The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 457: A Violent Game of Chess with Derek Wolfe

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Derek Wolfe, Bill Vanderheyden, Randall Williams, Spencer Neuharth, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: Elon vs. Zuckerberg; sacking Tom Brady; a fine for farting; putting an arrow into the monster cat; Derek's sports show The Drive, The Wolfe Untamed Podcast, and his new hunting show; the Phil Cam; Iron Will broadheads in the MeatEater store; Bill's tank of a black bear; the smell of the beetle cleaning room; arrow flight experiments and fishtailing; less drag with little ripples; Hooter Shooters; Michelle Bebber’s publication on the artistic merit of Clovis points; single vs. double bevel; the world's greatest lecture; howling for Wolfe; how low your chances are of fulfilling a childhood dream; when Steve passed out during the birth of his first child; confusing who the conservationists are; the inordinately complicated regulations around mountain lion hunting; what happened when there were no limits; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light, go farther, stay longer. You listeners are coming in late to a conversation, but I was just fixing to tell Chester here on the subject of finding arrowheads. My kids had, did I tell you about this? They were messing with the metal detector. No, you didn't.

And they struck some metal with that metal detector. And on the way, digging down with the metal detector no you didn't and they struck some metal with that metal detector and on the way digging down to the metal found a piece a big worked piece of black obsidian and in their heads it detects that and i was trying like no this is coincidence we were dude it was something it might be an old hunk of barbed wire fence. Was this in your yard? Where did this happen at? Oh, no, no, no. Up in the mountains.

Here's the weird deal. That fencing was lower than it. That's pretty wild. I don't know. Beautiful piece of worked black obsidian like how big about like uh size your thumb that little pocket if i think it's the same place

it's not same okay well where we were it's loaded with chips, obviously arrowheads. Yeah, stay out of there. We will. Real quick, who are you guys rooting for between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? Oh, I've been talking about this a lot. I do a sports radio show and we talk about this a lot. Not who's going to, well, I want to know who's going to win, but who are you rooting for? See, I'm rooting for Elon

Yeah yeah yeah But I think Zuck is Like a sociopath Psychopath kind of So I You know he's won Jiu Jitsu tournaments already So

But I don't know how How much does either of them weigh Well Elon's definitely heavier Than Zuck So he's going to have to cut If it's really going to happen I think

But you know If you saw Elon's Tweet he said that his main move is the Walrus where he just lays on you See I don't use I don't even know why I'm rooting for him but I don't know why Because there's nothing he's involved in to interest me I don't use Twitter

I have zero interest in Mars I will never buy a Tesla electric car I've bought like a thing on PayPal in the last 10 years. What else do you got going on? Do you use Starlink? That I would get into. Starlink is smart. I do like him. Starlink is my favorite.

I don't know why I'm rooting for him so bad. Something about Facebook is just evil to me. He also owns Instagram, which I think you use daily. No, I do use that, but I don't think that my access to that. Yeah. And you know, Instagram, which I think you use daily. I do use that, but I don't think that my access to that, if he gets whooped,

it just, that doesn't even matter that much to me. You know, it is. I use one of his products, but you know what the problem, my problem is, is,

uh, remember that movie about Facebook social social network painted like a very unflattering perspective. Mm. Hmm. That, that for me is that's that, right? Facebook social social yeah we're painted like a very unflattering perspective mm-hmm that that for me is that's that right that's the story like yeah yeah and so you know and I just have I have a friendlier I have a friendlier yeah I just like Elon Musk I don't know the guy at all. Join today by... That's so random.

Oh, no. It's been on my mind, man. It's not the kind of thing my wife's going to talk to me about. I thought the fight was already called off. No. No. Oh, no. They're trying to make it happen.

No, you're thinking of Pergozan's... No, no. You're thinking of Pergozan's... There was something in the news about how Elon Musk's mom said he couldn't do it do it and he said my mother asked me not to fight and so we're not gonna fight really yeah yeah see i thought you were confused about the uh the coup in russia in a lot of ways in this fight get the wagner group and the coup in russia i've been i've been reading equal amounts about both oh yeah i've talked about a short-lived coup yeah Yeah, that was so fast. Nothing happened. I know. I could, like, woke up in the morning,

like, expecting, you know, the Kremlin, you know? And he's like, we've decided to just go home. I was like, man, I don't think that works that way. He's a hot dog vendor. Yeah, I don't think it works that way.

Well, way ago. Yeah, I know, but, you know, humble origins. Joined today by former Denver Broncos defensive end Derek Wolf, who sacked, I mean, how many times do people point this out, that you sacked Tom Brady? You probably sacked all kinds of people. I got Tom Brady.

I sacked him the most, though. He's the quarterback that I got to the most. Here's my first question for you. We're going to come back to this more. When, if you talk to i don't want i'm not trying to equate military service which i have no experience in to athletic which i have no experience in but uh let's just say continue okay if you talk to to military uh professionals you're striving toward a toward a dispassionate

approach. Meaning, if you're going to raid Bin Laden's compound, you'd take the same mental attitude as all of the other dozens or hundreds of raids

you've been on. Right. You're aware, but when it comes to doing it, it's just, that's out of your head. Yeah, it doesn't matter who it is. Yep. It's like. It's the guy with the ball.

See ball, get ball. Yep. Like, that's, it's simple. So, but in your mind, are you like, I am going to, I have the potential right now to sack this guy that people – It's not how – you don't even care. You don't try harder. Because when you're out there, everybody's on an equal playing level. Everybody's on the same level.

You don't think like that. You don't think like, oh, it's Tom Brady. Really? No. Maybe I'm different because when I first got drafted by Denver, Peyton Manning was my quarterback. So I had a relationship with Peyton Manning right away. So I wasn't like starstruck.

You know what I mean? And then my first sack in the first game was against Ben Roethlisberger. You know, it's like guys get- You get nervous when you sack them. Well, guys get, seriously, guys kind of get like that sometimes where they're like-

They get starstruck about a player. Well, as I got older, like in my fourth season i'd seen the rookie rookies come in and they'd see payton and they'd be like and then not realize that he's just like a normal guy that you know drinks butt heavy and plays football and you know he's just a normal guy yeah he'll sit down at breakfast have a conversation with you about whatever he's just that kind of guy and tom brady's the same way he's a competitor you know i mean out there on the field like you if you get him and make a good play he'll tell you like a good play you know oh really yeah he's like oh that's a good play you got me on that one you know that was he like

he bat one of his passes he'll lose his mind you know quarterbacks hate that when you like bat passes um block balls and stuff like that but you know he's just a great competitor probably the best competitor I ever played against honestly because you could you know the AFC championship game 2015 um the first series of the game I buried him and honestly. Because you could, you know, the AFC Championship game in 2015, the first series of the game, I buried him. And this is when you could still land on the quarterback. And I buried him. Like, put all 300 pounds on him and just buried him into the ground.

And he just, that's, people forget how tough he really was. Like, he jumped right back up like it was nothing. And I heard the wind leave him. You know, it was like, oh, man. You know? And it was like the first, like You know, it was like, oh, man. You know? And it was like the first, like, I think it was the third play of the game. And we ended up hitting him 27 times in that game. Oh.

So he got buried 27 times. And he still almost came back and beat us. They made a rule that you're not supposed to land on the quarterback? Yeah. What, are you supposed to land on your elbow? Oh, they want you to, like, do everything you can. So you can't hit him below the knees. You can't touch his head the knees you can't touch

his head at all don't even like graze his head and you can't hit him with your own head you can't grab him and whip him to the ground dude that's gotta be so it changed everything it made it a lot harder to to tackle him so it's like you're like playing in the yard with your kids well you like yeah it's like pick him up like i don't your kids. Well, yeah, it's like pick them up. I don't know. I pick my kids up and set them down. The first year they implemented that rule, this is the law.

So the first year they implemented that rule, I missed seven opportunities to have a sack. We could talk about a lot. Because you're nervous. Well, it's not even that. It's just that, yeah, you're nervous because of the fine. That's what I'm saying. You're nervous about breaking the rule. It's a $15,000 to $25,000 fine when you get those roughing the passer calls.

That comes out of whose pocket? Mine. Really? Yeah. Just take it pre-tax too. And they're already taxing you. I'm already paying 50%. I'm already paying half of my money to Uncle Sam.

And then the league is like, oh, by the way, you had a penalty. So here's a $15,000 fine that just shows up in your locker. And you don't even write the check. They just take it out of your paycheck. It's crazy. So the first year of them implementing that. But when they're watching football, they don't put that in the stats. No, no, they don't talk about that.

It's like, how much do you owe? How many fines has he paid? You get fined for all kinds of stuff. We had a guy that weight fines, it's $1,000 a pound. What's that mean? You have a weight that you're supposed to be at and if you're over or under that weight it's a thousand bucks a pound how precise is the weight it depends how wide is the band so underweight is usually like forgivable but when you're overweight that's when they start hitting you like if you're one or two pounds over

though how big is the band you're supposed to land in? So, all right. So for example, we had a guy that his report weight was 330 pounds. He showed up at like 415 at training camp. And over that season, he got fined $375,000. God, that takes body shaming to a whole new level right there. So you got to think every Friday you weigh in. So institutionaliday body shaming is that by the nfl or by the team that's by the team didn't von miller famously get fined for farting in like a film session oh yeah that was it yeah so we that's like a was that it's like a position group thing

so every position group in their room so we we always had, it was a $500 fine for farting. Who created that? We just, the fun thing about those ones are, Was you guys self-police? Yeah.

Oh yeah. Because you get, you're plus 100, you're plus 100 for snitching. You wouldn't like. Well, you're plus 100

for snitching. So if I catch somebody farting, I'm like, hey, it was him. It was him. I get a hundred bucks. This right here is one ofing, I'm like, hey, it was him. It was him. I get 100 bucks.

This right here is one of the many reasons I didn't become a professional football player. Well, it's simple. Just get up and walk out and fart. You know what I mean? So the funny thing about Vaughn is Vaughn ended up bringing, you know that fart spray? Oh, yeah. He'd bring that fart spray and spray it. And just everybody would lose, like, it'd just clear the whole room out for a couple hours.

But, yeah, the fun thing about those finds those room fines like the position fines we get to take that money at the end of the year and go do something for ourselves with it like as a group you know go to like a big dinner go like go to vegas or something chucky cheeses go to chucky cheese urban air do some trampolines you know all kinds of cool stuff you could do with it but um yeah but the landing on the quarterback thing, it made it. Well, I remember when the referees come in, they come in during training camp and explain the new rules and they started talking about this and we were like, well, then how are we supposed to tackle him to the ground?

And the refs were like, I don't know. That's what they said. They said, we don't know. Figure it out. Just don't land on him. If you land on him, we will throw the flag. Like no matter what. If your body lands on top of his, we were like, well, what if we like sprawl out?

Like, you know what I mean? It's like sprawl out and like straddle him, you know? Yeah. So you're doing like a super. No, it doesn't matter. If you land on him, it's over. So you're doing like a plank over him. Yeah.

Yeah. So basically what they want you to do is like pick him up and like fall on your back with him on top of you. That's kind of what they want you to do is like pick him up and like fall on your back with him on top of you that's kind of what they want and what was happening is i'd get the guys wrapped up and then go to spin them and they just throw the ball away so i'm like i'm missing all these sacks because i can't like bury the guy um and then it then you that's the other thing the more you have to think out there the slower you are and you miss opportunities and stuff like that so yeah it's a stupid rule that is changing games and you see it now where guys are you're like how is that a roughing the passer it's because you can't land on the guy and it's insane and then you can't you

can't touch his you can't graze his helmet like don't even graze it that's a 15 yard flag peyton manning strikes me as a miller light guy you said he drinks budweiser but heavy really yeah he's a hunter though man he's what he's a hunter oh, man. He's what? He's a hunter. Oh yeah. Sure. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that he. No.

