00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, this is the Meat Eater podcast, recording out a Bozeman, Montana, hometown of our guests, Randy Newburgh, who has been hosting hunting TV programs for a long time. Wow, how long? Well? I think, as my grandpa would say, Moby Dick was a mint on back when I started. Actually, it's weird to say, Steve, but I'm going into year eight. Okay, so that's I'm not like Methuselah. But I guess you could say I've been there, done that long eight years. Long time to do anything. It is, especially I just turned fifty and I'm gonna be fifty one in November, and you know, I do these backpack hunts mostly, and I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna live long enough to do another eight years. It's just it grinds at me. You guys know you do it. You're also talking to uh that that leaves me to something about age that that's interesting. But um, I want to point out to our listeners that Randy, who's seen and done everything, was just marveling. He was blown away by the quality of the complete guy, the hunting, butcher and cooking wild game. I was that would take most people a lifetime. You hear those people and then you guys said, well, how long do you think? I said three years? And you guys looked at each other like, yep, so what So if I'm reading what you're saying, right, Randy, you feel like people are gonna get their money's worth. I don't know why you're going to price it at giving it away. You're giving it away. You you should buy two of them at that price. I mean, it's really I'm saying you have and you have a background that has to do with like you deal in people's money as a c p A. Yeah, I get to disinherit the federal treasury as a Randy thinks you ought to buy that book. If if you don't buy that book, folks, you're not gonna kill an elk next year. That's exactly right. I can promise you that if you do kill one, you're not gonna know how to take care of it out in the field. And I was reading your honest your piece about tuning up bows. Where did you come up with all that stuff? Experience just told all about it. He just wrote about it. I think you need to make that like into a pocket guide. Yeah. Well, I gotta say, you don't want to care. It's not like it's I can't call it original content. I mean, yes, I did put it down in my own words, but like it's not like I picked up a piece of wooden string and then I eventually learned how to make a compound, and then like how to tune a compound, you know, like all this stuff. Like yes, I've read you know, hunting magazines and and you know, watch YouTube videos and all this stuff since I was a little kid, and so that's you know, how it came out. But it's not like I made up how to you know, get ready for archery season. Like gazillion guys will be like, yeah, yeah, that's how I do it too. But wow, I was impressed. I was thumbing through the book and I'm just thinking, you know what, this is a serious project. Just you guys go into a lot of detail, a lot of things. I'm afraid that no one will ever read. I don't want you. I was half joking. I mean I like to plug the book. I was half joking. But I want to get you to think about age. When we talk about like backpack hunting, how many years you think you got left well, I always tell hunting as you hunting out right. I told my wife I want to backpack hunt and tell him sixty five and last long it's like years doth wrong. I felle in November, so fourteen fifteen seasons. But last year I packed out three bulls on my back. And how many miles? Told you packed bulls out about? Gosh, I'd be just a guest Steve. I'm guessing combined all those trips thirty miles something like that. But one of them was out of a canyon in there. I don't and it was ugly. I mean, even though it was only two miles each way. I remember saying, I'm not doing there's different kinds of miles exactly. And and my guest hunter had blown out his a c L and before the hunt, and he told me, said, look, I've been waiting for years to hunt Arizona. I'm deferring surgery until after the hunt. Do you mind having a guy hobbling along? I'm like, hey, whatever. So he went into it saying I'm not gonna pack all right, he told me. I mean, and he's he was fifty five, I think blew out his A c L playing basketball down in Logan, Utah. And he shows up and he's got a brace on his knee that looks like, you know, Colonel Steve Austin of the six million Dollar Man. You're too young to remember that. You know, you have no idea what's shocking on about? All right, see again we're aging ourselves, Sarah. But anyhow, he shoots this ball down in the canyon really nice, but yeah, like a three twenty bull. And I'll tell you, I want to interject, I've never met the guy. I bet that man did not have a torn a c L. I started saying that I would be like, on every hunt, I'll be like, yeah, I got enough in me. I got enough in me to get down in that candy to kill a bull, no problem. Yeah, it's just that once that happens, you know, So how hard can I can I hunt for how long? I don't know. I I'm well, you get to a point, and I've said this on a few episodes where you realize that there are a lot fewer hunts in the front windshield than what are in the rear view mirror, and you enjoy every minute of every day of those hunts as you see the sand drain and out of your hour glass, and you start having this internal fear. Gosh, oh man, my hip's hurting today. Is that gonna lay me up from al cunning? Because you know that there's a terminal point when you're hunting anything, let alone backpack out cunning. So it's like, I'm definitely still just too young and dumb to have those thoughts. I don't, are you or you have to because like my brother is a couple years older me. My brother is like he started working out lifting weights, you know, and now I've been I've been the only thing I'm thinking about's like I'm married, I got three kids. Like, I'm not like working out because I gonna be all like go down to the beach, you know what I mean. It's like, no, I'm like, I work out because all I'm that's the thing I think about, not being able to get up a hill. Right it's Oregon and smoked by Janice to the hill way ahead of me, you know. The And I hunt a lot of my guest hunters very younger than I am, And I drive a desk for a living half the year, and so I have to make a serious point to get out and hike every day. And I'm lucky here in Montana where I live. I'm a mile from a four service trailhead, going to two our hike every day, and mentally, I am in way better shape to handle cold, terrible, miserable, ugly conditions than I was when I was forty or thirty. I mean, now I'll just put my head down, lean against the grade, and I don't even think about if I gotta walk all day. Oh well, I gotta walk all day, Whereas when I was twenty eight, God, I had to walk for another forty five minutes to get there. This sucks now, don't even fathe me. It's like, hey man, I'm still hunting. I got some buddies who are you know they're done, They're they're cashed it in or whatever. And so mentally is fine. I mean, I wish I had the mental fortitude when I was twenty eight that I have today. It just comes with age. One thing I think about when I think about getting old and not being able to hunt like I like to hunt, is I think that me now would be able to smoke me when I was twenty five. I think if I put myself back to when I was twenty five, even though I'm fifty now, I would agree. I would I was inefficient in how I operated my how I walked, you know how much gear I brought with it. I didn't need all those things. I and just mentally, yeah, I could walk myself into the ground today, whereas in I'd have to ship and have a sandwich after two miles. I had a guy there day telling me about a principle and fitness that my brother used to joke or hat and I used to has joked it people that are bigging across fit, you just get good at doing CrossFit, you know, like it doesn't do anything for you. And I'll sell this guy that he says it half jokingly. But this guy was saying, there's his principle and fitness called like said, okay, So it's specific adaptations to imposed demands. Because what I've often wondered about is you could have people who are fit by any measure, ye okay, like, but you take them out like, oh yeah, you really ought to before we go on the mountains, you really ought to like get in shape for oh no, I just ran a half marathon Broye And you go out and it's like they have never done anything. Ye, it's such a specific thing that I really don't think you can replicate the demand. I don't think you can replicate the physical demands of mountain hunting doing anything that maybe like mountaineering. Yeah, I would agree, And that's why, you know, all my a lot of my buddies go to the gym. I gotta be on the cardio, I gotta be working on this me. I put pounds in a backpack and I just hiked and walk because nothing replicates the uneven ground. The Okay, I'm going up a grade and then down a grade. I'm side Helen and whatever, and I just I haven't found any any mechanical device that replicates it. So you can just go hike anything you do, like obviously anyway you can become stronger, you know, and all that. It's like great, sure it's not gonna work against you, but there's just something about, yeah, the uneven ground. And I think another thing that really starts to throw people is in addition to that stuff, and it is just the physicality of it. There's all this layered stuff about cold, heat, boredom, um. All they're just discomfort things, you know, uncertainties and when you're changing food. When you're younger, you all of those get to you, and now don't don't get to me at all. Okay, throw my pack on. I'm usually hiking up the hill. I'm in a very light merino wall and I got some layers, and yeah it's cold, but I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just got my head down and I gotta get to the ridge so I can glasp before sun gets up. Where before my mind would get distracted. Your mind gets distracted, you're not focused on hunting, and you just start losing it. Your edge is gone, and then you start getting cold, You start sniveling, you start whinding, you start thinking about, oh, dude, I could have been huddled up next to mom on this morning. Why they get out of bed, youth visit for Randy's wife. That's that's right. Yeah, there's a there's a joke to that, if my wife listens to this. We We ran into Jack Llane at an airport one time. Again, you guys, he related to kind of man, I'm really aging myself and uh he he was like the original fitness expert on old broadcast. He surely not before Slim good buddy, Oh way before he was like, I mean, he was like the first guy. So he's like eighty five ninety years old, and he says, you know what you young people need to know. It takes discipline. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to take in notes here. He says, it takes a real man to get out of a hot bed with a warm woman and go and jump in a cold pool because he needs to exercise. Yeah, Mike, dude, you're not ainty years old. I guess maybe you know what you're talking about. So, heyhow that's that's the inside joke about mama getting getting out of bed from mama. So now you so you were brought up in Minnesota though, Yeah, way up, way up north. So when did you start doing mountain hunts When I moved to Montana. I went to college in Reno, and uh, I knew just about nothing about western hunting while I lived in Nevada. You didn't hunt there? Yeah I did, but I was terrible at it. I tried to hunt everything like a hunted white tails. Um and then carrots had a platform, hang a platform over the tree. Yeah, there you go, And uh luckily stumbled into a few a few deer along the way while I was in Nevada. But when I moved to Montana, I just realized, you know what, if you're gonna hunt elk on public land, you better figure it out, Randy, because they aren't standing next to the trailhead and it requires work. It's just as quick as you accept the fact that hunting elkom public land requires exertion, you get way better at it. It's like you go through this period of thinking there's an easy way, and you don't kill anything. I mean I hunted elk for six years and never fired a shot at an elk because I thought there was an easier way. People just haven't been smart enough to figure it out yet. Yeah. And finally I'm like, you know what, well, there's an easier way. Well it's called cash, Yeah exactly. Yeah, I mean money solves a lot of you can buy. So that was the elk you were looking to purchase, right, And so after that, I'm like, all right, that's what I'm gonna do. And I went in, slept on the mountain that night, next morning killed the ball. Like, holy cow, what year was at that was in? And uh, I think I've killed at least one bull every year since then just doing the same thing, and it was like the light came on. Randy quit thinking there's an easy way to do this. There are easier ways to do it, but public land bull elk hunting on general tags is not an easy endeavor. No, but you've made it that your thing, man. Yeah, by accident, almost because of where I live, because of the fact that when you get in the TV world, elk are sexy. I mean, what what sells better than a big bull out screaming in a camera, big white tail buck on the cover of magazine. Well that's that's probably true. Um, But