The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 867: Jim Zumbo - An Outdoor Legend at 85

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with outdoor legend and veteran outdoor writer Jim Zumbo.  Topics discussed: Playing with insects as a kid; going to school for biology; winning a bet and and getting your first article published by Outdoor Life; how the editors always wanted bear mauling stories; "The Cow Call" and the "World Record Whitetail'; the very first rifle; having Obsessive Compulsive Firewood Disorder; philanthropic efforts with veterans; Jim's To Heck with Elk Hunting, To Heck with Deer Hunting, To Heck with Moose Hunting books; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. My God, are we lucky? We're joined today in the 85th year of his life very well-lived. veteran outdoor writer, biologist, and TV host Jim Zumbo. Thank you, sir. Delighted to be here.

Multi-decade tenure at Outdoor Life magazine is show Jim Zumbo outdoors on the outdoor channel. Known for Big Game Hunting, known for cooking, known for being a great guy. He has written, by his own estimation. He tried to count this up one day. 2,500 magazine articles and 21 books. Jim, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

I want to go back in time and talk about your career and how you came to do what you want to do, but I'm too dying to talk about something else first. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about is an article you wrote and a man you talked to. And we were talking about this before we started recording is I'm just going to refresh viewers on the story if they haven't heard it. The last known grizzly bear in Colorado, the last documented grizzly bear in Colorado, the last documented grizzly bear in Colorado was killed

by an archer in 79? In 1979. September of 79. Okay. It was an old female. The archer claimed that he was out hunting elk

in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. The archer claimed that he was attacked by the grizzly and he killed it. Now, for many years prior, no one had seen a grizzly at all in Colorado.

Colorado. They were hiding. Just very few of them. Most people assumed they were gone. After that, Grizzly was killed, people launched a monstrous search. That's not the right word. Monstrous. Yeah. That's good. That's good.

Yeah. Amando search. That was good. All through the San Juan's, trying to establish that there was a population there, never to find one. This story is, this story has a lot of twists and turns and there's some controversial elements to it. But tell us about, until this morning, I didn't know that you spoke to that man in the hospital.

Yeah. Tell the story. So I was, I'd drawn a desert sheep hunt in Utah in southern Utah in 79. And hunted for a week and I was on my way home to get more gear. And I heard on the radio that this guy had killed the grizzly bear with a handheld arrow. And I was Western editor for Outdoor Life at that time, so I thought, holy smokes, what a story. So I called my boss in New York, and I told him, he says,

get that story. Forget your sheep hunt for now. So I drove to Alamos at Colorado, got a motel, and visited him in the hospital and spent probably five days. The nurses kept kicking me out because he was hurt really bad. And so I was able to maybe spend 20 minutes or a half hour a day with him, but I got the story. What were the injuries he had?

Well, the bear had bitten through his left shoulder, and it had bitten through his right leg, made hamburger out of it. And he just sustained all kinds of wounds around his body. He was hunting with a, he had a client, a farmer from Kansas, Mike, and they had split up. Ed was outfitting.

He's a bow hunter, so he had his bow, and the other guy had a bow, and they split up. And all of a sudden, this bear came charging at him. And before he could do anything, it was on top of him, knocked him over. Ed's a big guy. He could be a linebacker for an NFL team. Big burly guy. So the bear's on top of them and chewing away and blood all over the place, and he knows he's going to die. There's no way out unless the bear leaves.

And he sees an arrow. He had his arrows in a quiver. and he sees an arrow laying on the ground and he got the arrow and the bear is on top of him and he kept jabbing him and he hit the aorta in his throat whatever that vein is maybe jugular whatever and the bear started bleeding all over him

and all of a sudden the bear walked walked away and flopped over and died so in the meantime Ed's screaming and yelling and whatever or Mike, the guide, comes running over, and he sees Ed, and he's in panic. The guy that got mauled was the client or the guide? The guide. Okay, that's okay.

That's what I thought. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. So Mike, the client, come running over, and Ed's covered with blood, and he gets pretty upset, obviously, and one of the horses takes off because it's full of blood. They had two horses. So he tried to get up on a horse and he kept passing out. And he just didn't work.

So finally, he got him on a horse and they headed toward camp. They were way back in the wilderness. I don't think the hunter Mike had ever been there before. They got to a big clearing and where a helicopter could land. and Ed told Mike to get back to camp and bring some help and call a helicopter. I guess I had a satellite phone back in camp. So he told Mike how to get the camp. Mike had never been there before.

There was a trail, but it would have been six miles out of the way. He told him how to get right to camp. So before he left, Mike dragged a bunch of wood over to start a fire because in the mountains is going to get cold at night. And Ed was just, I mean, he covered with blood hurt and he thought he was going to die. Yeah. So he started a fire and he left, went back to camp. His dad was a doctor.

And he had a medical kit. Somehow he finds camp in the dark by riding his horse across the mountains. Comes back in the middle of the night. And somehow his dad and a couple other guys, they had gotten off the trail. And his horse went over a cliff with the medical gear. straight down and died. You're kidding me.

No. Dude, I never heard that part of the story. That's what, that's exactly what I wrote, what Ed told me. So they finally got to Ed and got a helicopter and got him out and took him to the hospital in Elamosa. So that's basically what happened.

Yeah. But like you said, there's been a controversy because people just, they didn't believe it. And how could this guy kill a bear with an arrow? you know today everything's a lot of it's fake news

some of it's that's BS you know that didn't happen but I don't have a problem with this part well because this I mean there's a documented

cases people kill them with 22s people kill them with knives yeah yeah yeah but to have a bear actually ravaging her body and having the presence

of mind to grab an arrow and just stab him and like I said it was a big he was a strong guy yeah but I believe in because I was there

he didn't have time to think up any lies. You know, he was laying in that bed. He was, you know, he was, he was loopy and stuff. But I really admire that guy. And, and, uh, he's since moved. He's living in the Midwest now.

I think he's about 92 years old. Really? Yep. Wow. Yep. Do you care what I think? Sure. Yeah.

What do you think? I wasn't there. I never talked to the guy. I've been to the place where it happened. Mm-hmm. it just gets a little like okay i'm going to paint a scenario for you that i use in situations like this like let's say there's an omniscient being okay god an omniscient being who knows every all the truth in the world and he says to me he says um is that the full story because he knows the

truth and he says to me is that the full story if you're right you live if you're wrong you die. So I have to get it right. There's no being cute. Okay. There's no trying to make a point. It's just what you got to make the best guess you can make. My guess is just more to that story.

First, I want to throw in an interesting tidbit and see if this is true, as you remember. Wasn't it that part of the thing was that they could tell from that, there was a female, and they could tell, I don't know how they can tell. But when they did a necropsy, they could tell that she had Bore Young. something about there's some signature on the reproductive system or another that would demonstrate

that she had had cubs. Right. And she was pretty old too, I think. She was 12 years old or 20 years old or something or anything. The fact that she had had cubs is part of what brought about this big search that people got involved in.

Oh, okay. To try to find others because it was like she had to have a lot and she had, presumably had bread with a male. Where's the male? And she had bore cubs. Where are the cubs? But no one ever turned.

That still remains today the last grizzly. I think so. I think there's more in the story. I like, I don't know. I don't know. If there's one, like, if there's one bear in the whole state, there's one bear in the San Juan's and that bear, an old female happens to mall the guy, unprovoked.

To me, it's just more plausible that they, that they try to get an arrow into it. Maybe they, maybe. and it's excusable. Maybe the idea of their being a grizzly there was totally out of their mind, and they were like, oh, Black Bear. And I feel like they got an arrow into it. If I had to guess, not knowing the gentleman, they got an arrow into it, and that led to everything that follows.

If I had to make a guess. Okay. What do you think about that? I don't know. I suppose anything is possible. No. But, yeah, I don't know. Now, they were hunting separately.

He was hunting maybe 150. They were just kind of still hunting through the forest. And then Mike heard his screaming and would come running over. Yeah. I don't know. I had no idea you met. I had no idea you were on that story. Yeah.

All right. Now you're ready to back up now, back in time? Yeah. Go even back deeper in time. Mm-hmm. How did you, like, where did you grow up and how did it ever click with you to, to, to, to, get into the career you got into and to make a whole life out of, you know, hunting and writing about hunting and telling stories and,

and sharing, you know, your life and profiling other people's lives and capturing this whole culture for all these decades. Where'd that come from? Well, I, when I was a kid, I was born and raised in Newburgh, New York, which is 60 miles north of New York City. It's in the Hudson Valley, 30,000 people. I was raised right in the city. And ever since I was a little kid,

I just love anything wild in the outdoors. I'd lay on the sidewalk and feed crumbs to the ants. I'd feed spiders. I had names for the spiders, you know. And I always wanted to be a game wardener or a Forest Ranger. And at one point, I thought I might like to be a writer. In high school, I had an English teacher named Miss Fink. And I loved to read when I was a kid.

I read books like Amick the Beaver and Tarker the Otter and all sorts of stuff. I'm not familiar with those books. They're old. They're old. I was a teenager when I was. I read them. It was a long time ago. Mm-hmm.

But she read one of my compositions said, you ought to be a writer. So I didn't, I didn't pay much attention to that because I wasn't a great student. During lunchtime, I'd be trapped in the woods behind high school. We had raccoon sets out and stuff, possums and stupid stuff and musk grass,

you know. What do you mean stupid stuff? You mean grinners, possums? Yeah. I'm not stupid about a possum. But anyway, I went to a little school in northern New York called Paul Smith, way up on the Adirondacks near the Canadian border,

There was a forestry school in liberal arts and hotel management. There were 400 students. One, hotel management, liberal arts and forestry? Take your pick on. Yeah, there were two forestry courses. And one of it was terminal or the other was pre-professional. The pre-professional course got you basically started for your bachelor's. We had to transfer it in one of the university.