Is exclusive to Budweiser. No, but what do you mean he strikes you like a light beer guy? If I had, if I looked at Peyton Manning, knowing what I know about Peyton Manning, I'd be like, he drinks Miller Lite, not Budweiser. Bud Heavies. Okay.

Oh, you don't mean because of, ah, I've had enough current events for today. Not even related to that. He looks like he'd be in a Miller Lite ad. Derek Wolf came out, just for listeners, Derek Wolf was heavy duty on our radar, and we even wrote about him at our website on the media meat eater.com because he got in one of those uh one of those things that happens six times a year where a person well known in one sphere of the world goes hunting and then they uh and then they pay the price on social media with all the uproar and death threats.

In your case, you did a mountain lion hunt. Yeah. Um, no poaching. No, everything was by the book, man. I did everything by the book. It wasn't even a paid, like outfitting hunt. It was like a buddy of mine that runs hounds and was like, I said, Hey, if you ever have an opening and you want to go hit me up, like I'm just, we can go 45 minutes

outside of the city and chase lions, you know? So, um, this is actually my second time having PETA and TMZ and all them guys on my butt, you know, over, over hunting. Cause I, um, I went to New Mexico and did a bison hunt with my bow. Oh, that got them riled up. And I got them all riled up. And what riled them up really was the picture i posted because i it was a perfect heart shot so when we get when we opened that animal up my arrow was still buried in its heart so i pulled the heart out and i was like they didn't like that none they didn't like that they didn't like that at all so they made a big deal about they're like uh buffalo or they're going extinct i'm like no no they're not come on no they're not they just people don't know it's. It's uneducation.

It's so beside the point. Like any kind of reality is so beside the point. What's funny is we could do that kind of stuff. Well, in fact, do do that kind of stuff all day long. But it's just like people don't like being surprised. They know someone somewhere and they don't like seeing that raw edge in them. Yeah. It surprises them.

Yeah. Like if you're like famous for something, if you're like an attractive young lady, they're just not going to like it. Well, it's like, are you surprised? I told Phillip Rivers I was going to eat his children. Like, you're surprised that I'm out bow hunting? You'd have to be hungry.

Yeah, I was going to say. He's got a bunch of them. Yeah. But that's, I mean, that's another story. That was hilarious when I said that to him. Cause he, he talked a lot of smack, you know, Phil did, but, but with the lion hunt, the way it went down, man, it was, it was my buddy, Alex Nestor. He runs hounds.

And he was like, Hey, tomorrow we're getting a front. We're getting a fresh snow tonight. You know, be on call. I'll call you if we find one. I said, listen, I'll be at your house at five 30. We're going to go out and do something regardless. So he's like, all right, cool. So I show up and we started, you know, trying to cut tracks, just driving back roads and then found a couple of smaller tracks, nothing really worth chasing. Um, a couple of females, a couple of cubs, a couple of smaller males.

And what you're really after is this big Toms. Cause the big Toms are like, uh, they're killing a lot of deer. They're killing a lot of elk uh they're killing a lot of deer they're killing a lot of elk they're killing a lot of sheep they're killing dogs they're killing other cubs to get the females back into heat just like bears do and they're just bigger and they're just bigger and cooler and harder to get so we cut this we come across this track and it's kind of going back and forth from up under the underneath this guy's cabin it's going from from his cabin porch to under this tree so we go over and look under the tree there's a half feet mule deer under there big four by four and we're like oh this is the one you know his track was huge i couldn't believe i was like i was like these things around here roaming around just in

you know people's neighborhoods pretty it's not like a it's a mountain neighborhood you know what those neighborhoods look like but still it's a neighborhood uh so so there's public land all around but where the lion had went through was private so we had to get permission from this guy so we could go through there and and cut his tracks so we're just like kind of hoping that this guy's not an anti-hunter and is down for it uh so we went up and kind of knocked it was like six in the morning at this point so i just kind of tapped on the door i didn't want to like wake up go bow bow bow hey there's a lion out here you know i didn't want to do that so i and kind of knocked it was like six in the morning at this point so i just kind of tapped on the door i didn't want to wake up go to bow bow bow hey there's a lion out here you know i didn't want to do that so i just kind of tapped on the door and he didn't answer nobody came to the door

i didn't see the lights on so i was like maybe he's just not home but there was a truck in the driveway so i assumed somebody was home um so we left and we were trying to find a phone number to call this guy on and with um you know with google and with you know the all these online maps now you can kind of figure out who owns what property and we were able to get some of the neighbors numbers. And we started hearing stories about how many lions are actually in this area causing wreaking havoc. Like this one woman was talking about how last year, a couple of dogs got eaten

and her dog, her dogs are being harassed every night. She's afraid to leave her house at night. Cause there's a line that comes up and looks in her window. Um, and just stares at stares in the window at her little dogs. Pervert. Yeah, like a little pervert lion. Peeping Tom. Yeah, peeping Tom.

Yeah, we said that first. That was good. Randall, Dr. Randall? Yeah, that was good. Peeping Tom was that one. We need a little scorecard. Zing. Yeah.

I think that would hurt this podcast. Give a mark for Randall. But it turns out that that's like a dude ranch where this guy, it's like the ranch manager, the guy that lives there on this dude ranch. So we couldn't get a hold of anybody that owned the dude ranch. So finally we just were like, well, let's drive down and see if we can get around his property and try to catch the tracks, which is going to, it's going to suck because the hiking is like straight up and down. It's straight cliffs, two feet of fresh snow. It's going to be kind of miserable regardless. So we're like, well, you know, it's going to take us three miles out of our way, but

you know, if we want to get them, we got to go now. So we started driving down and here's comes the guy out of his, out of his house, kind of waving at us. He's like, Hey, you guys lion hunters. And we're like, yeah. And he's like, you see these tracks going across my yard? I said, dude, we've been trying to get ahold of you for two hours. And he's like, oh, is that you guys on the porch i said yeah he's like oh i thought it

was that lion so he thought the lion he's because he said he's like there's this big lion that keeps coming up onto my porch and looking in my windows really and so so the chat i mean the tracks went right by his steps you know and he's like did you see how big those tracks are we're like yeah he's like he's huge and he's like we're like you care if we go after him he's like please go get him please get him out of here so we so you know we jump out i grab my pack grab my bow we let the dogs out and we just go straight up and we and on the way up i'm like i'm starting to slip and slide already and i'm like this ain't good this is gonna turn in i already know what hopefully he's treated the top of this this mountain. Like hopefully he was just

up there and he's treat already. Well, we get up there and he wasn't, he goes all the way back down the other side, the backside. So we started like 9,000 feet or like 8,900 feet and go all the way up to like 11, two or something like that. Oh really? And then drop back down on the other side, down into a drainage and then he runs up this drainage so at this point i'm you know i'm almost 300 pounds out there and i'm in good shape but getting through snow and stuff like that it just takes twice as much energy to get anywhere oh so i'm like falling behind already you know on the way up let alone the way down which was just like might as well just sled down i was just oh yeah if you could go through snow and my skinny ass little body you'd be loving it oh i'd

be awesome just i mean it's like a mountain goat switch gears oh i was by the time i got to the legs cutting through that snow like you wouldn't believe man by the time i got to the other side of that mountain and was like i gotta i was i just was following the tracks side of that mountain and was like, I just was following the tracks, following Alex and the dogs. I was just following their tracks. So by the time I get to like halfway down that hill, I had to stop because I was like sweating already. I was like starting to like, I don't know. I was starting because I was like, this is going to be a long day. I already know it.

So I get down and I crawled up through all this deadfall and the snow down in that drainage, you know, it all rolls down there. It was up to my chest pretty much. So I just started crawling. I just crawled through it. And then Lion's cutting across the top of it. Yeah. More or less floating on it.

Yeah, he's just floating on it. And the dogs are floating on it. And then Alex is, you know, he's like 165, 175 pounds. So he's just kind of floating on it too. But me, every time I take a step, it's just like straight down. So I just started crawling. So I crawled and he keeps, he calls me, he goes, where are you at? And I said, dude, I'm, I don't even know where you, I can't hear the hounds anymore. I'm way behind you. And he was like, all right, we'll just keep following my tracks. He's like, I think they got him. I think they got him treed

now about, you know, two miles up here. And I was like, all right, cool. So I keep going. And then he calls me again. He goes, hey, there's a spot where you're going to see where I turned and went to go up the hill and came back down. Just keep going up the hill when you get there. And I'm like, okay. He calls it a hill. No, it's a straight mountain. So I just go straight up that mountain, crawl up there.

I get to the top and start walking the ridge following his tracks. And he calls me again. He's like, you got to, you know, he starts freaking out. I don't know if you've ever been on these hound hunts oh yeah it's chaos he's he's and in the background i can hear the hounds he's like we're gonna lose this lion where are you at he's huge and i was like dude i'm coming like i'm doing everything i can i'm going as fast as i can at this point i'm cramping so i'm now my hamstrings my quads and my forearms and my like rib cage is like starting to cramp up and I can't like your rib cage is cramped.

Yeah. Like all those, like in here, like the, all those abdomen muscles are starting to lock up on me. And I'm like, oh, this ain't good. Um, he goes, all right, I'm going to drop you a pin, come straight to the pin. I'm like, all right. So he drops this pin and I just like haul down. I just like roll down the mountain pretty much just sliding and ripping my pants up

and falling all over the place. And cause I can't stand up and walk. Cause if I stand up and walk, I just cramp. I'm just like Charlie horse, Charlie horse, Charlie horse. And then my, I'm like, Oh, like my whole body starts locking up. So I just was like, all right, I'm just gonna crawl. So I crawled down backwards down that thing and rolled down it and slid down it as much as I could get to the pen. It's on the road. I'm like, oh, no. And I call him. I was like, dude, you dropped me a pin on the road. Are you serious?

He goes, oh, you're, you know, we're screwed now. You're never getting up here. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you got to come all the way back up. He's like, I told you to walk the ridge and drop down on the pin. I said, no, you didn't. You said come straight to the pin. I said, all right, I'm not arguing.

I'm coming. And this is only like 900 yards that i had to go to get down to get or 900 feet to get to where he was has it been like hours at this point oh yeah oh yeah it's yeah we're four or five hours into this like like it just took so long to get anywhere and i look up and i still it's in this cut so it's a big cut like this and it's just deadfall everywhere and little cliffs and stuff. And I'm like, all right, here we go. So I just crawled my way up there. It took me about an hour and a half to get, to get up there. And I get up there and, um, I hit, you know, right. He's got the hounds and he's like, you're almost there, buddy. Keep coming. And I, I turn and look and I look up and there's a lion sitting right above me in a tree doing that. And I was like, Oh man, he's huge. I was like, I can't believe how big he is. And I look up and there's a lion sitting right above me in a tree doing that. And I was like, oh man, he's huge.

I was like, I can't believe how big he is. And I was like, I just shoot him here. And he's like, no, he's going to fall on you. I was like, I can't move, man. I'm done. And there's a video of me. If you look on my Instagram or even on my YouTube channel, he had his phone out taking a video of me standing up in that moment.

