00:00:10 Speaker 1: This is the me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, alright, Ben O'Brien, father of one, it's good, it's good. It is good, father of one. I you know, there's no way for anybody to explain to you the feeling that is. I like, you probably have won that child, that child in the world. Yeah, and it's in the world and looks at you like I'm gonna need you for a while to help me out with life. Um. I think you even tried to explain what the feeling is or how how it goes. But there's no explanation of what that is that that there's there's Irish writer, it's quarted. Far from being young, as young as a human can be. They seemed immensely old, their foreheads and features streamlined by time, as archaic and smooth as the heads of pharaohs in Egyptian sculpture, as if they had traveled an immense distance to find their parents. Then in a second they became young. That stout ship and you, I mean you read it well right from an irishman right, and to another irishman I'm feeling it. But yeah, they come out and they're like little miniature old travelers. Yeah, that's about the best way I can alien Well, yeah, it took me a couple you know. I think they say it takes it took me a couple of months to really like have the connection that you know, then they start looking at you and recognize you and saying you know, and and speaking to you without using words. Um, but once that happened, I just and change my whole Outlook, yeah, it's cold blooded thing to say, but I do like the mom connection is very strong, but there is. I mean, I hope it is. If you've done any kind of good job picking out who's gonna be the mom and your children, you'd like to see a nice strong connection there. But um, yeah, I felt like it's cold blooded to say, but I felt like my connection to the baby's matured over a few months. Yeah that's what they say when you read people are writing about fatherhood. They said, just be you know, the connection, and that first couple of months is mother time. I mean, they're essential to the life of that little baby. So you know, you I kind of felt like a spectator for a while, and then when you finally, yeah, you finally make a connection with him yourself and get some time to just be with him. And like I sat with my son just out and it was Texas and November and it was warm and we just sat in the sun and I just looked at him for like two hours. And then after that I was like, all right, and you're like, welcome home, Welcome home, sun two months later. But yeah, I mean, that's that's the that's the feeling. And then you come, you trial, you go hunting, and you just I mean, it's for me, it's hard. It's tough for every moment that I go. I remember after having our first kid, and I had the first time I had to go away for a period of time after having our first kid. I'm not I remember I was sitting in the bathtub with him and honest to God, wept and it became such a problem for me to leave that my wife said, you're gonna have to figure this out because you're gone a lot. It can't be this big thing because they're gonna internalize this, you know. It needs to be a little smoother, a little less emotional, you know. Yeah. I stood at the door when I left to come here for for shot show. I stood at the door. I just kind of stood there. I didn't look back or anybody was like, shut the door, and I just stood there for like five minutes. I was thinking about what is going on in my brain right now, because I just had to get it figured out because I was I wasn't about to do that, wasn't about to leave emotional and be all you know, come here and not be invested because I'm gonna travel. I'm gonn be be where I'm at, be present where I'm at. So it's it's it's a weird change. But I don't think anybody could ever explain it to you until you. I don't think there's no way. I don't care if your philosopher the smartest person you've ever met, I don't. I just don't think there's any way to explain it, at least from my my standpoint, how it's changed my elok and stuff, yeah, kel and just looking at us with the blanks. There has no idea what we're talking about. Never bred a woman, Now, Ben, Ben, explain what you do. I'm the hunting marketing manager for Yettie Yettie Coolers, um My job is to just to be the champion for hunting inside of our company, you know, and a lot of companies that you work with, Steve, and a lot in our industry are strictly hunting. U. We have the privilege and sometimes the challenge of being a lot of things. Um that's surfing, climbing, rodeo, ranch, music, all things that we work in. My job is too to make sure that when we were drinking beer drinking. Yeah we got beer drinking. Yeah, we got barbecue. We have a beer, barbecue and beer marketing manager yet he which is the best title in the history of titles. But you know, my job was to be the champion for hunting and handle um, everything that comes with that in in our business. You get out of a journalism about you a sports writer, Yeah, that was that was my when I was a kid, I grew up on the East Coast, and that's what you were when when uh, I was gonna be a sports fan, you know, like my whole family was baseball, football, basketball, what's next? You know? Since the get go? Right? Oh yeah, since the get go uh. But hunting was just a weekend activity. We the dinner conversation was sports, like that's what we I listened to. I used to listen to Baltimore Oriole Games on the radio going to bed every night as a kid. Like that's what I listened to. You know. I wasn't like reading ru Ark and stuff when you know my it was Cal Ripken Jr. Like that was my thing. So when I first came to college that I was. I was a sports writer for a while. You can't drop a writer name without breaking that down, though, what's that well? Breaking out Robert ro Yeah, I mean, like tell people like what you can't because if you don't even know, I mean a lot of people will know but don't want to know. He's the essential, right is the essential to me, the essential writer for African hunting and and really adventure um at least in Africa, the adventure writing. And you can name how many books he's written that are seminal to that. He's kind of up there with Jack O'Connor really like he belongs and uh yeah, especially with the list of like the greats, they would be very close together. Oh absolutely. And so you know, before I went to Africa, go hunting, the first I saved Robert Rourke's books Death in the tall Grass and Father and Son and all those books until I was going to Africa to read on the plane, like that's how I felt about him up, get pumped up, and like save that for that moment. And then he became a sports writer. Then I became a sports writer, and I did that for a couple of years until I figured out that was terrible, terrible thing to do. It was a terrible profession. All you did was sit around and watch other people do things. But why is it terrible because you already liked watching people do things. Yeah, but you're you're watching them is as a as a spectator. You're not involved in their world. You know, you have no as a as an outsider in that world, you have no judgment other than your general opinion on what you see on TV screen. But then when you're in it, you know you're you're as a writer, your judgment becomes important and some of the interest season things that you didn't know about or never would want to know about, become important. But I just felt like my being a spectator in that way, sitting in a press box and writing about what's going on in the field and then having to go down and talk to those people and not be able to put them up as icons and and love them. You had to know them as people. That's pretty challenging because some of them can be bad people are just not not who you'd want them to be. So to me, it was that was less of a that wasn't the career path I was gonna go down. I didn't know it would be a hunting writer, and I just, uh, I didn't want it to be that, and I didn't want to ruin sports forever. But I haven't that profession. So the writing world, like in like the literary world, there's like there's a real thing people talk about, is that you should try to avoid meeting your heroes because it's yeah, I mean, he's never gonna watch your all that you're always gonna walk away with a diminished appreciation for them once you meet him. Because no one can live up to no one can live up to themselves on the page. