The MeatEater Podcast - Ep.087: The Meat Tree, Part 2
Episode Date: October 23, 2017Afognak Island, AK- Steven Rinella talks with Remi Warren, Dirt Myth, Ridge Pounder, Pat O’Connel, and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: the brown bear attack story continues;�...�the feeling of your life flashing before your eyes; the short but exhilarating ride of Dirt Myth; the devastating mental setback of being charged by a brown bear; bear attacks as an act of predation; being 'bearanoid'; lessons learned; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless,
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You can't predict anything.
Welcome back to the Meat Eater Podcast.
You are about ready to dig into the Meat Tree Part 2.
Now, if you don't know what i'm talking about what i'm
talking about is a story about a fognack island and a particular brown bear this doesn't sound
familiar to you back up a episode and go listen to the meat tree part one if you've already listened
to the meat tree part one and you know that you're in the
right place welcome back we will now proceed with the story are you the first guy that saw it
i might have been i definitely heard him first and i think i i expressed some some fear that
there was something in the woods right next to us and then as soon as i heard that breathing
and that that deep uh you know panting noise you started hearing some twigs snapping you could hear
something coming out as full bore and then it was like all hell broke loose would you agree
yeah that's how that you saw and then and then Remy made. The way Chris and I were sitting.
Did you see him?
Yeah.
You guys were more.
I saw Pat's face and that like.
I am.
My attention immediately went to the sound.
And I just saw like that light color hair just shaking back and forth and locked eyes with him.
And he was coming and that was probably that's when that pandemonium of oh
f-bombs shit this is going down within the span of like three seconds oh yeah it was not this is
it was like no chance to grab bear spray pistols anything it was like that bear was on top of us before we even knew what was going on basically
what was dirt what was your first registration when did you first register it i think in the
same moment but i i knew like the whole time and this was um complacency on my part i didn't have
any protection and like it didn't cross my mind to look for some sort of spray or i should have
been i should have had something and so like my initial reaction i'd not even seen it was
get behind the separate myself from the sound in the direction all the shit was happening
and the tree so i just ran behind the tree before it was in amongst us no i saw only when it wrapped
around the tree after all the other oh really yes yeah and that's yeah and it was right amongst us no i saw only when it wrapped around the tree after all the other oh really yes
yeah and that's yeah and it was right i saw it charging through the woods i didn't see that so
you guys saw it charge the woods you suck pounder when did you see it i was sitting there eating my
sandwich and i remember looking at pat and seeing pat's face and like him registering what was going
on and then all of a sudden everybody's up and i see the bear so i'm like looking at pat and i look left and there's a there's a bear like right there
i had my back to the bear's approach and i somehow when i saw like you know like you
i see all you like the guys that see it causes me to turn toward it turn to my left toward it
but then it's like passing i just remember it's just teeth passing i mean within arm's reach of the right side of my face
coming into i don't i don't know what the the like
you know there's this there's this idea that
when you
I remember reading about this thing where this guy
he's talking about a dude guy that fell
off of his roof
and the feeling
that like your life
like flashes
before your eyes
you know and then later feeling like you think that it did
right there's this idea that uh that in that in those seconds you really maybe are
processing a bunch of thoughts or there's there's this argument in psychology that you really are like processing
quick processing thoughts in fractions of seconds or the memory you later your mind overlays the
memory with thoughts and that when your life flashes before your eyes in a moment it didn't
it just becomes overlaid in recollection because you're like thankful that
you're still there and you're thinking about you and you think that they were contemporaneous
yeah but they perhaps weren't i i remember thinking at the teeth i remember thinking that
uh i was like life will be different now yeah because someone is someone is getting um someone is going to be maimed or killed right now
and life is different everything is in life is different from this point forward it's like i
feel like that happened to me the second i turned and it was like within easy arms reach this thing's
a gape mouth and the noise it was making that that second was ah
yeah i i feel like i distinctly remember the things that were the most disturbing part of it
is the things that you were thinking while this is going down i feel like like oh that's the worst
case scenario type the worst case scenario but i i distinctly in the moment had thoughts i don't think it was after the fact but maybe it was that's
that's the question that's a psychological question well yeah but my my actions of the
thoughts that i had oh i see you know what i'm saying? Yeah. So my first thought was, oh, shit, obviously.
But what I was thinking of is my pistol is there,
and the bear is running toward my, like, I have no protection.
Yeah.
This is how we're going to die.
And my thought was, as soon as I can get a chance to get that pistol,
I'm either going to get maimed getting that pistol,
or I'm not going to, like, you know, because somebody is going to get itimed getting that pistol or I'm not going to like,
you know, because somebody is going to get it here.
Yeah.
You know.
My first like actual real thought that I know happened
because I acted upon it
was to dive out of the way of the bear.
And I didn't hurt my ankle.
I never like twist my ankles,
but I actually like injured my ankle,
clearing myself of the bear.
Do you feel like you got to your feet
no i don't know what i did yeah i really don't know he was in a very relaxed like on his side
uh almost like you were supporting your body on your elbow yeah you were laying down
and especially if you remember that bear coming down within arm's reach and those teeth
i almost feel like you must have like moved from a down position to like
another down position i think i just kind of rolled and sprang downhill yeah that's what i
downhill yeah i definitely downhill yeah there was no way to go no because i was at that little
cut out yeah a little dugout spot i rolled downhill yanni now you tell what happened because this could be a thing that's
this could be like a very important part like what you did i feel like i'm involved in a pivotal
pivotal moment but there could be a lot of reasons like a lot of other uh things that made it a
pivotal moment you know obviously just like what
the bear decided to do at that moment but i certainly didn't have um thoughts there were
there no thoughts there was i did i i remember pat saying something i remember like registering
that like yes there's a bear coming in and then i remember like
my sandwich being thrown to the ground i remember being on my feet i do not remember picking up
hiking poles i do not remember that i just remember like and i don't remember the bear like
there was like a little gully that the bear came out of right and then there was about probably
10 to 15 feet of open grass before he got to us.
And I feel like really the only thing I remember is being in a very aggressive stance with two ski poles held by the handles in my hands.
Black diving trekking poles.
Yeah.
Flick locks.
Fuck.
Saved our life dude and i don't remember making the choice because i had my bear spray
on my hip and i just like not on your pack no no i had my pistol i was running and the same thing i
ran last week hunting elk i was running pistol on the pack bear spray on my actual belt that way
when you go take your pack off take a pee or whatever i'm at least carrying
one you got a redundant system and um i'm still gonna always have bear spray first but gone second
it's just gonna i think it's gonna be my life rule in grizz country we can talk about that later but
um yeah uh it was just there on top of us.
I remember thinking, yes, this is it.
I'm going to get mauled.
And all I can think is that I somehow made, not consciously,
but somewhere in my head, it was fight.
And so I swung those poles as hard as I could right at his face, at his head.
And I've already recounted the story a few times, but there's never been a moment in my life
where there was a more unexpected outcome to one of my actions.
It was like when you yell your kids, they don't just go like, okay, dad.
Exactly.
I'm going to try to make a good analogy here.
It would be like me stepping into the Cubs stadium,
and if someone could give me a pitcher's name,
and them throwing a fastball at me.
Nolan Ryan.
Muhammad Ali.
It was not a pitcher.
He was a boxer. And me taking a 90-mile-an-hour fastball and swinging that bat
and knocking it out of the park,
that would be like how unexpected you would think the outcome would be
of that action, right?
Because you'd expect just to whiff and whiff.
