#2100 - Cameron Hanes & Steven Rinella

27:31Yeah, that's it. That's it That's exactly what it looked like. That one's a thousand year old, North Downs in Surrey, so that's in England. Yeah, fuck that ugly tree. That tree looks dope. It looks dope. That's not the tree Steve was talking about. I think it looks cool though. That tree looks old. That tree looks like a gnarly old man. Yeah, like some old dude. It was like when we rode horses everywhere. So Steve, I was thinking like, So what's the difference between a person who you said you wouldn't like to cut that treat or you wouldn't? And then like but like I said not Not I don't say that to condemn you know, I mean I don't say that to cast judgment on You know a logger that does I'm just saying I personally no, I understand that but then there's some people who take that to I'm just trying to I don't know reason with myself Because around here we've had people chain themselves to trees.

28:27You know what I mean? So, would you do that? No. So, that's what I'm saying. It's like, I mean - No, because the passion's not that - Right. There's a lip that the passion's there, but it's not that deep. Right. Yeah, it's just, it's weird thinking about, I understand what you're saying, I totally get that. I would probably, I think I've never cut down a tree. I've never been a tree surgeon, but I would probably feel the same about maybe a four or five hundred year old tree. I might be like, you know, man, Cam, you cut it down. When I was in Northern California, I don't have the deal with any repercussions.

28:58Right. We were in the Redwood Forest, and there's a tree that you drive a car through. Yeah. You've cut a hole in the tree, and I was like, why did they do that? But it was like 1920 or something when they did it. Yeah, I didn't care about anything. They didn't even fuck. But when you're around those trees, they're so big. It's so crazy how wide they are. And when they're gone, that's it. you just chop down something that took thousands of years to grow so you can make what a fucking table. There's a lot of trees that are like the 20 years old. Go kill those. Yeah, it's a tough one man. It's tough on looking at those trees, but it does seem like you know, some of those trees you look at, it's like you're looking at, it almost seems like some approximation of God, you know, and look at some of those old trees man, just astounding.

29:44Yeah, yeah, we that's in Oregon. That was a big thing because we had the spotted owls in late 80s basically and spotted owls lived in old growth. So we had that that whatever timber activists or Who of these spikens trees? Yeah, and or living in them They'd like well, we live here or we chain our substance, but they were up there and so the loggers would get there to cut You know do their cut and there's people living in the trees. Yeah, that one gal spent her name was like a lot Joe's probably had around the show. I would have brought a show. It was like butterfly or something, right? But I mean, I guess my point is it's like, you got people, whatever their passions are, they will go to the ends.

30:25We defend hunting till the end. That's our passion, that's what we love. But yeah, it's like all these different factions of people that, man, you'd have a hard time saying, you're wrong and believing that, because that's just what they believe, that's our passion. So it's like finding that middle ground. You know, the one thing that I never really thought of until I started hunting was the spiritual aspect, the hunting, that's it's a part of it, that it's almost indisputable when you experience it, like when you first experience it, when you first start eating an animal that you, like the first time you ever took me hunting, when we were in Montana.

31:05And I remember when I was eating that mule deer and we were sitting over the fire, I was I was like, this is so different than any meal I've ever had in my life. It's so different. I feel so connected to this animal. I know how difficult it was to do this. I know how insane their life is that this is this wild creature that is 100 % gonna die soon, no matter what. If it's next year or the year after or the year after that, it doesn't have much time left. And if you can move in while dip your toe into the wild, and extract that thing out. To me, that was like, oh, this is the best way to eat meat ever.

31:45This is 20, 30 times better than just getting a steak from a store. I remember when we were sitting around the fire and you're like, what do you think? I'm like, I'm doing this forever. You remember that? What year was that? I don't remember that specific conversation. That was 12 years ago. 12 years ago. 12 years ago. 12 years ago. This episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery. Actually have some buffalo trace cigars here. They just sent me one of the world's most award -winning distilleries that's been making whiskey the same way for more than 200 years made as a tribute to the rugged free spirited pioneers who blaze their own trail to new frontiers.

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33:12Distilled, aged and bottled by buffalo trace distillery, 90 proof. Franklin County, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace, American, family owned, independent and perfectly untamed. 12. Okay. And then you bow hundred and twenty fourteen. Yes. Okay. So did you kill? I have two people in this room that introduced me to hunting and that's our Montana. You'll do right there That's him. That's him. That's him. That's the most the nose bones That's the ones out there. Yeah, well, he's missing this too. Yeah, you need to shake Jamie down He might have pocket full those nose bones. I think that I think they they boil it out too long I think is that what it is.

33:51Yeah, always go always going back in but anyways, sorry that guy is very special to me That guy's very special first kill and I remember when we were eating him over the fire I was resorting my schedule. I was like, okay, how many times a year can I hunt now? How long is it gonna take to eat after the first time? After the first time. Right away. Eating it over the fire, like right away. I was like, oh, I'm doing this forever. This is what I do now. Like right away. I was like, okay, now I got a really research like Calibers and rifles and how to do this. I got my cardio, I got to start hiking hills.

34:25I started thinking all these things immediately. And I started planning out, okay, I got to hunt every five. for months, like what can you hunt? I gotta get pigs, because then you can font them all year round. Immediately, my brain starts spinning. Like, okay, this is what I do now. I was like, okay, I found it. I've taken quite a number of people on their first hunt trips. I've never had, I mean, probably dozens, maybe dozens. Either way, I've never had any of them regret it. Like, no one's ever said I wish I hadn't done that. But I would say the majority, definitely a good strong was your, or did not pursue it.

35:01Didn't regret it, glad they did it, but didn't make it part of life. What's difficult? It's difficult, you know, and that's the thing I think that is the impediment for a lot of people. It's like time consuming. If you don't have something like you or something like you to teach them, like I have friends, they're like, hey, I want you to take me hunting, like, oh, Christ. I don't have the time. I want to go bow hunting. I'm like, do you know what you're saying? Do you know what you're saying? I just want you to come with me one day and watch what I do fucking every day I'm going to that my kid right now.

35:34I'm going to that my kid where my older kids very interested in bow hunting, but It's just I'm like man you have to appreciate the level of discipline dude That you got to to shoot right like I'm perpetually rusty like you can't be like me and and I actually pulled the plug on them this year where I said, if you shoot every day, he'd been shooting throughout the summer. I said, if you shoot every day prior to this week, we're gonna go bohan. I said, why don't you shoot every day prior to the week and you didn't do it and I said, we're not going. And I'll see if next year that impacts them, but it's like the discipline.

36:10It's unfortunate, but I think, you know, there's no way to teach someone that. There's no way to really like get it into their head, how hard it is, unless they're in the field and they're drawing on an animal. And then they realize, like, unless there's some ways to mitigate that, like you've had Joel Turner on, which you've had him on, right? You've never had Joel Turner on? The shot IQ guy? No, I'd like to, but never. Oh, I've got to connect to you. Do you have his number? No, but I'm familiar with that. He's been recommended by many people and the guys I work with are familiar but I haven't had him on.

36:42He's absolutely God. And you've recommended him today, yeah. He's got a, there's a thing that happens when you're in a high -pressure situation that I recognize from martial arts and from a lot of other things, where you do not have full control of your faculties. And your body is operating on anxiety and adrenaline. And when it's completely unique, like a bow hunting thing, where you have hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of preparation and thinking about it for seconds of action. And it boils down to this one movement where you're like, yikes, if you don't have a strategy for managing your mental state while that's happening, the odds of you flinching or moving or doing something stupid are really, really, really high.

37:31And Joel Turner went through that for like, fucking 15 years. He like, who couldn't kill an hour? He was always choking. Yeah. And then when he became a swat instructor, when he was, you know, he's on a SWAT team. So he's literally, like, he was telling me this one story, We had to shoot this guy that was holding a young girl hostage and like I think it was with a weapon I forget I've made a knife or something and so he has a headshot while this guy is holding on to a girl And he had to figure out like what are the what is the mental process that allows people to flinch and panic During these moments and he realizes it's different between open loop systems and closed loop systems And the open loop system is something like Swinging a baseball bat like once you start swinging you're just swinging.

38:20Mm -hmm. You're just WAH! You know, you're swinging and Unfortunately with a lot of people that is the initial reaction. Let's go Yeah, I get it like the final thought you have is that you're gonna swing the bat. Yeah I don't know if a professional I don't know if a like Friend of mine's a you know real home run hitter I don't know if you would agree, but in my mind, yeah, it's like you've decided to swing and everything else is just nothing. Well, you're not going to stop it in the middle of the swing. Yeah, you're not thinking about all I'm going to go a little higher, a little lower, right?

38:50It's like punching. Punching when you're fighting, punching comes, it's an automatic movement. Like you slide back and you don't even realize what's happened. You're already punching. And you're not going to stop that punch once you've launched your shoulder forward. and when you're using his system, he has you talking to yourself through every step of it. So you're always conscious. So it's always a closed loop system. In complete control at any step, you could stop. And he's like, sometimes the best shot is a shot you don't take. When you realize you're shaking, you're holding too long, let down.

39:28That's the best decision you could ever make. If you get your mind to like just shoot now, just go now, you're, errr, now. I'll see people with so many videos on one. Dude, I've been there my, yeah. Yeah, everybody has. But there's a way to mitigate that with this. So it's not just the practice. The practice is great. You have to practice. I practice constantly, but you also should have a pre -shot routine. And I actually used CAMS pre -shot routine when I was in Utah. Because I remember CAME had this thing where you're saying keep the pin on them, keep the pin on them. And you say that while you're shooting, keep the pin on them, keep the pin on them.

40:05I just know if I keep the pin there, it's got arrows going to hit good. Yeah. What happens is people drop their bow on them a lot. Yeah. I mean, that's what happens a lot is that drop that bow on them to hit too low. Right. So if you just keep that pin there, both of them do so. Oh, you're saying because you said it yourself, be conscious of keeping the pin on it through the shot. Yeah. Not moving because the moving thing is like, over hit it. I don't know. I'm gonna hit it. Ah, and then things go left, right? Fucking three, four feet. You're like, how? You know where people realize that they have a problem is after they make a shitty shot.

40:36And they're just like, why didn't I practice more? Why didn't I listen to Joel or Joe or whoever? Because then it's real. Because we have a tendency of making things work out on our head the way we want them to. And then when it doesn't work out like that because we haven't put in the time Remember we don't have a process down and maybe you hit the animal bad. Maybe you miss maybe, you know, just shit the bed and then you're just like, God, what is my, what am I doing? Yeah. But up until then you're like, you're the baddest person ever. Yeah. Of course they're going to make a great shot. That's interesting between in talking to people that blow a shot with a rifle and talking to people that blow a shot with a bow.

41:18People will blow a shot with a rifle and they'll assure you they did everything right. Guns on. No one blows a shout out the bow. It comes the way of saying I don't know what happened I did everything right Because you fall into like you fall in like you're saying you fall into this like despair and guilt and you're trying to review in your head I've like I've accidentally landed on the thing. It's not fail safe, but somehow When you say like keep the pin on them. I've landed on this thing like like remember your elbow remember your elbow And if I remember to like Because when I'm shooting just practice I'm always there's always this thing of psych like sort of consciously being aware of have my elbow raised and that makes everything fall in the line.

41:58And so if I'm, if I know I'm gonna go to shot and I could think like, if you do the part, if you do the part and then that elbow goes up and then everything else sort of like takes care of itself, you know. And then if I take a shot, I might review in my mind like I never did that thing. I never did the elbow deal, which drives all the other actions. It's imperfect, but it's similar to what you're talking about. And there's something about staying in a conscious state and being able to maintain your composure during that high pressure situation, maintaining a conscious state where you're talking yourself through it and not just being a reptile.

42:37You know, just going... People black out, they really do. They don't know what to do. They don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Yeah. I think you use it up. Maybe I felt that if anything, Just a gradual dissipation with age and experience perhaps. Experience for sure. I'd be curious if some dude started, like if some dude at 60 years old, some dude at 60 years old started bow hunting, are they gonna wig out like a 20 year old on their first shot? Depends on who they are. There's something that's like their brains already chilled out. I think there's a part of your brain that, Like, there's a part of your brain that Andrew Hubertman talks about.

43:18I forget where the exact... That grows. Yeah. That when you force yourself to do things you don't want to do, when you force yourself to get up in the morning and run in the cold and get in the cold plunge and all these different, it literally grows larger. This part of your brain that is able to do things that are uncomfortable, that you don't want to do, actually grows larger. And it seems to be that that's a muscle just like every other muscle, not a muscle, but but a thing that is more robust with use. And if you're a 60 year old guy that's just been working in an office and listening to the boss and driving home and you know, there's no stress, no, no like, not stress, but no high pressure, decision making in the moment choices that you have come accustomed to managing and dealing with and negotiating.

44:08If you're a person, if you're a person and this fucking gone to war. Maybe you've had some crazy high pressure job in your 60, you probably got fucking ice water running through your veins. Five times your 60 years old, you're like, you've seen it all. So it depends on the human. But for most people, that, there's got Derek Wolf, you met Derek Wolf, you know what I'm talking about? I mean, you're talking about a guy that is fucking played professional football at the highest level. And even he says it's the most exciting shit that he's ever done. Like I've told Cam like so many times dude I've done a lot of shit I've fought I do stand up comedy do so many live things that are like high pressure Nothing is like elk hunting.

44:49There's nothing like that moment when you're drawing and that thing is like in the field And it's it drops his head down at 50 yards and start eating and you draw back and you got the He's like is this happening? Is this really going on right now? It's so pressure filled. It's a novel and unique moment that unless you have a bunch of those moments, like I'm at the point now, you know, 10 years into bow hunting, where when I draw on an animal, I can keep my shit together. And now to me, it's just like making sure, I'm steady and the shot's good. There's nothing weird going on. There's no weird wind or, and I just go through my process and I'm very confident now, but it's numbers.

45:35It's numbers. Like if you, I always tell people like, the more things that you can shoot the better, and then you can shoot pigs, you shoot things that people have to kill, you know, if you can go to Lennie where you can get like multiple shot opportunities on access deer, that kind of situation. That's, for me, the difference between like, how I feel in September during elk season and like some years where I feel great and super confident, It's always that I went on a couple other hunts. It's always. So you get that experience. It's a nice to feel fighting too. A couple of times I got injured and I couldn't fight for like six months and then I'd fight, but it was almost like brand new again.

46:14When I'd be in there, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. The first time you see people fight, they're in a panic. It's like, you can't believe it's actually happening. You're like, are you ready? You're like, yes. You know what you're like? And they get out there and if you're an experienced person, It's one of the reasons why like champions have such a massive advantage. They have such a massive psychological advantage because they're the champion. And they've been like, you would see guys and they would fight Mike Tyson. They already lost by the time they got in there. They look at him like, oh my God, what is happening?

46:46Is this real? Like the whole world was like that big. And they were just in a full like panic and they just couldn't fight. You know, that's that's kind of similar to how people feel bow hunting elk for the first time. I mean, that bulls coming in. Yeah. Yeah. They lost. Yeah. When that bowl's coming in and it's coming in 20 yards, it's just like, there's a chance. But I remember the first time we had your first bow hunt, we were in Colorado, the two bowls were coming in on this little tight creek we were in, so we'll draw coming in at the same time and they were just bugling and it was insane.

47:19Not even big bowls, but just coming in and closing down on us. And do you remember that moment? Yeah. You remember this like, it was unbelievable. It's so nice. All the shit that you've done this high -level crazy stuff that there was nothing that compared to that the screaming When you're there and they're like 30 yards doing that like the sound is so nuts Like if you're not a person has ever been around elk calling when they do it when they bugle It sounds like Lord of the Rings man. Yeah, it's such a good Unnerving sound. Yeah, it's so crazy to be intimidating. Yeah, you're not ready for it There's a thing Derek will have told me when you talk about the stress and competitive stress He told me a thing that had never occurred to me before It's about getting in a ring to fight Mike Tyson or whatever is And in his thing you're also there's a thing where you can get your star struck Yeah, like picture you're an incoming player, okay, and you're real young and also you're like, oh, I'm supposed to go tackle Tom Brady I've been watching right I've been watching through my whole like coming up through high school, coming through college.

48:31And also like, wow, that's him. There's the goat. You gotta sort of put that on your head, right? You're like, you're like, hey tight. Let me get his interview. Then I'll come, let me get his autograph. Then I'll come back and then I'll tackle him. Yeah, like, yeah, I mean the goat. You've heard how, you know, he's the best ever do it. And then I'll have said, and it's like almost like, you know, I'm a big fan, like to meet you. Sorry for having to do this. But it's not also the case with bow hunters where like you've been hunting your whole life hoping to see a two two hundred inch buck Mm -hmm, and then one day you're in the mountains and this mule deer steps out You're like oh, yeah, I guess is it is your imagining taking the photos smiling on Instagram You're imagining you see this wide mule deer buck like this is crazy.

49:14This is a real one. I can make this happen You're Everything is just full panic. I like Clay Newcom just did a bear grease episode about a guy, a poacher and he interviews the guy at length and this guy played softball on a army base. They had to go athletic complex. And a couple of times he sees this giant buck and the people were aware of this giant buck and he was trying to figure out if it was possible to kill it as he calls it, kill it right or kill it legal. And one day he just happens to have his bow in his car and sees it not anywhere he's supposed to hunt. And the way he describes it, he describes like he was out of his body and he shoots it.

50:00In the minute it falls over, he thinks, you'll never get away with this. God. But he looked not only like, not only lost, I can't, I think he's in Missouri, I'm a Missouri. So was he in the wrong unit or was he on a military base for you, not even, you can't hunt? Oh wow. And not only like losing, not only losing your mind as you're drawing back, he lost his mind And in the whole thing, getting his bow out of his thing and kills the buck. And then the minute he kills it, it occurs to voice done. So what did he do? It's a whole episode. It's two episodes about just horrible. I mean, I, you got to walk real fine line.

