The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 415: The Element

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with  K.C. Smith, Tyler Jones, Jordan Sillars, Hunter Spencer, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: Jordan's caliber battles; the leaked letter asking Biden to ban beaver trapping; milk from heaven vs. cow's milk; kids eating deer and duck turds; the Bozeman Hat Association; leapfrogging tree stands; when your book cover is banned on the internet; the Tofu Crafter; how KC got hung up on an audad's horn; almost being a football star, then almost being a rock star; making wise life decisions; Tyler and the Tribe's music; flying next to Robert Duvall; baby Frankincense; Bass and Breakfast; counter-cultural fly fishing; "Redfish Guy"; packing lead pellets in your lip; America's last three non-swearers; look out for K.C. and Tyler's "Buck Truck" series on MeatEater; listen to The Element Podcast on the MeatEater network; 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 farther, stay longer. All right, everybody. It's like the Alamo in here. So much Texas is in the room. It's like the Alamo. Especially like the Alamo because those dudes weren't Texans. Not really. A lot of them were like Crockett. We've covered this. Crockett had just shown up in town dude

How'd he die? Yeah was he there? He was there And I think he quit Me too I think he surrendered Yep Texans don't like

Embrace Crockett I don't think Like Some of the Movies make the Alamo thing out to be. Oh, see, I get a whole different... Really? Jesse Griffiths, he gets visibly uncomfortable when you start talking about that. Yeah, he's South Texan, though.

Oh. Yeah, yeah. So you guys are... So lay out where... Well, first I want to cover out. We're going to get to your Texans. You guys are both born in actual Texas. Oh, yep.

Real Texans. I suppose. You'd say. But then like actual Texas. Oh, yep. Real Texans. I suppose. You'd say. But then, this is Jordan's, Sillars first time. Is that how you pronounce your name, Sillars?

Sillars, yep. I used to always think it was Silars. Nope, Sillars. Just from reading it too much. Sillars. Sillars. It's actually a very

uncommon last name. You're not, you're barely even American. Man. But you're Texan. Yeah. I live in texas now i've uh been embraced i've married into the the state you could say born in winnipeg canada yep

born in winnipeg um lived there for well lived in calgary actually for five years in alberta and then moved to texas when i was seven and then we moved to virginia when i was seven. And then we moved to Virginia when I was 11. And that's where my parents still are. But now I live in Texas. Why were they doing all that, moving around? For my dad to go to grad school. And then Virginia is where he found a job out of college.

If you go, if you spend much time on our website, you've probably read many of Jordan's caliber battles, gun battles. Yep. That's me. He writes the comparison contrast. Dude, the other day I was actually doing a little comparison

contrast research and I went up just from Google search. I want to read one of your damn articles. Good. That's what we want. We want it showing right up there. Showing right up first option. No no and i read it for real yeah yeah i i had a buddy uh just tell me the other day he was like i'm trying to figure out whether i forget it was like three or eight or six five and i found this article i started reading it and i looked up and i realized hey i know that guy so yeah try to think what one i was digging into i think i was

digging into the um 257 weatherby versus the the 26 man i've written a lot of these i'd have to look it up there's like a 26-06, right? Or something like that. Like, I even shot a deal with 25-06. 25-06. Would it make sense that I was comparing the.257 Weatherby with the 25-06? Yeah, I think so. They're both.25 caliber.

Cost difference on the ammo. Yeah. Yeah, that's big. That's big. And that's something I think people don't often like think about. When they're buying a gun. Yeah. And then they go try to buy ammo. And because it, I think it has to be cheap enough to practice with, you know, you want to be able to go out and practice with the gun you're going to, you're going to use hunting. And if the ammo is too expensive, you can't really do that. So how do you get, when you're doing a caliber battle how do you break it down uh so the first category is ballistics um which is just like how fast uh is the bullet going what does it weigh

what's the energy um and then the second is shootability so we talk about um the recoil so we we say uh how much does it hurt your shoulder and your wallet um so how much does it recoil and then how much does the ammo cost? And then we look at versatility. It's the last one. You know what I think is the least shootable gun on the planet, even though I've owned them and like them? Yeah.

Is the seven millimeter. Yeah. How is, it doesn't make sense. It is the fastest punch to the head. It's like, it's the most accelerated punch to your head. It's like it's the most accelerated punch to your jaw. Yeah. Comes so fast.

Yeah. For a while I was shooting a 7mm and a 375H and H and the 375H and H kicks but it's like it takes 5 minutes for the kick to play out. Yeah.

So it's not that bad. It's like whoop. Yeah. Yeah, it depends a lot on the weight of the gun, too. The 7mm is like, pow! Yeah.

That's the first. That's what I was purchased as my first deer rifle at, like, nine years old, was a 7 mag. Oh, nice. Yeah. Wow. It's like, why do my teeth hurt? I'm surprised you stuck with it. I'm a bow hunter now.

There you go. Yeah. So, shootability, which is that yep and then versatility uh we talk about kind of the the range of animals that can be taken with which comes down to how many loads you can get for it in some respects yeah a lot of times it's like the range of bullet weights um so if you have something that can go down to kind of those light varmint bullets and then up to like you know elk and moose then it's it has a good range i was thinking today you should do like a um like imagine it all that shit's like the playoffs right oh yeah or no no that was all

regular season right like march sports dude sports. I mean, God bless you for trying, Steve. You know what? Someone should start an app. It'd be a great app. Politicians would be able to use it and stuff. Where you type in a thing, and then it generates a sports analogy. That's good. Yeah.

I like it. So if you're just trying to connect with the common man. I could use that, too. You could type it in, and it'd spit out a great sports analogy. New kind of AI. Yeah, new kind of AI. So to put it in a sports analogy, it's been the regular season. Yeah.

And you're going to have the playoffs, and then you're going to have the Indy 500. So close. Then you're going to have the Super Bowl. Yeah, I've thought about doing a kind of March Madness bracket. Just to throw another analogy out there.

That's a great idea. It starts to be tricky because if you're comparing a .22 long rifle to a.308, it's hard to really come oh but i think that you would wind up doing um like uh you know like small game yeah there you go different greatest of the greatest like verse you could do the greatest versatile big game gun

there you go like you're gonna buy one of them Lord knows who knows what you're going to go do with it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, had another question for you. It'll be too late now because it already came out. Yeah. But you're, you're, you guys are working on a big expose. Yeah. The, the beaver. It's not an expose.

Yeah. Uh, the beaver letter. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's coming out, uh, today, the day we're recording the podcast. So you want me to just go into it? No, just give it a quick crash course.

Okay, yeah. So this letter from an organization called the Western Watersheds Project, they're going to send a letter to the president, Joe Biden, requesting that he pass an executive order that bans beaver hunting and trapping on all federal public land in the u.s um so the article we're kind of going to break that down and and investigate that so meaning uh one wildlife manager put it like uh you're taking a sledgehammer to an issue that requires a scalpel yeah we had a little bit of chuckle about this can we just can we talk about this at all yeah i think yeah totally fine so what they're saying is there's some they're saying that like

because of climate change issues it's better to have more beavers out there holding back more water um but then simultaneous with them writing this letter is a lot of reporting coming out of the arctic where beavers are invading the arctic because of climate change yep and they're exacerbating climate change because of their activities in the Arctic. Yeah. So then here you have these guys making this really ham-handed, this gets funny in a minute, making this very ham-handed thing like all federally managed public lands. Well, the American Arctic is, I don't know what, 90 some percent federally managed public lands. So you're saying to mitigate climate change, we're going to remove a tool you would use to address climate change.

Yeah. And then Jordan goes to them for comment and they're like, oh, we didn't really think about that. Hold on. We'll adjust the letter. Yeah. Yeah.

They, they, they, they say. We haven't seen the adjusted. He hasn't seen the adjusted letter yet. Yeah. Yeah. Which by the time, you know, seen the adjusted letter yet. Yeah. Yeah. Which by the time, you know, by the time you're listening to this, maybe they've made those adjustments, but yeah. And I pointed out in our own state, you have very fine tuned management of the resource and I counted up. So you have, they're managed across seven regions.

11 counties have closures. This is not a thing that they, no one's willy nilly about the management of the resource. Yeah. Yeah. You have state furbearer biologists, you know what I mean? To be like, well, I'm going to talk to president

Biden and he's going to end the whole thing. Yeah. None of you people know what you're doing. Yeah. I mean, they, they have a. That's what it sounded like. Well, they do. I mean, that's pretty much what they say. They have a that's what it sounded like it well they do i mean that's

pretty much what they say they have a line in the letter that talks about how state game agencies are kind of beholden to hunters and that's why it's you know it's interesting they say that native america they feel that native americans would still be allowed to hunt and train beavers yeah they like because those ones those beavers. Yeah. But like, cause those ones, those beavers don't help climate change. Yeah. Yeah. They, they have a few.

Those beavers are not helpful. They have a few exceptions. One of which, uh, are, are Native Americans. Yeah. Those beavers are like, bro, I was going to hurt climate change. Um. Jordan's also a huge help on a Cal's Week in

Review as well. Mm-hmm. Just want to throw that out there. Yeah. Rock star. Yeah, I've been helping Cal with that podcast for a long time. That's really fun. Hunter Spencer's here.

Tell him about the work you've been doing on the Blue Collar Scholars. The wild milking competition. Tommy Edson, the Blue Collar Scholar, has been on the show before as a trivia guest. He thought he kicks ass in trivia. We had him out. He got beat bad. I later learned that part of his secret

is that he pauses to think. Oh, he does? Mm-hmm. In explaining, he pauses to think. So that's a problem. He is on a, there's a rodeo event I didn't know about

where you hold down cows and milk them? Yeah, I think they got like, do you guys familiar with this? It looks like it's like a team of three or four. I think two of them are supposed to be able

to go out there and rope it in some form or grab it by the head. And whoever can get, then you've got the guy that's got the milk, you know, the container. Yeah. And whoever gets the milk fastest and sprints back to the judge. Yeah, he's got a team. We're going to sponsor his team. You know how much it costs to sponsor his wild milk team?

300 bucks. However, he says he's going to donate all the winnings back that will roll into the LAI. So we could come out ahead. Is he a raw milk drinker? That's a great question. I bet he gets a little in there.

I'm just trying to train him. While he's running back. He's at the bottom of the horseshoe he might be at the bottom of the horseshoe so yeah there might be a gnome riding a wild cow I went to Hunter to be like dude you need to make a logo

for his milk rodeo team and then Hunter was supposed to be doing normal stuff for his job. Someone found out, someone named Tracy found out that I'd done this. It was like apoplectic that I would have taken Tommy Edson's wild. I was like, we need a logo for Tommy's wild milk team. And then I later learned you're supposed to have, you had other stuff you're supposed to be working on. But it's our gnome friend riding a big milking cow with a jug of milk. And it's bucking.

It's bucking. He's riding a bucking milk cow. Yeah. Celebratory lap around the ring with his jug of milk. Dude, I think that people are going to, when we, when we finish that t-shirt, that's going to be a hot selling t-shirt. It is going to be a hot selling one. I don't know if it messes up Tommy that his team will have a shirt that's like widely available to the public. I think it'll bring in an audience.

Oh yeah, they do it in sports. Yeah. Put this into the sports analogy. That's right. Well, going back to the Indy 500, those NASCAR players. It would spit out that professional sports players. You drink milk when you win the Indy 500. Oh, you do?

Or no, is it... Champagne. It's one of those. It's not an Oscar thing. Yeah, it's champagne. No, there's like a whole milk drinking thing. Yeah. It's like a...

What if you're lactose intolerant? Or allergic to dairy? You got soy for that. Drive slow. Almond milk. Oat. We got to put the bottom of the horseshoe on that shirt. And then it'll be very applicable to your podcast.

Just a little hidden horseshoe. It'll be like the dollar. When people show you what's on a dollar bill, all the crazy shit and symbolism on there. You know, like the eyeball on the pyramid. Yeah, it'll have a little horseshoe on there, and people will look and be like, you know what that means, don't you? Yeah. Okay. The guys from The Element are here. can you guys introduce yourselves then we got to

do a couple things that we're going to dig in heavy duty i'm tyler jones and um i've got two kids and a wife and i like to bow hunt deer there you go yeah about says it all that's it i'm casey smith and tyler jones took my answer so yeah texans you guys each have a wife and two kids yes sir and you both like to hunt deer absolutely so uh we're we're going to spend a bunch of time with Tyler and Casey. But if you go into YouTube, whatever, type in the element, you'll find a lot of these guys' deer bow hunting materials all over the place. Do a little bit of that. A lot of Texas land public. Well.

Some? No? Yeah, a little bit. That's kind of how we had to start. To say a lot of Texas public land is a little bit of a misnomer there. I said bull hunting. Yeah. Well, that's where we kind of started doing this stuff and filming and all that.

Just because you had to. Yeah. It's what's close to home, and we're kind of priced out of the leasing game. So that's what we started doing together. How old? I started hunting public land in Texas when I was about 12, I think, for whitetails. Yeah. I grew up duck hunting public around mostly. My dad owns a fishing lodge on Lake Fork and, you know, naturally there's birds around.

So grew up hunting Lake Fork for ducks. So you guys both got started young. Yeah. I was probably, I started waterfowl hunting about eight. So deer hunting next year after that and bow hunting about 16. That's great.

Yeah. All right. We're going to dig into that. We got to talk. So Corinne, you want to talk about the bottom of the horseshoe? Okay. A guy rode in.

Oh, you're going to do it. Oh, you just, you just, didn't you just say that? I'd love it if you did it. No, I don't want to do it. You do it. I thought you just said, Corinne, do it. This is like. You need to practice.

You need to practice presenting. Here we go. Do you want me to do it? I think you should do it. I think it's funnier if you do it. Okay. Guy wrote in. Yeah.

You'll be reading the list out loud and chuckling about it. So we had an episode called Lung King. Oh, it was named after the Liver King. Was there like a big Liver King expose? Oh, yeah. He's totally juiced up. Everybody knows that. I mean, just look at him.

