you and me. I would like to advise you that your recent podcast episode was full of wrong information.

And he goes on to lay it out, and this is like a bad, this is one of the worst corrections we've ever had to do. So I'll skip ahead. You say you are from michigan and an outdoorsman but i am disappointed in your lack of knowledge he points out so we're talking about the camp grayling expansion uh-huh it's not in the up we kept saying the up it's in the northern lower peninsula oh so that was an error right that was an error, right? That was an error. But the other error is he goes on to talk about a lot of ways in which he and other outdoorsmen have through the years really had a hard time with the presence of the guard camp there

and cites these examples of people doing exercises and being soldiers doing exercises and not being where they're supposed to be conflicts on rivers on and on and he says they say they're not going to do this and that but they're already fixing to do these activities that they say aren't going to happen on this expanded land what we're referring to is camp camp grayling is looking to double its size so i think it sits at around 150,000 acres, and they're wanting to add 150,000 acres of surrounding state land.

What they're trying to do is they're trying to gain access to surrounding state land. I will, this is the best part of doing corrections, though, is everybody gets to learn about the issue twice. Yep. Which makes it doubly valuable. But he is very incredulous of what is they're saying is going to happen and in part here's what part of what is feeding this issue so

the the the camp is looking to to double the size of the area they can use for training exercises so they're going to they're going to expand their ability to train out onto like some 150 000 acres of state land and it would result in no one's arguing this point it would result in temporary closures when they're doing exercises yeah they think you know like cause for great concern right if their track record up to date isn't stellar then an expansion would be cause for concern for sure. Here's where some of the confusion is coming from with people trying to suss out what's going to go on if this expansion takes place.

So a military spokesman said, a national guard spokesman comes in and says, there would be no new trails built for tanks, no bombing or shooting, no new buildings or fences. But then they go on to point out that they're setting up firing points, which they're setting up artillery areas on the new land that will be used to fire into existing areas so you're sort of like oh there's no new infrastructure but there's new infrastructure and it's creating a fair bit of

anxiety among people about this expansion yeah part of the thing people don't like about bombings is the big banging noise there happens to be one on both ends right so yeah so he's mad the guy that wrote in is mad at me he says like a lot of people around here have lost respect for you now which is that's a bummer uh he says what he's mad about me is not that i'm fence sitting on the issue because remember i would like the whole point is i was saying like here's one of those areas where i have a hard time making up my mind. I'm weighing this idea that it's not a habitat loss because it's not a subdivision or building a new base. It's giving soldiers access to forest to train on forest land. And you appreciate a strong military. And so I weigh that, and i weigh that it's not leading to

a net loss in wildlife habitat it just winds up being an access issue at the expense of hunters and anglers in support of military training so i'm sitting where you know i'm a little torn but he's like i'm not mad if you're being torn about i'm just mad at you for having your facts all wrong sure sure you said it's 150 000 acre expansion yeah and the camp has been the camp had the camp originally had a land grant then they've done these series of state leases and this individual i don't want to i don't want to go through them all because i might make the same mistake again and not fact check everything but this individual goes through like a whole litany of issues,

even things that have made the local TV news. We're saying just recently there was a group of soldiers who went down the Manistee River on a raft with a machine gun at the front on an area they weren't supposed to be. It even made the local TV news. Many incidents over the years. Thanks for writing in. It's good stuff. And, and for clarification, it's not, it's on the upper lower peninsula.

The Northern lower peninsula. He points out it's the, uh, you know, like tip of the mitten. Fred bear country. Oh yeah. 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. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app

is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com

slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Here's another thing that comes up. We were recently discussing what it's like to to spearfish in 15 000 feet of water where you're just occupying the surface lens and we were musing about um there's stuff at the bottom and there's stuff at the top but how boring would it be if you were in 15,000 feet of water and went and hung out 9,000 feet down? Who's home?

And the answer is nobody. Really? For the most part, nobody. There's not something that specifically lives at that. There's stuff that'll touch it. A sperm whale can get down to eight or nine but yeah you're in a you're in the area but it but it brings up that we're talking about there's still you know the deep deep cal's gonna talk about this new thing they found yeah so in the

deep deep deep deep in the deep deep deep deep deep and ford what what we're talking about is is that layer at which sunlight ceases to penetrate and in that zone there is essentially no life that that hangs out there that we're aware of yet which is like base is its operation there right well what are you talking life wise what size life are we talking there's gotta be something oh like big stuff you might catch there's something but life transitions right something they'll chase the maps to uh like it's stuff that is waiting for for things to fall to the to the to the very very bottom um and uh there is a type of snail that was uh discovered and the fun name is a pangolin snail because it's got these it looks like a pangolin's like you know scaled armor oh yeah on its foot but it's it's part of this family of armor footed snails and it's a great example of it would be called like an extremophile.

So it hangs out in an area that is what every other form of life would consider not hospitable. You can't live there because the temps exceed like 525 degrees. There's sulfuric acid. There's all these gases. It is an extreme place, hence extremophile. And this little snail with the iron foot is really, really bizarre because how it eats is it holds a chemical compound in its throat. And by basically breathing in the toxic water around it that chemical compound reacts with it and it's able to extract its nutrients from

you know whatever spits out of that compound and then i'd like to slide your tongue down that snail's throat but it's just like life i've never heard of anything that that's how it exists right no it's amazing and 500 degrees fahrenheit wait why is it so hot well because it's a thermal vent oh right right it's a thermal vent yeah at what temp down there does do you start getting close enough right like that you're in thin parts of the crust where water starts getting warmer again well that's like beyond warm yeah right but at what point is it like water's not 34 degrees now it's 60 again 70 again you know oh like getting warmer oh you're looking for like a banana belt down there but it's right yeah yeah that's where i want to go live that's where you got a deep drop uh yeah

but this throw maps around what's crazy about the snail too is so it's got this like scaled armored foot and they thought it was protective did you get into this yeah they thought it was protective because of course it looks like armor yeah right. Right. Um, and I guess in a sense it is protective, but it's like a reactionary, it protects against itself. It basically like you could call it the drool that is the byproduct of its feeding comes out and it would, and it contains sulfur, which is, um, a very common compound in, in how you kill snails in the garden. And in order to protect itself against this sulfur that comes out. To protect it from its own breath. From its own breath, its own drool. It's grown these kind of iron plates on its foot.