50:43I mean, he did like, as he admits, you know, he did a criminal act. And it's not like sympathetic of the criminal act, but it's a wise up being a story of the unraveling of someone's life about just A mistake but but being that that a that sort of lost for that animal, right? I guess we should be thankful that Derek Wolf never saw Tom Brady out of pizza then Good just freaking light him up sack him. Yeah, right. I got him I got that. That's that easy line of money. You're a burger king. He is fucking go for it. I lost my mind. It's Tom Brady. I just fucking. I don't know. I've just been programmed to tackle him.

51:25Yeah. No, but that I think I was thinking back to on you said when you're not ready for it. My my first two year, my first year bow hunting, my first year rife hunting. I was 15 was rife hunting. We did this drive. We used to do drives, right? Oh, no. Yeah. I really hit the hard drives of the old. Yeah, not really hitting pans, but not far from it. So you send the guys and then put the whoever the shooters on the stand. You know, can I ask you real quick? Did you call them or the names you use? We have we debate this all the time. What? Who was okay? What were the terms you use? Pushers, sitters.

51:58Yeah, that was it. Okay, use pushers and sitters. Yeah, or it's very regional or on the stand. Like, yeah, you're on the stand and then we're pushing to you. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But so I was there, had this, let's see, 300 Savage, just old gun, but 15 years old, doing the push, okay, go here. I didn't even know if I was in the right spot. I'm just like, God, I'm by myself. Just don't know anything. And then when I was sitting, I looked up and here's this buck. Poo. Giant mule deer. I didn't know how big it was, but it looked. And I was just like, Poo. Shot, no clue. I don't know. I never probably never saw it in the scope.

52:37It was like probably seemed like for me to you And I was just like had no idea what happened Was I prepared to kill that buck? Hell no So I killed a spike buck like the next day, right? And that's how it works. You're not ready for a giant Right then same thing with bow hunting first day bow hunting this giant bull comes out seven by six rows of felt first day I'm like sit on kneeling in this logging road I felt like my arms were asleep, they're tingling. I'm like, I don't know if I could draw this bow back. He's broadside head to the right, but to the left. And I shoot out, it's like right at 40 yards and I miss behind his butt.

53:16So I'm off like six feet at 40 yards and then end up killing a spike ball. So it's just, you're just not ready for those, the giant, you know? But that's where I think Joel Turner comes into play because I don't know if he could have helped me. I don't know if he could have gone. At that time. He had to have been like, give me that bow. Yeah, it probably wouldn't. You probably weren't totally ready for that at that moment. But if you have a certain level of proficiency and a certain amount of experience in mitigating high pressure situations, then I think you could get through it. Right, because I've been teaching a lot of people to shoot a bow for the first time on the lift run shoot show that I do.

53:57Joel Turner is in a tell them anything. I mean, it's like there's so many basics you have to get before that. But as you said, once you get that routine down and you're kind of more seasoned, then I think that can close loop, open loop, then that would make more sense. It was so attractive to me when I first started shooting a bow. I was like, God, there are so many of you get lost in this. There's so much going on just in your yard when you're shooting at a target. There's so much mental and physical and there's so many things that have to align like I have a checklist That I have on my phone that before I go hunting like when I'm on the plane flying to wherever I'm going I look at my notes on my phone and I go over my checklist and I bounce it around my process Yeah, I have a shot like boots I get all that that I'm terrible with too.

54:52I just stuff everything in there. I'm like I think I got it all in there I didn't really need to organize it like if I was gonna go on like one of those way more than you need Oh, I was gonna go on like one of those backpacking mountain hunts We carrying your whole camp on your back you walked in for fucking 20 miles I'd be the guy that has like the 80 pound pack because I threw in extra batteries and extra broadheads in case They'd happen and stuff in the bushes You know me while like Adam Green Tree has been doing it forever That motherfucker saws his toothbrushes in half to cut weight He's got it down to a science.

55:24You would do that one time. One time. Yeah, exactly. That's how you learn that. Everybody's learned that. So my process for packing is just fucking shove it all in there. And mostly like that. I always have two range finders and two binos in case I drop something. And you know, remember that time we were hunting in Canada and I broke my rest? My rest snapped. But I had a whisperer biscuit. I was ready. I was like, ah. Oh, it's good. He's being obsessive out there with his rest. just like wrenching on it for hours and changing and doing all this and in up stripping something out because he's like got too crazy on the rest.

55:59Well it was fucking up on it. Yeah it was fucking up. The rest wasn't dropping all the way and so like my arrow was catching it like the fletching's were catching and I'm like what the fuck is going on and then I was like oh look at my rest it's like slightly up above the riser like goddamn it's fucking good. I don't know. Oh, no. Oh, no. But Whisker Biscuits, man, I know they take a couple of seconds away from your fee per cent but boy, those fucking easy to turn. Oh, yeah. It's a lot less, a lot less little stuff to go wrong. I don't know. So if I'm in the high level hunters still use Whisker Biscuits just because they don't want to fuck around with anything.

56:36It's like for that Hunnans perfect, you're going to be shooting at 10 or 20 yards, you know, or a white tail hunter. They're shooting at 20 yards. Yeah. If you're going to be shooting long distance, a fletch going through with all that contact through the whisker basically, that's going to impact long distance. Well, apparently really impacts it when you have helical. Yeah. Right. So, if you have straight, so helical for people that are listening, there's an angle that the fletchings are placed in that accentuates the spinning of the arrow, which makes it more accurate and, you know, that's what you want, right?

57:12So some people don't use that. They just have straight up and down fletchings, which is still good. You could still shoot very accurately with straight up and down fletchings, but most like really good archers prefer a helical. Like you have a helical. Yeah, give a little direction to that energy. So the arrow won't plane. But the whisker biscuit accelerates. That spin makes it immediate. Well, it fucks up the fletchings because it's twisting as it's going through all those hairs. Whereas if you have a straight fletching, is just going to pass through. It only takes a few timber nets still hunts with a whisker biscuit.

57:46I was watching one of his YouTube videos. I mean, that guy's running and killed everything. He's been around forever. Solar Hunter, you know, Remy's buddy. And, you know, he's a really good hunter. And he uses a whisker biscuit and I was like, this is crazy. I mean, maybe he's only using it on this one video that I saw. But I was like, there's a lot of people that just go, I want to cut, they're just like a lot of people don't fuck with the canacles. It's like, it's too many things that can go wrong. I'm not going to fuck around with it. The last thing I did with mine is I put it on my fishbow, But it won't flow to fiberglass arrow I realized I was like man, it's gonna be genius for fish hunting, but it just the arrow just goes The problem is

58:31You just get limited to a fish that you get limited in the US you get limited to a lot of fish species that are not as desirable like gar and carp and stuff like that. Down South America, you're hunting like the best of the best of the best fish. So the bow? Yeah. I mean, you're hunting like the most coveted food fish, which is fun. Because I mean, how many carp do you want? We used to do it when we were kids, man. We'd shoot all kind of carp, but I just, you know. And in a while that carp are like prized in Europe? Yeah, I know. It doesn't make any sense. They like, they go out really. I should say it doesn't make any sense that they did it, but I don't know where we went.

59:09I don't know how we went so wrong. Yeah, it's weird, right? They put them all over, thinking everybody's gonna eat them all the time and just like to not take off. Well, they ruined lakes. Where I live on Lake Austin, there's a buddy of mine who's one of my neighbors, who's a fisherman, and he said, man, you should have been here before they brought carp. He goes, there's all sorts of vegetation in here and the bass were everywhere, but now he goes, if you can get a camera and look at the bottom of this lake, it looks like the bottom of this swimming pool. There's fucking nothing to do. Yeah, that was a terrible man.

59:38But the fact that it was intentional, there's so many non -native, there's so many invasive species that were unintentional with the fact that for the most part, the common carp was they were doing everybody a favor. I think they thought they were doing a favor for rich people on Lake Austin, because I think they wanted people to have less vegetation so they could take their boats out. Got it. That's what I think. And that's what he thinks too. I mean, I got this from him. He was like, I think they just wanted to clean up the vegetation because it was unsightly. He was in the fucking place up.

1:00:06Cause he was on a boat and when I met him, he was casting under my dock. You know, and I went out there and I was like, what's going on man? You weren't yelling at him? No. I've seen that on your show. No, I like it. I always, when I see those guys, and they're always like a little nervous. So I was like, how you doing man? No man, this guy's gonna yell at me. I was telling this guy, like the other day, that there's like this four pound bass that lives underneath my dock. I go, hey man, this is a pretty good bass that lives underneath his dock. And he's like, really? I go, yeah, can I fish it, man?

1:00:36I start talking to him. But my friend Alan shout out to Alan, who's my neighbor. He catches all he catches his big bass. He goes, I don't even try for it. He uses a big ass fucking Rapala. He has one of those jointed Rapalas, and it's like fucking six inches long. He's like, I don't even fuck around. He goes, I just want big bass. Cause there's like 15, 16 pound bass in that lake. And so he catches some big ones. He sends me some whoppers. defenders, the eight -year effort to bring vegetation back to Lake Austin. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, they fucked it up. They fucked it up. There's still good bass there.

1:01:13I'm going to show you what Alan catches. He's catching some big ass fucking bass. Where we used to, me and Roy used to be addicted to car punning because we'd go, they'd be spawning in the spring after we poured concrete. He had a construction company. We'd pour concrete then we'd go and go try to get carp for bear bait. So before they outlawed it in 94 in Oregon, we'd get Karp, catch his giant carp, have a wheelbarrow, get them all back, put them in a like a 55 gallon drum, put the lid on it, and then we'd make stink. So we'd call, we need to some stink to get the bear bait going. Because if you got that rotten carp in a gunny sack, you put it way up a tree where they couldn't get it, that stink smell would go for five miles down the draw, and then all the bear would come in, right?

1:01:58So I just remember it's one time we had in that bunch of carp and 55 gallon drum. After a while that kind of builds pressure. We didn't really think about this. So we go to take that lid off and it freaking explodes. In this shit smells. So I mean maggots, carbs, rotten carp exploded all over us. Have you ever seen those sails when whales explode on beaches? Yeah, well I see them when they blow them up. This is Alan just caught this in front of my house. God dang, that's giant. Yeah, he catches some big ass bass. I think he's huge, man. Yeah, I think that could be interesting. Bass fishing. Yeah, he catches a lot.

1:02:38Here's another one he just got. And whenever he catches 20 cents it to me. Yeah, but we're homies now. Those are big fish. Yeah, the weird thing is the dock thing. Like I encourage it. I'm happy when I see people. Look, I love all manner of outdoor activities. I would never want someone to not fish near my dock. That's like so stupid. Yeah, I think it's... It's a repulsive behavior. It's repulsive. Yeah, it's not. It's not your... It's a doc. Like let people fish. Well, you should talk to them. They're your friends. Like, wouldn't you do it? If you didn't have a doc and there was a doc and you knew the fish hang out under the doc, wouldn't you fish there?

1:03:11Yeah. So what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, so it's like, well, you're gonna have to move your doc because there's a fish under there. Not the fish for. But this is the situation where that's where they go. They go where it's shade. They go where they can ambush and they're all going to docks and you know hanging trees and Anything they can get because they fucked it up with carp Yeah, I was living in Seattle for a while and there's We had fish small mouth and and perch and stuff in the sink lake Washington, which is like right downtown And there's this I was in this neighborhood where they have these apartment buildings that are on pilings So just full -on apartment buildings out over the water built on peers and they would cast shadows and fish would collect there.

1:03:59And you'd be in a boat, man. I mean, you're like, besides being out in some dudes' front yard under their dock, you're fishing where you're right here almost looking into the window, you know, if someone eating breakfast, but your cast right there which felt much more intimate and kind of creepy. Yeah, that felt weird. weird, we're the weirder than, you know, like I said, where you got a house, then a yard, then a dock, like that's not weird, but you could get where you could basically, like, awkwardly wave at someone in their bathroom. Yeah. Yeah, just don't make eye contact. Sitting there taking a shit, looking at the window.

1:04:38Yeah. The dock thing is a weird one, man. It's a weird one, because I get it if you're not a fisherman and you're just some asshole that just doesn't want anybody near your house. What they're gonna tell you, what they always tell you, is that some guys gonna take a lead head jig, and chip the paint. Chip the paint on the boat, ding the dock, like that's their claim. Okay. Is it they're gonna whack your stuff with a lead head jig? I feel like that's the same as if you're driving off road. Like, and you're worried about pebbles. We gotta get these fucking pebbles at it. Like, you're driving off road.

1:05:15Yeah, I'd be like, well, don't put your stuff out over the public water. Yeah, and what are you doing? A boat's not a car man. Like it's a boat. It's supposed to get scratched up a little. You don't want your boat scratched up a little? Like some people don't know. What the fuck? I don't get it. You know what I'm saying? Like if you've got like, you're on a ranch and you got those stripes on the down the side of your truck. It's easy on the pinstrips. Yeah, that's kind of cool. You break it in. Yeah, that's what you do when it's new. You got, you kind of want that. I kind of want that. I like a car that's been fucking used, you know?

1:05:50Yeah, well you have 20 cars, so. I do. But you know I didn't. I'm pretty sure that's how I think. You know, I was thinking about your shot. You know why I think that that helps when you do the elbow? Because when you get that elbow right, you're pulling hard against that back wall. A lot of people creep on their shot. They'll get the aim and everything's going good. They're pulling hard. And then as they're aiming, they're kind of relaxing. Oh, and then that cam is kind of rolling over. It's called creeping. That'll throw off your shot. So I think when you think of that elbow consciously, it makes you think of pulling hard against that wall, which that's where the bow performs best.

1:06:28Kyle Douglas pulls so hard that he's made bows break. Yeah, he's broken bows and pulling into the back wall. Yeah, huh? Kyle Douglas. I know you thought about what you're saying, but it makes good sense. That's why it helps you. Kyle Douglas, who's a fucking, you know, one of the best. Sit here now, I'll try to picture it. Yeah. Yeah, I changed my shot quite a bit when I started pulling really hard against the wall really hard You know, I pull fucking hard. I have that locked in and it also changed when I stopped using the resistance Attention release because Dudley had me on what's called a silverback Which is I think one of the best methods for learning how to shoot because you have a safety you pull and then it's all tension base.

1:07:10So when you have the safety on, you could pull it hard. And then when you release the safety, you just pull a little more and it goes off. And you could set it to like two, three pounds, whatever the amount of difference. So if you have a 70 pound bow, you set it to 72 pounds, whatever it is at, you know, when you're at, you know, full draw, whatever the, you know, the drop off his. So they have this resistance setting where you can, you tweak it in your yard at like, you know five yards or you're right in front of the target and you get it to the point where it's at the back wall and then you just pull a little more and it snaps and breaks and it makes her a perfect release and I use that forever but then when I really started pulling hard in the back wall I was making it go off when I didn't want it to go off and then when I switched releases then I'm like oh that's definitely the most because you're much more steady when you're like when I'm fucking locked out I'm locked out like I'm engaged in my back when I'm shooting at something I am everything is locked out you know and I find out to be way more stable.

1:08:10Is your front elbow locked out? My front elbow is locked out. I mean I used to bend it, I used to bend it a little but then I was listening to this one guy and he said if you are going to lean against something and want to be totally stable when you lock your arm out if you're leaning against a wall and you want it to be completely rigid I was like oh that makes total sense. No, that's when you want strength, it's bent. Like if you fall, you're not falling like this. You're falling. Yeah, but when you're like benching, like when you have strength, like that, it's not locked out though. You're stronger.

1:08:43Yeah, think of trying to push your, think about when your body's car gets stuck and you're trying to help push, you're not locked out. Right, but that's strength. I'm not looking for strength, I'm looking for stability. Yeah. I have plenty of strength. The strength is not the issue. The thing is for me is if I'm locked out, That's less movement. I'm completely but I've never I mean I'm not saying you know it's all there's a very I'm anything but I'm anything but a Competitive archer, but yeah, I've never heard that in my life. Dudley doesn't agree with it most like I just I know this Well, I shoot with a band.

1:09:13We teach everybody to have it a little bit bent But Wayne always references this poster of these premier hoi hoi shooters and they'll have the exact same form and they're all slightly bent. Oh man, I find myself better when I'm locked out. Hey, listen, the thing is, if it works for you, who gives a fucker to anybody else's, because everybody says, I anchor wrong with my thumb behind my neck. Right. It's like, you know, whatever. If the arrows make any sense to me, if the arrows going where we're supposed to, the problem with the thumb behind the neck makes no sense to me. That seems to be to be way better.

1:09:50Because if you're anchored behind your neck, That's one more part of contact and that's one more thing that's locked in. You're like completely rigid. That thumb only has that much give and that's behind your neck. I would do it if my neck wasn't so big. I keep needing to see what all this is. Yeah. See, that doesn't seem crazy. No. No, well, you see Cam do it. Cam, he gets his fucking thumb behind his head. And the reason why. And your thumb's looking for a little spot probably too. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Now I just don't even think about it. but how it used to be back in the day when we started everybody, like there was 30 inch bows, 29 inch bows, and that's about it, drawing.

1:10:26So mine 27 and a half, I just had like a bow that was way too long. So I'm just like this, and that's where it started. Oh, you're just looking for something. Something, I'm like, God, I'm trying to like just hold it. I gotta do that behind the neck, and they'll tell you not to do it. I do not understand the logic of doing it. We started because the draw link thing, people weren't really fitting bows to the shooter at that time. It was just like, here's the bow, here's what we got. Good luck. And that's what we do. It's like your brother's bow or whatever. Yeah. Somebody gave it to you, but it's funny.

1:10:57Harkin and back to the old days, I just had Waddle on the show. So me, Wayne and Waddle were shooting at the bow rack. And we all have still trigger releases. You know, like nowadays a cool thing is the handheld, right? Right. But we're all old school still shooting, you know, like my wife's finger. Yeah, he's the trigger release like that and and we were shooting pretty dang good We had a shooting contest all in the X's and I said let's get a picture of these releases because it's kind of a novelty now It's like just the old guy shoot those well There's still real good competitive archers like Gillingham Gillingham is one of the greatest of all time and he uses a trigger You know and he'll tell you in the way he says that he goes this thing about target panic he goes because it's all just a mental weakness.