Did he have ab implants? He did that, too. I don't know. I think that was a rumor. I think he was just on a really heavy cycle and was saying, you know, all the raw meat was what was making him big. Fellow Texan, you know, Liver King, for sure. He is. Yeah. We should have had him in saying, you know, all the raw meat was what was making him big. Fellow Texan, you know, liver king,

for sure. He is. Yeah. We should have had him in here. I know, man. Shit, dang. Oh, you know what I need to talk about,

Corinne, can you humor me for a minute? Mm-hmm. I forgot a whole thing about Tommy Edson. Oh, please. He like, he's like Seth

and he seems to be like, he's always shopping for a boat. Like, perpetually shops for boats. How many does he own? I don't know. One? I don't like, he's always shopping for a boat, like perpetually shops for boats. How many does he own? I don't know. One.

I don't know. He's always shopping for boats. Okay. He sent me, I got to, I got to slightly edit this. He sent me a boat listing for a boat that's up for sale right now on offer up. Does he want you to check to see if it's like legit? No, I got to edit it because it's, um, remember in the movie Spinal Tap? He gets accused of being sexist, but he doesn't know what it means and thinks, he says, what's wrong with being sexy?

No, I didn't see Spinal Tap. Oh. It's in my top five movies of all time. Oh. I got to slightly edit this. Tommy sent me this boat. He wants this boat. Listed is my 16-foot tracker Deep V Pro.

This boat is a fish-killing bastard. It should be outlawed in 49 of 50 states. Why not all 50? Because no one fishes in California. Here's the thing, though. I looked it up this morning. California has twice as many fishermen as Washington. California has just over 2 million

fishermen. Washington has less than a million. It's easy. My mom, I was watching, my mom gets news only from one place. Like, she only watches Fox News because she doesn't even go read other news like that elsewhere. So in her mind, the news is what they cover.

She said to me every morning, we're watching Fox news. And she said, this country would be a lot better if they got rid of New York, California. And I said, well, what do you mean mom? Because of the crime? Yes. So I said, well, let's take a look. So I started researching violent crime and I don't, I didn't spend much time on it, but I found one thing.

It's like, mom, if you're going to ditch States because of violent crime, you got to get rid of Arkansas first. Ooh. Well, I don't know about that. I was like, here's violent crime per a hundred thousand people in there. You can't even like, like I was like, California's like 11. Oh, ma. It's a lot of hate.

Bunch of people like Clay running around in Arkansas. I know. It's Clay Newton committing crimes. That is an oxymoron. I'm not going to read the rest of it. It's a great boat description. But it just struck me like how just casually you can throw hate their way. You know?

Facts be damned. Not to mention it's a huge largemouth bass fishery. That's what I was going to tell you. I know. Yeah. We had a big conversation with two airline pilots on the way over yesterday. One of them was from California and we were listing off names. We were just talking about where we were from.

And we told them kind of what we did and he was like, oh yeah, I know some people that fish or something like that, you know. So the pilot says to you, where are you from?

Yeah, and we... We talk about Lake Forb. Yeah, because people know where Lake Forb is. Oh, so the conversation drifted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it.

Did he give you the little wings that you can pin onto your... No. Yeah, they used to give that out with peanuts oh my kids still get them all the time anymore i was a kid i had that on my wall i had this they were cool they do i haven't seen one since i was a child well there's a reason for that

do you ask the tour of the cockpit i do not uh on the lung king episode we got to talking about the bottom of the horseshoe, where the right and the left come back together and meet. You following me? Like picture a horseshoe hanging with the open end up and there's like the political right and the political left. Well, there's areas where they get along at the bottom of it. This guy says, I've worked in politics in various shapes and forms for more than 15 years and working in a legislative office. A number of staff members have noticed this phenomenon over the years. Based on the contacts we have received in our office, here are some of the topics to include.

Pro-raw milk. Let's pro-home schooling anti-5g anti-fluoride and water pro-home baked and other goods wait but the parenthetical statement a parenthetical for sale at farmer's market and not prepared in an inspected commercial kitchen. I get that carrot cake and banana bread from the Hutterites all the time at the local. Anti-con trails, chemtrails. COVID. UN Agenda 21. Naturopathic doctors and essential oils.

So when I write my book called The Bottom of the Horseshoe Which is an exploration of Areas where we all get along We'll be able to include those in there On raw milk Was there a lot of A lot of raw milk A lot of feedback

Guy says I like the perspective of feedback. Mm-hmm. Guy says, I like the perspective of Dr. Reisman on episode 409. It was refreshing to hear a doctor question some of the norms without being a pseudoscientist quack. I grew up farming and we always drank fresh raw milk for practical reasons. I never thought much of it until i fell in love with and married a city girl when we settled down and started a family naturally i bought a cow pretty as one does pretty quickly folk pretty quickly folks including my wife had me questioning whether it was safe for my children to drink the milk from my cow one day I was on the phone feeling guilty with a farmer friend debating if I was an

irresponsible parent because I was giving my kids raw milk. Can I interject real quick? Go ahead. My dad would bring home raw milk and we called it cow's milk. He's like, it's all cow's milk. But for some reason in our head, raw milk was cow's milk. To be differentiated from milk, which came from heaven. Like the stuff he brought home, dude, had like grass floating in it, man.

His party was a dairy farmer named Mr. Overly, and he brought home milk. You had like, this milk would like separate out, right? Back to the letter. As I was standing there on the phone, my 1.5-year-old son was crawling around the yard next to me. I was pretty stressed out when I looked down to try and figure out what my son was so focused on. As I watched him, he was crawling behind the barnyard ducks with a determined look on his face. As the ducks would take a shit, he would quickly grab it up and eat it. Then proceed to continue

following the ducks, obviously looking for more. I cut my friend off on the phone and said, he says a naughty word here, he said, to hell with it. The milk's not gonna hurt him. It's good thinking.

Have your kids ever eaten duck poop? One time we were squirrel hunting and my daughter, we told the story last night at the dinner table. We're duck hunting. I turn around, my daughter's going, spitting. Oh no. Yeah.

Eating deer shit. Oh. Because she thought it would look like little chocolates. And I was like, Rosie, you eating this? And I held up the deer shit and she's like, mm-hmm. They look like all

brown peanut M&Ms. Oh my goodness. You guys ready for a ethics one? Absolutely. It's about tree stance, so I'm going to put it to the element boys here. Why are you gesturing toward your colleague?

Because we've had some experience with this. Oh. And he'll have some good anecdotal thoughts here. Do you guys know, we have a thing called Chatticate, which is Chester. If you combine Chester and etiquette, Chatticate. Makes sense. That's one of our favorite things to do is combine two words like that. Oh, yeah.

We do it all the time. Also, if you have a series of three words, we'll take the first letter of each of those and make an acronym. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Which happens more often than you think in the English language.

Like little buck down. Yeah. Yep. L-E-D. There's like an adjective, a noun, and a verb. It's a thing that happens in the English language. Yeah.

Like B-A-H. Bad at hunting. Yeah. Or B-H--a they have a new one for that they're telling me this morning shoot it guys yeah so uh there's this like organization out there called b-h-a right you're familiar with it yeah it's called the uh bozeman hat association so if you and this is tyler's by the way this is how you came up with this he's the genius here but um like there's a certain membership here in Bozeman of hat wearers that are unlike other places. So if you're a member of the Bozeman Hat Association, there's a couple qualifications, a couple, what do they call them? Different groups within the group.

But there's the flat bill cowboy hat but not that's kind of felt. And then there's another cowboy hat but not. It's like a, like cowboy hat, but not, that's kind of felt. And then there's like another. Cowboy hat, but not. It's like a Montana looking cowboy hat. A Montana cowboy hat. It's like that wolf felt kind of hat. Yeah. Like Indiana Jones hat?

Yeah. Kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean. A lot of gals wear that. I guess it'd be like a fedora. Oh, yeah. No, gals will wear it for sure. Yeah.

It's got a bigger brim than a fedora. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then fedoras are called fall time. Yeah. It's like you're kind of half hopping through

the daisies, kind of half western. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm with you. Yeah.

Yeah. Those are members of the Bozeman Association. Frolicing through the daisies. Yeah. And then there's

like maybe like a chet hat or somebody like that that has like, it's kind of like the fly fishing hat that has a rope across, you know, kind of between the

bill and the top there. In other words, when we were at DFW. That's not, that's kind of like the fly fishing hat that has a rope across, you know, kind of between the bill and the top there. In other words, when we were at DFW. That's not, that's an Austin hat, bro. Well, those places are connected. There are BHA members

in Austin for sure. That's the branch. We actually. The Austin branch of BHA. Yeah. We knew the gate that we were supposed to be in just by looking

at the BHA membership at the gate in DFW. And that got changed a in just by looking at the BHA membership at the gate in DW. And that got changed a few times. We followed the BHA. We didn't have to see what gate it was. Because, yeah, the rope pad is retro. You're like hearkening back to a simpler time when old men had those hats with the rope across the front. It's like the Caddyshack golf hat.

Usually worn by people who can't remember those times, actually. Oh, sure. Secondhand information. No, I think they're a little aware that it's like hearkening back to a different time oh they're aware there's all of the that there's a teensy teensy bit of irony teensy irony makes it fun for sure yeah yeah so those are the two main categories yeah those are the two main ones and then there's like a bridge between all that where it's like if it has a little bit of like jade on it or something like that. A little what?

Like that, whatever the blue stone is, you know, kind of an Indian type design. Like a turquoise. Turquoise, yeah. Not jade, turquoise, yeah. What about when you get yourself a king rope hat, even though you've never been within 50 feet of a rope being used. I'm not familiar with a king rope hat. What is that? Somehow, I don't understand it.

Well, it's a company that makes rope and ropes. Gotcha. Lassoes. Okay. Yeah. But if you like to ski a lot, you get yourself a king rope hat. As though you're roping? Well, there's a little bit of correlation there.

You got to do a little more. You got to spend more time in town. Well, here's the deal. You're definitely assuming that being a Texan makes you a cowboy. That's what they're talking about. The king rope hat, if you Google it, it's exactly what they're talking about, that like black fishing guide hat.

It's like a little flat where the forehead is, and then it's like a shorter bill, and there's a rope across it, and it's like two-toned often, including corduroy. Got it. Yeah. Gotcha. so skiers do that here it means you like to ski a lot okay but which is weird because there's a big ski area here near here called big sky and if you go to the hotel there they don't dress up like they're skiing they dress up like they're cattle ranchers oh yeah i remember you talking they make the valets and stuff dress like they're cattle ranchers when you're sort of like the

antithesis it's the throwback still yeah second information like what used to be a thing it'd be like if you were at a place try to think of it put this into the sports analogy yeah let's go to be up to work in big sky with a cattle rancher outfit on would be like if you worked at PETA and wore a mink coat. That's not sports. No, it's different. You guys ready for this? This is a Chetaket question. All right.

I have a Chetaket question to submit to the council. But you guys are honorary right now. I hung a climbing stand on public land in October about a mile from the road. I killed a buck from it in November. I hunted one day in early... I'm already getting confused. Hold on a minute. I got to back up.

I didn't know it was going to get this complicated. Those dates don't matter too much. No, no, I'm paying attention to it. Sometimes I go into things thinking they're not complicated and then I gotta slow down. I hung a climb and stand on public land in October. Mile from the road. Killed a buck from it in

November. I hunted one day in early December. You guys tracking? Up to that point I had seen no sign of other hunters I hunted one day in early December. You guys tracking? Mm-hmm. Up to that point, I had seen no sign of other hunters in the area. After each sit, I left the stand at the bottom of the tree. I hunted today.

And when I got to my stand, someone had hung a climber. I love it. Yeah, someone had hung a climber. I love it. Yeah, I'm sorry. I hung it today. When I got to my stand, someone had hung a climber in the same tree above my stand. I love it, dude. I've never heard of that happening. I had to unhook my stand and reattach it above the other stand to climb the tree.

This is a great story. I ended up shooting a doe right at dusk and climbed down in a hurry because I wasn't sure how good the hit was. Well, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. True. Depends. Depends on where you hit her. Yeah, whatever. Yeah.

Whatever. I don't know the story. Maybe he wanted to just go look at the arrow. Maybe he knew something. We don't. I intended to put my stamp. I like that you're sticking up for the guy. It's good.

You're not like people on social media where no matter what you do, they find a problem. You should be like, that'd be a great social media persona. Instead of being like, I wouldn't skin it that way. I wouldn't do that that way. Be like, just be like the kind of guy that goes on social, in the comments section, be like, you know, really interesting. I'm sure he had a wonderful, I'm sure he had a great justification for the way he did it. No, he's a supportive soul.

He does youth ministry. Sometimes. I probably am just being nice because, you know. Who knows? Who knows what I got out of the entry? What's the comment that guy made on it? So we have a pretty viral video of Tyler shooting a big buck at a long range and smoked it, right? But still, there's always somebody who's like, oh, it's in the guts.

You know, it's kind of ridiculous. But this dude was like, it wouldn't matter if you smoked a deer he died in sight You use the same broadhead to skin him and gut him and packed him out on your back There'd be somebody telling you use the wrong broadhead That's the guy you're talking about that's the guy you want on your team right there. Yeah Okay, so back to our back to our individual The tree stand leapfroggers I ended up shooting a doe right at dusk and climbed

down in a hurry because i wasn't sure how good the hit was i intended to put my stand back i intended to put my stand back on the bottom thinking the other hunter would probably be the next one to use the tree but in the heat of the moment i forgot so now he has left his stand on top of the other man's stand so my question is what is the move if someone does this have i potentially escalated the situation by leapfrogging the other's hunter's stand after he leapfrogged mine goes on i'm gonna he i'm gonna go on he has a couple of clarifying points. I have a toddler and pregnant wife at home. Here he's playing the sympathy card.

So I rarely get to scout or hunt. I've also killed two deer from this stand and I'm not eager to give up my spot. I'm happy to share. It's public land, but I'm not sure what my next move should be. I should point out that none of my stuff was bothered or stolen. So take that into consideration when assessing potential etiquette violations. I got a lot to say, but Casey and Tyler, take it away. I love this question, man. Sometimes without getting too deep tactically, the tree is the tree.

You have to be in that tree to kill deer in that spot. I feel like as a bow hunter with a gun, it's a little less, maybe so, but I can see, I've actually been in this, this position before. Were you the leapfrogger or the leapfrog? So I killed a deer from a tree in 2017. And the next year there was a tree stand in that tree. And, um, you can't claim a spot in this state with a tree stand. You can, you can legally hunt somebody else's tree stand if they're not there. Right. So, but this is the tree and this state does not have a lot of trees in it. So it's one of those situations where I have continued to hunt that tree some.