I had a meeting with some magazine editors the other day and they're like, you just it's just a fact of like the best selling news stand Well they any cover you do, you can't beat that. It's gonna be the biggest bucks. You'll have an article inside the magazine condemning fence top fence deer operations, but the cover magazine is a fence. It's got it's a fence buck that you're never gonna run into, and then you'll sell new stand copies. Yeahs just it's just people like, yeah, answer your question, the white tail buck. Yeah, all right, So I kinda got into that, and you know, living in Montana, el coomes a big thing like it is in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado other places. And then in the mid nineties I started applying in all these western states and ginda going here, going there. Getting to hunt elk in a lot of different places and a lot of different environments made me a way better elk hunter because showing up in my backyard in Bozeman, Montana to hunt elk, you kind of know what they're doing. You're kind of doing the same thing every year. Oh it's for early November. This is where they're going to be. I show up in New Mexico and their season is, let's say, middle of October. Everything is different, so you really have to get your mind into a pattern and an idea of these are not the same animal I hunt at home, And like you guys know on TV, my my statement is I've got five days to figure it out, sort it out, and pack it out. I show up at a place I've never been and we've got dollars invested in an episode. I gotta find some elk. And it doesn't matter that the weather is crappy, it doesn't matter there's a lot of hunting pressure on public land. I gotta figure it out, you know, sniveling and wine and isn't gonna do any good. I can't change the weather, I can't change the hunting pressure. So over the course of doing that and you become at least I feel I've become a much smarter elk hunter than I was. And people watch our show and say, Randy, come on, what's going on here? I never see this many outcomes public land, and I don't know what to tell him. It's just, you know, either we're lucky, which we do get lucky at times, but we really have a system of here's how we do it. We spend the first two days figuring it out, then we collect all the information we sorted out, and then we got about another two or three days to try and get one on the ground and pack them out. That's just it's that simple. That raises a whole bunch of questions I got for you. But let me start with the one that I already had in my head. I used to feel like this is even hard to put. Most hunters have like a thing they do, okay, so what other the Michigan like, Like what you did like the thing you did was we bow hunted deer, yeah, bohn white hills. Then you do other stuff in addition, So like if you're a guy to lives in Wisconsin, you might just like you like agricultural white tails. But every year you go on a destination hunt. But there's the thing that, like the main thing, like if you took it all the way, that thing would be left. Okay. I've often thought, like when you draw, like what your thing is like. For a long time, when I lived in Montana, my thing was like the Archie hunt again, Archie hunt public land for elk. That's like the thing I really wanted to be good at. Like if I could be good at one thing, it would have been that. All the are stuff I did was auxiliary. Now I travel enough, I don't really have a thing anymore. But I always wondered, does the auxiliary stuff enhance your ability to do the thing you're saying that it does? Oh yeah, and how is that though? Because you'll go somewhere I remember, like hunting elk in New Mexico. I remember just thinking, this has nothing to do with hunt elka Montana. This ain't where the elk would be. This isn't what they'd be doing, you know, And I never like I felt like it's like you're not training yourself, You're just on vacation. Before we get Randy's the answer to this. I'm gonna take a short break for our sponsors. And when I tell you, Steve, what really preps me good for Elk County, You're gonna crack up. My son and I fish walleye tournaments and you're you're already looking at me like, what the hell does this have to do with Elk cunning. Yeah, when you fish a walleye tournament, or even if you go walleye fishing, and probably bass fishing the same thing. I don't bash bass fish, so I can't really say. But before you even go to the lake, you analyze, Okay, what time of year is it? All Right, it's June. The walleyes aren't gonna be up way shallow and they're not gonna be out on the d pumps. So right there, I've eliminated about the lake. All Right, what's the water temperature, what's the condition are the what are they doing? It's kind of the same thing with Elk. Elk do a different thing at a different time. Of the year based on certain needs food, escapement or survival, water and breeding. Same thing fish do. And what I found myself doing when I would fish walleye tournaments is I'd figure out one thing that worked, and I thought that would work every day, every place, all the time. And I'd catch fish one out of ten days, and boy, when I found him, I'd just thump him. But then the other nine days I'd struggle. That's how I fish yellow perch, same rig and still around the country, same rig, same depth. Sometimes I knocked the ship out of And so my son gets bored to tears just doing what his own man does. So he's out there experimenting all the time, and that little guy he's catching more fish than I am. And it starts driving home the point of you know what, if you always do what you always done, you're always gonna get what you always got. And elk hunting is kind of the same thing. If I go to New Mexico and think I'm gonna hunt like I do in Montana just because it works in Montana, not gonna happen. So how does hunting in New Mexico educate you about Montana? Because it gets you the mindset that when you show up, the very first thing you have to do before you even get there is cross off all the places on your map where elk are not gonna be. Scouting is not about finding out elk. It's about eliminating where they're not going to be out right. So you look at my map when I start, anything that's within a mile of a motor i e. A trailer, a road crossed off, just don't even look there because I know other hunters are going to be there. And then I look at all right, what is the season of the year. Okay, let's say it's the middle of October. All right, it's kind of the end of the rut. The bigger balls are going to be off somewhere looking for their serve fival locations. They're gonna be getting away from hunting pressure. They're gonna make a living down in a canyon or some other place, just like they do in Montana. But in Montana, they're gonna make a living in some really steep, nasty, blowdown jungle that has a little bit of food and a little bit of water nearby where they can not get shot for five weeks, just like yeah, or some small, little pocket, some steep place that you just aren't gonna think to look. In New Mexico, it's the same thing, but it's mostly canyons and and other terrain differences. So they're gonna he's gonna want to be down in New Mexico, he's gonna want be down into canyon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Montana already have a canyon country for the most point. And so it's not that the nuances of the landscape or how those out behave on that landscape teach me anything about how how to effectively hunt him in Montana. It's the fact that it forces you to analyze what is the season of the year, based on that he's into the year, what are public land elk doing at that time of year, and based on what they're doing, what am I gonna do to make sure I find them as often as I can? And I don't know if that's making sense, because most people will go out in the woods on a public land hunt and they want to think that a new gadget or a new call or a new blah blah blah is going to bring it elk to them. It's it very seldom does I mean it might, but you're really hoping on gambler's luck. If that's all you're thinking about, the people who and they're the reason. What did you guys say in Colorado? Probably what? The elk are killed by ten percent of the hunters. Yeah, and the reason being is those ten percent of guys have a system and they know what to expect when they show up. When they show up, they've already got a plan laid out, either on a map or in their mind. They've got three or four options, and they're not wandering around opening morning before daylight thinking well, I wonder if that ridge would be the spot or No, They're going to Point A, and they go there, they don't see him. The afternoon, they're on Point B. They'll have six eight spots on their map to check out in a five day hunt, and two to three of those spots will have alk and they'll just, through a process of elimination, get there and when they find now, they'll kill one. I think elk are one of the easiest animals in the world to kill once you find them. Once you find them, finding them as a hard part. And that's why you know, I do a lot of writing and blogging, and I tell people as crazy as it sounds, as simple as it is. You can't kill one if you can't find one. So quit worrying about all the techniques and tactics to kill one. Figure out how to find them, because once you find him, you'll kill them. Well, so what what's your way of finding them? A? Yeah? Again, it goes back to that whole seasonal thing. I break it down and think about seasons a lot, right. I break it down into five periods. It's early season, pre rut, peak rut, post rut, in late season. And if you gave me one time of the year to hunt and try to kill a big bull, it's gonna be late season. Let's just say, oh, bowl a bow, legal bowl, A legal bowl in Montana is a branchantler bull. I'm probably gonna hunt him in the peak of the rut in September with a bowl. Other states it might be a different answer. But each of those five seasons, they have a different need. In the early season, you look at it, Okay, the bulls still aren't really with the cows. The mature bulls, they're still putting on the feedback. You compare that too late season, and now they don't really care about food. They don't care about cows. All they care about is getting through hunting season. And they've got these sanctuaries they go to, and they in their bachelor groups go their year after or year after year. And you said your name to your name in Montana, Yeah, I mean low down nasty dog here. As as a general rule, I tell people, and this is Newberg's first rule of el cunting is where where hunters go, elk don't. And so if it's a place hunters can easily get to or don't have to exert themselves to get to, don't expect late season elk to be there. Maybe some late season coles, but not late season bulls. And I will share information with people about my early season spots or my peak rut locations. Fine, everyone kind of knows where those are. But you're never gonna hear Randy Newburgh tell you where one of these sanctuaries are, because one they're hard to find. Two once you find them, you can go there every year, year after year after year in kill elk in that same spot. Because these bulls get old by living in these locations. To find spot, like what side of the the ground, what side of patch ground? Oh, maybe sixty acres that they will make a living in a sixty acre spot all the way through hunting season. In Montana, we got a five week rifle season. After the first shots, all hell breaks loose. The older bulls are in their bachelor groups, and they are going to the ugly, nasty places. They're gonna be places that are hard to approach because of wind or noise or other things. And even if you do approach it, there's gonna be a fast escape route. Yeah. And it's just I can almost look at a map now anymore with topal lines and say, there's gonna be out there. Okay, But how does that play into your idea that once you find them that they're easy to kill. He's protected by the wind, he's gotta go escape route. You just gotta wait him out. I think most people when they find it out get way too excited. I gotta go kill him. I finally found one, and they burst in there. They think, oh, over here, the winds blowing out of the south while you get over the other side of the drainage or on the other hillside, and it may be blown out of the east. And so before they even get there, they've already announced to the elk what's going on. And they see an elk bedded and they're afraid another hunter is gonna come shoot him as bed and I just wait him out, like how like what sit there until they stand up and offer me a shot, or I get to someplace that says, all right, I'm two yards away. I know he's down in there. He's gonna feed. I can see his tracks in the snow where he feeds every night. I'm gonna let him feed up there, and I'll kill him. And I might have to wait until a half hour before the sun goes down, but if I wait, I'll kill him. I know I'm making this sound like everything you're saying, But I when I first started hunting elk, I made it way too complicated. I was looking for magic calls and you know, gizmos and all this stuff, and it it didn't work. I got a great anecdote about a late season big bull that was killed. Some guy finally killed him, but he was in gunnison, and I want to