1:11:42He's like, when you're looking at a target, but obviously he's like one of the best of the best. It's a different animal. But he's like, when you're looking at a target, like if you're practicing in your yard, you can do it, right? You can hit it and not flinch. He's like, it's a mental weakness. That's all it is. And he's like, I prefer to command fire. He goes, I know when that pin is over that target and I can stay steady and let it go. But he's got all kinds of wild wacky releases. He's always tanker in which shit, So he has weird releases that are like six inches long and they like leaning forward and pull like he gets it in his head modern stuff Yeah, modern stuff, but he he had just his stuff He's got some weird ones man Well, you look at the like extended releases like he's got a lot of wacky like I wouldn't want to emulate it unless you were him Yeah, he's also a fucking giant six foot six dude and you know, it's like he's got crazy long He shot so much he has a crease in his nose swirly got from the string.

1:12:38I mean that's good. I know guys at war groove and your teeth cut fish line. Yeah, same thing. He's got that just where that string sits. It's like a crease. Yeah, I shot a lot of arrows. I like I like a handheld because I've been doing handhelds for so long, but when I'm a here I practice with your release in my range. Yeah, I have the wise guy. I think for hunting. I think it's an event. I think for just control situations where he got all day. I think the handhelds away to go. an animal you have to do command sometimes. Oh, sometimes you do. You have to punch the fuck out of that trigger. Sometimes I've killed a lot of animals doing it.

1:13:14Yeah, sometimes if you can keep it together. There's moments where you like you got to shoot now. You can't wait for the hinge to break. Right, yeah. There's certain thing, I remember taking one of those home and messing with it. And I had the same feeling I had with my nephew who was trying to explain chess, like the game of chess to me. where I was like, that's pretty cool. Realistically, I'm not gonna, right? I'm not gonna figure this out. I admire it. I'm like, I took that attention thing out my yard. And after a couple minutes, I'm like, are you honestly? I'm going back to check. Are you honestly gonna figure this out?

1:13:54And I was like, at my age, as much as I shoot, I'm just not gonna. And I went back and I just, so I shoot the trigger and I'll shoot that trigger to my dad. You shoot the same trigger, he does. You shoot the wires go. Yeah, that's a good one too, because it's hot. Yeah, you're not yanking on it and pulling it and there's not a lot of weird movement. Like when you touch that fucker, it's going off. Yeah, there's certain, yeah, that, there's a type of trap called a Mb750, that release, it just seems like really nice little mechanical contraptions. Like I just like, it's like you pull it, it's like, it's so clean.

1:14:30Well, I like I use a thumb trigger now. I've been using a thumb trigger the last few years and I'll still use a hinge too You know, I like a hinge too because there's something about a hinge where I hear that click And I know okay, here we go And that keeps me in the moment. So I hear that like pull I hear that click. I'm like okay Everything keep the shot process going But then it goes off but the problem that is when it's windy like that one of the things that I found especially like hunting it to hone, you know, Wendy gets up there and those can't when you're trying to punch as it drifts over.

1:15:02You can't do it. Yeah. You got it. You have to have a trigger. Yeah. You have to you have to be able to control fire occasionally. But you but it helps you to have that process of recognizing that a surprise shot is important. At least an element of surprise where it's not like now, but it's like just go to the I can you know like with a thumb trigger you can make it go off, but you can also have it surprise. So that's me that's the best of both worlds. But that's a strange situation to be in when you're thinking the next time that pin blows over that target on a punch. Yeah. Well that's a half of some people.

1:15:38The mind fuck of target panic is crazy. When you hear about people that can't get the pin on the target, they can hold like six inches under the target. But once they rise up to the target, like yeah, everything starts getting shaky. My body wants to put that pin, my body wants to put that pin just to the left. Ooh, yeah. Well, that's, that's, I don't know why, because I think I don't want to obstruct it. Yeah, you want to see it. Yeah, you want to see it. So, I got to, when I bring it up, like if I bring a cross here on something, the cross here is going to go, if I bring the pin up, it's going to want to sit just left so I can still look.

1:16:13And then I got to go like, now I'm going to bring it over where it belongs. You know what's the greatest thing of all time? It has some problems, but it's the greatest thing of all time. And I know they're going to eventually work this out, Is that Garmin release do you saw that one that I was using last year at the site? I stopped use it. Yeah Garmin site. Excuse me. I stopped using it because I had some problems ranging things But dammit when it works. It's a clear window with just a LED dot No, just like a red dot with a pistol. It's fucking magic It's magic because there's no obstruction. He just put that pin right where it is You can see through the pin because it's an LED It's amazing, but it's just there's some problems with ranging like when I'm in my yard and I'm at 74 yards I know it 74 yards and but I'll put that pin on I hit the button and then it'll say 67 85 73 I'm like what the fuck and I'm like I can't I can't have this mind fuck and so last year I stopped using it and I went oh I stopped using it because when we went to Utah they made it illegal So I did, I hunted a full day with that release and luckily didn't shoot anything and then we went back and then Colton said, you know, I think that's illegal here.

1:17:24Yeah, I don't like, I don't think you didn't, huh? You just practiced. Well, I definitely didn't shoot anything, but I did go out with it. I didn't even go to full draw, but I didn't go out with it. Luckily, I found out like imagine, I was thinking imagine if you killed something. I think photo with that and you didn't know because the year before I had shot my own. They changed it in April. And it's just, you know, some little change in the law that I didn't know about. Yeah. It's a dumb change because it only makes it more effective and it's not easier. It's just you're more ethical. Like, yeah, there's a, they had, I mean, it's a range finder.

1:18:00Yeah, but the states are gonna have, like they have to try to like play the technology game because they just have to. I agree to a certain extent. But if you're gonna allow range finders, Why do you allow range fighters because you don't want people guessing? Yeah, well, there's a lot of guessing when you're gap -pinning. There's a lot of guessing when an animal You range an animal of 50 yards and then he takes three or four steps There's a lot of guessing, you know, and you're just gonna hold high or you're gonna do so with the the Garmin All you do is just press that button again and you get a new pin and it's perfect and the other thing about the garment It's really fantastic is if you can't range like say if you're at 20 or you're at 40 yards and you range them and then he walks out and you're pretty sure it's like 50 or 60.

1:18:46You can also press a button and you get a full range of pins. So you get 20, 30, you get five LED lights, you know, instead of just one. So there's an advantage of that too. So if you're in a situation like we were at when we were rattling and the buck just come running in and you know that's 20 yards or 30 yards, like you just pull it up and you got your pins. And you can do that. or if you're at 60, like I shot the Neil guy, you can hold it and then you get a pin. That's what it looks like. It's the shit, but it just makes me nervous. They're just trying to protect, what they'll say is the primitive integrity of archery.

1:19:21It's still pretty primitive. You're still using a rangefinder. It's just a rangefinder that's incorporated inside. But they're also trying to imagine where it's going. Like, you'll see some level of herky jerkiness and as they bring in regulations, as they try to like get a sense of what's common because if you wait too long on certain technologies, you develop a user group and then you develop a level of resistance. Like, think the second drones, the second drones became a thing. It was like a medium, like 13 states. Nope. Yeah. And in the end, you can be like, why is it even on your mind? In the end, if you look where it's gone, in the end, they made the right call.

1:20:05In open country, they made the right call. Other things I think that you might look and try to like picture where it's headed and then maybe come back and crack. There was a time, I remember the first time Montana came out with anything about two -way communications. It was no two -way communications in the field. The first year. People were like, oh, man, if I'm hunting with my 13 -year -old and my 80 -year -old dad, I I can't give them a radio so that they have a problem, they can get a hold of me. And they're like, oh yeah, I guess we didn't really mean that. And in the next year, there's a modification.

1:20:40And the next year's a modification, as they try to let gauge what's going on, but I think that as technologies come in, there's a tendency to want to pump the brakes to ascertain what's going on. Like look how long some states waited on trail cams. Yes. Right? And like when trail cams came out, no one imagined they would be cellular. Or that you'd run 40. Or that every waterhole would have 50 different dudes that have trail cams. Transmitting immediate information. And so then you develop a big user group and you develop a big resistance and it just becomes a much different conversation. So I think that in those cases where you see a sort of, you'll see a thing that doesn't entirely make too much sense.

1:21:28I think that's part of the gamble and struggle of getting it right. And the other thing is, like I think it's winning out, is it used to say, well, you can't have dogs hunting deer of course. And then people have been like, but I want a recovery dog. Like the dog doesn't do any good until I've already wounded the thing. And once I've wounded it, like, why would you do anything to impede me getting it back? Right. And they've kind of are settling in on a, yeah, You can't run deer with a dog in most states, but they're coming around to say, but for recovery, you can track a wounded deer with a dog.

1:22:03And so you have, there's a sort of compromise get struck. Or even a dead deer where you can't find it. Like heavy, heavy timber. Well, yeah, yeah, that's where it's put. You used to some states, you know, you used to be, you had to have it on a leash, but whatever. But coming around being like, yeah, we meant, you can't hunt deer with a dog. We didn't mean you shouldn't be able to find a wounded or dead deer with a dog and then they make a gradual correction Well, that's also the first step they do to outlaw a mountain line hunting right no mountain line hunting with dogs And if you do that That's coming from a completely different right that's coming from a completely different agenda.

1:22:38Yes That's not trying to help. Oh, that's trying screw hunter. I just don't saw some of them I don't understand like lighted nox That's to me is the dumbest one It's like, look, lighted knocks allow you to more clearly see your impact and find the arrow so you're not littering. So instead of like an arrow just alone in the woods, you see that green light in the distance and you could find it, you know? That one doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I wonder if someone, if in defining the legislation, there's a little bit of a, what else is going to be on an arrow that's electronic, I don't know. Well, they are doing something like that now where there's like there's talk of like Bluetooth technology.

1:23:19They have that Yeah, and so and so is it used wise now? Yeah, I mean that's been out for years So you could find the arrow with an app and so what they would say that if somebody's just gonna shoot an animal Excuse me in the ass just get an arrow stuck in it. So you know where it is Then they'll find it, you know like so is it gonna is gonna perpetuate shitty an ethical shot. Like if I can just get a piece of it, I'm good. Right, to get you in the racket. Yeah, like a whale. You know, like you put a harpoon in a whale and it's chasing you. Yeah, Oregon was, Oregon was very late on allowing mechanical heads and lighted knocks.

1:23:54I mean, it was just recently. That's why I was like fixed blade forever because at home I couldn't even shoot expandable. So Oregon, Idaho, they were pretty late coming to the game on the electronics because they call it a lighted nod to electronic. And that was And I still don't think Garmin sites are even legal in Oregon. There's like 10 states or I think they're illegal at least. But Utah, it's interesting that they did it this year. Yeah, so yeah, I know they changed, but it might be to what Steve was alluding to. It's like, you try to course correct, or they didn't want to get too far down the road before they tried to come back because that user group was established.

1:24:35And we'd been doing it. Now they have this, you know, they fight back on that. Yeah, I just think all it does is allow you to make more ethical shots. That's all I think that a range finding side Yes, I mean they could say that well rifle hunting is more ethical than bow hunting So why do we need to bow hunt? You know what I mean? Right? Well, you could also outlaw traditional bow hunting then because that's all guesswork Yeah, a large part of it Came already alluded to this a large part of this is is protecting a desire to protect archery seasons as you know you can kind of hold them out as low harvest limited efficacy high opportunity hunts right in a state of run of bow season and then they'll get in the general firearm and everybody gets down to the real serious business of killing and you can look at the archery harvest and the archery harvest winds up in comparison being I don't want to say negligible but But in comparison, it's a blip in the harvest.

1:25:40So the desire to limit bringing in crossbows, certain technologies is to be like, let's keep it simple, traditional, low efficacy, low harvest, and then allow for greater length of seasons and greater opportunity. and if you get to, and I know it seems impossible, but if you can use technology to get it up where your harvest rates really start to spike, you're gonna have the same thing you run into in other areas where you start being like, okay, we gotta limit the opportunity pool. Yeah. Because these guys are too good, you know? If you look at, like a general raw number is, just generally an archery alconer where it has a 10 % chance to success.

1:26:26Yeah. Yeah, just it fluctuates, but like generally is a 10 % chance of success. If that became 20, 30, you're going to pay for it somehow. Right. You know, you're going to pay for it somehow. That's what, you know, a lot of detractors of archery will say, and I don't want to say, I mentioned earlier that maybe you just eliminate bow hunting if you want to be, you know, more efficient with killing, just make it rifle. I believe archery is just as deadly and just as ethical as rifle hunting. I believe that that's the way to go. Certainly is for you. I don't want it, but the success rate is lower to Steve's point.

1:27:06And it's what the guy is back home have said that detractors of bow hunting is that in this could just be old boy talk, the bow hunters are killing all the big bulls because I haven't heard that one. They're rutting, we can call them in, we're getting prime rut time. And so, and you kind of get lulled into this trap, especially with social media, that you're thinking, God is everybody killing a fucking giant bull. Because that's what you see. These long range shooters, man. With the rifle, he means. Yeah, yeah. These long range rifle guys are taking 700, 800 yard shots. You know, it's really good at it.

1:27:42It's crazy. I don't even rifle hunt. I mean, I haven't rifle hunted since 89. You're missing out. I took, I took Cat Bradley. I know we talked about it before to get her first buck in Oregon. And so my buddy, Kevin had the SIG gun. She was going to shoot and is all good. But this other guy, he reminded me of God. Remember Mark Wahlberg in that movie where he was like this recluse, lived up in the mountains. Not Boogie Knights. No, not Boogie Knights, yeah. No. Oh, yeah. Damn it. Go on. Good movie. So they wanted their somebody who was going to assassinate the president. They tried to get him because he was this ballistic expert.

1:28:25They wanted to get him to tell him where they'd kill him from. Anyway, they, yeah, right here, shooter. Shoot. So anyway, this guy down there where we took Kat reminded me of Mark, or no, not Mark, this old guy he went to talk to that knew the history of right. Anyway, he had these guns set up in this steel out there at 909. 90 yards and I can I can shoot but I never shoot I haven't done it in years and I was just like I go How far is that far one? He's like 990 and I'm like what do you got here that'll shoot? And so he had this fucking sweet setup right? Got up setup Got there First shot out of this gun Had the wind Gage up there and I'm like okay the winds going here.

1:29:09I'm gonna hold on the left side of the steel boom 990 yards first shot and I'm like, I fucking never shoot. Right. I can hit this steel this big at 990 yards. So to your point about this long range thing, that's changing the game too. Oh yeah. People want to talk about archery's evolving and getting too far ahead of ourselves. God dang, these long range rifle guys. My kids can shoot steel at distances that we didn't know you, that when I was a kid, you didn't know you could shoot. 300 yards was a long way when I was, The farther shot you could take was across that corn field. Yeah, I think the corn was down.

1:29:48You were like a great shooter if you could hit anything at 300. Yeah. Yeah. That was the, yeah. Well now everybody has shooting sticks and then, you know, bipods and all sorts of different things that they used to set up to make them more stable. What we had at Prone. Oh, yeah. I mean, those, yeah, a bipod wasn't even a thing when I started to run for hunting. It's like, you had a sling. You could put your arm in there a little bit. Yeah, that might help a little bit for your off hand off hand still. Yeah. So I mean, when we kill black towers, like you, if you get, you don't want to be passed a hundred.

1:30:21You imagine if they, they said with rifle hunting, no more prone shots. Well, I don't think they would, they would approach it a different way. They wouldn't approach it that way. Well, they would start with by pods, right? If someone wanted to, no, they would probably cut. But see, I hesitate to say anything because I don't want to give anyone any one ideas. But if you were going to try, like I can't even think, if you were going to try to regulate, well, I'll put you this way. So we have most loader seasons, okay? A lot of states have most loader seasons and just very generally, a state's big game hunt would go archery.

1:30:59And then general firearm, and then you go into late season muzzle loader. and states will regulate muzzle loaders down to whether you have what powder, okay? So loose powder pellets. They'll regulate it down to open sites or no open site. They'll regulate it down to whether you have a projectile that's true to bore or encase in a little casing called a Sabbath. but what other kind of stuff they throw at you? Meaning they really like, pick your gear. They're like, in some cases, they're like riflesmen. Ignitions, they'll regulate ignition systems. Some cases they break it down to completely primitive muzzle loaders.

1:31:45That's what I'm saying. So there's nothing like. So they do have the power and not the power, I said the right word for it. They do have the ability to come in and really nitpick your gear, right? right down to weird stuff that you could have people not even know what the hell you're talking about when you say true to bore projectile. But you just, that hasn't come into, that hasn't come into general firearm. And in fact, I can't really think of anything out there besides you can't use anything that projects light. Like a laser. Laser, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so like projecting you see regulations around projecting light and I think there's some regulations about the scope can't have electronics in it Meaning lighted reticles.

1:32:36I think in some states you can't have lighter reticles But so far you haven't seen that real you haven't seen a real nitpicking of long -range rifle equipment I don't even know where you start man I don't know what did they would regulate the the magnification that they would somehow regulate or laser range finders. Imagine they regulate distance. Just you can't shoot over blank distance. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe a real puzzle of someone was tasked with figuring out how to reign in. I would pay a lot of attention to that because I guarantee whatever they come up with, it should I use. Well, in that case was shooting the 990, it reminded me of running, you do all the calculations on your phone.

1:33:14I mean, it's, and then you set the scope to whatever this says. Right. you know, if the scope has, not just magnification, but also like you're changing the zero of it. So, but you're doing it based on the distance, based on the load, based on everything else, it goes into the phone. The wind was not the greatest because you could check the wind at the gun, but when you're a thousand yards, so that's why you needed that flag out there. But to set the scope on, to hold right on, that's all done on the phone on an app or something. So let's go back to talk about bow hunters killing all the big stuff.