And you can see on my face, I'm just pale white. I just look like defeated, right? And I'm like, I just wouldn't give up though. So I just kept going and I had to go like 10 more yards to get to him. And I just got up and made my way up to him. And, uh, he was facing me. The lion was facing straight at me in that tree. So I had to do a frontal on him. And I was like, all right, it's time to send one. And he was like, put it right above this little white spot. And I was like one and he was like put it right above this little white spot and i was like all right i put it right on that white spot and he fell out of the tree and i just boom fell to the ground and i was just like i'm done i was like i hope i hope he doesn't come

up here because i can't fight back right now and he's like all right give him a minute and we didn't hear any movement so he's like all right i'm gonna go down there and check it so he goes down there he's like we got a dead lion you know he goes starts freaking out and he's like, all right, I'm gonna go down there and check it. So he goes down there. He's like, we got a dead lion. You know, he goes, starts freaking out. And he's like, let the hounds come down. So I had to like unhook those. And that took me forever because every movement was like, and then I started thinking, how am I going to get him out of here? How am I going to get this lion out of here?

So I let the dogs go and go down there. And he's like, hurry up, get down here. And I'm just like trying to take my time, you know? So I crawl backwards down there. When I say backwards, I'm on my hands and knees crawling backwards down the hill slipping sliding down you know and grabbing trees to hold me and finally we get to it and i couldn't believe how big he was could not believe i was like this thing could drag me by my neck up a tree if it wanted to and he goes we got to get a picture of this thing he's like he's like set your stuff over here and

let's take a picture of him. And I was like, dude, forget the picture, man. Let's get him out of here. And he's like, no, no, no. He's huge. He's one of the biggest lions I've ever seen. He's been hunting lions for 15 years. So he knows what he's talking about.

So I'm like, all right, whatever. I go to pick this thing up. And I grab it around the belly and I lift it up. And I'm like, dude, this thing is like 200 pounds. He's like, no, he's probably like 170, 165. 165 and I'm like dude I know what 200 pounds feels like this thing is 200 plus I'm telling you and he's like yeah whatever and I get him up and then he's in the head just like flops right onto my forehead and it and I'm like you know you can't even see my face and he goes flop his head to the side so I like like nudged his head over and boom He's that's the picture the famous snap that he snapped of me right there

And I just dropped him and he comes over. Let me feel this thing. He could hardly pick it up He's like, oh man, he is heavy So we gutted him out and I just laid him a cry I have a kafaru striker XL pack and has like a meat hanger on it So I just like hung that line across that. So the tail it's eight and a half feet long. So the tail is hanging out one end and the head's hanging out the other end. And there's also a video of me doing that, trying to get over this deadfall. And you could see, I'm just like wrecked. He goes heavy, huh? And I'm like, yeah, it's heavy. I was

like, I pack elk out and everything, you know, put 150, 160 pounds of elk meat, you know, with a skull and antlers and really don't have a problem. This is like, I'm struggling with this. So I did the same thing. He's like, I'm going to get the dogs down here because they're wore out, you know? So he just takes off. He doesn't even help me. He just takes off. So I strapped my boat in my packs, you know, with the line in there and get in. And I start crawling down backwards with this line, just like dragging on, you know, it line in there and get in and i start crawling down backwards with this line just like dragging on you know it's just dragging all over the place and i get to this uh i thought i was taking the same path that i took up but i kind of went the wrong way and i like i had to get across this little this little drop off it was probably 10 foot drop off and i was like I gotta walk across this now.

And when I say I took one step and just foot feet came right out from under me, and I was like, I just put my arms across my body and accepted my fate at that point. I was like, who knows what I'm gonna land on. And luckily I landed like right underneath this tree and it was just soft. And I was just super lucky, um, that I landed right there. Cause like all around me is deadfall and I could have gotten paled or something, but I fell off that thing and it, and then I had to repack the lion on this slope, you know, I had to repack him in there cause he was all, it was all screwed up. So I repacked him and I come crawling down out of there.

It took me like an hour and a half to get down out of that. And finally got him to the truck, sat him on the truck and was just like, god i was like i can't i can't believe that took six it was like six and a half hours up there just getting my just getting my butt kicked you're like next time i'm gonna bring some electrolytes yeah well i did i mean i drank electrolytes and everything but the problem the thing is when you get to that altitude yeah you know what I mean? It's like it just sucks it right out of you. Plus, it's cold, so you have to have some cold gear on. So I got a puffy on and everything. But I couldn't really take it off because I'm already sweating.

So now I'm going to freeze if I take it off. So I just accepted my fate at that point. And we jumped in the truck. And the funny thing was I was like two hours late for my radio show that I do a sports radio show. I was like two hours late for my show. And they're like, where are you at? And I'm like, I sent him a picture of me. Plug the show. Tell people what you do. Yeah. So it's, uh, it's a sports radio show. It's one Oh four three, the fan, uh, we're the number one sports show in Denver. Um, so we just talk to all things sports. Um,

I'm, I'm doing that. and I'm also doing my own podcast. I just launched my first episode. It's the Wolf Untamed podcast, and then I'm doing a hunting show as well. We just started launching episodes from my first fall out of football, bow hunting and turkey hunting, stuff like that. That's called Wolf Untamed. It's on YouTube as well. So you can check us out on Spotify. Then you can also, on denversports.com, you can watch

the show. It's pretty funny. We have a good time. It's really like a comedy show. We're just goofing around the whole time. Oh, I should point out. Can I point that out? Yes, please. Who said that? That was Phil. Phil, you gotta get a new song, man.

That would drive me crazy. Was that a genuine question about who said that? I can't tell. He's got all the stupid things back there. Oh, that's a good way to put it. I used to look Phil dead in the face. Dead in the face. I could tell what he was thinking.

Now I can't even see this. I mean, I honestly cannot see Phil. It's so distracting. now i can't even see this i mean i asked the guy i cannot see phil um oh there's his hand sticking up cal was thinking we'd put a little heart monitor like a heart monitor up in the corner so you can at least tell like his vital signs like a little live feed on the on the tv there speaking of okay that was great segue you can watch what we're doing right now on youtube phil's got it all rigged up it's become phil's like passion project this is being filmed right now that's right i wish we could see phil's face you think a guy if you think a guy that that was that liked to do that was a thespian you know what that means phil yeah it's an actor of stage

and screen you think a thespian like phil would be like jumping up and down at his big chance to like be broadcast on yet another platform it makes me a little uncomfortable but i do have there is a phil cam i bet he's beaming back there he doesn't want to be associated it's kind of fun to just imagine what the viewers can see I just cut to the Phil cam. It exists. You guys can't see it, though. Oh, you're on the Phil cam right now? I'm on the Phil cam right now.

Go camera four. You're actually wrong, Steve. He's the only one who has their own camera on him. You and Phil. So there is the band. That's a good point, Spencer. And the reason he's hidden back there is because he's probably got his face powder on. It's like he's got his makeup on.

A little eyeliner. He doesn't want everybody to tease him. I mean, like got like his face powder on and it's like, he's got his makeup on a little eyeliner. He doesn't want everybody to tease him. Uh, we're going to, we're going to dig back into, uh, we're going to, we're going to dig back into more of the more, cause we, we, we got to get not, that was the good part of the story. Yeah. Yeah. The other, the other garbage is whatever part of the story, but that was, that was a part

I like. Yeah. We, you know, it just real funny. Um, we just did a thing with the – did you follow the Blue Marlin controversy? Those boys that caught that Blue Marlin down in North Carolina and won a big tournament? I didn't follow it, no, but I heard about it. I didn't pay much attention to it.

Roughly, these dudes go out and they join a tournament. They're kind of like underdogs in the Blue Marlin tournament, but they win the Blue – yeah, they don't win. They catch adogs in the blue Marlin tournament, but they win the blue. Yeah, they don't win. They catch a big-ass blue Marlin. This episode's already out. People can check it out. Was that filmed?

No, that's not going to be video. They catch a big blue Marlin, 600-some-odd pounds, but it gets disqualified because it had a little bite mark on it. Oh, because the shark got on it. Shark bit it. So they lost their $3.5 million. Oh. We had them on.

And one of the things they were appreciative of, this is like a little plug for our show, is they had done every interview in the world. Who all did they interview with, Corinne? New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, every local npr was npr new york times is doing a piece on them uk daily mail and and and and and all that website all that and he says he's never gotten to talk about the what he imagines is the cool part is catching the fish yeah talk about the worst part about catching the fish and talk about the worst part about catching the

fish and it's a crazy story about catching the fish no one cares about catching the fish yeah they just so they're like thanks because we finally got to tell about catching the damn fish which was amazing right that's a huge fish i actually now that you're telling me i i saw the picture of the fish but i didn't see where it was like. It's superficial, dude. Where it had a bite on it. I didn't even see it. You know what? Folks can go back and listen to this.

They didn't even know. Because when they pulled the fish up, I think they pulled up the fish's starboard side. And they couldn't see the port side of the fish, that's how, it's like, they didn't even know. Yeah, they didn't even know. They pulled it up. He said he can't roll these things around.

It wasn't even, they weren't even, then later he was like aware of it, but didn't even give it any thought. It's just like a mark. Yeah, and he said- What about heartbreak? Oh, it is crazy. Hey, folks.

Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public

and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing

on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out

if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Joined also by Bill Vander Hayden. How's it going, man? Good. See, you missed a good transition there oh what should i done uh you should ask derrick what broadhead he used i was gonna do that and i forgot about it what broadheads use i was using a an iron will you were yeah do you know bill prior yeah yeah oh so you guys have met you guys are in the same state yeah i was i've been shooting

iron wills for a while now really so we met. We met at the Colorado Bowhunters. Yeah. Hey, Bill, stay close to your mic. We met at the Colorado Bowhunters Association. So how's things been going at Iron Will, man? Good. Good, been busy. Yeah. Yeah, appreciate you guys having me on last year doing that podcast on physics and fatality,

I think it was called. But yeah, got a lot of interest in us from that. So appreciate it. Oh, that's good I got a lot of interest in, in us from that. So appreciate it. Oh, that's good. Um, you know, I wanted to ask you, do you, uh, I guess you probably wouldn't know this cause you can't tell that if people that listen to the show, this is like a, I guess this is a marketing question. People that listen to the show and came to you from having heard the show, did they seem to be mostly Western elk hunters

or were you hearing from whitetail hunters and whatnot? Yeah, good question. I think a lot of the Western elk hunters had kind of already heard of us. So I think a lot of the people were more Midwest or even Eastern whitetail hunters. Like we went to Pennsylvania total archery challenge event. I had a lot of people come up to the booth

there, say they heard the meat eater podcast. And also at Dent, we were down in a, at a Dallas show and a lot of people there as well down in Texas. Got it. Yeah. Man, uh, I had a, I had opportunity to use your broadheads hunting whitetails last winter and phenomenal.

And my friend I was hunting with, we were both using them. They work on elk, right? But what's cool about this is you can now come and find, in addition to coming to our store and finding First Light gear,

finding FHF gear, Phelps game calls, soon to be DSD. You can also now come and find, you know, those are our brands. This is not, but we're now able to carry Iron Will broadheads on our website. Can you tell folks what they can find on our website can you tell tell folks what they can find on our website yeah we're gonna launch here with uh that our s series broadheads or s100 which is what you and uh and jason used on your elk hunt in new mexico um along with our s125 to our very popular heads um and then our new our new head for this year which is a wide single bevel, 150 grain head, which is our one new broadhead that we just launched.

