00:00:14 Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. All right, boys, we've got a lot of ground covered today, and this is the main ground we have to cover. Is Clay Hayes is here with us, Josh. Clay Hayes is is the man on the internet for bow building, quite a bit of bushcraft stuff, making flint locks. You live in Idaho, and we're going to get into this, but like this, this will be the conversation that we have that kind of like finalized the podcast. But Clay was the winner of a loan the show alone. 00:01:25 Speaker 2: That's awesome. 00:01:26 Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, twenty two. 00:01:29 Speaker 3: Twenty twenty is when it was when we were out there, we were right, oh really, right in the middle of COVID. Yeah. 00:01:34 Speaker 1: Has it been that long? 00:01:35 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:01:36 Speaker 1: So twenty twenty Yeah, so that's like the meat on the bone. But before before we get there, no, thanks for coming man. We've got a Josh Spilmaker with us here, Barr John newkeom here. So the there's two things I want to talk about. I want to talk about a recent social media your posts that I made about water witching using witching sticks. 00:02:06 Speaker 2: Hey, would you cr I got some opinions on that. 00:02:09 Speaker 1: Great listen. I am gonna just I'm very humbly gonna just give my full appeal for what it is, how I've used it, and what I have seen with my own eyes for decades. And if anybody has a problem with that, then I don't know what to tell them. But so we're going to talk about that. 00:02:38 Speaker 3: It's okay to disagree. We don't have to not be friends. 00:02:41 Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. I just don't know what to tell you. It's just like, okay, So we're gonna talk about that. And then we're going to talk about the film that Baron and I were on. I've been under this under the microscope this week really from the from the water Witching post and then on the YouTube the YouTube video, everybody was talking about how like the climax of the film is when this bear pops out, and and maybe that's what we should talk about right now, there's like three hundred comments on the most recent Montana black bear video, and it's it's it's it was such a great hunt. We ended up killing a big bear. But there's this moment when bear John sees a bear and we both go up the bears coming around the road and we're trying to get bear the shot and bear puller back up. Nope, nope, nope, no up like this yeah like that, Yes, deals about to pop off. There you go, rookies, rookies. And basically the bear is like at forty yards and bears using a three hundred wind mag and I am pleading with him to shoot the bear after we wait to see that it's not a sound, doesn't have cubs or could have been a sout, just it didn't have cubs. And and basically the bear turns and as it's turning, I'm saying shoot, shoot, shoot, And when the bear fully turns and it's running away, I'm it's like I'm still in the momentum of a father just going shoot, shoot shoot. So I actually do say shoot one hundred percent while the bear is like running down the road, and so like half of the comments are just like Lear, I used to respect Clay, I'm serious And then they're like, but Bear nuke? What what a pillar of a man? Which is true? Well, it's it's true. I mean Bear massively made the right decision and did the right thing even with the pressure of a dad Clay, you know, I would know how you know, the feeling. Do you have kids? 00:05:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's hard to you know, get an accurate understanding of what was going on in that moment unless you're. 00:05:19 Speaker 1: There, right, yeah, yeah, what we could see and what the camera saw. But anyway, Bear, what what would you what do you say about it all? Yeah? I mean I feel like it was I feel like I did have a shot really like, I don't think the camera quite captured everything because at one point the bear was sticking its head up, and I mean I just had a perfect shot just like right at the kind of upper part of its chest and that was when I should have shot it. But there was They were just like, did you hesitate? Well, it was like a combination of a lot of factors. I think. I think it was like my first time to ever like be in front of the cameras, which was just like in the back of my mind there was brush in front of it, which was no big issue except like I really don't holt with a gun all that much, and I was just like in my mind that was just like you don't shoot through the brush. And then it was like we just like just seen this bear, and I was like there was like the smallest little thought in the back of my head like there's still a part of that hillslope you couldn't see that, like there could still be cubs or something, which I mean there weren't, like we kind of knew it, but it was like in that like split second that was like part of the my thinking process and I think, and then I pretty much just kind of like froze, like with all those like thoughts kind of like colliding. I just like totally froze, And so you know, that's why I didn't shoot it turning. So I did have a shot, but yeah, you know, like if I were to do it again, I would probably just take that next shot. But well, I mean, what you're supposed to do when you're in the heat of the moment and lots of stuff is coming in and there there's any negative variable, like you're supposed to wait, Yeah, I mean like you made. 00:07:08 Speaker 2: Yeah. When I was watching A Choice, I had that same thought. I was, like, Bear made the right move. 00:07:13 Speaker 1: Yeah you could have. 00:07:15 Speaker 2: I mean, you could have made the other the other decision and probably got the bear. But man, in those cases, better safe than sorry, especially under the scrutiny of a camera. 00:07:28 Speaker 1: You know, that would have been bad to have like made a bad shot off or something. Yeah. Well it it was in the moment, it felt a lot more existential than it was. I mean, like we'd been it was the sixth day. Yeah, I think that was the other part of it that the camera couldn't quite capture, was like the desperation to kill a bear. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean, and it's not it's it's funny. It's not that we were I mean, it's just such a massive expedition to go up there, like yeah, thirty hours with your mules, like ends up being a ten day trip. And you know, I mean you're going up there to kill a bear. And I felt like this was our one opportunity, you know, And and so anyway, but Bear was the hero though of the in the comments, I mean, everybody was taking this. 00:08:26 Speaker 2: Thanks for Salvage and the film. 00:08:28 Speaker 1: It's a good job, bear, A good job. Okay, that's any anything else you want to say about that? Oh oh, I know what tell about how we split up because you saw the bear from the long ways away? Yeah, basically we split up like after that opportunity. We split up with different ways and I saw like the bear you ended up killing. I spotted it, like it was three quarters of a mile from where I was that and so we like booked it around the rim of this mountain to get over to it. And it was about a mile and a half like a horseshoe to where it was. And we kind of like came to where we last saw it and started like sneaking down the road just thinking that any minute we were just going to like see it around the corner. I mean like literally the whole time once we got there, like I just knew we were just about to see it. My heart was pounding. And then the road forked and the bear like literally there was a fresh pile of scat, like right at the fork. I was like, if there was a children's book about bear hunting, yeah, that would be in it. Yeah, yeah, following bear scat? Oh no, which way did he go? And it? You know, so I started out going right and on the right fork, it just like went over the top of this mountain and just turned into just like a whole nother area, Like it just opened up into and it was snow. There was snow on the ground up there, and no no vegetation. Yeah, but it well there wasn't snow on the ground, but there was no vegetation. There was a bank of snow. It's in the film. Oh maybe there was. I don't remember, but I remember going up that right and getting up to the top of that and it just like opened up into just like a ocean of just new territory that if he went down there, like he was just gone. And then I went to the left and it like immediately dead ended, and so I was like, well, maybe he went down the lower road, went down to the lower road, which was only like one hundred yards from the other road that we were just on, and didn't see him. So I was just like, whenever I was thinking about it, I was like, Okay, the bear had to have just gone on that right fork and just disappeared into right like the whole world. So when we met back up together, yeah, I was like, there's no way we're going to kill that bear. He's gone. And they didn't get that part on camera, but we met and you were telling me I need to go back in there during prime time. So it's like it's like two hours left of daylight and he's seen this bear like an hour before, and he was telling me he was gonna go like a totally different direction, and I was like, yeah, I was gonna go try to find it. And I was like, man, you got to go back in where you saw that bear. I mean, that bear is in there, and I'll let you finish the story. Yeah, And so pretty much I was just certain that the bear was like gone lost to the wind and that I could maybe go get back on either that other bear right or finding finding bear. And so I went that way. And so what did I say, Josh, is he is he left on his own free will, and by me begging him to go back in there, as I said, well, I'm going back in there, yep. And then I went back in there and killed the bear, like right where he was. That bear had to have been just like bedded down. I mean, yeah, he had to have been close because where you shot him, there's actually a clip Yeah, in the film walking down this little and it was exactly where you shot him. Well, what's funny about the film? And again this is me saying I've been under the scrutiny of the of the of the world this week is I had I had a friend that say he was watching the whole the film with his family, and he said, me and Bear split up, and Bear goes back the other way, and all of a sudden, the way they edited it, it's it's bear walking. He's going to look for bear by you know, like day six was getting dark that though. And then it shifts to me and it's just like over the shoulder, there's a bear and you just see a person's arm and camouflage and a gun and shoot the bear. You see the bear go down, and then the camera turns and it's me, not Bear. And he said his whole family went what And he said his kids, his little kids were like and they were they were upset with me for shooting bears. And then so but the but we didn't get on the film of like you know, you know, he me trying to get him to go back right, but no, So so I'm glad we got that taken care of. And uh no, okay, So here's the deal. The term water witching is probably not the best descriptor. I've heard it called dowsing, water witching, or divining rods. I was taught, Now this is bizarre, but I was taught that divining rods and dowsing were actually like purposeful engagement with the spirit realm to get information about like what you were doing. And so my dad was always. 00:13:54 Speaker 2: Like, so the one word that didn't associate with that was witching. 00:13:59 Speaker 1: Exactly. But as a kid, I remember my dad being like, now, thousand and divining rods, now that's witchcraft, but waterwitching is. 00:14:11 Speaker 2: Okay, Clay, have you ever have you ever done water witching? 00:14:16 Speaker 3: I I don't recall if I've ever messed with him before, but I've seen folks do it, but they probably had no idea what they were doing either. I mean with coat hangers. 00:14:28 Speaker 2: Okay, well, what implement do you use? 00:14:31 Speaker 1: Oh, coat hangers? 00:14:32 Speaker 2: I've done it. Like we had a friend who had a water leak at his house and we could not find it, and uh, my friend's expense, you know, he said, well, let's let's witch it. And I was like, what are you talking about? And uh he he gets coat hangers. Yeah, and we start we know the general location of where the water line is, right, and so we start crossing it. And I swear to you the where he divined it was exactly where the water leak was. And I didn't believe it. So I tried it and they move, they move. I can't. It's unexplainable. Is the science here? 00:15:22 Speaker 1: Listen? Listen, Okay, here's the deal. There are three hundred comments on the posts that I made. I would say eighty percent of them are people with stories like that that's just like, I don't understand it, but it works. And then there are multiple comments of guys that are you know, come across as intelligent and informed and go, there's no academic research on this. This is a pseudoscience. It's not real, I'll tell you. And so this goes back to the naming mechanism that Gary Nukem was comfortable with. Was the reason that witching sticks were okay and had nothing to do with like the dark realm giving you information about the Earth was because they work like gravity. I mean like they just work. I could do it right now, and I could. I could you take two? You take a coat hanger, a metal coat hanger, and straighten it out and take the last six inches and bend it into a ninety tep and you hold it and you walk loosely. 