1:33:50Yeah, I know it's a spaster. Yeah, I mean, I've heard everything I haven't heard that. So that's it. Yeah, I get it the rut. But again, it's, you know, social media, it makes it seem like for anybody that people are everyone successful, everyone's killing bulls, and it's just not the case. It's just not, success rate is still 10 % on on bulls with a well not even just bulls elk with a bow social media is just fucked up our perceptions of everything you know I was getting those bodies of people's faces filters but insect health does seem like everybody's getting a big mega bull don't know well there's so many people with Instagram accounts and everybody can't wait to post those photos yeah it's You know, I was when I asked what year that was I've seen some graphs on hunting.

1:34:41Oh, that's right. Yeah, that buck. And I see some graphs on hunting and I, you know, we all get blamed for a lot of ills that probably we don't deserve in regard to hunting. But I saw this graph talking about the flot hunters, you know, 50 years ago, there's this many hunters. and right around 2015, I mean, it was plummety, the number of, on the graph I saw, the number of hunters was just going straight down. And then I was trying to like, is that when you started coming in? And we talk about hunting here, and then now it's, maybe there's a little bit of an up, I know there's an uptick from where it was going, but I was thinking, I think it's a downtick now, right?

1:35:23Now it's a downtick. Now after the COVID, now it's going back down. But if you look at the graph that I saw before you Started talking about hunting who knows where the hell would be if you follow that line down to where it was going There'd be no hunters from 2015 to 2024 it's like it was I don't know where this graph was, but it's uh, I don't know Well, it just makes sense and think about the amount of millions of people that have been exposed to talking about hunting now But it's never exposed. So it's not just, oh yeah, hunting's in a more healthy spot because we do need hunters to champion our cause, right?

1:36:05But it's not just that, oh, that's good, but imagine without that, where we'd be. I once saw a graph, it was not a graph, it was a, whatever the hell, a diagram or something. And it showed in Michigan average age of fur trappers, People that held for harvest their license the average age every year of someone holding a for harvest license actually went up one year No one knew Save people and they're just you know, I mean how many new people are getting into trapping that have never trapped some God, it's gotta be small not like it is one for prices shoot up right yeah, well, that's different right Yeah, but no, super small man.

1:36:51No super super small and in any time yeah, for prices skyrocket Then it brings people in if for prices are low. It's just no one one of things you told me once that blew me away Was at one point in time the richest man the country was a beaver trapper. Yeah, well, yeah be a man John Jacob aster Yeah, that's crazy Yeah, I mean that was the most precious commodity was beavers Yeah, I mean you talked about Colorado man And that's a, it's a crazy time right now, because they are, there is that measure out there. I don't, I think it's about a measure, but it is. Yeah, where they're trying to, they're calling, they want to label, lie in hunting as trophy hunting.

1:37:32And look, there's a guy there who's very passionate, he's been doing a lot of good work, he's named Dan Gates with Colorado, for responsible wildlife management. For people who listen, don't know what we're talking about, we should say mountain line. Mountain line, yeah. Yeah, right. Well, all good. They say mountain line bobcat and then links they throw in links, which you can't hunt for anyways Yeah, it's not even to create this idea that yeah, it's not even legal But they love putting this trophy hunting moniker out there because it's really easy to hate trophy hunting Which isn't even legal you can't even they make it I read this article from Colorado son or something like that Where it's like they want to eliminate people who kill mountain lions and just go cut their head off and just take the It's like who fucking does that nobody does that but nobody does people who don't know think, oh my god, that's despicable.

1:38:18Let's not bother this. We did. Serve them some mountain mind. Yeah, what the aim here is that is the attempt to create a legal term, the attempt to create trophy hunting as a legal term. When you have a ballot measure, both sides argue about language. Like when voters go in, what are they going to read? Obviously you could write any ballot. If you could just write the ballot initiative how you wanted to, you'd win every time. But people got a debate, the wording. That's what they did with the wolf thing. Did you read the wolf thing? I never actually read it. I couldn't even tell what was four wolves and what wasn't.

1:39:00Oh, yeah. It was like, what the, I don't know which one I'm against. It was like forcing, it was, it was, should the state, does the state need to implement a re -interduction or discovery effort or something like that. And this is trying to, the debate comes around who can you say trophy hunting? Yeah. In a ballot measure, because if you can, if you can set the precedent, if you can use that, what a great tool, because people are gonna say, oh, I don't agree with that. You know, I don't agree with that kind of hunting. Right. Which would have widespread implications is because as demonstrated here with this deer here, there's a lot of parts of it that I don't throw away and I keep sitting around.

1:39:51So is this a trophy or is it an emblem or what the hell is it? But if I kept it, does that mean that I'm now captured under your definition? Right, right, yeah, what is trophy hunting? Yeah, yeah, and then the bringing in the wolf's thing is pretty wild because there's no precedent. They really don't understand like all press it with obviously with Montana with the Yellowside host Frank Church the Yellowstone but long term I mean we're only from since the 1990s yeah like there's a reason why they eradicated wolves it's I don't agree with it but when you have ranchers and you have all these people that they're living is based entirely on the stock that they have and whether or not they make money enough to keep their farm running or not is depending upon how many animals they bring to market and then you have wolves and you just bring in wolves.

1:40:43Yeah, well, so there's a, if I got the tinfoil hat on, they want to eliminate hunting. I mean, they want to eliminate hunting and ranching. So they don't care about ranchers losing their animals. They would love people just to be 100 % consumers relying on the government so they can control them. They say, here's your food, here's what you're getting. you're getting up from us, you're not out there hunting it for yourself. They hate hunters. If I was thinking about, you know, the governor of Colorado, which is Paulus, his husband is anti -hunting. Yeah, he's an animal rights act. That's where all this is coming from.

1:41:20So, but if you look at the bigger picture, hunters, they cannot stand. Hunters are usually capable,

1:41:32They have a skill set. You can't control people like that. They want government wants people they can control. That'll be afraid when they're supposed to be afraid. Where this mask when we tell you, get this shot when we tell you. Here's you get your food from the store. Here it is. And hunters are the opposite of that. Yeah, I think there's certainly an element of that. But I think it really all boils down to people that love animals. Yeah, I think there's I definitely detect that there's a complete disinterest in what Hunters think about it and they think that that for someone to come in and argue By doing this wildlife measure you're impacting Like you would like this animal on the landscape for viewing pleasure.

1:42:18I like certain animals on the landscape for or hunting, consumption, eating, whatever, and there's a conflict here where by doing this you're going to lower by increasing your likelihood of had a viewer pleasure, you're having a potentially really negative impact on my use of natural resources. I think that they would look at you as though you don't have a that you're ridiculous or evil or don't have a point in saying that you want to control, you want to limit predation on a resource you rely on and they don't accept that as a reality.

1:43:03I haven't encountered a lot of like really, really forceful wolf advocates that are serious hunters. There is a trend there, you know, the thing that bothered me about the, bothered me most about the Colorado reintroduction is that while the ballot measure was going forward, wolves showed up on their own. I would have imagined, even if I was on, and I'm not anti -wolf, but when they showed up on their own, I don't even know if it's legally possibly I would have halted that whole thing because the social friction is so much less if they walk in on their own. Diane Boyd, who is the Montana wolf specialist for many years, she even came to believe in hindsight that the Idaho Montana reintroductions ultimately would have been on nest, ultimately were unnecessary and that you would have gradually achieved the same thing with wolves walking in on their own and had a very different societal perception of what was going on.

1:44:11People would look at it as a natural, like a natural dispersal, a natural occurrence and not a government action. Right. Yeah, but I think they wanted that pomp and circumstance. Like, Polis was there, I think, when they released the wolf's car. Oh, yeah. It's like stupid smile on his face. Yeah, they wanted everybody else, all the biologists all had this like, what are we doing? He was like, yay! Yeah, they wanted right they wanted that you know and if they knew the truth of how nature balances itself It doesn't really balance it's over Predators kill way too many prey animals because there is no tag limits.

1:44:45They're not like for example They talk about trophy hunting lions to mountain lions to hunt Colorado. You have to take it's very regulated You take this test so you learn how to identify a Tom and a female You learn how to age a little bit, you know based on the coloring You learned, you know, what size a track. So there's, you have to go through this before you hunt. And the whole quota system. The quota, like, yeah. So the quota where I was in the unit I was hunting was 34 lions. Every night after five, you call in to see what the, where we're at. When I got there, it was at 31. I was there for six days.

1:45:22It was up to, it was 34 was a limit. It was up to 33. So one more lion could get killed. And then it's done. So it's not like that. It happens if like you kill at the same you're in the woods no signal. Yeah, someone else kills too Yeah, it's 36 it could that's why you check in there's a window after five No, so I think I think it'll usually click in like a 24 hour clock or maybe they might have been immediate I don't know it was they have you have 48 hours okay to turn it in there and But anyway point is you're not over harvesting you know the the estimate it goes up to as high as 7 ,000 mountain lions in Colorado, probably maybe 5 ,000.

1:46:00But in the whole state, hunters are allowed to kill 450. And they've been doing this. And it's not like they're out there killing mountain lions, cutting their heads off, no regard for the numbers, wiping them out. It's so regulated. You don't have to call and report your deer and elk. But lions are like a whole another level as far as control. And think about that quota system. If you have a horrific snow storm that pushes all kinds of deer and elk out of high country, and like everybody in his brother, like a perfectly timed snow storm, and everybody in his brother is just piling up deer and elk.

1:46:39They don't go, uh oh, shut it down. Yeah. They sit back and they'll go like, wow. Yeah. Mother load. What a harvest. Yeah. But with lions, they would come in and go, oh done. Yeah. But it's a perpetual motion machine where they've had these, they've had a really healthy stable population, minimum harvest. Yeah. That just goes on. It's under 10%. What's the thing that we should talk about when it comes to these reintroduction of predators? Which, listen, I fucking love wolves. I mean, if you look out here, I have all these photos of wolves. It's a long distance photos of wolves. I'm happy that they exist.

1:47:19I think they're fucking amazing. I got my favorite on my wall in my living room They're probably my favorite animals. I just think they're the fucking coolest animal all the time I really do I just look in their eyes photos of them if I come across photos on my Instagram I'm always like holy shit look at that thing they're majestic But their numbers have to be managed and is uncomfortable that sounds for people wildlife biologists they have an understanding of the carrying capacity and the resources of the land. They understand how many hunters there are, they understand how many, that's how tags are allocated.

1:47:53It's not a guessing game. Yeah, it's the way people need to understand this. It's like they've done this for a long time. These people have painstakingly researched these numbers. They know exactly what they're doing. But when it comes to this game of reintroduction of animals, The first step is they say there's a carrying capacity for the amount of wolves. This is the number when it gets to that we will agree to open up a season on wolf hunting. But every time that happens there's lawsuits. There's lawsuits to try to stop that hunt and then the wolves get larger and larger. And then you have larger and larger populations.

1:48:32I was looking at a graph the other day where they showed reintroduction of wolves to the the yellow stone, the amount of elk that existed, and now the amount of wolves versus the amount of elk. And it's pretty shocking. It's a giant drop. And they're so good at hunting. They're fucking amazing. But hunting wolves is insanely difficult. It's really hard to do. They're really fucking smart. They're really aware. Their senses are light years beyond what we can even physically imagine an animal to be capable of doing. In our minds, we know that deer, I remember I was watching an episode of your show where bear, when did you guys, like fucking 500 yards or something?

1:49:13It's incredible. Their noses are fucking amazing. Their senses are amazing. I don't think we really, it's almost like looking at the size of the universe. You know it's 13 point whatever, a billion light years across it. You don't fucking, that's just going in your head. You know the map that with the kind of power that the senses of a wolf have I don't think we could even really fathom it So our our thought is people are just gonna go in there and wipe out the wolves like they did before that's just ignorance The way they wiped out at this point you go and say that it's just that that's not the reality because after the after the de listing in The nor in the northern Rockies after the de listing that didn't happen right right?

1:49:58Right. Did they ever reach their quotas? Yeah, they reach quotas. Every night, not every night. Many nights, I'll check and y 'all get notifications like the ornate, I got a notification, whatever, to hell, 313, whatever it was, unit had its quota, region five had its quota. I'm talking in Montana, whatever region hit its quota. At this point, at this point, we've hit at, it is a stable, there's a stable population of wolves across a big chunk of range that are managed as a renewable natural resources that were managed as a big game species. There is no problem. It still gets litigated all the time, but the whole idea that they're going to be pushed back onto the ESA, on the endangered species list, the state doesn't want that.

1:50:44They'll be the worst thing that could happen to the state. They're not going to shoot them into oblivion. Right. It's like we have wolves on the landscape and you could have the extremes of people that Want to live in the world where there aren't any that's not realistic like you lost that fight You have extremes where people want to live in the world where there's as many as possible and there's no regulation on them Which isn't extreme because we could live in that landscape But right now we're living in a landscape where there are wolves on the ground. There's a healthy population There's hunting for them.

1:51:13There's a a equilibrium emerging and it's very livable But in Colorado, it's like you got hunters that are, if hunters saw that there was a pathway to finding the extent of it, they would probably feel a lot better. But right now they're like, we're gonna lose 50 % of elk, we're gonna lose 75 % of elk. This is gonna get litigated. It could be 100 years from now. We could have 90 years of full recovery objective. There's still no regulated harvest on wolves and they're apprehensive. And it's also for high population areas, which is the ones that vote the most. I mean, that's where the people are that are voting.

1:51:54These are generally urban areas that don't have any understanding of what they're even voting on. They're hoping to see one. Like, is that what's going on in BC when they deal with, when they made it illegal to hunt grizzly bears? And the people that live up in BC, like my friend Mike who lives in northern BC is like, Jesus Christ. Like, first of all, this is a way that a lot of people make a living, is by having these bare hunts. This is a part of their lifestyle. They're guides. They guide people to hunt grizzlies. And it's important to maintain their population because if you don't, nothing is.

1:52:29And these people in these urban areas, they think of it as trophy hunting. But at least people know that you eat bear. Nobody's eaten wolves. So that is like one of the most difficult to defend. When you say I'm gonna go wolf hunting like what a piece of shit you are Yeah, you're gonna hunt wolves a fuck is wrong with you here's here's a you were mentioned you mentioned Steve that it's It's kind of at a stable level with the wolves now, you know You call and check in and wolves are introduced they're hot there's still being hunted so that works in Montana and Idaho I think and while I'm in Idaho Montana right so I'd sent this to you.

1:53:04I was just looking this the last of course right and Idaho low -low region in 95 12 root walls were introduced in 2005 512 walls were present in 2011 800 walls were present so the elk from 95 there's 16 ,000 elk in this region in 2016 there was a thousand an elk. So it went from 16 ,000 to a thousand. So that's what wolves can do. So when you say, and that's what they can hunt them in Idaho and Colorado when there is no wolf hunting, and now these wolves are bad. And there and there won't be. Now not under this, they're governor now. But and that's what I say, it's like once these prey animals get down, then they can say, well, we don't need hunters.

1:53:55There's nothing to hunt. Well, let's see if Jennifer can get some regulated objective in California. Right. State -seried objective. And I've heard they want to turn Colorado into a, almost like a viewing state, like, you know, how they do the safaris over in Africa, where there's no hunting. You're just not taking pictures. That's what they want Colorado to be. So they want low numbers of elk and deer. So there is no hunting. So then they can say, well, we don't really need hunters. And by the way, do you guys need guns now? I don't know if you need guns, because you said you needed them for hunting.

1:54:26So that's a big portion. Some people say, yeah, we want our everyday carry for protection. A lot of people say we want a hunt. With no hunting, you don't need guns. So there's this big diobachal plan you could say, is this what's happening? But all I know is that where there's wolves, there's way less elk. It's openly stated on this wolf conservation website that that's their ultimate goal. Their ultimate goals to remove firearms because you won't need them if you don't need them for hunting You wind up with the this attitude about it that a Lot of people that are just really and again, I like I know I'm starting here because I'm not an anti -wolf person, right?

1:55:10I'm a pro I'm like pro hitting a recovery objective and then having a managed resource but you'll find that a lot of wolf advocates will really try to And one breath tell you that it actually they don't actually do that They don't actually cause the decline of elk numbers like when when elk numbers collapsed in the coming with the coming of the wolf in the northern Rockies there's other factors that could have explained that right they don't actually do that But at the same time they'll say oh, but there would be a great tool for controlling wildlife diseases which populate among overpopulated ungulates so you want up getting this cross talk on One hand, oh, they're not that it's not that catastrophic for big gamehards But it really lowers big gamehards and helps the disease transmission You know, and it's part of that that's kind of stuff really frustrates people Yeah, you know, you're getting all this, you know, they're like shit rainbows, you know, right and it like It pisses people off.

1:56:17Well, it's also like we were saying it's it's almost Indefensible to someone who's an anti -hunter Like you could say I hunt for food and people go like I don't agree with you, but I get it. Yeah, nobody gets wolf hunting You know like do you want to go hunt a wolf? I don't want to hunt a wolf. I don't want to shoot a wolf I love them. I think they're amazing. But I can't - You can say I take the thing of, I harvested an animal and took the thing of highest relevance and value to me. On a deer, I didn't keep the hide, I didn't retain the hide, but I kept the meat on a wolf. I didn't keep the meat, but I retained the hide.

1:56:56I took the thing of highest value to me. What are there like some trappers you were telling me that wolf meat was their favorite meat? Oh, there's an Arctic Explorer ,ville, Jolmer, Stephenson, and he would in his He has a he had a book my life with the Ascamone. He made first contact with a lot of Ascamone into it honours in the Canadian high -artic and he always claimed that was his favorite gaming Well, why if people eat if they eat mountain line and mountain line you told me it's delicious. Yeah Why don't they eat wolves? It's weird man. I've never I mean I've never gotten a wolf. You ate a coyote once Yeah, I've never got a wolf and I've never eaten a wolf, but I know people that have eaten it But it's not a you know eating like Lion hunters eating mountain lions is very common.

1:57:43I Don't believe that I believe there's some people that eat some wolf meat because I've heard of it and seen it I don't think it's widely practiced. Have you ever heard it? Do you ever talk to someone who's eating wolf? Yeah, who I Do you know a couple of guys that have eaten wolf? I'm a friend buck bodens eaten wolf. That's the guy that makes the bowls. Yeah. He had eaten it and I think Rade didn't rain any new burger eat a wolf. He might have. Yeah, I think he would. What did a buck bodens say taste like? There's a story about buck boden where someone's talking to him and he's cleaning a Wolverine skull.