say, I can't remember if think it was. I don't think it was a tough to draw unit because I think as a story goes, I know there's he was about like a three sixties something bull, so pretty darn big for Colorado Dunnison Basin. And during the rut in September, this bull would rut on private land and it was like right adjacent to town, I want to say, it's right outside of Gunson, so everybody would see him. It's just a giant bull run around right around, and then like you know, rut would go by, rifle season would come around, and this bull would just disappear. Well, finally, one dude, it's just like literally glass and just like the same mountain that's been behind this bull forever, and like looking way high up in the alpine way above tree line, and there's like this little patch of willows and there's like a hundred yards away there's like five like dwarfed little wh or angleman spruce or you know whatever lives way up there, you know, this little like six foot trees. And gets out of spot and scope. He starts looking hard, and he thinks he can see tracks like connecting the two, you know. So he's like, I'm gonna start looking at that patch. He climbs up and gets a little bit closer, and sure enough, at like ten minutes before dark, up rises out of these five little spruce trees, this giant bowl, and he walks like a hundred yards over these little you know, dwarf tie alpine willows and he loses them in the dark. Next morning, he's like watching and like just as his cracking light, he just sees those antlers disappeared on his five little cruce. He went up there, waited him out, killed that bowl, and he said the pack job was just like something out of like a K two documentary, just like ice Acs is cramp on, just like scooting along the edge of this basin, you know, eleven plus thousand feet high. But yeah, I mean he's got him hanging on his wall now and right into We're hunting mule your a couple years ago in Colorado, it was into the don't know what season was. There had been a couple of seasons going on, and they're just like looking through my spot and scope looking for Mulder and just seeing a nice bull and be like you son up a bit. That's where you're that's where you hang out. Yeah, I've like a post ut situation. Yeah, I've had that happen a lot of times in Colorado. I mean, I try to go deer hunting there every two or three years, and I'll be looking in these little pockets for bucks and does, and I'll be like, just like you said, you sill be. But I know I could probably come back there year after year and find him or other bulls around there, and I just I don't know. I I try when I do seminars about elk hunting, and I'm not an expert by any means. I just have a lot of experience that doesn't necessarily make you an expert. Um. I try to tell people, think about what time of the year you're hunting, and what are the needs to elk has at that time of year in the peak rut. They don't care about food. You know, it's back there when I said the best way to kill a big bull is late season with the rifle. The other would be at a water hole in a hot climate in the middle of the day during peak rut. I've been lucky and drawn Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, Utah. I've drawn a lot of those tags for our treat. What happens is the bulls take their cows up to bed them in the morning and they usually stop and get some water somewhere along the way. And once they bed those bulls and they defend them from a few satellites, those bulls will sneak away from the cows about somewhere between noon and three o'clock and they will come out in broad daylight, get a quick drink, and head back up to those cows. I've seen it so many times that when I have those tags, now, I don't go back to camp and take a nap at noon. I'm sleeping at the water hole or I'm sitting like I wouldn't be at home, because I like to take mind that I have from level of twelve up. But I think it's those sort of little tidbits that like in Montana you maybe never really thought about it, and then you went to a really hot climate where like it happens more often and you notice it and you go, well, you know, maybe on a hot September day, this happens in Montana too, and so you know, yeah, that's the thing too. Like, uh, when I was two earlier about like Havin, you're like core activity, and then there's all the experiments we're kind of talk about ways in which you become educated in general. But I found at the same time that was our deal. I found that I don't respect, and I don't mean respect like in a way like you know, or let me use a different word. I don't admire the hunting prowess of people who have just figured out a thing. Yeah it's yeah, like you know, would be like some dude like yeah, like in September he catches a ton of samon trolling in front of that river mouth. He's the man, and I was like yeah, but you know, like anything could happen and that fistory or whatever like so I kind of admire like adaptability, you know, or all the people that they kill a buck every year and then they whoever owns the farm they're hunting on, sells the farm. They never hunt again. It's like one manute, he's like the dude. They're like, yeah, oh John Man. Every mopening day he gets his buck and it's like yeah, I was just like I have my little thing. So through traveling and experimenting, I find that like just adaptability in and of itself, it's valuable. Oh I I agree completely. I mean it makes you feel more comfortable because I used to feel very vulnerable when I first started hunting here, first started hunting out here, I felt very vulnerable, like, man, would we be screwed if somehow this trailhead were to gain popularity? M hm oh yeah, I mean we'll be done yea. And because let me know, as you park here there and they're there, and like if they were, what the hell that right? So I do like the kind of stuff you're saying, like go anywhere and having like a toolbox that you can you know. Yeah, I've just been lucky to get to hunt elk in so many places. You might not even be comfortable answers because it sounds like you're like tooting your own horn or whatever. But how like like how many states or what states have you killed? Public Land, alicon um Antana, Whyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada? Uh? Should have last year in Utah and two weeks people get to see, Yeah, I know how it is eighteen yards of bowls standing there and I'm at, you know, with my archery gear, thinking, come on, buddy, take one step and either the camera's got them or I don't have them. And so I could have added Utah to that list if not for a very lucky lucky bull last year. But so it was all like, do it on your own, right, That's that's still seven states, is it. I think that's okay. Yeah, you know, and for me, I don't really even think about it in terms of numbers. It's like, no, no, that's why I hesitated to ask you. I mean it speaks for itself. Yeah, it's just experiences. And you know, a classic example of a learning experience is I'm in New Mexico. It's archery season. I mean it's blistering hot. I go up high and everyone else is up high high, like what eight thousand trying to get in some ponderosa. And I got my spotting scope out on this rock and I'm looking down and I see all these elk out on the flats in these grasslands. Grab my GPS and my map. I'm like, ship that's being lamp. So I go down there and there's some guys camp there, and I'm like, you guys hunting these elk out here? Oh no, you'll never be able to get up on them. I mean, you can't call that man. Well, I grew up spotting stock hunting in a lot of ways in the big woods of Minnesota. As weird as that sounds, you know, you're trying to find someplace where a buck is hanging out, and you're trying to see him before he sees you, because if he sees you first, one big jump and he's gone still n yeah, pretty much still hunting. So I'm thinking, you know what, those elk got a bed somewhere out there. I go out there and I get to looking around. I can see where they're bedding. Wherever there's a break in the terrain, just a rock pile like six ft, you know, dropping a rock. They're bedding right up against those rocks for shade or are sad. I go out there and within a day I arrow one of those bulls of that like two yards and we come packing. Yeah, we come packing it out and the guys we walked past their camp, They're like, where the hell did you get that out there? And I could have shot other bulls on that trip. Every time I've went back to that spot and been lucky enough to draw those elk have figured out no hunters want to come out here because it's about a three mile hike, it's hot, there's no shade, but there's no hunters either. So elk will go where they're They're kind of like this fluid animal that moves in response to pressure, kind of like water. I mean, you push against the water balloon and the water moves to a different spot in the balloon. It's kind of how these elk are. And so every year I hope I draw that tag because it's so consistent that I go to that trailhead I walk out there, no one's gonna be there, and they're gonna be out there. So it's just one of those things. Though, if you have enough experiences and go to enough different places, you kind of have those discovery movements and say, and what's funny is like if someone tells you, like, just describe that hunt, but put an antelope in there, and they're like, oh, yeah, for sure, we'll go after those antelope way out there in the flats. But then someone puts an elk out in that same country and I can't kill those things. Yeah, And I don't know. I think we on TV have a tendency to maybe create some narrow mindedness among hunters from the standpoint of what works or or how wide you're thinking should be. I mean, these are smart animals. They've figured it out. They've somehow. You know, a bowl that lives six years on public land, he's no dummy, Just like a white tail that lives past three years in the Midwest, there's no dummy. And uh don't don't discount some of the things they will do to stay alive. They just haven't figured out how to stay alive. That spot you're talking about always says you know if you go there. Um to me, man like my most valuable possessions in life, idols, just handful of things, just like reliable things. And you know you really rarely have more than a half dozen. And I'm not talking just one piece. I mean, just like the things that work and now and then for whatever reason you just scratch them. Yeah you know what I mean. Or you haven't done it so long and it doesn't feel like a thing anymore. But it's like knowing like the junk that works and stuff goes away like I used to be, because it feels like stuff changes, like I one of my things like that I counted by my things, like the ability that we would pound steelhead at the sixth Street damn in downtown Grand Rappers, Michigan. Right, I haven't done it forever the day. They haven't changed the damn they haven't changed the river. The steelhead are still there. But I feel like somehow if I went back, like I wouldn't be able to do it. I like lost it as my thing, you know. It's just I haven't done it so long. I almost feel like telling people. I recently had this thing where I had a friend move to a place I used to live, and I'm imploring, I'm begging him to go sit a certain avalanche slide to see if a bear came out, because I hadn't hunted in a decade. And he goes out and said, I went up, there's all snowy. I'm like, no, you're not listening. I'm saying, dude, it doesn't matter. The shoot will be fine. I don't care how much snow. You gotta wait through, park your damn car, walk up there and look, you know, And he thinks I'm trying to help him out. I'm just trying to know, like do I still I'm like, do I still have a thing or not? Here? And I'm telling like, you go this one time, you know, and he goes up called back, I'm like, never go there again. That I just needed to know that I still have that little thing. It works in these little places. I am a big advocate for conservation, but and a lot of people know. I sit on the board of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. One other people came to me and said, Randy, would you auction off your GPS with all your ways and you talking about Yeah, you talk about mixed emotions because you know I didn't do it. No, I I haven't and uh, you would have done it, but you lost your GPS so you couldn't. I found that GPS. Yeah, Joanna saw me a couple of months ago. I was in panic mode my GPS with all of this cherished hard. Yeah, I'd lost it. I'd been on muscrat trapping and I couldn't find the damn thing. Well, I have these customs heat covers made, and I put it somewhere where I wouldn't forget where I put it, and that's where I was. I found it in May sometimes but so you can auction it off, No, I have never got I will someday auction it off. But it kind of like what you were saying, Steve about, you know, in respect for people who are adaptable or whatever. I respect people who want to go out and figure it out, who who want to take the journey rather than be led to the destination and say here he is, shoot him. I mean the guy who just racks his brain and works and goes out before work or whatever on the weekends, and you know, he's skimped for time, but somehow he shoots a bowl every year. That guy's got my respect. Yeah. I like that