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean they can't live up to themselves on the playfield either. So call an, explain yourself and what what fashion however? You want? Man, great great American? Oh well, I work for First Light. I've worn many hats over the years, My current title is direct Or of Conservation and Public Relations. That's your current title. Yeah, pretty unique. Ah so yeah, I guess we're kind of growing a director of conservation. Yeah so yeah. You know, we work with a lot of different conservation groups and that's one of the things I've always liked to do on UM. Over the years, it's kind of become something the First Light brand has been known for kind of put our foot in our mouths very willingly on a lot of issues. And uh so yeah, now now we're kind of embracing that a little bit more. And so that's that's where the title camp comes from. Canton came up with it. I said, don't you think you should be more of a like communications title. He's like, no, I think this is pretty good. I like it. Thanks and of course the honest But tell us hello, anything you want to share any about what I do or do anything. It's like some insights about you know, we're here at shot show, Shot show. The view outside of this room is incredible from the shot show we've been. That's the one like a major drawback from shot shows that we're inside. You haven't seen the light? Are you ever inside? You can't tell what the I mean, Yeah, days could go by. Yeah, you kind of forget that that world is there. Yeah. The first time you see the sunlight a shot show is when you're head of the airport and it could be five days without sunlight. Is I used to think of it as being like um, I used it would be like how could you take because the significant percentage of the population that shows up the shots was people involved in the outdoor industry. There's like law enforcement, military, all kinds of stuff, but a lot of it outdoor industry. But then you put them in this place, it's like the least outdoors environment on the planet. I think it should be like the old trapper roundab was where you camp in a really in a cold, snowy valley. This is Is this not the opposite of what you enjoy like fancy dinners and walking in trade show booths and like I do not. I mean, I love the idea of shot show, but the reality of it is not. I'm not a fan. I mean it just is. Yeah, the idea of what it is like a gathering of people that all love the same thing through the same thing, and people I haven't seen for a long time. That's that's awesome. But the functionality of of being in Vegas and not seeing the sun for five days like a trap. Yeah, you know that cab right at the airport. It's almost like exhilarating. You get out there and you're like fresh air that I haven't haven't spilled that for a while. If you've ever seen the Shawshank redemption when Andy comes out of the the sewer pipe, that you're coming out all right. So the reason we have your boys here is now we like we have to do things where we deal with fan questions and no cale in the hand. And I answered about a bazilian questions inter day on a Facebook live session that was pretty wild. It was entertaining. I liked it. This is a, this is a and we pick one. So we have picked ones here that are things that just seemed to somebody pick because they're kind of funny. Some we pick because they come up often. Okay, let me let me lay this one on you guys. Okay, okay, why a lung shot over a head shot? I got a lot of guys asked about this because dudes. I found dudes in Southeast Alaska for whatever reason, it's a culture of head shooters head deer head shooters. I have heard that as well. I think it's because the brush is damp thick. Do you ever see part of their head looking through the brush? Are you through? You like at forty yards away? So they just learned how to Yeah, if you're gonna shoot the deer, that's all. That's That's all you ever see in the damns anyways, which take it lung shooting head shot. I know exactly how I feel about it. I I I'm a I'm a lung shooter. I mean to the to a severe degree. I don't even like quartered shots with with bullets anymore because I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna blow up that opposite shoulder. So I'm I'm a lung guy. But okay, So one time I was guiding a muzzle loader hunt and I watched the client shoot deer out, mule deer, wait season, mule deer um, miss, the buck, hit a doe in the jaw. The joe doe tips over stands back up, you know, thoroughly concussed. I'm sure jaw hanging runs off, never to be seen again. So I can see that being an issue. You there, there's a lot of things on the head that don't equate to an immediate death or ethical ethical death. That's what I would say. I mean, the head is is a right. There's last room for air when you're shooting. Shooting in the head, that's one. Two. It's a smaller target in general, you know, may be similar to Monk's eye on the deer or whatever. But I think the bigger point in the practicality of it is the head is a smaller target. That's my old man I said, would you rather try to hit a racquetball or basketball? Yeah, And there's also there's gotta be some level of decorum like it is just you know, much more polite to shoot him in the lungs and in the head. Wait to think about it. So if you if you just to badge your typical broadside animal. Now, if you're going in where you're back for the back from the shoulder blade. But if you go from the crease where the shoulder blade like meets the rib cage, and you go back a couple of ribs from there, and you're halfway up and down the deer, you can be off. Let's just say, wait till deer you can be off. Really six inches in any direction and still be where you're you're talking about a very dead deer very quickly. I agree, when you're shooting at a deer's head, you're talking about distances of an inch put you in trouble. Yeah, and there's a lot I mean, there's bone there. I mean that that has a lot to play with the terminal, the impact. There's much rather shoot into the lunx is that's just you get through, punched the hid and you punched it along. That's easy. That's an easy task for for a modern bullet. And then then yeah, and then you have like Cal brought up the meat, uh, meat damage. You know, a broadside shot behind the shoulder doesn't do virtually does virtually no meat damage. Um. But I could see that being the pro argument for the head shot as well. Oh yeah, I was gonna get to that little you tackle it unless you cook in some jaw meat. Well yeah, you know, I mean it kind of comes back to that everything is edible. You should try something new. And you know, we we roasted that head one time and that's fantastic stuff. But not everybody's gonna do that or see value in that. Um but oh boy, I mean you just see see the error in a head shot one time and and ye it to me, it is just not ever worth the risk of trying it again. You always funks when you functional in ethics, like say, I want to kill that thing in the most respectful way possible, and the thing that probably gets back to my own skill the best. I mean, you're gonna take that the shot that has the best room for air. I mean, you do get that simple. I mean there's probably no other there's no other way to look at it, Like we're less knowledgeable as hunters about the anatomy of a deer's head. That it's that it's body cavity. Yeah, definitely. The first the first year I ever got was the head in the head. They had had to finish it off. It was, you know, ten ft away. I thought I could see with his head um just come over. Like I was on a little ridge and I was kind of like talk, you know, tucked down on one side of the ridge, and it was coming up the other side of ridge. Want it finally popped up, It was right there. I didn't know what I was doing. I was thirteen years old. The same vein you know, the next shot I've I've had several neck shots that you know, that animal was not It was immobilized thoroughly, but it was far from not stone dead. My my buddy, uh Ron Layton, who is he? Uh he's a head shooter, will die ahead shooter, claims have never had a problem, not anything but stone dead. Dear. It might be because he's you know, he's a good marksman, lifelong hunter. But the thing he points out, if you are a head shooter, he always runs over and bleeds his deer because you know, like in a in a slaughter facility when it was slaughtering livestock, you know, they bleed the animals. When when you shoot a deer through the lungs, itself bleeds, I mean just the wound bleeds it. They don't need to bleed the animal when you shoot. If you shoot something in the head, it doesn't actually bleed out, and there's a lot of blood left in there. So you go and cut the you know, you go, you want to go cut the artery in the neck, and you'll spill a lot of blood out. You shoot animals