So those are going to be the three options there. It's a wobbler. Yeah. And yeah, you guys have been using our heads for a while and we appreciate all the help you've done, you know, helping spread the word. So I think it's a great partnership. Oh, that's great, man. You got a big old bear this spring? I did.

Yeah. I got a giant bear up in Saskatchewan. What was going on with that you know I've been going there for a few years and seeing big bears occasionally and um and man each year I kind of see a bigger one and this this guy when he was coming through it so he weighed 473 pounds oh really yeah 21 inch skull just just a tank and you know I see a lot better what's the boone and crockett cut off is it 21 or 20 i think it's 20 for the yearly and uh 21 for the all-time okay has your has yours dried yet no so he might not make the all-time you might shrink just dry him in a bucket of water

that's a trick phelps is it but yeah i heard i'm sitting in the stand. I'll just, Phelps did not tell me that trick. You could do the, uh, the, the Beatles joke. Phelps told me that joke, not that trick. The Beatles too. I guess the beat, like there's a beetle process. Yo yeah. Dermifted. Yeah.

What's that beetle called? Dermistid. Dermistid beetle. Carrion beetle. That shrinks it less. Yeah. Yeah. To help shrink it less.

Yeah. I used beetles actually on this one. Yeah. Man, I used to hang out with the dude that had one of them beetle works. Just like the, like a, and there's a ways to control it, but that is a smell that you can't find anywhere else, man. If you could bottle that smell and squirt it out of a can, you'd clear a room. That's funny. The outfitter up there had beetles, so we threw him a skull.

Oh, really? The guy, he had hisfitter up there had beetles so we oh really the guy he had his own he had his own so we threw it in there right away um and then like a day or two later we just went in there to check on it and three of the guys that were there on the hunt started gagging just by going in that room so sure man it's an insane smell in that room man yeah uh so what's gonna happen with that you know what do you get a big old rug made out of it i think i'm gonna do a big bear rug put it up on the in our shop there on the wall how far apart are you guys because you're in colorado right yeah we're about an hour and a half i'm yeah i'm north up i'm near loveland up near fourth collins uh estes park area and you're down a little south of denver yeah well when i did my book event in denver the other day i sure didn't see you waiting in line

well i didn't even know about it. I guess it's marketing people's fault. They told me. As an engineer, did you have extra interest in the submarine story or not? You know, I did. I wanted to hear the, just review kind of what went wrong there. And yeah, from an engineering standpoint, standpoint i mean the engineers were involved if there were engineers involved they should have known no you shouldn't do that you know it doesn't meet a

factor of safety well he didn't want he didn't want to hear about any of that he fired his engineer didn't he didn't he fire the head engineer i get where he's coming from man he was like an anti-regulation guy you know which is one thing but the minute you're selling the trip it's a different thing, and it worked like 40 other times. It was like the 41st time. Yeah, but you know how many times that Alvin, you know, that Alvin submersible, you know how many trips that Alvin submersible's done?

4,100. That's a good track record. Yeah. So talking about how, oh, we've done it a million times, it's like 4,100. And you can go deeper check me out man i'm like sub expert i was i was really curious to see if you actually had a number in mind like everybody else like i was like the joke that like everybody in montana is a grizzly bear

expert it's like everybody in america is a submly bear expert. It's like everybody in America is a submersible expert. And then there were Russian coup experts. Yeah, right. Oh, no, but I am an expert on that. Okay. We're joined by two of them today in the room here. That's great. You know, there's that great quote that how war, I don't know, I wish I remember how it went.

War is how Americans learn geography, right? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about the Aeroflite deal you guys are working on, Bill. Yeah. So I sponsored a study with the University of Colorado. I've worked with them for quite a few years. I've been an adjunct instructor in mechanical engineering, helping out with a senior design class for mechanical engineering. And this year, um, got approved to this past

year, got approved to sponsor a project and direct it where we had a team of seniors in mechanical engineering. And the project was on improved arrow vein design for bow hunting, you know, for arrows with broadheads on the front. So there's really a limited amount of scientific research on arrow flight when there's a broadhead on the front

and the aerodynamics are much different there than, than say a field point. Cause it's cutting the air ahead of it different, right? Yeah. It's cutting the air ahead of it different. There's different pressure on the size of it when it's, when there's some angle of attack, you know,

when it tips a little bit off of, off of straightforward. So, and you know, I feel pretty strongly that a durable fixed blade head sharp with good edge retention is such a better option than a mechanical. But there's a couple problems people might have is one might be arrow flight long range with that. You know, they're not as forgiving as a field point or a small mechanical. Um, and my own testing, I found out, but you could be very effective shooting fixed blade heads long range with the right arrow setup and

a tuned bow and a couple other things. But, um, but I wanted to sponsor a kind of an independent industry test where these guys weren't even, you know, they're not even bow hunters. They're just following the science and setting up experiments and running them to really show that you can be

very effective in accuracy stability with fixed blade heads at distance with with enough arrow vein and we studied like six of the veins top veins in the industry along with some prototypes um it had some great results there we looked at drag stability stability, accuracy, spin up, wind drift, and sound. And we had a computation of fluid dynamic modeling, you know, so a computer model, modeling the flow over the broadhead and the full arrow there. And then we could study all these things there. We could tip the arrow at say five degrees. Let's say the bow is not tuned or you torque a little bit and look at how much restoring force is there.

How well do these veins pull it back on quickly. Got it. Back on track. Um, and then we used a shooting machine and a lot of equipment. So we had lab radar looking at speed and drop. So drag, we could get from that. We had a high speed camera looking at spin up

and looking at how quickly arrows got stabilized. Um, we had a sophisticated sound system where we recorded sound of the arrow coming at it, crossing over it, and then analyze the frequency content. Like, would it be loud to a person? Would it be loud to an animal? So resulting from all that, we found a

particular vein that performed the best. And then I worked with Easton to get these machine fleshed at three degree helical. So now we sell these as well. So we get so many customers asking, you know, what's a good arrow for us to use for good accuracy, you know, with your broadheads. So I can say, you know, we have this scientific

study now that shows these do a great job of quickly stabilizing an arrow and giving you good accuracy, you know know with fixed plate heads that's a textured vein yeah there's like waves in it see i hate kind of stuff like this because now i want to have this it's like cal was bringing up like how he used to just love ice fishing always had a great time ice fishing and then better electronics come out and some guy shows up with that and you're like we're fucked now you know like you're like now it's not now we're not gonna do any good because he's got something better that's pretty cool though hmm i'll see that

so was this study did it uh like compare it against field points and mechanicals or what were the broadheads that were being used we we used um iron wool broadheads in the study but we compared them to field points so what we we looked at was like for, for accuracy, we use a bow that's out of tune. So, you know, a bow, a bow in tune means basically when it leaves your bow is, is going in a straight line, you know, at the target. The nocks pushing directly in line, arrow comes off straight. That's really what a tune bow means. An untune bow, like we would take it out of tune so that it would come out say tail left right out of the bow we were young we just thought it was like

just the how it was that your arrow fishtailed yeah that your arrow fishtailed for 15 yards it was just the reality it was like a comforting feeling to see it just kind of fishtail out, eventually straighten out. Yeah. With like a long bow or something where you're not cut to center, the bow is, the arrow is going to have to, you know, flex around the riser and there's a special. Yeah, I got you.

It'd be like a perfect stiffness to get that to go straight. Is that the archer's paradox? It is. Yeah. We named episode that one time. Right. Yeah. I listened to that? It is. Yeah. We named episode that one time. Right. Yeah.

I listened to that one. Yeah. You had a problem with that one. I did. A lot. Yeah, you wonder why. Whenever I hear things that defy the laws of physics, I gotta speak up.

Something deep in your brain goes off. A lot of those like modern recurves and stuff are cut. Like when I was building them, like an eighth pass center or, or center cut. Um, but then there's, you know, problems with strong risers, you know, a lot goes into it. Yeah.

With, with recurves and using fingers, there's just a lot more happening there. You know, in a compound, you can really adjust your rest and, you know, your bow set up so that your knock's getting pushed, your string's pushing your knock in a straight line and the arrow's coming straight off the bow. Some people, some people teach different ways

of tuning, but I mean, that's really the best. Having your arrow coming perfectly straight and, you know, that's how you're gonna achieve the best flight. But really this study, I know nobody's perfect and a lot of people aren't great at tuning their bow. So part of this study was, okay, if your arrow's not coming straight off your bow, it's actually coming out tail left. Um, one of the tests we do is we'll just shoot a flat shaft versus a bear shaft. It's say 30 and 40 yards because a bear shaft and we'll add some tape maybe to get the weight the same.

Um, but a bear shaft will come out tail left and then it'll just stay that angle and it'll end up hitting right. Oh, really? On a target out there. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, of course, right?

Nothing's pulling it back. Yeah. So that's a great way to test, is my bow really tuned or not? Take a bear shaft versus a flat shaft, just with field points, let's say 30 yards. 30 yards is pretty good. 40 yards, and you do it a few times.

If they're not hitting like the same, then it means, you know, your form or something else is wrong with your bow. Yeah, I don't know why it never occurred to me, but yeah. Yeah, it's a great test. With no fletching, it's never going to recover, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. So in this study, we had it so that a bear shaft was hitting a foot right of a fletch shaft at 40. So this is way out of tune, really.

Even with that. In that case, is the knock on? Is the knock lined up or is the center of the arrow lined up? Like, what is on target? I mean, if you shot it, no fletching, and it it kicks left and it just stays like that and goes in and then you're standing from your perspective some part of your arrow is going to cross the bullseye maybe like center when you're looking at it is that not true or is that true yeah it's kind of it's kind of difficult when it's when it's tipped at an angle to like basically the wind direction at that point.

Yeah. It ends up, with the veins, it will just quickly get put straight back on. You know, without it, it's probably tipping back a little bit towards it. But yeah, what part, I mean, the whole arrow is kind of getting thrown at the bullseye, but it's going to end up drifting right just because of the way the airflow is and the pressure. Also, the whole arrow will drift right. Okay, I got you. It'll continue on that drifting path. Yeah.

So what you see is your fletched arrow might be in the bullseye, but your bear shaft will be, in this case, it was a foot right. And you can see the back of the arrow is tipped tail. I guess that's my question. The knock is right too. Because it drifted, because the arrow drifted.

Yeah, I got you. Yeah. Yeah. You following that question, Dr. Randallandall no they didn't teach you that in that doctor school archery is uh an area of profound ignorance in my world so what vein setups were you all testing did you have like four veins and uh did you have three inch did you test any like of the fobs that have become sexy in the last few years uh we didn't didn't test the fobs. We had, um, let's see, we had, uh, Blazers, Max Hunters, Max Stealth, um, Silent Nights. Feathers? Just throw a turkey feather into the mix just

for fun. I've tested, uh, feathers in the past. Have you? And they are so loud. Um, I don't think people realize that. It's funny when. Oh yeah, man. It's funny when.

I've watched the movies yeah it's funny when people will say like oh that's you know that's a loud head or something and then shooting feathers i'm like hey i can show you the data that shows that those feathers are so much louder than anything else is that right yeah yeah how, uh, what's the reason for the, the textured, when I say textured, the veins rippled, it looks like a stingray fillet for you just to draw a very vivid image. Who knows what that looks like?