00:16:27 Speaker 2: You hold it real loosely. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: Very loosely, and it will find all kinds of stuff. The only way that I can describe it is that it finds anomalies in the ground. That's like the That's not nobody ever said that to me. That's just what it does. Like if you walk over your dog, it does like this. If I walked if I walked over you, it would do that. If you walk over a water line, a gas line, uh, it'll do that. 00:16:54 Speaker 2: I've only ever done it for water. 00:16:56 Speaker 1: So and and and the reason it works over a grave is because there's metal, there's a coffin, there's hollow space, there's something in the ground. I don't I don't know why it works over this man. It's a it's oh, it's yeah, it's it's. 00:17:15 Speaker 2: I mean, it predates coat hangers, by the way. 00:17:20 Speaker 1: Predates coat hangers. Well, so, but I would like to I would like to here. Here's my thing about it is that, uh, somebody told me. They said it's subconscious and you're moving the rods without knowing it with your hands. 00:17:38 Speaker 2: Did it with my eyes closed? 00:17:40 Speaker 1: And every person that did that, I asked them, I said, have you ever done it before? Because that is absolutely not I like, I completely reject that, because like you're not moving them with your hands, that they are moving on their own. I had a guy say, Clay, it's the same thing as the Oigi board, which I don't even say the name Ogi board. That's like, that's like stuff I don't want to mess with exactly. But as I understand Oigi board, you actually consciously like engage with with with the spirit realm or something. The only spirit realm I'm engaging with is God and Jesus. That's all. That's all I'm That's all the guys I'm talking to. And this guy was like, it's no different than a Wigi board, and I'm like, I reject that too, because I I don't think darkness cares about where my gas line is, or my or my dog or all. And so all I'm saying humbly is I have I do not understand it, but I know that that it works. And it's not an exact science. I mean, like, if you put me studies. There there have been, uh, but this was the most interesting thing. If you would go back and read all all those comments, there's a there is a lot of. 00:19:06 Speaker 2: This. 00:19:06 Speaker 1: Guy says, Okay, his name is Brandon. He says, I just saw your witch and stick video. I'm in Southeast Texas and used to work in oil and gas. We use them to find lines as last resort when nothing else would work. From what I was told, the rods will close towards each other when there's a break in the Earth's natural magnetic field. I've used them a lot, and there's a company that actually makes them for line locating. It's a plastic handle with a collapsible rod that goes inside of it. I've got one in my work truck and I'll send you pictures of it. And he did. He sent me pictures of his commercial witching sticks that his oil and gas company provided provides for him. 00:19:48 Speaker 2: That's crazy. 00:19:49 Speaker 1: I mean so again, when I when I made the video, I was like, I knew that it would stir up some Yeah. So I had a guy like met private message me that was just like Clay, I really respect you and has a friend I want to just tell you. Basically, he was like, you're an idiot, he said, this is this is a pseudo site, like he couldn't believe that I and I just wrote back and I said, hey, man, I hear you. I understand, I said, but it just works so dang good. And I just kind of fist bumped him, you know, just like I don't know what to say. It works, it does. 00:20:33 Speaker 3: And I'm trying to find a video here. I saw a post probably on Instagram a little while back. I think I've got it here. It's a YouTube clip of Oprah way back in the day. And she's holding this she's holding this string. She's got a u some sort of psychologist or something that she's holding this string and dangling from the strings little nut or something piece of metal, and she's holding it as still as she can. It's it's still, and the and the guy tells her this, Uh, imagine this nut swinging in a circle, and it starts swinging in a circle, and she's holding it as still as she can, and so subconsciously she's introducing minute movements into this which is causing this. And he can tell her, imagine it moving back and forth, and it does all of these things. 00:21:36 Speaker 2: And so you think it's that you think it's pseudoscience. 00:21:41 Speaker 3: I think I. 00:21:42 Speaker 1: Mean, well, I think finding water is pseudoscience. That's my others. So it's just I can't. I cannot go find water. Like there are lots of people in the Ozarks and all over the country that they would back in especially back in the day, would hire a water someone that would water. Which'll well, so if you had a big piece of property, like where is there the shallowest water, you would go get this person and they would find you water. I I don't call me when you need your well drilled, call me when you need to find your waterline, period period. So but tell me what what do you think though? Like what what what do you get from that? 00:22:27 Speaker 3: I mean it, I don't have any experience with it. So I'm talking from just you know, the outside looking in. But it sure seems to me like the same things happening with what was happening with Oprah Winfrey when she was when this thing was moving over so she was they even though you even though you say you know you're you can't like I am not moving these rods, Well she wasn't moving that that string. 00:22:51 Speaker 1: But she was interesting. Well, when we get done with this. We we should make it so and and I'll see if you can find my sewer line over there. All right, fine, sat tanks because he doesn't know where anything is. 00:23:06 Speaker 3: Make a believer out of me and you just we'll see. 00:23:11 Speaker 2: No. 00:23:11 Speaker 1: I I don't want to argue with anybody. I just am like this is this has been. This has worked for me. So now we got that out of the way. That's a real relief. So clay has been here. What is this clay? That's a gator hide that you tanned? Yeah, how did you tan that? 00:23:34 Speaker 3: Well, there's a little bit of a process to it. Like like most hides, you gotta uh dehare them. If you're gonna make leather. Well, you've got to de scale those. They have they have a Oh. 00:23:46 Speaker 2: They do have a actual scale that comes up. 00:23:49 Speaker 3: It's not like a fish scale. It's like, uh, well they are kind of like fish scales, I guess. But there's definitely an outer layer to those, to those. 00:23:56 Speaker 1: Hides, like a snake kind of has. 00:23:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of like that. But you you would soak that h you flesh it first, and I fleshed that with a with a pressure washer. Okay, that's the easiest way to do. Gator fleshed it and then soaked it in a five gallon bucket with lime and just polarized limestone. And that's a that's an alkaline thing that makes the hide swell up and it loosens. If you did if you did a piece, if you did a deer hide, it caused the hair to loosen. You just wipe it off with your hand nice and with that it causes the scales loosen. You can just again just wipe them off. That right there, that's his belly, yep. I didn't I And that's the way that you know most unless you're gonna do it for a mount or something, you do what they call I think hornback or something like that, and you'd have that that those plates on the back. But if you're gonna make leather, that's what you do. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: Did you harvest that gator? 00:24:53 Speaker 3: Yeah? Those came from Louisiana, got those several years ago. I've got a friend down there and it's got some property down south. Uh normal ones. But then that's just done with nothing but oak bark. And take a bunch of oak bark, yep, and steep it in hot water and it's it draws those tannins out. Throw that thing right in there, and it soaked the hide, soaks up the tannins. And you have to go through several changes of water, you know, changes of that solution, but eventually it soaks up as much. 00:25:24 Speaker 2: As it's each time. 00:25:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, So the way I do it is, I've got a I've got a keg, like a stainless steel keg. Cut the top out of it and it makes a you know, big nice bruepot or a you know, fill it up with with bark, fill it up with water, and heat it up until it's simmering. And then just cut the cut the heat and just let it let it simmer or let it sit there and steep and basically making tea. 00:25:50 Speaker 1: M hm. 00:25:50 Speaker 3: And uh. Put that into a non reactive container they're plastic or stainless or something like that, and soak your hide in it, and and uh it takes for something that thick, it'll take, you know, a month, six weeks, but you're you're having to, like, it'll soak up all the tannins and the color the liquid changes. It'll be like a dart red tea color, like a nice pretty color to start with. And then as that soaks it up, it just kind of turns like a pale, like a yellow color, and then toss that out put more more liquid in there. 00:26:26 Speaker 2: So having that in there for six weeks doesn't break that that leather down. 00:26:29 Speaker 3: No, it's the tannins are preservative. Uh. And that's that's one of the reasons, like when they that's why they started putting hops and beer, is my understanding, is because tops are a they have tannins in them, and that's that bitterness, and that's it was. It was a preservative back before, you know, when they're just putting in wooden kegs. 00:26:49 Speaker 1: Hmm. Interesting. So is that tan is good as a commercial tan like you might get from a Yeah, is it really? 00:26:57 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:26:58 Speaker 1: So it'll lasts a lifetime. 00:26:59 Speaker 3: Yeah. You could take that hide right there, dig a hole in your yard and bury it, come back three years later and it'd still be there. 00:27:06 Speaker 2: Really, that is cool. That make a nice pair of boots. 00:27:10 Speaker 1: Have you ever backed a bow with gator skin? 00:27:12 Speaker 3: I haven't, but I've I've thought about it. I've thought about I think the the sides of the tail, you know, if you're on a small gator, like if you had a if he had a tail that was maybe two feet long or something like that. I think that'd be cool. 00:27:27 Speaker 1: Bear show us your bow. So this is what I've been working on. I'm gonna use it as a bow fishing bow, but it's been turning out pretty good so far, so I'll probably also use it as a hunting bow. But I've got sturgeon skins on the back of this one. That is cool. Man. Yeah, I got him from a guy in North Carolina who I guess he lives next to like a sturgeon farm. These are like farm sturgeon, like wild sturgeon. But uh, yeah, it's pretty that the finish is that the way it's gonna be. I mean, it's finished. You put something on it. I've got to put something on it and then kind of just do some finish work sandpaper when you run your hand down that. Yeah, I need to. 00:28:10 Speaker 2: It is It is such an a weird did you feel that? It's like a weird texture to it. It's like a cat's tongue. 00:28:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, why did you ever touch a cat's tongue? 00:28:20 Speaker 2: Well, you know cat's tongue has barbs on it. 00:28:23 Speaker 1: No, I didn't know that, Josh. 00:28:25 Speaker 2: How many cats have you killed? Killed a ton of cats. Well what mountain wion, mountain bobcats? 00:28:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not house cats. Let's just classify it. Didn't stick my finger in their mouth either. That's weirder than witch and sticks. True. That's a cool bow. I like it. So that's gonna be your bowfish and bow. Yeah, but I'll probably also the way I want to design. I've kind of got an idea in mind right now where I can just like basically bolt on like a bow fishing reel and then just take it off and it'll be a hunting bow. 00:28:59 Speaker 3: I have a video on my YouTube channel that shows you how to make a bow fishing real little that that fits on those bows really nicely. Really his man out of a bean can and a hacks All blade. 