I didn't take that one. I took the terminal course. We had classes like sawmilling and dynamiting. And we had a sugar bush. We had a sugar mill. Oh, really? Yeah, back in the, now they use tubes to get sugar syrup.

Sure. And those days, you drive a spiggin and a maple tree in March, colder than hell, three foot of snow, and put to hang a bucket on it. We go through the woods with a horse-drawn sleigh with a big vat. Yeah. We take those buckets, and then we put the sap in the sugar house, and somebody had to keep throwing wood in the stove,

and it had to be so many degrees. Anyway, that was one of the courses. so what that did you know i got to tell you something that you that okay when we were when we were little kids we didn't know we just knew it was maples we didn't know of sugar maples yeah and we had like a lot of the wrong maples we ran around you know we would just drill holes in those maples and then like take a peanut butter tub or something and try to nestle it up under that hole really tape it to the tree you know and we're always looking at it like what gives man I never got shit.

One interesting thing about the sap from the tree, if it's 2% or better, it's fantastic. In other words, you get two gallons of syrup from 100 gallons of sap. 3% is like impossible almost. Anyway, that was one of the courses. So that prepared me to be a woods boss or working a pulp mill or whatever.

I had a good buddy who, he taught me how to trap. He was always two years ahead of me in school. and he went out to Utah State. He said, hey, you got to come out here and get your degree. He says, he wants to, you know, if you want to be a game war, and you've got to have a damn degree. So I went in Utah. In Utah.

State, up in Logan. So I went there, I got my bachelor's. I got a backup. I'm sorry. When I was at Paul Smith, you know, in a lot of these little communities, the hunting communities, guys would say, oh, there's a big old buck out there.

And there was a great big white tail that everybody called Old Joe. Sure. and he was supposed to be this monster, maybe a mythical buck, I don't know. So one day I'm crawling around this cedar swamp, spagnum moss, and I got my 30-30 model 94 carbine, you know, and I was squeezing between a couple trees, and out jumps this huge buck. And all I could do was just look at him because I couldn't even move.

So I got a wild hearing, I wrote a story about it for the college paper, and they printed it. And I thought, holy smokes, you know, I was just so impressed to see that, stupid story in that little stupid paper. When I went out to Utah State, I lived with a bunch of foresters, and one of the guys worked on the paper called Student Life. And he said,

why don't you do a deer big game forecast? I said, okay. So I did. Tell me again, do what? A deer big game forecast. Oh, okay. Deer elk forecast for the upcoming season. Yeah, yeah.

So I did. And then he says, the editor wants you to see, you want to write a column. And I said, yeah, I wouldn't mind trying that. Now, I never took any journalism courses or anything, and I wish I did. But I wrote the column, and one night a bunch of foresters and a couple of professors, we went up the canyon.

It was a cabin up there. And we had a bathtub full of beer, and we were BS, and we were cooking hot dogs and hamburgers, and this professor comes over. He says, Zumbole says, you think you're a hot shit. He said, you write that stupid column in that paper. I'll bet you a case of Lucky Lager beer that you can't. sell a real story to a real magazine. So, you know, we were all kind of

half buzzed, and I said, I'll take you up on that. So there's a lake called Bear Lake on the Utah, Idaho border. And there's a Bonneville, Cisco that is endemic only to that lake. And they only spawn in January, and it's colder than hell, 20, 30, below zero. They spawn close to the shore.

So you go out there with Nets, and it's a gala event. People come from... That lake has an endemic Cisco? Yes, sir. They say that's the last. lake in the Bonneville ocean that still anyway deeper than heck turquoise beautiful water so Lyia's Club was out there selling hot chocolate and coffee and hot dogs people just a lot of people anyway I wrote a story about that and I'll be darn if out there life didn't buy it for how much money

350 bucks yeah oh yeah oh those days holy smokes yeah I just got married we're living in and student housing you know and brokered in hell and yeah and I So that kind of started all. And then I started freelancing. In the next three stories I sent to Outer Labor rejected. I wrote one on Rockchuck hunting. And the editor of Bill Ray says, that's a massacre, Zumbo.

He says, I can't use that story. But this guy, Bill Ray, of all the editors, Sports and Field, Outdoor Life and Field and Stream were all in New York City, right down in Manhattan. Sure. And they were still running those places out of it. When I started writing, still running those places out of New York. You'd be on the phone and they're

talking to people in New York. Yep. Yeah. Out of our life was on Madison, you would, it was, well, advertisers were. And that's what you think about it. Sports and field was there. But at any rate, Bill Ray was a kind of guy that he would, uh, he would encourage a writer even if he had gotten rejects. You know, a lot of editors would just, you know, we don't want your stuff anymore, but he, he was really a fantastic guy. I could probably tell you, 10 guys my age or less, most of them passed on, that got to start from Bill Ray. But anyway, that's how it started.

So he rejected three. At least three. Do you remember what else he rejected? No. Do you remember what the next one was that he bid on? Yes. I worked at West Point for eight years as a wildlife biologist and a post-forester and a game warden. and a buddy of mine

had developed a tip-up with a battery on it and a light. Yeah, I remember those. Well, he said, hey, let's go out fishing at night for walleyes in his lake. So we built a big fire and had a little whiskey, you know, and the lake went out there.

So I wrote a story called the Fisher Lighten. So said it to Paul Smith. Paul Smith said it to Outdoor Life, and they bought it. I thought, holy smokes. Wow. The next one was called Beacon in the Forest. Okay.

Where when I'm out there in the woods, I realize that in the fall, the first trees that turned yellow were hickrries. And squirrels love hickories. So I'd spot a yellow tree and I'd go there and I'd sit and by golly, here's the squirrels all over. And then they work on the oaks or whatever else. Sure, yeah. So I wrote a story called Beacon in the Forest. About hickricks. Beacon in the forest about hickrries.

And they bought that one. Yeah. Back when you were selling those articles in the early days, were they paying you on, were they doing a word count, paying you on a word count? No, just a flat fee. Flat fee. Yeah. Yeah.

But then I worked for the government 15 years. I worked for the state of Utah, Forestry and Fire Control for two years. Then I worked at West Point for eight years. Then I came back to Utah. I worked as a wildlife biologist for the BLM. And I got a call one day from Don Causey, who was executive editor. And he says, we'd like you to work for us as Western editor. I said, what does that mean?

He said, well, he says, you'll run the yellow pages, the old yellow pages, and work with all these stringers and all the states, and send us 720 lines of clean copy plus maps and photos, and that's your job. I said, God, I can't do that while I'm working for the government, can I? He says, hell no. I said, you mean I got to come to work for out their life full time? He said, yep. So I took about five minutes to think it over, and I accepted the job. for a huge cut and pay. It was.

No cut and pay. Yeah. Yeah. I was making 18,000 bucks with the government, with all the perks, health benefits, you know, and all that stuff. And pension. Went to work for out of their life for $9,000 in a handshake. No kidding. Yeah.

You were married at that point. Yeah. How long were you married for? I was married to my first wife, Lowe's for 26 years and Madonna for 32. So, yeah, we're still fighting with each other. Dude, that's a mark of fidelity. You hit, like, a mild man managed to pull that off to hit, like, what's that called, a silver anniversary? Yeah.

With two different women. Yeah. But my wife, she's great. Kind of like you could look at it two different ways. You look like amazingly loyal. Yeah. Or not. Yeah.

But she puts up with all my absences. I don't travel much anymore, but there were times when I was. on the road for probably 270, 280 days. Now that included also shows. I did a lot of seminars. Yeah.

In fact, that's where I met her. She was running the ISE shows in her, the sportsman's expos on the West Coast. But, uh, yeah, I,

I, there were times when I'd take off and be gone for 30, 40 days. Yeah. Then I got the TV show and between a TV show and outdoor life. I mean, it was just constant. I would go on maybe,

Four hunts in a row. I'd go up to BC. I'd go up to Northern BC for elk. And then I'd hunt Montana typically in Wyoming or Colorado and whatever else. Antalal deer, mousse. I love to hunt moose, black bears. So, I mean, it was just nonstop. Because he had to, you know.

I had to write a column a month for Outdoor Life when I became hunting editor. First, when I was Western editor, then they did away with the Yellow Page. Then they made me editor at large. Okay. That meant I just... I remember that. And then I became hunting editor. And you got to have so much copy, you know, and you got to travel, obviously.

So that's kind of where it's at. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now I've got my own show. So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies available on all TSN platforms in the IHeart Radio app. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? that's who I listen to. I can make those sounds

on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls dot com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an

easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. When you were on the masthead or not on the mass head but you were staffed but outdoor life but you would do seminars and do tv and stuff was that all in on salary or was that more like like a la carte approach where where you would get like additional money to do these different projects yeah i was on a seminar

circuit i had a contract with an international sports and expo and i did shows in like six cities on the west coast and denver but you kept that money yeah and they'd pay me a fee for that Okay. And that didn't conflict with your normal gig? No, uh-uh, it didn't. The only conflict was outdoor life didn't want me working for the competition. They don't want, they don't want me in-field, receiver, sports, the field. American Hunter, NRA magazine, they didn't care about that, you know, because that was a different deal. But, so, yeah, it was, I was, it was crazy. It was a crazy time.

You know, that's a, I think I think about that long era, like just the years you've, your career, outdoor life, field and stream, sports, the field. There was so many more shared, like,

there were so many more shared national experiences back then. Do you know, like, like, I'm old enough that when I was a little kid, I mean, there's channels three on a TV. There was channel three,

eight, and 13. Right? Mm-hmm. It was like NBC, CBS, ABC, or whatever to hell it was. And that was what it was.