guy. I always like, I always want to help that guy out. Me too. And I always want to help out the guy with his kid. Yeah, but dude, he and his kid, And I was like, hey, you know what I would do? But um, yeah, man. The thing about auction off it's just like, like you said, you're proponent of conservation. Um. It just brings up a thing that I think about all the time is when people talk about the need for hunter recruitment, the only will of that, the thinking goes that for hunting to survive politically. I mean, I'm not telling you that, I'm just for listeners that for hunting to survive in today's political climate, we need to have we need to have healthy, robust numbers, right. Um. But a thing that critics of that say, including many friends of mine who critics of the idea of hunter recruitment. We'll be like, well, why would you want to increase the likelihood of someone being in your spot? And when I get asked by people, and often will give talks, and the thing that always comes up when I give a talk because people be like, what can we be doing? Or why are hunter numbers staging that? Or why does the average hunter get older? So you know what, what what do you see from the people you meet? I'm like, you know what, Inspiring people to want to go is not a problem, right, There's plenty of motivation out there. The cost, I don't think it's there's not a lot of people. There aren't tons of people who want to hunt but can't because the cost. They're not hung as they don't have a good spot, and a lot of people aren't willing to just make the sacrifices necessary to find good spots. I found I take people out, take them on amazing trips, and then they are going to replicate that amazing trip unless they do tons of hard work to find their own stuff. And that's it for him. And when it comes down to it, so like I like, so if I was consistent with what I'm saying, I would give up all my spots. True, you would, because I would be able to make a handful of people. But it's just not something I'm willing to do. And some people, like you know, my older brother, he just thinks that all this talk is just ridiculous. And I've listened to some of your podcasts where the topics come up, and I'm kind of torn between. I'm I'm all about making sure opportunity exists, but not handing it to him. I think the worst thing you can do for a prospective hunter is to hand them something that just show them the easy way. Oh well, that's all there is to that, and you've cheated him out of the entire experience of what hunting really is. In my mind, I don't think that's the value that people when people say hunting recruitment, that's not what I think of. You know, bring him on out that, bringing them out there, make sure they kill something the first day. Now, you know, let them get a little called, let them, you know, maybe feel a little lost, let them have to work, and that's the part that is going to make them a hunter for the long term. It was if it's easy there's no reward in it. Yeah, I don't want to make new hunters just for the sake of doing it. No, if you told me if I signed some treaty with the non hunting public, he said, we'll never mess with you. Okay, in perpetuity, you will not be messed with politically or environmentally. I'll be like, Okay, I'll just be the only that honestly want to be the only guy that hunts. Is long is you're telling me you're not gonna mess with the habits at, You're not gonna mess with the hunting rights. You know That's fine. I'll just be the guy I'll take. I'll take that job. I've heard you talk about your brother's opinion on this and growing up in Michigan. I'm assuming it was a little bit like where I grew up in Minnesota, where everybody hunting fish, everybody, well, every household. Yeah, I mean I did not know anyone who really ate beef growing up until I went off to college. I didn't realize how much beef, chicken, and pork got standing. Oh, definitely, we ate all kinds like we ate. There was all around. Domestic meat was there, but they everybody hunted, but it wasn't like it wasn't like a subsistence area. But and so the point I'm getting to is, because some people grow up in that environment where you just work your butt off and you hunt and your fish and you trap and you do all those kind of things, you encounter experiences that shape inform you, so you don't need to be quote unquote recruited as a hunter. Everybody I grew up with they were going to be hunters because we came from a society of hunters. That was our identity. That you weren't, Oh, I'm a carpenter and then I'm a hunter. It was the reverse. No, I'm a hunter. Just who you were if if you were a young kid, you looked up to the guys who were hunters in your community, or fishermen or trappers or whatever. And so I I think a lot of quote unquote problems we we attribute to hunting recruitment are just the environment or atmosphere in which we're trying to bring them into it. You know, trying to bring someone who's only exposed to nature or to the natural world for one day out of a year. You're not gonna convert them to being a hunter, like we think of a hunter, you have to put in the effort in the work to immerse them to a level where they understand all the other parts of hunting. Yeah. I thought about that because I've been um befuddled at times by taking people out on that one day a year thing, you know, like, Okay, I took you on this, like we flew up with like a caribou hunt. Surely you'll now be a hunter and then ay, there's never hunt again. Yeah, I don't understand, dude. But then we're talking. It's not long ago. I feel like, but if someone took me sailing, they're like, hey, man, you want to come sailing for a day? Like why not? Later they're like, I can't believe he never became a sailor. I think, no, dude, I just thought to be interested to go sailing over day. We went sailing. That's great. I mean, do you regret going sailing? No? I want to like be a sailor. No, it's fun. You know. I think a lot of people look at that way like I look at it, like do you self defined as a hunter or not? I do, And that's you know, most people don't look at the world that way what people ask me. I think we were doing an interview with you guys, I think, and someone said, Randy, introduce yourself. Randy, I'm Randy Newberg. Hunter. It's just that's who I am. Yeah, professionally, I'm a c p A and everything else. But everyone who knows me, all the people I hang out with, their hunters, and we look at the world through a lens that is so much different than everybody else. And I used to think that I was the same as everybody else. But after you have enough of these life experiences, interacting with enough people who don't hunt or see the world differently, you realize that hunting gives you a vision of the world like nothing else. Yeah, I mean, nothing I can think of compares to the vision of the natural world you get if you are a hunter. I don't you mentioned trapping a couple of times. Before we get into trapping too far, let's just take a quick break. So, Randy, you mentioned trapping a couple of times, and now you mentioned that a hunter looks at the world way that no one else looks at it. I'll tell you that when I'm driving down a road and I drive over a bridge, I know what you're saying, and I look off the bridge, no one is looking at what I'm looking at or not. No one, very few individuals will select few individuals are looking off the bridge that way exactly. And just like when I drive through a value, I'm looking up the mountains like I do not see what all the people see. I think that I have. I think that hunting in some way makes it very difficult to look at the natural world with passivity. Completely agree. It's like you're looking at it sort of in a way, and it sounds egotistical, but you're looking at it the way like, well, how does this like pertain to me in some way? Like where are the animals? Or what's up with that spot? And it's I can I can only see it that way if I go on vacation. We just went on family vacation in Hawaii. The whole time I'm looking at those hills being like, no, what would have fella fine up there? This bone arrow? You know? I mean, like, I can't not see things that way. I can't. My wife has just been baffled by my inability to just sit on the beach. I am the same way my wife will say, is that all you think about. Yeah, I don't think about one thing when when we're doing whatever. You know, we might be driving down the road and I'm like, on our way home, I want to stop there, kind of like you're saying about the bridge, because at that culvert right there, I'm pretty sure I could trap a muskrat. That's what I was getting out, And I said, like driving over bridge, Like yeah, so I grew up trapping in Michigan. You grew up trapping to Minnesota. Yeah, a lot of the I don't know, fift I needed a little little bit of groundworker. Like when you're trapping, you Romans called a trap line, and no one just sets a trap, like you're on a trap line, and your trap line might be six what we call sets or locations where you have a trap set, or in the case of a mink long liner, you might have two D three hundred traps out or what you call sets. So when I was trapping, fifty percent of my sets that I would make would be on public rightways of bridges for mink and muskrat, mink, muskrat, raccoon. So like I divided trapping up in my head, water trapping, land trapping, so land trapping you trapped love it was early like we'd land we'd start land trapping. I don't member where. I can't remember that. When I would do it, I'd start land trapping October ten, UM, and you'd have twenty days of land trapping before water trapping open up. During land trapping, I would target red fox, but um, I would get gray fox, and I would get raccoons that weren't that valuable because raccoons hadn't come into prime quite yet. Um. And then November one, I would start water trapping Zone two. When I started water trapping zone too, I would set tons of public rightaways where you are climbing into it. You don't, you're it's not public land. You had permission on the land. You could park your car on the bridge or parking car on the side of the road and sort of skirt down the bridge abutment abutment, get down the river and then make your set below the high water mark. Yeah. So you just learned the same way. Now as a hunter, I look at like a like a brushy strip between two corn fields in a certain way. Yeah, driving over bridges, I had a way of I would just be able to assess it so quickly, whether it was interesting to me or not. And a lot of people ask me, well, how has trapping helped you as someone who hunts, because you you still trapped? Oh yeah, I mean, be honest, you came with me one day last year. I just sent all the muskrats to the Canada, to the fur auction and they sold them last two weeks ago. Um, what was your average for large? It's terrible this year. There's an article in the New York Times yesterday about how first coming back, no, they could say an anfort. Thanks to Putin, the Russian are trying to invade everything in Eastern Europe. So it's at least for a guy who's a muskrat mink guy like I am. Two years ago, I got twelve bucks a piece for a double XL muskrat. This year they were This year they were five bucks apiece. I mean premium winner skins. But you know, two weeks out of my winter I get to go on goof around, catch three muskrats, a few minks and raccoon, dozen't beaver, and it's just you catch three d scraps we always called scraps. You catch three hundred scrats and two weeks. Oh easy, if I if I didn't have taxis and to worry about, I could catch a thousand on them in two weeks. It's it's crazy what I trapped. Um. I tried a lot of muskrats, but I trapped fox kyle and incidental. That would be raccoon, possum, skunk on dry land possum in Michigan. Are you kidding me? I didn't know that we didn't have them in Minnesota. I didn't know that. I bet they do. Now there's two things. There's two animals that are traditionally southern that have been really expanding the range northern and that all he has to do with climate change. I don't think it has to do with just just slow adaptability. Raccoons well, several have alinas seemed to move northward all the time. A possums are moving northward, So yeah, you get death up. Incidentally, then I would trap muskrat, mink, beaver, raccoon, and then you were allowed, depending where you were, one or two river otters. And I would really work hard to get my otters. But I wouldn't sell my honors into the firm market. I'd sell them into the taxidermy trade, huh, because they were a novelty item, right, So like when I was trappling to Michigan, a bobcat in Michigan was worth fifteen bucks. Text terms could be hun here right now like good Western as they call them, Lynx cad even though it's not a Canadian lynx. You know, a really good colored spotted belly five six hundred bucks. Taxidermist will still pay you a hunterbucks for him, so it would vary, you know, back then when in my here coyotes are just coming in. Remember the first two kyles I remembers. I sold him in taxi Dervis, okay, because people were still kind of like wow, okay, and like people weren't as tied in then as they are now, just like pre Internet, somewhat pre internet, so it's like what you had access to, Like I always argue now that the souvenirs are