00:29:12 Speaker 1: I need to check that out. 00:29:13 Speaker 3: It's you can make one in ten minutes and they work really good. 00:29:18 Speaker 2: There you go. 00:29:19 Speaker 1: Now, did you you did not make a bow fishing rig on the Alone show? You made a fishing reel. 00:29:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was but I'd made one. I'd made one of those, or made a couple of them actually before I went out there. That was part of my I knew I was going to do that. 00:29:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty incredible he made Do you remember that bear when he made the I don't really even remember what it was like. But you were able to take with you a spool of a spool of fishing line. Yeah, and then you carved a reel out of wood, like a functional fishing reel. 00:30:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was made like it would it would cast like an open face spinning reel. So I had two pegs, one sticking straight out front, one sticking to the side so that reel. I would stick it on there, and I had islets made out of a snare wire and I could I mean, it cast just like a spinning run. And then I couldn't reel it like that, so I'd take it off and stick it on that peg on the side and then I could reel it. So it was like a they make one. There's a there's a no, I can't remember what they're called, but there's a I think there's a real that's out of Australia or New Zealand that flips like that, and I can't remember what they're called. 00:30:44 Speaker 1: Oh, like a commercial reel. 00:30:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're available, Clay. 00:30:49 Speaker 2: I haven't seen the season that you were on yet. How long did you stay out? Hold on, sorry, I'm way down the road. 00:30:58 Speaker 1: This is like like we need to we need before we release that information, which the world knows already how long you stayed, But we're gonna that's like the meat on the bone. So that the question was like, I'm sorry, Josh, we have already acted. We would like to react. 00:31:14 Speaker 3: Question. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: That's like that's like your your your kid reaching up and grabbing like the choice piece of meat and like trying to chomp into it before they even said the prayer. 00:31:24 Speaker 2: But who likes who doesn't like the choice meat? 00:31:26 Speaker 1: Yeah? You were after the choice meet? Yep, Clay, how long were you out there? 00:31:32 Speaker 3: No? 00:31:32 Speaker 1: No, no, give it? Give a spiel about just like what is Alone? I mean, I think everybody would know, but maybe some people wouldn't. And it's like, yeah, I mean, and how did you get involved in it? 00:31:49 Speaker 3: So? Alone is a TV show that I think they're on their like thirteenth season or something like that now. It's been going on for a pretty good while. In the the premise is that there's ten people and you get to choose ten items from a list. You can't just bring whatever you want. There's a very specific list that you get to choose from very basic survival items an ax a, saw, a pot, that stuff like that, very basic stuff. Aw a bow and arrow counts as one item if you want to take that. Uh. And they take these ten people and they take them far out into the wilderness and drop them off alone in ten different places, and basically it's the last person standing wins, the last person out there wins. And it's I mean, it's having gone through that, like having gone through that and having been associated with other television shows in a variety of capacities. That's it. Like people ask, you know, you always run into skepticism, like they're just whatever, it's legit. Like when they drop you off, you're on your own. They do not. There's no catered meals. 00:33:12 Speaker 1: There's all self filmed, right, it's all self filmed. 00:33:14 Speaker 3: There's no camera guys out there with you. You are literally alone to make a living with whatever ten items you brought. They do come back and check on you, make sure you're not dead, yeah, or getting you know, got your leg chewed off, and you have the ability. You have a satellite communicator. So if you ever want to leave, you just tell them come and get me I'm done, and they'll come and get you. And that's how that that's you know, that's how you end up with one person. Yeah, people tap out or or so they're they're removed because of either malnutrition or there some health issue. 00:33:57 Speaker 1: And so you were on it actually took place in twenty twenty and you were in British Columbia. 00:34:04 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:34:05 Speaker 1: Was it like just like National Forest or Crown Land in Columbia. 00:34:10 Speaker 3: It's native ground and that's usually I think what they do because they can. I don't know all the reasons, but I think they they have some leeway with hunting and fishing regulations. Okay on those grounds. 00:34:26 Speaker 1: Okay, So are you bound by hunting and fishing regulations? 00:34:30 Speaker 3: Yes? 00:34:30 Speaker 1: Unfortunately, So what were the parameters when you were there? You could kill a deer, You could kill a black bear, no bears, no bears. 00:34:39 Speaker 3: I don't under I still don't understand that you couldn't kill a black bear. You got one deer, one deer. Get Yeah, you had permission to kill one deer. And you think you know, I got comments like when you know you kill that deer, you're set. But I guarantee any one person in this room could eat an entire deer in three weeks, done, all gone, if you're eating nothing but that deer, and so you know, that's not enough to sustain a grown man for months at a time. And so even though I did end up killing a deer, but I had to ration it really sparsely, like I was eating very very little. I'd like to know how many calories I was eating, you know, each day, but it was not a lot. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, So you went into alone. I remember you try. You were trying to gain weight. So what did you weigh? Going in one hundred and eighty pounds, which was heavy for you. 00:35:37 Speaker 3: That's way heavy. 00:35:38 Speaker 1: You've probably never been there. 00:35:39 Speaker 3: I'd never been. I don't think i'd ever been over one sixty five. 00:35:44 Speaker 1: So you packed on twenty pounds. Yeah, and just like just eating junk food. Is that I'm putting words in your mouth? Is that what you did? 00:35:53 Speaker 3: No? I mean my wife Liz did it all. She like I couldn't have done that without her. She was cooking like I was. I was eating like a loaded baked potato every day and just eating so much that I was just constantly I was never not uncomfortably full, just like stuffed. I hated it, but that's what I had to do. 00:36:19 Speaker 1: How long did you do that? How long did it take you to gain that way? 00:36:21 Speaker 3: Probably five months I started. 00:36:24 Speaker 1: That's wild is that like eighty percent of men in this country would not have that problem at all. These two guys would bear and Clay I could put I could put on twenty pounds yep, pretty quick. 00:36:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, but I started, like I started gaining weight. I knew it was gonna be difficult. I started trying to gain weight before I even knew I was gonna be on the show. 00:36:50 Speaker 1: Really yeah, I mean when it was like a possibility. 00:36:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, from the first contact with the with the casting director, I was like, it's pretty get a chance. I'm gonna be on this thing. So I started trying to gain weight, and it was not an easy thing to do. 00:37:07 Speaker 2: Is this something that you like applied for? 00:37:11 Speaker 3: You can apply for it, but that I was actually recommended by a former participant and they contacted me. But there's other folks like Jordan Jonas. He put in and he was the winner of season six. I think he put in his application along with forty thousand other people or however many. I mean, that's a bunch of people that apply to be on that. Yeah. 00:37:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, so they kind of pick and choose probably who they think is going to be good at it successful or. 00:37:47 Speaker 3: I think they. I think they based their choices on a variety of criteria. One is, one is that you could do it still, One is skill. One is h who they think is going to be who the audience is going to connect with. So there's death, there's there's more stuff than just like you know how good you are in the woods? Yeah? 00:38:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, so you start gain and wait, at what point did you know you were going on the show? Like a couple of months before I was. 00:38:21 Speaker 3: The kind of a funny thing is I didn't know. I didn't know for sure that I was going to go out until two days before I went out. 00:38:32 Speaker 2: Are you serious? 00:38:34 Speaker 3: Yeah? Because I was cast as an alternate really yeah, And so I went up there. The only reason I got on is because they cast someone from the UK and this was right in the middle of COVID and he couldn't come because they had all that they had to travel, you know, shut down. Yeah, and that's the only reason I was able to get on the show. 00:38:58 Speaker 1: Really, So you were you were an alternate. So two days before you're in Idaho. 00:39:03 Speaker 3: No no, no, I went to So when they when you, they only ten people go out in the field, but they actually take twelve to location. And so because this was in the middle of COVID, we had a two week quarantine and then a ten day at ten or twelve day orientation period at the not at location, but near nearer there. And that whole time that it was me and another we knew one of us was going on, but they wouldn't never tell us who it was, and they were just waiting to see. 00:39:38 Speaker 1: So they had twelve people there in case like something happened to one of the ten. 00:39:42 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:39:42 Speaker 1: But so you're up there thinking you're not even going to be on the show. 00:39:46 Speaker 2: Do you knew you were an alternate? 00:39:48 Speaker 3: I knew, Yeah, I was. I knew it was an alternate because they told me that before. Like, you know, I was talking to the casting director and she's like, I can't remember exactly how it went, but uh, she said, we've we've got all the ten spots filled, but would you accept being an alternate? And I was like, you know, I was kind of kicking the balls. Yeah, I had to. I st them to think about that, and I took a day and thought about it. I was like, you know, if there's an opera. 00:40:26 Speaker 1: Stakes were high, yeah, like if it worked out, it would be really yeah significant. 00:40:29 Speaker 3: Yeah, And anyway, I ended up I ended up accepting it. I was like, well, I mean, we didn't know at this time, Like I didn't know if this guy, I didn't even know that was going to be an issue. You know that he wouldn't be able to come. So I'm thinking, you know, he's coming, and I'm just going to be there, And you know, I was like, well, at the very least, I'll get to meet some cool people. 00:40:51 Speaker 1: And you would have gone there and just gone home when they went out, Yeah, okay, yeah, so you're like on deck. Yeah, and then two days before they go you're in the show. 00:41:03 Speaker 3: Yep. Wow. 00:41:11 Speaker 1: They take you out to this location. And how much do you think the location matters for success? Like, I guess how much variation is there in locations they're on a single show. 00:41:26 Speaker 3: I think there can be a lot. I never saw anyone else's location, but just from looking at the footage and talking to people, I think there's a lot of variation and. 00:41:39 Speaker 2: How big of a range was everybody in. 00:41:42 Speaker 3: We were on a lake, Chilco Lake, which is I think something like fifty miles. I could be mistaken about that big. I think we were spread out for fifty miles along. 