Yep. Right. We still have, like, we still kind of retained a shared experience of the Super Bowl or something. But there used to be like many, many shared experiences that people would have. And I think some of those were just these magazines. Because pre-internet, you know, if you were a hunter or an angler, you were looking at those magazines. I think of going to my, my maternal grandfather was a musky fisherman, big fisherman. he liked to hunt, you know, you'd go to his house and he would have the magazines.

Do I mean? And I would like go home and bring them with. And it was just that all, it was sort of like all eyes in the outdoor world were on those things. Right. You know? And in that way, I grew up just like, I just grew up with your name. You know what I mean? I grew up reading your stuff.

I was reading your stuff as a child at my grandfather's house. Holy smokes, you know, but just being, being, yeah, I'm not young anymore, man, but like being there and dreaming about hunting the West and stuff and that, you know, and your stuff was there. Yeah. And things are so diffuse now. Yeah, it is. Very much so. You got all kinds of stuff. Well, your show is everywhere, thankfully.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it gets out there. Yeah. Hey, tell me about firewood. You're big into firewood. I suffer from an illness called ECFD, excessive compulsive firewood disorder. Let me hit you with one. Can I hit you with one?

Yeah. My brother, Danny, recently got himself. This might be a good book subject for you. He recently got himself a book about firewood. Yeah. It's from the, it's from the, it's from the, maybe out of Norway or something. I might have that book. Honestly, okay, go ahead.

Well, no, I mean, yeah, I need to get me a copy. He's got a book. It's just a book about firewood. And there's a thing in there that I didn't, that I wasn't aware of, I want to run this by you. It's like, you know where I was talking about this wood,

has, puts off this BTCUs, this wood puts off that B2s, this wood puts off that Btus. This book is saying that all wood is the same by weight, but not by volume.

Like, would regard, if you, you don't measure it by volume and measure it by weight, it all puts off the same BTUs. It's just a matter of efficiency in releasing those BTUs because a denser, like denser wood, we think of as being hotter. But wood by weight has the same BTO. What do you think about that? I don't know.

We'll put that in, if you make a woodbook, you got to either make that that's true or not true. I don't know what to make out of that. You know what I'm saying? but like yeah yeah yeah because i'll tell you dude i grew up in the hardwoods in michigan and i used to sell like when i was selling firewood we would get you get 90 accord for dried hardwood you could hold it till like february

january february february and get a hundred and ten a cord for dried hardwood i would cut it and make just huge mountains of it then deliver it when the prices were good only maple and oak some beach thrown in at that time you could sell white pine so if you could get a 90 bucks for a cord of cut and split hardwood

a cord of white pine was $35 people would talk where I grew up they would tell you that you can't heat with pine they would say that it'll burn your house down because the pit I mean it was like you can't You go anywhere in that area, you would never find a person carry a piece of pine in their house and burn it. But then you move out west and that's all there is, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody burns pine. Yeah. So for decades, I've been burning that junk. But then I go back to my mom's and we go down on the beach on the lake in front of the house there and I make a big old pile of oak and get that burning. Dude, you can't, you can't even get near that fire. So it's like, that's a wood right there, dude. That's a hot wood. would, you know? Yeah. So in reading that, it kind of threw me off, that it's like, you know, that it's just,

they're talking about by volume. Right. Well, I've always, I've always considered, I've looked at the BTU charts for both native woods in the U.S. and all woods. And most of the charts would tell you that, oh, sage, orange, also called Bodok or Hedge, number one, BTOs. Okay. Number one.

And they say it'll burn your grate. And it, it damn near will. I like to get wood from all over. I got some buddies from North Dakota who come on antelope with me, and they bring a bunch of oak from their yard, you know. And I went to Kansas to a writer's conference, and Mike Pierce was a good friend of mine. He used to be the outdoor writer for the Wall Street Journal.

And I said, hey. The Wall Street Journal, the outdoor writer? Yeah, Michael Pierce. So I said, Mike, if I bring my chainsaw over, can I cut some hedge? He said, yeah, there's all kinds of hedge around here. So as it turned out, he had a buddy who had a whole barn full of hedge. back your truck up and load it up.

So I took it home. And I only burn it when it's really cold. But it burns hot and it burned long. But Locust is another one that's got a lot of BTUs. So I don't know. You know, we live in Northern Rockies, as you do. And the only two softwoods we have are Aspen and Cottonwood. Otherwise, Doug Fur, number one, limber pine.

white bark pine, which is now in danger. You can't cut that. Dude, I never met anybody that cut it split into a piece of white bark pine, I don't think.

But this, this, this old sage aren't just so hard that you can't, you can't, you can't drive a nail in it. Yeah. And they call it hedge because in the old days,

the pioneers would plant it, and it would grow into, into a row of really thick foliage, and the cattle couldn't get through it. But it's amazing stuff. Yeah. Anyway. Well, guys run that for, I mean, the industry there is cutting fence posts out of that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. So how does your, if you got a, like an OCD around wood, how does that manifest? Like, what, like, how do you, what are the symptoms? The symptoms, go cut more wood. So you just, like, keep a good stash laid by. I once, honestly, had, I swear, I measured it, a hundred firewood cords. No, firewood cord, not a full cord, four by eight.

I'm talking two by four by eight. But I had a hundred, a hundred cords. Oh, I did. No, no, but I'm not getting what in the world

you're talking about. We've been having this debate lately. Are you forget the term Rick? Yes. Okay. What do you, what is a Rick, what is a full cord

four by four by eight, 120, 120, 128 cubic feet. No, a Rick is a face cord. It is? Okay.

Should I Google it? You know, I think you're right. But what, what you talk about, what kind of, what a firewood cord? A 24 inch deep.

Yeah. So that's a long cup piece of firewood. Yeah. But that's, if you look it up, it says two by four by eight. Firewood or a face cord. Yeah, but whose oven door are you fitting 24 inch pieces of firewood through? My fireplace separates a big stone wall on both sides. And it goes all the way through.

you can open the doors on both rooms. And that thing's got a three by four foot box. So I can actually put a almost a 30-inch log in there. Yeah. But you're right. You know, most of those aren't going to take that 24 inches. I'd like the, you know, I'm not a big government guy generally. Well, in some areas I am, but I would like the government to come in and really put some enforcement and some structure around firewood measurements.

I think it would do the nation good. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Because there's a lot of like people saying a lot of weird things. Yeah. Yeah, there are. I guess for me. There's a guy Spencer Newhart. It's the guy Spencer Newhart that hosts trivia.

And I actually, it's a long story. We got a big fight about this very subject. Bricks and face cords and cords and all that. So you cut too much wood. Do you sell it? No. I used to. You just like to keep it.

Because of the civilization classes, you got all kind of wood. We use it. That fireplace does not go out from usually October until April, unless it's like this winter, you know, hell, 70 degrees in January and February, we didn't burn it. But my wife will say, what's going on? There's no fire going. Your fire sucks because it's, you know, because there's no flame.

Okay, I'm throwing a log in it, but we burn that. We probably burn 10 to 15 and 20 quarters a year. seriously. Wow. But I get it from everywhere. Beetle kill, we had a big beetle kill infestation. I live just maybe a quarter mile from the National Forest, the Shoshone Forest. And as soon as those trees started going, I'd get a forest service permit for seven bucks or whatever and bring that wood home.

That's your exercise. Yeah. But you had a heart attack, right, cutting wood? I had a heart attack when I was rolling the log. Yeah, I was rolling the log with a peavy. It was a big ass log and it was a rock behind it. And I put everything I had behind it. As you know, a PV, you can roll a 500-pound log with that extra.

And I felt the pain in my chest. And I said, hmm, what was that all about? Huh. Then I thought, maybe I strained a muscle, you know, in my chest. So I had all a wood cut throw in my truck. And I just said, I'm going to leave this wood sit. Put the chainsaw on my truck and go home. And if I don't have this,

and I'm going to, when I get to the highway, I'm going to call my doctor. You know, I didn't because the pain went away. I never had that pain again until my 75th birthday. On that night, I was kind of short of breath. My right arm hurt. And there was a little bit of pain in my chest. I told my wife,

and at that time I was between doctors. So I hadn't gotten a new, and my other doctor had taken another job in the hospital. So she drives me to Townsakes, two aspirins, get to the emergency room, tell the lady I got test pains. And she's, boom, they stuck me on a, whatever you call it, and did a EKG, and it showed nothing. And then they did another test. Well, I'm not sure what it was. And they said, he's having a heart attack right now. So they threw me in an ambulance, took me to Billings.

Mm-hmm. And they put two stents in, and I had to wait six weeks for the real open-heart surgery, which was December 15th of 2015. And I'll tell you, waiting that six weeks was a nightmare because I knew I was going to go under the knife and get the zipper. Oh. On the bright side, my surgeon had done 3,000 open-heart surgeries in Billings. So I was pretty, he was a great guy. And so got the operation.

Whatever he did work, because here you are. Yeah. And I told my cardiologist, I said, when can I start swinging that six-pound mole? He said, you got to wait at least three, four months. You know, and so I did. You split everything by hand? I used to. You switched to a hydraulic?

Yeah, and then when I turned 65, you know, my son was selling, my dad still splits wood and he six. 65 years old, you know, and I bought a splitter. Yeah. And, I mean, that takes all the work at everything. You know, trying to cut green split, green cotton wood, you hit that with them all and it just kind of, you know, just full it. Water comes up out there.

And it ain't going to split. So you've got to hit it 15 more times. It's like hitting a sponge. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I used to work. The first tree service I worked for was the outfit called professional tree service. it was when I was in community college.

And the interesting thing about this dude that I worked with, he had bought this property. You're going to think I'm making this up, I'm not making this up, man. He bought this property. And when I'd get to work in the morning, he would be out in the morning with a metal detector, metal detect in his own yard.