You wouldn't even touch the ball.
Maybe you would touch the ball and foul one off behind you, right?
Yeah.
But what it felt like was that I hit that ball,
and it went out of the stadium
because as i connected with this with this bear's face he did 180 degrees or maybe not quite 180
because i felt like he came in if you can imagine like an acute triangle that you're looking from
the point down he came in on one of the sides and then he turned and went off the other side
that was the thing and that was the the other side that was the thing and
that was the blur of bear that was the thing that was most surprising to me is that it i was
anticipating this being a sort of a drawn this was going to be a draw like i i feel as though
i was thinking that this is going to be a sort of drawn out thing the fight that is going to begin yeah yeah
yeah yeah it wasn't going to resolve quickly it was going to be like someone he's going to get
that a gape mouth is going to get on someone and we're going to have to like we're in a mix up now
like the fight has begun but it ended so we haven't even got into the saga of dirt myth yet
so you connect on his head he spins and what i register from that moment is that at that point
i turn and i feel as though he has dragged is dragging dirt downhill that's what i thought he had dirt and was hauling dirt
downhill yeah no yeah dirt dirt's ready because he just spit into his you spit into his high-end
juice bottle all i saw was that what was that orange first light logo and a bear yeah because
his pants were brown i just saw an orange logo and
a bear going in the same direction yeah i thought he was dragging you down and i will get to the
reality but i thought he was dragging you down and i was frantically trying to find my pack
which wasn't hard to find because leaning against the tree to get my spray to go down and
like that we would all go down and attack the bear with with whatever it was like where's the spray
where's the guns right we're gonna go save dirt but what happened was well yeah so i like i said
i i wasn't opposite of yanni my instant deal was flight like it didn't ever occur like face this thing
and assess well no because there was but i think for some but there was no fate he was like already
on yeah yeah no but i'm saying so like fun i could have gave him three stooges in the eyes
but it's just like he was just like it was like he wasn't but i wasn't like looking at my pack
for my spray type yeah yeah so i think everybody had that there was was no decisions made. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Remy did say he thought and made decisions.
My intention was to go, because when I said I,
well, I didn't add this to the story,
but I was thinking pistol, and it's in front of me where you were.
You ran out to the side, and I start to go to the pistol,
and now I'm caught between now I don't have any time,
so I did this juke move and jumped to the side.
That's when Yanni took two steps up and that bear turned.
So I thought, oh shit.
Like I went left, the bear went right toward Yannis
and then the bear wheeled around.
But Yannis was, at this point,
I couldn't see the action of the swinging.
I just saw Yannis and bear right
here i mean i was within arms arms reach of the bear and i think yannis must have turned around
i juked then he turned around and the bear went down yeah it was so much that i don't even know
if if i like made like if i made contact with the bear or not, like in rolling out of the way.
It was so fast.
It was very fast.
Because it was like here,
and just to reach across the couch to grab a pistol
where you go forward,
and that action of going for the pistol made me go,
oh, fuck, I have no time to get away.
So like that left, right, real fast,
like which way am I going to go?
And I went right, and the bear kind of went right, gonna go and i went right and the bear kind of
went right and i went left and then the bear kind of did that toward yannis yannis must have swung
because i said just after i juked him the bear turned around and it was and then later yannis
was like you know why he turned around yeah it's like no clue yeah dude it'd be like if you were
like sitting in your living room watching tv and then all of a sudden like the bear doesn't come in through the front door the bear is just like next to you and
you're like i gotta do something and it's like that's the reaction speed like that's how fast
it happened i think what so the saga of dirt myth yeah so i i was behind the tree like you said even
though it's happening fast i remember thinking like something it's gonna be messing people up and like assess it kind of
and but like the second i mean that happened split second and that same second it came
on the back side where i was and i think in trying like oh shit you know it's like
it's happening here do you mean he went all the way around the tree yeah so the way like he came
in i don't know if he went all the way around the tree because so the way like he came in i don't know if he went all the way
around the tree because if he did he went down from the bottom because he would have had to come
over my head and he didn't go around the tree no i don't think he ever turned around where steve was
sitting he came down my side of the tree yeah he couldn't have gone around because he would have
stepped on top of me all messed up because i like i've literally been playing it back i saw where
you ended up and over yeah yeah but at some point so i'm totally like
this is interesting because i this whole time i've been thinking he went above like uphill the tree
wrapped around to where i was at that's what i thought happened too oh you and steve must have
ended up in similar places yeah i think but so it's like this freeze frame of this i mean shit
man that was like four foot broad bear.
I feel like, I don't know if that's an exaggeration.
I think it is, but yeah, big, big right there.
And in some movement of mine or being bumped by someone, I think it's like trying to get
out of the way I tripped and fell on its back as it was passing by and was riding on its on its back on its hump on my back just pure coincidence and momentum like
for one mississippi was on its back and got bucked off into an alder downhill you went you went on
him about 15 feet downhill and crashed into an alder patch yeah and i thought when i was on his
back like my thought was yeah like i'm the one that's fucked like he's this is like he's in the like i'm gonna drop and he's gonna turn and
get me oh yeah and when i got bucked up i thought he already had you i thought he was carrying you
no way it looked oh i was just riding riding him riding the storm
dirt layer talked about how he got hurt when he got bucked off he's got a bruise i've seen it yeah but the yeah and then yeah immediately realized everything was
okay and heard you guys say where's garrett it was surreal i mean for everyone but it was like
did i yeah because i remember someone yelled count off i remember everybody goes because i i remember seeing garrett at this point i had my pistol ready and i saw you and i started
running down in that direction and then you stood up and i thought like oh he's got to be right
yeah there yeah because i saw you and bear and going downhill yeah i did you because you would
have been on that side of the tree by that point as well no i saw garrett right i thought the bear had garrett yeah so at this
point yanni you had your you had your pistol by now yeah because i think as soon as he was going
downhill with garrett i think you were the one saying like you know everybody get your bear
sprays get your pistols and i said all of this is legal or not i'm assuming it's legal i said if that bear comes back kill it oh and i said no shit
yeah i was i was like i think at this point we've crossed into yeah because here's the thing
you can't okay in alaska you, so in the lower 48, bears are covered with the exception of, with the exception very recently of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
The, you know, Indiana sized hunk of ground of Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, until recently.
Let me back, that was a confusing way of putting it.
In the lower 48, they have ESA protection,
outside of a very small area,
and so,
it's like,
if you kill a bear,
in self-defense,
or in defense,
you can't kill it,
in defense of property,
okay,
you can kill it,
in defense of life,
in Alaska,
you can kill a bear,
in defense of property,
so if a grizz,
if a brown bear grizzly, grizzly is destroying your camp,
you can kill the bear.
You can't kill the bear to protect your kill.
If a bear claims your moose kill
and you don't have a permit to kill the bear as a hunter,
you need to forfeit the kill to the bear.
But in this case, we'd been attacked. It wasn't like... And there was no access to the kill to the bear but in this case we'd been attacked it wasn't like
and there was no access to the meat for this bear yeah he would he didn't have it we'd been
attacked so i yelled out if that bear comes back shoot it because you know because of obvious
reasons um so we'd have been yeah defense of life yes in that case uh suddenly uphill even though he left downhill suddenly uphill we heard him woofing
so there's different among our group there's different interpretations
i feel as though it was the same bear they're so freaking fast he was just back up there, woofing.
There's also the idea that it had a cub up there, and that cub was woofing, but I don't think that's what happened.