00:41:54 Speaker 2: This so you were probably five to ten miles from someone else. 00:41:59 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and they have you know, you're supposed to carry a tracker with the a GPS tracker, and so if you they have a boundary, and like when you when you're they dropped us off on a boat and when you're when you're going up there, you know, getting dropped off, they say, you know this ridge top and you know, they kind of point out the boundaries, but you can't really unless you're in the air, which some of them are dropped off in the air. You know, it's on other seasons that they have a better I would I feel like anyway, they'd have a better idea where their boundaries are, which is handy because I didn't know exactly where my boundaries were until I hit them and then they start beeping. You like, turn around, go back, and you're like, well, hell, I just spent the last five hours trying to get over here, and now you're now I got to go back. Really yeah, they only did that to me a couple of times, but there was one. 00:42:51 Speaker 1: Time you were pushing the boundaries. Oh yeah, it wasn't that big of an area then it was big. 00:42:57 Speaker 3: But I I mean I walk and I wanted, like you have to do well and to be able to exploit the resources, you got to know what's on there. And the only only reason, the only way to know, they don't show you a map. I mean, it's basically you just like you're going somewhere you've never been before. And on top of that, when we went in, there was a bunch of wildfires to the south of us and all that smoke was blowing up there, so the visibility was less than a mile, like you couldn't see anything. And so you're basically going out there blindfolded and they're dropping you off, say good luck, and so you think about, you know, being out on a drop hunt like that where you don't you don't get to pick your spot, you don't even get to look at any aerial photographs or anything before you go out there. You just like dropped off and then you have to figure it out, well you know where you know, to figure out where the critters are, you gotta walk the you gotta walk it. Yeah. And there was one time where I could see from from uh, you know, part of my area. I could see that there was up this slope there was like a little bench, and I was like, well, that looks like a good a place where critters would come across. Well, I got three quarters of the way there and they and it was up some nasty hillside that was brushed in and just nasty walking. I got three quarters away there and they ding me. 00:44:22 Speaker 1: That turned around and you take them back. But there's a sweet little funnel up there. I probably got some elk coming through. What about that mountain? Didn't you see a mountain lion? 00:44:35 Speaker 3: Yeah? It was uh, I think it was the second or third day there. Right at my camp. I was just sitting down by a campfire and just kind of minding my own business, and this red squirrel ten yards behind me shot up a tree started barking. I was like, oh, that's weird. And I turned around. There was a mountain line and he wasn't I mean, he was less than ten yards from me looking at me, and he was kind of crouched down in the bush. And I had the camera there and I got him on film and everything, the cameras rolling, but my bow was twenty yards away at my where my uh I had strung up a tart for a temporary shelter. And I is one of those you know, hindsight things. I what I tried to do was I tried to just kind of ease back over there. Well, when I took a step away from him, he took he turnedtail and faded into the bushes, and I ran after him, trying to get him the tree, but he was gone. And I, you know, in hindsight, what I should have done was right when I saw him, I should have just ran at him, and he probably would have popped up a tree and I probably could have got to my bow. 00:45:57 Speaker 1: But I legally could have killed him. 00:46:00 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And when they when they told us that, it's like it was what we were going to get to hunt was in negotiation for a long time and we didn't get I didn't know, we didn't know what we were going until maybe a week before we went out. We didn't even know we were going to get be able to have shoot a deer. And so they're like, oh, by the way, you can, you know you can? You can kill a mountain lion and uh, maybe even a links. And it was like, well we're out, great, thanks, good luck, good luck. Like I've spent my life in the woods, I've never seen one. Well they two have one ten yards behind me looking at me. 00:46:37 Speaker 1: Unbelievable. 00:46:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I thought. 00:46:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that scene, and I remember you discussing with the camera that you should have run at it. You know what I thought when when you said that. You know, you watch television and you see these survival people and most well I don't. I the world knew you were legit when you said I should have charged that mountain lion, and it would have tried, like I don't. You can be in bushcraft and yeah, and but but only a hunter would know that that would work. Because when he said that, I was like, why, I bet he could have you know what I mean? Yeah, because they you can do that with a bear. I mean, if you see a bear come up close on a black bear, nobody agrees but run at them. And there their flight responses typically to go up a tree, you know. But no, no, that was a that was wild. You even got him on camera. That's that to me seems to be the challenge with with that whole scenarios you're filming and like just getting something, getting anything on film to show people without just telling them just like hey, I just saw a mountain lion. 00:47:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, but you got one of the things that I mean, that's one of the things that they really drilled into our heads before when we went out is just let the camera roll. It doesn't matter if anything, if there's nothing going on, leave the camera on. Let it roll. 00:48:08 Speaker 1: Because they believe you had like stacks and I had, yeah, unbelievable amounts of batteries. 00:48:15 Speaker 3: Yeah that they we had a big Pelican case that was I mean it was big. It's probably it's probably the biggest pelican case they make. And it was like that big that or that wide, and you know, maybe two feet deep and like fourteen inches deep, and that thing was just chock full. We had extra cameras, go pros and just you know, pounds and pounds of batteries and media cards. And so when they when they came out to do their med checks, they would that they would swap out they would get our old are filled up media cards, give us fresh ones, and then swap out batteries. Yeah. 00:48:56 Speaker 2: Interesting so you didn't have any way to charge anything. 00:49:00 Speaker 3: No, they didn't have any way to charge anything. We had a battery bank, but the only thing I ever used that for was maybe charging like uh, the little satellite communicator thing. 00:49:15 Speaker 1: Yeah. So you how did you establish where your home base was? It was it just right on the lake. 00:49:24 Speaker 3: It ended up being I I was. I think I was the last one to set up a permanent shelter. They had to. They were they had to like suggest like it's probably time to set up. 00:49:34 Speaker 1: They texted you that. 00:49:35 Speaker 3: No, when they came out to do their med check one time. How many days in I don't know, it was probably ten days in or something like that. 00:49:43 Speaker 1: And you were just kind of floating around with a tarp. 00:49:46 Speaker 3: Yeah. They they needed I think they needed to know where I Was going to be so that they could get like a safety plan, like if something happened, you know, if I there was grizzly everywhere like there that that's one of the highest grizzly densities I think in North America up there. Wow. And so they you know, they have a safety crew that's ready to respond in case somebody calls in and you know, something's something's going on. So they're trying to get their plans together, like how they're going to respond to something. But I didn't set up a permanent shelter because I want I didn't want to just set it up where they dropped me off. I wanted to check out my area first. I wanted to set it up in the best possible spot, and so I was just scouting and it turned out that where they dropped me was the best spot that I found. So I ended up setting it right there, just right where they dropped pretty much. 00:50:43 Speaker 1: And that that had to do with proximity to good hunting, proximity to water. 00:50:49 Speaker 3: Water hunting, food resources, berry patches, you know, just a whole variety of things. But that where they dropped me was I was kind of right at the where a couple of different habitat types came together, so there was edge there, you know, a good place to set snares, you know. I didn't want to have to I didn't want to have to travel a long way to run a trap. 00:51:16 Speaker 1: Line, yeah, or to find you know, I think that would probably be the I hadn't really thought about that. But if they dropped you off and you had this huge area, I mean, I assume your area was many square miles. 00:51:30 Speaker 3: I don't really know how big it was. It was several it was several square miles. 00:51:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so you know you can't. It's just like, where do you camp when you hunt? Like you're always that would be a question you'd always answer because you don't want to be too far away from where you hunt, But you also don't want to be right in the middle of where the game is you'll spook them. So like finding that balance. And usually in my life I end up camping too far away from where I'm hunting, and you know, having to walk so far to get to the good hunting, you know, But yeah, that would be interesting. What question did you have? What time of year? 00:52:09 Speaker 2: Yeah? What what time of year did you start? 00:52:11 Speaker 3: We started mid September and then my season I think went to the end of the through the end of November, so it was getting pretty it's getting pretty chilly towards it. 00:52:23 Speaker 1: So okay, on the show, what's the longest anybody's ever said out? 00:52:27 Speaker 3: They did a they did a season season seven I think, where it was one hundred day challenge, so you had to make it to one hundred days. I think you had to make it to one hundred days to win the thing, but it was a million bucks too. Wow. Yeah, I wish I was wishing that they would have I could have stayed out there one hundred days. 00:52:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, so one hundred days is the longest anybody on a loan as ever stayed. 00:52:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, I think eighty seven day. I could be wrong on that, but something like that. Yeah. 00:53:02 Speaker 1: With with the it's not I guess it's not apples to apples. It's because every location is different. And I remember them saying that on your season, the hunting was very difficult, like you were the only one that killed the deer. 00:53:16 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was just a it was a high elevation, really unproductive habitat. And I was there for two and a half months and I saw two. 00:53:27 Speaker 1: Deer and and you killed one of them, and I killed one of them. And that's that's unbelievable. 00:53:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean. 00:53:36 Speaker 1: I find it using thousand rods. 00:53:44 Speaker 2: That falls up the dark spirits we just want to witch. 00:53:48 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't gonna tell anybody about that. 00:53:53 Speaker 1: So well, okay, so you yeah, you killed a deer. Man, it was on the when we were following along. I mean It's like when he killed that deer. I mean, it was like awesome, you know, because you're just like, oh my gosh, Clay just killed a deer, and you know, and the way they build it up, you know, like everybody else is struggling, and you know, this person's starving, has been eating mushrooms. It's been a couple of years since I've actually watched the deal, but we were, we were watching it and uh and he kills a deer and you just almost can't believe it, you know, Yeah, yeah, because I know how hard it is. Number One, to kill a deer with us traditional bow out here over a pile of corn is hard, very hard. And then to do it off the ground load density like that, I mean, it just was meant to be. 00:54:47 Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, I mean, that was I am not. I mean, I've killed a lot of animals with self bows, deer, bear, oggs, I mean, all sorts of elk, all sorts of stuff, and I have never had an emotional reaction to any animal like I had when I walked up on that deer and saw that deer laying in the in the in the grass. 00:55:12 Speaker 2: How far in was it before you killed it? Three weeks, okay. 00:55:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, which was probably perfect. 00:55:20 Speaker 3: It was, yeah, because if you killed. 00:55:22 Speaker 1: It on the first day, you know, I mean, I don't you know, but three weeks in that's pretty good timing. 00:55:30 Speaker 3: It was good timing because you know, the fishing really I had caught a few fish to start with and had a very small surplus. Like I was, I was really trying to stretch the food that I could get as far as I can stretch it. And so I would catch a fish, you know, and I might eat like i'd catch a say, a twenty inch trout. I'd eat like one quarter of one filet, you know, in a day, and that's all I would eat, maybe some mushrooms and so you're talking, I don't know how many calories that. 00:56:06 Speaker 1: Would be, what three hundred calories, four. 00:56:08 Speaker 3: Hundred calories something like that. And so I'd caught a few fish and I'd smoked them and trying to you know, just trying to preserve the meat. 00:56:16 Speaker 1: But I'd caught you were smoking them. 00:56:18 Speaker 3: Yep, I'd caught all of those. All the fish that I caught, I caught within like a two or three day period. And then which was like the first week, and so by the time I had killed that deer, I hadn't caught a fish for like ten twelve days, a fish in every single day, for hours a day. And so you got this happened. 00:56:40 Speaker 1: Why why couldn't you catch them? 00:56:43 Speaker 3: I don't know. I think we. I think we got a little cold snap and they I couldn't find them in the shallows anymore. I wasn't getting bites or anything. I just they just weren't there. And so you got this little stash of you know, food, and you know that if you don't find more food, you're not gonna be able to stay. You know, I don't have enough. I don't have enough body weight to stay out there, to just sit there and starve. And so it's very stressful, Like I can see my time coming to an end because I cannot catch a fish. I'm at this point there's no snow cover, so I'm not snaring I'm not catching you rabbits, I'm not I've maybe shot a grouse or two by that time. 00:57:32 Speaker 1: Now, was that tape of hunting not pretty productive? Like trying to shoot a red squirrel or grass squirrels were off limits? Oh no, because they're a fur bear in Canada and they wouldn't. We couldn't take fur bears. 