Would it be more drag? Yeah. You know, we, um, to be honest, I don't know why that made this a little better. Um, we tested kind of with and without, but when we looked at all the results and we looked at drag, drag and sound were reduced with these ridges

and this particular vein material. Are you guys selling just the veins or you got to buy the whole damn thing? We are. We're selling the veins too. Just bring a little pile of them? I didn't. I can ship you some.

What am I having? So it's less drag with the, the little ripples in those veins. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, like, I'm not sure if this is applicable, but you know, a golf ball has

little dimples in it. It'll change like the airflow over it and the turbulence and that's an improvement. Sure. Oh, they used to play golf with no dimples. Well, I don't know if they did, but I know dimples in the golf ball make it, you know, go further.

It changes the airflow across it. They did play with a smooth ball. I think it was an accident when they stumbled on that the like dimples made a difference. So. We need those dimples to make it go straight now. If I could just keep the ball straight, I mean,

I'll drive a 400 every time yeah uh that's interesting though so but when you got here's my question about the researchers you had to fund it i did yeah but since i'm the director they they pay me too god to direct it so it worked out pretty good. And then because you weren't previously making a fletching, so you didn't have, you weren't in there with a bias. No. And I really just wanted to like be able to say to our customers, we get so many questions about what vein should I use and how will this vein work?

And so I wanted to study them all in this testing. And now I have all the data and I can say, yeah, this vein works pretty good. This one has a little more drag, but it's fine. Um, so it was really, that's, that was the reason for the study. And then, um, I worked with AAE that, that made, um, some of the veins that were in the study and just got ribbon material from them so that we could laser cut different shapes in them. And they sent me materials with different stiffnesses, different, you know, with and without ribbing, things like that. So we had a bunch of things to prototype and test as well. And we found this one that, um, it did a great job with

accuracy stability, but then reduced drag and sound. And, and you know i can have my bow out of tune i currently have my bow out of tune you know four it's hidden four inches right four to five inches right at 40 so just a little out of tune not terrible but i can hit the same point of impact with broadheads and field points up to 100 yards with a bow a little out of tune with this vein on it you know it just does a great job stabilizing. So when I was seeing that, I'm like, I just decided we're just going to, you know, offer this vein as well as a fletched arrow to customers that want it.

How much do you shoot, how much do you shoot field points, man? I shoot them, I shoot field points and broadheads typically, you know, together like every day. Do you just, but I mean, are you shooting them just to save on, cause you know, I got a feeling you got a good line on broadheads, are you shooting them just to save on, because, you know, I got a feeling you got a good line on broadheads.

Are you shooting them just to save on targets? It saves on targets. I don't chew up targets as much. Yeah. And also, I don't need to shoot, well, if I'm shooting groups at distance, I still wreck, I still wreck things if I shoot three broadheads, you know, so I'm cutting veins, I'm hitting one broadhead into another. So part of it is if I shoot three broadheads, you know, some cutting veins,

um, hitting one broadhead into another. So part of it is if I'm going to shoot a group at 80 yards, I'll shoot one broadhead and two field points. Yeah. I mean, I know, I know why I shoot them. I was just curious, a fellow in your position while you're shooting, but you still, you still

like just destroy everything you own all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, I want to, I like to shoot a lot just to keep in practice and be able to, you know, if I find you shooting daily, um, or maybe skip a day here and there, but just shooting a lot. I just keep my form consistent, but yeah, there's no need to shoot broadheads all the time. Did the college already have an arrow shooter? No. No, so I supplied like a, it's a hooter shooter is the name of the machine, but it's a shooting machine.

And we got the lab radar. And so we got some of the equipment they needed there for the test. You know, Kent State University that we did the. Yeah. We were talking to them about doing some other fun projects. They don't have one hooter shooter. They have two hooter shooters that they use for their experiments. Hmm.

I always think that would be like a shot that you'd get one Hooters shooter. They have two Hooters shooters that they use for their experiments. I always think that would be like a shot that you'd get at Hooters. If I heard that. It could be. Speaking of, you know, he just sent me, Matt and Aaron just sent me a pretty interesting academic article. That has to do with, like you know how how clovis points why they're so mesmerizing and why people are so fixated on them and and like you know for a fellow such as yourself not that you have one but tattoos paintings people you can lay out a bunch of uh you can lay out a bunch of stone projectile points

and people are going to point to that one and it's it's what is the art like what is the artistic merit right so so they talked to all these art and design people to be um and then some people say it's so beautiful that it must have been part of its design must have been its beauty like there's aspects of it that don't make sense from a functional standpoint like why would you go through all the hassle it must have been that they knew that it was beautiful they knew that it was art so this paper i read the what do you call it up top i read the abstract yeah basically dr knew that one yeah basically why are clovis points so like why do songwriters want to write songs about clovis points and they're not writing songs about uh i don't know all the other ones do you share that same sentiment i've never written a song about those.

No, no, no. Like aesthetically, they're the most pleasing. I wrote a song about Dr. Randall. Oh, you did? About Yanni. I wrote a song about Yanni. My song about Dr. Randall is about how he can't actually prescribe drugs, so it doesn't really matter.

Someone sent in another song based on your song to Roman. He shared it with me the other day excellent but uh do i share the idea that there's something about them yeah they're like aesthetically they're the most pleasing absolutely there's something there there's something there there's something that appeals to the modern there's something that appeals to the modern eye yeah bill man i'm glad we could i'm glad you're letting us uh be i don't know you called a dealer to use that word um yeah i guess you're letting us carry your some of your products on our site man yeah you'll be the the one and only seriously really yeah that's selling them besides us you know online yeah damn are we gonna sell the uh veins do you guys um you can oh i don't think

it's set up to do it initially better Better hustle now because people are going to be wanting those veins. Right. And the arrows too, if you want to. I'm going to get some of those veins for sure. Huh. Well, thanks for coming out, man. As always. Tell me about the new, tell me again about the new head you got.

Yeah. So it's a wide single bevel. We came out with single bevel broadheads. Yeah. Sell me real quick on, I know we've talked about this, but sell me again on when people argue about single or double is just mental masturbation or what what do you think on it well they are different but they both perform really well but when you when you do because you're looking at things you're looking at things empirically right you're not just being like i got a nice i got a huge bowl with this so it must be the best i mean what tell me yeah so from an

from a science from a from a engineering perspective what are you getting and not getting what are you sacrificing and not sacrificing and also tell people what the hell single bevel means yeah so a single bevel versus double bevel um the edge itself um on a single bevel it's all ground from one side of the blade. So the other side of the blade is just flat and all the grind is on, on one side. Like some super fine, high quality sushi knives are single bevel.

But if you open your knife drawer, all your shit's double bevel. Pretty much everything's double bevel. Yeah. And there's a, yeah, they grind from both sides of the blade to come together and make a sharp point. Oh, you know what?

Your ice auger is single bevel. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's about it. Things that shave. I think there's like cheese knife. Oh, things that shave? Things that shave where they're just wanting to push.

Oh, yeah. Like your razor that you shave with in the morning, right? Single or double? I think those are single. Okay. Yeah. All right. But like, if you take a double bevel, put it down through a block of cheese, it's going

to go straight. If you're going to like cut it in half, it'll go straight. But if you have a single bevel knife and put it down through like a block of cheese, it's going to push off to the side because that pressure will make it want to push off. And when you get to the end of the block, you got a big old curvy cheese block. Right. So, um, what happens when that goes through an animal is all that pressure on one side. Um, and, and you, what you do is you grind, um,

you know, say the left side on the top and the right side on the bottom of the blade so that when it goes through an animal and all the pressures on those bevels, it creates a rotation of the broadhead through the animal. So. And you think that that's true? That is true.

It's not just in theory. No, that's, that's true. I mean, we've, we've done it with high speed video. We've looked at it going through different mediums, going through animals as well. And we do see that it does rotate. There's some great YouTube videos where guys will shoot a single bevel versus a double bevel through

like a shoulder blade of a critter. And when you see the, maybe I kind of a critter and when you see the maybe i'm understanding this wrong but when you see the this double bevel go through it looks like the footprint of the broadhead like it looks like you could just shove that thing through there and you know exactly what happened there with the single bevel though it's like a hole it's like a drill went through there and you don't quite uh see the outline of the broadhead as much right that's right hold on a minute let's say you're passing that arrow through 150 pound whitetail yeah okay

you hit it behind the shoulder or wherever the hell you hit it anywhere you want how many rotations is it actually going to get done that's a good question not much really it's like maybe one um it depends a little bit what it goes so it So it's not like a drill. So it's not like a drill. But when you look at the shoulder blade, one looks like, is like the size of a shot glass. Right. And the other one, like I said, it's like the footprint of the broadhead is how they look. Well, we see this through the hide. Do you believe him?

And you're right. What's that? Do you agree with him? It does change the shape of the hole. Okay. And we see this through hide that with a single bevel, um, or with a double bevel, you're pretty much getting a cross cut. So you have bleeders, so you got a cross blade. Yeah.

You're pretty much just getting that, that cross cut through the hide and through the tissue organs, whatever. With a, with a single bevel with that rotation. And I like a single bevel with bleeders. And we also do that single bevel grind on the bleeders because I like a cross cut anyway to kind of open up holes.

But if you do that and it rotates, now the entrance and exit holes through the hide, they're almost square. They are more rounded, even though, as you mentioned, there's not a ton of rotation. It's not like a drill, but it seems like twisting the hide or tissue as it's cutting does change the hole shape like that got it and you

can see it through through lungs liver whatever too it's got a little different shape to it and correct correct me if i'm wrong when you're shooting a single bevel it's pretty important to match up like uh let's say you got a left wing feather you want a left bevel on your on your single bevel broadheads. Right. So it doesn't spin the opposite way. You want them spinning the same way. That is very important.

Yep. You want your arrow, well, you want it to be rotating to begin with. So you don't want straight flesh. You want some, I like two or three degrees offset or helical on your veins to create some rotation of the arrow. You know, that kind of helps average out in any

asymmetries in there if you can get the thing to spin on the way there. It's like when I'm throwing a big old spiral, man. Derek knows what I'm talking about. Yeah, right. And then on impact. When Spencer goes out for the bomb. Mm-hmm.

And then on impact, you want it to just keep rotating the same way it was going. Not have to like stop and rotate the other direction. That would lose energy. Yeah, yeah. We do have a video on our YouTube channel. So you got to be cognizant of that and line that up wait or is it always a or is it always that same

twist yeah you don't have to really line anything up it's just the way you fletch if you're like there's we sell our right flesh what's i'm saying but do you ever see a guy that has his deal rigged up where he's got a right spin on the fletching and a left spin on the bevel but doesn't realize it uh yeah once in a while okay and we some, we have like a YouTube video just explaining how to figure out if you got a right or left fletch and, and a right or left single bevel just so people can make sure they match the two up. Yeah. Yeah. Was there a period in time, like, like the 1980s when everything was double bevel? Did like single bevel uh become popular more recently i think there was always been some very thin you know cheaply made blades that were single bevel

because it's cheaper to make them that way um and a lot of those are made on these like reel to reel metal stamping machines where a coil of there's a coil of steel on one end the blades are coming out the other and if they can just grind one side, it's a quick way to do it. So there are some, I think it's always been used kind of in industry and some products where it's a very thin blade and it's want to be really cheaply made.

So I think it's already shown up somewhat because of that. Here's a dumb question. Could you have a three blade broadhead that's single bevel? You could. There are a few out there. Really?

That do that. Why would you want to do that? Again, you could get a little rotation with it. That's it? It's, if you're doing a reel to reel, it's probably cheaper to make the blade. Okay. So it might be, I mean, that's a driving, that's a driving factor for a lot of broadheads out there is how cheap can I make this thing?