Um, but I don't know. It's just, uh, it's, it's really like, as far as what he's asking, um, I mean, you never know if you're gonna escalate the situation. You don't know what that guy's thinking. Right. Yeah. So, um, you try not to, certainly. But it's kind of weird when guys are walking around with deadly weapons out in the woods

and you don't know what their demeanor is, you know? I just think that if there's nothing messed up, this is the same situation like leaving trail cameras out. You, you know, try to be respectful of other people's trail cameras and hope that they do the same for you. You see guys, we actually had a guy moon our trail camera

the other day. That's hilarious. I can understand that. Yeah. Yeah. I like that move. But yeah, I don't,

I mean, I know what's going on out here in the woods. I'll show you. That's right. My ass. Yeah. Walking around.

People do Tom White till by the moon. So maybe he was giving us a sign. That's exactly right. The moon chart. Yeah. For sure.

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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. This guy's situation is like an ethical net zero. I don't think there's any wrong done in any of this that he's talking about. Now, I can see where if he's – I'm assuming this guy is honest because I don't know him, so I like to assume that. If he's honest that he didn't mean to, like, you know, stack the stand on top of the other guy, then whatever.

I think it's fine. I like these two guys a lot. I think that you would do it... I have a... Like many guys, I argue with my wife about the toilet seat. I always feel like I think that each user should position it for their use

according to the immediate need. user should position it for their use according to the immediate need. Like that's what I do. If I come in and find the seat down, I adjust it according to what I'm going to do. I don't go like, well, it's down. Now I have to live with it being down and then pee on the seat.

So I adjust it ahead of time and I'm like, why don't you, I tell my wife, why don't you make these adjustments as need be and not a plan on other people anticipating who might use it next and then leave it fit for them. To which she'll point out that like sitting down, if you make a mistake and sit down when the seat's up, it's bad. It's not good.

I could see him if he's really trying to, I could see him taking my wife's approach to toilet seat placement and being an extra gentleman and move your stand back down to the bottom. The thing I really appreciate. And you're like, it's all ready for you, my friend. Neither of these guys touched each other's stands. That's what I was going to say. It's like we know that the guy that wrote it in is considerate, but it seems as if potentially the other guy was too because he could have taken that guy's stand off

and just laid it by the tree. But he didn't take his off. Right. But it could have been the same situation as this guy that he forgot to because it's not a natural thing. If you plan on leaving a stand, you don't usually take it off the tree. And put it back on again under another stand. Yeah. But I'm just saying if he forgot to because it's not a natural thing if you plan on leaving a stand you don't usually take it off the tree and put it back on again under another stand yeah but i'm just saying if he wanted to go extra but see the thing i would worry about is i would worry about

psychologically i would want him to know that i'd been there and got one so i could picture taking my stand moving it down putting his, and then maybe scratching like a little notch or something, and then have a little note that says, I scratch this, I make a notch every time I get a deer here. Notice there's two fresh notches, so that that person doesn't go thinking, I'd want him to know who he's dealing with. Cold-blooded killer.

You could have a yearly banter back and forth. You just keep up with it. Who kills the most out of the same tree? You know, it'd be kind of fun. Yeah, like, let's have a little journal

and share our experiences. Especially if it's anonymous, you never actually meet the guy. He's just a hypothetical dude who hung the stand, you know? It's kind of cool. Signpost rub.

Yeah. They won't really know until they both walk out there someday at three o'clock and they both like, there they are then they're gonna have to sort it out yeah we had a guy right in the making I think actually what's that it's a good rom-com in the making we had a guy right in one

time that was having one of these disputes of someone and one day there's like two trees kind of together and he's up in one and the guy comes in I mean literally climbs up right behind him and they sat quite awkwardly him looking out yeah that happened looking out one way and the guy looking out the other way yeah one of our camera guys in Illinois last year same thing they sat like 20 yards from each other yeah it's like the second guy is just there to ruin the experience for the first guy so that he doesn't come back it's kind of silly yeah not my favorite it kind of ruins it for me though like to uh and i'm not a big like who who kind of experienced guy too much i just like to hunt deer but um it does i don't like to sit in another person's stand in

particular like one time in a tree a person used screw ends so i'm going to take those out and be hard to hang my own steps in the tree so i used the screw ends but then hung my own stand next to the stand that was in the tree partially because i don't like the position that i was in better than the way he'd hung it but uh i just don't like sitting on it and you don't there's like a safety factor too you don't know if this person's using you know you're pretty safe guy yeah usually his safety is my number one concern of course but yeah it's kind of weird we're gonna do one last thing we're gonna talk about one last thing before we talk about what safety is my number one concern. It's kind of weird. We're going to do one last thing. We're going to talk about one last thing before we talk about what we're going to talk about. There's a guy I thought about.

I don't know. What am I trying to say? I thought about having him on the show before because I read this book. A guy wrote in about a bad experience he had with one of his books on Amazon recently. About what he's, you know,

I don't know if it's, is it censorship? I guess it's censorship. Yeah, censorship. I mean, at the end of the day, yeah. Yeah. When people confuse, there's censorship, like First Amendment censorship

that would come from the government, right? And then there's just private companies doing what private companies want to do. Banning, yeah. So meaning if someone wrote a big article about how all the reasons that hunting should be outlawed, and we said, I don't feel like publishing that article on our website. That's not going to go over well. Would they be like, you're censoring me? You'd be like, no, it's just we own our own thing, and we own our own thing and we just do with our own thing what we want.

I'm not censoring you. It's more like their standards for what is acceptable and allowable are, you know, questionable. We're talking about an organization that sits one rung below the government, which is Amazon. Give it another 30 years. Like they're like, they're competing. You know what I mean? They're like, they're sort i think they're like they're competing like you know what i mean they're like they're sort of it's hand in hand pretty much you know like how our military will have like the red phone to the chinese military yeah they probably have like a red emergency phone they're on the phone all day like talking between amazon and the government

so guy goes on to write in my newest book, More Than Wolverine, an Alaska wilderness trap line, on the cover, there's a picture of him holding the wolverine trapped in the bush. No blood, no gore. Animal was harvested responsibly, found state regulations, displayed in a respectful manner. He had an ad campaign for an amazon canceled my ad campaign below is their message following my appeal kind of blew me away anyway just a heads up when designing your future book covers hello from amazon advertiser support when we received your ad campaign, More Than Wolverine, we determined that your cover contains images of excessive violence.

The image contains graphic depictions of cadavers. And also, not just that, and also we determined that your ad contained violent content. To ensure a good customer experience, we don't allow ads containing images of human or animal abuse, mistreatment, or distress. Because your ad uses the cover image on your book, you'll need to update the cover of your book

in order to be eligible for Amazon advertising. A quick note, I had something about this kind of burn my ass the other day. One of our senators in Montana has his profile picture. It's him and his wife, Senator Daines. It's him, his wife, and an antelope. So him and his wife

with an antelope. And he got booted off Twitter. Which just struck me as weird because the whole thing with Elon Musk buying Twitters, they're supposed to quit screwing with everybody about stupid stuff. But anyways, his thing got reinstated. I put the picture up on Instagram. I thought it was interesting

that that is excessive violence. Yeah, I read that Musk reached out to him personally to talk about it. Did he? Mm-hmm. Yeah. See, Cal thought I was being stupid. He's like, what's Elon Musk have to do with this?

I said, well, I don't know if you've been following the news, but some bitch bought Twitter. It's like, what's Elon Musk have to do with this? I said, well, I don't know if you've been following the news, but some bitch bought Twitter. It's like, I think your account got hacked. I'm like, oh my God, dude. He bought Twitter. The whole thing was he was going to make Twitter not cracking down on everybody all the time. For like, like totally objective or, sorry, for totally subjective stuff. And then I sent him a headline that says that he put it back, made it back right again.

I said, ha! Yeah. That's what I wrote. I even put like multiple exclamation points. Yeah, I mean, even now if you look at like. I had like three of them in there. Things you'll get dinged for. As bad as Facebook is, if say they've got a list of 15 things.

Instagram, maybe like eight, you get to Twitter and it's probably like a list of 25, 26 infractions, you know, from alcohol to one down the line, you know, for getting restricted on. Oh. But I have a book. I have. So I have books published with. I feel like it's like. Well, you've got a book that in particular makes me think of this guy's situation. So I have books published with, I feel like it's like, I don't know. Well, you've got a book that in particular makes me think of this guy's situation.

Well, I have two books. I have a book of holding a grayling. It's a vertebrate. Okay. I'm holding a grayling that's no longer alive. So it's, and I have a book where I have a turkey. Right. Another vertebrate, sentient being no longer alive, published by the world's biggest book publisher, Penguin Random House. But then they mess with this dude.

What's your, don't you have a thing about eyelashes? Yeah. Like, you know, if the animal has eyelashes. So that grayling didn't have eyelashes. Grayling don't have eyelashes. That's why I forgot about my own rule. I wonder if us calling this out on this podcast will have, you know, we'll get some kind of Amazon message about those books being up and maybe needing to be taken down,

and then Hunter will have to redesign a cover of you, like, cuddling a turkey that's alive, like a stuffed animal, like Steve and a stuffed animal. So you're thinking that us bringing it up is going to flag my books, not fix this guy's situation? cuddling a turkey that's alive like a stuffed animal like steve and a stuffed animal us bringing it up was going to flag my books not fix this guy's situation maybe yeah i guess i have not too much hope when i sent cal the article that that um after a little bit of public pressure senator danes's twitter account got put back up with his grip and grin of his antelope and cal said did they credit you?

They had pointed out Ted Cruz. You were instrumental. That's like stolen valor on Ted Cruz's behalf. Because it was me, man. It was stolen valor. What was the nature of that? Was that a profile picture change that triggered it? He put up a new profile picture of him and his

wife with an antelope. Not a speck of blood to be seen. You could almost thought the antelope was still alive if you didn't know what you were looking at. Yeah. So what'd you take, Hunter, as a designer? Well, we could do a whole podcast on this,

but I mean, the situations that we've run into and it's kind of even hard to quantify because it doesn't make sense but so for example if i had a shot of you in the field with a meat crafter and we used it in an ad versus a shot of a meat crafter on a cutting board one's getting dinged one isn't same exact thing promoting the same exact thing but contextually i've taken out of one situation into another because it looks like i'm fixing the knife someone yeah yeah or or or you're you're using it in a in a violent way you know be it you know skinning something so you're saying like if you have a picture of a piece of raw meat right or let's say a deer's leg and you're making an opening cut

a dude being in there is bad but if it's a knife and an opening cut like in a culinary sense you're fine um i was talking to to ben rumery about this and a couple other situations. Like FHF has a lot of trouble because. Oh, they're always in trouble. Yeah. Because it's all things that are accessories to modify a weapon. So you're promoting the use or sale of a weapon. You mean like if you have a little bullet holster?

Yeah. Or a little cartridge holder? The worst you have a little bullet holster? Yeah. Or a little cartridge holder? The worst one is the bear spray holster. No, whether you show it in the field or you just show. Yeah. Because it's harming the bear? Nope. As opposed to saving, potentially saving your own life?

Pepper spray. Oh, pepper spray. Yeah. What? Yeah. So that's like one of the ones at the top that nobody even bothers doing. Because they're thinking of pepper spray being used in like a malicious sort of environment rather than like for protection or something. I would assume, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Now here's one that's puzzling that we were talking about this morning was obsidian pants for the longest time would get dinged. And what ends up happening is, so when they go- Wait, just a plain picture of like someone inside the pants. Like first lights Obsidian Pants. Yeah. You don't have to show-

Great pant. Yeah. That ad could just be of the pant. But I think what I guess had happened over time is when they go to scan that ad, they're also checking the landing page to where that ad is taking you to. So if that, if it's, you know, Obsidian Pan takes you to a page where that's you in a hunting situation, then that gives them cause to ping that ad. So it's not just visually what that ad looks like, but it's a lot of times, you know loophole where it's taking you to yeah because the way that

they justify those is you don't want to be scrolling through necessarily and see something that is offensive or you don't like right but if they're also looking at the landing page that says it's about the product itself not just your user experience correct correct like we've never we don't seem to have issues promoting vortex in a sense when you're not necessarily showing it on a weapon however sig no go and i don't know if that's tied to because of being uh you know they're thinking of it in terms of you know the ammunition rifle and stuff like that they They make pistols. Right. Yeah.

So I don't know if Vortex gets that. Because Vortex makes optics and not firearms. Optics. Right. And that could be for, you know, golf, birding, whatever. There's got to be some kind of workaround. Is there like a universal symbol or visual of a thing that is like so neutral or like, I don't know, a box of lucky charms? And we just put that in the background of every picture that we put up. Yeah.

Until they find out. Until General Mills comes after you. Yeah. But yeah, it's strange. I mean, you just eventually kind of learn, you know, I mean, it makes it a little tough in certain situations, like I said, with like

rifle slings and things like that. I mean, how do you promote or use that? Yeah, the meat crafter was definitely a unique and tough one. So a lot of times I'll just take my own meat crafter and photograph it, you know. You should call it the tofu crafter. That's right. They'd promote it for you.fter. That's right. They'd promote it for you. Absolutely.

See, man, you know what the problem is? I got two things that are happening at the same time. I'm getting older, and shit's getting more ridiculous. And when you're older, you get less tolerant of ridiculous stuff. And I feel like at the trajectory I'm on. You're just on an exponential rise to madness. Yeah. You're like, I don't know if it's a joke.

It's a war at Christmas. It's like, that's like, you know what I mean? I'm there. I'll probably say it not as a joke next year. It's a war. You know what I mean? Right. Like the besieged feeling.

Yeah. But it's just like that plays into your old age. You and Brody are going to be on a balcony like Statler and Waldorf and the Muppets just yelling. I know, dude. Me and Brody? We're going to start a thing called besieged old men. But that's a good point about the grayling because it does make me wonder like visually, you know, I don't recall any dings with anything spearfishing related. You know, any, any.

Yeah. No eyelashes. What if you shave the eyelashes off your deer? No. That ain't gonna do it. Yeah. Oh, here's a trick. Watch this transition.