00:57:51 Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, So I could snare I could hunt rabbits and snare rabbits, but I wasn't seeing any I didn't start catching. Still, we got some some snow cover. But you know, you think about you think about it. Uh, you know it's it's It was stressful for me because I knew that my time, like, I wasn't gonna be able to stay there. And so when I did kill that deer and saw him laying there in the grass, it was like all of that pressure is just gone. It's just like I've never experienced like a release, a pressure release like that. It's like like the weight of the world is just like off your shoulders. Yeah. 00:58:37 Speaker 2: Do you feel like that was the deciding factor of you being able to stay out longer than everybody else? 00:58:42 Speaker 3: I wouldn't have been able. I didn't I wasn't catching enough fish, and I wouldn't have been able to do it on rabbits and grouse. And I didn't have the body condition because by the time I shot that deer three weeks in, I was already back. I had already lost I'd lost a pound a day. Wow, I was already I estimate anyway, they would never let us look at the scale, but just bejauging by how I looked and you know how my clothes felt like. Yeah, normally I was like, I am not right now. I'm probably one hundred and sixty pounds right now. And so you know, I was going to be going into a deficit after that. And I continued to decline in my weight, like by a lot. But I eventually my body, my body weight and muscle mass, we'd reached an equilibrium with what I was able to bring in and I stopped losing weight. I think I got down to one hundred and forty pounds. Wow. So I looked like, you know, my my abs. If I were to pinch my skin and the fat, that's what it looked like. There was zero fat. Like if you take your forearm and just pinch the skin. 00:59:52 Speaker 1: On it, like you're saying on your belly. 00:59:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, if I did that, that's what it looked like. 00:59:57 Speaker 1: There's nothing there. 00:59:58 Speaker 3: There was no fat at all. Wow. 01:00:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, that is amazing. 01:00:04 Speaker 1: You know, well, him describing killing that deer in the sense of relief I've I've thought about. I mean, this is kind of an artificial situation today in the modern world to send someone out and say survive, kill something with primitive weapons or snares or whatever for your survival. And it's kind of cool because we can kind of artificially make this thing that because there's so much at stake. It's actually probably pretty similar to a real kind of like paleolithic existence. I mean, other than the saws and not some of the tools you had. But I just I just think about the people. Their actual survival was their act, their their literal survival. Not not excitement because we killed a deer because we're we're hunting and we want to bring food home to our family so we don't have to eat you know, beef, but like literally people that would kill a deer and that would make them survive through a travel or something, a journey. I mean it happened, yeah, period, like people. 01:01:11 Speaker 3: You know, I wish that I wish that everyone could experience that that gratefulness for like I mean, just I was overjoyed with when I saw that deer, Like I mean, I was overcome with emotion. Never I've never experienced anything like that before or since. 01:01:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, unbelievable. So you kill this deer on like the twenty first. 01:01:40 Speaker 3: Day or so somewhere around there. 01:01:41 Speaker 1: Youah, and you have no sense of what anybody else is doing. You don't know anything. You don't know if nine eight people have dropped off and you're going against one, did you have any sensation or any any inkling, I mean, did you think you were going to win? Of course, does everybody think they're going to win. 01:02:08 Speaker 3: That's an interesting question, and my opinion is that no, not everyone thinks they're going to win, and that's why people that's why people leave in the first week or first couple of days. Yeah, you know, I think that. I think that in order to push yourself through the discomfort and the not only the physical discomfort discomfort, but the emotional anguish of being separated from your family with no contact at all, no word at all, in order to push yourself through those things, you have to believe that you're going to win, because if you don't. 01:02:47 Speaker 2: It's not really worth it. 01:02:49 Speaker 3: Well, there's a thousand there's a thousand and one excuses to leave. I mean they are easy too, finn Yeah, like, oh, my sight is to variable. You know, so and So's got it. He must have a bears or somebody's killed a this or that, or I mean you can find reasons to leave. Yeah, finding reasons to stay is not as easy. 01:03:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you halate that that would be just the ultimate conflict on a very micro scale. And I think everyone here would could identify with this. Imagine being on a deer stand at about nine thirty in the morning, and you go, man, I could sit here till noon, or I could get down and go do some work, I could get down and have some breakfast. I could get home and go see my wife, or I could go Yeah, I'm joking, right, but it's like the same, Like there's a thousand reasons to get out of the tree. Yeah, that are all like very valid. But then you know, you make the decision, well, I'm gonna sit till noon no matter what. It's nothing like that. It was kind of a joke. But the point is I understand what you mean. Like I watching you do it do that, And that was the first season of the Loan, that full season that I ever watched, And you know, I guess everyone does it, but you put yourself in that situation, and I mean I already thought of fifty reasons why I should go home. Yeah, I mean, you know, in the way they edit the films, and and also just what actually happens is that you start to see these characters kind of erode. You know, they do one little thing or they say one little thing, and you're like, they're gonna in two episodes, they're gonna be gone. Ye, you know. And I guess there's there's surprises of people that maybe something really fortunate happens when they start to go down. We are one of your buddies that you know, and I know, yeah, Kup Hoover Keby Harrow stuck in his leg. 01:05:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw. I talked to him before he went out. Actually, I think on the phone just he had I don't I don't remember what the conversation was, but he had some questions about he knew he was going on there. Yeah, yeah, that was unfortunate. 01:05:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh my gosh. 01:05:27 Speaker 2: Obviously this show is made to be challenging and demanding. What would you say was the most difficult part of it? Was it the finding food? Was it? The mental game? 01:05:38 Speaker 3: Was it? I think it's the mental emotional game. There was I've talked about that, talked about this before another podcasts, and I wrote a book about the experience. It's in the book, but the probably the most difficult. I had a time period when it was probably between day fifty and sixty where I just got flat out depressed. And that's not like I don't normally. I'm not a I'm not prone to slipping into a depression or anything like that. So it was it was kind of odd for me. But you know, you got all of these things that are stacking up. You got you've been away from your family, not not only for those fifty days, but for the two week quarantine plus the ten or twelve day orientation. Yeah, I mean, it's a long time to have no word at all from your family. So you got that, You've got weather that's turning crappy, you got fade like decreasing daylight. You got weather that's coming in. And the shelter that I made was it was a dark green tarp, and you have a snowstorm comes in and that keeps you in your shelter for two or three days. You're starving, literally, and so you got all these things coming together, and it just I mean, I just I got I got depressed, and I caught myself one day I was just complaining, and again they they they they, they drill into your head to film all the time, so the camerage is rolling. I'm sitting in my shelter one evening and just complaining about the everything just this sucks and the weather and blah blah blah whatever. And the next morning I was laying there in my in my bunk, and the thought occurred to me that my two boys are gonna watch this on TV, and they're gonna watch me complain about all these things that I have no control over. And that one thought switched my entire higher perspective on the whole thing. And I'm grateful that this was like day sixty or something. I'm grateful that I went through that period of depression because without that, without that mental anguish, I never would have gotten to that point where I was able to look at it from a completely different perspective. And from that moment on, I did not suffer anymore. And it was only because nothing changed about my situation. I didn't have any more to eat, The weather was still crap, still living in a dark hole, but it was just the way that I was looking at it right. I was able to look at it through their eyes. Yeah, and that's something that has stuck with me. And that's one of those things that I wish that people just in general could get to they could experience something like that. You know, just the way that we view our lives is, you know, it's it's all just perspective. You know. We can choose to see it as everything's wrong, or we can choose to see it as you know, we're gonna make do and make we're gonna figure it out. Mm hmmm, up until it's perful. 01:09:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Up until that point. How long had had you ever spent on your own or away from your family. 01:09:25 Speaker 3: It was pretty common for me to go out on hunts and be gone for you know, two weeks or I think the longest that I'd ever been gone from them was probably three weeks something like that. 01:09:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's tough, man. 01:09:41 Speaker 1: It's funny. It's funny that we're so frail when it comes to stuff like that. I mean, because you think about when it comes to actual survival, like caloric intake and keeping warm and having shelter over your head. It's like, separation from your family is not a factor that's going to kill you, right, but it absolutely is a major factor. 01:10:08 Speaker 2: I mean, we just we're just we're not designed to be isolated. 01:10:12 Speaker 1: We really are. I mean it's like it's like these mules out here. You pull one of those mules out and put it in the trailer, and the other mules are just running up and down the fence wanting to go. You know. They call it buddy sour, and it's like they're just made to stand beside each other. I mean, they just they don't even is He doesn't even like those other mules. She kicks them, bites them every day, but she cannot stand to not be standing right beside them, just chemically, you know, biologically. But it's kind of the same way because i mean, shoot, man, I'm the small hunts. Compared to that that I've been on, I have had little micro moments in the back country where I just would be like flooded with a sense of this in my family that just almost overwhelming for real. It's like really private moments of that, even as a grown man, just you know, just like I used to. I used to get real homesick, we called it when I was a little kid in grade school, like cry at school, just like just you know, just typical stuff. Right, I'm serious. I still have that sensation occasionally, and I kind of just have to calm myself down. I can't imagine being gone for how long? 01:11:33 Speaker 2: I have a question? How long were you out there? 01:11:37 Speaker 3: So we from the time that they dropped me off until they came and got me, it was seventy four days. I was gone from home the seventy four plus the two week orientation or the two week quarantine, ten day orientation, plus I was there on the backside for another probably ten days. So how whatever that? 01:11:58 Speaker 1: Oh? 01:11:59 Speaker 2: Really twenty four months? 01:12:02 Speaker 1: When they came to get you, you still were ten days from being home. 01:12:05 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:12:06 Speaker 1: Now it did your wife come and meet you? Was she able to do that? 01:12:10 Speaker 3: They would not let her come because they had the border shut down. She's the only one in all of the seasons that wasn't able to go out there. Oh wow because of COVID yep, wow, Yes, that's that sucked. But got to talk to her via sat phone when they came and told me I was the last one. 01:12:31 Speaker 2: So they come, they come and get you. 01:12:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's. 01:12:35 Speaker 1: It's a crazy Have you ever watched the season I've watched. 