1:58:23Okay. When he was trapping Wolverines, he's cleaning a Wolverine skull with a knife at a counter and some of us talking to him. And as he's talking to him, he's eating the hunks of meat and he scrapes off the skull of the knife. So, but out of remember what he told me about it. He told me, I remember him telling me the one thing he can't get that he's tried every which way is brown bears eating salmon. Just always. I remember him telling me that was the one food he had a hard time with. Well, you were telling that story about how you borrowed your friend's smoker. Yeah. Coles the black bears. Yeah.

1:58:53And you were like, man, you got to clean your smoker. It smells like fish. He's like, I never cook fish on that smoke, right? Yeah, you know, I used that for that. And I was like, oh, that's my bear. My bear ham did that too. How did the bear taste? Oh, I don't mind. You know, it's funny. You know, dirt, right? Yeah. Dirt one I really like and that. You like that bear that tastes like smoked salmon. Cause he's like, well, I like smoked salmon. Right. And I like meat. And this is the full bag. Yeah. That's fusion. No, you hate it, though. But I'll just eat stuff. You know, I don't care. If I have it, I'll eat it.

1:59:24Well, if you do it right, like one of the things that we learned when we were hunting with Jesse last year, like Diverducks, which people normally say they taste like shit because they eat the stuff on the bottom of the lakes. How many cooks? Jesse Griffiths can cook some Diverduck that makes it like literally one of my favorite things I've ever eaten in my life. You can figure anything out. You can figure anything out. It depends how much work you want to put into it. Right. And, you know, obviously it doesn't hurt being an amazing chef. You know, but he's he's got it down to a fucking science those diverdox are sensational But if you talk to the average duck hunter I would if I got a wolf I would definitely want to have a couple of shoes off it, but I I mean I could tell you that you'd never separate me from the hide off that thing But I would you know, I would go into it big.

2:00:12I'm gonna try it just because I want to see what it's all about Yeah, you know, but it wouldn't be my primary objective Yeah, getting one Some of those animals just need to be killed. That's all they're like coyotes, wolves. They just need to be killed. You have to, and whether you eat them or not, I don't know, their numbers need to be managed. The wildest thing about coyotes is it doesn't work. That's the opposite effect. Well, depending on how good you are at it, they're done in a very surgical fashion. At the right time, the right place, with the right level of intensity, they have found that it is effective.

2:00:51We got to bring in a fucking special ops unit. No, like you can, there's, man, if you have imperiled populations of pronghorn or imperiled populations of Mule deer, and you go in, like, during calving season, in the right areas at the right time, you can move the needle on recruitment. Does you now and then, if you ever ranch and you now and then see a coyote and get it, are you doing like effective predator control? Probably not. That does not mean that you cannot done in a timely fashion, like I said surgically, a timely fashion with the right approach at the right time. You can absolutely move the needle on wildlife recruitment.

2:01:36You see it in Alaska, you see it in Arizona, you see it in order place. But the issue is state wide or locally that might be the case, but they will then spread out Yeah, but they will now they're in every state they're in every city in the country because of that because people fun So I put this to someone there today. I got you know how you don't like you don't do media Yeah, you know like doing interviews. Yeah I now and then get like suckered into doing an interview and I did interview about a contentious issue There's about states banning, I knew the mint the journal is called, and he's talking about banning wildlife killing contests.

2:02:15And I said, can we please say hunting contests at least? Do we have to say wildlife killing contests? And I'm like, you know, my buddy Doug has a doe, Derby, where they're in an area where they're trying to lower deer numbers for issues of disease transmission, habitat improvement, and he has a little Derby where you win some prizes because they're trying the state is explicitly trying to encourage Doe Harvest. Is he having a wildlife killing contest? Or is he having a Derby as a management tool? Right? Anyways, I do this interview and shouldn't have done it because the quote they pulled from me was not the right quote.

2:02:59I'm so mad about that. I came in with Point Niles driving that. You were gonna say that they tried to lump it in as a killing contest and oh, without law the contests of killing animals basically. Yeah, but I had some like broader ass point. I can't remember now what it was, apologies. I got so riled up about talking to that guy. Yeah, yeah. So I do want to revisit one thing because I said for me anytime I see coyote, if I got a license in this legal, I kill it. I killed one this year. I'm always trying to, my personal thing is I kill so many prey animals a year, whatever that number is, I'm going to try to kill a number of predators also.

2:03:41I feel like that's doing my part to whatever, to balance it. But I didn't want to say one thing about the mountain lion hunting. As I say that I will kill just a coyote just because I think it's to kill. I didn't kill a lion in Colorado because one of the biggest benefits to using dogs is identifying if that's the animal you want to kill. It's not what what happens now like in Oregon where the outlawed running lions with dogs is if you kill one It's just one you saw and you don't know You don't know what it is you don't know how old it is you don't know male female Because you don't have time right and but that's the only way you can hunt them So now they have the season is open all year it never closes in Oregon There is no dog so lion numbers are going way up deer numbers going way down.

2:04:26That's kind of what happens where dogs are allowed or baiting for bears allowed or even hunting black bear with dogs is allowed. You're killing the animal that should be killed, the older male, generally, and you're identifying it, you're taking out the right one. Without those measures in place, those hunting a dog is a tool. Without those measures in place, it's not nearly as controlled. And it's not like people are just going out there just going to kill any lion at the tree. Just like I didn't kill one because I didn't see an old male lion. Howonsmen are the one that originally pushed for lion regulations.

2:05:01Yeah. They were pushing for lion regulations when no one was paying any attention to lion conservation. Okay. I finally remember my point. Okay. Am I allowed to go back time? Yeah. We were having this conversation where people say that the coyote hunting actually increases coyote numbers. and I see what Tom Oka that disrupts packed dynamics and can lead to animals shooting off in new directions and starting packs. And also leads to them having more offspring. But I said, well, if you're super pro, Kyle, why would you not encourage that? It's true. And I'm just throwing out there as a rhetorical question.

2:05:39Well, it is a rhetorical question, but it actually does have merit. You know, when Dan Flores' book, Kioe the America, which is an amazing book, fucking incredible when you realize how wild those things are. And when they get killed, they, when they do their roll call, and there's a coyote missing, the female coyotes will produce more pups. I mean, that is just, that's the reason why they're everywhere. Yeah. I'm friends with Dan. I studied under Dan. I have massive respect for Dan. I have Dan on the show. There's certain little tidbits of this debate. Dan and I don't see eye to eye on. And this is one of them.

2:06:15Yeah. But but the effect love him the fact is hard to argue they they literally have gone from a hundred years ago Yeah, where they were primarily in the Southwest and in the West it's everywhere in New York City I mean they have coyotes in in fucking central park Yeah, and some of their and you got to realize you like Wildlife dynamics can play out very slowly so So in some ways it's possible they're still responding from the elimination of the wolf. Right. Like some of this stuff tastes so light. It just look at, like, why does this very gradually, why do raccoons and possums keep going north and west?

2:06:58It's just so weirdly gradual. Havolinas, right, move over time. So you see these things that happen so slowly that you can't picture and play it out. But with the Kyle it seemed like there was a gradual movement and then just an explosion You know, I remember them coming into our area like I was a Red Fox trapper and We didn't have Kyle's I remember the first Kyle to ever saw and now it's like for the most part Red Fox are gone and Kyle to there and That was part of the like not just a gradual increase that was like the explosion in the 90s where they just like I don't know. They suddenly figured something out, something clicked.

2:07:40I don't know what it was, man. Well, I was as this conversation with some guy in the Hollywood Hills, you know, people up there terrified of losing their dogs. They lose their dogs all the time. Dogs and cats could kill by coyotes constantly. And he was telling me about this. And he's like, fucking hate them. They're everywhere. I go, yeah, I get it. But you love rats? Because if it wasn't for coyotes, rats would be everywhere. They'd be everywhere. Like they also keep the population of things down that you don't want. I mean, they're an essential part of the ecosystem. There's a reason why, like where I used to live in California, it's not infested with rats.

2:08:17Because it's got a lot of coyotes. They're fucking everywhere. And yeah, don't leave your dog out. Yeah, don't let a kitten roam around your backyard and you're not looking. Because they'll get it. They killed all my chickens. but they're also like they're a very important part of that system. Again, I don't dislike them. Yeah, I love them. I like them. Every year I flesh and stretch a few and send them to the tannery. Someday I'm gonna have a big giant bed spread out of kiosk. How many of you have now? How many do you have? How many have I got saved up now? I mean, I used to sell them. Now I got saved up, maybe ten of them.

2:08:57How many do you need for a bed spread? I haven't done the math yet. Maybe my body's sent in and we had 50 beavers and we did two blankets two big blankets out of 50 beavers. No Beautiful that the first thing is a fascinating one too because there's people that are really anti -fur But yet they're wearing leather and they probably don't like the oil industry

2:09:22Well, that was my favorite I talked about that on stage last night the fucking stop oil people that block the highway with their fucking paint on their sign that's made with oil, wearing shoes that are made with oil, wearing clothes and this... They're not dressed in fur, it's made out. On anti -depressants that were made from oil, you know, they use oil for everything. I know that. Oh yeah, man, that's something that happened in the early 1900s. They figured out to use petroleum -based things to make medicine. Yeah, if oil... They got their fingers and everything, don't they? Everything not for not fair.

2:10:01Yeah everything but it's like the weird thing is like people don't like Animal skins that have fur on it. That's crazy part like if you have fur boots people like oh you piece of shit Yeah, if you have leather boots like oh guys got boots on yeah, it's almost over notice But it always drives me crazy like why is it become bad? Why is this so much better to take the fur off? Weird it's weird the skin itself is leather and that's fine But if you leave the fur on all you fucking creep It's weird. Yeah, that's one argument that I, you know, people like to lump kind of an aside, but lump hunters into trophy hunters or me hunters, which I think we would all agree, you can be both.

2:10:40Yeah, I take one hundred every ounce of the meat from the animals I kill, every ounce is like, is more valuable than gold to me. And I take all the antlers, the hide, I got claws. I mean, it's like, that's all part of that memory of that hunt, and I'm honoring that. that memory and that harvest essentially. But I'm also sharing that meat. We eat the meat every night or every day. And it's like, we're both. We're not just, because I meet people and they say, well, you're not a trophy hunter, are you? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am. Yeah, I'd be like, I'm all kinds of hunters. Yeah. Well, here's what's interesting.

2:11:18It's like we're so separated from the idea of animals and just the wilderness itself being a resource in order to sustain you. But during COVID, there was a bunch of people that reached out to me and wanted to start hunting because they had this thought. Because when my friend Duncan went to the supermarket and he sent me a picture, he was like, dude, there's no food. He sent me a photo of the meat shelf. And there was literally like a package of ground beef left. There was nothing left because the supply chain he got interrupted. And people started thinking, oh my God, we could get to a part where I don't have any food.

2:11:55Like that's a real reality. Yeah, people felt vulnerable. They felt vulnerable. So the two things started happening to me during that. People started reaching out asking me about hunting. And then when the George Floyd riots kicked in. The guns. People wanted to borrow guns. People asked to borrow guns. How many guns do you have? Can I have one of your guns? That's not legal. Because in Texas, I could just give you one, which is wild. Like in Texas, you don't even have to fill out paperwork. Like if you were a Texas resident, and I was a Texas resident, Like you like that gun you can have it. Oh, yeah, most of that's your gosh is a most places But yeah, that's the norm that's the norm letting California else like I can't do that I it's absolutely I could go to jail for giving you a gun Like you have to go through the whole process and then the lines outside the gun stores were wild because what you can't do is you can't go down and Buy you can't go down to the FFL the federal like a you can't go down to a dealer gunstore and buy it and say it's for you and then give it to someone but it's actually your body buying it right that you Def can't do right you can't do that because if you like legitimately went and bought it for yourself and then you decided you did not want it You can gift that yeah to a friend what they're trying to prevent is your body saying hey go down and buy it for me I'm a felon and can't right that makes sense so they don't prop though oddly they um They don't really prosecute people for lying on FFL statements.

2:13:23Interesting. It's a real issue. Well, yeah, that could be definitely an issue of someone's a felon. I mean, well, then there's also the... They'll reject the purchase and then then then then go after the person. But when they have those gun fucking conventions, when you can go and just, what do they call those things? Gun shows. Gun shows. You can, that's a weird one, right? Yeah. It's like, it's the kind of conscert around some regulations. And that was part of the things that people didn't like. When you hear in the gun control the bait people about trying to close the gun hole loop holes are trying to Put it that They should be subject to FFL transfers, but like when my dad died and I got my dad's guns Um, we didn't do an FFL transfer.

2:14:04Right. How does any kid get a Gears on yeah, right? So get a good dad from or your grandpa. Yeah, we're like here you go son Right, that's just how it works right up under the tree, man Yeah, right. Yeah, it's there's a lot of regulations that make sense and there's a lot of them that don't and most of the ones that come out of California Don't I mean the limiting magazines that's a fucking insane one down to 10 rounds or certain guns. You can't even buy They're trying to do it in Oregon five rounds. Oh my god. That's a lot of walks in to nerdy did that right maybe so maybe that's what I'm that is so crazy Yeah, so what do you do if you have a glock 16?

2:14:39You don't yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, that's fucking insane Yeah, it's insane. I can't remember. I shouldn't speak that but I know that there's a there's I don't know about on long guns. There's a restriction a magazine restriction. What's interesting is for hunting waterfoil federally regulated migratory waterfoil. There's always been a magazine restriction in the field. Mm -hmm three rounds and then And as they're trying to lower snow geese numbers to protect arctic habitats, they've gone in an undone. They've made an exception to allow unlimited capacity magazines to hunt snow geese. So it's one of those weird areas where you see a real reversal of like a time honored tradition, which is three rounds in your gun to make it that people can kill more snow geese.

2:15:32That's an animal that I want to hunt with you one day, the rib eye in the sky. Oh, the cranes. Yeah, sandhill cranes. I remember those are insanely delicious. It's crazy when you see a bird that is like a dark red meat. It's like, what is this? This isn't a chicken. What the hell kind of bird is this? Friend of mine, he's right where he said, it's watching one of those come down out of the sky as like watching a folding lawn chair hit the ground. It's just a wild bird hunt, man. That, you know, I asked this question to Waddle the other day. What do you guys think would end hunting if anything does?

2:16:08Do you think it would be anti -hunners, politics or fellow hunters causing division and infighting and whatever? Public referendums, politics. Politics. Yeah, urban centers, urban centers for people vote and they don't have an understanding of what they're voting on. You don't got to wonder about it. It's happening. Yeah. It's like a theoretical. Well, why would you say hunters though like like hunters in what way? Well, because I see fellow hunters are so much infighting whereas you look at the anti hunters They're so aligned. They're not like oh Parsing out to this and that. Yeah, this this guy is the number one anti hunter in the United States No, he's not he's a piece of shit Hunters love like yeah Really

2:17:03He's a he's a fucking I'm ruining it for all of us anti -hunter. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. It doesn't happen. They are so aligned Right. They get they get you know they have the lobbyists working for them. Meanwhile hunters Fuck we can't get out of our own way on half the shit. Yeah, but I have a long history of being a public person And I understand it from a different dynamic because there's just a thing that happens with men where they become jealous of other men and hateful of other people's success. And then they look at other people for whatever reason, as anytime they do something, it takes away from them.

2:17:40Or they look at someone getting attention and somehow another takes away from them, and they focus entirely on that person's success, or who that person is, and they try to find flaws with them. It's a natural thing with jealous weak -minded men. Right, so we have that in hunting. Yeah, you're gonna have that in everything though. We have that in comedy. It's a real issue with stand -up comedy. We have that in fighting. But nobody's trying to ban comedy. But they are. You're wrong. Yeah. There's shitty comics that try to tell people that they can't joke about. What joke about it? Like what comments?

2:18:14Yep, they all suck. There's one thing they have in common. They're all not funny. 100 % of them. Every single one. There's not a single one that's exceptional. That's not a single one that is anti -comedy about controversial subjects that people are excited to go to see them that are real comedy fans that are really good comics There's not a single Anti -like controversial joke comic that other comics seek out to go see what's interesting is half your guess are your competitors? Yeah half your guess there are comics yeah, but I don't think of comics ever as competitors I'm sure they're my tribe I try the best I can to get them more famous.

2:18:54I want them to be huge. My daughter had a book that described, she had a book about jealousy and it described jealousy as a hot prickly feeling. I've heard it as a vessel that poisons the thing that carries it. Or a substance that poisons the vessel that carries it. That's the best way to look at it. It doesn't do you any good. but it can do the opposite. It can do the opposite if you have a good mindset. If you have a good mindset and you see someone in your envious, that can be fuel for your success. As long as you manage it in your mind, like almost everything else it's complicated, you have to manage it in your mind as like, this can fuel me and be a fantastic resource.

2:19:38When I see someone's success, I get inspired to work harder, I get inspired to do more. So I am happy that that person is success. So if you saw a comet coming up and they were kind of in your wheelhouse and nipping on your heels. You'd be like, I'm gonna have that sunbitch on the show. 100%. Every time. I do it all the time. I'm gonna shine a spotlight on that. 100%. That is my, that's, look, that's why I used to take Joey Diaz on the road with me. Cause I couldn't follow him. I was like, he's so funny. He was the funniest guy alive. And people were like, you take Joey Diaz on the road with you.

2:20:08You're out of your fucking mind. And I'm like, yeah, but, but if I can ride that way. You said he's up up to be that one guy wasn't as funny as the other guy. I would hear it all the time. People would say, you know, you're opening acts funny to the new, I'm like, yeah, he's the best. You have a unique mindset. That's all I worry about, or not all I worry about, but with hunters, we just, we have a hard time giving other people credit, being supportive of each other, some of us. And so with this disjointedness, that's what I get worried about. But you know how that changes? These conversations.