Did you guys ever get in trouble at the element for stuff you put on the internet? Yeah. Oh. I mean, what do you mean by trouble? Like just flagged stuff. Stuff taken down? Yeah. I mean, what do you mean by trouble? Like just flagged stuff? Stuff taken down, demonetized. I dealt with Google for weeks one time. And of course, the people I'm in touch with are foreign.

And I mean, I couldn't figure out why our ads weren't running. And essentially just came to my own conclusions that it was being censored there was no i was never told that it's something i mean like algorithm in the ai yeah it's just and the people on the other end of the line can never tell me that either yeah for not they don't know they don't know exactly right yeah so i just came to a conclusion that we would stop running ads pretty much there's other individual times too a certain video would be demonetized and a personal appeal would change that. So that got flagged by AI for having something.

And then if you send in the, you know, we eat all the meat, you know, you give a personal appeal to justification of what you're doing. It would work. Yeah. A lot of times. Which you guys used to do predator control work. That was me. That was you. That was you. Tell about that.

Clay told me to ask you about it. All right. Thanks, Clay. I worked for the government, which is just a red flag, right? But I – Like state or APHIS? I worked for APHIS. Yeah.

Well, so we're tri-funded. So a portion of the funding for me as a state trapper came from APHIS. A portion came from the state, which was wildlife services. And a portion then comes from the county that I worked within. Can we just clarify what APHIS stands for? Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. Thank you. We've had some APHIS bigwigs on the show.

Yeah. APHIS has got some cool people over there, man. Yeah. Avis has got some cool people over there, man. Yeah. Yeah. My. And it was like the thing we brought up is that they don't get credit for, they don't get credit for a lot of good work they do.

People just take some stuff they do and make it seem like as controversial as possible. But then they eliminate invasive nutrias from Chesapeake Bay.

And it's like, eh, who cares? Yeah, exactly. It's kind of weird. But, so I was pretty much a glorified county trapper.

You know, what it is is used to these counties would just fund a trapper, just old guy, you know, around there, just trap. And the South trapping is different because we don't have a fur market too much. You know, coons maybe, raccoons, whatever. And so coyotes don't really have pelts that are worth anything um so it's strictly for livestock protection pretty much and then you throw the hogs in in the last 30 years it'll become more of an issue um that's i spent probably 80 of my time on hogs and coyotes and then uh the other rest of that would be like disease monitoring for avian flu or nutria or uh you know some ladies

losing their cats in South Houston. You can go figure out what's going on there. Stuff like that. There was disease monitoring with the hogs too, right? Yeah, there was. That was kind of cool. That was one of my favorite parts. So we used to do aerial operations with hogs with the helicopter stuff, but with like,

you know, a purpose, right, I guess. And who were you working for doing hogs? For APHIS. So you were shooting hogs from helicopters? So I was not a gunner in that scenario. What were you doing from a helicopter? That's a different job I had, actually. So I was a state trapper.

And then previously, and this is actually one of the things I put on my resume to kind of help me get that job, was a, I don't know what you'd call it. It's pretty much an odd dad wrangler. Yeah. I'm a guy I don't know what you'd call it. It's a pretty much an odd dad wrangler. Yeah. I'm a guy who told me two things to ask you about. They're going to bleed together in a minute. Yeah, good. So I was a game capture specialist, I guess. So, you know, the exotic industry is a big thing in Texas. So we got exotics, especially in the Western half of the state, there's exotics running out a lot of portion of the state and so they're they are treated like you're talking dancers right yeah i guess i don't know what is

that what do you mean see you don't tell me oh no i was making a joke about exotic dancers okay okay so exotic specialist okay uh so So, yeah, I'll clarify. Exotic game animals and non-game animals, too, caught some weird things. But there's a big industry for those. They're treated as livestock in Texas, according to the Texas Ag Commissioner or whatever. So you can freely transport them around the state and out of state, too. Out of country even. So we pretty much would go out and we're glorified cattle wranglers, except for rounding up, you know, game animals.

Mostly Audad, Axis, and Black Buck, but a lot of other stuff too. For people that wanted them out of certain areas or that wanted them into certain areas? All that. Yeah. So usually the common scenario was a landowner has a plethora of exotic game on their property, usually low fence. Our company would pay them per head of different game animals we caught. And then we were kind of a peddler of those animals. We would then find a high fenced operation that wouldn't want those animals and then sell them to them and release them there.

So the motivation on the part of the landowner that has them might be, A, they want a bunch of them gone. B, they just want to make some money off the resource. Or C, both. Usually, it was a lot more of B. Okay. Yeah. A little bit of C mixed in there, but... Guys wheeling and dealing.

Yeah, man. Money is what drives everything, especially in Texas. Huge economy. Texas is the ninth or tenth largest economy in the world if you even look at national scales. So, like, the state of Texas is like a national player when it comes to world economy. So that translates to a lot of money in the state, but also a very economically minded, like average citizen. So those people are like, yeah, sure. I'll let you fly a helicopter in my place and catch 60 animals for $300 a head, you know, and then, but there's a

pretty heavy turnover there where like the margins are good, you know and then got it but there's a pretty heavy turnover there or like the margins are good you know especially for bigger animals so you guys would come in and contract on it yeah we'd uh and so are you usually employed by the um you don't have to get specifics with your industry but with your particular outfit but the way i just curious how the industry works yeah so like you what do you what do you are you guys getting a percentage of sale, a per animal thing? You're hired by the guy that wants them. You're hired by the guy that wants to get rid of them. Yep.

So I got a daily rate. I was, you know, just a hand pretty much. And so my old boss in this, he ran a business that offered these services. And then usually the helicopter service was a different service that we would combine with. So the pilot kind of had his own bird and we would team up with him. There'd be a net gunner, a pilot, and then a ground crew. And I ran ground crew a lot until we went out West and did the audit stuff. And so there's pretty much like, it is a contracted service to a landowner and then i'm paid a daily rate yeah yeah so you swoop down let's say you're what was

the most common animal you dealt with uh i'd say axis deer okay yeah they come in on a helicopter come down pa landing uh throwing that on it shooting that onto it is that hard to get a hit right uh depends on the guy it's hard to get a hit right? Depends on the guy It's hard to get good at But once you're good at it Man my buddy Chavi He was He was good

Good net gunner So that's a skill Yes Yeah very much obtained It's kind of cool They ran a single shot Blank 308 pistol And they have like a fabricated

Net gun cage That goes on the front of it You have these four little weights You know one at each corner Of the net. Yeah. And pow, and then that thing just flies out there. And the idea is.

Moving shots. Yeah, for sure. And the other cool thing is the talent of the pilot. Man, some of those pilots are just insane. Because they're running an R-22, which is really, what's the right word? The very maneuverable helicopter. It's a two-seater, very lightweight. And, man, they could just do some insane stuff. And what they're doing is they're like,

not only getting the guy on the animal, but they're positioning the animal to where the guy has a good shot. And they're kind of directing the animal to a certain direction all while avoiding live Oak trees and mesquites. And they're flying below deck, man. Like they are like in the stuff, you know, they're not like, you can't shoot a net gun from 100 foot up you got to be probably and somebody probably knows better than me but just in my experience looking like 40 foot or less is kind of where you want to be it seemed like they'd shoot a little higher but it's harder the higher you get because you're losing velocity and the animal can move more stuff like that and when that that net gets them their legs get tangled up whatever usually yeah and antlered or horned critters are way easier because you got another thing to get tangled up more yeah and then the ground coop runs in and you tranquilize it or you don't even bother

that's a different thing it's a thing we do but um the uh anytime there's a net gun you just stir hog time pretty much three around three legs leave one leg done you know a little half hitch there usually leave the net on them unless it's easy to get off. And then you just put them in the back of a UTV or something like that and take them back to a trailer. Do you blindfold them? Sometimes. Different animals stress worse than others. Blackbuck were kind of bad about being stressed. Axis are pretty tough. Audad, never blindfolded Audad. They're just tough as goats, you know?

So it just goes on whether or not that thing's going to get so freaked out it dies. Yeah, yeah. African game, really, except for Aud-Ed, which are African game, but Plains game, I'll say it that way. Plains game is really finicky, which Black Buck and Axis are not either. They're high strung. Yeah, they're high strung. And they're expensive, too. So one time we lost to Wildebeest, which was a pretty expensive loss, you know, and it was stressed and it was even tranquilized.

It's still, and it's still stressed. So it's. That's an expensive animal. Fairly expensive. They're super exotics. And wildebeest is kind of like boring on that because it's a little rarer in the scheme of exotics. But like you look at like a gimsbuck or a zebra or a giraffe or a kudu or addicts like you're kind of in that super exotics type range there you know yeah and then those we would usually tranquilize

because tranquilization is a little safer and easier on the animal but with the african game tranquilization is a little finicky more finicky because you had to be really precise with your dosage which i wasn't licensed to do that, so I was just observing this stuff. But I would see it could go bad pretty easy. And some of those things are worth, like the animal's worth like $8,000, $9,000, right? Yeah, yeah. You take like a sable, that's a, I mean, back then that was like a $20,000 animal. And that was just 10 years ago.

So he's worth that alive. Yes. Not just to a hunter. Yeah, to a hunter, you're talking a big turnover there. Yeah. Especially a big one. You want to know the other thing Clay told me to ask you about? Tell me about it. You got your pant leg hung up on a

Yeah. I got your pant leg hung up on a odd-ass horn one time. I did, man. Do you want the full story on this? No, I want the full story. Let me grab a drink of water here because this is a water drinking story. Yeah, wet your whistle for this one. Ladies and gentlemen, he wet his whistle. That's right.

So this is kind of cool because it's like one of the few times I felt like we had a greater objective than just economic stuff. So we were working in West Texas, and the bighorn restoration stuff is a big deal in West Texas. And there's a ton of Audad that inhabit native bighorn range. So what we were doing was a capture and eradication of Audad so they could come in and restock native bighorns. Those two things conflict, I'm sure, for resources and probably for what's the Ovis flu or whatever it is. There's some sickness, right? Yeah, the pneumonia yeah yeah so i'm sure they conflict moves from uh moves from domestic sheep species into bighorns and that as much as as much as market hunting like that decimated bighorns man yeah yeah i could

see that being the case because there ought to add are roamers where i've never hunted bighorn haven't spent much time with it but from what what I understand, they don't move as much, right? I mean, is that a thing? Like they kind of have their spot. They're not as transient as Audad, you would say? I wouldn't ask me. Yeah. I don't know too much, but it's what it seemed at least.

Like the Audad would cover ground. I'm a little over my waders on that subject. Well, at night, those Audad would hit the valley floor, and, man, they'd take off. So the way this sets up is there's these plateaus out there in West Texas. They're kind of like mountains, but they're flat on top. Everybody knows what a plateau is. And they're 60, 80, 100,000 acres, something like that. And you'll have these groups of animals that live on those, and there's a valley floor that's completely different ecologically than what that mountain is up there and those mountains are cool it'll be javelinas

elk all kinds of stuff out there really really neat country uh i love it out there um also we uh this is a side note but um sleeping on the ground out there one night we heard a uh jet fly below the level of the mountain while we were out there so there's some sketchy cartel stuff kind of going on out there for sure. What are those mountains top off at? Like height? I don't remember elevation wise, but I would imagine. We've got 8,000. Yeah.

Over 8,000 in Texas. I imagine those are in the four range, something like that. But it's like, I remember being 1,300 feet of change from the valley floor to the top of the mountain. And you, I mean, you'd gain 20 or lose 20 degrees in temperature. You'd be in short sleeves at the bottom. And by the time you get out of the truck at the top, you're putting a jacket on just, you know, in the summer in Texas. It's cool. So we're out there doing this all day work and we're contracted to take like 25 rams,

25 use, and then we're going to eradicate the rest. And we are flying a R44 helicopter, which is a four-seater, because of the rugged terrain. So normally you'd have ATVs, UTVs running around on the ground, running ground crew, but out there you can't really do that. You have to have another guy in the helicopter as a jumper, which is usually the dumbest guy, and I was a jumper. So young the dumbest guy and i was a jumper uh so uh young you know and could do i did a whole thing in steel toe boots man probably appeals like the same people that rodeo yeah it's it's a drilling rush for sure yeah well i'll just say a guy that's gonna ride a bull's like hell i'll jump out and grab that

thing yeah exactly and then you don't sleep that night because you go out and you know chase wild women and stuff you know former former life know, just being a wild young man. And so we were on the top of a mountain there. I'll keep these names kind of vague, but we're on top of a mountain that you could not access by vehicle. It's a plateau and it's about like at a 15 degree grade. It's a really heavy grade up top. And every rock is about a basketball size, and it has lechuguilla growing up in between the cracks between the rocks.

What's that? Lechuguilla is a southwestern plant. You've probably seen it. It looks like aloe, but it doesn't have the juice inside of it. It's pretty dry. Is it one of the ones that when you get it in your shin, it feels like you got hit by a hornet? It hurts. Yeah, for sure. But not for long. Like, surprisingly short-lived pain. I mean, those all had to eat that stuff. That's what they're living on.

God, that's what their tongue must feel like. I bet it's rough. It's just constant pain. Yeah, man. All that are tough critters, man. They are something else. So, whenever you net an animal out there, the jumper has to get out and deal with that stuff. Back then, I was more than happy to do it now.

Just get jabbed in your legs. Yeah, and just do it again the next day, whatever. It comes down to kind of a brown tip. Is that the one you're talking about? Yeah, and it's 18 inches tall, maybe a little taller. You know what Yankees call those? What's that? We call them...

Prickles? If you're trying to describe where something is, you go, you know that yucca-looking thing? That's what we say. There's a lot of cool there's cool plants out there. And I got, we have a Yankee camera guy. I, I, let me explain. He now lives in Texas and he's great, but he's from, yeah, he's from north of the red

river. So he's a Yankee for us. Right. Um, he's from Illinois. Um, and he, um, he likes the names of stuff in Texas so he's trying to you know learn this stuff

so there's Acatillo there's Lechuguilla there's Weesatch Guajillo there's what else there's all kinds

of stuff out there and we were out hunting out there the other day and he's like look at Acapatillo over there so he kind of

just made up words you know or whatever just whatever stuff is you know just trying to be like ah that's what that is Acapatillo

sounds like a good cheese yeah so you know, or whatever. Just whatever stuff is. You know, just trying to be like, ah, that's what that is. Acupatillo. Sounds like a good cheese. Yeah. So, anyways, we net a ewe up here, which is a less valuable animal, right? So, like, rams by the inch are worth more money. A 30-inch ram is considered a big trophy. Anything over 20 inches is worth a good bit.