Um, you know, just to drive their margins higher. So. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of decisions are based on that. Yeah. Uh, speaking of blades, um, me and Randall are working on this project about the long hunters

and then the, the beaver trappers. So it'll be like a book, but not a book. There'll be an audio. Imagine like a lecture, like the world's greatest lecture. The world's greatest lecture. Explaining everything about the long hunters, the deer hide hunters, like Boone, you know? Yeah. the deer hide hunters like boone you know yeah um and in this working i got to seeing what they're what boone's hatchet you know you'd hear like tomahawk and hatchet tomahawk hatchet

um a best guess at what his hatchet would would it look like yeah and had that dude there's a dude people should check him out on instagram riley Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick Ford. Can you look, what is he on Instagram? Can someone look? Kirkpatrick Ford, Forge. I sent him the pictures. He made me one of those. A hatchet.

So it's just like a, like just what Boone's hatchet probably would have looked like. Is it a single bevel or double bevel? No. That's why I'm bringing it up. Double bevel or don't know that's why i'm bringing it up double bevel is there a definition difference between a tomahawk and hatchet in my mind a tomahawk is thrown or is that not not that simple no it's just a head shape difference my understanding it's got that straight shaft and a different kind of head and they used to make it with what they call it uh randall that whole teardrop i don't know what they call it he's talking about like the anvil shape you get a different part yeah yeah

should get a different partner for this project huh i can't tell you kirkpatrick forge it is that i'll see you good research yeah so did you know put that in your little notepad there randall what is the official difference it's like what's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp? Depends who you ask. What is the difference? Depending on. So there's like support. I've never found a satisfactory answer.

People generally call huge shrimp prawns. Yeah. And there's some regional variations, but there's also some stuff that I'm not sure about how the plates on its body body on its abdomen how the plates overlap but i don't know if that's horse shit or not another area of profound ignorance you know in my mind uh but my hatchet is badass and i'm gonna post a video he makes these videos how he makes the stuff it's pretty cool man he makes like it's amazing so uh you know jordan jonas he won a alone, one of the alone seasons, um, with, uh, he got a, um, he shot a moose with a, with his bow and then, um, a Wolverine was trying to

get the meat and he killed it with a, with an ax. Um, anyways, that's a single bevel ax. It's a traditional Siberian ax. And I got to be friends with him. He sent me, sent me the ax. So I had it for a while. It's got a notch in there for every day.

I think it was 70 days he was there, but. He gave you the ax? He sent it to me cause I actually did a CAD model. We were thinking about getting some made actually. Oh, I got you. Um, but anyway, it's a single bevel. So they use that to like shave bark off of trees and things like that.

But. Where, where are they filming that, that they can, that they can buy animals without needing tags? Do they film all in Nunavik? Canada, like Vancouver Island or something? No. They've been in different places. I think they get hunting licenses and they can just shoot like-

There's no way that dude, there's a guy that killed a muskox. He didn't draw a muskox tag, I can tell you that. And he wasn't hunting with a guide, or he was. But it's like, I'd love to know where they're, I think that some of that was Nunavak. So they're like actually, they're able to buy the animals from the, what do they call? First Nations. First Nations. They're able to buy animals from the First Nations people.

Because you're not, you can't hunt big game in Canada without a guide. Right. I've always been puzzled by that. I had a casting lady call me up about that show one time. I remember that, Chester, because Chester makes bows. Well, he quit.

Yeah. Yeah. I recently got a message about being on a dating show for rural folks. So if we have anyone in the office here, we could put them on that. Oh, and they wanted you to date?

They wanted you to date? Mm-hmm. Yep. Did you tell them you're married? I did. Like farmers only? You know, I don't know. It was around the time when-

Is it because you're the host of the trivia show? No, I don't think so. I think it was- Oh, come on. I would imagine 100 folks on Instagram got this same canned message about being on this dating show for like hunters, anglers, farmers, just rural folks is how they described it. Man. It's going to be an awkward conversation with my wife

tonight. You think you'd do well on there? I'm not getting any casting queries. I can only hope. I'd be like, you know, baby, we've had a good thing going, but I've had opportunities. These could really further my career.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. 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.

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on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. All right, Darren, I want to jump in. So that was like a – we had like a – I want to get back to the story. After the nerd session is over?

Just nerd it out. I want to hear more. Every time I talk to Bill, I feel stupid. Oh, yeah, sure. He's just like a – this guy's a genius. Yeah, but that's why there's people around, and it makes it – you don't have to think about stuff yeah it's perfect yeah with me he's like hey he's like hey we're gonna make this arrow for you i'm like great yeah i have a lot it's like i got like a lot of opinions about a lot of kinds of uh i have a lot of well-earned opinions about about rifles ammunition knives apparel but for whatever reason i've just taken for whatever

reason when it comes to archery i have a you tell me attitude i just know who i'm gonna ask exactly right i know i'm gonna ask way and and i'm gonna go because there's a thing then i'm guilty of it other people are guilty of it. You have a great experience, right? Like you do something and you hit a bull and the bull takes two steps, the tips over or whatever, or it's a really big bull. And then the rest of your life, you're like, by God, you know, I like a right-hand twist. Do you see how big my bull was?

And you're kind of like, yeah, but you could have run eight arrow. Like, I don't know. Could you have run eight different arrow configurations through that bull and the same thing would have happened or not? Like, it's so, there's so much anecdotal, right? Or some guys are like, I'll never use that broadhead again. I lost a bull. Well, maybe you should have put a better shot on it.

Should you have hit it in the knee? Like, I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know. And so you can get drowned by the um unless you have just like experience after experience after experience after experience you can get drowned um in the anecdotal oh absolutely so i just like to have people i know i always talk to phelps i like hearing what bill has to say uh it was the same way you know in football everybody's got it you know there's always a different way to do something right and uh like especially pass rushing because it is ultimately football is a violent game of

chess uh-huh is what it is it's good because there's no other call the show i saw the episode of that man yeah it's just a violent game of chess and it is like how you fail it's that's why it's the relation between bow hunting and football to me is so it's so strong because you fail so much like you fail way more than you succeed on the football field and in those failures you have to find like the weakness that like that you created so i'm always like doing something to set something up later right so when it comes to pass rushing i'm gonna i'll bull rush a guy right so i'll just come off and just power him just put my head under his chin put my hands in his chest and drive him back well what's that going to do the next time next time he's gonna be like he's gonna probably bull rush me again so i'm gonna sit a little heavier then i'd try to get by him just wipe his hands

you know do something and then okay that that that might have worked so i kind of try to swipe his hands again so he oversets then i spin off of that so then you know that's that might've worked. So I kind of try to swipe his hands again. So he oversets, then I spin off of that. So then, you know, that's, that's what it turns into. It turns into just like this dance. And for me, it was the same way with, um, you know, I grew up hunting whitetail and, um, in Turkey, Ohio, Northeast Ohio. So that's what I was primarily hunting. So Western hunting was so like, I always wanted to do spot and stocks because you can't spot and stock whitetail in Ohio because it's good luck. It's not going to work. Did you start out young?

Yeah, I killed my first whitetail when I was 13, 14 years old. And that was back when you had to wait a while, right? It's not like now you can just start your kid hunting whenever you feel like it. Well, I started pheasant hunting when I was like nine or 10. Oh, so you were, okay. Yeah. So you were like, I think it's like nine or 10 is like the cutoff. Cause that, yeah.

A lot of that, a lot of that's changed so much, but I'm quite a bit older than you are. And you had to be like, you couldn't, you couldn't hunt deer with a gun until you were 14. Oh, wow. See, I killed my first deer with a bow. Yeah. That was a, and it was, I took a climber out and was on a buddy's farm and I just like first buck that showed its face, you know, showed its antlers, this little four pointer just showed up and I just started losing my mind up there and put a good shot

on me, ran 14 yards and died. But you weren't hunting with your dad though. No, no. I don't know my dad. Um, I was hunting with friends. Like lay, do you mind laying that out quick for me? Yeah. Yeah. dad um i was hunting with friends like lay that lay do you mind laying that out quick for me yeah yeah so so i grew up um my mom married a guy when i was uh three months old okay i married um it

wasn't my dad have you tracked your dad down now no tried can't find she doesn't know she doesn't my mom doesn't know who it is well have you gone and done like the 23 and yeah we've done all that stuff and i'm upset now they have now they have my dna and i don't like that but they're not finding matches they're not finding any matches little clusters they found out like where i'm from like the scandinavian viking background and stuff but um it goes from scandinavia to ireland and straight to appalachia yeah because i gather sometimes they'll be it'll be that oh in some neighborhood in Cleveland, right, there's a bunch of activity that seems like a geek. We couldn't find anything.

Had a lot of leads that could, you know, people are like, oh, he kind of looks like you or he's big or this, that. And it's like, you know. It's not Chester. Yeah. It's just we couldn't find it. So that's why, you know know when i got introduced i got introduced to hunting by my stepdad but his idea of hunting was like he'd hand me a 410 and sit me under a

tree and tell me not to move and i'd sit there and freeze for four hours and then we'd leave that's not bad advice yeah he was better than giving you a 410 and telling you to move yeah exactly it was good i mean he'd say yeah sit here't move. And then he'd go off and wander off somewhere and then tell me he'll be back to get me. And I'd be sitting there just shivering. Like it didn't matter if a deer came, I couldn't move in any ways to shoot it. So, um, that was my idea of hunting with him.

Um, so then I, when I, I met a friend when I was in middle school, it was really in a bow hunting and, uh, his brother was a little bit, a little bit taller. So when I was, when I was like 12, 13, 14, I was shooting probably like a 28-inch draw or something like that. So I could just pick up a grown man's bow

and start shooting it. Yeah, yeah. So I started shooting this old PSE that he had. It was like his old bow, and it was just like a natural thing for me. I just had no problem putting the arrow where I wanted it to go. It just made sense.

So I really like picked it up then and I was obsessed with it. The problem was, is that football kind of got in the way of that because September and fall, September, October, November is football season all the way into December. So you really, you're getting like late season hunts or all that are available. Yep. So once I got into the, to college, I didn't get to hunt much at all. It was like every now and then type of thing. Right.

So it was like, if I had a, you only get two weeks off a year in college football. That's all you get. So if it was like, you know, we were playing in a BCS game in January or something, we'd get like a little four day weekend where we could, I could dip off up to Northeast Ohio and hit somebody's farm and, and I would just, you know, shoot the first thing that came. So I guess it meet and that's kind of how it went. So, and I never had my, I didn't have my own bow anymore. I couldn't afford one.

So I, like when I got drafted, I had $7 in my name. Didn't have a bank account. Huh? Didn't have a, I didn't pay. I paid everything in cash because I had a Pell grant. I just cashed that check and pay all my rent and everything out of that. I was on scholarship, so they just paid for all the other stuff, you know? So I didn't have any, any concept of like, you know, buying like a $1,500 Matthews.

You didn't grow up around any kind of money. No, no, there was, everybody's pretty, the average income in my hometown is like 16,000 a year. Yeah. So it's, it's a pretty poor area, but a lot of hunters, everybody hunts, you know, it's like we get the first day, the first day of opening shotgun season, everybody's off from school. Nobody goes to school that day.