through the neck, or shoot the animal through the lungs and go to bleed it, nothing comes out because that bloods all this laying there pooled up in the inside the rib cage. Um. If you want to come back to that, I forward forward that email from Aaron T from South Burrow. Math. Yeah, I'll get to it now. This one, this is a good one for Callahan, good one for Yanni and you might have run into it too. Our guide schools worth it? Oh, hunting guide schools. Oh, I you know I do? Do you guys? Let me start right? Do you guys ever go to a guide school? I did not. I taught one for uh, fly fishing, guides in rowing, you know, to learn how to row boats for I don't know, maybe a half dozen years or so, but I never did a hunting one. I would. I would say that the public opinion when I was getting into guiding was no, don't there a sham because placement, like my very few interactions with it, to be that you can go to school, but unless it has like a way to automatically place you into a position, that's what you really need, that's what your paying is what you need to really need. Because you know, a lot of outfitters are pretty salty guys, and they're gonna be like, well, I don't care what that guy taught you. I want you to learn it my way. So you know, I'm not necessarily gonna take this recommendation for any sort of value. Now I have heard um, now, oh there's a good one out of Wyoming, and and maybe a good one out of Montana. Um, but I can't cannot remember the names. But um, I don't want to say anybody's running a shoddy business. But I think, just like anything, there's probably some that do a really good job. Um and uh, and some that may give you some skills but no placement. Yeah, so let's say no. But I don't know, I'm feeling. Look at the apprenticeship style is probably the way to go from my perspective, especially I think with hunting, you know, and that's how it worked for me, and it was it was great. You know, if the alpha has got horses, you're gonna quickly learn how to deal with the horses, and you know, you're gonna learn you're gonna to do all the ship jobs first, and then you you know, after sometimes two weeks and sometimes two years, you might actually be in the field guiding, but at least you're there in the camp spending those hopefully to three months, you know, doing what you love. Now for the fly fishing, we probably hired to nine of the people that went through the whole class. So you did that course with us, then most likely you were going to be guiding that summer. So it was almost like a training program. So he answers, yes, yes, So there's one out of Jackson Hole or Victor, Idaho that is I got a nephew. Yeah. Yeah, Well so I would say, like he didn't become a guy. I mean that was a fly fishing one as well. Oh I think he did, like a elk one or something. Well, that's it. Hunting got hunting guy is not a generic pursuit. So like, how do you what does that really mean? Yeah, you're out putting three thousand snow goose decoys in the field up Maryland and you're like packing into Alaska. I would say that unless if you're okay, if you're going you know, you're gonna be a guy in Montana for big game and there's a big game Montana. I mean that would be to me a more you know, more relevant thing to do. There's no is a guide school. A good idea only if it applies to exactly where you're about to go home. It's not bartending school. Yeah right, Yeah, here's here's a good one. This is a real good question. If you were to take the costs of hunting for your own meat supply and the cost of purchasing meat from the store in a one year period, which do you think would be more expensive than why? I think that for ninety No, I think that for the majority of hunters, it's much more expensive to hunt it for yourself. I've lived both ways. At a time when I was living like in Western Montana, and we generally hunted around Western Montana and we shot a lot of we filled a lot of dough tags and whatnot, we were definitely being like very economical hunters. Yeah, that's not like doing like Little John sleeping out and sleep eating bags, you know, and like sleeping under your car in a sleeping bag, waking up killing two antelope doughs, coming home with like shiploads of meat. We were like, you couldn't have bought that stuff, and you're processing it yourself, processing yourself. I think the minute you start doing any kind of like destination hunting, the minute you start throwing small game and do it it's you can't you have to find other There has to be more to it than that. If you're just hunting to save money, Um, it can be done, but you're probably you know you're gonna be hunting. You're probably talking about local, almost subsistence level hunting, which applies to some people. But but that kind of hunting leads you into being curious about other kinds of hunting. In prison, you're doing things that aren't so practical. Yep, that's it right, it's very very well. So yeah, that's it's it's what's your what's your motivation. If your motivation is to save money and get you know, organic meat, it can be done almost I live in Texas, might go on ranch and probably people would pay me to kill hogs and or uh go kill some call deer and we kill ten call bucks and ten hogs a year. I mean in process it yourself. You're in an environment where you can or you can be efficient with that. But there's not a lot other plate you know that. I guess in out West, you can kill a couple of cow, can get a ton of meat, and you can do added value stuff too. So the minute you go get the meat and then you're producing like artisan grade sausages out of it, you know, like at a point, yeah, you can, you can wind up really justifying it financially. When I was in when I was in college, Um, we have spent shipped for money and ate a lot of dear meat, and it would have been It's to the point where if we weren't shooting deer and eating them, we would not have been buying We would have starved to death, we would not have been eating the quality of food that we were eating. We would not have been eating meat like hot dogs. And I don't even know what to stake. This is maybe a like what one costs a thing to say, but I don't know what one costs in the store. Well, that's the thing. I think that we're probably undervaluing what a year's worth of meat or however you want to break it down a week that if you especially if you're buying the same kind of quality, because we are talking about some pretty fantastic bitch and fairly organic most of the time meat from the woods, you're going trying to buy that in a store. I mean, you can very easily be twenty thirty past, especially if you're trying to buy game. If you're trying to be like, Okay, I'm gonna go price out a bunch of elk loin, Yeah, then it's gonna be way different than if you're probably out like Oscar Meyer. Yeah, price out what we can probably figure out real quick with a half of an organic grass fed beef costs. But I'm guessing it's many thousands of dollars. You know, we always used to say a lot of different grades of beef out there, So like choice versus select, here in Vegas, there is a lot you can do it easy. So again we're not a lot of definite answers. Well, we had very the long shot thing I think was clear. Now here's a good one. This this one, This one, I want you guys to think hard on before you answer. Do you think wearing a helmet and maybe even some sort of armor could be beneficial in a bear encounter when hunting? Now, there's a movie about this called what's that movie called? So it's one of the greatest movies ever made in in a way, it's called um Grizzly Project, not Grizzly Man, but Grizzly Project. It's a guy that got mauled by a bear a Canadian. This is a true it's a documentary about him. He was mauled by a bear and that inspired him to make a bear proof suit. So the movie follows him through the production of a bear foot proof suit. But when he finally gets a suit that he feels his bear proof, it basically immobilizes him. In A lot of the movie follows him trying very hard to get mauled by a bear and not being able to get mauled by a bear. One of the problems being in the suit, he can't really move after him enough to try to antagonize him to malling, so he was never able to put his suit to the test. Grizzly Project, This sounds like the most entertaining movie. Dude, he gets the suit, he has his buddy run him over in the truck, he has his buddy roll him off a cliff. But no, I think that's kind of I think it's ridiculous. And here's why I think it's ridiculous. It's like, you're not, okay, You're not gonna get mauled by dann bear. You are not you are not gonna get