I think that bear just was so freaking jacked up and fast that he was back up there.
We kind of surrounded the tree people everyone facing in different directions i went up in the tree started cutting meat out
that was extremely some people would have just ditched it but i was i didn't want to ditch it
that was yeah i was like let's get the heck out of here we we made a pretty good formation quick
though we circled up everybody was pointing
in a different direction we circled up around the tree everybody had protection at that point
too yannis and i were the two with the pistols everyone now had bear spray in their hands
so we were we were collected everyone was at this point cool-headed and collected our backs were to
a tree so we couldn't get attacked from the back we would see the bear coming in at this point you were now in the tree went up getting the meat started
cutting meat down out of the tree and then anytime somebody went to go get something we had
the pistols and we made a rule we were creating our own confusion but because we're making a ton
of noise because thinking that and i know it works making noise that bears bugs bears yeah right so like
an authoritative like hey i just noticed through a lot of personal experience like an authoritative
standing up group of guys going hey is intimidating to bears dude my voice is still raspy from you
it is so much yep but we made a rule too don't say bear unless you see a bear hey and all that's okay but going hey bear
bear because we kept like freaking out causing a little bit of confusion about whether someone was
seeing it or not yeah and i'm up in the tree and i got a pretty good view at half the ground around
us cut the meat down then we just grabbed the meat up by hand i remember looking down for my
sandwich and it had been mashed and it was as mashed as the original bear shit laying under that tree.
Bad sandwich.
My sandwich was destroyed.
Hacked a meat down out of the tree.
We just picked up bags of meat.
And then in defensive formation.
It was impressive.
Four guys carrying meat.
Two guys with everybody with pepper spray.
Two guys toting pistols.
Dude, you carried a bone in shoulder
with a busted ankle down a hill and up down a steep hill and up a steep ravine and a river
crossing until we had a big open area in which to load up our packs yeah you were in lead with
that too i was walking point with the shoulder yeah so oh man now here's what here's a little
bit about now now we're getting into conjecture here's a little bit about now we're getting into conjecture
here's a little bit about what i think might have happened hey folks exciting news for those who
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Like, if I had to go, if somehow this had all been captured on film by some secret camera,
we don't know about.
Um,
and I had to bet like what the footage would reveal.
Uh,
and also if this footage was able to,
um,
assess the psychological state of the bear and evaluate his motivations,
I feel like this is what I kind of feel like this is what happened.
I feel as this is what I kind of feel like this is what happened. I feel as though somehow in the hours before our arrival, a bear had come in and was like, wow, right?
A lot of meat, a lot of stuff going on, a lot of people smell,
and he was sussing shit out.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that us approaching,
making a lot of noise, hooting and hollering,
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that we maybe moved the bear off.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that then we sat down to eat sandwiches and we're all
on the ground.
You can't really see what's going on in there.
He is in the area.
He comes back.
In fact, it's not like a big threatening 1200 pound bear that's coming and claim the kill
site. threatening 1200 pound bear that's coming and claim the kill site it's like some low
not very intimidating things yeah under that tree i think he came in to assert his presence
and i feel was kind i mean this is so conjectural i almost hesitate to even bring it up but it's
like an interpret i'm offering up an interpretation,
an unprovable interpretation.
I feel that he ran in and was kind of overwhelmed by what he ran into.
Yeah.
Just the chaos.
Six, like a collection of six yelling, screaming.
Extremely handsome.
Trekking pole swinging like mayhem.
And then also one that jumped on him from his perspective yeah i think he's
telling his buddies dude i gotta attack my people it was uh we in that situation i i feel like
looking back we were zebras because they survive in these groups and when the lion runs in it's
this scatter confusion effect that
the predators stretch so many ways they don't know a single target to focus on and they end up
giving up and reassessing yeah one explanation i have is that that like on one hand like how could
that that mouth have not yeah gotten hold of somebody and i'm like okay there's two explanations one
that it was such an explosion of like it might have been expected as much as it expects or
whatever yeah i mean like they're predators they attack shit they know what they're doing
he was attacking maybe a thing that he thought was a thing a single thing yeah and in fact it
was not it was it broke out of his line of sight was all of this stuff right and that
that he never got a hold of someone or it was never his intention to get his mouth on something
it felt like he was intending definitely did because he put his mouth on yeah it seemed like
it meant to get a hold of something and i'm sure that it knew whatever whoever it was looking at
as it came through the brush it knew that I am a lot bigger than that thing.
Yeah.
I think we should also clarify, this was not a bluff charge.
This was a full-on charge.
We've been false charged.
I've been false charged.
Yanni's been false charged.
And there's a big difference.
False charges go down a certain way.
This was nothing close to a false charge this
was a 100 charge the type of charge when a guy ends up if he's there gets attacked or dying
the surprise charge that goes 100 of the way this was that charge yeah false charge being like lots
of hoofing teeth clacking gets up spins at 15 yards maybe comes in and spins at 15 yards which is scary yeah but
there is nothing like this dude yeah yeah um i had a gun pulled on me in nevada and it took a
couple hours for my hand to quit shaking and i had uh in the time that we got false charged
it took me a couple hours for my hand to quit shaking.
It was like that level of... But this was in...
There was no spin.
He crashed through us.
And I think must have gotten confused.
Got whapped in the face.
Got jumped on from his perspective. got gang piled yeah he's like
what the hell is going on you know and and ran down i have a question i'm sorry not to
do you think like how relevant is it that the more i think about it the more it makes sense it was
one bear and he was back above us like sussing us out even more yeah i don't have it i mean
not really knowing i have no doubt that's what happened well so in that case in my mind too
that's very relevant like to see even though it's super thick like if that would have all gone down
and we would have seen him on the other side of the main creek,
just getting out of there,
it would have been like...
Yeah, he didn't...
I don't know.
The fact that he wrapped back around
into an aggressive point of contact
freaks me out even more.
He was just still...
Just waiting for that attack to happen again yeah
it was scary it was a very confusing it was like in those movies where someone's getting attacked
and it's over here then over there it was very over here over there the it we didn't know which
way he was going to come back in because we heard we saw him go down we heard crashing to the side
and we heard noises over here and we heard the wolfing up here so it was a very disorienting thing where he could come in again at any direction
and that was the the almost more that was scarier for me than the actual charge yeah because the
charge was all instinct you just like react yeah But this was just waiting for it to happen again.
Yeah, it was intimidating, man.
Now, there's this thing in dealing with bears and bear safety.
There's this idea that if you are attacked by a black bear,
what you're experiencing is an act of predation and
that you would fight that bear as long as you could possibly fight
because he's attacking you in an act of predation
and it's his aim to kill you and eat you.
Grizzly bears, brown bears do that too.
They do predatory attacks but they also do attack of that they're startled or threatened or spooked and their response to the spooking
is to neutralize the threat and a black bear's response to spooking is to act like you know everything else in the world right away run off so when people
say that this whole like playing dead idea with a with a brown bear attack grizzly attack is that
that you're betting on that it's the neutralization of a threat
thing that's happening to you and that once you cease to be any kind of a threat
and he can be like,
don't mess with me, man,
that maybe you'll be lucky
and he'll then leave you alone.
Because he's like, hey, this thing scared me.
I got the situation resolved.
Now I'm done.
There's all that kind of talk, right?
Now, and I've always maintained that like when people ask these questions, you know,
about how to deal with bears and bear safety and what you should carry and this and that, I usually say like best practices or when people who have exhaustively analyzed all
these maulings and attacks,
like what do they find to be recommended practices?