It's, they just call it off. So it's a big deal where I come from, but that's also another thing why I didn't really like gun hunting because, um, we'd go out and to public land and gun hunt. And it was like, you had to dodge bullets the whole time because if a deer jumped up and ran, it was like five or six, you know, different groups of people shooting at the same deer running across the ridge. And you're standing on that ridge and you just hear the bullets whizzing by. And it's like, you know, those are big slugs, you know, so they're really only a hundred yards away from you.

So they're not far. They know that you're up there. What are you shooting up here for for so it was just dangerous so i just enjoyed bow hunting better because um you're sitting in a tree stand you're kind of you know there's a strategy involved so that's why that's why like when i started elk hunting when i was finally able to elk hunt which was you know i waited 10 years in the nfl to living in denver and seeing all my buddies getting to go and this and that and i was like man, man, I would love to go. But I had no idea about the point draw and all this and that. So my first time getting to go elk hunt and really like seeing how it's the same type

of chess match. It is. Everything can go right. But if that bull decides he doesn't want to just take another step out of now from behind that tree, it's kind of over for you. Or if the wind switches on you, like all these factors go in, go into it and everything has to happen for a reason. Like you're, you're making these moves prior, like, okay, I've spotted this bull over on

this Ridge. So how do I get there? I have to make all these different moves over hours of like four or five hours to get myself in position with the wind being right. So I can get get make a move on this bull and I there's something about that that I just I love it like I love the planning of it and I love the I love even the failure I always learn something in that failure right it's just same way in the football field if it didn't work I learned something from it I'm not going to go

out there and try the same thing you know I'm going to let's let's switch it up and try a different route and that's something I loved and then what I also loved is, you know, I said this on the Go Hunt podcast I was talking about. You know, when I was finally able to release an arrow on a bull, I've won, I've sacked quarterbacks in Super Bowls. I've sacked Tom Brady in AFC Championship games. 80,000 people screaming, howling, you know, because my last name is wolf so they howled so like that feeling is very surreal like when you sack somebody and jump up and howl and then the whole crowd does it with you there's something that goes that but i've never felt the kind of emotions i felt when i was finally able to put my first bull down how good your howl

i mean i didn't i just was screaming oh i'm. Just like, you finally released it. But when I was finally able to put an arrow through a bull and put my hands on him. Yeah. You like that better? Listen, when I was seven years old, I was six years old. Bill and I were talking about this. I watched Reggie White and the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre win a Super Bowl. Go Pack.

And I was a huge Packers fan. And I was like, I watched Reggie White grab that Lombardi trophy and he put his Super Bowl championship t-shirt over his pads and jersey and carried that thing around. And I was like, I want to do that. That's like, that was my vision, right? That's what I want to do. That's what like sparked it right away. And I started playing tackle football next year. So my dream was to do that well i got to do that and i got to carry that super bowl trophy around and it was like i when you reach like a goal it's like point zero zero one percent of people get to actually live out their childhood dream right like it's such a a small a small occasion but i always dreamed of

elk hunting it seemed so far out of touch for me. Like it seemed like something I would never be able to attain growing up in Ohio. Like I, like I said, it was poor, you know, how am I going to get to Colorado? How am I going to get to Montana? Like that's the thing. These things seem so far out of touch. So when I was finally able to do that, it was a stronger emotion than I had

ever felt in my life. Got it. Really. When I was finally able to connect with a bull. And just like the whole experience, right? Hearing a bull come in just screaming and just so you feel it rattling in your chest. It's an unexplainable feeling

unless you've been around it. And you don't even have to hunt to do it. You just go out in the, you know, take, go middle of September, go down to New Mexico and see what that's like. It's like Jurassic Park out there. You know, so that was, you know, my first, my first bull was like the best feeling i've ever had in my life you know and i i i feel bad saying that because i have a daughter and all this stuff but like this yeah

yeah this is a different accomplishment right different feeling i didn't really do anything on that on the childbirth i just was there i didn't have to do much. Dude, when my first kid was born, I passed out. Really? Yeah, because they got out that big-ass spinal tap deal needle. Oh, for the epidural? Yeah, I passed out, man. Dude, that was... You know, I later told the nurse.

I said, man, I could eat your arm and it wouldn't bother me. But you getting ready to drive that needle into my wife's back. Have you ever passed out before no i don't run around passing no i don't know i kind of i've tried to spin it off blame various things like i had sounds like your wife's fault had enough to eat nothing like that you know but yeah i felt so bad for my wife when she was getting that thing because she was having contractions while they were putting that in to respond and i was just like i was i was freaking out i was so sketched out yeah and there's some like there's some little complication while they're

trying to get everything hurried along you know yep because they're well they they're monitoring the heart you know whatever i can't remember the details now but it got stressful and so they're like we're gonna it can't be one way we're gonna do it the other way and and i woke up out in the hallway and I had in this nurse's lap. How's everybody else doing? Did you miss the? No, no, no. I made it back in. I made it back in. That was so embarrassing.

I just envisioned him dragging him out. So embarrassing. I envisioned he wrapped up like a little baby. They brought me to that little area where they put all the babies. This one's already circumcised. Oh my gosh. When you got blown up so bad about the lion, did it change anything about your behavior or anything

it yeah it did it changed a lot i felt like a sense of responsibility right and the responsibility side of it was that okay now i can see what kind of attack that we're really under as hunters yeah is that right well i saw i could see it that it's a really planned out attack and uh somebody you know a guy named lou webb who's just an awesome guy, you know, he gave me this analogy for me. Um, he was like, look, he's like, as hunters, we have to be like an elk herd. What are the wolves try to do to the elk herd? They try to split them apart and pick out the week and kill the week.

Right. They pick them out and they start, and then that's how you kill them is you put, you separate the herd and then they, they follow one, kill it and get another one, kill it. So if we want to stay together and keep this lifestyle, we have to put aside all of our, our egotistical, you know, garbage really. And it's like, okay, who cares if you're a gun hunter or you're a rifle hunter, or you're a crossbow hunter, or you're a long bow hunter, or you're a traditional bow hunter, or you're a compound bow hunter. I don't care bow hunter or you're a traditional bow hunter or you're a compound bow hunter i don't care i don't care what kind of broadheads you shoot i don't care any of that stuff that stuff does not matter because at the end of the day if

we don't if we keep infighting and arguing with each other and trying to like take each other down they're gonna win because they have millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars backing them you know this industry doesn't have that kind of money. We have to spend that money just to keep the wildlife safe and ready to go for us to hunt them. You know, the amount of money that we spend on gear and stuff, like they are spending all that money just on ending it, ending it. They don't want us to do it.

Like something about it. They hate, they don't care. You can't reason with them. And I felt a sense of responsibility to try to bring us together as hunters and try to keep us in that tight little group and like stick together. You know? So I did, I felt a big sense of responsibility, but I also, um, I also had this sense of like, you know, I don't want to get too vulgar, but fuck them. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like, I did everything by the book. I'm not poaching.

The amount of money that our, our money, all the money that we spend on hunting goes straight into the, keeping their trails going. They don't, how do they not realize this? Yeah. That you want to, you want, you want your lakes and you want your trails and you want your bike paths and you want all this stuff taken care of. Who do you think pays for that? Hunters pay for that. So as a conservationist and hunters are conservationists,

you know, if you do it by the book, that's what you're doing, right? You're out. I'm not out just looking for any lion to kill, right? I'm not out just looking for any elk to kill or any bear,

any deer. I'm looking for a big mature animal that is, and I'm going to eat that animal. And it's, everything is used. I use everything yeah and you're you're in your opera in in your case as we highlighted you're operating within a very a very finely tuned state and federal sanctioned yeah activity yeah the north american

model is the gold standard yeah and it's and it and it's like, this is how this elaborate team of biologists and land managers have decided to maintain and utilize a resource. I point out, like the wolf analogy is good. There's another one, people say, you you know we're all in this boat together and i'll point out that now and then certain people will shoot we're in the boat together and they'll shoot holes in the bottom of the boat meaning people you know i'm talking about people who go and and not only operate outside of any kind of legal framework but operate outside of any you know they become unproductive like they're not helpful right people who are you know violating like like repeat violation of laws willful violation of laws give people a black eye but i think that like you're saying man um for for someone to be

operating in accordance with the law when we generally all agree on how these things are established to then have that person be crucified, I think is also an attack on this very effective wildlife management system. Oh yeah. And they'll put false statements out there. You know, there's an organization, we won't say their name, but everybody can probably imagine who they were. Starts with a P. They put out that I poached, they've said that I poached it or did it illegally or that these animals are like mountain lions are the only big cat thriving in North America. Like they are thriving. Go to California. The deer population is like decimated yeah they're expanding they're expanding numbers yeah colonizing new territory expanding numbers because that's

what they do you know and then they're like well why can't you just uh you know move it to another area well where are we going to move it to because there's already a lion in that area you know what if you'd have done that you know what you've been doing you've been breaking the law breaking the law exactly you're not you can't you just can't do've been breaking the law breaking the law exactly you're not you can't you just can't do that lying in the back of your truck i decided to take it upon myself to move it to a new area i darted it yeah darted it'd be like ricky bobby were you surprised by any of your allies in the football community or otherwise when this went down i was surprised by the lack of the allies.

Oh, really? Yeah. You know, I dealt with this in multiple things, right? So I refused to get vaccinated. Did you get in trouble for that? I got fined a lot of money. Really? Yeah, but I just, the science,

they kept saying, believe in the science. I'm like, well, the science isn't there, so I'm not going to believe anything that you tell me. I also wouldn't kneel during the anthem, so i lost a lot of friends over that but i'm hold on a minute you lost friends for not kneeling yeah they i was so the there was a the wash i think it was a washington post uh front page put derrick wolf tells they asked me why aren't you gonna kneel and i was like well you know, I have a lot of friends and family and people that have served.

I remember, I remember this. If even one person says that it offends them or like kind of makes them feel weird about it and they don't like it, I'm not going to do it. If even one veteran says that. Yeah. I'm still not, I'm not going to kneel. I didn't know there was a pressure. I didn't know there was a problem.

I knew there was a normal, there was pressure. Big time pressure. There was a pressure to do it. Big time pressure to kneel. know there was a pressure. I didn't know there was a problem. I knew there was a normal, there was pressure. There was a pressure to do it. Yeah. Big time pressure. We didn't very pressure. They pressured us heavy to just kind of jump on board and do it. You didn't get fined for that.

No, I didn't get fined for that, but I did get labeled as a racist. So the Washington post put on Derek Wolf tells his black teammates to go back to Africa. What? When all I said was, if you don't love, if you don't love this country, I had just traveled to Thailand. So I saw what these people lived like on the Bangkok river. I saw what, you know, these little mountain towns in Chiang Mai,

how they lived and they're happy as could be. But I realized how privileged we are to live in America. Like even the poorest of the poor are living better than how they're living over there. And they're still happy.

But to me, I said, if you don't love, if you don't love this country, we live. But to me, I said, if you don't love this country, we live in the best country in the world. If you don't love this country, then why do you live here? That's all I said. It's just a simple question. Like, why do you stay? Like, you're free to go and come and go as you please. You know, so that was, they interpreted that as,

and they put it in quotes too. So I had to. Really? Yeah, and when I finally got them to take it down, the damage was already done. So now I got teammates of mine who i'd won a super bowl with looking at me like dude i thought like are you like is he a racist they're like my family's calling me ask me if you're a racist if you're this if you're that i'm like dude what are you kidding me yeah like really so yeah i dealt with stuff like that before so and then when this when the lion thing came out i noticed it even you know, that people were like distancing themselves from me.