2:20:43Yeah, this gets out there in the zeitgeist people hear it they recognize their own failings their own shortcomings and their own thought processes And then they realize this is not admirable well some people never will we can't afford it I mean we can't afford we can't you know so I'm thankful for outfits like Dan Gates isn't Colorado and then there's another one I wanted to mention called howl Yeah, and I think is it John Stallone man I know that we had Dan Gates join us at a live show and he's we got him scheduled to come on the podcast as vote and starts heating up on the as voting starts heater, you know, as the we start nearing the date for the initiative in Colorado.

2:21:22I'm familiar with how I was introduced to how by my colleague, Janis, who's a supporter and we've done some things to support them but man, that name, I probably met him but just right now I'm space and if I am so apologies to him. I believe it's John Stallone. But but anyway, it's they are helping keep us organized. They're, you know, make it easy to send letters to legislators. And it's just yeah, they're leading the fight on that. They're leading the fight on the hunting bands. Right. So, and that, and especially in that arena right there. That's a positive. That's a big one. They're still like in the grand scheme of things small.

2:21:59Like if you look at numbers of followers or things like that, but they're making an impact. And so I've been trying to, I want to support them and help where we can. It's just, you know, you're unique when you look at a comic, hot comic coming up and you want to celebrate them. I wish hunting could be more like that. It can be. It can be. Do you just gotta, these weak people have to understand that we know what they are. We see right through them and you're not admirable. Not only you're not admirable, you're not respected by your peers. Everybody knows you're a bitch. Nobody likes a bitch. And when you're a man and you can't recognize as another man's success, or you see a man and you measure yourself up to him and you fall short and so you start shitting on that person, everybody knows what you're doing.

2:22:41Every man knows what you're doing, especially every exceptional man. They know 100 % what you're doing. So you have to live with that. And that's how it's a poison that ruins the vessel that carries it. It's not good for anybody. And it's just a thing that people do. People have always been jealous of other human beings throughout time. but you gotta understand for your own personal benefit that feeling can be changed inside of you to fuel and it will make you a better person. It'll make you better at what you do. It'll make you understand that competition is critical and vital in order for you to reach your full potential.

2:23:21You don't reach your full potential if you're the king and everybody else is a pussy because then you'll like, well I'm the king. Everybody else is just a bitch. I don't have to be any better. But if you're a king around other kings, you realize, wow, these guys are all fucking getting up earlier than me working harder than me thinking smarter than me Being more effective Recognizing their shortcomings fixing them talking about it with other people to do the same and growing from each other You know, we have like in the mothership and the comedy club that I own when we get together in the green room during the shows We're always breaking down bits.

2:23:55We're talking shit. We don't like hold secrets We don't have like trade secrets. I don't want to tell anybody how I write. I tell everybody how I write. I tell everybody how I correct things. I'm like, this is a thing that I've noticed that helps me. Here's a thing that I've added. I started listening to my recordings and doing this afterwards. When I get home, I always do. If you just do that one hour every night, just think over time, and then my other friends would say, I sorry, I do on that, dude, it's you're right. I just sat down for 10 minutes, I had a new bit. I wouldn't have come up with that bit if I didn't do that.

2:24:24I guess. Yeah, now we all learn from each other. But if you see this one guy that's out there that's putting in all this extra work and succeeding and you just start shitting on him Everybody knows what you're doing. You know what you're doing mother fucker You know in your heart of hearts. You know you're being a bitch, right? And you can live with that if you like, but I can't I I'm allergic to that feeling in me. I hate that feeling. I've experienced it. I know what it is It'll still bubble up every now and then if someone's killing it. I'm like, wow, guys doing so good. Fuck him. You know, like that fuck him part of you is always there.

2:25:03But you gotta go, oh, you little bitch. I know what you are. You're a little bitch. But if you can do that. And then this is in the mirror. Yeah, the asshole, generally never gets the mirror. It's like, I try to squat that fucker as soon as it comes up. Like, oh, weed, I pull it out right away. But if you don't do that, it's not good. It's not good for you. You never change people's opinions. If someone is doing exceptional work and doing an exceptional job of being very unusually successful, and then you start picking on all the little flaws in that person, and people are gonna look at you. They're gonna go, but you're kind of fat and lazy, and you fuck up all the time, and you're always drunk, and this problem and that problem, and how can we not look at it your own self with the same scrutiny that you look at this extremely successful person?

2:25:53It's because you're jealous. That's all it is. It's a natural human instinct. But that feeling can be repurposed. That thought can benefit you. That feeling of comparing yourself and coming up short. What you're supposed to do is going, what do I need to do so I don't have this feeling anymore? Why do you work harder? I need to work smarter. I need to do some things and I'm not doing that maybe make me uncomfortable. And that's what I need to do to get better. Yeah, you know to your point last night I saw two of the funniest people I've ever seen Shane and Tony both Putting notes in their phone from comments that were made in the green room.

2:26:33Yeah, oh really? Oh, we always do that. Yeah, so they're like just like oh, that's okay I'm gonna put this down so I don't forget it trying to grow to you know, that's exactly what you're talking about They're they're almost at the top of the game Still trying to get better based on feedback from other comics. We always do that We workshop constantly. We're always in that green room. And I was trying to explain that to one of the managers. I was like the reason why we have to, like when comics get together, like we're at the comics bar and we're all just talking shit. Like if someone is sensitive and they get in that and they start complaining about jokes that are being told, hey, you've got to leave now.

2:27:08Because this is literally how we spar. Like this is what we do. If you're complaining that someone is making fun of this person or picking on that person, creating an unsafe work environment, Okay, well you can't be here. If you go to the gym and you're trying to be a boxer and you're like, everybody's trying to hit me. Like that's what they do. This is how you get better. You hit each other. You don't like being hit. You can't be here. You can't fucking be here. And this is like this the reality of what we do. And the only people that really truly know that are the practitioners. The ones who are doing this very difficult thing.

2:27:42Look, with standard comedy, there's a lot of hunters. There's a thousand of us on earth that are worth a fuck. It might be less. I'm being generous. It's probably 500. It might be 250 that I want to see on planet earth 250 comics that I would go out of my way to see That's not a lot. Like we got a fucking stick together There's so few of us for you to be shit on this guy because he's selling out arenas Why do you think people like him? What is it? What's he doing? Well? He's doing something Fucking figure it out get better. I was I'm curious does comedy have the same in And hunting it was a big deal when the girls started coming in right so a lot of guys would say oh She's just getting this because she's got her tits out or whatever right which is true and but I can see I can see comedy being the same like because our women comics Did you guys look at women be like she shouldn't be up there?

2:28:40It's only she's only up there get the stage time because she's hot. Well comedy is a meritocracy The thing about comedy is if you're not funny, we find out real quick. Nobody laughs at you just because your tits are out. Well, the thing about hunting, though, like there's gals that become very popular online that are just hot wearing camo. And that's just - But how I looked at it is if I can't be more whatever, stand out more than this girl just because she's hot, I must not be that fucking good. I think of it in terms of effectiveness. Like if a girl is really hot and she's got big tits and camera butt She's also a beast and she's out there really killing a lot of things.

2:29:19Okay. That's not very many right So what are you worried about I'm not I know I know a lot of guys were like what are you worried? They're not effective like if there's a girl that's hot and she gets on stage and she's bombing all the time No one's like yeah, she's gonna be up there cuz she's hot like you don't care like if she's bombing If someone's if someone bombs all the time you're like get away from me like you don't want to be around them They're like, it's contagious. But if someone's good, like Whitney Cummings. Whitney Cummings is hot, but she's also really fucking funny. And so when Whitney's just a real comic, when we're around Whitney, no one thinks, oh, here's that hot chick that's like, it's just like, oh, it's Whitney, what's up?

2:29:59It's like, she's one of us, but she also is hot. It's hard to be that person. It's very fucking rare, but it's doable. But she had to go through all these ladders to get there, Because it's preconceived notions when you see a woman go on stage you like immediately Mo a lot of men. I've been guilty of it. You know what are the odds? She's funny. She's too hot It's like almost immediately. I can't have at all What's not so you think like what how did she ever like Richard hit a Christopher Hitchens rather wrote a long piece for vanity fair ones called women aren't funny Mm -hmm. I remember that it was brilliant.

2:30:34Mm -hmm. He's so he was so fucking smart who wrote that Christopher Hitchens because he could attack things from a level of intellectual introspection. Like he has looked at this in a way, like analyze his own thoughts on funny, how he feels, how other people feel. He broke it down so clearly that like female comics really couldn't even say anything about it because what he was saying was true. He was like the ones that are funny are kind of ducky. They're kind of like, you know, like this the most. And then he's like, no, I'll go back to attacking religion. And other safe subjects.

2:31:14But there's, you know, it's that thing. It's like why do, why are men funny? More men are funny for a lot of reason to impress women. That's how they learn to do it to impress their friends. Like it's a part of the natural banter that men have when they get together. Women don't necessarily have that same banter, some do, but most don't. And women don't have to be funny to attract men. They just have to look good. So they think they're funny because guys are laughing at anything because they want to sleep with them They're like, oh, you're so funny. I've never Never were we're young someone pointing out that for a girl to say a guy was nice is not good.

2:31:50Oh right They're like dude. She said you're nice They're like if she says that he's funny. That's a real good sign. Yeah. Yeah. It's true Yes, it's true because you know about the nice thing There's last funny women, but the women that are funny, I respect the shit out of them because it's so hard to do Especially first of all your subject matters limited because nobody wants to see a woman talking about politics on stage Very few men want to see a woman with like very strong political opinions on the other Oh fuck off they get mad and then if you talk about sex you talk about sex too much. Oh, she's a slut There's all these thoughts that that's always struck me as the unfair thing is how much guys get uncomfortable about that Oh totally unfair totally unfair guys get real like oh But it does Create a situation for a woman comic that if a woman comic can navigate that they become undeniable If you can navigate all those preconceived ideas that people have about you before you go on stage But yet you still succeed at making them laugh that's black belt shit.

2:32:55That's high -level comedy That's what Whitney can do. Yeah, you know, she she pull I've seen people look at her when she gets on stage and they're like, she's hot. She's hot. She's hot. And then she starts killing and they're like, God damn it, she's fucking funny. And then after a while you just give in. They're like, wow, she's fucking great. And then you're laughing, you just enjoy yourself. But it's much more complex. Whereas a fat guy gets on stage and he's already funny. It's funny, looking. Big fat, stupid looking guy. And he starts talking about himself being fat. And then you got to lie with a lot of leeway.

2:33:29Yeah. Yeah. You know, I want to return to for a minute, you talk about after, you know, comics being in the green room, workshop and if in Colorado, they lose this bailed initiative about hunting bobcats and hunting mountain lions around this definition of trophy hunting and America's hunters get together in the green room and workshop what went wrong. I think they're going to determine that what went wrong is not identifying with and fighting for people who are engaged in the activity that a specific segment of the activity that you're not engaged with. And needing to come into the awareness that like this, as this plays out, this will get around to impacting you.

2:34:24You have to have that ability to do that. This is going to get around. This is like the next thing that comes up is going to be something that is going to like strike at you near and dear. It's going to be bow hunting is cruel, unnecessarily cruel. Right. Yeah. There are people that have that perspective that are fonters. Yeah. And then they're going to be like, you're going to freak out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When they strike, come. This is going too far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, then you'll be the one that you ignored when other, you'll be ignored when other traditional use practices were getting eliminated because it didn't affect you and then now here it is on your doorstep.

2:35:03There's also a thing about hunters where they're competitive in a different way than like saying comparison to stand -up comics because stand -up comics, you have that audience to yourself. It's not like they killed the audience. The audience doesn't exist anymore. Like I had a great audience. I had you kill them all, you fucking piece of shit. It's a good point. Now this is another body and you just do them up. Yeah, but if you go to the mountains and you kill a 400 inch bull, like that's a 400 inch bull that's gone now. I can't kill that bull. Now, ah, he fucking kills all the big bulls, no bulls left.

2:35:35Audiences are always there and the more comics that are really funny, the more it makes comedy grow and you get more audiences. You're not assassinating them. Yeah, but you could be competing with them on any given night, though. You're both in Toledo on Monday. Sort of, but when it's your opportunity, it's your opportunity and it's just your own shortcomings that are allowing you to fail in comparison to them. It's not them doing something. It's not like they're yelling at you from the side of the stage trying to fuck up your routine. You know what I'm saying? But it's like when you have your time, that's your time.

2:36:09And that's, I think with a bowl, there's more bowls though. It's not like there's more. but there's not a lot of 400 -inch bulls. And if you're a public land hunter, and there's a specific unit, and there's, you know, it's allocated 150 tags for the specific unit, and everybody's in there, hiking out, trying to end one guy, shoots his big ass bull, that's a big ass bull that you're not gonna be able to kill. And so there's a different level of competition, because even though it's a renewable resource, it's a limited resource, and there's also exceptional aspects of that resource, like an enormous animal, a very unusual rare outlier of an animal that if someone kills it, now you can't.

2:36:49So there's that competition. And then there's also the fucking dick measuring thing where guys are taking gripping grins. You know, one of the things that's really disturbing to me is the numbers thing. I was talking to a friend of mine who was a guide, and he was furious because this guy who is this well -known hunter shot a mule deer, and it was a beautiful mule deer. but it was only 189 inches. He wanted a 190. He wanted 200 inches. And he didn't think of it as like, it's just a buck. It's just a buck. And this guy was like, I would cut off my left nut to shoot that fucking buck. And this guy is this rich famous hunter who goes in and he's complaining about it.

2:37:33He's not even appreciating this thing. Oh, it's a buck. Just a buck. It's like a giant buck. It's a giant old seven eight year old deer. giant. Yeah, but it's funny. I'll get something. I have a lot of stuff that I've never measured, never will. I got a really nice move this year. I don't even, I don't know what measures, I should say no one. Yeah, pretty much no one measures moves. You tell about how wide there and you leave it at that. But I will have stuff for now and then someone's like, you know, around me that likes to do that. And I'd like to measure that thing. I just curious about Right.

2:38:07Yeah, I mean, it's like I don't hate the it's a pointer reference. Yeah, I don't hate the number system I get curious by like I'm curious about all aspects of all all aspects of hunting and wildlife and and the boon and Crocus system is of interest to me I don't live and die by it. You know, I'm at times I'm not curious what that is, but if someone shot a real stomper I might be like

2:38:33That's what I do too. I don't necessarily care about what I If I kill something just because I just was there. I'm not I'm not thinking about is this 400 is this well anything and I said this the other day and talking to Waddle it's like you know people talk about that you get great opportunities to hunt you know I mean that's just all there's to it but I said Joe I've never heard Joe talk about a score of something or he didn't want to kill it because I said he doesn't care there's been one ant word elk that he's was like, he would kill it. Right? I tried to. Yeah, and you're fine with it. You're fine with it.

2:39:10So I don't care. I'm gonna eat that. Right. And he's a big bull. I think it's kind of cool when they have broken out. Right, so it doesn't bother me at all. People will take shots at you because you killed a giant bull and this and that and they've been hunting their whole lives. It's like, you don't give a fuck. You just want a hunt. You're hunting. Yeah. And you don't care what it scores. You're not after like the biggest bull on the mountain. You just love hunting. And like that's the truth people can turn it into whatever they want. Yeah, they're wrong. I'm like Daniel Boone, man I go to the best hunting place I can go.

2:39:40Yeah, yeah, you should I don't know many people that yeah I don't know many people that if they said like hey man We're gonna go on family vacation and we found this sweet spot But then we got to think we should actually go to a family vacation in the shitty spot. Yeah Well, it's also all the it's the same thing that we're talking about with jealousy If those people had the resources that I have, and if you didn't do what I do, you're a moron. You don't go to the places where there's elk screaming all over the place, it's awesome. Yeah, I'm always looking for good opportunities. I mean, I'll take the shitty ones too, because I'm looking to get out all the time.

2:40:14So I'll take the shitty ones, I'll take the good ones, but I'm gonna generally, like if I get to, if I'm at a fork in the trail, and one side is like good and one side's bad, I'm going up the good one. 100 % of the time. Yeah, yeah, it's just a resource thing, you know like do you have the ability to do that if you don't you might Criticize people to do oh ever since I was a little kid we went to the way I think I did the best thing You know I did I went to the best spot I could get my best fish and hole always Yeah, I mean you you're right It's a resource thing because when I started where I killed that spike bowl that I talked about earlier that was Warehouse or timber company land, anybody could go there, everybody could go there freaking hard hunting to kill a bull with a bow so hard up there.

2:41:05That was as tough as it got, right? So then I'm like, well God, we could go to the wilderness. It's more open. It's on the east side of the state where I was hunting the west side of the state. The bulls are more vocal. It's the high country. That's better hunting. God, but that cost we got to drive all the way eight hours across the state, we need gas money. We need food when we're there. We're not just going home every night, but it was better hunting. So yeah, Roy sold a gun. We got some money. We drove over there, better hunting. Then it was like, shit, Oregon. Oregon sucks hunting wise compared to other states.

2:41:38It's like, I wonder if I could hunt Wyoming, put in for a general tag in Wyoming, drew it, killed a six by six bowl. Next time I drew it, killed a seven by six. I'm like, God, this is so much better than Oregon, but it's $1 ,100 for this premium architect that I was putting in for, got to work a little harder, got to come up with some more resource. You said it's a resource that you're allocating. Worked a little harder, that was better hunting. It's just that process. I started with the shittiest hunt you can get in the shittiest state to hunt, basically maybe Washington's about it. No, my state was way shittier in your state.

2:42:12Yeah, from, yeah, exactly. So, but you keep working for the shittiest state. You're shaking. Michigan? Is that where? Oh yeah. I had it quite good on this joke with you. Yeah, but that's how people think. No, it is true. You're right. But anyway, the point is, it's like, you keep working, you keep moving up the ladder to get to better hunting. Yeah. Now, it crosses the line. And I do understand when people are killing high fence animals in small properties and they're making it look like this is a wild animal. Yeah. Yeah, there's it there there comes a line and that line gets crossed all the fucking time right here in Texas Yeah, I know I know people that have I know a guy who has a 200 acre high fence property Mm -hmm, and I'm like whoo Yeah, that's where I go there.