How big are we talking here? God, it looked fairly big.'s a great great question about 50 cent piece 50 cent piece yeah um but it's like we know so much about the world and we know nothing about it like there's these whole host communities that are based in these super specific um little climates at the very, very bottom and crushing depths that we're just discovering right now. And yeah, I just think like, what could we harness that for in a good way? My kid recently asked me how many animals there are we don't know about. And I told him it'd be hard to count.

That's a great question. It'd be hard to count because we don't know about them. Right. You got to wonder what, if Spencer starts running out of pardon my plate things, if he could go on a little deep dive. Yeah, season five. Season five, way ass deep. We've tried the nasty sea sea duck so let's start trying

sulfur-filled snails giant clams there's all sorts of stuff down there the vent uh here's another one for you callahan uh anti-venom a person wants to revisit your experience when your dog got zapped by a rattlesnake yep so the question is he's gonna be hunting sharpies in montana this fall he's nervous about snakes hasn't encountered them he says he hears the anti-venom is a waste of time and money yeah yeah it's you know unfortunately like this is a part of veterinary medicine where yet you're gonna have a bunch of folks that agree with you and a bunch of folks that go like, yeah, but it's your dog. So there's no anti-venom is this cocktail of venoms from common snakes. For instance, the one that we used on Snort doesn't even contain the venom from the great basin rattlesnake which she was bit by um but she had an incredibly positive reaction to the anti-venom and i'm very glad that

we used it and we used it at a time at which most people even like the pro anti-venom people would be like yeah it's not going to help so it's late basically in the in the process yeah earlier the better is is the golden rule uh and we used it at the 23rd hour mark i think 22nd or 23rd hour mark and saw yeah almost instantaneous positive results so um i had been on the phone with, uh, several vet friends of mine, um, when I did get cell service and they all said, you know, like they, they weren't there witnessing the situation. They weren't, uh, they were definitely like listening to me, but also going off of their past experience of, you know, in general, labradors do not die from rattlesnake bites in general right um don't you know the dog's gonna be very uncomfortable don't worry about

anti-venom um she'll make it you know it's not gonna be pleasant but she'll make it and they're saying that body mass wise because i always heard the smaller dogs more likely to die from rattlesnakes or poisonous snakes in general. Larger dogs better off. I think that that's definitely a rule. But it's just like dogs are face level with snakes, you know, from the beginning of time. Oh, yeah. And they're just built to handle that stuff way better than, than we are. And I brought up this case from a human that had been bitten in the

same region. And he ended up spending like three months in the hospital and I think lost at least a portion of his leg. And I was like, well, what about this guy? Big, big football player type guy. And the vet straight up was like people are sissies compared to dogs like it's not a fair comparison do you know that hunting guide in arizona lee hop you ever met him i have not no yeah got bit well yeah but i mean first off that guy knows his biz if you're ever in the hunting guide business in arizona need a hunting guide that guy knows his situation real well yeah he got zapped by one spent time in the hospital but he's like it's like you say most dogs don't die 98 of the people that get bit by a rattlesnake don't die oh yeah i would have thought it'd be so much higher than that not say that again 98 98 of

people that get bit by a rattlesnake do not die. Have y'all heard me talk about my friend Fred Lally that's been bit like 20, he doesn't even know how many times he's been bit by venomous snakes. Oh, yeah. He was on Bear Geese. Yeah, that was fascinating. He was a snake handler. He's been bit by king cobras, multiple types of rattles all the rattlesnakes in north america

and a couple of venomous snakes from asia and uh he likes it all he does he take anti-venom or does he feel like he's built up a resistance fred lally he's 81 years old. He's missing a big section of his hand. And he would not go to the hospital for a common snake bite. For a king cobra or something, he probably would. But wild. I appreciate you sharing that, but tell me more. Well, we're just talking about antivenom. He doesn't, most of his snake bites, he never went to the hospital. It was just a cool, I just have a friend that got bit 20 times.

That's all. Oh, yeah. I had a friend that got bit by a rattlesnake, and he went to the hospital, but they didn't have the antivenom, so they put him on a helicopter and flew him to another town and he wound up with a nine thousand dollar bill for the helicopter flight uninsured did they give him the anti-venom or did they yeah it passed it took him to billings and hit him with the anti-venom and he said the real stinger was a nine thousand dollar helicopter

ride i haven't talked about it with him in a long time but he was pointing out way back then that he was still trying to like sort that whole thing out yeah all the money he owed for that i uh yeah but to stick with the anti-venom um i you know i mean it's your dog you got to make make the decision and you can see uh how they are reacting to the bite. I think Snort either has a strong reaction to rattlesnake venom or she got a lot of venom. And the thing that you will always come to, no matter how many vets you talk to, is they do not know how much venom is administered like it could be a dry bite quote unquote dry bite where there is very very little

to zero venom injected by the snake or it could be a crazy huge amount and it's just like an unknown well i always heard along those lines with snakes the babies are more dangerous because they can't moderate the amount of venom they deliver i have no idea if that's real but i've heard that pretty consistently through the years yeah i've heard that too and i know i think there is a uh study that's kind of gone through that and i i think i probably i shouldn't even comment i think there is something to that but it's like not as as uh black and white as we would wish it would be yeah yeah kelly i want to get into one um i don't know if you've been following it it's a it's a tough one to get into. The hunting closures in Alaska.

It's like you'd have to do like an eight-hour special on the same, but we're not going to do that. No, we need to find some experts, though, because I think you – do you want to summarize this? Yeah, I'm going to summarize, but I'm just trying to think of where to begin. With when the Russians came to alaska so oh my god enough people that like i i like we we covered another version of this before but i want i want to get into this this news item from alaska um kind of a troubling news thing a troubling thing that keeps happening in alaska so i have often um

i have often explained how i am very supportive of federal land management agencies i think there's a thing the feds do well i think the feds do land management well they with you know all the land management agencies we have the National Park Service I don't hang out on that stuff much but it's their Bureau land management hang out a lot there USDA National Forest lands hang out a lot there National Wildlife Refuge National Wildlife Refuge is a guy Bureau of Reclamation. Yeah. They have some of the most... The Bureau of Reclamation, as we now know, has the most...