mauled by bear. There are so few bear maulings. When when people talk about the scarcity of you know that the lack of likelihood that something's gonna happen, you know, they like to say, like, you've got more of a chance to falling off the ladder and day, you've got more chance to getting mauled by your dog and dying. You've got more chance of getting stung by a being dying. Okay, all that kind of stuff. Within that, though, I think there are, like, there's high exposure groups. Okay, if you are a bow hunter in northwestern Wyoming, if you're an elk bow hunter in northwestern Wyoming, you have I've never run the statistics on it, but you have a much much higher likelihood of getting mauled by a bear than any other player out there. Even then, I think it's so narrow that the fact that you would like have a helmet on or armor on an anticipation of getting mauled by a bear. You can't even get people to carry spar bear spray. But wait, wait, if you wear a seatbelt on an airplane, right, sure, but the questions question posed is would you think it would help? Oh? Okay, you're right. If you could say if you could get the bear to hit you in that exactly if someone say, in a minute, I'm gonna have this bear MOLEU. Now, uh, would you like to put the helmet and armor on? Of course, I'm gonna put the helmet armor on. Well done. Yeah, be very beneficial at that point. So if you can see the bear coming, he had a little shirt about a pack around that tanner twenty pounds of armor, so he can definitively say yes, it would have Yes, it would help. Yeah, it's not gonna hurt. No. Um. Thinking when you get mauled by a bear, and everybody likes to tell you, like what to do when you get mauled by a bear, and you tell you, now, if it's a black bear, and there's plenty of this ship like if it's a black bear, fight because if a black bear attacks you, it's a prey. He's doing a predatory thing. The black bear has identified you as food. He's fixing to eat you. For black bear attacks you fighting, punch and kick because his hope is that you die so that he can eat you. For grin is malls you. Chances are and they're much more likely to mall you because think about this like, think about you know, we have black bear seasons and out in thirty four states or something like that is black bears are everywhere. There are hundreds of millions of people in this country who live in black bear country, right and most years no one gets maulled by a black bear. You have grizzly bears in in the lower force, but just speaking of the lower forty eight, you have grizzly bears in a small portion of Idaho, not quite half of Montana, maybe less than a third of Wyoming. And every year you have a couple of fatalities from grizzly bears. Eight hundred grizzly bears kill a couple of people every year. What's that going with this? Oh, the grizzly malls. The thinking is, don't fight, you lay down, protect the bad pack your neck with your hands, and play dead because it might be mulling you because it's mad at you and wants to immobilize the threat. Like that. They have a reaction to threat by attacking the source of the threat. So if you're like, I'm not a threat, I'm not a threat, I'm dead, they might just give you a smell and walk off. That's the popular thing. So maybe you armor is more is better for grizzly bear hunters play Dead and maybe you know, bear spray for the black play Dead and wear armored. Okay, now here's one question. This guy says, there's one question I gonna ask Steve. That would be, what's this taken using photos of harvested animals for marketing materials? Oh? This is I think it's I think it's totally fair game because I think that it's just I'm not I'm not a marker. Now. I look forward to you when you guys have to say about this, because you guys have applm marketing. Um. The other guy like, like, there's an aspirational element to marketing right where you're trying to present a figure doing a sort of thing that a fella would look at and be like, Man, what I wish I was in that situation. Now when I get an animal, when I hunt an animal and kill it, I'm really happy. I don't I'm not wishing I could undo what I did. There's a level of respect and remorse for sure, but but the overwhelming thing is that you did something very challenging. You've succeeded in it, you're happy in the moment, you have very strong good feelings for the animal, you have strong good feelings for the accomplishment. You take a photo of it because it's something you want to remember and share with other people, the same way you would of you and your old lady, Like on the day you get married. I'm real happy that I married this lady. I'm proud of the fact. I'm gonna hire for time, prefer to come down and take pictures of me and the lady I married because we're glad about it happening. Okay, Now if I get an animal and I'm glad about it happening, and I want to share it with people. Um, It's like when when someone asked the question, it was like, what am I supposed to be like disappointed that I got it that I want to hide it. If I was gonna be disappointed that I got it and wanted to hide the fact that I got it, I wouldn't have got it. So it just seems to me like logical that if you're if you're trying to if you're in the job of marketing, Let's say a product that you'd show a person in a moment that at least in the hunting world is universally accepted as a happy, triumphant, proud making moment. That would be fair game. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think it's all about what context that that you show it in. And to me, I always like I always stop and say, if I'm marketing something, it doesn't matter what it is cooler here doesn't matter. Is it honest and authentic? Like, is the way that you're is that moment you're describing captured in that image you're captured in that footage? Or have you endeavored to capture that thing? Are you out there trying to get to what you're talking about or are you just manufacturing and glorifying something that you think some marketer told you, some agency guy told you this is what all hunters want to get to. So now give me that, and somebody goes out and tries to manufacture that, oh, and they give you a like a bogus bullshit attempt at something that. So like if you if you had never surfed before, and you said, they said, Steve, I want you to create a surfing ad, and somebody said, you know what, when when a surfer hits that way, this is the moment that they they feel triumphant, and then you went out and try to manufacture that and advertise to that it's going to be this disingenuous Maybe you're trying to make it as authentic as possible. So what what I think is important is that you are you will have it under a nuanced understanding of the story you're trying to tell, and that you're that you're honestly trying to depict it in a way that that gets to gets to a point of depth. And that's what when you're depicting a dead animal, it's a little more serious than depicting a big wave or depicting something else that you would want to advertise to. So that's a little that story is more serious because it is more complex, has more depth, there's more to it. Yeah, there's there's I imagine for your position, there's a lot more. They can backfire, there's a lot more. We're talking about this earlier today, a friend of mine, historian body mind, setting you a photo from way ago in a magazine. It was a gun ad where's the dude standing there with the gorilla? Yes, I've seen that, I've seen that. That wouldn't go over too well, not so much. But that's also the same thing, Like you gotta you understand your audience, right, So I would just assume that if you're showing a dead animal, you're speaking to hunters, right. So that's so you're you've got a pretty defined and dedicated audience. But in my position, shouldn't you're speaking to hunters and you're also speaking to everyone else because anyone can see that advertising and you want, you know, you talk about this all the time. You want any hunting communication to be able to be consumed by someone that maybe hasn't experienced that and still have an appreciation for it. Maybe they don't have the depth of appreciation for it that a hunter might, but they It shouldn't come off as the glorification of that, of of that moment. You know, a thing that it's kind of similar. I remember that there's always like a debate when I was young about is it okay to put it deer? Like if you have a deer in the back of your truck tail gate uptailgate down? And there's like two different kinds of folks, right, you're down folks and you're up folks. The up folks like why if it's sensitive to some people and some people don't like to see it, why rub it in their face? The tailgate down. Guys like I have nothing to be ashamed of. I'm I'm nothing to hide. I'll just pretend like I didn't just get a deer. But can I'll take the main question, the marketing one Dead Creators. So the person that wrote this question, I can totally see their perspective as that they could see it as a marketing ploy. And I think at one time that was that was very common. I can I can tell you from what I've seen from uh, what Ben's been doing and what we do on our end um. You know, it just isn't we occasionally put kind of that grip and grand photo upon our social media stuff, um, because it almost always, i would say always is accompanied by a fantastic story of some somebody who has purchased a lot of our gear and said, hey, thank you so much, I couldn't have done it without your stuff off. And by the way, I got this animal, and there was this adventure involved, and and we'll post that photo on occasion and be like this person got this and congratulations and and and it's more of a nod to their story. You know, it's and it's not to me at this point, it doesn't fall into a paid advertising category. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Well. Also, like one thing I think of now, like you look at where we are now with hunting in society. Sometimes I think if I put that dead animal in there, is that changing the conversation? Like if I can get my point across without the dead animal in there, wouldn't much rather do that because I don't now don't have to defend that it's there, or you don't have to increase the complexity of my message by having some people that are gonna see it. We're gonna say, they're gonna focus right on the dead end, will miss my message entirely. Yeah, because that we always said it's like that's the end of the hunt. Yeah, it's well, the end of the hunt's not not that great. During the hunt is super fun, and the pulling the trigger is absolutely miniscule fraction of time compared to the adventure part. So you know, we've never really focused on the end of the hunt because that's like that's just a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah, We've got a film coming out here, a YETI film coming out about she Plenty in the Mackenzie Mountains and the guide his name is Tavis Mulnar. He puts it pretty good. He said, Um, that would be like reading the book and only focused on the last page, you know, because like all, you have to have read every chapter of that book to appreciate not only the story but the author. And you wouldn't. You wouldn't just read the last page and close the book you want to, you know. And I think advertising as much that way, like you know, any company that just glorifies killing and and doesn't aim to just tell the story all the way. You know. I don't have a problem with grip and grins as long as it's a part of the larger story. Like the gripp and grain is a part of what we do, but it's not the only thing we do. And if you've if you've got a social media channel, if you've got a company, and all you do is share gripping grins, then you're probably doing it wrong. You're missing of what's out there walking around shot show there'll always be some mug selling whatever and they'll have like to t you know, a lot of places to put a TV screen up just run some nine continuous loop. I was checking out one today where it's just all it is is Kyle's just getting smoked in the worst ways and like a glimpse of something like that is one thing, but just to be like again again again when we're doing me eat like we never, I like go way out of my way to not fetishize kill shots and people the fact that even has a term kill shot. I think that. I think some of the hunting networks used to have a thing where like you couldn't show it could show a kill shot more than seven times in a row or something. I'm not a kidding, man, I've ember seeing something like that at a point. It isn't man. I mean you're always like making your always gaming and making sort of little judgment calls about you know, presenting a reality but not overdoing portions of it, you know, and people complaining like, oh, there's no they didn't show the kill shot, Like okay, so that hunt, that hunt was seven days, Okay, there's twenty four hours in a day that that was just like one second of the thing or one portion of the thing. So yeah, I'm trying to like focus on all these aspects of what a hunt is like and the things that go into it, and every hunt. I don't think the culmination that hunt, and that the one second that really really matters is that one second, and it is being a little bit aware of people's sensitivities. But it's also just like your own aesthetic. And I think too that over time doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, you do feel after a while like you get like a little tired of seeing it absolutely, like it's just it's something in you changes. Yeah. I had a very very you know, one of the probably the faces of our industry. Maybe I would say tell me that. Uh, he just it was the killing is what people wanted to see. Yeah, he was like, when the more killing we have, the more dead animals have on our show, that the higher the ratings are. I said, I've got it. You know. He's like, the more if we put up a shots and twenty seconds for turkeys, he gets more of us than if I That's what he told him, and he had the numbers to back it up. And I said, I could care less about that. I can care less about that. I would never be driven by that. But I think hunting TV, you guys could maybe I know as much as I do, But I don't think hunting TV for a lot of people is appointment view appointment viewing except for a few shows, your show being one of them, a few shows people turned tune into. But I think a lot of people, my dad is one of them that just turns it on and watches and I'll say, Dad, who are you watching? I'm not sure who they were. They killed a big old elk. Yeah, I dude knows that. That's kind of I see people watched, but I see people watch all forms of TV that way, as you know I see it. So it's like, I don't want to be exclusive to you. I don't know that it's exclusive to um hunting TV, because I think that's just people. There's like people who have TV on, Like if I have it on, I'm if I'm watching something, it's because I've picked this thing that I want to watch and I am focused on watching it. You know. I don't have like things where I'm like, oh, yeah, it was kind of like in the background. I don't really know what's going on. If I'm watching it, I'm watching it. But I think a lot of people do watch We're just sort of on and in that way, I could see that it might draw people's attention, but it's like, that's not the eyeballs I want. Now, have you ever encountered or killed a doe with antlers? No, I have not. They do exist ever. I've seen him, but not killed. I've seen them, seen him. They look goofy. Were like that look real goofy. Yeah, And I don't remember. I mean it was it was I was young, young, so I don't know a lot of the details. But it look goofy. I mean that the body type. I remember it, just being looking at the deer, even when it was on its feet, and thinking, that's a gnarly looking deer. It's sick or it's you know, there's some sort of deformity. You'll notice that most states like uh, you rarely see a tag for a buck. A lot of things you see tag. You know, antler deer. I know because it's it's a thing that does happen. Now, antelope, tons of man, tons of the dolls have horns, but that's not antlers. Yeah, ever kill one to see one? I have not. I worked with some folks in the frank Church that they desperately wanted to kill this antlerless bowl that they would find over and over again. Why because they were afraid that all of a sudden he was eight there apparently every bowl in the valley. Apparently he was very aggressive and they had watched him chase off or fight off aunt weird bulls. I was not there for any of this, but yeah, and they were thinking he was gonna breed and breedle and it's been in like produce a strain of genetic line of antleless bowls. Yes, got you, But I mean the wilderness outfit, right, So you gotta have something to talk about, Okay. Do lunar phases factor? Man, this is a this is a golden question, a contentious question. Do lunar phases factor in the hunting? That's always been the thing that everyone believed, and I was raised to believe that. It is on your GPS. Yes, if you want to find out it's good hunt or not, simply consult your GPS. It will tell you whether it's worthwhile going out or not based on the lunar phase. Now