Because someone had told him that the old lady that he bought it from had been burying jars of money with metallic, like, Bell, Ball and Mason money jars. Really? With metallic lids. Yeah. Had been burying money all around the yard. And this guy's morning rituals to get up and metal detect. Holy smoke.

This 10 acres, whatever he had. That's funny. Hoping to dig up that money. But he, so his middle finger is gone. and he used to run those sats you know remember that remember that i don't know they still make them sacks dolmar chainsaws like horrible vibration control on those like no vibration control on those chains they were just monsters he'd run those sacks dolmar saws and he wouldn't he had the he'd buy a regular five-finger glove obviously but this middle finger is gone so i used to laugh because any time he was gripping something

he'd be giving you the finger because there's no middle finger in there to for the glove. And I always assumed he'd cut it off with a chainsaw. But we would, a lot of times, all that would, when we were doing a removal or whatever, just going to a mountain. And then if there was nothing else to do,

we'd go out there and firewood all that. And it was terrible because you'd bring it home in all these weird chunks, you know, just lowering stuff right into a truck. So it's like elbows and odd, and you're just sorting through the pile trying to find 16 inch cuts. Right.

And like I said, never asked him about that finger. But I assumed he cut it off. But one day, we're cutting and I'm doing something or not with that hydraulic splitter. And he says me, that's just how I lost my middle. For goodness. That's how I lost my middle finger out on a hydraulic splitter.

Yeah. That's funny. Let's go back to 1986. And it's funny to think about, but cow calling elk. Yeah. even like bugling elk man was you know i'm sure historically people figured it out but like bugling elk cow calling elk that wasn't in hunter's toolkets no not at all back when i first started um our bugle calls we made them out of a piece of garden hose or maybe a piece of pipe

cut a little notch in it you know and they sounded horrible but they still called elk and they were awful and then I remember when the first calls came out. But I think when you say in 1986, you're referring to the, to the cow call. Yeah, your article, yeah, about, um, cow call. Right. Your article, El Cunning's newest secret.

Yep. Well, I had, I'd gone to Gardner a lot, Montana, which is literally on the border of Yellowstone Park, the Northgate. Oh, were you friends with, uh, were you parties of Don Laubow? That Don Laubach invented to the cow call. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. So Don and I, we'd hang out.

He owned, like, the saloon in town and the motel and a restaurant and a gas station. He owned a bunch. He was from Big Timber. Great guy. Anyway, one day we're sitting in his bar, and he pulled this thing out of his pocket. He says, you know what this is? I said, I have no idea. He's, well, listen.

And he blows this thing. And everybody looks at him. He says, don't worry about them. I own the bar. You know, he makes this big shrieking noise. What does that sound like? I said, it sounds like a cow elk. He says, well, what do you think?

I said, what do I think? I don't know, what do you think? He said, well, don't you think that, you know cow elk, they vocalize year around. I said, yeah, all year, not just like during the rock. Yeah, yeah, like the bulls. So he said, when you hunt turkeys, what do you sound like? You sound like a hen. You're yelping out there, you know, and he says, so don't you think you can use a cow

call to the track bulls or whatever? That makes a lot of sense. He's, I'll tell you, he says it works. He says, I know it works because I've done it. And he lived right in Gardner and the elk were in his yard year round. Yeah. He heard him talking all the time. So he said, he said, I'll give you a call if you don't mind.

And would you, if you like it, would you write a story about it? I said, absolutely. You know, out there are life like all of the, it's a service magazine. You know, people want to know how to do something, where to go. Or maybe they'll want to read an armchair story, me and Joe. But anyway, this was right up my alley. And I thought, man, this is a big deal. There's no such thing as a cow elk.

Nothing. There was no such thing. So I took it out and I tried it for a year. And he had given a couple to some outfitters up in that country. And it worked like a charm for all sorts of reasons. You know, not just to attract an elk during the rut, but all. So I wrote a story about it in 86. I think it was the August issue, Elk Hunting's No Secret.

And at the bottom, I put, to order a cow call called Cow Talk from Bon Laubach, Don Lawbox, and so-and-so, $9.95 and three bucks to blah, blah, blah, and Gardner, Montana. And before the article came out, I told him that we're going to put a plug for the call. And I asked him how many calls he made. He said, well, me and my wife, Dee, we made a couple hundred in the basement, you know. I said, well, maybe you'll sell them. I can't tell you how many he's sold. Thousands and thousands and thousands.

but anyway that in it it was that was probably my as far as having an impact on hunting for something new that was probably my number one story but I didn't do it I just happened to be the lucky guy that Don knew you know and passed a story on to me you didn't get a cut or commission on all those calls no no no no and then he invented the power bugle remember that yeah oh yeah yeah yeah and then he did a deer talk a deer call or something and but his call went into the Cabela's catalog, and he sold a lot. Oh.

Yeah, a lot. But he's still around in Gardner. He's got a shop there. Well, he's still alive? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I'm the Gardner all the time.

I don't know that. Yeah. Really? You can find a store, yeah. Well, how old is, how old is he now? He was probably, he was probably a few years younger than me. Oh, okay. Probably late seven.

I don't know. I don't know. But he was so much fun. We go up in the famous firing line. You know, when the elk would come out of the forest, out of the park, and they'd get on, and they stepped on the Gallatin National Forest, and holy smokes. One day, I counted 96 hunters up there. Yeah.

They had built snow forts to hide, you know, and the herd of elk. And then you go to the bar that night, his bar, they called the town bar, and everybody talking about, how many elk they did today? Well, I see it a herd of a 95 come out, and they killed 94, you know, blah, blah. But they changed that whole structure now, man. Yeah, and then the wolf stepped in, you know, they had like a couple thousand cowt contacts it was nuts and the wardens would ride around on horses and I was there I was just I never hunted there I didn't I didn't want to but I'd just be in a writer you know I'd

walk around the ward would ride around on horses and if they saw somebody shoot two elk they'd give the guy a $50 fine and he could keep one elk honestly that's all it they didn't care a long time ago yeah but interestingly one year as you know the montana elk season runs basically five weeks from October to the Sunday of Thanksgiving one year it was a really really really bad winter during the general season those elk came out by the thousands and everybody in montana headed for gardener and i heard a story that in one day they killed like 700 elk i mean it was just crazy yeah because anybody with a general tag could go you know yeah but uh so fascinating place i spent a lot of time a lot of the photographers would go there and and we'd film uh elk door

in the rut and mule deer during the rut, big horn sheep. But Gardner was kind of, it was a second, second home away from home for me. I spent a lot of time there. One of my kids got accosted by a mean old lady in Gardner. We were in Gardner one time and, you know, there's

elk standing, it's the park, you know, just for people listen, this is the entrance to the park. Yeah. It's the, the Yelso National Park's a north entrance. So you get a lot of these, like very, very habituated park elk They're just kind of hanging around.

Like they're hanging around the gas station. They're hanging around the hotels. Anyways, my kid is going up to one of these elk. And these couple of ladies just cut loose on him. He was a little kid. You leave them alone. Really? Yeah.

I was thinking about, you know, I didn't really get involved in it. But it's kind of a lady. You've seen what this kid's done to some elk. Was she with the park or was she just a civilian? No, just some lady yelling at him on the side of the road for getting too close. to a tame elk. Yeah, I thought that was funny. When we took pictures in the park, we had to have a commercial permit.

And we paid $100 to film because we were in the business. We weren't just doing after a slideshow at home, you know. And those rangers, if they saw you using a cow call, they get all upset because you're harassing the elk. Oh, you were trying to call them for photography. Yeah, get them to look at you or whatever, you know, and stuff. But they're well-viewable. But anyway, they, yellow stuff. zone is uh it's one of the reasons i moved to cody because uh i just loved the park first

first time of lozero was my wildlife class at utah state took a bus all those students and two professors and went in the park in golly 1963 and we looked out the windowners or herd elk first first elk i ever saw is that right yeah we all ran over to the side of the bus you know and that was when they were they literally killed like five thousand in the park. They had regular shooters and they had butchers come by and save the meat and everything. That was quite a deal. Yeah. Those days are passed right now, man. Yeah. Yeah, those kind of elk numbers.

I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind and now got my own show. To retire to lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies available on all TSN platforms and the IHeartRad last spring clay newcomb and i collaborated with jason phelps at phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts now i'm going to tell you i love mine because it's easy to use i'm not going to go i'm not going to win a turkey calling contest it's just not going to happen but when i run this call i get the sounds that gobblers are looking for i have a great turkey hunting track record if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods they're not going to win

calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. You spent time covering the Milo Hanson buck. Yep. Yeah.

Talk about that. Well, I was in Saskatchewan hunting whitetails, and I think it's the same thing, but in Saskatchew, when a non-resident can't hunt below the bush line. You can't hunt in the agricultural areas. You've got to hunt north in the bush. Okay. And Milo lives in bigger. He had a farm there. He's south of the line.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He just passed away. Yeah, he did. A couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah. So we're having we're having dinner

And my outfitters He had a farmhouse That's where we were saved And his wife did the cooking And we were sitting around the table And she said by the way Mylon Hanson killed the world record Way Till Buck

And it's like Hold on back I got refused You're there when it happened? Yeah I'm there I'm there I'm sitting there having dinner And it just got killed

Just got killed like the day before or two days before. Okay. I thought you meant you were there later. I didn't know you were there when I was. I was there. And they already, but they already knew it was a record.

Well, what had happened? I didn't believe it. You know, I said, well, what did it score? She said,

I think it was two four teachers. Holy smokes. Are you kidding me? Typical? Yeah, yeah. I said, and then my guy sitting next to me,

we're having dinner. He says, I know Milo Hansen. In fact, I sold him a box of ammo. Do you know Milo Hanson? He says, yeah, he said,

you want me to call, him. I said, yeah. So he goes out of the phone and he called Milo and Milo confirms, yeah, yeah, I had an official measure and he says, I got a guy from outdoor life here. He wants to talk to you. So I talked to Milo and, and I said, any chance I could come down in the morning and interview you. He said, yeah, no problem at all. So really nice guy. So I called in the morning just to confirm the guy was going to take me to his house. Yeah. And how far are you from the house? About 50 miles. Dude, what luck, man.