Anything under that is like a banana ram or whatever. And so the U's are, at that time, worth $300 or so. So already I'm like, okay, well, whatever. Still, like, pretty good. Yeah, well, AV fuel and a crew and all that stuff. At least you get a helicopter involved. Yeah, man. But I don't really care because it's not money out of my pocket.

But still, you know, it's also cool. Just put your hands on a big ram. So, you know, I'm thinking about that stuff, too. And the net is less than ideal. We want to say the net. I mean, like the job of the net gunning. And my buddy does a great job on that. I'm not saying it, but it happens, right? Just like bad shots in archery, it happens. So she has a front leg and one horn caught in the net, which means she is still really mobile, almost more mobile than a 22 year old Casey. You know what I mean? Like she's getting it and this is her country, right? I'm invading. I can't walk around on that stuff. Very good. So I finally catch up with, you know, I jump out of the helicopter. Uh, that's like not a big jump, but like, you know, five, six feet or whatever. They don't land cause they can't land up there and that stuff. And, um, I chase her, she's rolling down the hill, you know, fighting. And I can already tell it's going to be a bad one. There's good ones, bad ones, and there's in the middle. Right. And this, she has an attitude and it's a bad situation. Okay.

So, oh man, here we go. I finally chased this thing down the hill to almost the edge of the plateau. 1,300 foot down cliff, pretty much straight down from here. And we're about 20 foot from the edge from when I finally catch her. Huge sigh of relief. Right. Finally. Because she's not that valuable,

still an animal that I don't want to die for no reason and fall off the side of the mountain. And then I have to account for, well, I didn't get her, you know, so you don't want to be that guy. So a lot of things playing in here. I get caught up to her and she's ornery. So I finally get her tied up because she's not much in the net. So I have to really wrestle her to get the three legs tied up. And the helicopter has a big sling rope off the bottom. So, you know, imagine a really thick nylon rope with a carabiner at the end of it. You run that through the legs of the Audad, back up to the rope, hook it in, and they sling her out to a trailer that's like two or three miles away.

You can hang it by the legs. With that, you know, hog tie on there. Yeah, for sure. That's kind of like the way it's done. Really? Mm-hmm. I would have thought you had to cradle it somehow. Well, a lot of times, you know,

there is the like super ethical way to do things. And then there's the utilitarian way that companies do stuff. If you see the state doing stuff, you did some stuff with the Mule Deer, right? Yeah, Mule Deer Foundation. They did the cradle, the whole, it's like a harness that goes around the whole body. And ideally, you have the net in there, too, that is functioning as that. But she didn't, and there's no way to get the net more around her. But, yeah, she's perfectly fine doing that.

For sure, like, odd-edged survival on this stuff is, like, in the high 90s, I bet. Got it, got it. And this is, I'm just pulling numbers out, but, I mean, we hardly ever lost odd-edged distress. So, or injury. Like, you know, she wouldn't be limping or anything on that. And so, I get the sling rope, run her i give the guys the signal like we're good and um this honoree you gets one last hoorah at me and flings her head around it's like she knew

i was there you know and her ewes have horns but they're not that long. A mature use like 10, 12 inches, probably something like that. Maybe a little longer depending on the goat. Um, and, uh, they know how to use them because they're always there. They're not like a whitetail that drops them. You know, like those horns are always there. They know exactly what they're doing with them. She flings her head around, catches the cuff of my right leg on my blue jeans and the helicopter's going up and all, you know, this happens fast, right?

I process things pretty quickly too. So this is all kind of going slow in my head. But before I know it, I'm being lifted off of the top of a mountain in West Texas, six hours plus from a hospital, um, which I wouldn't even need if this, you know, went bad.

In a morgue. Yeah, exactly. They're going to have to have shovels. But I'm being lifted up by my leg by an odd ad who is slung to a helicopter. And these guys have no clue that this is happening because I'm straight below the birds. And you gave them the go ahead. Yeah, I gave them the go ahead. We're good.

And I didn't have anywhere really to go because the edge was right there and pretty unsafe anyways, you know, so, and like never ran through my mind, Hey, get away from the animal. Um, and I'm getting lifted up and all of a sudden I'm off the ground. And remember I was 20 feet or so from the edge of this mountain. And I can remember having my hand straight out like this, thinking. So you're upside down. I'm hanging upside down. I'm looking down at my hands, and I'm seeing the ground go further away, and I'm seeing the edge come really close. No, man.

And I had the pants for a long time still because I wanted to save them because about six or eight feet off the ground, I heard that little rip, and I fell down to the mountain where i fell i could spit over the side of the cliff 1300 foot down yep right then and there man i was it was prayer time for sure you know as soon as their pants started to rip the u's like shit i almost had them well i was i was kind of at that point where it's like I need these pants To be really strong

Or I need them To rip right now I don't want No middle pants No I don't want to rip it In like a minute They either need to

Take the whole trip Or none at all You know So yeah I've had some Near death experiences But that's top five For sure

Now if you had the wear With all the undo your britches I'd be impressed. I don't know. You know, under that amount of pressure. Start doing your belt. Yeah. Under that amount of pressure, not like mental pressure, but actual physical pressure, I don't know if I could undo my pants.

Yeah. So, if anything, I was thinking about trying to get a hold of the animal. Oh, my God. But I didn't have to come to that. If I ended up hanging out over space, I probably would have been grabbing something. You know? Yeah.

Yeah. It's wild. Dude, that is great, man. And, you know, thank you. It was a lot of fun. But a story like that probably ain't all that uncommon. Not that that exact scenario plays itself out. But we actually had a film crew

come out one time and film us doing this thing they were going to start like some type of a you know it was during the deadliest catch days you know so they're trying to get the next great anybody catching something yeah exactly risking their neck to catch something we recall like they're going to call us like modern cowboys or something silly you know and and uh so like crazy stuff like that was always happening you you know, but that was like mine for sure. The thing that I remember being, that's when I realized I kind of almost went from young man to, you know what, maybe I need to get this stuff figured out a little bit more and

not be doing this stuff too much after that. No, that's great. Yeah. That's a good story. Thanks, man. Should have saved that story for close calls, man. Well, we can tell it again. There we go.

I think if we do, I mean, that would be a great one, and I think we should cut it out of this podcast if we actually want to do that. Well, we could just beep out the end. We could beep out the entire thing. So he's going like, And then I was like, Holy! Hey, folks.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So, Tyler, this is all before you guys Became the element He wouldn't have liked me back then I don't think anyway So you were a wild man I still don't

And you were like You were serious about football And almost at NFL Yeah You can say that You can say that Yeah I played

I was a power forward At SMU And I think Steve doesn't know What that means Yeah I was like I don't remember basketball

David that's where Meltzer was I don't mean SMU I mean sports reference power forward I don't know what the hell that means but I figured it's like a position it's a position like you're out there on the court

I was on the court. Yeah, I was. The pitch. On the court, on the field. Yeah, I played. I was, my dad and his dad, and he had an identical twin. They all played college football. And so, I guess you could say I was kind of in that line of, that was in my family, you know? So that was kind of what, uh, like I had some pretty good, um, I had some pretty good coaching, you know, I had, I had a, a natural inclination to be pushed that way, I guess.

And so how did you reconcile all that, uh, fall sports plan with, with hunting and fishing? Yeah, that's, uh, so I, so i actually when i got done with football um i kind of debated on being a coach and that was the the the hunting was the thing that i was like i missed i missed too much at this point you know but we i mean we always went like after football season we just that's when we deer hunted so december you know got it and so everything you know and then on the bye week or whatever, you know, anytime I had time, that was, I hunted, you know,

and we fished a bunch because we lived on Lake Forge, so. You actually gained a nickname because of that, right? What's this going to be? No, no, it's serious. The Mr. December thing because you're always killing

the December. Yeah, I killed most of my deer in December until I was done. They called you Mr. December? That's what my dad called me, yeah. You know, just, because I would always take it down to the wire, you know, chasing a deer.

You know, it was, uh, early on deer hunting, I was very much kind of, I was, I was relegated to one property a lot of times. Like that was, my dad had a lease in Kansas and that was where we, you know, that was where I hunted and I got to go three times a year or whatever. So I would always, and that, so the way they manage that is they, they want like five-year-old buckshot off of that place.

It's not like a strict thing, but you know, we come from Texas where, you know, QDM started and that was kind of their mindset is like, we want to shoot big old deer on the place is that true that qdm like took hold in texas for its spreader out as far as i know yeah that's uh yeah it was down in south texas in the brush we're talking about just just so people know we're talking about quality deer management which there's a thing there's like quality deer management association qdma it's actually changed the india yeah but yeah yeah but you know that that was like that was like, that's an organization, but there was a set of principles that was eventually exported all around the country. Yeah. And people would talk about QDM, meaning taking strategies popularized by QDMA and applying it.

Basically, you know, trying to select age classes and grow big bucks. Yeah. Not just like Brown is down. Yeah. So that's what my, you know, my dad and the people on that lease with him were, and we basically, so I was always looking for, I was kind of low man on the totem pole out there. And so I'm always looking for like, I don't get to chase the big ones, you know, I get

to chase the old ones that are like nine years old and have seven points or something like that. Like they'd tell you, if you see this big one don't touch it no but it's a big place and so these deer they they hang out in certain areas right they wouldn't let you go into the honey holes and they my dad would for sure but i i just didn't want to step on you know i don't i didn't feel right hunting his stand you know what i mean just put your stand above his stand that's that's what i did sometimes you know tree so yeah that was my that was what i did you know and and uh and then eventually um towards the end of college football i kind of i had to make a decision where i was playing in some i was playing music and so i was in a band that's kind of

regionally gaining some success in texas and, kind of got burnt on football a little bit. I just decided, uh, not to pursue the NFL. Uh, you had sent me an email and you'd mentioned Cole Wetzel. So funny. Cause like big, like he had that whole football music. I don't associate that stuff, man. Well, so, I mean, Texas football is huge. So is music. And music, yeah. So, I mean, those are two things that are common for like a high school boy to do. Or at least in our generation.

I don't think people play instruments too much in high school anymore. Dude, I think if you went and took the dudes, like nothing against them. I hung out with them all. You went and took the guys from high school that played football, right? Like the good, the guys from high school that played football, right? Like the good guys that played? Yeah. You put that whole crew together, not one of them would know how to play an instrument. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. They might cruise the FM dial a little bit, but I would not think of that as like a, you know, guys that like football and music. Ted Nugent fans? Y'all didn't have any of those? Yeah, man. Yeah. I mean, Motor City Madman.

But he didn't play football, did he? No, but surely some Michiganders were looking at him like, I want to be that, you know? Tons of dudes. I would say more like, there was some more like hunting music crossover. I'm saying like the

and maybe I just met, just recently met you and recently met Coe, so I just happened to just meet two football musician people. I just don't think of that as a thing. And I'm saying where I grew up, the football guys weren't going home and getting out the old six string. Yeah. Guys from my hometown,

I said a little ago how the Alamo movie kind of is not, but Friday Night Lights is really how it is, man. I mean, it's a i said a little ago how the uh you know the alamo movie kind of not but friday night lights is really how it is man i mean it's really close you know so like part of it is like to get the girl so you learn how to play music but yours really wasn't that right no uh i had some good friends that i had two good friends that started playing guitar and i'm just sitting around six months later listening to them play green Day songs and stuff and I'm like, I wish I could do that, you know? So I picked up the guitar

and until recently I was the only guy still playing guitar at all, you know, so. But you guys had a serious band going though. Yeah, we had,

I was in a couple. There was, the first one came through football, actually. Met a guy who was a singer-songwriter and one of the crazier

people I ever met and, you know, he kind of forced me,'s a singer songwriter and one of the crazier people ever met and uh you know he kind of forced me i was a songwriter he forced me to learn uh what some people would call lead guitar and um and kind of be a harmony singer with him and help him write and that kind of thing so we did that for like five years had quite a thing going on and it's a long story but basically he sent an email it was not very good to somebody he didn't know was as well connected as they were and we got like blacklisted and lost like half our schedule for the next six months and uh back up yeah can you go in a little more detail okay gloss over the juicy okay so it, so. It all ties into censorship. Yeah, no.

There was, okay, so we played a show in Manhattan, Kansas, and we had recently had some pretty good radio success. Tell the name of the band. The name was Clay Wilson Band. It was, you know, it was very like

what people would call Texas country when we started out, and it became a lot more kind of, I don't know, artistic or abstract or— Heavy rock elements. It was heavier. Some country elements. Yeah, yeah.

And so we went and played. We opened for a guy. I won't say his name. Why not? I'm just not into, you know, doing that kind of thing. What's it sound like? What's's it sound like you wouldn't know this guy okay yeah you would know him just kind of a regional dude that had a lot of money and had a bus and rhymes pelvis yeah anyway we open for him at this place and there's like um it's probably like a four or five hundred cap venue and um because of the radio single we had they like everybody showed up for us and was singing this

song that was our radio single currently gotcha it was like the first time we'd ever seen this happen really especially outside of the state and so we were kind of taken aback by it but like i said these i mean this the lead singer he was in my wedding but he's one of the craziest people i've ever met sure i mean just you know and but also like a sweet dude like you would you would he would do anything for you he would you know he's a good friend like crazy like van gogh type stuff uh yeah i don't hadn't studied van gogh too much but he i mean he would like a little chunk of his ear off and mail it to his girlfriend? No, not that crazy, but definitely would spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars a week on alcohol.

Oh, that kind of crazy. Party crazy. Party crazy. Yeah, not like insane crazy or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so we play the show. Our crowd is better than the main acts crowd. You upstage the main acts.

A little bit, yeah. But while he's on stage, our guys are in the back partying. Well, there's a glass window behind the stage to the outside, this outside deck where people can hang out and stuff, you know, they're back there just messing around. They're not trying to distract from a show, but they are certainly doing that because everybody looking at the stage is

seeing through the back window at this party going on and just people being, you know, unruly and like their butts are out potentially, potentially. Um, it's like on the woods yeah uh i i so i actually you know side note i never even uh drank alcohol i never tried alcohol until i was 22 years old just as like a discipline thing i i wanted to like prove that i could just it's like. Dude, I didn't know about the word discipline.