No, not some. Has the most visited public lands in the country. Is that because of lakes and reservoirs? Yeah. They have the most visited piece of federal public land in the country. It makes total sense. It's administered by the Bureau.

No, I think they have the most visitors. country. It makes total sense. It's administered by the Bureau. No, I think they have the most visitors. Oh, it makes total sense. So that'd be like your Lake Powell. Yeah. Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, places like that. Amazing pit toilets. What makes federal land, like in my- They always have a ladder to get out.

The one we were talking about, we carved earlier. Yeah, we covered a state pit toilet earlier, and look what happens in there. No escape ladders. Phone-eating ladders some of bitches and there's no ladder they'll even put a line for you to grab so what one might be like well why would the feds be good at land management the feds are good at land management because they're to they're immune to some of the whims that take over at the state level and they have a different financial structure so we have well-funded federal land management agencies and they can manage lands they can manage public lands in perpetuity what happens at the state level

oftentimes the states have a lot of pressure to monetize land right so many times states will have state land and it's in the constitution that the state land be be monetized not long term but short term monetized for short-term gain right um you might have states that have state land and it's such that you can't spend the night on the state land or you need a special permit to utilize the state land, or the state land gets leased out for livestock grazing, which means then that the public has no access to it. Conversely, the Bureau of Land Management leases livestock grazing on a chunk of land. That doesn't affect the public's ability to hunt on, camp use the land um the multi-use doctrine that the you know the multi-use

doctrine with um our national forest is like is like a beautiful doctrine where they're saying we have this land we're managing it for many uses some of its wildlife habitat some of its timber extraction uh we have pieces of land they've managed for well in excess of 100 years uh a lot of wonderful land management comes out of there but i don't think that the feds do a very their talents expire when it comes to wildlife management that's my personal opinion with the exception of things that are legitimately, like things that are on the Endangered Species Act that are legitimately endangered,

there are some great federal protections to help recover those things. But when it comes to the management of fish and game species, that is a state game state they do it best that's my preface you take objections any of that cal i'd be you know there's exceptions to everything right so i'm like well migratory birds yeah and that's a wrinkle because no state gets to manage it on their own right right and but i can imagine let's explain why they get to do

why do you why does the feds okay let's look at this for a minute sean has brought up the great exception ducks and geese so migratory waterfowl is managed at the federal and state level why because they move from state to state right so you can't have one state say let's say louisiana louisiana texas from now on we're gonna have it be that ducks are always open and there's no bag limit it's our wildlife right which would completely screw everybody else so you're boning everybody else on the flyway. So in that case, there's federal oversight. Well, I'll point out another great example. Halibut, because on the Pacific, so on our Pacific coast,

halibut move around. Halibut are managed not just at the federal, state, federal federal international level because we have treaties same way we have waterfowl treaties with mexico we have treaties with canada about how we manage our halibut so you're right there are cases yeah but it's like it's not a clear cut and dry case with migratory birds because you don't know what it it doesn't even exist that there would ever be like a state management versus federal management we have nothing compared there's no comparison no control yeah this is all just a preamble to try it i'm just trying

to lay a little ground yeah yeah for what's going on in alaska in alaska you have these federal subsistence boards okay so. So let me give, I'll give you like a little tidbit about Alaska that isn't gonna, um, that doesn't actually have anything to do with what I'm talking about, but it's just interesting. Alaska, like at the highest levels,

when it comes to the allocation of natural resources, like fish and game resources in Alaska at the highest level, when it comes to allocation, they look at it like tiered use. Okay tier use of subsistence right so that the subsistence user group and subsistence has nothing to do with your income like like to be a subsistence user in alaska for the most part has nothing to do you could be you know uh uh uh tells his name doesn't want to buy twitter elon musk elon musk could move to kasan alaska he could move to wherever arctic circles but elon musk could move to certain alaskan like zip codes and he would become a subsistence user based on his location

okay so it's not doled out by need it's doled out by location those subsistence users are always like going to get they they eat first next is is is the next that eats first is commercial. Okay, so subsistence, commercial. Really? Recreational eats last in Alaska. That's just like a high-level view on resource allocation. Yeah, I didn't know that commercial came over recreational in Alaska. Commercial Trump.

If someone's going to give up, if something's getting pared down and someone's going to give up, it's going to be recreational. So hunting would be recreational. Not if you're a subsistence yeah i mean the type of hunting we would do oh yeah very right yeah okay you're the low like like we're the lowest of the low yeah we're non-resident you're like non-resident recreational which people are like dude everything is luxury you're not resident yeah it's like no one cares wait just to be clear here there are in-state recreational users right sure yep and the way it typically like subsistence is defined is is by typically if you have to travel some amount of distance like you're not

a subsistence user which is something that's been been fought over greatly yeah and even that's crazy so for example we'll just get it's huge yeah i feel like i want to argue about this before we can get into well i haven't even gotten to the point yet but let me tell you let me tell you another interesting wrinkle okay let's say uh let's say you're a federal, you're federally qualified subsistence user. Okay. So let's say you live in Southeast Alaska and you're a federally qualified subsistence user. You can set a 30 hook long line for Halibut.

Okay. Just based off your zip code. If you're qualified federal subsistence. Yep. So based off your zip code. If you're qualified federal subsistence. Yep. So based on where exactly you live, right, you might qualify to set a 30-hook long line for halibut, which are federally regulated.