I know. I know. That's like John Crackard being on, that's like John Crackard being on Everest when that big disaster happened. Yeah. Like right in the mix, man. So I call him in the morning to confirm. He says, geez, I'm sorry. He said, but Gordon, Gordon Whittington is sitting in my living room.

Gordon was the editor for North American White Hill at Georgia, I think, for South Carolina. He was already there. He had flown all night and he was sitting in my old. No. Yeah. swear to God. Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, I read about... He scooped you from Georgia. Yeah, Georgia. Okay. In fact, I put this on Facebook when Milo passed away, did a couple pictures, you know, and Gordon chimed in. He says, yeah, that was a great time.

But he wanted to write the story real quick. They had the issue ready for the shot show, which I think was in January. So he wrote the story. And my boss in New York, he was a... Of course, he was all excited. I called him that night, Vince Brano. I said, Vin, I said, my God, this is, this is the story of the damn decade of the century,

World Record Whitetail. Yeah. And he said, well, get the story, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, I can't. Gordon's here. He says, we'll get second rights. We'll pay him some money, whatever exclusivity. And I don't know what the hell he did.

I don't get involved in that part of it. But at any rate, Gordon had the story in Sportsafield. Then I interviewed Milo, and we talked about the whole deal. It was like an as-to-AT-T story, as told two Jim Zumbo. Yeah, yeah. And he told him the whole story. He went up to his farm and really a great guy. So he didn't live on that farm.

Yeah. Yeah. So he lived there. Yeah. Tell the story him killing the world record buck. Because then I wanted to get into whether it really is the world record buck. Okay. You know where I'm going with this.

Yeah, I know where you're going. Well, evidently, that buck had been seen by the school bus driver, you know. And in fact, somebody had taken a shot at it and missed it. Really? Yeah. So the way they hunt up there, and this was somewhat controversial because what these farmers, they're all Ukrainians, you know, and they hunt deer for sausage. That's what they do. They don't give a damn about horns.

It's a fact. Sausage hunters. Yeah. I know the kind. So they got all these, all this kind of open country with all this popple, which is like stunted Aspen. And basically, they drive these different. in areas and I think Milo was sitting there by his pickup.

They do pushes. They do pushes. Yeah. Yeah. So Mila's sitting there by his pickup truck and here comes his buck. Nice buck, you know, and he shoots it. It goes down.

And he walks down to it. This is what he told me. The first thing he said is, that's a nice buck, but boy, he's not very big. I ain't going to get much sausage off of that thing. It's exactly what he said. And it was a hole in the antler

where somebody had hit him in the antler. And they dragged that buck by that antler. And good thing, it didn't break off. Sure. Right? Would it disqualify it? Yeah.

So anyway, he gets the buck home and people start hearing about it. So he calls a Boone Crocket guy and he comes over and he measured it. And I think the score was, what, 214 and something like that. So anyway, funny story. we're at the shot show, and Ian McBerchy, it was a Canadian photographer. He passed away. And Milo said, Ian is the only guy that's going to photograph this buck. The Outlaw Life wanted to send some big shot photographer from New York to Canada to film the buck,

and Milo said no. And so all the editors, they were all upset, like, what kind of picture we're going to get for it. They wanted to put it on the cover. Yeah. And, in fact, the president of Outdoor Life was not a hundred, honor. He was a three-piece suitor from New York. And he says, we can't put that buck on the cover in the April issue.

That's the trout issue. We've got to put a trout out of the cover. Yeah. It's true. So anyway, we put the buck on the cover. So we met Ian at the shot show and he comes over to our table and sit with a bunch of guys and he said, I got something for you, Zumbo, and he gives me a little sliver

of sausage. He says, that's the world record buck. No, really? Yeah. So we cut, no, he gave me the whole sausage. You got to Eat a chunk of that buck. We got to. So help me. Yeah.

But anyway, that. Really? Yeah. Dude, you can sell that sausage for a lot of money now, man. It'd be a little old, be a little freezer burn. But, yep. No kidding. You had a chunk of the hands of a buck.

I had a chunk of that. Yep. True story. And Milo and I became friends on Facebook. You've got to be kidding me. No, I was honest. In fact, when I put that in my little comment on Facebook and two or three other guys sitting at the table said the same thing.

Yeah, that was really a great piece of sausage or whatever. Wow. I can't think of who I was well with. Just, I don't know, some friends and writers. Hey, when you think of doing a push, what do you call the people, like, what term do you use? Because buddies all around the country have different terms for it. Like pushers and sitters, you know? Like, what do you guys call them?

Usually the drivers and the standards. You do drivers. That's a lot of guys do that. It's wrong. Yeah. It's wrong. It's pushers and sitters. Okay.

A lot of people don't know this. They think it's drivers. And my buddies in Pennsylvania got some real dumb thing they call it. But yeah. Yeah. They got like, I can't remember what they got some dumb things. They get it all, they get all confused now how to do a,

how to do a drive, you know. Jeez. Yeah. That's pretty crazy, man. So, so obviously,

you know, where I'm, like, remember when I made that comment like, yeah, is it the world record? Yeah. So I think that there's,

so these records stand a long time, right? So there's only been a, it's only, it's only, like, the world record, buck's only turned over a couple times. The first buck was a Jordan buck.

That was around for, golly, 50 years. And that scored maybe 209 or something. Maybe, I don't know. I forget. Yep. Then it got whooped in,

the hell was it, 96? What year was it? 93. The Hansenbach was 90. Oh, no, 96 was the Ron Paula buck. Mitch Rompele. So let's jump to that. Everybody still calls the Hansen buck.

You know, it's the world record buck. But there's this question. I'm obsessed with the question. Is like, Is it? Because then a guy in Mitch Rompola outside of Traverse City, Michigan, mid-90s, he arrows a bigger buck. Right?

Shrouted in controversy. Shrouted in controversy. What's your take on that buck? Well, from only what I've heard. No, I don't, don't caveat at all the hell. Just tell me what you know. Tom Huggler? Who?

Tom Huggler. Huddler? Yeah, he's from Michigan. No. He's like the outdoor guy. He's got a big show and stuff. I went to a show one time, a expo show.

I mean, you know, you know how you like meet people and kind of maybe like the name doesn't click, but I'm not, I don't believe I'm familiar. Okay. Anyway, Tom and I were good buddies.

I was in Michigan one time doing a, doing a seminar in Elkhunt or something. And from what I understand, this may or may not be true, but Mitch Rompola would not let anybody take, take a picture of that buck nobody well no I don't know I don't know there's pictures

that that buck but who took the pictures he did he did didn't he kill other bucks with the same kind of frame big wide yep some honey honey hole somewhere listen dude this is why the story makes

it starts to like really make its own gravy you know it goes deeper and this this story is a bottomless pit yeah kills the buck he has a a recovery video.

I talk about this. I'm obsessed with this thing, man. I'm going to make a documentary about it. So, kills a buck, makes a recovery video, right? Get some pictures. I mean, there's so many twists and turns of this thing. A handful of people handle the buck. I wouldn't say it on the phone with a guy

that I spent two hours on the phone with a guy that held the buck. Okay? Uh, but in, in quickly, there's a lot of skepticism about certain aspects. I'm making a short version of there. There's a lot of skepticism about aspects of the buck. It gets measured. Some people come forward and they're like, the buck ought to be x-rayed, right?

There's varying explanations of what he did do it. You know, some people say that he kind of made like a sort of frank and rack, like he constructed a rack, killed a buck. opened it's opened it up like this took the skull plate out put a skull plate in there right fabricated fabricated the thing yeah you know

but this guy I was talking you one time he had the weirdest observation about it man he said that uh I don't want to give his name but he said that when he went to see the buck after it was killed he said it was in a truck with a top around

you'll get this because you're a hunter it's in a truck with a topper on it. And picture when you jam a deer into a truck with a toper on it. Right? They're hard to get in there. Yeah. And he says that that buck was like jammed into this truck with a toper on it. And then you kind of like cocked the head up in there.

Right? Yeah. So he says when he goes to look at the buck, it's cocked in this trailer like where its head and rack are kind of jammed into the topper. as you're looking into the top on the left side and he talked about him kind of rassling

because it's stiffened up he talked about him kind of rassling that head out of there and he's like if that was a make-believe Frankenrack would you have jammed it into a topper like that?

It's true. It's an interesting point but he wouldn't submit it to an x-ray because people wanted to x-ray and eventually he gets to this point. He eventually gets to the point where he says,

with all the scrutiny, he says, this isn't why I hunt, you can all shove it up your ass and that's not his words, but this isn't why I hunt and he takes his buck home, never to be seen again.

And that's been the stance since. It's like he didn't play the game. But people point out, he was playing the game. he was playing the game video video photography declared it right and eventually there was a with the hands in a state they signed a deal they signed a contract I heard about that that he would cease and he would stop saying it was the world record buck a lot of people wonder why he doesn't want to claim it I mean you know it so

I've sat on so many sides of this thing, man. I'm sure you have. I got a buddy from, I got a buddy from back home. He's an outdoor writer. We went to high school together. He was a trapper. He always felt that the,

he always thought the buck was BS. Okay. But one day he told me, one day he went to a guy's house to touch the buck, did it handle the buck? And he said when I walked out of his house for a period of,

time. When I walked out of his house for a period of time, I knew it was real. And he goes, and I think, as he explained to me, he doesn't know where he stands on it now. I've gone back and forth both sides. One day I was explaining to someone. I was telling someone, like, I was trying to explain to someone that doesn't hunt how everybody has an opinion about this. Okay. And as we're talking, I'm like, everybody's going to.

opinion about this thing. So I sent a text message. I'm like just watch. So I'm trying to think of people that he would know about. And I sent a text message to Jeff Foxworthy. And I sent a text message to Nugent. I'm like, hey, what do you guys think of the independently? Not in a group text. I'm like, what do you think of the Ron Paolo Buck? Right. One of them comes back with an answer. I don't buy it. One of them comes back with the answer. I give them the benefit of the doubt. Oh, jeez. So it's like, dude,

I'm fascinated by the whole story, man. I would like nothing more than to touch that buck. I had always heard this rumor. I don't even know where I heard it now. I'd heard a rumor that it had burned up. Like, I can't even think of who told me. Is it burned up in some fire or something?