Yeah. You guys were awesome. I thought discipline was getting spanked by your parents. I mean, it's, and we have,

we're so alike and different too in a lot of aspects too, which makes, it would compliment pretty well, but you know, I'm talking about KC here,

but anyway, so they, long story short, we get a email from his management because he complained about us causing a scene. Sure, yeah. And she was just like, you know, hey, just ask if they ever play with them again. Don't, you know, don't be distracting or whatever.

Well, at this point, like we'd seen some success. The lead singer kind of gets the big head a little bit. And he's like, he tells our manager, who's also seriously the nicest guy I've ever met. He tells him, hey, if you don't send an email in 24 hours, I'm sending an email to this lady. And it's not going to be good. And he wants him to say these specific things. Like if I want to disturb someone else's show, I'll. Pretty much. By God.

Mind your business kind of thing. Yeah. And my manager. Jared said, no, I'm not going to do that, man. And 24 hours later, Clay sends this email. My best friend at SMU actually helped him craft the email. He said, man, I toned it down as much as I could. It was pretty rough.

And essentially her husband, uh, owned a company that worked real tight with Toby Keith at the time. We didn't know that was a connection. And she was a regional radio rep. And so just, I mean, literally within hours, it was like. You didn't hear that radio single anymore? No. Really? We lost like seriously half our shows probably probably only that were on the books.

And, uh, that was when I was like, and things had gotten crazy, man, like little big for his britches and like people in the band were bringing just gallon bags of, you know, pot and on road trips. I had a six month old, no money. I mean, no money. I, my wife, uh, didn't have a job at the time. Um, and so we're just broke. And I'm like, if I go to jail, we are toast. I can't do it. We can't, we can't make it as a family, you know? And if I go, and I knew these guys, if we got caught with drugs and stuff, I was, they were going to, I was going to go down with them, even though I wasn't doing any of that stuff. And so I just said, you know what? I'm a songwriter too.

And I know I had met a few guys recently in Sulphur Springs where he grew up that were musicians, pretty good young guys. They were all like four years, five years younger than me and started my band. But I had a lot of network and connections through that. So we were able to jumpstart pretty well. And, you know, for the next four or five years, did our thing is it was fun? That's an example of great decision-making very smart. Well, thank you. I I guess you could say that being sober helped me Tyler in the tribe, you know

We still record every summer my my my so we we the reason we stopped touring was uh we played a big so we turned into country music like kind of subculture i guess in those circles but we we we kind of especially now have edged more rock and um we always didn't fit in completely, you know. But we did play a big show that was called Texas Thunder or something. It was a big festival with like big artists at the time, like Florida Georgia Line, Brad Paisley, some of these big country artists. Texas Thunder sounds like a weed strain. Yeah. It could be. It could be.

There's probably plenty of them out there. Yeah, because when I was growing up, there was like Fruit Pork Crippler, Texas Thun. Yeah. Tell them about the inauguration.

Yeah. It's local up here. The, uh... Right? No, we played Wyoming Inauguration. Yeah, yeah. Pretty close to here.

Yeah. Governor Meade, Matt Meade. Oh, he's been on the show. Yeah, we played his inauguration one time. Did you really? Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah, Governor Meade, Matt Meade. Oh, he's been on the show. Yeah, we played his inauguration one time. Did you really? I did, yeah. Yeah, they saw us.

So we actually played the Republican National Governor's Convention in San Diego. Yeah. They flew us first class. Who was the actor that I flew with? I can't remember his name. Robert Duvall. Robert Duvall, yeah. I flew right next to that guy on the way back from that show.

But anyway, Matt Meade. You could have been the most annoying guy on the planet and been like, smells like napalm in the morning. Quoting his movie lines from him. Yeah. I don't watch many movies, so when I walked on the plane, I was like, I know that guy. I just don't know who he is.

And my buddy told me who he was. But long story short, we played that, and then Matt Meads's wife really liked us we gotta back up for a second probably uh perhaps the greatest movie he's in perhaps the greatest movie ever made lonesome dove yep apocalypse now apocalypse now okay oh yeah none of these i've seen i don't think there's a listen the other day i was it's just we have a guy you'll meet him in a minute spencer newhart i've met him before okay the other day he's telling the same director that made apocalypse now made what is perhaps the

second greatest movie ever made which is called the godfather 2. Spencer Newhouse has never seen any of the Godfather movies. Oh, my God. Really? He's like, well, I just don't feel that bad if I haven't seen a movie that was made before I was born. I love Spencer, but that hurts me. I told him, I said, listen, man, you got to make me a promise that in two weeks

you'll have watched The Godfather. Yeah, he's in that. He's a a conciliars what's the word they use what word he's like not italian in the godfather movies he's not italian and he's like a outsider he's like irish or something but he's like they're he's like legal counsel he's a conciliars to the italian mafia he's like legal counsel. He's a conciliar to the Italian mafia. He's like the only non-Italian they trust. And Two's like

the best one of the trilogy. Neither of us have seen either of those movies either. Should write some Godfather trivia and just have Spencer.

The best Robert Duvall movie is Lonesome Dove. Sure. Followed by Secondhand Lines is one of the best ever. Secondhand Lines. Isn't that what it's called? Secondhand Lines. The best Robert Duvall movie is Lonesome Dove Sure Followed by He's been in some phenomenal movies Second Hand Lines is one of the best ever Second Hand Lines

Isn't that what it's called? Second Hand Lines Michael Caine Haley Joel Osment Michael Caine Candle Lion It's a great movie When I'm in a joking mood

I say that Rancho Deluxe was the greatest American movie ever made In a joking mood He wasn't in that But he's like He's in Like if you get a bunch

of critics together and stuff and they like make a list of the 10 greatest movies ever made, some bitch is in a couple of them. Yeah, he's great. And people often, like lonesome doves, highly regard him. We don't read picks. So kudos to you for being on the plane with the guy.

Yeah, I mean, I had big plans at the time. You could have done him a huge favor by not saying anything to him. I was right behind him, and I didn't say anything to him. He probably loved you. He did. He actually— So you're hoping this guy don't talk to me. He was the first one on the plane. You never anything to him. I was right behind him. Yeah. And I didn't say anything to him. He probably loved you. He did. He actually. I hope this guy don't talk to me. He was the first one on the plane.

You never talked to him. Yeah. He had a baseball cap on super low and everybody walked on and he was the first one on the plane. Everybody walked right by him and just sat there like this, took his hat off when everybody loaded on and they closed the door. When he wasn't incognito anymore. He didn't feel like talking about it.

Yeah. I love the smell of day palmm in the morning i didn't give him that one no no but it was we were riding that's the only time i've ever been first class in a plane it was cool because the republican governors flew us out that way so that's great they booked you first class yeah they booked us first class and then like i said matt mead's wife saw us there liked us is her name julie i can't remember it now. I think she's her name is Julie. She's like, I feel like she's like 6'2". She's super tall. Yeah, I remember.

Yeah, she had us for the inauguration. Yeah. I was telling him he ought to run for president. Yeah. I don't think he's going to do it. I'd be all for it. I don't think he's going to do it. No, I wouldn't either.

He kind of had that attitude like about, he had that like old George Washington style attitude about public service. Like do a thing. Yeah. And then get out. You know, like do a thing, go in, do public service, leave public service. Right.

Yep. Let somebody else come in and. Yeah. And it'd be like, you like, you like contribute to society. You get like reach a level of maturation. Do a time in public service. Say goodbye. Yeah.

Yeah. I like how you have to explain this because it doesn't happen anymore. So, yeah. We played Governor Meade's inauguration, which was very weird. Because we're playing. Cause he's just headbanging. No, he's not.

But, but there were people that were way too old to be doing that, doing that, you know? So, uh, it was, it was very interesting.

You know, we tried to play some George Strait, got him up there to sing and he was not much for singing. I can picture it. Yeah. Very, uh, reserved when he's on stage.

But yeah, that was kind of like, that was the end of that band pretty much. We started to kind of fizzle out and I could see, I guess, the writing on the wall. And then my band, after we started four or five years later like i said we were playing that that festival out in midland texas i don't know what country that's a friday night lights country and um you from midland i was i was supposed to have my second kid journey um like any day you named your kid journey uh-huh after the band um or just after journeys well we wanted we wanted a J name. My wife's big on the, it's not alliteration. Oh, throwing all Js?

Yeah, yeah. So we already had one. Yeah, so the second one had to be a J too. That phenomenon, they go with Js. Like I grew up with Jeannie, John, and Jason.

Yeah. People that want to go all letter, they rarely break from J. Really? I don't think, can you think of any examples? My wife's family is a bunch of K's. Oh, they went with K's. That's very

close to the J. They're like, what comes after J? We're progressive here. I like the strategy. No, you threw a bunch of Q's. That'd be impressive. Yeah, for sure. Have you ever watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Uh-uh. It's an old musical. It's one of my favorites.

The mom wanted Bible names and the dad wanted the alphabet. So they have Abraham through F and they couldn't find the F so they named the baby Frankincense. So the baby's gonna name Frankincense. That's a good one. It's a pretty good movie.

Anyway, so we, because she was due really soon, i decided to drive her car out play the show and then we we drove out um or i drove out that night and so i'm in the hospital and i find out there was only our tour manager who's this big dude from uncertain texas he was 6 10 i don't know how or why he decided he should fit in a van you say uncertain texas he was 6 10 i don't know how or why he decided he should fit in a van do you say uncertain texas uncertain texas yep so right right on the border of louisiana and near caddo lake the only natural lake in texas and um just good good dude loved him uh and then two guys i think it was our drummer and our guitar player and the guitar player was driving he's definitely the worst driver of us all and i don't know if there was anything involved in this accident, but I do know they

were in a construction zone where they put those concrete walls up, you know, to kind of like divvy you to a different direction. And they, I guess, somehow hit one of those, totaled their van. Our guitar player also happened to be uh he's very introverted and didn't really hang out with us on trips a whole lot he put his earphones in you know and just do his own thing yeah um and uh but we still loved him good guy you know overall and um he apparently totals our van he's also kind of does like a lot of our finances whatever that means i mean you know just we got we had a couple loans we had a loan pulled out to get our first album done uh or really our second album but our first you know uh produced we produced our first album we wanted a

different producer and uh anyway it was tied to the van the van was collateral on the loan note for that album. So to get the, uh, the van title, um, so that we could claim insurance, we had to pay off the note for the album. Wow. And it left us with $67 in our account. And, and so, and then, uh, two weeks later, our guitar player quit just out of, out of the blue. And when he quit, he was good friends from high school with the other two dudes in the band. And they were like, man, I just don't really want to play without him. Things were going well overall. But we were all just – I always think that the biggest stifle to creativity is too big a workload on people.

I think that's what stymies creativity, in my opinion, is when people get so busy that they don't have time to sit there and think. You know what I mean? I'd agree. Yeah. And so I feel like that we were at that point where like, we're all working these jobs at Pizza Inn. I was basically a glorified janitor at my dad's fishing lodge. You know, I have a degree from SMU with in economics, which is like, I could go get a

good job in Dallas, you know, but I'm making, you know, hardly anything working for my dad just because he would let me go tour on the weekends, you know? Yeah. And so, uh, anyway, we're all just like kind of burnt a little bit, but we're, we're doing good things. We're still just on this weird, we're in this weird category. We a little bit, but we're doing good things. We're still just on this weird, we're in this weird category. We're not making a whole lot of money still, but we're playing some big shows with big artists. Anyway, when he quit, everybody else kind of fell off.

And I truly kind of went into, I would say, I was depressed for like 18 months and kind of had to work through that, but that was kind of the end of the whole thing. It was just like, you know, we were playing this big festival, guitar player gets in the wreck and totals the van. And that was, but it was like, I, at the time I was depressed for 18 months, but then I look back on it years later, a couple of years later. And like, I got to spend all that time with my daughter as a newborn that I would not have, I would have been gone all the time. You know, I was gone all the time. And my son at the time, you know, he's five at the time, four years old, whatever it is. So, you know, we're just like, I got to spend some like precious time with them that I would don't, I would not trade anything

for. That's good. Yeah. And so I i it was definitely a blessing i'm very glad it happened and now uh things are a lot more calm and i have a you know decent job and i'm just real appreciative for that as opposed to you know doing the the touring thing it's hard you probably talked to ko about it some it's it's not always easy and he's doing he's super successful right now so he probably gets to you know at the time we were loading all our own stuff in and out i was driving the van a lot and i don't sleep well you know like i i mean if i i'll wake up when a pin drops you know so it's just i didn't i would go to sleep at four and wake up at 6 30 you know and then go do it all over again bloodshot eyes it was

it was tough for a 25 year old even it's tough you know i can't imagine doing it right now for sure so how'd you guys meet funny story you say it how you want to okay cool so uh i will always joke that we met on the internet um but we didn't go to the same high school. Uh, but my wife is from the same hometown as Tyler, just right up the road, you know, like, uh, like 18 miles or something like that. I don't know. Um, and, um, when my wife and I were dating, she was like, Hey, this guy fly fishes. You should go fly fish with him. Cause I, I liked fly fish a lot too.

Um, and so I was like, okay, he'd made a film, uh, going fishing at the Valley of Adal in New Mexico. And I watched it. I was like, okay, you'd made a film going, fishing at the Valley of Adal in New Mexico. And I watched it. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. So she was like, now, I don't think she regrets it, but now. Were you guys fly fishing for largemouths or you went to trout water? No.

So like, it's funny. Yeah. A little bit. But we kind of grew up in that bass culture thing with like fancy boats fancy trucks and we didn't really weren't in it that much because we were pretty poor but like we saw that oh it was firsthand for me because my dad had a fishing lodge and that was i mean it was just like the 90s were crazy at fork like it was operation world record i mean they were trying to break the world record at fork it was like all this new this whole new school thought is like pertaining to largemouth bass texas parks and wildlife was trying to grow the biggest bass they could and fork was the place that they were supposed to do it you know

they're catching like a double digit every day in the spring it felt like whenever like in 93 94 those days like that i mean it was just it crazy. So that fishing lodge was a largemouth bass fishing lodge. They called it a bass and breakfast. It was kind of a play on words there. Yeah, so it was pretty much still probably is the high, kind of the more high class, one of the nicer places on the lake. Bass and breakfast. Yeah, it's got seven rooms.