thinking is full moon, dear, get move all night and get all their activities taken care of overnight because there's so much light out and then come morning you're sitting there and your blind during the crepuscular period, you know, the half light period, and there's no dear out because they've all been out all night already. I don't know if they've studied many other species, but I know there and I have read and you know, I feel like like my friend Pat Dirk and who writes a lot a lot about the science of white tales, has written about this, and know there's been a lot of work on it. Where you get yourself a collar buck buck carrying a GPS collar, deer carrying GPS collars, and then you watch what they do during various lunar phases, and things that I have read about white tails have said that in fact, nothing changes mhm, that they're not doing something different. Now, It's not as simple, yes, no question, because undoubtedly uncertain nights, waterfowl will fly all night. Unwell at nights, things will migrate during the nighttime. Uh So, I've been three trade shows in three weeks. I've been talking to lots of people, and uh the super moon keeps coming up. As you know, it's a slow season, tough season. Super moon really warm, well warm for sure. That ship definitely matters. Yes, but it seems to me like many many people are blaming some slow days in the field on this super moon slow day super moon every good book. Now, Rammy Warren, who I have nothing but respect and admiration for and who knows his ship inside and out, disagrees beyond this. From an Elk perspective, I think, how I'm not messing this up. I think he feels that movement patterns are affected by moon. Mm hmm, what's the man? I wish Pat Durkin was here, because I'm telling you it's like, so either thing is white tells about be different. Now another white tailed thing that everyone believes is it a running buck. This is in some of the same papers that I read. This thing about lunar faces. People think they're running buck is all willy nilly going crazy places. A running buck goes to the just he goes to the same place as he always goes, just more often. He doesn't pioneer new he doesn't he like, oh, I've never been over there, I'm gonna go over there. I have always heard that the white tail bucks range is very, very small, and then when the red kicks in, it expands three or four times. No, they don't pioneer new spots. I read that exact same study and and um, the GPS College. I don't know how many bucks it was a good number, but number a deer. And what they found out was they they they do not expand their range. I think we maybe there may be some fallacies inside what their range, what their original ranges are, um. But they do not. They don't expand their range. They just move more frequently in different areas. Like if you look at him throughout the year, he'll be like he's got some little spot he goes and he goes there every week every two weeks, but he'll kind of go into some area and check it out. Then during the ruck he's just kind of backing forth, going to all these places he already knows about. He's not patternable in that time. That doesn't mean he's going to new place. That doesn't mean he's not there. And saying and they were saying the same thing about the October law. It doesn't mean that deer did not does not. He just he does not move at different times. He just moves in different places, you know, and in different frequency. Because then you look at the the pattern of a buck from whether they're just in feed mode and to when the mass crops fall and they change. You know, I grew up that was acorns fall and then the deer patterns changed. I killed more dear in early Octurber, growing up just understanding where the acorns dropped, where the deer would move into and wind than anything else, rut anything. So you guys would specifically like hunt acorn crop wood. Yeah, at Elice in Maryland, I would unt. I would hunt acorn crops. I knew exactly which which grove trees. I knew exactly where to go and exactly when the deer would be there based on when those acorns fell. I mean so, but I think those GPS collar bucks, it just shows that those deer rarely if ever expand their range unless you know, there really is no hot doughs in the area. But I mean white tap populations, there's always going to be a breeding dough somewhere within their range. I would think I think those GPS colors were messing with those deer. Yeah, that could be maybe deer with GPS colors. Act we're speaking of expanding ranges though. In white tails. Did Brodie send you that picture too those white tails. No, yeah, I didn't look at it yet though. Yeah. So he lives uh in Steamboat Springs and was traveling south and uh basically smack dab in the middle of Colorado, ran too it into a six pack of white tail dose. It probably seven to eight thousand feet just feeding in the stage and it's like the nearest place I've ever seen a white tail to that exact locations probably well over a hundred miles, like up in North Park, Colorado. We had a biologist in Colorado tell us, if you see a white tailed, put your tag on that. I would be sorely, sorely tempted to burn my tag on a white tail, purely for the preservation of the mule deer in area. I do not want to see him come in. Yeah, they really like just for for folks listening. Mule deer have many problems, uh not insurmountable problems, that they have problems. One of the problems the white tail deer. Uh. The white tailed deer is generalists. They do very well, uh that they handle stress better than mule deer handle stress, and white tailed deer um because of agricultural practices and other things, white tailed deer always expanding rain is in the new areas and they come into competition with meal deer. It oftentimes they went out, um and guys like, white tails might be sweet, but um, you know we're not gonna run out of white tails, little white wraps in the mountains. That's that's cool, bloody. Okay, how do you years ago? I like, I remember, I've ever seen this one before. How do you fight fear at night? My brothers and I do a lot of bad country hunts, but we struggle with falling asleep at night. I don't want to sound like a bunch of woosies, but it really pisces us off. It doesn't matter how far we hike in or how tired we are, the fear settles in every time. Just curious how one fights that. I think that um exposure. For me personally, I think that everything that you're afraid of exposure makes the fear go way. I used to be afraid of taking my skiff outside of the arm, out of the open straight. I don't even think about it at all anymore. What happened was I just kept doing it so I wasn't afraid of it anymore. And yeah, man, when I first started hunting the mountains and Grizzly Bearer country, I'd go up and be laying in bed at night and be a little scared. Now it's lasting on my mind. That's my I don't have any like psychological any might have some kind of psychological tricky has got a lot of little mental tricks, not for this one, not for this one. But I think I agree with you, I mean across the board. You know. I was just thinking about how like I was kind of scared and nervous the first time I came a shot, you know, with you guys and talking to big wigs, you know, and then like you just learned how to be comfortable in that situation, and you know it's I'm just not worried about it anymore. You know, it's just exposure practice. I wonder if those guys have a specific instance that they're like, that they've heard of or something that they call back that is is causing that fear, that trepidation, like something the buddy got muled by a bear or what ye maybe they hunt something back alleen Tijuana. Maybe somebody pulled a shank on them in the matter. I don't know, but I would just say that, you know, do you get scared in the mountains, Yeah, just of the unknown. It's of the unknown. But you can't like that's any fear, like you said, I mean, there's no better way to put it. You can't dwell on that fear. Yeah, it's just your ego and you're in your head. You're a little ego. And and again it's the instances of something bad happening when you're in a two man tent in the back country is very slim, you know. I think, I think too is about fear and stuff. Is like when you're not afraid. So when you're just sitting at home and in a very comfortable place, if you if you sit and say, you know what, from this perspective of being home and safe, I'm comfortable, I do recognize that it's a um, it's an irrational fear that I'm that I'm feeling. I think that once you recognize the fear as being baseless of irrational, I think you almost