I'll point these out to people,
but I oftentimes will also clarify that if it were actually happening,
I don't know how much all of this is going to be really that helpful.
And now that I know what happens when it happens,
I'm more,
I'm just more aware of,
of that.
It's almost a shrug of the shoulders.
It's like how it really goes down is so fast and dizzying and overwhelming
that you're not even operating even in a reptilian thing you know like meaning like that your brain is like these layers right
and deep in your brain are these ideas of just that you need to breathe okay like just basic
things that you do and then layered over it are these more you know like these more you get like like emotional ideas and sophisticated actions right
and i don't and i feel like the shutdown that occurred for that half second was a very deep
shutdown occurred in my brain yeah like a deep like a deep instantaneous shutdown and then you
then coming out of that was like if you found if you're in a
boat if you're in a boat that capsizes and you're thrust underwater and you need to swim up to the
surface i feel like i had to swim up out of a i had to swim up out of the water to find a breath of air the breath of air being a clear thought i had to like swim through
a haze to come out with with a clear idea of what to do next yeah yeah it was such a mental setback
of all your thinking and situational awareness spatial awareness of just being a person who's like prides themselves on
knowing how to deal with bad situations right learn through like being out in the woods lot
hunting a lot being in shitty situations subjecting yourself to that you get like pretty good at
problem solving it was like all that was gone for some part for some collection of seconds maybe it was just wiped out and i had to
like swim to the surface of some very murky water to put my head up and be like here's what you need
to do yeah and in the time it occurred to make that metaphorical swim to the surface of consciousness was probably the time in
which you're just in its teeth yeah not even feeling it other maulings play out different ways
because there was a guy that got killed you know up by denali and he had been photographing the bear
that killed him up until it's very far away and
he was still snapping photos at 25 yards then the bear killed him so there you have like a situation
like that we've had other bears come into our camp or come to claim like a caribou kill that you had
all kinds of time but I think that all that time gives someone who knows how you're supposed to behave
time to make it not happen yeah through how you present how you configure your group how you use
firearms for warning shots like all that time is all the action needed to make it not become a
situation but when the situation is fast like that i feel that like
it would take you would have to live through that six times to be able to become
right yeah it's just like my analogy of like skiing giant freaking black diamond moguls fast
right the first time you go down that ski run you're just like oh my god oh my god you fall you trip and this is whirring by you and then you get to a certain level of feeling
comfortable and you're like even though you're smoking that hill it's all happening slow every
every single turn and bump just happens nice and easy you see it yeah it would take a lot of bear
charges but a thing but but i want to i want to preface i want to preface i'm using that to
preface what i am going to say because i am going to turn this into a recommendation
right good that's where i was going to go with that too yeah i've got a lot of recommendations
yeah so all of that said i'm going to turn it into recommendation that um i think that that that
it's possible to go into an area and you go into an area, a risky area,
and initially you're very aware of the risk, but it's mentally exhausting to be aware of risk.
And I think that some part of your brain wants to get out of the risk mode,
and you're like, okay, we've gone days.
We haven't seen a bear.
I don't see evidence that a bear has been on the kill,
and you just have a gradual letting down of your defenses
that you maybe wouldn't have made that mistake on the first day
when you went into it ready for this thing to be happening.
We were talking about it.
We'd read about it.
We discussed it.
We were joking about it.
But over the course of a few days,
it somehow like a level of complacency took place.
And the concrete recommendations one would be to try to to try to maintain that level of awareness
even when it's not being uh reinforced by constant reminders of trouble
because the first bear i laid eyes on on that trip was within arm's reach
so there's that in a much more like practical much more like practical real-time thing
having your deterrent
um on the waist belt of your pack is great when you're wearing your pack.
But when you take that pack off
and set it down
and you remove from it
and then all of a sudden the bear that you see
as an arms reach away,
getting it isn't really an option.
Especially if the first thing you need to do
is roll out of the way of the thing.
It's like you have to have you have to have it kind of on your chest i would even say having it in the holster could be clumsy you know i mean you can't just carry it
you need your hands well i mean if you take your pack off and you're just hanging around just having
it unholstered with the safety on just close to you yeah all the time yeah you could
have it on your pack but have also like a secondary location yeah where you if you take that pack off
like rami you actually had two holsters talk about your two holster approach so
i promised i just had a weird feeling about this trip. And I went and bought a second holster in Anchorage on my layover.
Because I was like, and I promised myself, I said, because I got just a weird, you know, those just you feel a little uneasy.
I said, I promised myself if I take my pack off, I'm going to put my pistol in my other holster.
Even if it's just to go take a leak.
I was diligent with it.
The one time during the trip i did not do it was that
that time because your pack was right next to you and i think that that well it was and i remember
seeing it sitting there and thinking to myself i should grab that pistol i i was thinking
to have and i i sat and then the confusion of someone sitting where I was sitting, because I actually, when we sat down, I unclipped the safety catch.
So it was ready to grab because I was sitting down.
I put my hand on it as like a mock pull out.
And then I got up to get the water and then people had moved
and I wasn't sitting in that position anymore.
And I thought, oh, I'll grab that.
But then throughout the week, we had talked about,
oh, our best defense is going to be having six people.
A bear wouldn't attack six people.
Which is actually what ended up probably saving us,
or one person from some kind of
when i say the group thing i mean when you have a bear who's like oh there's some stuff
i'm gonna go over toward that stuff to suss out what's going on which they do they see stuff and
they just go toward it i think having a group of people is is yes very intimidating to a bear it is and i think what made because i'm my dad is hyper bear and
now i'm paranoid and after this experience i'm gonna go apologize to him because there's a lot
of times that i've done dumber stuff than what we did way dumber and had no consequence if you
were by yourself under that tree, you'd be dead.
I agree.
No question.
Yeah.
And when my brother and I were on the island previously,
we were seeing bears, but we also took every precaution.
We never loitered around the meat tree.
We moved the meat to caches.
The minute we got to the cache,
we climbed to the tree and looked.
One person always had their deterrent out.
We had a plan and we stuck to that plan 100%
because there was two of us
and we knew that it would probably be one person.
One person was always on the lookout.
One person was doing things.
We were, you know, we went in with that plan
and said no matter what that's what we're going to do but with the amount of people we had and
not seeing bears and other things that whole situation got lax yeah you know and and that's
why my first thought was like shit i'm gonna without, and my pistol's right there. You know what the best recommendation? The best recommendation, don't hunt in bear country.
Yeah.
But that's not acceptable.
It's not.
So you need to work down to a solution that you can live with.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's very relevant.
A solution you can live with is, I now realize,
no one wants to have extra unneeded stuff hanging off their body.
But I can live with the idea of having some annoying contraption,
which in and of themselves are dangerous.
Because I've been hosed by pepper spray.
It sucks.
Hand guns have inherent dangers to yourself and your companions so it's like
you're and i have at times been jokingly said uh pepper spray is more dangerous than bears
having been involved in a couple situations where pepper cans blew off
went off inadvertently so it's like you
it's like you're you're weighing all these things but yeah for the real-time recommendations it has
to be the reason i say your chest too it has to be somewhere where you can get it blind yep
and your waist belt your jacket covers things things get in the way it's get caught
pulling trying to pull it out i can just now i mean it right here is the easiest place to reach
even if you're if you're on the ground you can defend yourself with your arms and still reach
your chest and i had my gps unit up front on my waist belt and my spray behind it and the whole
damn trip i kept thinking that i should take a second and reverse them so that the
spray was easier to get at.