And my dad, it was originally like a house slash real estate office for when the lake, you know, when they did eminent domain, all the lake, all the new property around the lake is all of a sudden worth a lot more. Like it took a lot of money away from those or land away from those landowners, but it also created this new lakefront property that is worth a lot of money. And so this proprietor kind of opens up this business slash his house. It's a big place. Well, he sold it to my dad, and my dad kind of renovated it a little bit and put bathrooms and rooms. What's it called? Lake Fork Lodge. Bass and breakfast. Yep.

That's great. So he still owns it. I'll be bass for breakfast. Well, they used to make, my mom's a really good cook, and they used to make a mom's a really good cook and and they used to make a huge breakfast for everybody that stayed there at 10 30 so the guys would fish the morning and bring them all back in and they'd eat just you know 60 eggs and all the biscuits and gravy and cinnamon rolls and everything my mom made everything you know

homemade is that place still in business my yeah my parents still do it but they they have scaled back a lot because as you could imagine phone calls at midnight from you know they pretty much do groups and they kind of do it more like an airbnb thing where it's like hey you kind of take care of yourself while you're there this weekend you know so you rebelled and decided to become a trout fisherman kind of i don't know i originally i was fly fishing for bass because, you know, at 16 or whatever, 17, like, but not really, I don't really, the Rockies is a whole different world, you know? Um, but in college, that's what I dreamed about. I didn't have any free time in college.

I mean, we were practicing like probably 315, 30 days a year you know so any time but my dream i would read books about fly fishing and i tied flies in my own room and just you know that was what i wanted to do and i don't know if it was like an active uh countercultural mindset but it probably was countercultural just kind of subconscious nudged that way a lot you know because you kind of subconsciously. Nudged that way a lot. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Cause you kind of just see this whole, just like flash and bang of, uh, big bass fishing and $90,000 boats and $90,000 trucks and, you know, all the things that come with it. And it's like, I don't know. It's a little bit of that. And a little bit of also this whole mystique in the Rockies, the inability to, to buy elk

tags when you can go get a $ fishing license you know that's kind of what drove me that way probably you guys caught wind of each other yeah i was actually living on the coast working for aphis and spending all my free time fly fishing in the bay that's how i learned how to fly fish pretty much i was like tyler i had that you know the warm reds and sea trout yeah red trout and flounder you know and and honestly i really like catching sheephead which uh might be different than what y'all call a sheephead but no i know i know the sheep you're talking about yeah big teeth you know jump some tarpon too i did jump some tarpon on fly yeah that was kind of wild um so that's how we kind of started lining up was um tyler saved my name in his phone is What was it? He's like redfish guy or something.

Because I really wanted to catch a redfish, you know, at the time on a fly. We still haven't done that. Nope. But I was up, I was long distance with my girlfriend at that time, who's my wife now. And I was up visiting her and him and I planned a little fly fishing trip to a place that we have, um, uh, striper fishery, um, you know, stock striper fishery. I think they might reproduce there. Anyways, it's, there's enough salinity that I think they have a reproducing population. So pretty good fishery. I actually caught one there a month before a nice fish, like, you know, 25 inch long

fish. And, um, so, uh, we took a little trip up there and Tyler was like, Hey man, you mind if I like film this? And I was like, sure, man, I don't care. You know, whatever. Sounds cool. And we like put together a little thing, you know, just kind of for fun. And then like a month later, he's like, Hey, you want to come up and we'll drive to Arizona and fish for 24 hours and then drive back home. And I was like, absolutely. So then we took off across the country to go catch an Apache trout, which is kind of a rare native trout species. Is that a cutthroat?

Pretty much. Yeah. It's like a subspecies of a cutthroat. Yeah. Which your friend Mark Kenyon would probably have some interesting things to say about how that all works. Sure. There's groupers or lumpers and then there's dividers, right?

Splitters. Yeah. Um, whether, no matter how you feel on that, they do look different. So it's fun to cross those off your list and the native fish live in some really cool places. And, uh, really, um, we made a video from that. It's pretty cool. We caught the Apache trout like we wanted to. And then on the way home from there, we kind of like, I don't know, uh, also decided we

like to deer hunt and uh tyler kind of floated the idea of having a podcast um to me while we're driving home through hailstorms yeah how many years ago is this that was uh 16 early in six or mid summer 16 yeah so what'd you guys do with your apache trout video you put it on youtube it's on youtube yep yeah it's uh pretty low views it's like six minutes yeah it's got a couple hundred views on it you know hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in can. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a hind titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can 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 hand-picked by the on x 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. Well, did you guys get into it thinking you were just going to do it for fun? Or did you get into it thinking that you were going to figure out a way to do outdoor media? But just do it on your own without... We definitely had different outlooks on this.

Tyler is a visionary. I mean, you can tell by starting bands, doing all that stuff. You know, I am much more of a free spirit, which not to say he isn't, but I just was like, this is fun. Cool. I kind of fly by the seat of my pants, kind of impulsive a little bit, which my wife will tell you I'm not, so I don't understand. You know how that stuff goes.

I think you fly by the leg of your pants. That's a good joke. Way to go, bro. Dude, man, silent killer over there. Yeah, that's a good that's a good joke yes dude man silent killer over there yeah that's it that was a good time i had experimented with the outdoor stuff a little bit before that right yeah i did uh kind of having video and ducks and whatever forever but yeah i mean i i've always have always wanted to do what I'm doing right now for a living. Like it's always been the goal. Even when I was chasing the music dream, I always thought if there was something, one thing I could do besides music that I would rather do would be this. That you'd rather do?

Yeah. More than being a rock and roll star. Yeah, I think so. And I love creating music. That's a good testament right there. Oh, this is, I mean, it's literally, it's who I am. Like, this is what I've done since I was, I mean, I was running around. One time, this is a quick little story, interjection here, sorry.

My dad, I left a Red Ryder out in the rain and leaned up against a chain link fence. And it rusted. And my dad got, he's a gun, he's very strict with gun safety. So he got, you know, a little bit perturbed by that. And so he banned me from my gun for a long time. I don't know. It was like probably a year. Good for him.

But he, uh, he made me a bow out of a willow tree. And it was literally like cut the branch in two spots, tie some trotline string, like notch it, tie some trotline string to it. And he gave me an aluminum arrow. And that was what I hunted birds with for a year. I never killed a bird for a year. So he was pissed about that rust. You know what he used to do with the red riders that would rust them out? We'd speed load them where you put all your BBs in your mouth.

Like hundreds of BBs in your mouth. And you line up your mouth with that port and blow them all in there and everything would just get rusty and shit inside. Man, I had a daisy. Everybody's got to like leave the or maybe not everybody. A lot of people that leave the BB gun out and get in trouble.

Story. I feel like it's a thing. It's like almost a ride of patches. For us it was if you left the old man's tools out. It was your ass. Yeah. I was getting in trouble for a roofing hammer a lot

because it's kind of like a hatchet. I'd always take that thing. But I was doing that with a Daisy 22 caliber you know like bolt action and those are lead. So as a kid

I was packing lead Sure man. Lead pellets in my lip like it was snuff and just totally blew up what's around. It's a great way to carry them,

you know? And so, yeah, if I like twitch a little bit, that's probably why. I remember my old man, we left,

someone left some tools out in the yard and they got rained on and I remember my old man taking me and my two brothers and putting us in the bathroom with the light out and he said when someone's ready to tell me who left those tools out in the rain three of you can come out of that bathroom and no one had any idea i came here we were just i feel like someone had to

the way we remember it someone had to venture come out and be like i did it you know no one had any idea you couldn't come out of the bathroom until someone was going to clarify. Take one for the team. Who left the tools out in the rain. That was such a big thing, dude.

So you were the youngest that you get paid for. I remember like that feeling that you'd be laying in bed and it'd start raining and just the feeling of dread that you know something's out in the rain

and it's not supposed to be in the rain. I always leave boots or something outside. He does. All the time. Just the feeling like you're going to wake up and be like, oh no, we left that out in the rain. I always leave boots or something outside. He does. All the time. Just to be like, you're going to wake up

and be like, oh no, we left that out in the rain and in all the trouble you're going to be in. Rain anxiety, for sure. It's constant.

Yeah. So that's kind of how we kind of got together. It was the fly fishing thing and then decided we'd deer hunt. So how many videos have you guys made

as the element? 400 something? I think it's over 400, I think. Yeah. I mean, there's probably a few that we made that aren't on the channel too. There's definitely some. We've got some to, we've got some produced that will go on the Media Channel at some point. Some new ones.

Yeah. How'd you guys come up with the name of The Element? I wanted something, so I wanted something that uh basically i was trying to compete with meat eater right so i needed something that was broad i didn't want because we i mean i love deer hunting and i think i've learned a lot about it the last few years especially but i mean what we did growing up it's like whatever season it was that's all you did you know if it's march you were a generalist yeah exactly so we did everything and i love doing everything i love fishing and hunting everything so that's what we did growing up and that's what

i wanted to do eventually with the element but i also knew like if we niche down a little bit we can gain some traction because white tail is a pretty big category and so um i i left the name as kind of like a broad thing and uh and then we, you could have become a rock band with that name. Yeah. Still mine. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of the reason I wanted the name to be, to be able to, uh,

represent like whatever you're doing is what you're doing you know but you guys have had you've guys had the most traction and become known for just like on the fly whitetail hunting yep yep which like i said it's like the whitetail version of running and gunning for turkeys yeah i mean that's what yeah i mean that's and he's like like he mentioned he's always down for a good time. And he's always just like, he's super optimistic. His positive spin on everything. I mean, and that's a big part of this deal because we had no money when we started this thing at all. It was just like, I had some cameras. I actually did wedding film, wedding videography so that I could pay for cameras to do this. And basically we, uh, he, his,

his kind of optimism is what got us through because we're hunting public land, pressured stuff, especially in Texas, where we started lots of people, little deer, not very many bucks, low, kind of low deer density areas. And that sounds great. Yeah, it's so much fun. It's so much fun. You know, you're just sitting in a tree waiting on something to walk by, you know? Yeah. And nothing does most of the time. So it was a struggle.

And like for me, knowing that we needed to make videos, I mean, to have any sort of traction happen, that, it was hard. I got down on myself a lot about it. And so having him around is like crucial to our, his like crucial to our, his like mentality to our,

what we, that's then it's crucial to what's your mentality. Um, I, I try to be as optimistic as I can and it really isn't even, it's, it's very inert within me. Yeah.

You don't have to try. Yeah. So it's not that like I'm an optimist, but I'm just always looking for the next good thing to do. And not like a fix or a high, but like if we're in a situation. This is like the microcosm of how we are. 2019, 18, we are calling in a buck on public land. Rattling him in from 350 yards out.

I'm the shooter. Tyler's the videographer. Ratt rattling them in from 350 yards out i'm the shooter tyler's the videographer uh rattles deer into like 35 yards and i take the shot and my arrow deflects off of something grass or something like that and immediately i'm grabbing another arrow i'm like trying to kill a deer still and tyler like oh i fall down in the grass yeah just, just let the dad come. And I'm like, hey, he's still right there. And then on the way home, I'm like, oh, man, that stunk. And then Tyler's kind of over it already. But in the moment, I'm like, let's go. We just got to get this thing done, whatever it takes to do it,

which sounds so cliche. But the reason cliches exist is because a lot of times they're true. A lot of times it's a thing you need to do. So, yeah, that's kind of how I operate. Just, Tyler, you're not critical of me of this, but you've pointed it out. I'll put it that way.

Tyler, this is great. We have a great relationship because what we do in the woods is we stand next to one another and we shoot as many holes

in the boat as we can, proverbially, not like the boat we're hunting out of. No. But until we just find, we run the sieve through the idea until we find the idea of what to do hunting. And that's what we do.

And so where was I going with that? Whenever I was talking about that, I kind of got lost. Uh, you were talking about the micro chasm of our. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just that. That's kind of how we are.

So like, uh, I'll have an idea and Tyler's like, no, we can't do that because this isn't this. And like, if you learn to put your idea and Tyler's like, no, we can't do that because this isn't this. And like, if you learn to put your pride aside and understand that you're both trying to have the best outcome, then you can get that. But if you're the guys like, well,

why don't we want to do my idea? You know, you become possessive of like, like you want to own the end result. So you feel like you need to own the process. Yeah. Yeah. If you can get by that,

man, you can, you can do some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's it. I think even in can get by that, man, you can do some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I think even in business, like, that's the way to be. Like, you have to be able to speak to another person straightforward.

There's no reason to mess around, you know. Like, let me tell you how I think about it and don't get offended. And I won't, I'm not saying anything about you. I'm just saying this is my idea. So, what do you think about that? And we just constantly's like so that's a business thing but it's also it's how we kill deer what i was saying is what you're critical of or bring up about me that's what i was saying the um i'm kind of a little bit too optimistic sometimes so it'll be the last day of a hunt 11 a.m and i'm still like trying to rattle in deer on the way out of the woods or something like that.