Okay. Now, if you live in anchorage but you go to this area where you're allowed to set this 30 this 30 hook long line you're not allowed to because you're not a federal subsistence user however if you live in downtown you could live in a mansion in downtown anchororage and travel to a place that has state subsistence regulations. And then you can fish under state subsistence. So you can go and role play as a state subsistence user. So if you're in Anchorage and you travel to an area, let's say Prince of Wales Island, you live in Anchorage, you go to Prince of Wales Island, you may not set a 30 hook skate or a 30 hook long line for halibut because that's a federal, federally regulated species and you're not federal subsistence. You can, however, set a 100 hook sablefish long line

because even though you can't do it where you live in Anchorage, you are now acting as a subsistence user where you are. But if you catch a halibut on your long line, you must let it go. Let me give you another one. You live in a mansion in Anchorage. You go to Prince of Wales Island, and you drop your rod and reel down, you are allowed zero yellow eye rockfish and one other species of non-pelagic rockfish per day. If you leave your rod at home and go out with a hand line, you go to the same spot, same bait, same hook with a hand line,

there is no limit to how many non-pelagic rockfish you can have in the boat. Because you're using subsistence tactics. So two things. A, I'm confused. Yeah, oh yeah. B, I feel like when I go shoot an elk, I'm subsisting off the elk. I'm not going to buy meat. I'm going to eat it.

But you can't get into like, imagine the world. support all this i want to point out but imagine that you had to um if you're a rural resident in alaska you don't need to go prove how bad you need it it's just where you live and and and here's like you go back to statehood, a wrinkle with Alaska, even like accepting statehood or wanting statehood was the ability, like historically, socially, culturally, like we are people who live off the land and they need to be able to be that people in rural areas in area that you don't live and vacation there and use local subsistence strategies. You'd have to ask someone else how that ever came to be a thing. I don't know. Is there anywhere? Yeah, go ahead. I'll leave it with a heavy pause.

I need to think it over. It's the main thing in life that i think about is there anywhere even close in the u.s with as stringent and complex of game laws no there's nothing even because they're they're managing like a dozen big game animals they have like think of how big i mean it's a huge place they got a mountain range the size of california it's like yeah they're they're managing all those big game animals managing a huge commercial industry you have subsistence people you have native alaskan villages where people have historically lived off the land it's like it's it's well there's 27 game management units which are divided and then

divided again it's it's complex incredibly and now and i'll point out, and I feel that they generally, I feel the state of Alaska, like I feel the state of Alaska generally does like a phenomenal job sorting out all this complexity, all these user groups. And, you know, their wolves aren't on the endangered species list. Their grizzlies aren't on the endangered species list. They have an intact regime of megafauna. They got good salmon runs.

Yeah. Now it could be like, well, they got lucky. Okay, they haven't blown it. Yeah. But now we need to talk about some sheep that are not doing so well. But we're not there yet. Okay. There's a thing that happened in the Western Arctic,

around the Western Arctic Carib, we heard, and this is very contentious. So these are places like I've been to and hunted places in the Brooks Range that a few years back, and we covered this a few years back, the Federal Subsistence Board came in and overrode what the state wanted to do with their wildlife management plan. They made this thing where non-local, so not even subsistence users from other places.

They made a thing where they took this huge quadrant, basically like a quadrant of Alaska, the northwest quadrant of Alaska, the Northwest quadrant of Alaska and closed it to non made it illegal for non locals to hunt caribou in some of the remotest, like mathematically remotest parts of the North American landscape. It was cited as being like resource conflict. Okay. Because there was competition for resource near villages between locals and non-locals. And however you feel about how that might sound, it was not what the state wanted. And the state felt that there's no reason to even argue that that's necessary. This thinking has now spread there's an area so everything west of the saga is a hard river to pronounce and i've

canoed down and whatnot the saga venok River. Folks call it the Sag. Some of the old, not the only, one of few places that you can go and one of the few places you can go in Alaska and hunt doll sheep and really good doll sheep country from the road system. There's a handful of spots. It's hard. People do it every year. It's hard this is this is one of those spots um they've had some brutal years on

sheep uh sheep numbers away down now the western interior alaska subsistence regional advisory council just managed to close doll sheep hunting for all users on one point million acres of land against the recommendation of the state how many acres 1.8 million 1.8 million acres of land and steve that board does that where does that sit in sort of the federal hierarchy is that u.s fish and wildlife yeah is that like a or is that its own whole thing it's part of the federal subsistence board is the federal subsistence board based in alaska and like made up of people making decisions that are alaskans or are they sitting the Federal Subsistence Board represents federally designated subsistence users in Alaska. Yeah, so it's a local board.

Okay. It is. And they're broken out into regions. But in this case, you have the state biologists saying, because here's the wrinkle with doll sheet management. It's a full curl. These areas have a full curl restriction. A ram is going to hit full curl till he's eight, nine years old.

He's going to die when he's 11. So they've had some bad winters that really hampered sheep. The state is saying our management plan. It doesn't matter. Like it they're killing about like within one of these areas, one of these archery areas, they're killing about five mature Rams a year. A lot of people get to try.

It's very low success rates, but they're killing about five Rams a year. They don't even have a fresh survey. It's, it's like, it's anecdotal. What people are seeing, they're seeing a,

they had some rough winters. Sheep numbers are down the state whose job it is to do this kind of thing. It's saying there's like sheep numbers are down hunting mature rams is not going to affect sheep populations we're not killing ewes we're not killing lambs you're killing mature animals that are that are arguably at the end of their life it has no impact but then the the fed comes in and says like no more sheep hunting on 1.8 million acres of land screw your professional perspective through 2024 it said and what's their impetus what's their motivation like if if we were to try to speculate or they did they say why someone feels

well like there were some bad winners sheep numbers are down and someone feels that somehow or another not killing mature rams five adult rams is going to help rebound sheep numbers that state biologists feel and not just that the wild sheep foundation is against this like everybody's coming out against this and it's just this alarming trend it's this alarming trend of you have a professional agency that has a like an amazing track record of managing big game and imagining a disparate bait a user a disparate user group who now like outside of any kind of scientific reasoning or any kind of scientific understanding people are just sort of like coming in and making these like extremely arbitrary massive closures shutting out hunter like shutting out hunters on areas like like almost on a whim it's like whimsical uh i i so the the the survey that the data is based on on is a 2012 survey. Um, there's 25% of, of that 2012 number left in the current population is what,

what they're saying. So it's like, it is an alarming drop population wise since 2012. Um, when I first heard of the closure, gut reaction is like oh that finally happened because at places like sheep show i've had conversations with outfitters who have told me you know eventually this is going to get shut down because something is going on with the sheep population now it's very anecdotal but i'll hit some added wrinkles well let me let me finish this so then when i got around to reading about this after my gut reaction of i was actually quite surprised to get the state that the state was i I assumed that, oh yeah, that thing is finally happening that I had heard about years ago at this point. And so I was pretty surprised that the state of