have a personal responsibility to conquer because you should at all times your life beyond the lookout for irrational ship that you do. You should add those guys should ask himself what you know? I could come back, like what leads to that fear? Like, how do you you know is your development as a person what leads to But allowing that fear to have a causation where you can't sleep because I have fear sometimes when I get tired and go to sleep, and I might be a little scared, I might hear a noise, but I'm I'm there to do. Something's gonna go to sleep, and That's what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna let that fear regulate that. But is that part of your personality that you let everything you're scared of have a you know, cause and effect in your life? Run your life, run your life like I just don't think in general that you should. That's not how I live my life. I wouldn't do it, Hunting wouldn't do it, and raising a child wouldn't do it in any and anything. But I know I know people that do let their fears, you know, run their lives. And if they think all the the West Nile Vos is gonna get him, if they see a mosquito, they run. YEA to me, I think, what's the odds I'm gonna get bit by emscuito? With west nil oars, I don't give a ship go ahead and bite me. Let's see, let's test the odds, because that's I mean, there's people canceling trips because something happened fos away from there. Cal not really inspired by that question, man, I do not recall every being afraid of sleeping outside. I've had far more restless nights sleeping in my bed thinking about all the stuff I forgot to do at work. Yeah. Yeah, so it Uh, there's a price for doing everything, I guess. And if you want to sleep in a really beautiful or if you want to be in a really beautiful spot the very next morning, you gotta sleep there. So, um, you know, if you're having trouble and I'm not knocking on these guys at all, but you know, if you're having trouble sleeping, take a long nap in the middle of the day. You know, it's like, oh, get your sleeping done then, yeah, get your sleeping done then you'll be fine. Yeah. I like thinking about fears like a pet subject about I'm interested in it. Um. So this one's for Ryan Callahan specifically. No, I'm not I'm not gonna do It's nothing. It's not what you think. What is the first light logo supposed to be? It's very easy, but you hear him out. I've had arguments with friends over this. It always looked to me like the sun peeking over a mountain, hence the name first Light. My friend thought it was the letter F laying sideways. I don't see that. I would say, you are correct, it is. It is the sun coming up over the top of the mountain. So first light, first light of the day. Um. And yeah, many people get confused by it um, which I kind of enjoy because people ask questions about it, and I think that's kind of a good marketing tact. And the name first lighted I get a good laugh out of it every year, multiple times because our competition has say our name, because every good hunting story has first left first Light. There I was. There's a great book Jim Harrison is a collection of Jim Harrison writing. All of his essays on hunting and fishing, literature, and food, all of us, all to a certain point in his career, are all collected in a book called Just Before Dawn. So if you ever do a spinoff company called Just Before Dawn. At first Light, I saw a yetie, it's perfect right, first light big? Oh yeah, it's ali big. Okay, here's a good one. This is a heavy one. Heavy. I feel like the speller's gotta asked to grind. He says, how do you access wilderness in quotes? If you have I don't know why it's in quotes? How do you access wilderness if you have lung cancer and cannot hike, are an amputee and cannot walk, are older and don't have stamina. In short, what you want is a place where a tiny percentage of young people can use while their parents and grandparents cannot. Um There's many ways to explain that. I'll point out one that if you came to me, let's say you took a favorite patch of wilderness that I like, but let's say some pure ass wilderness, and you said to me, Steve, uh, we're gonna yet yet want at choices you could never step foot on the north slope of the Brooks Range again ever, on penalty of death, or we're gonna roll it all up. I would say, okay, I'll miss it. So it's bigger than having wilderness, is bigger than just saying like I want it for me and me exclusively. It has tremendous implications for wildlife, clean air, clean water sanctuary. It's like it's doing more than just being a place for people to go. If there are activities that we can conduct in wilderness that do not damage the integrity of wilderness, all the better. I don't think the goal of every patch of ground on Earth is to increase its accessibility to all folks in all forms of use. That's one way that I would look at that question, Well, what I aspect do you? I mean, he's looking at from a purely personal aspect. He's like, if I can't be there, why haven't? Yeah? And I were? I think all of us here, I would say, we think about the land and the animal before we think about ourselves. Like if I think about, well where can I go first? Or where can my dad go? Or where can my grandfather go? Or where can my people in my life go, I probably wouldn't treat wilderness and with the respected deserves. But I think, what, as you said, what's the best thing for that that piece of ground? You do that? And then if that means elderly folks or you know, people disabilities can't get there, I'm sorry we're doing what's best for that piece of property, for that ground, for that land, for those animals population. Jim Pozzle with the great conservation and writer. Do you remember the story yet? Tell the story. I'll do my best, But yeah, that's what your head when. But yeah, he put it, Um, what was the what was it? Do you remember the name of the fight or the mountains that that was? It was? It was based upon that. When the guy got up to speak, No, I don't remember. They were arguing over a patch of wilderness area. Yeah, whether some roads should be shot up in and there. I think the gist of it basically came was like, um, you're saying at the time when he stood up and said, I'm like eighty years old, and I'm not going to take away from the current young generation just so that I can have my time in there now as an old guy. Yeah, you know what I mean. I need to we need to preserve it so that those young people do have places to be scared at night and sleeping in the tent and be wild and free and to experience that. And just because I've aged out of that. And by the way he stood up and said, I'm eighty some years old and I can still get in there, So age has nothing to do with this. Yeah, but yeah he was. He was respect was like a place he'd always spend time as a young man. And another guy was arguing like, well, now I'm old, I can't get in there more, so we need roles to let me get in there, and that was that was his replies, So you want to deprive all future generations of what you had, what you had loved. Do you think this guy asked the question, is a millennial. I think he's sub thirty. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to say. This guy could just be playing the devil's advocate with wilderness. I think maybe that that idea that you know, why not me is is I'm thirty one and I'm I guess I'm a millennial for better tense purposes like the generation I'm in that why not me? Oh yeah, why why not the thing that I want to do? Why not my personal sensibility before the betterment of of the thing that I say that I want to do that I love? Yeah, you mean to tell me that these younger little whipper staffers. Seriously, what the Sam Hill there's whippers? My optic view of the world. That's that's a good question. Quick point. Oh please, I have taken many old infirmed, amputeed people into the wilderness on fantastic trips. That's a good point. Too. Many Hell's canny wilderness. Most people the enjoy the Hills Canyon enjoy it from a boat going through the Hells Canyon, and what they're looking at is panoramic views of wilderness. Another quick point. You go Glacier National Park, gorgeous, stunning panoramic views, waterfalls, uh, plenty of wildlife. The vast majority of visitors to Glacier National Park, they see that park from the going to the Sun road only they they may leave the vehicle, but it's to go step out on a you know, a concrete viewpoint. They just go stop and look at the scenery. You cannot tell me that those people don't appreciate that scenery because they didn't hike into it and it given the choice, I