obsolete. Can can I stop you there? You said somewhat pre internet when you were trapping, because remember I had an email and no well way pret when I started trapping. Okay, when I quit trapping, there was a university email thing, okay, because I was gonna say the Internet for me when I was trapping growing up, al Gore hadn't even graduated from college to invent the Internet. Yeah, I want to clarify the point. I set my first trap called my First Muskrat, ten years old, way pre in that. But I was thinking when I quit trapping at twenty two years of age, there was at the college I went through, there was some kind of university email thing and people were just starting to mess around. So yeah, but at that time when I sold those two kyos is. Around that time, I was saying that people used to have where you could go into a tax nurvis and they're like a provincial bunch. You know, you're going to a tax's be like, here's a Kyle, and it wouldn't occur to them that there's guys out west and stacks are kind of like Kyle stacked up every which way. They're begging someone to take off their hands and be like, holy sh it, you know, I'll buy that kyote off you. So you know, it was like that at the time, and as a site hose and say like souvenirs are going obo sleet like people were like, well, I went to France, you know, I bought this bottle of wine, but dude, buy that bottle of Safeway. Man, you know, I mean, like I could go and leid, but there's nothing I can't unless you find something out in the woods. There's nothing you can't give someone they just can't get. So it's like weird now to buy people like you go to Hawaii and buy a Seashell necklace. It's just weird because like I go to Seashell Necklaces dot Com. But we also gonna bring up like, I mean, that was really about trapping. It's you so you're ten years older I, which means you hit the fur boom. I missed the fur boom. Fur boom definitions vary. It's largely accepted that like the Great American fur boom, Yeah, I hit it perfect. Some people fudge you by a year or more. But for there's just this this explosion of good fortune for firm markets having to political, economical fashion. Yeah, commodities, it's a it's a hedge against commodities. It's when the dollar is going one way first can be going another and all those things in fur together. But everything exploded right for prices for for like anything with hair fur on it skyrocketed in value right overnight, and every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world went out. For sure. It was unbelievable. How many people in my little town of Big Falls trap You gotta figure just adjusting for inflation. Yeah, muskrats, it was like the era of the six dollar muskrat. But we're talking in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, in nineteen eighty four, my first year in college, I came home for Christmas break in, me and my uncle, uncle and I we got six hundred muskrats in a week. And what what's up traffic? What kind of cover? Like? What kind of have with that up? In these beaver flotage is in northern Minnesota, you north of Highway to you were allowed to cut the tops off there there are rat houses, and so you'd cut it off, put a couple of traps and there put the lid back on, patch it all up. You'd have your trap on a long wire. So when you walk by, the muskrat got in your trap, and you knew because he went down the hole into the water, pulled the pull the wire up against the hut. He can't molest the hut. Oh really? Okay? In southern Minnesota at that time, you couldn't. I think you can now, But we would go do that and one guy would just walk around these beaver flowagees and pull the muskrats out of the traps, put the traps back in, and the other guy would sit out of fire and skin muskrats because if if it was twenty below, you know, if you didn't skin them right away, they were hard. Oh yeah, you weren't gonna get them skin And so at that point in time, to be a college freshman and come home and get five six bucks for muskrats and you're half of them, is you know, three hundred. I went back to college for winter semester. Man, it was Domino's and high quality beer that semester. It was. It's just how it was. I came back spring break of that college year and we caught a hundred in a week, and we were catching them so fast Minnesota. Yeah, And like a lot of my buddies, we were catching so many we didn't have time to skin them all. And the fur buyer would come and we'd have them laying in the basement of my uncle's house, stacked up literally like firewood. And the guy would say twenty bucks apiece in the round. In other words, you didn't have to skin them anything. He didn't size them. It was just twenty bucks apiece. Take them and he'd just sit there and slap his twenty dollar bills on the table. And we were just I mean, we thought we had really hit the lottery. Yeah, first sold in three ways you sell it. During the fur boom, trappers got interested in trapping faster than they could learn their trade. There's a lot of people out for a quick dollar and they were interested in sort of the discipline art of being a trapper, and they would sell a lot of fur round and round means on the animal. So fur buyers like, I mean, add a layer out of this. There's three ways of self fur. There's three ways of selfur meaning in the round. I got two many ideas going once here. There's two ways that you actually sell fur. A fur buyer, like a country fur buyer, or a fur auction. During the fur boom, you had country for buyers just like a guy buying for oms garage. He's selling to the auctions, and the same trappers can basically selling those auctions as well. But to sell an auction you gotta sell it fleshed and dried. That's hard. It's it's it's harder to learn how to flesh beaver than it is the trap of beaver. During the fur boom, guys will go out and trap, and just every night on their way home from trapping, go to the country fur buyer and sell fur in the round to the fur buyer. Or you could skin it, which is the easy part, and sell it green. Yeah, I sold all my raccoons, all my beaver green skinned but not fleshed and stretched. But I could sell them at a small auction that way because I could just freeze him a big chest freezer. So during the fur but yet at guys that didn't know what end of a knife was sharp, but they were trapping and selling the fur buyers in the round. But you're walking and selling red fox in the round for sixty bucks. It was crazy. But again remember we're talking about right, and you take those dollars for inflation. I remember having a couple hundred bucks in two my senior year in high school. That fall, I got fifty some mink before school, just running a trap line on my way to school, and I think I averaged like twenty four bucks a mink that's male female in the round. No, I I mean, because they're quick to skin and and dry and stretch, but actually come off clean like a mink. You don't have the flesh from two. Now that's the it's easy. And I just think about that now. I'm like, man, if I could get whatever dollars was in two, if I could get that today, I'd have to get out out or TV because I'd be trapping man all day long. But you're you're in a way, you were getting screwed. Because what I wanna say was when I came in four, I was coming in on the euphoria of the fir boom, but without the prices. There was a lot of information out there. There's a lot of traps use traps out there, but I had missed it by a couple of years. So but I came into a time when people there were still affort because it hadn't gone totally bad yet. We would get and I was ten, I couldn't really started in the earlier. The first day ever set traps was I set traps at midnight on November one. By seven am on November one, It's like I have an alibi for that day, dude, I could think exactly where it was. By seven am, we had three muskrats. I think we had nine traps. We had three muskrats. Two were caught. One was caught in front of Joe Babcox house in a one ten conno bear. One was caught in front of this this Foster family's house on North Lake one ten conno bear. And we caught one on the north trending side of Crazy Mary's Point in a number one single long spring traps that under a stump. We're a bank then entered. I could tell you every damn detail of that day, and we sold those muskrats for I think our big ones that year. We caught twenty the first year, and my old man lent it, lent us the money like I have older half brother. He gave a six number one, He gave a six number one long spring Victor long Springs. Then what we did is our old man lent us money. He drew up a little contract, even on a yellow legal paper, and lent us enough money to buy one dozen Northwoods one ten conno bears, And we caught our first year trap in twenty muskrats. One smallish raccoon and made enough to not only pay for the conno bears we bought, but to go buy a bunch of more connobaris. And I was off running because at the time, if you called a buck mink, a buck makers worth twice as much as a female. And it's even then minks held because you would get forty bucks for mink. Yeah, oh it's it was crazy. And I remember my two brothers one time late in the year, I like quit, I pulled out of our trap and collect to touch at my two bars. I can remember what someone's going out of school. But anyways, they went to set some more muskrat ponds and I didn't participate, and they came home and picked up two mink out of muskrat sets. Remember the dudes walking through with for forty bucks a piece and being blown away. I remember night six, I shot of mink with a thirty two special, took his head off and board a groove down the center of his back, and we took it to it for by her name, the Abe Sallessina, and Abe Sallessina offered me like four dollars for that, making my old man cursing him out, really because he thought you were getting a bad treatment, he said, I'd invite you to sell that mink for more somewhere else than the dude bottle being right and want to take to make so I was missing a part. So now here you are what you said. You're twenty two and last time you trapped. So I trapped from the time I was ten to the time was twenty two, and I thought I was taken. I was still into it. I was paying. I remember paying a guy named Mark June who later became like a video white tail guy. I remember paying Mark June two fifty bucks for a day's lessons in trapping Red Suburbia, Red Fox. So do you miss it? Oh? Yeah, But I still said every I still set traps because I still I like. I eventually settled into the thing I like to do is trapped beaver through the ice. I love it. It became my thing. I liked everything about it. I liked. We would go out and out in the ice December January with a push broom and push brooms, snow away on the ice looking for bubble trails, exhale trails and take axes and chain sauce and ship and get down through that ice and stringing snares and stringing three thirties and I loved every minute of it. I like falling through the ice. It's like I liked everything about it. Man, And I still now will trap. I trap to beaver to spring. I'll still trap it, and I'll send it and get a tan and I'll haven't made it into stuff. So I got. I trapped my own hat, I trapped my own mittens. I got some stuff getting made right now. I got a beaver that my brothers haven't made into a hat for his wife. So I'm still in the fur business. But I'm just in person. I'm into personal use. And then I eat the beaver meat. I like beaver meat well, but I'm not into trap. I'm not trapping numbers like I used to out after a beaver. And I know some people are listening to this and probably thinking, man, these guys, they're off their rock here talking about trapping. But if you've trapped, you understand the excitement of ain't in bed at night thinking, oh that one that set, that last set I made tonight, that's gonna catch one in the morning, and you almost can't get to sleep at night. You can't it's worse than opening the night before opening day of deer season. I could never sleep between seven because we'd go out and set at midnight. Because we live in a high competition area. Okay, we'd said our pre we picked like what's the premos spot, and we'd set start set midnight and we set like even even up into whatever age. When I quit trapping, I was still set traps from midnight through the dawn up to dark. Wow. And I would get a lot of sets out. I would punch in usually more than seventys wowe for mixed bag from otter to scraps. It was never that competitive for me. I mean, everyone kind of okay, Randy's gonna be out here to be out there. It was no one bothered. But before we get done there and get too far, I'll just get started on talking to we We could be honest is in here and looking at us like, man, these guys can really spin it out. But I want to. I want to just before you make it, if I want to say one last thing about the people think you're off the rock about trapping. Yeah, I remember making the observation and I'll stay by this today. The most skilled outdoors and are trappers, no doubt. And here's how I'll prove it. If you fish, there's people out there who just fish. Yeah, right now, anyone hunts knows how to fish. Correct, anyone that traps knows how to hunting fish. That's exactly right. It's just like you know what I mean, It's just a thing. You're better a trappers, better than