But I was talking to a guy. He's like, man, uh, Mitch lives in the same house. He's lived in when he killed the bug. That buck ain't, that house. ain't burned down.

Jeez. You know? I wonder, did the Boone and Crocker Club ever approach him? It's not certified with Boone and Crocket Club. It's not? No, because of these questions about, I think it's like,

well, if it was, if it was, I mean, I, you know what, I take that back, I don't know.

But if it was certified, if it was B&C certified, then it would be the world record. Yeah. But you know what's crazy, man, about this whole deal? a weird part about this whole deal

is it like you know how all that scrutiny came on them like a lot of that scrutiny is motivated by jealousy and stuff because we had on the podcast a hunter named Dustin Huff who killed the big he holds the biggest typical white tail in the U.S. So the nation's record but not bigger than the Hansen Buck which is the world record.

So he has the biggest white tail in the U.S. When he killed that white tail, he killed it. Flat out, fair and square. What do you think happened when he killed it? All over right away,

all the ways in which he must have cheated it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He anticipated it coming and calls his fishing game office. And he says, I just,

just killed a huge buck. Like, it might be the big, it might be a record buck. I just killed it. No one calls them back. Really? Well, then a while later, they do call. You know why they call? Because all the reports they're getting about how he cheated the system.

He tried to get hold him in the first place. Oh, be darned. And that wild. So a lot of that stuff just comes because there's so much jealousy and bitterness. Oh, my gosh. Totally. You know? But it's a real mystery, dude.

I've never killed a 375 elk, Boone Crooked elk. I've gotten some 350s, but I always figured if I did, you know, all hell is going to break loose. You know, just because people get so damn jealous and, you know, being the fact that I, you know, I hunt full time. Yep. Oh, well, he got it on his ranch or, you know, they had that elk, you know, filming them every day, blah, blah, blah. Sure, sure. It's just, yeah. You're going to hear about it.

Yeah. One of the thing about the Milo Hanson buck But that buck was three years old. Only three years old. That's the thing I tell people, too, man. I didn't know that till just recently. All that talk about six, seven years, six years old, seven years old, the biggest, I was like, the biggest buck ever killed. Yep.

Three. Yep. Isn't that nuts? Would he have been bigger than next year? Probably, I suppose. You know another little wrinkle about the round pole of buck? What? That place don't make big bucks.

Doesn't it? Don't make big bucks. Big bucks don't come out of there. You know? Boy, what a story. But someone told me it's a freak, and freaks can happen anywhere. Mm-hmm. But it's like it doesn't make big bucks.

You remember Gordon Eastman? Yo, yeah. Well, Gordon. Dude, I remember him interviewing. I remember listening to an interview of Gordon Eastman, interviewing Don Lawbach about the call. I thought it was Lawbough or whatever. Lawbock. They became partners.

Yeah. And they did a bunch of videos together. Sure, man. But Gordon Eastman, he lived in Cody for a while. We got to be pretty good friends. He told me some wild stories when he'd take his little plane up in the Arctic and live with the Eskimos. But he told me every Boon and Crocket Buck is a freak. Oh. Every Boone of Crooked Buck is a freak.

I mean, that's what he said. So anyway. Yeah. That's what this one guy I was talking to about that buck. He's like, it's a freak and freaks happen anywhere. Mm-hmm. It's a freak. So maybe it was a freak year for a freak buck.

Or no, no, sorry. I mean, sorry. When I'm talking about the youngness of the Hansen buck, maybe that was like a freak that it was, you know. But you wonder, would he, at five, would he have been like extra the world record? Yeah. Or would have gone downhill. I don't know.

Yeah. Well, since he was only three, I think he would probably be bigger, but I don't know. What's your, you know, old fellers like you and me? Yeah. Right? Like I always shoot like people. Yeah. People are always like, hey man, what's your, you know, people ask you all the time.

I got kids older than you, Steve. Yeah. They ask you like, you know, youngsters, young little whippersnappers will come me about wanting to talk calibers, you know. Yeah. And at this point, I'm like, like, it's like a tinge of embarrassment, you know, when I talk about, I shoot a 300 win mag. A lot, right? Yeah. I shoot a lot.

Yeah. I have other stuff. My kids shoot six, five, because I trained up my kids on suppressed six, five, Creedmores because I just didn't want them to develop you know fear of recoil fear of noise so suppress 6-5 is like a very it's a great way to break them in yeah I would shoot a 300 wind mag because I just like you know I just shoot it at whatever you know it's a great gun what's your where do you stand you know with all the new calibers and stuff do you feel a need to stay hip to the new

calibers you shoot the old classics I shoot the old classics you know I way back in 64 I graduated one old graduating in place My father-in-law told me to go to a store and buy a gun. Now, that was just when the pre-64s were going away. It was 64. It was an old electrical store in Vernal, Utah. They sold everything from diapers to wash the machine and everything. They had a few guns on the wall.

So I went in there and I was going to pick out my gift, and I wanted a 270 because I was a huge Jack O'Connor fan, you know. Okay. So, during a pre-64 270s, they had some 270s, but they were brand-news. knew and I didn't want one, but they had a 30-06, pre-64. Okay. Explain what you mean when you say, because a lot of guys aren't going to know what you mean. Okay. When you say it pre-64, like the claw extractor and...

Yeah, in 1964, Winchester came out with a modified super version of the old 1964, but I'm not exactly sure all what the differences were, but I just knew that O'Connor was a serious fan, you know, of the 270. but I think that pre I can't remember man like guys are going to crucify me for not remembering this I can't remember what all the selling points were it was like I think point of manufacture on pre 64 and something about the way of the extractor like it was a claw extractor and post wasn't but for for decades after that people were built built custom rifles yep off pre-64 actions they didn't even want the rest of the gun right they want the

actions exactly yeah so anyway I picked out that that 30-06. And I was 24 years old, and I used that gun for probably 20 years on elk and deer and moose, whatever. And, I mean, you know, you get a gun that is your sweet on it because it works, you know, when you put it up through your shoulder and, you know, it's just right. I love that gun. And being hunting editor and writing about it so much in the magazine,

my boss, Claire Conley, he said, Zumbo, you write too much about that damn Winchester. He's, we got other advertisers, you know, we got Remington and Savage and Marlin and Ruber and stuff. He says, you've got to start using different guns. So I said, okay. So I went on a trip one time, and British Columbia was Chuck Yeager.

Chuck Yeager? Yeah. The right stuff, Chuck Yeager? Yep. Yeah. Yep, we went out there hunting, hunting elk, and it was a perfect time of the year, September 26, prime bugle time, the woods were silent as hell.

And we were staying in a cabin with an outfitter, and he was hunting with a guide on one mountain. I was hunting with a guy down in another mountain. Long story short, I finally saw a bold elk standing in a small opening, long, long ways away. There were no range finders in those days. And I had to shoot kind of over a canyon. I don't know how far he was, but I took a shot, and I'm pretty sure I shot under him. because he just stood there, took another shot. Nothing happened.

The third shot, he kind of lurched, and he ran off. And my guide was kind of standing behind a tree, and he didn't really, couldn't see it get a good view of that elk. So we went down and we looked for it, couldn't find anything. We crawled around, no hair, no blood, no fur, nothing. And we just made big circles, and after literally 45 minutes or an hour,

Carl and my guy, he says, you must have missed him. I said, maybe I did. I don't know. I said, I just thought I heard him. And he says, well, I'm going back. We had the horses tied up on a ridge. He says, I'm going back up on the ridge. I said, I'm going to look a little bit more. So he looks with me.

And so we left. And we're halfway to the horses. And all of a sudden, I had this weird sensation like ESP or whatever. And I heard that. I heard a noise like an animal hitting the ground and I saw that bull lurk in my mind. I saw it. And I said, Carl, that bull's dead.

He's what are you talking about? I said, that bull dead. Wait here if you want to. I'm going to go find that bull. And I ran straight to it. Really? I swear to God. What do you think it was?

What had happened was... I mean, what do you think? You just like your mind pulled up an image that you kind of hadn't thought of as you reviewed your memory? Yeah. It's like another time I was hunting moose, and all of a sudden, it was real foggy. Something was drilling into my back. Something was looking at me.

And the fog finally left, and it was in Newfoundland, and there's this moose. But anyway, I went right to that bull. What had happened? There was an old spruce tree. It was kind of down in the ground, and it was typically it had kind of a big space around it. And there was these big branches growing out. That bull had fallen into that hole. And it was about that.

much of his time sticking out. And I don't know why I didn't smell it. Because, you know, an elk, a bull elk, he's going to reek a little bit. I think I was probably within three feet of that bull crawling and look. And I yelled at the car. I found him. He says, he couldn't believe it. But anyway, long story short.

So Yeager's up on this mountain and he hears me shoot three times. So he go to camp that night. He said, what the hell happened? Why did you have to shoot three times? he says, I said, well, I don't know. What do you use? And I said, I'm using 30.0.6. He said, well, that's your damn problem.