Alaska was not in support of, um, but the, it sounds like there's a gap in current data. Well, here's why it's a little, here's why it's a little here's why it's a little unfair to lump it in with the caribou like the caribou moose stuff in in the in the western brooks range it becomes a little bit unfair because uh there it's like it's being closed to non-local users here they're closing it even to subsistence users because people can hunt sheep on like like local federal subsistence people can hunt sheep outside of the full curl restriction so if you were really trying to stop harvest you might go in and say okay we're going to stop harvest the the federal subsistence users are going to stop harvest because they can shoot use and lambs or we're going to change the regulations around the state is the state their use of non their

non-subsistence hunters who have a full curl restriction shouldn't be getting rolled into this but it's like well if everyone's going to take a hit if someone has to take a hit everyone will take a hit yeah yeah it's uh it kind of akin to i don't know what pops to mind is like sage grouse right where it's like we know the grouse are getting beat up from a bunch of different factors but we also know that hunting isn't one of those factors like it doesn't factor into like the long-term uh viability of these populations yeah um and we need hunting around and in order to a gain data b keep some public interest on on this bird because eventually we're going to need to get a bunch of support to help this thing out oh yeah that's kind of like one of my big axes to grind right now is the death spiral of sage grouse participation yeah oh you know what's funny i felt uh the the one concerted effort i

made to hunt sage grouse and we did an episode about it it was right when they everybody was still celebrating the they came up with these great compromises in sagebrush country, so the sagebrush sea, areas of Wyoming, northern Colorado, portions of Idaho. They came up with all these great compromises. They had this stellar sage-grouse recovery plan put together. The Secretary of Interior, was it Sally Jewell at the time? She was, when it was completed, it was her. They announced that ESA protection is not warranted.

It was kind of like ESA protection is not warranted because y'all have put together an adequate plan to avert disaster. Oh, a huge kumbaya moment. Huge kumbaya. Everybody was excited, and it was sort of like they were rewarding the plan by not doing it and then they just i mean uh elements of the trump administration just like wholeheartedly ditched the plan totally just ditched the plan yeah but in those sort of like

halcyon days of thinking that the plan was in place i went and hunted sage grouse and felt weird doing it oh yeah i actually went back and watched that episode at some point in the last year or two during said obsession with sage grouse and i remember being like oh man that sounds oh no that didn't happen son of a bitch but it felt weird to be like a minute ago they were going to declare it an endangered species yeah but now that they didn't we're gonna go hunt for them like how do you explain that to a five-year-old but it was funny because so many people in the sage grouse recovery world were welcoming and encouraging hunting because they're like we want public participation in the resource and it's neck it's a negligible harvest.

Like the hunter harvest doesn't matter. Oh, yeah. What matters is habitat loss, fence strikes, all these other things. But it did feel funny. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to derail the conversation. I can talk about sage grouse a lot.

But sheep. Felt weird. Sheep. But with sheep, sure, you'd be like, okay, sheep numbers are way down. They're 25% or whatever. Does it feel funny to go hunt a full curl ram in that area i'd be like it does like that full curl ram doesn't matter the biologists would tell you to shoot it it doesn't matter hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcomemaps.com slash meet welcome to the to the onx club y'all well quick question when you said subsistence subsistence and sheep don't go together in my head well you need to go you need to go read uh steffensen's My Life with the Eskimo. So they're killing a lot of sheep. Somebody's killing a lot of sheep. Well, I mean, historically. I mean, people have.

Have you ever read Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper? I have, but that's mountain sheep in the lower 48. That's different. It's interesting because one spot in that book he talks about when they were living off bison, they got where they couldn't find any

and decided to go winter way up high in the mountains. Yeah. So they could hunt bighorns. You know, I kind of got a piece of that recently. was tickled we did a buddy of mine got married on the main salmon river and we did a you know week-long trip and we saw 10 x as many sheep as we saw deer and i was like holy shit it's like we're in the good old days it was awesome when he used to see four or five hundred on the hillside we didn't see that many at all but but isn't that funny like that was a super stable and common food source for people who weren't uh quote unquote in sheep shape right it was like oh i gotta go get some food for the

mining perception right you don't know they were in sheep shape. It was like cookie going out to slide some meat underneath the tarp. They certainly didn't have ergonomic boots with really nice insoles. In my life with the Eskimo, which was written in the early 1900s, he talks about native Alaskans who live in the high country, the Brooks Range. All their clothes are white. All their blankets are white, that they live off sheep. That is badass.

Well, it's kind of the sheep eaters in central Idaho are very similar people. They were definitely sheep shape as a side note. Seasonally and otherwise would just be dull sheep specialists. Yeah. So there's definitely a subsistence component to it it's just and you know no matter what you feel like like being a guy that doesn't live in alaska i'm like a tourist there you know we we have a shack there but we're not anything but anything but locals i'm like a person that loves the place and i kind of recognize where it's my business not my business it's not my business and it's carpet bagging however it's alarming i know it's alarming

because it's a broad it's like i just hate to see people's i hate to see people's hunting and fishing privileges stripped away especially when the agency like when a trusted agency manager is saying this is unnecessary. Well, it definitely feels a little grizzly bearish to me from the Northern Rockies. There's a little bit of a tinge of federal. We don't know anything about the, I'm sorry, Ford. We don't know anything about the motivations of the actual people that made this decision.