everybody else. You know more bits of And I have to talk about I like, I remember I made this point before about guys who want lions with hounds. People be like, oh yeah, what's the challenge and shooting line out of a tree. And then I met some houndsman who hunt lions, and I realized that guy holds more bits of information in his head. Right, if you can somehow quantify information way we have digitally, right and add up how many bits of hunting information does a guy who shoots white tails out his father in law's farm in Wisconsin? How many bits of information are in his head? And how many bits are in a houndsman's head? He has gigabyte upon gigabyte more information in his head. Yeah, I a trapper, A good trapper. You can't when you talk about read and sign the ability to read sign and it's just in space awareness and having a landscape map in your head. You can't get closer to it than a hardcore trapping. The anticipation that the trapping requires, as far as anticipation of what that animal is going to do, just makes you think an experiments so much more than hunting does. Because trapping, they are stepping within and you know a two inch area, you got you, guys, I need him to step right here, okay, archers, Yeah, forty yards is good enough to circle forty yards? Yeah, which means the eight yards circle circle with an eight yard diameter, and it's talk about a circle that's an inch and three quarters. Yeah, and the most some archers who are just badass woodsman, but try to get that to a two inch circle. And the benefit is with archer, you need to be there when it happens. With trapping, you don't need to be there when it happens. Yeah. I want to get to this point, Steve So, I read your book about your bison hunt in Alaska. I mean I knew you back when you did your show on Travel Channel and and uh I lucked out. I drew a free range bison tag in Montana. For it was January two thousand thirteen. I said, all right, I gotta go find a good bison book. I read your book, and you are either a stark raving nut or one hell of an author that makes that hunt and the danger involved seemed way greater than it is, or you just have a death wish. I read that and I said, this guy is he owes the world the tragedy if this is how he conducts himself out in the wild all the time? Was it is this just like a really good piece of writing, or was it really that wild? It was one of It was like the most intense ten days that I've spent hunting. It's some of the most intense reading I've ever But here's the thing. Here, here's I'll take a couple of things. It's like, that's a different kind of hunt. Like the Copper River hunt is a difficult hunt, and it used to be much more difficult because at the time I drew it, all the land along that river was inaccessible because it's tribal land. Now they have a set access feed for people that draw that tag. At the time I drew it, there was no such thing. So you have this river, and there's herds of animals that migrate a good distance forty miles. They ca up by these glaciers in the wrangles, and they wenter down on these gravel flats, these willow flats along the Copper River, and there's really nearly distribution. It's a humongous area, maybe a hundred animals, and it's spread out over a ton of ground. And at the time, you could not hunt the river corridor. All the huntable land you can find down below high watermark. Okay, on a gravel flat, does blow high watermark and kill it there, Okay, as long as it didn't go up. If it walked up, you're screwed. Or you could get past the buffer along the river by wading up a tributary stream to get in, because then you're fine. You're blow high watermark to get into the hunting area. The year I drew tag, they gave out twenty four permits. Four guys killed an animal. The seasons eight months long. They find that most people don't show up. Once you find out, they send you a letter. After you draw the tag, they send you a letter. They used to this is two thousand four. They send you letters saying like, Okay, I drew the tag, but basically you're screwed because there's serious land ownership issues. You have to understand what you're getting into. It's like there's major access issues. There's a lot of barriers to this. I went, and the minute I drew it, I sold the story of this before going, I sold the story of this to a magazine outside magazine. I was a writer and at the time I lived a very hand of mouth existence. So I'm doing a story that will offset my costs in doing this. So I'm gonna get like four thousand bucks to do the story, the hunt, all everything is gonna cost a lot. I had to do it. So I find out and people say like, well, why did you write like a book? Like why did you write your book? There's two reasons. There's the there's the not the real reason, but there's like this like reality reason that oftentimes has to do with with money, right, and it just is pragmatic. I guess, like, well, because I was gonna write an article about it, you know, and I sold the thing, why did you really do it? Well, I'm very interested in Buffalo. I only write about what I'm interested in. I got in as a story chronicles. My interest in Buffalo spawned was spawned by me finding a buffalo skull in the Madison Range in a weird place like nine tho feet above sea level the mountains. I went up having a genetic line extracted from it head at Radio Carpon dated like the book tells this big story of Buffalo and in America. But the minute I found at skull, I was like, Man, I'm gonna write a book about these animals. I just don't know what the storyline is gonna be. And then I drew that tag. So I had a lot riding on finding a buffalo and killing and I got into situations doing that that we're in and in I chronicle all this like very detailed way, and like, yeah, when I was doing that book, you know, because some people just fabricate whole cloth and then publishers get in trouble and writers get in trouble. So when I wrote that book, they made a big point like I had to go over everything on maps, provide names for people for them to call. They just like wanted to know. But I could take you up there right now and walk you through it, and once you see what I'm talking about It would all make sense in that you're confined. In my case, you're confined to either being in the Dadina, Nadina or Chettilina River. You're not gonna get to Anals river. The only way to get to Anals rivers is wait till it freezes, which is like the other guys that kill buffalo or hunting off snow machines going up the frozen river, wait till the river freezes, and they're killing them in the winter when the bad weather has pushed them down into the willows. The letter I got from fishing game that says you're screwed points out successful hunters on his hunt, and that's why they give you eight months to start September one, and you have eight months. The reason they give you that it's because the river freezes. They say. Most guys that killed buffalo and this hunt do it off snow machines when the animals are pushed down in the river flats. But you should be aware that river hasn't frozen in three years. Okay, they hadn't been killing any buffalo off that hunt. When I first drew the tag, I was like sweet. I talked to my brother, I got a brother in anchorage. He's got friends and snow machines. I'm gonna go up in march, and we're gonna go up. You got your low daylight, but you just basically cruise the river up and down, up and down until they're you just standing in a non on the hunkle willow out on a willow island. It got where it just wasn't gonna be. And so I got this idea that I'm gonna have friends bring me down. We're gonna hunt together. And I'm at first like, oh fine, one on the river. So I get my brother, two of our buddies who are avid rafters, and we get down and there's three main river areas we have identified as being areas where they've been killed in the past. We passed one past the other, get to the third and have seen like a set of tracks. These guys have jobs. They're not starving like you. They're like, sorry, dude, I'm like, I guess our only option here is that you'll leave me here and you know, like cell phones and ship like that's not going on. You'll leave me here and you'll come back and get me like a week over week now on a Sunday, and I'll be backed down here. I have no way of getting up or down the river. I'm on the Copper River at the mouth of a tributary, and I got a little patch of ground I'm looking at. You're not doing ship because I can't even leave the little island I'm on because I'll be on off land and I know I'm gonna write about this, so I can't do like a wink and nod, right, I could get checked into or I'm also very vulnerable because I can't have a dead animal land somewhere. I can't have it land. You know. At that point, it's like I'm gonna have to just start. I'm just gonna have to put waiters on and wade up this cold ass river by I sell and if I find one. And I did shoot a one thousand pound animal that I need to then move by myself down to where I can get it into my body's raft next week, and there begins like a whole set of problems. So you had invited me, and so like, yeah, it was like it's not replicable, but it's like it all it seems weird, like the ship that I had to go through. But when you start factoring in like all these decisions, and I'm constantly being egged on by a couple of things. The rareness of drawn the tag. They've now they've since made it retroactively once in a lifetime. Once you draw a buffalo tag in Alaska, and there's some gravy hunts, it's like the Delta junction hunts are basically shooting buffalo out of oat fields once you draw a tag. And it proved me once left that once you draw it, you cannot draw it again. I'm not talking successfully harvest. Once you probably can't draw it. So I'm now in capable, and I was correct. It was once literally once in lifetime hunt. And I knew that I wanted to write my damn article and I wanted to then write my book, and the way to do that was to kill that buffalo. Because and just before that, I read you leave. Yeah, you had called that summer and said, hey, we should go to southeast Alaska and do a sick of blacktail hunt. And then you and Dan came down with limes, I think, and we had to cancel that hunt. And then I read a bunch of other hunts. Yeah, and I read that over the course of that fall, I'm reading the book and I'm like, if this guy takes this many risks just to write a freaking story, I'm really glad he got lines to these and I'm not up in the alpine of Prince of Wales Island trying to survive with this crazy ass because i mean, looking back on it, do you say, what the hell was I thinking? No, No, because as a real it was just one of those great it was just one of those great hunts. And I'll say this man's we had a conversation this, you know, on this podcast. We had a conversation about um, you know, like the way how how filming or writing effects the experience. It's becoming separable for me now though, because I've been gifted the ability to do things and go places and have experiences um that I just simply would not have ever had were it not for you know, writing and filming, because it's just I simply wouldn't have had the money in time, you know, I have, Yeah, I got lime, not filming, but I've had a lot of other problems and like small problems, large problems, dangerous situations did in large part I just was egged into those situations somehow by one by my desired hunt. Cause I got friends have never stepped foot near filming and never stepped footing near right and they get in all kinds of situations. Does tend to I'd be lying if I said it does tend to add a second layer of motivation. It does. I feel the things and stay out doing them because, um, I'm almost wish it wasn't true, but it's true. I may have um watching my buddies and I wasn't as experienced in the out of doors in two thousand four. Um, I think it's to the two thousand four hunt. Yeah, standing on that bank in a strange place in Alaska, watch my bodies, so like see you and like there's you know, yea grizzlies, so a wolf read up from camp. It's like, yeah, there would have been a strong thing to be like, hey, you know, it's just not the right year. Yeah, But I was like, no way, man, Because as much as I'm a dedicated hunter, I guess I'm I'm like a dedicated writer. Yeah. And I've spent a lot of time in Alaska. I locked out. My grandparents lived there. I got three uncles who lived there, and I go to some crazy places in Alaska and the risks, just Alaska itself has inherent risks like no other place. And then you are there alone and anyone who has been on a free range bison hunt like you and I have, and you tip one of them over, You walk up to it and say, what in the f am I gonna do here? Seeing one at Yellowstone Park or seeing one at the you know, the local bison farm does not do it justice too. When that thing's laying on the ground, it's cold, you're wet, and all you have is a knife, and you add all those together, and you did this in Alaska. I was just like no freaking night this day. The day I killed that one, I was camped on a ridge. It was like a ridge, but basically at the top of a canyon, like the plateau above a canyon. You know, it seemed like a ridge, but I actually didn't drop off the other side. But uh, I was. It's snowed. I was sleeping under