We're sitting around the campfire, right? So he walks over with his Weatherby Mark 5, 300. He says, here's a man's gun. Get rid of that goddamn pipsqueak. So he didn't know it, but I had promised that gun to my son. Because Claire Conley told me to use other guns. So I got his weatherby, and that's when I had to finally quit using that 30L6. But as far as other guns, you know,

I don't know. I'm just kind of a traditional old school guy. I use a 300 rum right now for elk, you know, Remington Ultramag. And, you know, those cartridges, you put that next to a 375. If you don't look real close, you can't hardly tell a damn difference. I mean, it kicks like a mule, and it's not suppressed. But I love the gun. I use it for elk, boos, bears, and for deer and antelope, I use a Kimber 270.

And that was kind of a special gun. One time Chuck Yeager, they wanted him to be a guest speaker for Pacific Northwest Steelheaders in Portland, Oregon. And they knew I knew Chuck. And if I invited Chuck on a trip, he didn't want his regular stipend. He wanted a trade for a hunting or fishing trip. He was a hunting, fish and nut. So I made a deal. And I said, Chuck, if he'll come to Portland, I already had research.

Yes, I'll get you set up with five guys on five rivers in the northwest. West area fishing for salmon out of boats and stuff. So we made that deal and he came. While we there, we went to the Kimber factory, which was in Portland at that time. They knew we were coming. And when the tour was

over, they gave Chuck a rifle, 7-MMM, which is his favorite, and it said Mach 1 and gold. That was the serial number. And they gave me that 270, and it said, Zumbo for the serial number. So that's so special.

I still shoot it. Oh, really? Yeah. That's great, man. But, you know, as you know, everybody knows it's bullet placement, you know, for the most part. Yeah. I remember O'Connor saying when he shoot an elk with a 270 right behind that crease right behind the shoulder and get a double long shot, that bull's going 80 yards and he's dying, which is pretty much, you know, not always true, but it pretty much is. but so you know a lot of people come out west from east coast or when they're hunting white tails

and they think they got to have a great big giant gun but uh it's not really and and they're afraid of it you know and they hate to shoot the damn thing but they think they got to have it so i always say you know shoot which you can shoot best you know back home but don't bring the 30 30 you know unless you're in the woods or something but first year i ever kill with a gun Pardon? I said the first year I ever killed with a gun. Yeah. I shot it with a open site model 94, 34, 32 special.

Oh, did you? Uh-huh. This dude, I've told a story a hundred times, but this dude was kind of a mentor. Good buddy, my dad's. He had this cabin. His name was Eugene Groder's. And he had these gun racks built into the ceiling of the cabin. He was in his 80s, like yourself.

and when I was a kid though and he would do this thing with kids he did it with me where he'd say you know I try to have one gun for every year I've been alive really in the roof and when I was little and he says you know when I counted the other day and realized I have an extra and he would do this with kids you know

I have an extra and so he pulled that gun down and um yeah shot dear with it and the dumbest thing I ever did The dumbest thing I ever did is I took it down and sold it at a place that sold wood stoves and guns. Oh, geez. And that dude gave me $300 for it because I wanted a bolt gun. Oh, wow. Dumbest thing I ever did, man.

Dumbest thing I ever did. I'm Luke Wilson. Join me each week for Film Never Lies. Since retiring from the NFL, I've had a lot of my mind, and now I've got my own show. So if you're tired of lazy takes, if you want honest conversations, join us each week. Film Never Lies available on all TSN platforms and the IHeartRadio app. spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds

that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to you, I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy

to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. You don't think I wanted to ask you about? Like, You do, I mean, you're like for your age, dude, you're doing like phenomenally well, right? Yeah. What's it like in life when you get to where, I mean, you know more people that are, you've known more people that are dead than there are alive. I do. Do you know what I'm saying?

All my buddies back each are dead. Every one of them. Yeah. What's that start to look like? You know what I mean? Like, how do you start, how do you think about all that? What's that starting to feel like? Well, I'm thankful every day I get at that I get out of bed.

You know, being 85 because, you know, I'm way beyond the normal age for white men and stuff. But I just wrote a, I'm writing a story right now for Beul magazine on that very thing on aging and how you feel. First thing that happens pretty much as your balance starts going. Like just putting on a hunting boot, no problem. But I got to the point where I realized it was easier to sit down. Okay. or, you know, to lace the thing up. So little things like that happen.

And now I'm at the point where I can't ride a horse anymore, and that really hurts. Okay. What happens when you go to ride a horse? Your balance and just getting up on a thing. Okay. You know, when I go upstairs, I got to have a railing, use a cane sometimes. Okay. But I have a foot issue and knee issue.

And the heart seems to be okay. You know, my back, I've got serious back issues, but, uh, and I haven't taken care of myself. You know, I, most of my hunts were remote wilderness hunts on horseback and a lot of hiking and tough country. Early on, I was a forester. I did a lot of wildfire suppression and which is, I think, the toughest job you can have because you, you're going. You're through no timetable. You know, you got those, but so I was, I was always in pretty doggone good shape, but, but. then I realize, well, like right now,

somebody wants me to do something this fall. And it's like, well, maybe I'll be able to, maybe I won't be here. Mm-hmm. I mean, you can't sit around and cry about it. A lot of people say, you're so damn lucky, you know, that you can still do stuff. Yeah.

Because a lot of guys 20 years younger and I have given up hunting because they just can't, you know, they can't get around. So it's a sobering thing. One day I drove up the South Fork and near Cody, which takes you up to the famous thoroughfare, or Jack O'Connor is hunted a lot, and I've hunted a lot. And I was sitting on the dirt road where the trailhead is,

and I saw these guys come down. They were on horseback, and they each had two horses. And I said, elk antler, six-point bull and all them ate, two bulls. And I thought, I'll never go up that trail again. Oh, yeah. So. Yeah. But, you know, the only alternative is that,

you're dead, right? Yeah. People complain about getting old, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's like, well, what would be the opposite of that? Yeah. It's being dead. My dad lived in 92.

Did he? Yep. And that's because he fell and broke his hip. When you fall and break her hip. At a certain age, it's a death sentence. You're going into rehab, and then you're going into a sensitive living, then you're going to rest home, and then you're done. Who are the people you miss the most?

Who what? Who are the people, the friends that you've lost? Like, who are the people you miss the most? Oh, gosh. Oh, golly, there's a lot of them. Oh, gosh. One of my, one of the, my all-time best buddy, the name was Louis Gizarelli.

Mm-hmm. Real Italian name. Yeah. And we were buddies since we were 12. And we were in Boy Scouts together, and we hunted and fish like crazy. We trapped, and we'd be riding our bicycles at five in the morning before school to check our muskrat traps.

And we're the best of friends. And the year before I joined out to her wife in 78, he got killed. Somehow he had rolled off a bridge and his truck landed. Water was only two foot deep. And his truck landed on its top and he drowned in the truck. Oh. And I missed that guy. We'd go to Newfoundland fishing for Atlantic salmon and hunting bears, you know.

And we had so, I mean, we'd catch yellow perch and bluegills. the hell won't have it. And a lot of times I'd be hunting squirrels and I'm having them in my game pocket. And at the end of the day, they're all stiff, you know, and it's hard to skin. Louis says, leave the damn things here, I'll do it. That kind of guy. We'd always fight over the best minnows in the bucket, you know, and we're on a boat and the best worms. Yeah, he was special, but, you're just, most of the guys that I miss a lot were the guys back east.

we had a cabin in the Adirondah and the Catskills deer cabin, typical deer cabin, you know. But so, yeah, it's tough because, you know, people are dying every day, especially as you get older. And sometimes there's, you know, they get killed in an accident or whatever. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is tough, man.

Yeah. The thing I got a real good buddy I lost. And you know what haunts me the most about that? Is the times I had negative, that I had negative comments about him to other friends. About whatever, we get into a skirmish about something. You know, and I'd have negative comments about them. That sticks to me now, man. The feeling of how I should never have said that shit.

Anytime we had, we knew each other for many, many years. So, of course, we had, like, disagreements. That sticks with you. Tell people about your books. You got a handful of them here. I don't know that your first book, this is crazy, but your first book was called

Ice Fishing East and West. Yeah. I didn't know about this one. I know these ones. That was out of print. It's out of print. But it's funny, that cover,

Arctic Cat sent me that cover. Look at those snowmobiles. Yeah, that's all checking out. Yeah. Yeah. Fish cleaning. Oh, snow travel.

Yeah. Safety on. the ice, where to find fish. Yeah, that book, let's say, I wrote it in 76, I think. God, almighty. That's more than 50 years old. I don't know how

I didn't know about this book, because we, I come from a long line of ice fishing, man. Well, the editor of that book, he was with Outdoor Life, and he worked for David O'Mackay Company in the York City, and he saw me at the shot show, and he said, why don't you write a book on ice fishing?

Which is, why don't write a book on Cotentill Rabbits? I said, who the hell was going to buy that? Ten people. So, yeah. You sold one copy. Yeah. If I'd have known about it. Did this ice fishing books sell any copies?

No, not really. I can't picture it would. That was back in the days where you do the royalty thing. Like you get 10% of this first 10,000 bucks and 12% for the next 10% and 15% for the next. And I don't think that, I don't know what it's old. I never want to make any jingle for you. That was back in the day when, I mean, You win your ice fish

nowadays they've got all kinds of stuff you know obviously just a ton of new stuff back in the old days you drill the hole and you stood there with the warmest clothes

you could find like a man yeah you stick your hand in that damn cold bait bucket and grab a minnow and wind or whatever you just stay there

and so it wasn't there was no really technology to it today you know there's all sorts of stuff yeah even when I was young so much ice fishing gear

was homemade yeah You know, my old man would make his ice fishing gear. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it was homemade. Yeah.