2:43:03That's rough. I can go there if you have a 15 20 ,000 acre high fence property and like okay What are the odds those animals unless it's a mule deer? It's a migratory animal. What do the odds of those animals would ever get out of that? 15 ,000 acres in their normal natural life. As long as you're not feeding them, if you're not like, I'm standing over a feeder waiting from them to show up at 5 p .m., as long as it's not that, it's just hunting. And when people start talking about private land versus public, I understand the appeal. And I understand that public land should be available to everybody and I agree.

2:43:37And I think it's an amazing thing that we have in America. where we have these resources where any person can go to a place where you can get a general tag and go to public land and hunt. I think it's amazing. But you're also dealing with animals that are acting in a very unnatural way because they're highly pressured. So if you have a lot of hunters and a lot of pressured animals, you're dealing with an animal that's not acting like a wild animal. You're dealing with something that's being constantly harassed. And that to me is unnatural. Well, that yeah, then you get in like a history debate because you're on landscape so to Ben haunted but I would agree that high pressure

2:44:19Absolutely Changes everything about how they conduct yeah their business you're also competing with other guys like I've talked to guys That have had situations where they know that they are downwind or they're you know their upwind brother, their wind is gonna come down on an animal, but they see someone stalking that animal and they try to get to it first. And they know they're gonna bust it. They know it and they don't give a fud. They would rather bust it than have the other guy kill it. Yeah, they know the take a chance. And there's so many morons that are doing it. I think the best case scenario is human beings interacting with absolutely wild animals in a way where these animals are acting as natural as they would be as if human beings didn't exist.

2:45:04That's best case scenario. And if you can get to the most remote places, that's where you can get that. I will say your example about you didn't want somebody else to kill us or you can go down. I've probably done that before. When I was hunting, it's like every man for himself. I've raised people. I mean, I also backed out of Yeah, I just felt too weird. I'm not gonna do this. I because I remember here's how much I wanted to protect my In that same logging country I would go out and the road would end maybe I don't want to drive out to the log and unit Because that's gonna spook all the deer especially in the headlights before it's you know light and you're out there waiting So I'd park like half mile back and walk out there, but I didn't want anybody else driving out there So I'd park in the middle of the road sideways we leave my truck there.

2:45:57It's like, I'm not saying you can't come out there, but you're not driving. People, people lost their shit. I mean, I would hear gunshots going off of my truck and I'm like, are they shooting my truck? You know, you know, or are they gonna shoot me with it? So I did a lot of this crazy stuff. I mean, I'm very competitive. I did want to also clarify one point, because you said animals on 15 ,000 acres, you know, wouldn't be reacting, they wouldn't know they were an offense type thing. Because I've seen people say crazy shit about, oh, our hunting. But the bulls you kill are not an offense. I've never been an offense.

2:46:36No, it's always been fair chase. I've even said, oh, these bulls run beta blockers. Some crazy bull shit. Beta blockers? Beta blockers. So on bulls. I'm to limit their, their dreams. I don't even know what the hell it do. So I get blockers. I guess so the call leads can't use them and there's there's a certain Not scared. Yeah, it kills your adrenaline. So people say crazy shit. I don't want them turning in that you were validating a big High fence, no, I've never done that. No, so you're the bulls you're hunting are wild fair chase. There's predators around There's lions. There's bears. There's I mean this is wild out So yeah, I just want to make that clear because people take say they say crazy shit Maybe even 15 ,000 acres is not a good example.

2:47:21So like let's say like The four six ranch that my friend Taylor Shardin notes. It's two hundred and seventy thousand acres. Wow Yeah, really? Yeah, he isn't fence that no God, that would be a lot of money enough But even if he did you know, that's like the fuck yeah like that's where they live You just put a fence to keep other people from going in really not you're not stop that's like natural habit Yeah, I mean the whole country's been by oceans You could look at it that way, but I've never done it and I've never done it and I've had like Occasion to debate people about it, but it's not like maybe I used to be a little friskier About arguing about all the finer points, but it's just it's um Haven't done it I don't really think about it.

2:48:14It's not the same thing. When I talk to guys who hunt out here, and most of them are pretty honest about it, the way they do it, like the hunt over feeders. You're just not people that hunt a lot. They don't practice a lot. But when they get a chance, it's essentially like a kind of harvesting animals. It's almost like a type of farming. Because if you're hunting over a feeder, and they'll put you in a tree stand and say, all right, the feeder goes off at five o 'clock. You're like, what? It's a collision of animal. It's a collision of husbandry and animal husbandry. of hunting an animal husbandry where you're using the sort of harvest tactics of hunting, but you're employing a lot of the principles of animal husbandry.

2:48:51Yeah, it's not the same thing. It's not going into the mountains. Like we do, we're hunting in Utah or you're going to Colorado. You're going in the mountains. Yeah, well, there's a wild animals, they're unfenced. And to that point, it's not guaranteed. I mean, when we were there this last season, great, it's great property. I mean, nobody could argue that it's incredible, Elkhani. But there was hunters the week where there who didn't kill, the week after we were there, seven guys did not kill. Well, the week where there are only three did. So only three guys, people make it sound like it's just shooting fish in a barrel and guaranteed 100%.

2:49:30It's like, how many hunters were there the week where they're there? I'm not sure. There was, there had to be 30. I don't know, it's a big piece of property. And it's fucking hard, man. And you gotta be in shape. Yeah. You gotta be in real miles. 10 miles a day. 10 miles a day through the mountains. The end of the day, you're fucking exhausted. You're eating everything you can get in your face. You're so tired. And then you get up in the morning and you do it again. And the idea that somehow I know that that's cheating. You go think that if you like. But if you do it, you go there, you won't think that.

2:50:05You go there, you're like, oh, this is just just an amazing opportunity in a beautiful landscape where wild animals live, unmolested. You know, there's still lions there. I mean, the one that we saw. Those are the first time I've ever saw a full grown big ass cat in the wild. It's like, wow. I got to watch when Mr. Deer down in Mexico this year was really cool. Oh wow. Watch him come in, there's a doe, she's traveling. I watched him come in ahead of her and he kept looking down and trying to guess her trajectory and then got and laid down and then mister. Did he go after him? Oh yeah, yeah. Like he couldn't, I mean, when it was like a ball of fur, dude, and she comes to squirt, well, I'm sad, I'm kind of simplifying it where there was a fork he I didn't know about and she got up right next to this fork and then the lion blew out.

2:50:57It kind of first tried to roll that forky and then sort of spraying out of that and tried to get the dough. But it was like he was he was flockshootin You probably if you asked him he probably had a target But man they ran like hell Wow, that's cool. It was a second line. I saw that night. Yeah, that was a rarity Yeah, that when I was in Colorado this year in the week that I was there I killed a bullbuck in a bear in that week. I saw four lions hmm So many lions in that country that's a lifetime supply for seeing them without dogs. It's it was insane but it's uh yeah I was gonna say that story reminded me of you said the flock shooting I remember this old guy who'd come back from to hunting cap when I first started he's like you see anything he's like yeah yeah so I got on a good herd I said you get a shot he's like yeah yeah what happened he's like well I shot over some and a shot under some I could just envision that there's a heard and try to get an arrow in one of them.

2:52:06But uh, yeah, it's uh, you imagine being a Native American with a fucking handmade bow chasing after those things. I bet it didn't spook 200 yards away back. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we know that. I the first, I'm trying to think man, the first three or so dear I got, I got on, on when I was a kid, I killed first year and else 13. The first three or so dear, I got, I got all on private property. And then I killed, I went into the white river, kind of the, we just called the white river swamp, but down on my national forest land and killed a fawn one October with my bow. And you hear people, like people didn't celebrate public land hunting then.

2:52:51It was like you're slum in it. So you were there because you couldn't get a no farmer was going to let you, you didn't know any farmers. Right. You know, if you went out on public land in Michigan and you went to anybody that was on public land and said, Hey, do you want to hunt like the farm over there? No one is like out of principle by God. I'm staying here. They would just they would go to the farm but When I did get that fawn deer which I killed over a bait pile in the white river swamp It felt good man like you know, I mean like I was aware of having and did this thing that I would have...

2:53:28Yeah. To have and did this thing that I would have regarded as almost like semi -impossible. Right. You know, to pull that off. I have a deep respect for people that can shoot mature animals on public hand. Sure, man. That is very hard to do. And it's very, and I get that you would have a higher sense of pride. I totally get it. I've gotten a handful, I've gotten like four big mule deer,

2:53:54I've never killed a meilder on private property. And I got four good meilder on public property. And like that, like I can't deny that that sort of means of thing to me. You know, not that I wouldn't. Like if someone tomorrow, if I drew some tag and some area and some guys like, oh, my ranch, I could go hunt their ranch all day long. But it just, it sort of like happens that that's true. and I don't look at it and think differently of it, the same way all kinds of factors plan to it. But every year, I've gotten some big coos here, and all the coos here I've killed on big private ranches in Mexico, except for Arizona.

2:54:35Got a nice year on big private ranches in Mexico and loved the experience. I mean, to all that stuff, man. I get why people would think a certain way, because it's very similar in a lot of ways to bow hunting versus rifle hunting. Yeah, a little bit more priceless. If you see someone that kills a big bull with a rifle, they're like, yeah, that's a big bull, man, that's awesome. But if you see someone that kills a big bull with a bull, you're like, whoa, that's a bigger deal. And it feels way different. As someone who shot bulls with rifles and shot bull with a bow and arrow, you cannot compare.

2:55:08In my, the way it makes me feel, when I make a perfect 52 yard shot, and I watch that arrow go into the crease behind the shoulder, And you watch that bull buck up and you know you got him you like It's like there's nothing like it. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like I was hunting with Evan Hafer from black rifle coffee this past October we were both alkanig at this ranch and I shot this bull and it was like on the fifth day of a six day hunt It was a lot of up and there's a lot of fucking missed opportunities a lot of getting winded a lot of a lot of shit went down But when I finally snuck in and it was a long ass stalk it was like it Took me an hour and a half to cover about 40 or 50 yards Because I was the the elk was bedded and I was barefoot I was in just in my socks and I was just slowly creeping Slowly and every time he'd move his head I'd stop and I was slowly creeping when I finally released that arrow And it hit that bowl and I heard that whack and the bowl literally ran 30 40 yards and piled up the whoo that I let out you could have heard it a Fucking mile away.

2:56:23I see they heard it on the other side of the canyon They were watching with binoculars and they heard Because it's so different I shot it with a rifle. I'd still be pumped. It's a beautiful bowl. It's meat. I'm psyched. I got all this food now This is incredible. This is what I wanted this was what I was working for but it's harder. It's harder to do on public land. It's harder to do with a bow. There's always little factors. Like any accomplishment, there's always little factors that wind up, you know. Accentually. An elevating experience or some other thing, you know? And then you get into like where I'm at now in life where for me, the highest, like the most elevated experiences that have to witness my kids do something.

2:57:07Mm. Yeah. Yeah, well Cam always talks about that like his favorite experiences when he takes people for their first time Like you were telling me that the time you took that woman. Yeah cat Yeah, she shot that deer and you guys are eating it like this is getting any better than this No, you introduced something this thing that you love you have deep passion for they get to experience you see them get lit up I mean you've done that so many times. I'm sure I want I wanted to take Steve on that hot I think I mentioned that yeah, we detects about that. Yeah, that was I just missed out you missed out It's you're done.

2:57:36That's it. But no, I just especially that one because that's Oregon black tell which I grew up hunting in Western Oregon. So I really love sharing, you know, the small little logging community, the badass loggers there that are tough as hell. Just that little Western Oregon vibe. I love sharing that. But then she also killed a big four by four buck with the eye guards. Just this old big old buck. And it was, then we, you know, Of course, packed it out as a steep log in unit and we cooked it up the next morning. Definitely the highlight I killed quite a few animals this year. None better than that.

2:58:14Mm -hmm. That was the highlight. I didn't kill it. Yeah. But it was just that experience. It's a yeah, there's nothing, you know, and my kids, I took true with the same, he killed a buck down there too this year. So yeah, it's a, you know, you get to where, and all I said, I was very competitive, very tunnel vision. it was all about me and that, you know, with age, that changes. And then you're like, no, I want to share this with people. So it's, well, if you don't do that, how are they going to find out? And one of the things that you've talked about so many times, Steve, is the barrier to entry for someone who's like, they're thinking about hunting.

2:58:49Like, I thought about it for years. My wife used to go crazy because I would be at home watching Spirer the Wild. She's like, what the fuck are you watching? Why are you watching Dead Nugent? And I'm like, I want to figure out how to do some day. And then I want your show. KC place, I got to be here, KC place Fred Bear. Yeah, well when you, the lackmaster. When I first saw your original show, the wow within, right? That was what it was about. When I first saw that show, I was like, oh, I want to talk to that guy. And that was before meat eater even started. And then when you invited me to come hunting with you, I was like, oh, finally, now I can figure this out.

2:59:22But if it wasn't for that, having someone like you to show me how to do it and it take me out and have you be my guide? Like fuck, what are the odds? I'll see people making like young hunters or people just starting to hunt. Now I'll see you make this like horrible decisions, you know? We're like, I think I'm going up there in the morning. And on one hand, I wanna have feel like bad. I'll be like, oh my God, it's a horrible idea. And then I'm like, dude, yes. Like that's all the stuff that yeah, like that I had to do when I was figuring anything out. Yeah, like hats off to you dude. Yeah, you're gonna get up and go like you don't know it But you're getting up early you're gonna go try something I recognize it as the dumbest thing you could possibly do But like that's that's how you do it man.

3:00:07That's how you learn so that barrier to entry like some people Are have the for mental fortitude Well, they're just gonna take it on yeah, and then some people are gonna sit and be like I'm not you know, I don't have it in me to really Figure this hard ass thing out Well, until you've experienced success, it's very difficult to justify the work. And if it seems insurmountable. And for a lot of people that don't have someone like you or someone like you taking them out, it's almost insurmountable because there's so many things you have to learn. It's not intuitive. It's something that you have to figure out through trial and error or you have to read a lot or watch a lot of videos and absorb all that information.

3:00:44Yeah, mostly you have to learn it yourself. You know, because you can read reading helps watching helps talking helps You just got just as you said that that's how they learn they get out there They do it themselves and then they're like well that didn't work now what and that's that's how you learn That's what's hard about hunting with that barrier to entry is That experience accumulates slow for most people yeah, like when I was hunting back home I would get a week for elk. That's all so a week a year and And that's it. You know, so I had to go out take photos, try to be out there amongst them, learn body language, learn what they like to do.

3:01:24And that takes years. So when somebody comes in late, yeah, they can't shortcut that experience part. We were lucky to grow up doing it. And now we're in a position where we can share it. But it's tough if you didn't grow up doing it. Yeah, there's a few places people will teach you how to do it. You know, Jesse Griffiths has that school. What is it called? New school style. What is it? What is it again his school? But he has a literal like limited edition. It's not the new school, but that's in it. Yeah, it's okay. It's the same name of it. So he has, Jamie, it pulled up, but he has a program.

3:01:56Well, I'll take you, he'll teach you how to shoot, he'll teach you how to hunt, he'll teach you how to butcher, teach you how to cook. The whole thing. I'll take you through the whole process. That's so valuable. And there's something that you can do, and especially with a renewable resource like pigs. Yeah. New school of traditional cook. And I remember there's like a somewhat contradictory, three new school traditional cooking. But that's so valuable, where someone can take you through the whole process and there's not a lot of that available unfortunately. And even if it was available, it would be very difficult to screen applicants to make sure that it's even worth taking your time.

3:02:31Because if you got a guy and, you know, he's 50, 60 pounds overweight and got a bad knee and you want to take him in a mule deer hunt in the mountains like, we can't really do this. Like you're gonna have to lose weight. You're gonna have to get in shape. You're gonna have to figure out a way to be able to get to where the animal is on. Get into something different. Because this is not an easy task. I think the truth, like there's an area, I don't think everyone needs to get there. There's an area of expertise or a level of expertise that I think is admirable. And it's, you know, you learn how to hunt some particular spot.

3:03:03And that's great, right? You learn how to hunt some particular spot and that's your hunting spot and you get it really figured out. And that's a wonderful journey. and that's really good. I think that getting to the point where you get that place and thing that you're comfortable at, and then you go and be like, okay, I'm gonna take whatever it is I learned there and try to apply it to something totally different and figure that different thing out. And get where you're good at these spots and these things, but you become good at like deciphering, figuring out, and being able to move into totally new things and carry that accumulative knowledge into these new spots, like that becomes pretty fun.

3:03:46And that's a high, I regard that as being not better, but a high level of expertise. Well, there's also variables that maybe some people that are successful in other disciplines don't recognize as they enter into this new world that there's different parameters. Like, for instance, if you got someone who's a successful white tail hunter that hunts out of a tree stem, a really good archer. But they're used to shooting a 65 -pound bow with a 350 -grain arrow and they're used to shooting these animals that are fairly small. And then you take them on an elk hunt. And you're like, hey, that's set up with this three blade mechanical with a 60 -pound bow.

3:04:27You're shooting a fucking enormous animal with huge bones. You might not even get through the ribs with that thing. You might center a rib and that's a wrap. Like you have to recognize you're dealing with a totally different thing and you're not you can't just be weak You have to be physically strong you have to be capable of making it to you're not gonna sit in a tree stand Like you've got to change everything about the way you approach it. Yeah, you got very successful with this one aspect of this thing But you've got a whole new thing now you have to apply it to and if you don't you're gonna wound animals You're gonna have problems or you're gonna just not be successful at all I remember the first time I went out of the guy deep drop and for swordfish So I watched the guy catch a couple swordfish and 1300 feet of water and I realized I knew nothing about fish

3:05:16So specific oh my god, man like all the shit you think you know that you go out there Do you like you're not gonna catch a fish out here? You can't do that Like nowadays with fishing, you know Steve I sent you that thing the other day with the guy had uh... he had uh... a screen on his phone and there was some sort of a camera attached to his line like what all that guy that was crazy wild so this guy cast out and he's looking at a screen with like a little bit to shield the sun on his rod as he's really seeing the fish coming towards his bait yeah not like ice fishing with the camera but he's like yeah has a camera what he's casting and has a camera watching fish interact with his bait while he does a retrieve.