a little red tart red on top still round bottom. I had that tark strung up and I was actually burning buffalo chips because they had wallowed. They had wallowed in that area of summer, and I had a little mound of them stacked up under my thing. I just had a tarp, sleeping bag, buffalo chips backpack and um woke up in the morning it was all like wet snow had fallen and I was gonna light us start my alcohol stove to make some coffee. I was like, well, I'd better take a look down in the canyon, you know, um, before I start my sofa. And I just grabbed my rifle and peered over and just like there was the freaking herd of him coming down, maybe because the snow just single foul. And um, there's a big cow and they're up towards the top and there was wet snow, and I shot her with a I'm left hand, I shot the right hand and three h mag I borrowed from a body of mine, and that thing started going down that wet snow. It's a long drop, very steep pitch, and when it hit a stand of aspens or poplars, you know, I mean, it shattered. I mean it was like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins, man, but just like smash and just stuffed flying everywhere. And I went down and that thing was so entangled in trees I couldn't lift its head up. I remember I just started. I was like, I was just gonna try to get a back leg off that thing. Yeah, And I eventually dragged the back leg away, and then I cut a little gate to try to get some guts out of it. It was just it for three days. Wow. For three days I cut and carried, and that didn't even get it down to where I needed to get it to. I cutn't carry just to get it down to the tributary. So of all of the crazy things that writing and filming has maybe pushed you a little further than you otherwise would have you look back, is that one of the defining ones that you say, you know what, There's nothing else I could have done in my ordinary life that would have given me this experience, this sense of reward, this sense of accomplishment. It was four There's four trips that made I guess. There's there's four trips that made I feel like you're interviewing meet Mandy. But there's there's four trips that I'm just curious. Yeah, there's four trips that made me like who When I think of like who I am? Um? As a hunt of the fortress and made me who I am? That's one of them? All four we're in Alaska. Uh. The first was the first carribo hunt I went on on the north slope of the Brooks Range, just like pickup truck canoes. Me and my brothers just had no idea what we're getting into. The second was the first time we went on a very unsuccessful doll sheep hunt. Just park truck across the river, start hiking nine days, saw one ram about three miles away that was sub legal. Um. The third was a successful sheep hunt we went on where we mean we killed two rams the self guided wall, you know, and in that buffalo hunt are the ones that like, if I could give everything else, if I had to keep forward and give the rest of the way, I'd keep those four. No doubt, We'll all quit interviewing you. I'm I'm overstepping here, But I'm just curious because now that I reflect back on having hunted for thirty eight years and tagged along with my grandfather and my dad even before that, I look back and there's just certain events that I'm like, you know what, no other activity that I could have done in my life outside of being a hunter would have exposed me to that would have allowed me to walk away with that perspective. Maybe that confidence maybe pushed myself to that edge of saying, what the f am I doing here? But then somehow being able to pull out of that. Uh. And I've not been in combat, so I'm just you know, I'm I'm not trying to equate hunting to what it's like to be I haven't got a shoot at you or anything. But of hobbies and activities or passion in life, I can't think of anything that would have given me those experiences of you know, I could probably listen a handful of them like you do. And so now when you get to be fifty, you reflect back on that and you're like, well, ship is am I just kind of out to pasture? Now? Am I done with those really cool experiences? Or do I got more of them ahead of me? And you're kind of getting this reflective mode at that point, and then then you start interviewing the host of the show because you feel like you're a statesman. Those challenges and tough things that happened to you and the discomfort and the like rewards and all that that makes a special caliber of person. I like, oh, man Or people. I hang out all man Or people. But when it comes to like being comfortable around people in bad situations, like being confronged people in the outdoors, Guys that have been through the military, mountaineers and big game hunters tend to be like people that I just like feel comfortable around that I feel like like reliable. Do you mean, like when you're with people and just people, you gotta take care of people to not only take care of themselves, but take care of everybody else. I remember a guy talking a most the people he fished with, and he said, Steve, you gotta wait in line just to wash a dish. I mean, I mean like the doozy hangs out with, Like if you want to wash dishes, get in line, buddy. Everybody wants to wash them dishes. It's like that level of just like attacking problems. You know, there's not many things in life to give. I'm sure there's more than I'm naming, but lifetime exposure to those things seems to make the kind of guys that you gotta get in line if you want to wash a dish. Yeah, And maybe I'm biased because just about everyone I hang out with as a hunter, and so I can sit here and share these kind of experiences with them, and I can have this very wow. Yeah, I get that to its greatest detail. And when I'm in the field with them, I'm very comfortable around them. There's some people where if you gave him a butter knife, I'm so uncomfortable. I think this guy's gonna figure out how to cut his thumb off of a butter knife. You know. There's just some of those people where you're like, I gotta get the hell out of here. I'm not gonna have any fun if I'm with a guy like this. And usually they don't have the background of the three types that you mentioned, the military, of the mountaineers, or big game hunners, and maybe there's a couple other sl For me, it's just yeah, That's why I asked a question of how profound that hunt was. That's a situation I'm in now is you know, I got kids and my wife. I had this ongoing debate where I expose them to I'm not negligent anyway, but I expose themto what we might be regarded as dangers by a big segment of the oh yeah, population right. To me, it seems like very pedestrian, not dangerous at all. But some people might regard activities that I expose my kid kids to kids too, as being like not age appropriate or being a little bit dangerous. And I'm always like, yeah, okay, that's a little bit dangerous, like he might cut his finger. But they always point out we're having this conversation your day, someone's like everybody keeps talking about my kid cuting his finger with his knife. I always cut my fingers with my knife when I was a kid, So it's like, who, dude, like one how like, let's not act like that's the end bad. Yeah, it's like that's just a given, you go cut his finger. But I always like, okay, let's deprive him of the dangerous stuff. But at what at what danger does that come out of danger? I think because later on it's like you went up with a helpless person and there's other ways to get there. It's like, you know, I don't know if there's like some Bible pass like there's many ways to get to whatever, there's other ways to get there. I'm not saying like if you don't hunt and fishing your kids you're gonna have crappy kids. Because's certainly not the case, because you can get there a bazillion ways. But from my exposure, my experience where I come from the way to get there that I understand, the way to get there that I can present to my children is very much that way. Because them watching me right isn't gonna get them there, true, it's just not. Then watch me record podcast isn't gonna get them there? Okay, then watch me flay fish. It's hard to explain. I feel as all that might really my son felt a lot of danger when you'd see me balance in the debts and the credits. It's like, Dad, the way you really handled that that advocates you are the Charlie Daniels of the advocaust. Dad, Man, I feel comforted now you've taught me the life lessons. But yeah, um, and it's a false in some ways. You might regard it as the false world now because um, in my mind, the nature of subsistence has changed for people to live anywhere else side of small handful locations around the world. The nature of like subsistence hunting and fishing. You know, it's not like I always say, like I'm gonna beat fine, dude, you can take hunted fishing way from me on that. I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna start right. You know. It's like reality TV, like if they don't get this, they'll die. Right, It's just not true. But I guess I've just in some way opted that I believe in. Elements of that subsistence lifestyle, right still pertain, all right in the main risk of imminent starvation isn't there, But there are tremendous risks of like character, um fortitude, understand how do you use stuff? How do you use physical objects? Yeah, my son went to college back in New York, and I wondered, Man, how is he going to fit in back there? He's coming from Montana we did hunt, fish, you know, shoot whatever, and he's going to an Ivy League school that's kind of well, it's known to be not like Montana. Yeah, and so I'm worried that. Okay, he goes there, How's he gonna fit in? How's he gonna cope with the different environment and the things he learned in the coping skills that he brought from hunting and fishing and understanding how a natural world works. He blew through it with no problem. I was so impressed with how adaptable, so much would he learned as a hunter fisherman shooting, cutting his finger with a knife when he's six, you know, shoot your eye out. I mean he had to be begun when he had like five. But he was in a whole group of people that were not exposed to that, and he kind of emerged from that not just unscathed, but almost like a leader that they looked to because would look at like the woods upbringing and say, oh, they might miss out on some sort of social you know, aspect that they're gonna get more if you grow up in a big city like New York. But that's not the case. It's like you still have to have all those relationships and communicate with people and work through all that, and you're probably gonna learn it because of the hardships and even a better way, in a stronger way, where like you're saying, he went there to that Ivy League school and people are like, wow, this dude, Like yeah, strong and just his perspective of ability to look at a more complex problem and not needed to be sanitized down to little compartments of you know, oh, well, this is a historical question, no, he I think hunters a general rule of people who understand the natural world can stand back and look at a bigger, more complicated problem with multiple variables like you see in the natural world, and other people struggle with that. And I didn't really give it much that until watching him go through that process and watching some other kids his friends go through and do it similar things in different places, and I we'd have the discussions of how you fitting in there? Fine, what what do you mean? Like, well, you're the one walking around with camouflage boots on an IVY League campus and everyone else's you know whatever, you got your mad bomber beaver fur hat on and your chopper mints. I don't care. I'm warm even able to put everything in just a very simple solution, very pragmatic, And so this whole idea that we got it kind of coddle everybody, you know. Back to your point of what is the future danger of removing all the dangers today? I think we end up with kids, or they become adults that can't handle a lot of things that maybe some of us just take for granted. I remember being out with I bought this this sit on top kayak called the Big two in a kayak, very stable sit on top fishing kayak um And you know, I bought it very much. Minded out fishing my boy when the seattle are there's a lot of water around there. I just wanted something that I could get in the water and the whole time, like sit on top the whole time, Like what if the kid falls in the water in the winter, And I was like, all my thinking was like, how he's gonna not fall in the water. And we go out like I'm bundled up. You know, he's got Obviously I don't let the kid in near your boat with I life jacket on. Um we get on the water. I mean it's you know, January February, Pacific Northwest. And he was offended by later accused him of just basically jumping out of the kayak. He just like all of a sudden, he's in there, and then he's in the water. He like, look, it seemed to me that he did some kind of barrel roll out of his seat into the water. He fell very much. He did not want to be in that water, and like like he's just there and then he's floating in the water, you know, And I hauled him out of there, and like, at first my mind is just racing, you know, won the wrath of his mother. Yeah, but sure, I mean I