Yeah. But these books took off, man. Yeah, they did really well. It was to heck with deer, to heck with elk, to heck with moose. Basically, those are just stories that I've written. Like, each one has like 30 stories in them about crazy stuff. You know, each one of them was a hunt. To heck with moose is actually a compilation of everything other than, you.

deer and elk like moose caribou sheep antelope so those are all kinds of different stories you regret naming it to heck with i do you know people that what the hell what's what's wrong with that book i was just the title you know and it bugs you yeah yeah yeah but once i explained it then they looked at i said yeah okay and to heck with uh to heck with uh how to get an easy elk that's kind of just a fact pat macmanis wrote the forward in that book that was a funny man i never met him but my god is that guy funny we're eating emailing around favorite Pat McMahon's quotes the other day. Oh, yeah?

Just the other day. He was so much fun. He was a funny, funny guy. Yeah. He was. I would read him as a kid. Can I tell you quick, Pat McMannis? Please, ma'am.

The editor about their life said, why don't you and McManus go in a hunt somewhere and write a double feature, you know, side by side? And each of you tell what happened on that hunt. Mm-hmm. So we decided, well, let's go and hunt something that's got fangs and corks, you know, to make it make it real interesting. So we went on a bear hunt in British Columbia with Remington and a bunch of writers. And it was a real crazy spring.

It was snow everywhere and the bears were not out. They were in the cottonwood trees, way up in the cottonwood trees. And you could look out over this river and see five or six bears, black blobs and, But they were kind of smallish bears. I don't think there was a six-footer up there. Up eaten in there? In British Columbia. Like, Tom, they're laying up or they're up their feet?

No, they're eating. They're eating those big buds. Yeah, yeah. So, well, nobody's doing very well. And on the fourth day, Pat got a bear. Okay. Okay. So, of course, he's a humorer.

He gets a bear. I don't have a bear yet, right? I'm not having a bear yet. Yeah. So the last day, my guide and I were driving around, and there's a bear standing there looking at us, like 70, 80 yards away. Yeah.

Piece of cake, you know, meat on the table. And he's just looking at us in the snow. So I get out of the trucks, out of my sticks, and I said, you know, there's my bear. I fired, and he just looked at me. He didn't do a damn thing. And he kind of just ambled off and waddled away. Okay.

That bear would not hit. So I said, I missed him. The guy said, you sure as hell did miss him. What the hell happened? I said, I don't have any idea. So I said, I'm going to go up there where the bear was. I'm going to find his tracks. And I looked for blood too, but they will know it.

And I'm going to, you stand right where I shot from. Draw a straight line. And I look, and there is the top of a Douglas fir. tree laying in the snow there was a little hole in it. The bullet head deflected. So we go back to camp, passing our tent, here's this pull up. Do you get one? I said, yeah, I got one.

Where is it? I said, right there, and he looks at that piece of tree and they're laughing, like how I told him the story. So there's a little place where you get cell service. So I called the editor in New York. And I said, I got an interesting story. I said, Pat got a bear and I didn't. And there's a silence. He says, well, we can't run that story.

I said, well, think about it. You know, it's a fun story. What is Pat right? He said, Zumbo was after that Doug Fur. That trophy dug fur. And he waited for that bear to walk around behind it to present a good silhouette. And he fired and he got the fur. But that's just Pat, you know.

He, golly. we used to do a stand-up act for the Elk Foundation on stage and he tell his famous deer on a bicycle story. I saw one guy fall off his chair he was laughing so long. And I wonder, what the hell am I doing up here with Pat McManus? You know, we were close friends. But all I do is tell some stories. I didn't try to get funny, but he was.

Yeah, because you're not going to out funny that guy, man. He was hilarious. But he wasn't really funny in person. Oh, is that right? We go to lunch. You know, that's a weird deal about real funny people. The funniest people aren't funny in person. Yeah, yeah.

They run out of energy a little bit of that. Yeah, the funniest, funniest people, performers aren't funny in person. And sometimes the funniest people in person aren't funny in performers. Yeah, you're right. That's a weird deal, man. So when you're hanging out of him, he's not just cracking jokes left and right. Was that what? when you're hanging out with Patrick McManus.

He's not just cracking jokes left him right when you're driving down the road. No, we just, I don't know. We talk about the magazine, you know, and some of the jerks we know. One interesting. Did you guys know a lot of jerks? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Some of the editors were, they're all from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, but I took off out west and I started hunting at a young age. those guys never got it got it got it you know but uh pat was a kind of guy where a stranger could walk up to him and he started talking to him and he'd say you want to go to lunch with us i mean he was that kind of guy but one of one of my greatest uh articles was when pat died um the editors asked me to write a tribute to him on his back page and outdoor like oh to take his column yeah and write about him yeah that was fun yeah

god a guy was funny man yeah he sold so many books some of them and made the new york time best seller list you know and uh he also had someone do a play

i didn't know that especially around montana idao he'd actually impersonate pat and uh oh really yeah pet wasn't there but he impersonated him he did a great show yeah

but pat could make anybody laugh even even the wives that didn't hunt you know He, like he write about backing up a trailer, a whole column, make it funny as hell. One time, he actually started with Field and Stream, and Clear County stole him away from Field and Stream. Got it out there way. But Pat told me one time, an editor called and said, The artist wants to know what your next column is going to be about so he can start working on. Pat had no idea.

He said, it's about a box. He said, okay, what kind of box? he said a green box a green box how big oh that was big as a coffin okay so they went with that he had no idea what and he wrote about it yeah that's good that's good well man I appreciate you coming on the show and taking the time to drive up here I'll tell you I'm I wanted to meet you for a long time because I know you are uh you can tell you're so genuinely involved in hunting and fishing. I get so much out of your podcast that you did one on CWD recently.

I learned a lot of stuff. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I saw when you went to North Dakota to that bobcat sale, learned a lot of stuff from Nevada. Yeah. Oh, was that Nevada?

Yes, sir. Yeah. No, I really enjoy your stuff. And it's a pleasure to meet you and do the podcast. So I appreciate that. You know, I want to share this with people that we met down in Cody, Wyoming. and you gave me some smoked trout. And it's great smoke trout.

Everybody loved it, but I wound up, they wanted to be in well-traveled smoke trout because I took that. I had one pack left, and I took it to the Bahamas. We brought our own food down. Oh, my gosh. Right?

We chartered a plane to get out to a remote area, and so we brought deer and elk and whatnot. And I threw that smoked trout in there. And so we're sitting out there in the Bahamas. on like the, you know, the queen mother fishing grounds, you know, all these dead fish on ice, right? And we're sitting around eating that smoked trout and my buddy down there. Yeah.

He's fished all over the world, you know. Yeah. And we're eating zumbos smoked trout. And he's just blown away how good it is. And he's like, man, how could I make this with something down here? You know, what would I use down here? Yeah, yeah. I didn't tell you this, but I got that right.

I've been smoking fish all my life in my, since my 20s. And I had one of those little, little chief smokers, you know? Sure. And Lord Jensen, I think, out of that. Everybody, yeah, that was like the smoker. Yeah. But I never was happy with the brine.

It just wasn't happy. And I go to Alaska, and man, I had such good stuff. And one day I had mice fishing at Cody on Buffalo Bill Reservoir, and there was a bunch of old guys there. And I didn't know. We got BS. And one guy said he had retired from a meat processor,

wild meat processing business. I said, oh, well, that means they'd cut up. stuff and you smoke stuff, right? He said, yeah, yeah, we smoke deer hams and pheasants and ducks. And you smoke fish, too. He said, oh, yeah. I says, now that you're retired, could I get your brine recipe? Because this guy's a pro. He says, wait a minute, he goes up to his truck and he's got a package of smoke, and he gives it to me. And I said, holy smokes. I've been looking for this all my life. So I didn't do it. I just got that from him. Are you willing to share? Yeah. Tell people. Right now. Okay. Lay it out. Two cups of brown sugar, half a cup of white sugar.

and one cup of tender quick. Morton's tender quick. Tender quick. If you want to make, like, if you want to make your own, like, corn, meat, this is like the quick and easy way of doing it. That product. I buy that product.

I order that shit on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's hard to find. Yeah. Well, I found it in Albertsons and Cody. It's made by Morton, Morton Salt.

Yep. And it comes in a blue bag, maybe a two-pound bag. But it's actually a meat cure. It's got sodium nitrate and nitrate. Mm-hmm. So I've actually sent smoked fish across country. And, you know, it takes four or five days, and it gets warm. And it's okay.

Yeah, you take it down to the Bahamas, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, but anyway, I put it on dry. You know, take your fillets. Take the flays skin on. Of course, I'm going to smoke them. And just lay them in a tub and just keep sprinkling that mixture on them.

And as soon as it hits the cold fish, it turns to liquid. but it looks just like maple syrup. Yeah, it starts drawing that moisture out. Yeah, and I let them soak for about nine hours. Then I rid some off in cold water. I like how you take your own chainsaw and you cut your own wood chips for your smoker. Yeah. Just pick up your saw cuttins.

Yep. You ever rip it lengthwise to get bigger cuttings? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you get those big, big, yeah. Big curlicues. Yeah. But what I did is I took, I had a friend in an outfit, everybody in Montent, Billy Sockton.

Billy Sockton, who lived in Wise River. And he had a chainsaw and he put vegetable oil in it. And he cut his out. So he had food-grade chips. Yeah. So that's what I did. I had a saw and I put take all the old oil out and put the vegetable oil. Really?

So when you're cutting the wood, you didn't have oil residue on the wood, you know. Yeah. That's a good move, man. Yeah. Well, again, Matt, so much, appreciate you coming out. It's a real honor to me. It's an honor to the show to have you on. Thank you, sir.

I really appreciate it. Everybody, Jim Zumbo. Thanks, man. Thank you. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making

good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human