01:12:40 Speaker 2: I've started several seasons and not gotten to the end. 01:12:44 Speaker 1: And I'm not I don't watch a lot of television, but the way they do it is pretty cool because they go do this random health check and the audience doesn't know it either. Correct. 01:12:58 Speaker 3: I think the audience does know that they're so there there the audience is kind of in on it. 01:13:02 Speaker 1: Okay, Okay. The scene is they just show up at Clay's camp to do a health check, just like they have every week probably for this whole time. And so they come up and they don't talk to them or you know, they don't chit chat with them. They're just like, step on the scale, how do you feel? What have you eaten? They do all this stuff, and you know, Clay's like one hundred and forty pounds and dirty and just like, you know, just kind of been out there for seventy four days. And then they're like, what did they say to you? Actually, because they said something like, well, you don't have to I think you said like I'm going to try to catch a rabbit tomorrow or. 01:13:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, they asked, uh that. So one of the things that they do when they come out and do their health check is the field producer, I'll do a short interview with you just to kind of so they have an idea of what's been going on for the from that time to the previous when they came out there the previous time. It helps them to you know, find footage to make and do their ends and all that stuff. And so they asked like, so, how long do you think you can make it out here? And I was like, well, it depends on how many rabbit grouse I could catch, because I was catching rat I was catching rabbits pretty much every day, and I was shooting and snaring grouse. I actually left there with two grouse tied to my backpack if you look at it. If you look, if you watch that final scene where I'm walking to the helicopter, you can see them on my back. 01:14:40 Speaker 1: Oh you were you were living off the fat of the land. 01:14:45 Speaker 3: But uh, And I said, well, I don't. I mean, I've still I still had a bunch of deer meat and I had I was catching grouse and stuff like, well, I know I can make it to ninety days because I had my deer meat ration to ninety days, and I you know, I. 01:14:59 Speaker 1: Could keeping track of days. 01:15:01 Speaker 3: I was not. I had no idea I did it didn't matter to me. It didn't matter to me how how many days I was going to be out there. 01:15:09 Speaker 2: So you didn't go out, Did you go out with a goal or like, I'm gonna for sure make it the X number of days. 01:15:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, my goal is to be the last one. I like it. It didn't matter to me how many days it went. I was either gonna you know, I went in there with the with the I had made up my mind that I was not tapping out. They were gonna have to pull me out. I just got lucky and killed deer and didn't have to do that, or they didn't have to do that. But they said something along the lines, well it's, uh, well it turns out you're not gonna have to do that, because they said something along the lines of you're not you're you're you're the last one or something like that, and it didn't. If you watch the footage, you can see my face and I'm like, like, what are you even talking? Bow? 01:16:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that you were. It took you a minute to understand what they were telling you. Yeah, because because they're they're communication was not telling you like you would typically if if you know so much of our communication is external, Like if if I was telling you you won, it'd be. 01:16:18 Speaker 3: Like you won. 01:16:19 Speaker 1: And they were like, well, you won't have to stay here anymore because you're the last one, and and he was like, well there's what. 01:16:28 Speaker 3: There's a good there's a very good reason for that confusion on my part. And it has to do with there's a season I think it was season six where a fella is convinced that he's the last one. He's got it in his mind like I am the last one. They're on this med check, they're coming. My wife's gonna come. She's gonna sneak up behind me, and she's gonna tell me I'm the last one, and I'm I one. Well come out and do the med check all that stuff. And then they leave and he is not the last one, and it destroyed him. And so in my mind I had built like this mental block, like there was they were not coming to tell me anything. They were coming. 01:17:18 Speaker 2: It wasn't off schedule, no. 01:17:21 Speaker 3: Because they they weren't on a schedule. I mean they came out whenever they came out. I think the longest and I you know, I think the longest I ever went without seeing anybody is probably three weeks. And I might be. 01:17:36 Speaker 1: Off on that, but really so those three weeks. 01:17:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, they there was sometimes it was ten days, sometimes it was a week. Sometimes you know what it was. It was random. They would just call us. I didn't know when they were coming. They would just you know, text me on the thing and say, hey, you know, tomorrow at eleven o'clock or whatever, we're gonna be, you need to be at your shelter. Yeah, And so in my mind and like there's no possibility that I'm leaving, like I'm I'm here for the duration. And it was such a like a I don't know what that is that you can do to yourself and your mind to make you believe something like that, but I believed it. And so that's why that was. It was like I did, I didn't even under I couldn't comprehend what they're going to say. 01:18:23 Speaker 1: Venim of your state of mind was rolling so hard towards they're not coming. Tell me, I won I mean, I'm staying here forever. 01:18:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:18:33 Speaker 1: When they said it, it's like it didn't it. 01:18:35 Speaker 3: Did not even make sense what they were saying. And he said and then the next thing he was saying is like I don't remember exactly what it was, but then it was like, oh, oh I am the laugh holy yeah, And it was again one of those like just a one of the most emotional things that I've ever experienced in my life. 01:19:00 Speaker 2: How long had you been married at that point? 01:19:04 Speaker 3: M Liz, don't listen to this. 01:19:09 Speaker 1: I'm sorry to do back math if you say, how long have. 01:19:11 Speaker 3: You seventeen fifteen years? 01:19:16 Speaker 2: Was your wife like all in from the very beginning? 01:19:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, she well. 01:19:20 Speaker 1: She with the marriage. No, she was for the. 01:19:22 Speaker 2: First years with alone, with alone. Did she have any hesitation? 01:19:29 Speaker 3: You know, she didn't. If it had been up to her, she wouldn't have I wouldn't have gone, you know. The last thing she wanted me to go, to be gone for four months and starve to death and to starve and all that stuff. But she was never She knew that it was important to me, and it was actually I didn't realize how I didn't realize how important her h supporting me. I didn't realize how important that was to her until I came out and there was a development. While I was out there, I had no idea what was going on. She when when you when you go out there, you have to sign a paper that says if there's an emergency at home, that they either come and tell you or they don't. If you can, you can say that if there, if someone contacts you and they're dying, I do not want to be informed. And so I of course put on there. Yeah, I mean if if, if, if my wife determines that it's an emergency, I want to know about it, go and tell me. Yeah, Well, she had gone, she had a doctor's appointment. This was the day that I launched Day one. She goes to the doctor and gets just like a routine scan, and they found a growth on one of her ovaries. And she used to she was she was a X ray attach at this hospital, and so she's knew everybody in the radiology department, and somehow she got her hands on the piece of paper from the person that read and interpreted this scan and it said this is likely ovarian cancer. Wow, I'm gonna start crying. So she's standing there with a basically a death sentence in her hand, and she does not call. She deals with this on her own. 01:21:57 Speaker 1: M hmm. 01:21:58 Speaker 3: Goes and and and it's seven days before she can go back in. And she was never supposed to get that paper. You know, she was never supposed to see that paper without a doctor there to explain things to her. But she was able to get back in. They they did a biopsy. They went in and removed that Ovary had major surgery, abdominal surgery. Yeah. I never knew about it. She never told me, Wow, because she didn't want to take that opportunity away from me. You know, had it had it been cancer, I don't know what she would have done. I don't know if she would have told me or not. I hope that she would have, but I don't know. Yeah, but she, you know, she thought it was and that she made the decision to deal with it on her own. Yeah was I mean I just that just I didn't know. 01:23:01 Speaker 1: That's part of the story that you don't see on the Yeah, on the show. 01:23:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't even know how to. I mean, she told me that when I came a couple of days after I came out, and I was just like, you know, I. 01:23:16 Speaker 2: Can't imagine what it would have done to you had you been out there. Yeah, I mean, if you decided to stay, it would have been you would have just been a wreck. Yeah, I would have been yeah, and then or would you have just decided to go home? 01:23:31 Speaker 3: You know, had I had she called and told me that I would have gone home. Yeah, I mean, no question about it, right, I wouldn't have hesitated. Yeah, but she I mean, she knew that it was important to me, but I didn't know, you know, I didn't know that she put that much stock in it, you know, yeah, yeah, and she was that strong to handle that on her own. 01:23:55 Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, and uh, honest answers would be acceptable. 01:24:07 Speaker 3: Let's caveat not expected but acceptable. 01:24:12 Speaker 1: Well why did you do it? And let me give you a multiple choice, Like my question is is why why did you outlast everybody? 01:24:25 Speaker 2: Why? 01:24:26 Speaker 1: Like the internal motivation, and an acceptable answer would be the money was a major factor, the what it would do for I mean, Clay makes outdoor media, like there would be no mistaking that him winning alone would be could be significant for just his career, which to me, career is connected to family and connected to taking care of your family. So it's not like career doesn't have to be just like personal ambition to be something great, you know, it's it is connected to success that go you know, rolls over to your family and and I obviously don't think it's one of those. Or it could also be like this, like personal challenge or or maybe just winning. I mean sometimes there's things that a person just feels like they need to win and like the money isn't that big a deal, like you know, like what if the pot had been like five hundred dollars, you know, would Clay Hayes still have gone out there and won? So the question is on the table many ways to answer. Is that a fair Would you like to add to the question? Bear, I don't think so. I think you were that pretty good, okay, Josh. 01:25:43 Speaker 2: No lies and truth acceptable. 01:25:50 Speaker 3: So for I think everybody that goes out there has different reasons and different motivations. For for me, the money was not I never thought about the money when I was out there. Was not a motivation for me. And if there had been no money, I still would have done what I did. I still would have pushed myself to that. 01:26:16 Speaker 1: I think that's all. I think he's being honest. 01:26:18 Speaker 3: Uh huh. Now, I like you were talking about with the exposure and the and the media and the career and all that stuff, Like I knew that this was huge for me and what I do for a living, right, I didn't see. I never thought about that when I was out there. It's not why I stayed out there, but I but before going out there, I had a plan. Like I mean, I had a year from the time I came out or from the time I went out there till it was it went on History Channel. And during that year, man, I did a lot of stuff. You had to keep it secret for a full year. 01:27:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, kylie, wow. 01:27:03 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:27:03 Speaker 1: I actually talked to Clay during that year, Okay, and I knew he was on it, and I knew that he couldn't tell how it had gone down, and he was like total poker face, even though I'll I had a sneaking suspicion that you want not because of anything you did, but just because I was like, Clay Hayes would win. Yeah, I'm being honest. I think I went home and told people. I was like, I probably my I don't know who I told, but like I didn't like put it on the Instagram or something, but I was like, I bet he won. 01:27:41 Speaker 3: But as far as like the real reason, the reason that I one of the big, one of the big reasons I went out there is is because it was a test of myself and what I It was one of those things that I always just am I good enough? Am I good enough to do this? And it's like the ultimate test for that because it is it is real. Yeah, like there's no like I was talking, this is what you do. It is, but it's it's like the ultimate challenge of being a human, you know, of what a human is. And so that was the big reason like that I that I wanted to do it in the first place. I always wanted to do something like that, and it just turned out that alone was the opportunity to do it. The reason that I stayed was because I had made a promise to my family that like my boys when I when I when I left, you know, I I was like, I need I need your help. I need you to help your mom while I'm gone. I need y'all to try to behave even like, don't make it harder on And you know they did, They did amazing And I wasn't you know, I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna quit because I was uncomfortable, or because I was hungry, or because of any you know, I can't think of anything short of a you know, like a broken leg with a bone sticking out of my leg, that would have made me hit that button. I was just not it was not an option for me. I never thought about the button. It was not on my mind because for me, it wasn't an option like that bud didn't exists. 