And every time I'd look at it,
I'd be like,
Oh yeah,
I got to,
you know,
should you really get around to never did it.
And that's still the waist belt problem,
the waist belt problem.
And to think too,
that we used to,
we used to bow hunt elk.
We sometimes have our spray in the lid of our pack.
What in the hell good is that?
Well, I have hunted this island with spray in my pack.
It's stupid.
I'll never do that again.
No, you'll only hurt yourself probably with the spray in your pack.
Yeah, holes in your gear.
Yeah.
I think if I could have a couple of minutes,
maybe it'll only take a minute.
I'll give you 10.
But for me, the recommendations,
I think for me, it's like even a step earlier
or two steps earlier.
I feel like we did a good job coming in there,
making noise,
but then we quit making the noise, right?
Yeah.
And you can read on our our website you can go to the
articles about grizzly bear attacks and the prevention stuff and stuff that that uh frank
van manna was talking to us about it's like constantly making noise you know it's like
where like bear bells come in you know to play where people attach them to their backpacks or
their hiking sticks whatever to avoid like utterly surprising yeah the surprise factor you know and
i think that us you know making surprise factor you know and i think that
us you know making noise throughout you know obviously not taking the break but making noise
throughout the meat retrieval process and basically done what we did after the attack
and and sort of taking that approach without having that bear come in again this is hindsight
right but that's how we should have done it we
should have gone in there with freaking four four sets of eyes two dudes working the meat two dudes
packing the packs four sets of eyes looking all directions constantly making noise yelling being
bear aware and moved out of there even if it 200 yards, but to a place where we could see and we couldn't get surprised.
If we could see 100 yards every direction, we wouldn't have been surprised.
Yeah, I was actually going to add that.
I tried to earlier where I said the first mistake was lingering under the hanging tree.
But yeah, without really knowing knowing i feel as though had we
done what you're just saying this might not have happened and hooting and hollering the whole time
standing up big presence loud presence deterrence drawn yelling hey bear hey bear hey bear getting
what you needed to get taken care of and getting out of there very loud lots of noise
clustered together standing up bodies yeah that's prevention what i could add is i think when you do
that right you get into this mode where say say we did that nothing would have happened then you
get this mindset like well nothing happened it was a waste of time yeah we should have hung out when you get that yeah yeah but from if we could lend any advice
to anyone is if it feels like a waste of time it's working yeah you already know you're in the mix
just assume that it's going to happen and And then when it doesn't happen, whatever you're doing is the correct solution.
But by us getting that lazy,
like,
Oh,
it doesn't happen.
It hasn't.
I mean,
I've spent a good portion of my lifetime in bear country and had nothing
happen.
Yeah.
It's like the first time you go take a growler,
you select the growler site where you can see.
You got the shotgun with some slugs.
You got your spray.
By the third growler, you're out there in the dark,
tucked up against some berm.
How many times did I ask you where your bear spray was
and how come you weren't carrying it, the one I gave you?
So many times.
Too many times.
I was like, I got too much stuff. I times too many times i was like i don't i
got too much i got can i got too much stuff i don't got time for i don't got time for spray
that's the other unique thing though too is filming you're like in you're on your monitor
yeah not necessarily aware of you know spatial awareness yeah when you're kind of in the zone
but yeah you need to you need to have a system before you go in and stick to the system and
because you aren't having encounters or whatever you just go like whew made it through that day
without an encounter but i'm still doing my system still doing my system yeah it's almost
like if you should it's it's a pain in the ass but it's better than getting mauled right it's
almost like like my brother danny has a thing they do when they're moose hunting.
This has nothing to do with bears, but it's an interesting thing
because people get carried away in the moment when you're moose hunting.
It's hard to pack moose.
So he'll go up hunting with a group of his buddies,
and because they know that you get carried away in the moment,
they'll set like, okay, okay before we go before we get started
what is the distance that everyone in this group agrees we will pack a bull
and draw that line now and then later there is no room for someone to be like ah
guys sorry i shot one four miles off the river because there's no room for like making
individual assessments about what's best it's like they come into it we're like okay we all agree
we're hunting on our own and everyone here if someone kills a bull within a mile and a half
of the river corridor everyone's cool and that's we're packing and unless you want
to move it yourself stay within 1.5 miles of this river corridor and it works for them
i feel that a good bear approach would be that if you have a hunting partner
um this doesn't like work for like my brother matt like largely hunts alone so this is self-enforced
but if you have a hunting partner or hunting partners that you would, prior to a trip, say, what's our bear plan?
Yeah.
Now, let's make a deal that this bear plan is concrete and it is not open to later complacency or different interpretations of it. Our bear plan is this. At any
given time,
you have
whatever we determine
through our own research to be the most effective
deterrent for where we are, be it a pump shotgun with slugs,
a pistol,
spray, pistol and spray,
redundant systems, that our bear plan
is such that there's no deviation
from this plan.
And we agree that that's how we do i think that that needs to become our way yeah so i just think that one of the most
interesting things of this experience to me was the mindset okay so before the event our mindset was such that we were not going to be attacked by
bears and treated it like that from the moment that bear attacked us till the time we got the
heck off the island we were expecting to be attacked dude everywhere i looked i was gonna turn around it completely flipped it went from
oh they don't attack to oh we are going to be attacked yeah it was and we did see another bear
after and it was instead of but had we seen that bear before we thought oh a bear no big deal now
we saw that bear and said that bear wants to to kill us. Another thing that's interesting, man, is I think about a lot of the lessons I learned from our time talking to Rourke Denver,
who's an author and a retired SEAL commander, And him talking about that they train and practice so much in such real situations
that when you're actually doing something, like the training is so real and so ingrained
that when you actually go and do it, and in his case,
that you're actually thrust onto the battlefield,
it doesn't feel any different to have it be in reality than what it did that what you were
trained to do like the training is so real and repeated that it's fluid to go into reality
he didn't even think like when he was actually in a situation he never thought about it being
like oh this is the real thing because everything was so real and i feel that a good system with like a good system with sort of managing your deterrence
would be that you would with your bodies kind of test it right well yeah there's you think
you're cool like where is your spray cool i don't know let's let's see like okay get your spray
yeah how much time does it take seven seconds for you to get your spray. Yeah. How much time?
Would it take seven seconds for you to get your spray out?
That's not a good system.
Yeah.
Now, I have a lot of analogies running through my head about,
and Garrett and Pat, you guys can speak to this too,
about staying safe in the backcountry skiing.
Yeah, avalanche.
You know, learning how to use your avalanche beacon,
reading snow, making group decisions.
Practicing. Yeah, practicing. I mean, beacon, reading snow, making group decisions. Practicing.
Yeah, practicing, digging, using your probe.
It's proven that the bigger the group is, the more dumb decisions are made.
It's like another similarity.
But yeah, I feel like I've discharged bear spray.
You said you have, right?
I've discharged it. I want to. Have you? I have, yeah. Yeah, so three out spray. You said you have. I've discharged it.
I want to.
Have you?
I have, yeah.
Yeah, so three out of the six of us have, three haven't.
That should be mandatory that everybody's sprayed it.
Yeah, and Dirt was even – we ran out of time.
Dirt was even asking about cutting loose with a can.