I mean, were they getting pressure? Was there political pressure? We don't know that well they just know the rules for every decision that's that's like on the docket there's like a public comment period right so like i guess their constituents for lack of a of a better word can call in and you know kind of give their opinion on the matter um but that's you think they made this decision based on that that's that would be the hope right i mean that's the way the system's supposed like the each member of that board is supposed to be representing not just their own thoughts yeah but you know people are people so remember that Depeche Mode song people are people oh god yeah uh but you know it hurts right when they use broad strokes I guess I guess what I'm

getting at is like some of the some of the grizzly bear stuff and British Columbia and you see different places where for sure like an anti-hunting agenda or some agenda outside of the conservation management space it's like it's pushing people to make decisions this is probably not that so yeah so that's a great point i'll touch on that real quick the decision not to hunt doves in michigan is is nothing to do with biology it's social tolerance for killing a symbol of peace okay so it was advertised as like a dove is a symbol of peace how can we allow hunting of a symbol of peace in this state and people voted it down many years ago nothing to do with nothing to do with dove populations you can't shoot doves in michigan no but they're

delicious couldn't for forever in iowa i don't think you can still but another example be grizzly bears in the northern in the northern rocky ecosystem it's not a biological thing it's a social thing like people they can't stomach the idea of killing the bears has nothing to do with the number of them or the viability of the population in this case the stuff in the wet and the in the western brooks range with the caribou moose it's about wanting to protect my own and you have people who you have local on the ground individuals who have a mechanism by which they can keep a resource to themselves and not have competition from other people coming in and disturbing that and they utilize the mechanism it's like i don't think that they would come and tell you it's anything but it's anything

but like a selfish desire and then when we you know initially talked about the caribou closures we we tackled that right and it's like how it's like if you had the ability to uh close down your favorite hunting unit to just just the folks in your community, in order to relieve the pressure from non-residents or folks outside of that county, would you, you know, hit yay or nay? Yeah, like let's say you have a river access site, you have a river access site, and there's conflict between floaters and fishers.

So tubers, moms taking their kids swimming um people who just talk loud yeah those people moms taking their kids swimming versus mom taking their kids fishing and they and they all get in a fight and then and then some agency comes says okay the only way you can use this river access site is if you're fishing done deal no no no talking half the people are gonna be like sweet yeah and i'm just gonna be quiet about it yeah when i came into the brand new first light store i couldn't help but notice i couldn't help but notice a large display hmm right off the bat. First rack in.

First rack in of an unusual assortment. First light waterfowl. Wait, we need like a drumbeat or some other whole buildup. Who wants to talk about that? You don't like that buildup? Tell us, Sean. Or whoever. Who wants to talk about this?

Sean's the most legitimate duck hunter here so i think the most passionate yeah everybody knows sean from sean's duck report oh i just forget do you get emails about sean's duck report uh some emails probably more instagram messages but a lot of emails corrections or helpful stuff um yeah usually just like kind of added on things like you know here's something else i want you to do a duck report about a lot of that a lot of like you should do a duck report on this um back to the rack when you first come in the store um we're working on have been working on for quite some time something that another thing I've been getting all the Instagram messages about and then real tight-lipped about is uh new first light waiters

they coming which is by far the product I'm most stoked on and most pumped about like our launch this year. First light waterfowl stuff was fun and cool and all good stuff. But you know, there's a reason that my Instagram messages and emails were flooded with. So are you guys going to do waiters? When are the waiters coming? Tell me about waiters. Are there waiters? I don't see you in waiters,

but we've been keeping it tight. Even from a non- Pretty tight. Yeah, trying to. Even I'm getting emails about that, and no one knows who I am. Instagram-less forward. Oh, yeah. I mean, just, hey, so I'm trying to buy waiters this summer.

I know you're not going to tell me, but should I buy waiters this summer? And I'm like- Like, wink your right eye. Don't blink if First Light's coming out with waders. You're like, summer's a hot time for wader buying. So lay out, like, what is the full waterfowl? Like, what all is available currently? Yeah, and why the timeline, you know?

Well, I mean, what we have out right now is a smattering of existing First Light products that make sense as waterfowl products with additional design pieces. I would call it a heavy smattering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I might, Sean. Okay, fair. But like we have, right, all the First Light wool. For sure.

That makes sense as waterfowl gear. Warm and wet. And then in addition to that like we have the refuge collection and the ground control pack and the lz and things that are waterfowl specific and designed for waterfowlers but um you know of course one of the things that all waterfowlers use and need is waders but waders are they are probably the most demanding product like they are the thing that's hardest to get right and takes the most time to get right and i mean you're expecting something to work both as a like beating through the brush

breaking through sticks and ice and also being impenetrable and waterproof. For long periods of time. Yeah, for long periods of time, more than a day. It's a bit of a unicorn, I would say. Yeah, it reminds me, back in the day when I first started working, I first like, working the phones, I used to get to call and it's like, I'm looking for a jacket. It's insulated, it's waterproof, it's breathable,

and it makes you invisible you're like pause boy yeah my response would be like if you can make that jacket i will buy it i'm not superman we don't currently stock it unfortunately but it's true with waiters it's similar you kind of needed to do damn near everything i think what deals more death to waiters and anything on the well i barbed wire fences deal our wire fences are brutal but beaver chewed sticks people don't realize how hard beavers are on waiters man oh they're excellent punji pit yeah little punji sticks all over eighth inch of ice man like that is like just kicking ice for decoys hard right at the top of the boot especially when you're in that shot like the shin depth stuff where you're using your shin yeah to chunk up ice and that that is the cool thing

about these bad boys right yes these are not your normal waiter no no these waiters are they're the real deal they're serious and if you put beaver proof on the label i feel like people might not they might think that mean attacked by a beaver yeah we could just make a sweet little logo to put on the outside beaver chewed stick proof just an angry beaver uh when i was i used to have this uh chevy pickup and we put uh i we i ripped the exhaust out and put cherry bombs on it, as one does, and just straight pipes out the back. And didn't cut the straight, left the straight pipes a little too long. And I one time on the, so I'd be like messing around,

reaching into the back of the truck, trapping with my waders on, in and out, in and out, in and out. And I remember standing there and smelling something and burned a hole through burned a hole through the right leg of the waiter right above the knee on that straight pipe and then later the day that day the same day burnt a hole through the other waiter on the left pipe i've burned matching like matching round exhaust pipe holes cutouts later i have done that not on a pipe but on sunflower heaters on those real cold days where you're like i gotta get as warm as i can and you hug that sunflower heater in the blind just a little too close but these these waiters are you know i not it's like uh it's just a thing it's a fact