And I was like, whatever, man, like I'm going to be who I am. I'm going to stick to my beliefs. I'm not going to change for, for anybody, especially when I'm not hurting anybody. Uh, just because somebody is offended, you know, by the lifestyle that I live because I i love this lifestyle and it's it brings me you know killing an animal it's not the point it's the journey like my favorite part of that hunt and in that story is the journey to get there and you notice how when i tell the story it's a small very small part of actually when i shot the animal yeah most of the story is the grind to get there it's the same with every animal. So they take,

they all, but all they want to see is the, cause, cause that's what happens is you post a picture, right? It's like, look, you know,

check it out, you know, but the only reason I'm doing, I'm not gonna post a picture of something. I just walked up and, and was able to kill easy. I want to tell the story about how difficult it was and how much of a grind it was to get to that point. So,

so to me, if you, if, if you don't want to be friends with me because of that, then I don't really want to be friends with you anyway. So that's fine. Yeah. You know, but even, even, you know, people will still come up and be like, did you really have to kill that lion?

It's like, who cares? Who, what do you care? Why do you care? I did everything by the book. It wasn't like some, somebody's pet. Are you, is that an actual question? Yeah. Like I,

really? Like, why do you care? You know, I, but you try to educate it, educate them on it. You know,

I did an interview on Tucker Carlson where I just started hitting him with numbers because I knew I was going to have a short segment. So I was like, I'm going to take the opportunity to hit him with some conservation numbers about how many attacks on people happen. Like once, one a year a year, every two years,

somebody gets killed by a lion. Yeah. And then what they do to the cubs and what that does to the population of the lions. So it's actually good for the population of lions to take out these big mature toms. If your goal is to have more lions. Right.

If we were out there just wanting to kill lions, we'd go out there and just start shooting every lion you saw. But you do, but you still, you do, you would like to have a healthy lion population because it's still cool to have, have those things around.

Um, but when it comes to like the wolves, that's what this actually segued me into this, the whole wolf or, you know, trying to keep the wolves out of different areas. Colorado's already kind of screwed on that one, but the least we can do is make it available to hunt them,

which is still, you're never going to dent that population because it's impossible. I mean, look at the coyotes, you know, coyotes just destroy. You can definitely, it's a good man. I think it's a good management tool to have like a sort of controlled growth of, you know, I mean, we've been doing it here. Like we've been doing it while here, Idaho, Wyoming. I mean, we've been hunting out, we've been hunting wolves now for years and still seeing expansions of population, healthy numbers. It's not like it's the way it's positioned as an either or is ridiculous. It's like either, you either can have wolves or you can have wolf hunting, which will result in no wolves. And that argument has been thoroughly, I mean, no one would know it.

No one from PETA would realize it. But that argument has been thoroughly put to rest that you can very successfully have healthy, stable wolf populations alongside state-managed wolf hunting. Yeah. alongside state managed wolf hunting yeah and it's been there is zero cases with mountain lion hunting there is zero cases where modern like regulated hunting of mountain lions i'm not talking about back in 1890 when they were poisoning them with strychnine yeah regulated hunting of mountain lions having any appreciable impact on mountain lion numbers it's like it's just not a thing yeah it's not you're gonna have roughly the same amount of lions you're gonna have the same amount of lines whether you know if you're hunting or not hunting especially when you factor in that the lion like you got would have statistically however it would have wanted

being killed by a state agent yeah because it was like in california it was too comfortable around people california as soon as they got rid of lion hunting, the number of lions they kill, that state biologists kill, goes through the roof. And now they're killing the same number of lions annually as they always were. When they could be, they're missing out on opportunity for people to hunt them. People used to pay to go do it. Now you pay a guy to go do it. Yeah.

Do you think the lion, you think when the lion gets killed, he's like, well, thank God it was a government agent. Exactly. It's like, of course not. It's silly. Honestly, it's silly. And you know what I think it is? I was just hoping it wasn't some local.

Yeah, I hope it wasn't some guy out here. Better not have been just some guy, some hunter. I'm glad he's got lights on his truck. And I think this all has to do with the, it's it's because they're not thinking they don't want to hear the science or the rationality behind it they're just thinking emotionally which i understand that they're emotional about it and they love cats or whatever like but you know at the end of the day man like you have to manage if you're gonna live in within the nature like if you're gonna build houses up in the mountains and you're gonna to live in the mountains, you have to manage that, that population.

It's here's the other thing that frustrates me about this conversation is that at this point they're managed as a big game animal. The regulations are more strict. Yeah. If you like, if anyone ever, if anyone who's like uneasy about mountain lion hunting from not in terms of that, they feel bad for the mountain lion. If anyone's uneasy about mountain lion hunting in terms of that it's like exercise in a reckless fashion i would invite you to go and try if you're not from a hunting background i would invite you to go

and try to understand mountain lion regulations yeah in terms of how thinly sliced the map is and all the quota systems around males females tiered season structures you have to take a test dude before you get your license it's like you know you get most places you get yourself deer license it's like the most you got to figure out is that you know you get like whatever amount of time and it's either got antlers or it don't yeah you know you get into um these 24 hour 48 hour reporting hotlines so that you have like a a portion of a mountain range carved off and you're gonna allow one female and if that female gets killed you have x hours to register it the whole season shuts down within 48 hours there's like nothing like that no i mean some bighorn sheep stuff there's really that level of detailed management i shouldn't say nothing

because there's a handful of fur bears that fall into that but anyways that's like that's a level of focus and precision that is not exercised elsewhere no not broadly exercised i could explain montana's hunting regs to just about anybody with the exception of mountain lions i wouldn't know where to begin to start yeah like it's just inordinately complicated yeah and it's they they it's it's managed that it's managed as like a long-term renewable resource yeah and focused. And like that has not, like I want to be clear, that has not always been the case,

but that's the case now. Right. You know? Well, it's funny because you always, you know, you talk about, you know, what they used to do back in the day. When you see those old timey pictures

of guys, you know, at hunt camp and it's like five guys and they got like 10 deer hanging in the background. Sure. You know, a bunch of 10 deer, a bear, a lion. Yeah.

They got all these different animals because there was, the rules weren't there. They could just go out and do whatever they wanted. I'm going to post a picture from a guy gave me a picture from 1954 of a bunch of dudes in Utah. I don't know what the regs, there was regs in

1954, but with a flat bed loaded with mule deer like you would not like bucks like you would not just giant you can't even tell how many you're in there but some of the just like some of the bucks in that truck are like what yeah you know i mean definitely like there's like spreads in there there's like a buck in there it's got to have i don't know 36 inch but they're like, spreads in there. There's, like, a Buccaneers that's got to have, I don't know, 36 inches. But they're just piled in there. Yeah, piled. It's insane.

It blows my mind. You know, even these, like, old-time duck hunters and stuff, too. You see these piles of duck, like, no limits, you know. I've got an old photo from my grandpa that I need to get in, like, maybe the podcast room. Well, it's pretty full for my office. But it's a big, blown-up it's big blown up photo of like what you guys are talking about a bunch of deer there's a couple frozen foxes yeah hanging out the back it's pretty cool it's pretty wild la la huffman was this great photographer that he uh photography was just becoming a thing that you could you know move around with a camera and this dude named la huffman made it out to mile city montana in the winter of 1881 so he got to do photos of the so the last big

buffalo slaughter was the winter of 8182 it was when the railroad hit mile city and kind of tapped into the core of the northern herd and they killed a couple million that winter that was the last big shoot um and he got to go he took photos of some of these hide hunters and there's this one photo he has they used to make these dugouts they just dig into a cut bank and um the amount of like stuff that they got piled up around there right down to frozen buffalo fetuses as decorations and then some of those pictures he took too of like the mule deer heads and even now the whitetail heads where it'd be like just one dude standing there with like a the dugout canoe and 50 bucks wow i mean you look at

it you gotta be like that i've had pretty good time check that out but on the other hand like oh my god man well that just shows you how many there probably were yeah these guys are shooting for the mining they're shooting for the mining camps yeah shooting meat for the mining camps and um and like even just what what was their awareness about were they were they you know colonel dodge of dodge city colonel Dodge talked about what he thought was just this extraordinary mule deer that was lost in a fire. And you'd be like, I would love to see what that guy thought, what that guy in 1870 thought was just an extraordinary mule deer. It's probably just ridiculous. Oh, you'd love to know, right?

Yeah. Because look at these pictures. These pictures, these guys are like, meh. You're like, dude. It's a 200-inch buck. Yeah. Those bucks ain't around. Yeah. You know, and you got like know, right? Yeah. Because look at these pictures. These pictures, these guys are like, nah. You're like, dude. It's a 200-inch buck. Yeah. Those bucks ain't around. Yeah.

And you got like six of them. Yeah. It would have been great. It would have been great to see some of that stuff. You know, it's funny. I heard you say something. I forget what episode you were talking about. We talked about like a time machine.

Like, where would you want to go? Mm-hmm. And I think you talked about Daniel Boone coming through the Cumberland Gap. Yeah. And when you said that, that just stuck with me. Cause I was like, man, I always thought that way too.

Like I'd be walking, you know, walking in Appalachia and coming through these mountains and you know, what was it like out here before all these people came in here? Like, what was the wildlife like? Cause I know how the, I mean, there's deer everywhere. Well, you'll have to listen to.

I was going to say this. You know, we got a project just for you. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Perfect. Cause we're going to tip. We're going to tackle that question. I just think that would be incredible.

No, we're going to, we're going to get into a lot of that kind of stuff. Um, what, what were those guys? How did they hunt? What were they doing? What were they seeing? What was it like? Why was that area so full of game? Yeah.

Probably not what you'd expect. Yeah. You know, it's a crazy story. You guys stick around for trivia. Yeah. Bill, you gonna play trivia? Did you play trivia before? I did, yeah.

Did you lose? I did not win. Did you beat the Shelby Index? We'll talk about it on the show. How about that? Oh, hey, I got a thing for you. What's up? A stat.

A guy proposed a stat. Okay. Can I tell you that now? Yeah. He thinks that you ought to do, when I was doing the, oh, you know, it keeps, here's the thing. Fonny has already told Corinne this story. I got two things for you real quick.

Okay. Someone came up to me and said, they couldn't figure out why corinne did so bad at trivia and i told corinne that they said that they looked her up and she looks very smart okay uh-huh just they couldn't make any sense out of it yeah can you make any sense out of it i don't know what they're expecting they're expecting to see someone that just looked like a poor performer at trivia here's the stat and it's a good one okay strong strong strong closers and strong beginners like you know how people say you know that the right they start strong they come back and finish

strong is there anything to that well we've seen with the overtime questions that brody is by far our weakest performer on the contrary i think you're our strongest performer in overtime steve does that make you feel good i think you feel great yeah so i don't know because the 10 questions are kind of random about how they're organized but i think you can pick up a lot of intel about how folks handle overtime. One thing I wanted to add, we work with a guy, Garrett Long. He's going to hook you up with a bunch of First Light stuff. Okay, cool. Sweet.

He's going to get you squared away on that. Then you're going to stick around for trivia. Bill's going to play trivia. You didn't win last time. Did not. Do you feel like you're going to win? No. Really? No. Not a chance. Here's a quick question for you. You know how you throw a bone to guess?

Is there going to be like a double bone throw? We have one for each of them. What kind of categories are there? We'll talk about it on the show. Play the drop, Phil! Oh, right on. Bill? Bill? son Ride on Ride on Ride on my

long sweetheart We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on

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