Yeah, if you carry spray, I wonder if they even make like a non-active they make a non-active
ingredient a practice can yeah do that yeah just to know what i mean it throws an impressive cloud
that thing actually kicks when you hit the button on it throws an impressive cloud but
practice with it the nice thing about the one with no active ingredient is you can see how it works in the wind because a big problem we had is we were
in an area with very high winds and um came in with the wind yeah so yeah that was a weird thing
too he came into us traveling with the wind you would all you know if someone said to me hey man
a bear is going to come attack you i'd be okay, he's going to come from downwind. Because he's downwind right now.
But he didn't.
He didn't.
He didn't play the wind.
A thing I was thinking about.
Man eaters.
Sorry.
About the bear plan is like, you got all your deterrents and you're all set up
and you practice, but say a bear charges you and either your shotgun jams
or your spray doesn't
go off or something happens in your group and you're with somebody or you're alone and you do
end up getting mauled what's your plan to like get help at that point because like that's what i was
thinking about i was like if somebody here got mauled and i had to be the one to like make a
call to the coast guard or whoever the hell to get a heli back like i don't know how to do that
so like knowing that kind of thing about like where you're at,
who you're going to contact,
having something on you that allows you to reach the outside world
in those situations is a good idea too.
And that's applicable to any emergency.
Oh, yeah.
Because most kind of like travel like this,
you know, there's like, we could have the same discussion.
If one of us had gotten a compound fracture,
we could be having a big conversation about having a compound fracture on your femur.
Big time.
So, yeah, there's that kind of stuff.
Just so you guys all know, the AK Troopers,
which is the line you call for, like, 911 help when you're out in the bush,
it's in the sat phone.
Oh, nice.
For that reason.
That's good.
I also had an emergency beacon on me.
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the on x club y'all oh they yeah yeah panic button sos their thing is travel with, and this is something we do pretty good at, is, I mean, people come into our organization and out of it.
And I think that the people that stay within our organization are cool-headed people.
Yeah.
So, if you're testing out new hunting buddies and stuff, this isn't't a good place to find out if someone's a good fit.
Yeah.
Do it somewhere else.
You don't want to be with a guy that...
Dude, if somebody just freaked out and panicked, that could have been a bad situation, gone even worse.
Yeah, and I've been with people a couple times.
I've been with people who full--on legit had like panic attacks yeah about it's kind of like wilderness travel and and um yeah you just don't want to be around
i don't mind like talking to those guys like you know i don't mind talking to people like that but
i don't like being around them and in situations it could turn dicey but give me a yeah it shook
me up man i mean just like just for me to kind of like for me to kind of
summarize it um it was it was a it was a real eye opener and it made me reassess a lot of assumptions
i had about uh how i would like to think I am.
And it was because I don't like knowing
that a real big bad surprise
can snap me,
a real big bad surprise can so readily
snap me out of
my mental processes.
But you get really hard on yourself about that,
but also you could be like,
well, I managed to roll clear of the bear.
Yeah.
Maybe there's some guy somewhere that wouldn't have done that.
Just a little lay down, got in bed.
What am I going to do?
I don't know.
So you want to be like, nothing happened, so maybe we did as good as we could have done that this is a lay down gotten bit what am i gonna do i don't know so it's like so you want to be like nothing happened so maybe we did as good as we could done and this
is an important point we talked about a lot among ourselves afterward even if everyone had had no
no remy felt that he had time because he saw it coming if i had had a pistol or pepper spray in
my actual hand the way i was there would have never been a safe opportunity to discharge it oh no i
would have been where i was i would have been at risk of shooting one of us because i was behind
people but sounds like remy and yannis could have possibly had a chance to oh had i had it in my
hands you would have a chance to flip the safe safety and sprayed him yeah for sure yeah yeah
so yeah so yeah because i had yeah i would have had time to it would have
had i think though the way we were sitting it would have had to been on my chest because it
would have been really hard to yeah i don't know about that's the thing like again i didn't make
the decision but some like like i've been carrying the freaking thing on me for a week i feel like in all of september i've
had a bear spray on my hip almost yeah and it just like it didn't come through my head to pull
the bear spray and i don't know if that was no real decision came through my head except i just
was like in this like it was almost like an out-of-body experience there's somebody else there
like just doing this motion.
And then once the bear was running away, and we started talking.
And again, that might have been me swimming through the murky waters of my capsized ship next to it.
But yeah, it just wasn't a thing.
And even if it was on my chest,
I don't know if there would have been the time to pull it out.
But we never practiced.
I feel like we need to start doing the thing where you're like draw so yeah like now that someone's just yelled draw
and everybody has to whip their shit out yeah me and my brother would do that yeah we do that
like test your system test it like okay spray and rip and grab or pistol or whatever you've got or
rife you know and to see. Just like when you're a kid
or even now I still do it.
When I'm wing shooting,
I will walk around and I'll throw the gun up.
Constantly throwing the gun up.
Even though I've shot chucker
my entire life.
In those mountains,
I practice throwing the gun up randomly.
Because when that flush happens,
I need it to be 100% instinct
to put that
gun to my cheek and shoot and i and yeah there was well dirt got a picture of me practice drawing
actually i did a couple times but yeah yeah yeah i went i one time watched uh i was watching a
green beret a team train and what they were working on the moment i happened to be watching
them is they're working on transitioning from your rifle to your pistol it was like they're doing drills where you drop one
and pick the other one up and like dude i never once was like so what would happen if i really
needed to quickly get my pepper spray out um yeah it's probably not a whole lot more we'd say about
it i got got the elk out ran into another bear on the way that's that oh oh go ahead no that's gonna say on a cycle like the biggest thing i'm trying to
wrestle with now is keeping that due diligence up but also being able to enjoy and relax
in bear country like because i love outside of hunting i'm out in mountains with bears all the
time and i don't want to be i don't want to let this that experience you know be a constant anxiety
and i think the way to fight that is to know that you're doing everything you're you can do
and then just focus on the enjoyment of of the mountains and the wildlife, too. Well, you can't quit. No, no, but it's, you know, at a point on that hike out,
it was like, I just can't deal with this.
But you're like, no, I can't.
I just got to be diligent.
Yeah, and I feel like if anybody did quit after that,
I wouldn't feel, I wouldn't say anything.
I would like, it'd be fine with me.
I'd be understanding.
But I like the places that, I But I like the places that have them.
I always have liked the places that have them.
Like, if you gave me two options, you can hunt in a place that has them
or a place that doesn't, I'm always going to pick the place that does
because I like their presence and I like the knowing that they're there.
Oh, for sure.
Part of that is, part of that is like kind of feeling not comfortable with risk but kind of feeling like
drawn to risk yeah and that's and i i'm i've definitely no doubt about it 100 back to my
normal state with the addition of being diligent on uh you know knowing what needs to happen the physiologist jared diamond
um he's a bunch of things but that's one of the things he studied he had this idea of why is
why is really reckless behavior why was it not um wiped out yeah through natural selection because when it comes to natural selection you have like
sexual selection and a natural selection so sexual selection would be things that
um enhancing organisms ability to reproduce so like having like big antlers having like giant
antlers is on one hand can be a detriment okay you're putting a lot of energy in the production
of those antlers that's not helpful you can be putting it into fat reserves um it's harder to get around through
the woods right you got big antlers on your head you can't maneuver as good so that's like a
detriment so what is the point well the point is there could be sexual selection like that females
look at that and they want to breed with you and so even though like natural
selection might it might not fit with that sexual it makes up for it in sexual selection
he has this idea of like why would it be that you have like why would it be that you'd have
why is it attractive to a species like the human species to be like that someone can really party hard like why would being a hard
partier not have been just eliminated through sexual or natural selection and there's a sort
of thing this idea he gets i'm not doing a very good job articulating it but it's a demonstration
of fitness to be like i am so fit that i can afford to do something so reckless in such a dramatic expenditure
of energy.