3:06:04I never seen that before. I was like, this is great. But the things that are sent you, the ice fishing guys, they got fucking cameras down there and like a fully heated shack where they're watching television. I'll tell you my kid don't want to ice fish without the camera. Well, it's an added element to see the fish. like this is so cool. You'll watch them sneak up to it. You know, is uh, yeah, that's, it reminds me there's something new in hunting now, which I don't like. But it's at the heat seeking binoculars. I think it's heat seeking. Oh, thermal, thermal, yeah, thermals. And to me, I don't, you can't use it for big game hunting.

3:06:48No, it's not, there's some stays for us not regulated. It's not regulated. They don't even mention it. No, no, you can't. Well, yeah, you can't get outside illegal shooting hours. No, but to find out. Oh, I see what you're saying. Are there states where you're allowed to find a game with thermal? I think it's not, it's just not disallowed. Yeah, I got it. It's not addressed. Well, there's an issue now where they're banning drones that use thermal for recovery. But I don't like, because your argument is your scout, of course, you could be if you're piece of shit. But like what guys could conceivably do, like in Oregon, as I've talked about in Western Oregon, and glassing those big huge logging units and finding deer is an art.

3:07:27I mean, it is hard to pick those things up. But if you could just put, you know, and find the thermal register of it. Sure. They're, oh, it's right there, you know, and that's like a big part of killing a buck. I don't like that. That needs to be regulated here. Yeah, honest was just hunting in Latvia. And in Latvia, they get out in a clear cut, mill the day, whatever. They're gonna get out in a clear cut and put a thermal up and be like, nope, hop back in the car and roll out. Yeah, I don't know. And he's like, I can't believe you guys can, you know, I can't believe you guys do that. Like I can't believe you don't do it.

3:07:58Yeah. Right, it works, stupid. Yeah, I, well, I know. Well, in Scotland, they're stag where we were at. This is amazing. And they had a hunting ranch out there. And they said, do you want a hunt? And I said, do you guys yours rifles? And he goes, yeah, I go, can you use a bow? Can I bring a bow? And they go, no, we don't allow it in the country. I don't know, like what? Like, you know a lot. Can you watch me shoot first? Like, let me talk to the governor. Can you set up a target at ADRs and show you? Like, this is, I know what I'm doing? Like, let me do this. You can't. Yeah, I think was it South Africa?

3:08:38There was like quite a lobbying effort to allow our true equipment. Really? Wow. Yeah, there's some countries over there that didn't have it. I don't care. I think Ted Newge was involved in something about having to show the How lethal it was Before they were allowed. It was a lethality concern. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I don't know what it was for I don't know if it's for elephant or something like that But it's not always the case when people just don't know and you think of an a bow and arrow You're like well that sounds like we use a gun stupid. Mm -hmm. You know so much more effective You know when I have that conversation with people that are non -hundreds and they're like why do you use a bow and arrow?

3:09:17I go, that says you're more connected. It's quiet. It's like there's so many things about it that are just, it's more difficult to do. It requires more discipline and concentration. It's more rewarding when you do it. There isn't a rifle better though. Oh yeah. Why don't, are you trying to get meat? Yes. Do I have support new support spear hunting? Like I have no, I have zero problem. Zero problem with spear hunting. I don't think it's gonna be a thing to impact game numbers. impossible. I 100 % supported with with pigs with what I think that when I say supported I mean like I feel that if you had a regulation I feel that that if if someone wanted to say we'd like to open it up that people could hunt with the spear I would probably generally say okay I just because I don't think this is gonna be a thing that reduces opportunity.

3:10:07Well you know you remember the thing that happened in Canada with John Fomar they banned spear hunting because is this one controversial moment where it was totally legal. Everything he did was totally legal. Yeah. And they said, It's just the thing no one realized, because there's things that are legal and they're legal because they're not illegal. Right. Right. That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to hunt with a spear, but I get it, you know? But I always feel like it's a gimmick. Like when I see someone hide in a tree and they spear a pig, they're showing that it can be done.

3:10:36Yeah. It's kind of a gimmick. I haven't done it. I can't picture getting into it by any stretch, but I just don't think it hits traditional for sure. And then I think it's not like, I don't think it's gonna throw off population levels and lead to decreased opportunity. No. I don't think Aime is gonna be like, the spear guy's got them all. Right, they got the all the big bulls. Like about hunters. Cause they gonna hide in trees. Yeah, I mean even if they wouldn't have made it illegal who the hell was gonna spear hunt a bear Sad Josh up there right it's less it was just it It's a real psycho it caused such a stir that they had to address it Yeah, so it's a but yeah, I wasn't gonna have an impact on the population Well, it caused a stir because it was discussed publicly and it was like this It was a social media thing and it gets into this weird area where you know Some people have a really hard time with people exploiting hunting on social media because they say that you're kind of like bastardizing this beautiful thing and you're making it just like showing things on Instagram.

3:11:49Just like all the other things that you show off on Instagram, your private jet or your big house or your fucking yachts and shit. You're making your cheapening this beautiful moment. When I was a kid, you had to go down to the local sporting goods store and staple your picture up to the brag board, man Yeah, the community brag board and you had to go down there to see what always happened Well, it's essentially just a limited version of what Instagram is, but it's a global brag board Yeah, but that's the thing too. It's you're not getting people that come into that local sporting goods store that don't understand Yeah, no, I think that is a big deal because I think in a big deal in that that we need to think about how we're presenting things.

3:12:31You know, wherever, if you're down at the local sporting, if that's only Hunter's pretty much seeing that. Just like when you'd write an article like when I wrote for Eastman's Journal or whatever, that was just Hunter's, or if you are an outdoor channel, it's just Hunter, nobody besides Hunter's is watching that. Now, everybody's on social media. So I think we just need to be very cognizant of what we're putting up there. Well, you do a fantastic job of that. And you have a very specific protocol you follow. you know, will you show photos of the hunt, then you show the meat. You know, you show harvesting the meat, cleaning the meat, and then eventually, you'll show a photo of the animal that you killed.

3:13:07Sometimes I don't even do that. Yeah. Sometimes I just show the, whatever, just because the gripping grins for some people, and I have, you know, a lot of people that follow that don't hunt, they have a hard time with those pictures. Yeah. And I'm just like, I get it, whatever. You haven't grown up around this. I have to me and people like me, this is part of it, but I understand. I've never had anybody get mad at me for cooking in Elk State. Exactly. And it's just not going to happen. So, it's just like, do we need to put the grip and grinning up? I mean, is it necessary? I don't care if people do it.

3:13:44I just want them to think about what they're saying when they put it up, how they do it. To me, I lead up to it. I show the country, the animals, the journey, like on this lion hunt. I actually also showed a lion killed a beef calf. Didn't eat any of it because if they killed it in the creek, the lion wasn't big enough to drag it out of the creek. So it left it and went killed and elk. That's interesting. Followed the tracks for three miles and I would see the lion go and was sitting behind a tree. All the deer tracks were there. So the lion was hunting and I shared all that. That's all part of the journey.

3:14:24that's all the cool stuff people. So I say share things like that. And also, you can share your kill shot. It's great. But also, what else stood out from the hunt? There's also a problem with hunting TV shows in that you're condensing something that might be seven days of 10 hour days. In 22 minutes. Yeah. And then speed ball. And then you want to pick that you want to pick to enter asking 22 minutes. Yeah. It's like you randomly pull out segments out of your 100 hours of footage. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's been a big benefit to tell more of the journey now that Steve's on YouTube, his videos on YouTube have tons of views.

3:15:01So he's able to explain why the hunt's important, what stood out to you, it's more intellectual approach to it. Whereas you didn't really have time on an outdoor channel show. You didn't have time to get into that. Some of my favorite shows of yours are meatier, you're unsuccessful. And I love that you have those. You know, I remember that one we get in real introspective about your father Yeah, it's like one of my favorite episodes you ever did and it was just you unsuccessful hunting and it's like yeah, that's also a part of it like this is not easy and it's often unsuccessful And I was always you know, and was always am always bummed and I get something to like I'm trying But we'd be you know back back in the early days.

3:15:43We were making 16 shows was, so you weren't gonna, you know, if you weren't spent a week bus in your ass and you didn't get something, it wasn't, the option wasn't there to, to ditch it. Like we were gonna make something out of it. And in the end, that was great. Glad we did it. But, you know, I've never gone in the woods hoping to be unsuccessful. Right. It definitely happens. And, you know, but I always wished it was otherwise. Of course. Yeah. But it's just the, editing it down to 22 minutes. It gives people that are on the outside a completely different perspective. They think it's so easy.

3:16:21I mean how many times you heard that? If you're a real man, you know, you'd go the hunt it with a knife or something like that. Something stupid. You're, oh what a coward. You're shooting it from a distance with a rifle. And in that 22 minutes too, there's also sponsor obligations when it's on TV. So it's not even 22 minutes of hunting. You know, you have to have the tips and tactics brought to you by Osler, right? So it's like you get down to the hunt You can't really say why the hunt is important to you almost It's like it doesn't give you time to develop that story So we've it's a big benefit to us It was social media now.

3:16:57We're not we don't need approval by an editor We don't need the the channel to approve how long this thing is we put it on YouTube and then we can tell the story of the hunt in a more honest and relatable fashion, hopefully, and explain why it's difficult and people understand it. What kind of restrictions is YouTube put on hunting videos now? Because I know that they're... You can push it a little far and get dinged. What is it pushing far, the kill shot? Is it blood? No, it's a being, no, like blood and skinning shots and you kind of graphic. Like, you know, we got... The first thing you hit is you had a demonetization thing, right?

3:17:36And then you can hit all their levels of dings and there's like a little scorecard, but oddly,

3:17:44doing a neat, we had something like, just like examples of doing a knee -cropsy on something, just to graphic organs, things like that, just assembly. That'll get you dinged. You can get demonetization. I believe there's levels of demonetization you can get around certain firearms issues, but the primary thing is just like gore. But even put in terms of knee crops, so I'm sure at some level it's like, I'm sure it begins as an AI thing, scouring all this footage and find something that's like bloody and graphic, and at some level it gets elevated. We've argued and gotten our stuff back. You know if you can get someone's ear and you can get it tested by a person and got in the back But that is the primary thing is is is gore there was talk of them eliminating kill shots That could be I heard that I remember I think that guy was send it, but I think there were some issues Here it goes you you can turn on ads for this content hunting content where there's no depiction of graphic animal injuries or prolonged suffering hunting videos where the moment of kill or injury is indesernable and no focal footage of how this dead animal is processed for trophy or food purposes.

3:19:03Boy, that's pretty fucking limited. Yeah. Well, like for me, I had one that was limited in age restriction. So people 18 and under couldn't watch it. Was it a fire arms and fraction? No, no, no, no, no, no, just archery. But and I don't monetize any of my hunting videos because I just don't even want to deal with oh you're killing for Fucking profit or whatever the hell so I'm like I don't even I don't make any money. I don't turn monetization No, not for hunting I do it for my lift run shoot and my podcast Yeah, but for just the hunting I'm not meant that's a good way to but I still got that that age restriction because of They said the Gore then there was an outfit that that what's his name Jason?

3:19:49I think sportsman's alliance maybe. But anyway, they appealed it for me. They got it in touch with YouTube and appealed their decision and got it overturned. So for people like me, they, or for us creators, they will go to go to bat for us. Yeah, oftentimes I've seen cases. I remember our senator and our senator, Montana, I got dinged on one of the social media platforms For having like a picture at him and his wife with a pronghorn. Yeah, and his account got taken down and in a minute Humans became aware of this. They're like the right humans became aware of this. They did like a very quick reversal.

3:20:32Yeah, so the way The way we'll generally look at it with putting up video content is is we'll try to avoid demonetization being demonetization. You cross some line, right? But the thing is, I haven't found it to be like, it's not like an owner's process. I feel that it's pretty, if you compare it to other channels of distribution, I have not found YouTube to be dramatically over restrictive, of especially compared to any kind of, especially compared to any kind of like network parameter. Right, no. They're not, they're not, they might be bad, but they're not bad compared to anybody else. No, and that one, that was Jason Quick, who helped me with that.

3:21:22I just remembered his last name. But that one I showed, I killed this bull on San Carlos, and I think I showed the lungs or where the arrow hit. Yeah. And that's what got it. And it wasn't once I appealed at myself they said no we're upholding the restriction and then they did get it over turned a TOOK so it took a couple times but still is reasonable and they took they had age restrictions on other ones I didn't even know about but I didn't notice that the viewership was down and And so that they lifted all those So it's kind of a weird situation where Although there are many, many video platforms, YouTube essentially has an overwhelming majority of people into the point where it's almost a monopoly.

3:22:09And if you have things like that that are very valuable to people like, I want to see where the arrow hits. Yeah. I like when I see blood pouring out of an animal because I know that that's a lethal shot. That's what you want. It might be graphic to some people, but if I see a rage hit behind the shoulder on a deer and I see that blood squirting out as soon as the deer starts moving, I'm like, that guy got that deer. That's a dead deer. That's what you want. It doesn't seem awful to me. It seems better because that's a lethal shot. That's a successful hunt. That's what you're trying to do. To pretend that's not what you're trying to do, boy, that seems insane.

3:22:53And if you're doing it only to protect the the ignorant that seems insane too It's like you don't have to watch those videos and if you're gonna allow those videos on the platform You should allow those videos to be a realistic depiction of what everybody's trying to do Which is a lethal shot on an animal and if you hit a lethal shot on an animal and you hit it in the vitals and you use a A strong arrow with a great broad head. You're gonna get blood squirting out of it because that's what you want The last thing you want to see is an arrow hit an animal and no blood comes out. Yeah. I mean, and that's okay.

3:23:29Well, and meanwhile, they show people getting killed, I think, on YouTube, don't they? I do not know. I know. But they shouldn't be in pull those, I think, they try to... Being injured. Yeah, well, you see it on the war videos. You see it blocked out or obscured. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the hunting networks used to have self -imposed restrictions that they felt were cleaning up hunting for the sake of non -hundreds looking in. And it was counterproductive because they would have a restriction that they didn't want to see raw meat. They didn't want to see bare bone. And so it created this sense of like when I say counterproductive, if you were looking in and watching it, there was no acknowledgement of what happens to it later, which created the sense that maybe nothing.

3:24:26And then that eventually corrected itself. And they're like, oh, some level of gore in parentheses, like some level of gore is helpful in explaining the process, but the instinct early on, the instinct was to not have any of that. Right. And people would get dinged for raw meat, they'd get dinged for like a bone sticking out of a backpack. One of the things that I really appreciated about your shows, particularly early on, is that you have a lot of segments where you cook the meat. And there's a lot of shows where they don't cook the meat. Those are trademark, dude. Yeah. It's a big difference.

3:25:01Big difference, I mean, it's much more enjoyable. Like one of my favorite videos is you and you shot that black pair that the blueberries and you're watching like you're explaining like look how purple this fat is because this thing's just been gorging on blueberries then you're cooking it and eating it like that to me it's like that's a full range of what the experience of hunting is about. I wish more people would do that. I find out looking back on those days it's like I sometimes look back and I'd be like I was just shocking that that wasn't it's shocking that that wasn't out there more. Yeah, at the time, you know, it was like you something like so simple and elemental and it was just Suprize people it was almost non -existent.

3:25:42Yeah, surprised people on those outdoor channel shows You knew very very rarely saw someone cooking the animals that they killed it was I think it was kind of assumed Just because I how we grew up and in magazines They never talked about that you never read an article where they talked about how they Processed the meat or ate it that have a recipe of finished finished like a recipe with shit you take out of the freezer, but there was an ignored part. There was the old Fred Bear videos. You know, he Fred Bear is making videos way before we ever started hunting. The meat was never shown. So it was just kind of like that's just how we learned.

3:26:21Then Steve, brilliant idea, meat eater. Yeah. I mean meat eater right there. You got the fork. You got the forks on the frickin' moose. So it's like, that was the best decision ever because it addresses that part of it, which was kind of like, it's impressive that you foresaw what might be a challenge for us, explaining and hunting. So that was just like brilliant to come up with that. But to our defense, that was never a thing. We just knew, I mean, I read this old article, my first deer I killed that spike that I said I don't know what it was, 15. I wrote this little thing for the school newspaper and said I got 37 pounds of hamburger from it.

3:27:02And I don't know why because I don't know why I said that. That's a great school newspaper. Cause yeah, yeah. Cause nobody ever talked about it. But it was like, that's hilarious. Yeah, it was funny. I said something like, my mom was happy because you got 37 pounds. It's probably all we got off that deer. It's pretty small. So, but yeah, so I mean, it's, yeah, it has changed. It certainly opens people's eyes up that are non -hunters and it's a very valuable addition to this whole video depiction of what hunting is all about. Also, you're a really good cook, so you would get really involved to make some pretty cool recipes.

3:27:42You cook for your staff and you got episodes like that. We cooked all these different preparations of different wild game. It's cool. It adds to it. Mm -hmm. Like you appreciate it. Well listen, let's wrap it up. Let's bring this bad boy home. Medi -dures available, it's essentially only on one now, right? Yep. Well, we have like the fast channels, but yeah, you can find everything we do on YouTube. So I just wanna say to me, huge honor, you guys are the voices of hunting. What are you the voice of hunting? No, no. No, you guys are so well versed in how to discuss it, how to explain it. How's it?

3:28:21It's like I am honored to be here and do to have a podcast with Steve We've done a lot of podcasts, but to have all three of us here. It means a lot to me. So thank you That's great. It means a lot to me you two or the main reason why I got into hunting 100 % and without you taking me out to shoot that one mule deer that sits proudly on that table. It's Change my life. Both men both you do Appreciate it. Love you too. All right. Bye everybody