01:29:41 Speaker 1: That's a good answer. That's a good answer and maybe not surprising, but it feels like it would be hard not to be motivated by the money. I mean, even even with somebody. If somebody wasn't, I think a lot of people are. 01:30:02 Speaker 3: But for me, it wasn't. Uh, it wasn't a big deal. Not because I mean the money has helped us pay off our house, you know, it's it's we've started a couple of college funds for the kids. You know, we've invested. I mean, it helped us be more secure. Yeah, but had there been no money, I still would have done it because of the personal challenge and the benefits that came out of the thing. I mean, I came out of that. I was I'm a different person than I was before I went out there, and that to me, is more valuable than any prize money. I mean, I'm uh, you know, we go through our lives and we take it we we we take for granted so many things, and oftentimes those things that we take for granted, or our family because you know, especially I think about my wife's like we've been together since we were seventeen years old, and so we've just always she's always been there, you know, and when someone is or someone or something is a constant in your life, it's just like, you know, you kind of lose that perspective and being out there and having all of that stuff stripped away from you gives you an opportunity to look back on your life like that's a that's a thing that people don't get today really as an opportunity that we're so busy, we're distracted every single day where where, you know, trying to make a living with social media or whatever, the little computers in our pockets, Like we never have a chance to step away from our lives and and look at our life and like, well, why do I do things the way I do them? You know? Why do I go to this job every day? Why do I you know, why do I do anything? And that gave me the opportunity to do that because I was pulled out of my like my normal life, and that's a that's a tremendously valuable thing there was to me anyway. 01:32:10 Speaker 1: You know, it's such a rare It really is rare. I mean, like the opportunity and I you know, I mean any one of us could make decisions that would lead us to go on a trip of isolation in the wilderness. I mean, there's nothing stopping you, Josh from doing that. But there there's a thousand things that are really so I mean, like the opportunity to get to do that. Yeah, I guess that that really is so rare because yeah, you just wouldn't do it on your own. It's it's like there had there would have to be a reason, a justification, you know, the show, the prize package, the you know, there's all these things that like make it this like kind of once in a lifetime opportunity. You know. Yeah, I mean do you want to go do it again? I mean, maybe not be on the show alone, but do you is there something in you that's like craving to go out there or did it extinguish all that desire because you know you can do it, you did it. 01:33:19 Speaker 3: I don't have any desire to go out and starve again and go through all of that. But when I when I, when I in the days following me coming out of there, I thought to myself, I will never ever do that again. It was just it was you know, it was a lot to endure, you know, but time has a way of kind of you remember the the good that came out of it, and you kind of forget some of the anguish and the suffering. 01:33:54 Speaker 2: It was like type two point eight fun. 01:33:58 Speaker 1: I think that's it was five fun ti you know. 01:34:02 Speaker 3: People asked me that was it fun. 01:34:04 Speaker 1: I was like, no, it was not. 01:34:05 Speaker 3: It wasn't fun. I mean, it definitely had its moments, like I have. I had life changing experiences out there and and and experiences that I never would have had before. I'm grateful for it was it was not fun, but I'm grateful that I did it and went through it. You know. But if they if they offered me a chance to do it again, I would consider it. I don't know that I would, but I mean I would probably knowing myself, I probably would not be able to turn it down because it's a huge adventure. 01:34:42 Speaker 1: Well, isn't it. What's the catnus? What what movie? 01:34:50 Speaker 2: Am I talking about Hunger Games. 01:34:53 Speaker 1: Didn't In the Hunger Games they bring all the champions all stars. 01:34:59 Speaker 3: Yeah that I don't think that's ever gonna happen. 01:35:04 Speaker 1: I mean that, I mean, surely the alone people have thought of that bring all the champions together and have like a huge prize. 01:35:13 Speaker 3: Fool they've thought about it. I don't know that they've got the budget for it, and I don't know that that people would even do it again. Yeah, yeah, because you know, you got You've got guys now that are doing really well, like on YouTube. 01:35:31 Speaker 1: And as every do. Most people that win alone go on to have a career that's attached to that winning. 01:35:41 Speaker 3: No, not, I mean some do. Certainly, I was doing YouTube stuff before I ever got on a long I think I started doing YouTube stuff full time in twenty seventeen. It wasn't on the show until twenty twenty. It picked up a lot after after it went on Netflix. But like Jordan is the only one out of the other winners, he's the only one that I really have spent time with and know, and he he does some YouTube stuff, but it's not I don't think anyway. I don't think it's a major part of what he does. He's he runs an outfitting business now out of he outfits into Idaho from the Montana side, I think. But he does survival classes. Like he'll bring people in and pack them into the wilderness and spend you know, five or seven days or whatever back in there teaching him how to make friction fires and shoot bows and arrows and pitch tents and do all that type of stuff. I think that's his big that's his big deal. 01:36:46 Speaker 2: Now. 01:36:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, it's it's a great story. 01:36:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. And what what's cool? 01:37:01 Speaker 1: And I would have been a skeptic of well, I had never seen I had never watched Alone when I learned that Clay was going to be on it in that lag year, and uh. And in that first conversation, I feel like I asked you, is it is it real? 01:37:21 Speaker 3: Like is it is it? 01:37:23 Speaker 1: Just because I didn't have a frame of reference for it, and you were like, oh, it's very real, and I was like, oh cool. And then you know, started watching it and maybe even watched another season before or something. But that's the coolest part of Alone, that makes it different than Yeah, at least anything I've seen, is that it's like it's like people are. It's it's legit. So wow, man, that's awesome. We we didn't even get to talk about Clovis and fulsome today and we don't have time to. We could talk about it remain it remains in no I mean we could talk about it for like five minutes here. 01:38:03 Speaker 3: No. 01:38:04 Speaker 1: Typically on the render we talk about the bear grease that just came out, and uh, it really would have been fitting to have Clay here to talk about Clovis. We can, I mean, we can talk about it a little bit, but I love these episodes about early human history and archaeology. Metting Aaron and doctor David Meltzer are like heroes. They're great. Taylor Keene was great, I mean, like an all star lineup on the podcast. And uh, this is a Clovis point that Meting Aaron made for me. He he is a just like a very very very good maker of fulsome points. Excuse me, Clovise points close points. Yeah, so this would this classify as a as a Clovis. That's a Clovis, Yeah, and it's it's just it's just the hafting, you know, like. 01:39:01 Speaker 3: The clothes us has the flutes that go all the way down folsom, the false fulsome, that's a fulsome that's okay. 01:39:09 Speaker 1: So so this this is a cast of a real fulsome point right which the fulsom has a full slabe off of it. And that's like the radical newer version of a Clovis. Yeah, so that's a cast of one's that's a cast of a real Clovis. Look how thin it is. I know it's a real folesome. Excuse me. And now this is a fulsome that was made for me by Tony Sores. So I mean that's a real one. 01:39:42 Speaker 3: That is just think that is a master yeah at work right there. 01:39:46 Speaker 2: I mean, I wonder how many they total before they got that well, I mean the fulsome points. 01:39:52 Speaker 1: They say they had a forty to like fifty percent failure rate, and that's. 01:39:57 Speaker 3: Probably someone that really knew what they were doing. Yeah, I mean, get you get a sorry, go ahead, I'm just gonna comment that to get to this point of being able to make something like this like this is years and years of busting rock. So how many crappy points did this guy make before he made he started making this stuff? 01:40:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, and they must have felt like that, like that it was worth it, you know, what I mean, like, I don't know, I mean more effective or was it like, hey, this is my maker stamp that I can do this? 01:40:36 Speaker 3: You know? But I look at something this like this, and I see artwork like we like to we like a beautiful hunting knife. Does that make it cut any better than a than a one that's not beautiful? 01:40:47 Speaker 1: But that's so hard to especially the fault now we're talking about folsom but it's like so hard to make though. It just seems like it's if you were out on a loan, you wouldn't be showing out. Maybe you would because you didn't you didn't have anything else to do. I mean, you see what I'm saying, Like that you wouldn't be like trying to do something extra special just for the sake of it. 01:41:11 Speaker 3: I don't know, man, It's like I think of cave paintings when I look at this, It's like, what's what's the function other than artistic expression? You know. It's like the guy that makes this takes pride in what he's able to create, you know, And it's a beautiful thing, and I think that has value. 01:41:35 Speaker 1: Wouldn't it if we could just set with the maker of that. I think we would be as we would be astonished no matter what. It's possible that we could be astonished at the flippancy with which he would hold this, Like he might just be like yeah, like like us holding like a fork, Yeah, like that we pulled out of the drawer, you know what I mean, like, or we might be astonished that when he held that, he said, Son, this isle our future. This is the pinnacle of human existence, to make that point, And I mean he might have had philosophy, you know. 01:42:18 Speaker 3: I think it's probably more on that spectrum. I mean, it's that's. 01:42:21 Speaker 1: Complete speculation though, you know, I mean, we just don't know, but it's it's it's fascinating, Josh, what stood out to you? You weren't involved as much in the actual content of this one like melt Oh you. 01:42:38 Speaker 2: Were with those with David Meltzer. But man met in there and that guy is sharp. Yeah. I really enjoyed listen to that. I think I think just it up until this, it hadn't been something that I'd spent a lot of time thinking about, and so to put it out there of you know, when when David Meltzer talked about the Ice Free Corridor, it was fascinating to me the advancements using DNA technology that way and finding that there was no organic matter, so the ice free corridor would not have been a route that early humans would have traveled. And I can't tell you how many times in the last week I've said the Laurentide ice shelf in the cordillaria. You know, I've sounded like I really know what I'm talking about. But just just to think about early man coming across and going down, how they would have lived, what would have been their motivation, what would have been their deciding factors on doing things, is just it was new and kind of exciting to think about, you know, and the technology of the time and how long that technology was effective to keep survival of humans. You know, it is pretty amazing stuff. 