Like that's how fit I am.
And come out of the other side of that still walking.
So the idea of like, why are you drawn toward risk?
Like why hasn't like risk been wheedled out you know it could just be that it's like a demonstration
it's like you're demonstrating a level of preparedness and level of fitness by courting
disaster yeah and that in, what an amazing experience.
Dude, I wouldn't have it any other way.
No.
It worked because it worked out.
Yeah.
All right, Garrett, concluding thoughts?
The experience without the consequence was a gift by Mr. Brown Bear of Fog Neck. And with this crew.
When we got out of the swampy waters of our intellect,
we were tight, tight, tight.
I mean, there was still fear,
but I felt like it was like I wouldn't want to be with anybody,
any other people.
Everyone was on the same page.
Bam, get this meat out of there.
There was some group cohesion going on there but i also literal and
figurative there's something that we didn't mention was after the rest of the concluder
no well this is i think something that needs to be mentioned before we sign off okay is the rest
of the suck of the day oh yeah very important the suck is so fully established at this point
but i don't know, dude.
It got worse.
Yeah, I mean, we had the bear attack.
It's a story worth telling.
The bear attack.
And then the Gale Force winds, which destroyed our camp.
So not only do we have a bear attack that same day,
we come back to a destroyed camp.
To describe the winds, as we're nearing the pass that we went over,
I don't know, a half dozen times during the week,
some winds come up to the point that Stephen,
I think Chris-
I mean, Chris got knocked over by the wind.
Got knocked down by the wind.
And moments later, Pat's rain cover gets ripped off of his pack
and disappears into the sky.
Like a helium balloon.
Ascending.
Ascending.
I mean, there was not an even chance that you would try to go find it.
That thing's probably in Mexico.
Everybody in the panhandle of Florida is probably like, whatever.
Freaking little bitches.
You don't know what wind is.
But it was windy.
And so when we crest over the pass and look down...
I see a sleeping pad from 1,200 feet above.
I think, what was it?
1,000 feet above camp.
I see a sleeping pad drifting along.
With sheets of rain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then having to disassemble tents, redo a bear fence,
because now we're all thinking that we're gonna get killed
reset up tents dry out wet sleeping bags fighting hypothermia the entire time
yeah it was just it was a very taxing day yeah it was it was emotionally taxing you know hypothermia
gets way more people then yeah yeah and i could picture in that situation i could picture
like the like a loan or a pair of inexperienced campers yeah could have gotten in that situation
and also found themselves in very serious trouble yeah i think we had two pretty close brushes with
some uh trouble trouble serious trouble that's a song by The National.
Trouble will find me.
It found us.
On multiple occasions.
Pounder?
My concluding thought was going to be kind of piggybacking off of what Dirt said.
Just thankful to
having to go through that all.
Just going through it with a group of dudes
like you guys
that are just level-headed and able to handle troublesome situations and be cool with it.
Wouldn't trade it.
Good.
No.
I'm going to go back to your lonely apartment.
This is not lonely.
I got a lady there.
You're going to go back to Miss Pounder
and tell her the story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I would trade it
for going in there
and doing a few things differently
and not having it happen.
Oh, to trade it
to not have it happen at all?
Yeah.
No, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't trade it.
Now it happened.
I'm glad it happened.
Yeah.
Learning experience. That's true. Yeah, if you look at it that yeah. Now it happened. I'm glad it happened. Yeah. Learning experiences.
That's true.
Yeah, if you look at it that way.
Don't want it to happen again, but wouldn't trade it.
Yanis?
I don't have too much, but I do know that in the minutes,
maybe half an hour, like you said, it took half an hour to quit shaking.
I didn't get the shakes, but it took me maybe half an hour,
45 minutes to catch my breath. Yeah, yeah. I didn't get the shakes but it took me maybe half an hour 45 minutes to uh catch my breath yeah yeah i didn't i didn't get the yeah i didn't mean to see it for i don't know
why i didn't but i didn't have that like when i got the gun pulled on me i didn't get the shakes
but i got something else well no i mean the the endorphins you know adrenaline uh you know it's
a freaking serious high that you're taking on
and then you know coming down off of that it's uh i got emotional quite a few times i kept thinking
about how i really wanted to give my kids a hug yeah i thought about that a lot on the way out of
there um but no that's about it it was a fun trip it was an adventure it's like you say this is
gonna be one of those ones
that's fun to talk about later,
but wasn't that much fun while you were there.
Because I was going to ask you, Giannis,
just as a direct question.
I felt like a little bit afterwards,
your demeanor had changed, and I was kind of curious.
He's still not back to normal.
No, he's not back to normal.
Is it the family that runs through your mind? Is it the thought thought of are you mad at yourself for not doing things the right way like
or is it just a kind of a general funk where it was like that was a real shitty experience
or more of a learning lesson i was just kind of curious on your take on it oh yeah i think it's
just just processing it all still you know i'm not through processing it
and uh i feel a lot of responsibility you know not really to you to remy and steve because i feel
like you guys are sort of here on other or i don't know we're on a different trip you're here as a
guest you know but the guys that you know i hire and you know we sort of set up you know um
apologize to all of them for putting them into that.
I could feel that on you because you're a natural leader.
You have leadership tendencies.
And when I could sense that you were down on yourself,
I imagined that you were feeling like some level of responsibility.
Which you should know.
I may be speaking for both of us.
I understand the ticket that I'm signing up for.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, I know that.
You guys get the heads up for sure.
But that's what it feels like.
But yeah, I don't know.
I guess it just, it does suck, you know, because we all keep thinking about like what would
have happened had, you know, for me, it keeps like, I keep just that moment of like the
bear turned.
Why did he turn?
You know, I have no idea.
But he turned and
that like it changed it all right because you know you having to call my wife you know and
because you way later on the trekking pole man you're telling something you know um telling her
you know some bad news uh i'd feel shitty about it so yeah just a lot to process still i guess yeah i think that out of everyone
after the situation you definitely had the most weight on your shoulders of
you know you were responsible for this crew of guys and i could see that you know if i was on
a guiding trip and something like that happened i would feel like it was my responsibility to the
people that i brought in there. I can understand.
In that case, yeah.
Probably even legally.
That's a lot.
It's a lot to process.
You did.
That's what I said.
I felt at ease afterwards
because of your presence.
Very good point.
I did feel protected because you were
there and like what behind us with that pistol yeah or even like i feel like you were a big part
of that whole when we regrouped like all right you guys start putting packs like yeah steve's
getting the meat you were yeah you did you did you're moving you were a leader that made it
efficient and safe pat what's your take because you do a lot of you
do a lot of yeah things that are more high risk because you like to climb that's what you do like
big wall stuff ice stuff yeah white water uh-huh and i love that that risk element that's more
that's more risky than elk hunting and bear well. Well, yeah. Big wall climbing. That's what, when Yanni called me up and suggested I come on this trip,
I was like, hell yeah.
That sounds like a badass trip.
Like, I want to be involved.
You know, if he had been, if he had called me up and said,
hey, we're going to Maryland or whatever,
I probably would have been like, no, I'm busy.
But I had nothing else going on.
So I was like, hell yeah, I'll go to Alaska and, you know, brown bear country.
Sons of bitches.
You guys need to call.
If you guys are anybody out there looking for work, call Pat.