That's me. I'm that guy. You're slower to switch into the holy shit mode. I don't take my release off pretty much until I get back to the truck. Where Tyler's like, okay, let's get home and see the family, which is a good thing. Different way we operate. You guys ever get

into a fist fight? Never a fist fight. Never even yelled at each other. But we've had our disagreements for sure. This thing Tyler remarks about a lot, and I think it's kind of interesting, is we're both Christians. We kind of try to live by a certain set of standards. And you'll never

Now this stuff only happens between us, right? We usually keep these disagreements pretty private. But you'll never see two grown men like be very vehement with one another and not say

a single cuss word the whole time. It's kind of strange. It's kind of strange. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, we have a lot of pauses

because we're like, how do I say this? And it kind of goes back to like the leapfrog tree stands. Like, how do I not escalate the situation? Yeah, that's right. And honestly, we still have disagreements from time to time,

but we haven't really ever had like a knockdown, drag out, I'm not doing this anymore too much kind of deal. Were you guys raised in religious households? You were. There was a moment, though, just to go back to what you said, where I was like, I was pretty much done with the element. There was a moment though just to go back to what you said where I was like I was pretty much done with the element

there was a moment yeah like I got to the point where dadgummit yeah that's exactly that's what I was saying no I just

so at postseason there's always this kind of like postseason drag where you're like man it's cold there's nothing to do we didn't have as good

a season as we wanted maybe like early on especially. And we're in that same mode where I was talking about with my band earlier. We're like, we have to go work jobs and then also do this part time, you know, however we can make ends meet. And so, you know, he did a lot of carpentry, cause that's kind of where he grew up was in that, that space. And so, uh, and so the reason that, uh, I ended up doing a lot of the, the editing and stuff like that for videos, um, was I, I had like, we had sold a house in 2018,

um, the house that my wife and I bought when we first got married. And, uh, we took like everything I made off of that. She worked as a teacher and which is married. And, uh, we took like everything I made off of that. She worked as a teacher and which is not a very good income, but it's okay. You know, and then took all the money that we made, which wasn't a bunch. And that's what we lived on for the next few years while I just edited every day, didn't have a job. And so like full transparency, you know, it feels like he's going out and making money. I'm editing and not making any money and keeping this thing afloat. And, and it's just a hard time, right. In like a business owner, a proprietor's life. And it was like just a struggle. And so it came

down like after the season where I, I had told my wife, I was like, I'm not, I would rather than lose a friend and be like angry at him or him be angry at me and me all have to make a passive aggressive statement or whatever. I'd rather just say done with this, you know, and finding, find a decent job or whatever, you know, we wanted to do at the time. And so I had gotten to that point and that was like probably the last, one of the last times that he and I had like a, an argument, I guess you could say.

And so. During these years when you were being so, like, I, I appreciate all the elbow grease. So like, I think like a principled existence where you're, you were going to be, you pursued music, you pursued, you know, being an outdoor media, like stuff that's hard. Did your wife ever, was she ever like listen man i heard the phone company's hiring there was definitely oh yeah oh yeah like towards probably 2019 2020 she was really like i mean at this point like i've been out of college for 10 or 12 years or whatever it is i can't't even think about it right now, but it's been a while. And, and the whole time we've lived very poor. Like I've sat with my hand, my head in my hands

in the driveway thinking, how am I going to pay, you know, $500 mortgage? That's a cheap mortgage. You know what I mean? We had a little house, I mean, not a little house, but a cheap house that we bought in the recession. And, uh, it. And it came down to where she was like, listen, we got to put an ultimatum on this thing. Like, there's got to be a time where you say, okay, you don't have to quit, but like maybe time to get a more stable job, you know? And I don't know if we ever came to a date

or terms with that. I was like, yeah, deflect. You call up Casey like, listen, deflect. You call up Casey like, listen, dude, I got until Monday. That was probably like the 2020 season, I think,

is whenever like that was kind of the make or break year and you and I both had kind of make or break experiences in the woods that kind of,

because I was like, kind of excited about you taking that job that way we would take some of the heat off of that situation. I was a newlywed. I forgot. Yeah, I didn't you taking that job that we would take some of the heat off of that situation. I was a newlywed.

I forgot. Yeah. I didn't even mention the job that I had. Yeah. In the works. Yeah. And so like I had to work. My wife met me before the element.

So pretty much Tyler videoed my wedding. Okay. So like that was like kind of how it all started at the same time. Gave him a good price. Yeah. He did. He gave me a smoking deal. So and like my wife

is like hold on this is not what i was like you know an upshalate nupti-waiting or whatever you know so that's a good word um i made it up um uh we jokingly say you gotta fight with your wife sometimes um i'll i'll just say i say that. I'm not going to make you on that. No, I've been there. We are married to wonderful women, by the way. They're great. But like in the year 2020, it was somewhat of a make or break year because it was like, man, we've got a, things are moving slow as far as like element stuff goes.

I'm trying to put my wife through grad school. You're working, you know, doing editing pretty much full time. Kaylee is, you know, uh, the one income on your end. And like, we're like, man, what do we do? And then we kill some deer that year. And like, it was like, man, we can actually do this. So it's self-filming too. This was, we had got an intern that year and he washed out before November got here. And so it's like, gosh, you know, what are we going to do? So we end up just self-healing ourselves a lot that year, put some things together, and then, man. Yeah, it was a good year.

Yeah. It was a good year. It was kind of like I had a job. So I was actually, my church was trying to hire me to like lead the music portion of the services, you know. Oh, really? Yeah, and do a church podcast and that kind of thing. So my wife is like, yes, he'll do it. And I'm like –

She went to the interview for you. Yeah, pretty much. I'm like, man, I don't know. Things are going okay. And then I killed five bucks that year. Dang, that was the five? Three of them were like wall hangers. Sure enough.

I mean, big year, you know. And I remember that my church kind of gave me this like, hey, by the end of November, can you let us know something? You know, are you going to do this? I had already been basically starting in COVID in 2020. Like, that's when I started leading the music stuff there. And I was just doing it as like an interim, you know. And they wanted me to continue. And I told them, I as like an interim, you know, and, uh, they wanted me to continue. And I told him, I was like, yeah, I guess I was hoping we could get through the season and see

how the element is doing at, you know, in January or something. And, uh, so, but they wanted to do it by December. So, and I literally, I killed my fourth buck on November 30th and it it's the video we just reached a million views on that video. Um it's our, you know, biggest deer video, I guess you could say. And when I killed that buck, I was pretty much like found that as a sign. I should probably decline that job and kind of do the element thing. Steal the wood. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and then killed another deer at the end of December. That is like our second biggest video. So. We had a pretty good talk on. So I killed a deer on November 23rd that year, and we were both driving back in separate vehicles, and we had a pretty good talk that was kind of like, you know what, let's just go all in and just do this thing,

which, again, cliche. But it was like, we can make this happen with hard work. If we continue this on, we'll have some doors open up, and if not, we can still scrape it together and make it work. We're scrappy. Yeah. That's how it goes, you know. Got to be scrappy to kill deer.

That's right. Yeah. You guys got Michigan elbow grease all the way down in Texas. That's it. It comes right down the river system, sir. Flows in. Yeah. It flows in. Yeah. It flows in.

Yeah. Well, guys, we're running out of time, so we got to do the trivia show, man. Yeah, man. But tell people what you got coming, because now you got some stuff that's going to come out on meat eaters channels. You got some stuff that's coming out on your own channels. Yeah, I appreciate that. So at the end of the year, 2021, I shot a deer on public ground in Oklahoma. And, uh, well to back

it up, there was a nickname being thrown around that year of the buck truck, the truck I was in, you could joke, joking around. It seemed to be that there were bucks around when that truck would show up, you know, and his truck, he got COVID in South Dakota in a tent, you know? And so with a bunch of other guys, well, uh, we also have another guy on the team that he's not a morning person, so he doesn't get up and hunt in the morning sometimes. Well, they were buddies, you know, riding around the truck in the mornings because he was hacking all night, just felt terrible. So they'd get up, you know, about sunrise and go see bucks out of the truck.

So they started bragging on themselves about how they were the buck truck. Is that like the ice cream truck and all the kids like we're in the woods trying to kill deer plays music yeah yeah actually grunt calls come out of the speakers yeah but then uh tyler and i teamed up at the end of that season in 2021 and killed that deer on public ground in texas i mean in oklahoma and buck truck, like, really was cemented then. It was like, hey, this is a thing. So we decided to maybe put a little effort into it and have a little bit more direction with that.

So we're going to have a series that comes out this May, I believe, called The Buck Truck, where it's just, you know, two best friends traveling the country, hunting deer and a utilitarian. I was watching some buck truck deer tonight. Did you like it? Yeah. Yeah. You guys, like, could hear each other shooting? Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty sick. With bows? Yeah. hunting deer and a utilitarian I was watching some buck truck deer you like it? yeah you guys like

could hear each other shooting? yeah that's pretty sick we were close 82 yards I think on the on X yeah that was funny

when he realized someone had heard his buddy shoot an arrow that's some small parcel it was man it was we were in tight quarters and both shot nice bucks

it was kind of kind of wild man crazy things happen whenever you go out there and actually put some effort into it and so I always like to say It was, man. It was. We were in tight quarters and both shot nice bucks. It was kind of wild, man. It's crazy. Crazy things happen whenever you go out there and actually put some effort into it. And so I always like to say. It's good footage though, man. Yeah. Great coverage.

Yeah. Yeah. Our guys did a killer job. That was the first one of those episodes that we did too. So the camera work gets better throughout. We did really good deer footage. We did seven episodes. It's not like, oh, if you look real carefully,

you can kind of see a deer. It's like good footage. Yeah. They kill it. They do, man. You don't see the eyelashes and everything. That's right.

Get people riled up, man. So, yeah, I always like to say you've got to give amazing a chance to happen and that's kind of what we did that night. You know,

two guys set up 80 yards from each other kind of on a, I don't know, tough hunt. It's kind of hot, you know of on a, I don't know, tough hunt. It's kind of hot, you know, late September. Smoked a couple deer, you know. Pretty good time.

Eat pizza. Backcountry. Eat pizza back there. Pack them out. When you have a bunch of camera guys, you tell one of them to bring a pizza a mile back into the woods, you know. Eat them and then work on your deer. Yep.

Nothing like a 3.30 a.m. bed roll. That was good. You know how those nights are. Yeah, for sure. You appreciate them. Good memories. Yep. Nothing like a 3.30 a.m. bed roll. That was good. You know how those nights are. Yeah, for sure. You appreciate them. Good memories. Yeah. You guys hunted with Clay recently.

Yeah, I was on that series. Yeah. So that'll release in May as well, I think. And yeah, we're in Arkansas. Did a bunch of boating around. It's cool. Not swearing. No, exactly.

A bunch of dad gummies. The three non-swearing colleagues. A bunch of dad gummies. Yeah. A bunch of dad gummies. The three non-swearing colleagues. A bunch of dad gummies. Yeah, a bunch of dad gummies. A bunch of... America's last three non-swearing. I like to throw Spanish at Clay because he tries to play along with it a little bit.

Yeah, I'm from the South. Yeah. That was a good time. I love Clay, man. Yeah. Good dude. All right, guys. So everybody, Check them out

At Just type in The Element Yeah Yeah Type in Meet either The Element Type in The Element You'll find them

You guys Give all your social media handles too Yeah so it's The Element Wild A lot of times Is where you'll see it Or The Element Podcast Depending That's gonna be

Where you find us at on You know iHeart, Apple, all that stuff Everywhere you listen to podcasts Yeah exactly And then the YouTube channel Is called The Element And The Element Podcast Gets pretty heavy into whitetails Yes sir That's going to be where you find us at on iHeart, Apple, all that stuff. Everywhere you listen to podcasts. Exactly. And then the YouTube channel is called The Element. And The Element podcast gets pretty heavy into whitetails. Yes, sir.

Yeah. It still kind of has that Element vibe of like the seasonal thing or whatever. We actually just did a pretty cool podcast about axis hunting in Texas. Oh, that's cool. Kind of did a little bit of deep dive into the history of that and that sort of thing. So it'll be a little bit seasonal, but always some whitetail stuff for sure. And TheMeatEater.com, you find all Jordan Siller's writing. Yep.

The gun battles. Yep. Beaver battles. Beaver battles. Cowler battles. Yep. And if you're looking at something that looks like someone designed it, it's probably Hunter Spencer. Yeah.

Yeah. And the shirt will be out, the Milken shirt. Yeah. Stoked about that. Can we outro with Born for a Time? Sure. Maybe give us a little spiel about the background for that. Thank you for that. I would love to do that.

I saw this is, the Foo Fighters are my favorite band. Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. I listened to your track a couple days ago and Corinne sent it to me and I was like, this sounds like the Foo Fighters are my favorite band. Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. I listened to your track a couple days ago and Corinne sent it to me and I was like, this sounds like the Foo Fighters. Well, thank you. That's what I was aiming for.

He's so good, guys. Thank you. I just feel old and washed, really. But basically, when their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died recently, I kind of just, I don't know. It's a very weird way that I wrote this song, I feel like. It's not very typical. And sometimes I think what gets me into trouble is creativity. I want this creativity, and it's not super digestible by most people.

But I don't care anymore because I'm not trying to make money off of music you know and so um i wrote this song basically it's almost like uh my perceived relationship of dave and taylor who are like best friends in the band together and uh but i'm like speaking towards dave as like hey this is a terrible thing that happened but you also have like a big platform and an opportunity to say something to the world here you know like and basically taking uh esther 414 and saying like you were born for a time to do something very powerful and maybe this is that time so that's why i wrote the song is the the hook line is maybe you're born for a time such as this no it's great man i listened to the tune i liked it thanks man yeah yeah i was surprised were you yeah i don't look like

very good at things do i no no no i don't mean surprised by it being good i just uh was surprised by um because it didn't sound like country yeah i, I was expecting more, you know, I thought it'd be more what most people would identify to be more like leaning in the country genre. We definitely have, since we have stopped touring and pursuing a career in music, we've basically just done what we wanted to do and stopped worrying about what people would like.

Yeah. So it's way more fun. Just make tunes you like and don't worry about what bucket it's in. Yeah. Yeah. All right, we're going to kick off. We're going to end off with it.

Thanks, man. So find these boys at the Element Wild on social. Yeah. That's it. They'll track you down. And the Element Podcast, anywhere podcasts are found. Stay tuned.

Thanks, guys. Trivia. Oh, one last question. Do you think you'll win or not? I'm fired up about it. He's got a good shot. You think you're going to win? I like trivia.

You want to do a side bet? Yeah, y'all should. I don't know. I'll pay for it. Can we do something non-monetary? You don't want to do a $5 side bet? I mean, that's almost not worth it. We'll talk about it.

Yeah. We'll revisit it when Spencer gets in. I like it to be a little bit more meaty when it comes to... You want something that I really like

and don't want to give up? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll talk about it. Thanks, guys. A time and a place Seems like a mess

Want to disappear It hurts so bad Don't want to exist But strength won't build overnight He lit up your eyes His energy Gave you life Hero in disguise You question why

A second time Pain subsides Subside If you don't win your battle You lose your best friend If it all went to bed You'd go through it again, no Maybe you were born for a time such as this this If you only knew back then You'd lose your best friend If you lose your best friend It's getting harder, man

You go through it again, no Maybe you were born for a time such as this Thank you. guitar solo We'll see right back. If you'd only knew back then You'd lose your best friend Then all the men You go through with a candle Maybe you were born for a time Maybe you were born for a time Such as this Yeah! Yeah! Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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