that i i don't know how i destroy waiters in the way i do but last year i think i was on my sixth pair of waiters by the end of the season i was gonna say man you get you spend more time returning waiters than you do in your waiters some you need to get yourself a patch kit man i said like i used to be able to go through a muskrat trap and season fewer waiters than that and i will say like when you're on the road as much as i was it was just like those ones leaked now move on to the next set yeah and by the last duck hunt of the year i made clay where yeah where holy waiters he's like do these waiters leak because i'm already wet so dude this is the last thing i had left i only had one pair of waiters he told me he was

gonna take care of me we were gonna we were gonna hunt and he was like man i got i got you some sweet waiters i mean this is sean this is sean we were from duck hunt. And he was like, man, I got you some sweet waders. I mean, this is Sean. This is Sean. We were from Duck Lore. You know, traveling the country. And to be fair, like, I got to be clear here. These are not First Light waders, right? Because we were filming Duck Lore. And so I had to be wearing waders on Duck Lore that weren't First Light waders

because we weren't showing them yet. But on all the non-Duck Lore stuff. The cameramen were wearing them. Yeah. The camera guys got to wear like the best waders i was super jealous because i'm wearing these huge baggy waders that leaked and then the camera guys were wearing the first light weight all sleek yeah that kind of pisses me off hey so you're you're tiptoeing around that these are these are designed to be

super tough and now and and so when i was with I was with Sean, I didn't know much about waterfowl hunting, and I just, like, in private. So this is a look into our private conversation. In private, I was like, tell me the truth. Are these waders any good? And, I mean, Sean was kind of upset about just life in general, so I was waiting for him to just be like, man, they're okay. First lights lights you know

it's okay this is after my boat broke down again and and he he gave a glowing review and said these things are gonna like change the waterfowl market oh yeah oh really yeah well it's good to hear in private yeah which means something what we're missing here right now is is the pitch are they are they do they have pockets are they zippered is the pitch. Are they neoprene waiters? I want to tell my waiter shitting story. Do they have pockets? Are they zippered? Yeah, these aren't

shit-proof waiters. Do they have boots attached to them? Do they not have boots attached to them? What are they? Oh, yeah. Are you going to tell us

anything? I think we just leave it with... We had, I think, 11 guys on that testing trip in Arkansas. I mean, we were really we were getting reps on these rolling deep yeah and i mean i did sean was there i wore them all

year off camera right or had camera guys wearing them all year off camera but but we circled up at that camp or after that camp in arkansas and i i'm pretty sure all 11 guys said it was the best waiter they'd ever worn and i did have critiques to be fair it's not like they came out of it's not like i was like yeah great job everybody these are perfect waiters but we we made some changes over the summer yeah and got them right where they need to be i think yeah here's my waiter shitting story with that yeah so we used to fish the saint mary's river which separates uh um michigan's upper peninsula i'm positive allegedly it's not the northern lower peninsula so when uh if you imagine lake superior lake superior sits i don't know what it is 23 Lake Superior sits 23 feet higher than Huron.

Is that it? So there's the Sioux Falls, and the Sioux Locks goes around the Sioux Falls so the iron ore boats and stuff can come and go. But anyways, it sits some feet higher, goes through the Sioux Falls, and there's this river called the St. Mary's River, which is basically, not basically, it is it's Lake Superior draining into Lake Huron.

And this river's wide wide wide. You and me ran it in a boat together. Pre 9-11 you could just buy a book of bridge passes, two bucks a piece.

And you would go over and the people, the customs people would just get to know you. I mean, we'd fish sometimes. When I was going to school at Lake State, we would sometimes fish three, four days a week. On the Canada side, you could keep more fish. So we'd go over there. I'm sorry, you'd catch more fish. Yeah. F fishing the Canada side because you could access the rapids okay so the US side he had like a bunch the locks you could go over and fish sort of like a more natural river scape coming from the Canada side so we'd cross all

the time and in the when the pink salmon ran in the fall the water be pretty low and if you were a bold wader so we would uh get cleats you know corkers if you had like felt boots and then put some corkers on them we had me my buddies we had like routes that you could get way out into the river and it'd be you'd cross here and then you'd go up 100 yards and go out and then you'd go down 200 yards and go out a little more and then go got a cockeyed angle and yeah and you'd wind up like way out there fishing fish that people didn't fish at and one time we get way out there, and I don't want to say who it was, my buddy all of a sudden has. The need. Yeah. He's got the gurgling going on. He's got to go number two.

This is after a long night at the bar. Oh, the worst. And he's kind of in the situation of needing to weigh what to do because now he's got an hour invested into getting out into the pink city. Oh, it was like that serious of a walk to get out there it was not there was no joke in fact people would people that didn't get it would kind of like marvel at how one could get out there but you're like well you know you figure out how to get out there it was just a dicey walk yeah so he had to shat his waders there's nothing else he can do and just kept

fishing through it he fished through the whole thing but i was a boy that takes strong man that takes the waiter farts thing you know when you take your weight that takes it to a new level fish through the whole thing gets back to our house and uh drives back with us with his belt on there and gets back very tight goes up and into the shower yeah smart guy takes his waiters off did he keep those waiters i'm sure he did there's no way because that's another thing what got me thinking about that what got me thinking about that is back when none like you know growing up not having any kind of money it'd be like you'd look at your waiters like how you look at your car like if something happened to your wait money it'd be like you'd look at your waiters like how you look at your car

like if something happened to your waiters you'd be like how how will i ever recover yeah do you know what i mean yeah yeah like like life would end it'd be like if you broke your main rod like well what's supposed to do now like when your waiters went dude you were done you were gonna go buy another pair no which is a testament to why like i i do think that there is a lot of waiters out there right now that are pretty pricey and the quality has just gone to crap i mean there is a there is a brand of waiters where in the last two years i quite literally the first week of using them just a seam pops and start leaking like has nothing to do with a puncture or anything like that and you know that's always the that's the most common thing that fails on a wader anyway right it's the seams they're just bad seams bad work bad tape job and you get that leaking in the crotch right we've

all had it where you all of a sudden there's a day where now your pants are wet right in the crotch for no reason had nothing to do with you shatting in your waders and had everything had everything to do with just crappy waders and we went into this conversation early as a team looking at trying to solve the major problems that Sean's just describing, right? So the first thing on our mind is, let's make these the most durable thing that has ever been introduced to the waterfowl world. And that's kind of what that was our,

I would say like our mantra going forward. Like, how can we break these and showcase that, you know, this iteration didn't work. Let's move on to the next thing. And pretty proud of them. And the other thing about them for all the guys down in Clay's country that wear waders every hunt is they'll come in a timber camo. Which is a fancy new detail.