Because he always gets so much of it.
That if it ain't at a cool location.
No, no, no.
That's not what I'm saying.
But it was like a trip you can't turn down, you know?
Because of the risk element, sort of of yeah that appealed to me yeah but like a couple days before this whole
thing happened i was talking to garrett i'm like i'm not i'm not a hunter you know um and we're
kind of talking we both like kayak and do some stuff like that and i was like you know what like
hunting like it's cool being out in these remote places you know chasing these
animals around but it's just not like quite the adrenaline rush you know that i get from other
activities and we were saying like you said too like pulling the trigger might be a different
yeah yeah i've never like shot something i'd imagine that's and like being a part of like
the full process you know i'm just here to like carry stuff and shoot some b-roll and stuff
but um yeah having this happen completely changed my perspective on what hunters have to deal with
you know like i don't know it was just crazy was way scarier, way more of an adrenaline rush than I've ever gotten from anything I've ever done.
Ice climbing, big wall climbing, kayaking, rafting.
Yeah.
It's not even close.
It was like I've never felt like I was going to die quite as much
as the three seconds that this bear was on our our on our shit you know quite oh my god
yeah but yeah it was really reassuring to be with all you guys who i know have spent your entire
lives you know dedicated to hunting being outside you guys know your shit more than anyone i've
i've met so it was like when we re-huddled and the bear was still somewhere out there in the woods,
I was scared shitless, but at the same time,
it felt really good having you guys there with me too.
So yeah, it was a hell of a trip.
I'm really glad I was along for the ride.
Remy?
Yeah.
No, I think at first I was worried that this trip wouldn't stack up
to the level of suckage that I had experienced.
That was a legitimate concern Remy had.
He was afraid it wouldn't suck enough,
and he'd seem like a guy who blew the suck alarm prematurely you know those guys are like oh
yeah that was real tough and then everyone else out there like this ain't that bad what are you
talking about what a wuss you know and i feel like it met my expectations i was a little worried we
weren't going to get those gale force winds that i promised you honest would happen because i was
like it's gonna be windy can these tents handle this and that and the other thing so we got the wind we got the bears
we got the hike we got the water it just overall reinforced my belief that i don't necessarily have
to do that again but we'll probably find myself there probably and um and it also i think was a good wake-up call for me that i needed uh because i
told myself that i needed that wake-up call but still felt lax and didn't do things i didn't i
honestly was felt the the worst part about it is me feeling like i didn't do what i knew i should have done and maybe it was the
group thing because i just don't do things like that it was just it i just felt like i did things
that were out of character for the way i would do things and it led to situations that were bad
so outside of that you know you just gotta stick to what you tell yourself you're gonna do and
be diligent about the way you do something and not take it for granted yeah because
there's yeah there's your you know you know steve yourself and this whole crew we put ourselves in
a lot of these situations that i mean if you if you go about it right shouldn't be a problem
but there's always that element of something could happen and i'm fully aware of that i mean i
this last year was hunting water buffalo completely alone with no emergency system and just a bow
you know it's dangerous it's stupid i got charged there but it was not anything as scary as that bear like i i
legitimately thought this is how i'm gonna die yeah and that is not a i've had that happen a
handful of times in my life and i just really you know but on the other hand i wasn't i used it more
of as a learning lesson than anything and i hope hope that, you know, with the platform that we have,
I like to see my life as a good way to take what I've learned
and showcase it to other people.
So they can maybe learn from my mistakes, learn from my successes,
and they go out in the field and they can have a good experience
with having to put in less amount of time.
So I think that if you're listening to the podcast,
don't think it's just
six guys sitting here bullshitting about some bear story because i've heard bear stories before
and i haven't taken away what i should have taken away from those bear stories yeah i sat down
on a couch in a setting like this from a guy that was mauled by a bear within five miles of that spot.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
And I didn't learn from his lessons.
No, we met a woman this morning.
His brother got mauled by a bear 20 years ago.
Yeah.
So I think that if there's a takeaway,
take away the things that we're talking about.
And the other takeaway is it reaffirmed my belief
that when it actually goes down
like you're saying you don't know what you're it's just you play it out in your head a million
times but the actual one that would probably get you may be semi out of your control anyways
yeah and you just got to go with knowing that that's how it may go down uh i got two concluders one if you had this coffee
table in a house where you were raising children you would get nothing done besides taking those
children down for stitches it's a burl the the blade coming out on my side of this coffee beautiful
table it is beautiful i look at i imagine little kids with cut foreheads.
Do you think that's what it is?
It's a birch burl?
It's a birch burl.
I would think it's a spruce.
I think it's a chunk of spruce stone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My second concluding thought is, it's like, I always try to, you know, when I think about
hunting, man, when I tell people, it's like, there i tell people it's like there's two i would
say there's two things i'm like if you remove the food i wouldn't do it anymore okay um because it
would the tangible thing would be gone and i need that like i need like i in my stuff i really like
like tangible results um and if you remove the fun, I wouldn't do it either.
Like when I meet a guy who's like, oh, you know,
I don't believe in industrial livestock production,
so I just hunt for my food.
I'm like, but you know what, dude?
You're having fun hunting.
Stop acting like this is not.
Like you're like, oh, brother.
Here we go again.
Got to go hunting again, right?
You're enjoying it, right?
So I was like like if you remove
the fun i wouldn't like it anymore wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't do it anymore if you remove
the food i wouldn't do it anymore um but i almost feel like there needs to be that third thing is if the not if the every time you wake up just like being being in a situation you just can't
imagine everything that'll happen today that uh that it would lose something to callahan not long
ago ryan callahan was talking about the feeling of someone says, oh, I got a private pond stocked with trout.
Would you like to come fish?
Cal's like, you're always going to go once.
And you'd be like, he's right.
This is great.
There's a lot of fish in this pond.
But you're never going to go a second time because you've eliminated the mystery.
Well, it depends on the human,
because unfortunately...
I'm talking about the worthwhile ones.
Okay.
That's harsh.
It is, because there's a lot of people
that even pay for that experience.
I don't mean that.
Okay, the kind that I like to associate with,
or I don't know there's two kinds
of people there's people who think they can divide everyone into two groups and then there's that's a
joke uh that was my concluding thought i love the surprise and mystery no for sure yeah you know i
always you know we uh my brother and i i don't want to say we argue, but we debate about the name of the hunt to eat, the t-shirts.
And it's just like we'd like,
some of us want to really push the whole like,
oh, you're constantly just hunting for the food,
hunting for the food, hunting for the food.
And I'm like, really?
I mean, yes.
For me, I'm not even that much like you are.
We're like, I would just give it up if you took away the food aspect of it.
I'd have to get to that point and then think about it. But for it up if you took away the food aspect of it i'd have to get to that point and then think about it but for me if you took away the chase and like you're saying
the unknown and the adventure and the exercise and just the whole activity and the process of the
hunt then i would not do it yeah it'd be like if you were i was gonna draw some kind of golf
analogy but i'm real bad on golf.
I feel like the same thing applies to our jobs,
mine and Garrett's jobs,
because I'm not always on this show working on hunting stuff,
but it's like the same thing.
It's like the surprise of waking up and like,
oh, what am I going to see today went away or stopped being fun.
I wouldn't do it.
Like if I was working on like some show that was like,
oh, this is what we're going to do, the same same thing every day i would probably try to find something else to do
yeah for sure and you do some when you're not working with us you're still doing sketchy
doing some rowdy stuff yeah all right that's it thanks for tuning in
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