01:43:58 Speaker 1: I will never get tied ever when I see fulsome points in close points of saying that those people the only thing, the only print that is left on the face of this earth that represents those people is these stone points. I mean, because everything else they interacted with was organic matter. Their bones, their flesh, the adlettle spears, their clothing, their food. They're like, they didn't have plastic or metal or they didn't have anything. The only thing that survived is that and that's not entirely true, because we do have in North America. And this will get into this more in a later episode, but they have found a couple of human remains that they believe are from the Plaistocene, and one of them is that Anzac child, which we just briefly talk about, the Anzik child found in nineteen sixty eight, which was a toddler that was found while some dude was like digging a footing for his barn or something in Montana and like digs up this human skull and they're like, holy smokes. And then they they they realize it's old, and an archaeologist or somebody comes and takes it, and then it's not until they can do DNA testing on it. Even in like the last fifteen years that they DNA tests the bone and it's still in good enough shape that they're able to determine what the mother ate. The mother of that child. There's a whole academic paper the mother of the Anzik Child. Now, Meltzer tells me that the sciences slightly is questionable, but I mean it's like on like a major academic journal. Well, it's the one that it's so complicated. I hope y'all all were paying attention. It's the one that Met and Aaron talked about how they used it as a political tool to talk about climate change and to say that the humans were the ones that killed the mammoths out because they analyzed this child and were able to tell that the mother had a diet heavy heavy in animal matter that essentially was equivalent to a scimitar cat period. 01:46:29 Speaker 3: They weren't eating any potatoes. 01:46:31 Speaker 2: Exactly, and so. 01:46:36 Speaker 1: Or coked zeros. So but I bet those suckers could water witch. No, I'll never get tired of just like when I look at that, what I see is mystery, and in a time period of human existence, when it's like the mystery has been taken from us, you know, because of all that we know and all we have access to and the little computers in our pockets, and it's like we live in such a rare time. I mean, like these people would be looking at us, be going, holy cow, what you know. We take it for granted where we live as just an anomaly in human existence. We have no idea what the results of this kind of life are really and I mean it kind of even ties back into you with your alone stuff, Like having this kind of artificial simulated like existence in the wild for this period of time, that's like life changing to you. You come back into the real world and you're like, oh, I've seen the light. Like everybody needs to do this. I wish everybody could experience what I've experienced. I mean it all kind of it all kind of connects in a way, but fascinating. What stood out to you? You listened to the podcast, didn't you? 01:48:01 Speaker 3: I did? 01:48:04 Speaker 1: Would you have known about quite a bit of that stuff? 01:48:07 Speaker 3: I mean, not not the depth that you guys got into it, but I mean the thing that I kept thinking was what I was just talking about, Like there, I think there's reason for making those points beyond just functionality. I think there's an aesthetic and a and a and a craftsmanship angle there. I think it was a pinnacle of that cultures. I think the people that were that were making those were could have been highly revered. You know, if you're able to produce a point like that, it would be like a like a you know, a fine rifle maker or something like somebody that's making something that's functional that's in. 01:48:54 Speaker 1: A pinnacle of their existence of their society. Yes, this wasn't a hobby that they were hunting. This was the life way, absolutely. 01:49:01 Speaker 3: Yeah. And so that that, you know, I feel like there's a there was a there was a pride there in someone's craftsmanship and an artistic side of it. And you know that when they could have you know, there could have been people that that's what they did. That's all they did was make that. They they they were the artisans and that's what they did. They made points. They were good at it, and so people would come and trade. They didn't have to go hunting. I mean they had. They were taken care of because they were good at making that type of stuff. Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think your average guy really back in the day was able to create that, even though. 01:49:48 Speaker 1: They would have been setting around and that would have been like a a it would have been equivalent to like being able to hook into the internet. 01:49:58 Speaker 3: No, but it wasn't. It wasn't because look at look at look at people today. Look at guys today. How many guys out of one hundred guys, how many guys could go out there and cut down a tree and make a bench. 01:50:15 Speaker 4: But right, well, I see what you're saying, but they have they don't have to. They couldn't do it if they had to. Even they don't have the they don't have. 01:50:27 Speaker 2: It's not critical to their survival, is what you're saying. 01:50:30 Speaker 1: No, you're saying they don't even have that, don't have the aptitude. 01:50:33 Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, gotcha. 01:50:35 Speaker 1: I mean I see what you saying there. There would be a gradient of just raw natural ability to do something like that physical and that tactical tactile. 01:50:48 Speaker 3: Some people, some guys just don't have the mechanical ability to to build things or to make things, and some people do. That's an artist. The guys that made that point, he is an artist, and that that's only a certain number of the. 01:51:04 Speaker 1: Po It's interesting here, And you said that because yesterday we had a brief conversation. I told Clay, like we're totally breaking the rules by talking about this before the podcast. But Clay makes bows, and he has a style of self bow that like he would recognize just out of a lineup, like that's a bowt And and you're saying that, like when you see a folsom point, you see craftsmanship, specific craftsmanship and pride. 01:51:30 Speaker 3: And that originated probably in with just one guy that started doing it, and then they started catching on and he was teaching people and it just kind of dispersed from there. 01:51:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I could see that, Like it's easy to kind of just like look at the stone points and it's kind of like generalize like all these ancient people just by like you know, they all can make stone points of that quality just because that's all we see. But that's kind of just like a generalization. Yeah, like there would be some people who would be like a lot more skilled at it because like you know, you look at those points up there and some of those are like janky. You could make points better than some of those, Yeah, and makes you wonder was it was it a kid? Was it right? Or some like you fit to that point when they made that, they were just like dude, you need to haul firewood. 01:52:26 Speaker 3: Okay. 01:52:28 Speaker 2: It's interesting to me to think about a stone point like that that's really beautiful and then you see stone points from an era of a thousand years ago and how the technology changed. But I don't know that it was more effective, like what caused it? What costs that to die out? 01:52:48 Speaker 1: That's great, A great question, because it did like they got fluting points all together after basically and. 01:52:58 Speaker 2: More effective than that's on point. 01:53:01 Speaker 3: I think that any and I'm not I'm not a historian. I could be way off base here, but it seems to me that you see art emerge in a culture when you have a state, you have a certain amount of stability, right, And so that makes me think that that's a that's a high level. That's like the highest level of stone point that we've ever seen in this country and maybe in the world. I don't know, but I think that that has to emerge out of a fairly stable, a stable culture. A culture. Yeah, uh, you have to you know, you can't be you can't be worried about whether or not you're going to be alive tomorrow or be able to find enough food tomorrow to support your family and put enough time into developing the skill to make that. 01:53:55 Speaker 1: Right. 01:53:55 Speaker 3: You have to have the time to deve up to do that. And that's that's not somebody that's living day to day or day by day. 01:54:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a good point. It really is. 01:54:07 Speaker 2: Interesting, fascinating. 01:54:09 Speaker 1: It's this is also I think when you see the you know, there there's charts met and Aaron had some of these charts that like showed the the technology shifts from year to year. And I mean like, so where's that Clovis point? I mean essentially this Clovis point, this is a would be older than a fulsome point. But what makes it Clovis to Clovis is that the half there's a small flute like right there you can just barely feel it, yep. And they make that by making a little a little a little shelf like there'll be a little nipple right there that they that they chip out, make a little and then they hit that little that little platform and it flakes off. Well, this turn into this so it's like a kid his dad taught him how to do this, and he was like, he may have done it by accident the first time, but he was like, man, if you build that platform just a little bit bigger and hit it just a little bit harder, it'll flake the whole side off, and it flakes off, and then they start making these for a thousand years. A dad taught his son. Yeah, it literally has to be the product of like knowledge pass from generation generation. You don't you don't come up with that that's not like there's a thing called convergent evolution, Like in two places, the same thing happens. I think that's what it's called. Like that doesn't happen because of that. A falsom point happens because it started one place people taught and then all of a sudden it just completely disappears. 01:55:51 Speaker 3: But you got to ask yourself, like if that if my theory is correct, and that that developed out of a stable you know, food base or whatever that was able that was uh enabled these guys to put that amount of time in it, Like did something change? And now it's like we can't we can't afford to sit around and paint on the cave walls, like we got to get out there, and you know, we got to put meat on the pole. Yeah, and and and you know, a normal stone point that doesn't have that level of detail in it, it's gonna kill a buffalo just as dead as that one. You know that I broke half of them trying to make these beautiful flutes in Yeah. 01:56:36 Speaker 1: Well and and and you also wonder how much human uh nature was involved in this technology because I purposefully did stuff different than Gary Nucomb did Bar Newcombe purposely does stuff a little different than me, just in different areas. Just like God may have a bear. Maya woke up one day after his oppressive father who tried to get into shoot bears, and so in the rear, maybe one day a baron Nucan wakes up and goes, I ain't fluting anymore points. 01:57:17 Speaker 2: That means, you know, maybe maybe when they were a ground built, maybe they were grounded, like go flute points. I'm not going if I leave. 01:57:27 Speaker 1: I've never fluted another point. I mean that happened. 01:57:31 Speaker 3: I know it did. 01:57:32 Speaker 1: I mean like people just going, man, you don't have to flut. I mean they're like secretly talking around their little kid fire, like you don't have to flout them to kill stuff. I killed an hard bark yesterday with just a regular point, and Grandpa's like, what you said, any animal you killed better be killed with a fluted point. I guarantee you that they were people just like us. You know that's somewhere heard the analogy that you know, these paleolithic people and these ancient people, if they would have been born today, they could have learned to fly an airplane, they could have learned multiple languages. I mean they were just like us, and so they had they had they had social structure, They they loved each other, they grieved when people died, they they got mad at people, they got you know. I mean it's like, so this is all these like the same dynamics that you have with your boys, some paleolithic guy had with his Like I can't believe that kid, you know, did this or did that. It's just fascinating. But well, I guess we did have time to have this cons I guess we make the rules around here for real. It's because we had such an interesting guest, but we also had an interesting topic podcast. And I really had to get the water witch and stuff, you know, out on the table out to the people. Yeah, you know, clear the air a little bit, clear the air a little bit. Yeah, well, thanks Clay. It was really it was great man. 01:59:06 Speaker 3: I'm happy to be here, yeah. 01:59:07 Speaker 1: Man, yeah yeah. Well keep the wild places wild. That's where the berries g