A new timber camo. A new timber camo. That we can't talk about. No. We'll leave it at that. We can say it's sweet can't talk about. No. We'll leave it at that. Can we say it? We can say it's sweet. It's sweet.

Yeah. Can I ask you guys how long you spent developing until you got it to where you want? Because this is like a long time coming, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, two and a half years. I forget. I mean, Typha, I feel like, was like 11.6 or something,

iteration-wise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Typha being our current waterfowl camo that we dropped this summer. Yeah. I've been screwing around with the waders myself for, well, over a year. Yeah. Not just me. And it's been longer than that. And I think what's interesting to realize too is like wers don't just like come as waiters, right? There's like material selection and all these things where we spend time touching, feeling, trying to break. And Logan Williamson, our waterfowl product manager, has been in it for, you know, two plus years, you know.

Oh, and it's worth saying we've got a pretty sweet partner lined out. That's right. Putting those things together. Yeah. You want to mention that one? You do that there, out. That's right. Putting those things together. Yeah. You want to mention that one? You do that there, Kevin. Yeah, yeah.

So we've been working with a company called The Cross, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Little, little, little company over in Western Oregon, who is as a company, obviously not new to the game of rubber boot development and things like that. So without saying too much, the construction obviously not uh new to the game of of rubber boot development and things like that so um without saying too much the the construction and sort of the development of this um specific boot for these waders is uh far and away the best thing i've put my foot in yeah it's not even like it's not even

in the same realm no no it's like we're talking like new materials new construction a different way of looking at heat insulation a different way of looking at heat retention. A different way of looking at breathability, like the whole bit. Just the ability to like go in a room and say like, what is impossible and how can we make it? For days on end last year, like by design, on purpose, stood in the water, you know, 35 degree water for seven, eight hours straight with no way to get your foot elevated

and out of cold icy water like skimmed over water and you know because of my own poor layering decisions end up with a cold core cold thighs but warm feet which just doesn't happen shockingly warm feet like that was a big takeaway from that that's that's one of my favorite parts the whole thing but yeah waiter yeah it's that boot that's great one's drop date oh tentative we can't be that specific it'll be available in about a year 23 at some point yeah but what you can do right now watch this transition but what you can do right now is come down to haley idaho and come to the new first light store check it out one and only on the planet.

It's really cool in here. I told them that they need a duck that Sean killed hanging in here. You know, I've never got a duck mounted, taxidermied. Stuffed. Stuffed. So you should get the first one put in here. Put in here? Mm-hmm.

All right, we're going gonna wrap it up we're gonna do trivia yeah how do you guys feel about it trivia or like have you ever listened to the one of the shows i've been practicing up do you feel like you're gonna win or lose oh definitely not gonna win but i'll hang in there how have you been practicing you know tommy i'd like to just reading encyclopedias tommy edson after he came on and played with us, and he's a strong player. The guys at work call him the blue-collar scholar. I was shocked at the Turnpike thing. Like, y'all didn't know what Turnpike Troubadours were.

There's like two of you. That shocked me on the last one. I think that was Clay and myself. You know who Robert Roll Keane is? Oh, yeah. Ray Wiley Hubbard? Yep. You know?

Oh, yeah. Waylon Jennings? Absolutely. Are we trying to make this generational right now? No, I'm just saying. I just thought like Turnpike was a chain. It was said by the First Light crew that they would think Ford is good. So now Ford has got some pressure on them.

You know what? When I don't know something and someone points out that I don't know it and they kind of want to tease me about it, I always remind them that there's probably a lot of things I know that they don't know. That is so mature. Got them. Got them. do you even really know i don't want to name them all but there's probably a lot of things i know you don't know hold on steve do you actually great come back do you actually know

tell me your favorite topics yeah and uh i'll come up with the few that take a seat here do you actually know it or is it just your perception of a dust particle? Oh yeah, like my like when I look at my sun coming through all the shines bright and clear to me. Yeah, can I just intercede quickly my gut reaction throughout your whole description of that philosophy about not understanding anything about life just makes me think of their nihilist donnie oh yeah it is that's what i was thinking the whole first five minutes the other day i was this is the last

this is the honest to god last thing i say the hard day is seth and chester who are frequently on the show both happen to have hawaiian shirts on and i informed them wait where were you in hawaii or yeah yeah okay, you know. We wanted to get them hats that said Howley. So they had their Hawaiian shirts on. And I was trying to explain to them about the Boogaloo movement. Oh, yeah. It's like a nihilistic.

It's like a nihilist. It's like a nihilistic it's like a it's like a never nihilist it's like a nihilistic uh militia group what's it yeah what are they called again it's the boogaloo yeah yeah yeah yeah the world's good and they wear hawaiian shirts and i was saying i would think when i saw these guys i was like i think you guys are like here from the the boogaloo movement and they have no idea what i was talking about i think that got old chester feeling a little self-conscious because later on in the day do you remember this he he came up to steve and i and he said you know um some local guys uh kind of gave me the stink guy and i think it's because of my hawaiian shirt they're like that dude ain't hawaiian he must be boogaloo

and chester's like legitimately one of the nicest people on the planet like oh all right so check out the first light store come through haley idaho if you're if you're passing through check it out um stay tuned for these super waiters coming soon full line

of waterfowl apparel um anything else that's good oh bick lighters with the first light logo on there Gators, coming soon. Full line of waterfowl apparel. Anything else? That's good. Oh, Bic lighters with the First Light logo on there. Well, I'm sorry to over-pick Bic lighters. If you're a smoker or just someone who likes to start campfires, come by and get a genuine Cal Hand Lighter. How about an outdoors-oriented person that always likes to be prepared?

You know what those are called, right? You got a lighter in one pocket and a knife in the other. I still call them cigarette lighters. I can't think of what else to call them. Well, these are called first blighters. Oh, I can't take credit for that. That already happened. Yeah, that was not my idea. Well, I bet I've come up with a lot of good things.

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