didn't have him out of the water five seconds. I was glad he fell in. Yeah him, because I'm kind of like one falling out of the boat too. If a dude falls out of a boat in really cold weather, here's what you do. We're gonna run through it right now, so you understand like the situation we're in, right yea, And yeah, now I look at it like the one thing I didn't want to have and fall out of the boat. Now, when I think of like highlights of the last year, I'm like, man, you know it sounds perverse. I'm like, it was great when Jimmy fell out of that boat, because like, look how much content we got out of that, Like life's content, you know, revery like anard time we were down in Baja fishing and then I went out in the dark to fish, and I told him a thousand times and like stay here, Daddy's gonna walk out in the dark. Don't move, you know that I was going on to get a better as I come up something's gone and look he's like rolling around the tide. I read out and grab him. That's just kind of like drag him up them in the shower. I was like, why in the world, you know? But um, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm kind of glad because at something I feel like it's adding layers out there. It is. I I mean, I think about the stuff that I did. My parents would have been in jail and we would have been in Foster home in today's world and actually dangerous about in my podcast that we were talking about last week, I tried to me and my cousins tried to build a bomb to blow up train bridge when or eight years old. I mean, you think about doing that now, But it's one of I learned. So yeah, I learned so much about how you can saw a shotgun shell in half and pull the wad out and dump the powder and a paint can. And I mean, and that if you didn't direct the force a certain direction on they did was blow a scour hole out between the two railroad ted. I mean, but the stuff that we did was so valuable as I got older in life, and maybe it's because of the path I chose later in life. It was valuable. Maybe if I hadn't done all that stuff, I would have taken a different path than people would have said. Maybe that knucklehead grew up in that little town there. He doesn't know his asked from third base, but how to blow up railroad? But anyhow, all right, so let's uh, you mentioned it, plug it you've been working on a podcast deal larging conservation is I'll let you tell me. Yeah, and it's it's thanks to your friends here at zero point zero. Uh, we were on a bear hunt last year. Janice and Dan were filming me and we talked about all kinds of things. That's got us a hunt to eat T shirt infamy. There you go, what do you call them the Latin? Yeah? That that magnate hunt. You gotta hunt of eat T shirt? I do? Thanks? Yeah, did you give it to him? Yeah? Yeah? That good plug here there. He's not gonna send you one. You gotta go to hunting dot com. Yeah. I mean they're like, you need a podcast, buddy. You you're just like spouting off all the time. You're blowing and carrying on, you know, with no one. Yeah, you know, just nothing but a few seals and you know, to two poor camera guys, and uh so it took us the last part of a year to decide we're going to do this. And so thanks to these guys, we have the other podcast at zero points zero producers called hunt Talk Radio I e. Raindy Newberg, Gun Filtered and it's just me and friends talking about hunting, fishing, growing up, conservation, a lot of politics, and probably we got into marital advice at one time. Didn't know you know, you know we we we end these podcasts where you get to have a concluding thought, Yeah, give me some marriage not that I needed, but give the listeners marital advice as you're concluding. OK. I don't like to dictate your concluding thought. No, if you see fit, every camera guy I have is like in his twenties, early thirties, he's getting in this, you know, thinking of getting married, like Dan, isn't Dan getting married? All right? And so there are I'm gonna wear the pants in my house and I just about driving the ditch. When I hear him say that, I'm like, yeah, right, And sooner or later it's like, all right, you've been married twenty six years, Randy, give me one piece of advice. So this will be the concluding thought. Yeah, I'm gonna do marriage advice from mine. Okay, if you want a long, happy marriage, be more interested in peace than you are justice. You don't have to be right. Being right is expensive, financially expensive, emotionally expensive. And you don't get hunting fish nearly as much as the guys who let let them be right half more than half the time they're right anyhow, So you know what are Yeah, it's not about this whole idea of justice. I'm right, she's wrong. You'll regret saying that I proved you that I actually was. Yeah. I mean, anyone who's been married more than about a month has been down that path. Yeah, and so I just tell everyone be more interested in peace than you are justice, and all will be well. I have three pieces of barrel advice I tried doing quick said a very strong precedent um. When you meet a man or a lady, live the life that you want to live. Ten years into your marriage will not earned back. You don't get freedoms exactly. The news doesn't get looser. You guys who would start dating a girl and they're all infatuated, and you know it's like Thanksgiving at their parents and you know, instead of doing whatever, and then a couple of years down the road they're like, well, you know, I actually usually on Thanksgiving, I'm usually you know, we usually fish steelhead around. Thanksgivings are kind of coming into the rivers. It's like that, you don't you go we go to Mike MoMA's every year for Thanksgiving. But yeah, well, I mean normally it's like live it, you know from the start. Yeah, it's much you're talking about dragging yourself away from mama. Drag even at its most difficult point, at its most difficult point in the beginning, find it in yourself to drag yourself away from mama. See piece of Marral. Advice I have is uh, how long you've been married to you? My anniversary is coming up. Well I know that mean one year now. I got married two thousand eight. Okay, so you're seven years in. Yeah. I'm giving advice, not from like having with you know, weathered time. I'm just like, okay, just observations. Um, you always here. It's like cliche pick your battles, oh for sure. It's like there's just some stuff like, for instance, issues with my kids, like like what they're doing, when who's gonna where for holidays? You know what I mean, Like what their clothes are, like what time we're supposed to get up or what time they gotta be Just like, okay, yeah, that's just static. Just like and I'm not I'm not saying that just the kids. But there's many issues, like many matters of of how our house is structure, how our time is structured, matters of our social life. Okay, there's just a lot of stuff like when you're gonna be working, when you're not gonna be working. Um that I'm just like, okay, you know we're gonna be moving, Okay, So like the house we're gonna live in. I know I have some input on this, but not a ton um drum rolls. Number three, number three? How can I that? Remember? Number three? Oh? Read the works of Cormac McCarthy. He never talks about marriage. But read the works of Cormac McCarthy and try to decipher his moral code, which is consistent throughout his works, And then and and read them and internalized Cormate McCarthy's moral code, and you'll have a better marriage. Huh. I'll have to read that it's you're saying a huge you're making a huge commitment for yourself. Well, like, is it? It's not, it's not. Well, I just just wrote many books, but start with the Border trilogy. Oh no, and I'll sum them up because also the way I've interpreted the works cars. But there's a morality there where a lot of people want to live in a world that existed before they made the decisions that they've made. Okay, yeah, did you go like, oh, but you're still trying. It's like I see it all the time. I have to reading Corn McCarthy like, oh no, no, buddy, you're trying to live the life that that that existed before you made a very willful decision to take a certain path here, abandon the notion that that that you like, abandoned the idea that you're somehow going to get out of the situation you're in, kids, whatever. It's like, you're here now. There is the life outside of this. Stop pretending that there is. Yeh, yeah, that's how long you've been married. You could have a concluding thought. It doesn't have to be about marriage. Now. I'll give them about marriage. I think twelve years, two thousand three, So I got a couple under my belt. They've all been great. Um, this piece of vice actually came from another fishing client of mine. I think I got it her a few times her her, Yeah, and she'd been a in a long, long marriage and um, she basically got dumbed for the you know, the secretary. It's something along those lines, and not the fishing guy. She not the fishing guy. She didn't she didn't see it coming, and it really beat her up. And so she went on. She embarked on this you know, like it was it was a pole, but it was like a journey. But there was like this poll that she constantly kept up with, and she kept tallies and notes, and when she saw old couples, she always went to him and said, hey, what's what was What's like, what's the secret? What's your one little tip or whatever? And what she came away from with it all the number one one word that people always said. And everybody's like, oh, it's love, you know, It's like, well, love is bullshit. You know a lot of times love just does not have that lasting powers. What does is commitment. And I always try to remember that, well, I'm committing, you know, and I believe, and I have to believe that my wife is also committed to me and that always, you know, no no problems getting too hard times Ronnie Bain, who has no shortage of wise observations. I was talking to an old man one time that was speaking of his wife and the only and said, you know, ron I wouldn't give you ten cents for another one just like her, but I wouldn't take a million dollars for And there's sort of like a fatalistic sort of thing there. It's just like that's what I got. Well, I think any of us would get to hunt, travel as much as we do. I gotta have something figured out. And I think that's why a lot of people ask me for maritle and that I'm giving an elk cutting seminar, and someone will raise your hand, how does your life wife let you hunt so much? And so I got it. I feel like I'm going into this doctor field discussion there or something, and I tell him the best deal I ever made in my marriage was when we built our last house in two thousand and four. I told my wife, you can take of the cost of the house and add it to furnishings whatever you want. I don't care. I don't care what color, what size, but I don't never want to hear it. Budget discussion about hunting over again, and she jumped on that like a rat out of Cheetoh man, she was on it, And so hunt a lot. But here's the thing, though, I love being married, like, oh me too. I love seeing my wife. I love being married, I love having my kids. I like to hunting fish. It's like, so, yeah, there's and I'm not saying that all everything that I'm arguing is I'm behalf of me out hunting fish more. But I think that, like we're saying there, there's certain lessons to be found hunting and fishing, and there's certain things where you know, that's just like something that's important to me, and I've found a way to have it be that it's just like an integral part of the household. Even though my wife, you know, familiar with sympathetic tords. But what never does it self identifies the avid angler? Yeah, you know, doesn't hunt like will certainly fish, but doesn't. If you got these ten things she is fishing with, fisher woman wouldn't make the list. Oh gosh, I'm sorry to keep adding tang entel. Everybody had a concluding thoughts. This is the longest we've talked, the lost we've ever had to actually talk. Oh really, man, I'm sorry, No, no, I mean you and me. Oh yeah, you and I. We had a long phone conversation whatever. Remember, But yeah, it's it's good. Hopefully we'll get to do it over camp fire and a fresh backstrap someday. Well we're all sick from something. Yeah, I don't know. You guys come down with more food born ailments. I just telling my wife about some of the things you guys eat, because she asked me what I was doing with that bear I shot this year, and I told them you, Oh, Janice wants these hawks in this She's like, aren't those guys that get sick every time they cook something? And I'm like yeah, She's like, and you said you were going to go hunting with him sometime maybe, so yeah, you only need anything that comes out of a package. But well, guys, thanks for having me. Great. I appreciate all you guys do for hunting, and in the the message you guys are getting out there is so need nude and so valuable not just to hunting, but how hunting can expand its boundaries to a bigger discussion in society. So as I want the last usually I'll say like, thanks for listening, but let plug the plug the podcasting Hunt Talk podcast Randy Newburgh Unfiltered and can go to iTunes and get it produced by zero point zero. Thanks for letting me plug it in, Steve tune In. Thanks, everybody appreciate it.