can't imagine those people would say, ah, probably don't really need this because they can feel it. You can feel it in its proximity. It's overpowering. The main thing I think, as well as the reason I will always be a wilderness advocate is I'm not. I don't think we have any real chance of running out of non wilderness places. Like I do not fear for the future of roads, I do not fear for the future of concrete. I just like I'm like, get it now, Yeah, it's just yeah. We will not run out of that ship. We will not run out of places to drive vehicles. Will we will run out of places that do not have those things. So I will always believe in the preservation of those last little vestiges of wilderness that we have. And again, if those places can be you know, live alone, live harmoniously along low impact activities, all the better. I'm gonna keep beating. We have no idea the value of what these places are gonna have, especially years down the line. I've had this conversation a lot lately with people where we take it for granting. Now we're like, we go hunting wilderness all the time. We get film permits, going great tracts of national force to go do our business. And it's very I want to point out, which we pay for, yes, gladly, and um, we literally take it for granted. It's something we're going and just do it. Willy nilly, and as populations grow and we have less and less of that, I feel like in fifty years our kids there might be a point where we'll just is now that we just walk you just part of the trailhead and walk into You're gonna have to start drawing permits more and more just to access those places because to a point when there's too many cars in the trailhead that will start to affect the wilderness. It won't be as pristine pristine. And so as that demand grows, like you see with anything, the price is going to go up. You know, you know, there's less there's not gonna be the supply. So it's just like, exactly get it now while you can't, because fight for it now, while you can't. No, no, no, But I'm saying, but we're not gonna stop the fact there's gonna be more people that are gonna want to enjoy those places, and so it might not be as accessible as it is now. Yeah, it's not a replenishable resource. You know what this this person pulls her own question because I emailed you over the summer. My I taught my eighty eight year old lung cancer surviving one lungded grandmother how to fly fish, because not because I wanted to teach her how to fly fish. I didn't force her into it. She said, Hey, I want to learn how to fly fish this weekend. She's determined to might not be next weekend. Yeah, you know. So it's like, maybe if you think you can't go into the wilderness, you don't want to go in the wheelers, surprise yourself, you know. I think that baffled me about politicians who sort of aggressively go after wilderness and who are like antagonistic to the idea of wilderness. Is where if the goal of of public service and the goal of being alive is to do good work that will be remembered well, that you will have you'll build a legacy for yourself. If you just look at American history, there's no there's no like example of a well remembered, great legacy individual who made it their life's goal to destroy wilderness. We look now at Yellowstone National Park and it's like, what is what is Yellowstone's approval rating? It's like this like great act of genius. Right then, then what was eighteen seventy six or eighteen seventy seven or something that someone would have stepped and said, let's set this big chunk of amazing landscapes. And I were like, what foresight? What genius on their part? And then rose Belt, he's gonna set aside all to hell his eleven thousand acres of land per day in office. Okay, they go and carve his face on a big damn mountain. They write books about. There are scores of biographies about Roosevelt, just with his relationship to wilderness. He is one of those guys that everyone points to, Democrat, Republican, everyone wants to liken themselves to Roosevelt. He's an American hero for what he did for national forests. So just by looking at the way history has gone, how do you think that you're gonna now be anti wilderness and be remembered well down the road. Here's here's a good one. How do you handle a gut shot, dear? Really? No different for me. It's how that clean everything out real good if anything spilled inside. Oh, you don't do gutless method automatically, you know what? Man? I know him like an old time you fella on this. I don't I do not like I do not like gutless. I just know that's the I gotta hear more about that, because I'm I'm like, I'm from I'm from the East Coast. We gutted everything, everything we killed, we gutted, and now everywhere I go the gutless. If I don't know every the ins and out of the gutless method, I'm not. They're like, what's wrong with well? Then they do the gutless method and they're still digging around the damn guts. Do they want to get delivering the heart and the tender loins out? That's my biggest problem. You getting the tender loins out. You still gotta it doesn't take me that long. I have the guts out of the thing so fast, then I can sit down and make a fire, have a snack, drink some coffee. I'm not sitting there watching it slowly bloat. I will get the guts. Are my tender loins against anybody's gutless method tenderloins any day of the week. They look like two completely different pieces of meat because you get them out real nice. Yeah. Yeah, you're hunting with a bunch of hacks. That name. I can't argue there's some great hull with some great hunters who liked the gutless method. But it's just I like and Yanni YouTube. Yanni a video YouTube. Yannie made a video like how to how many people have watched your gutless with y Gosh? I haven't checked. Probably over a year. I don't know. Let's just say quarter quarter million watched the gutless with Yanni gutless. This is how to do the gutless Yanni breaking down gutless. Kent and I went out one morning. I was telling me about the mountain bike. Kent and I mountain bike into this spot and he ended up shooting this buck um. First shot was a little bit back and he's like, we should probably do the gutless method. I was like, I can salvage it in the creeks, you know, not too far away. Uh. And he's still says to this day that some of that meat was poor and he ended up as a precaution, so he didn't, you know, bias his children grinding it all and turn it into sausage because he thought I had some gut taste to it. Yeah, no gut like just to speak about gutschot deer anyone who says they've never had when you're kind of lying because all that needs it really happens. If if it's quartering slightly in any kind of direction, you could you could center punch it and still wind up. As soon as you break the abdominal uh, you know, as soon as you kind of break through the diaphragm, you're gonna hit. Something's gonna go on. So we could say paunch. If you hit the paunch, that's a gut shot. I got him out. I take my water bottle, and if it means I'm gonna be thirsty, I take whatever I got for water. I cleaned everything up. I used snow to clean it up. I trim all that business away, washed the whole thing out, and then proceed on as what never happened. Are we making the assumption that this person is is saying you have gut shot at here that is dead on the ground. Maybe he means he gut shot and it ran off, like do you in that case, wait, do not pressure it. Let it lie down and die. If there's even a inkling that you might have got in the guts are far back. Yeah, A cautionary bow hunter, no matter what hit he gets, is not gonna follow that animal for an hour. If he's like, I it was first ripped back from the show, couldn't have been better. He's still gonna sit tight for fear that that thing will lay down, and that will go a little ways to lay down, and then he'll come trouncing through the woods and it'll jump up and then cover one mile in the next handful of seconds and give him all hell finding it. So, if you know you got a gut shot, you want to wait as long as you can push it. When considering the air temperature, otter factors can lead to spoilage, don't go chasing off after it because it's gonna go and lay down, and then you're gonna jump it up and it's gonna run like holy hell and become very difficult trailing, very difficult to blood trailer. Wait yeah, wait, how did you get to do what you're doing? What should I study in college to be able to work in the outdoor industry? Yeah? I used to get that a lot about writing, and I'd be like, I just never meet I've never met, Like, no two writers has the same story. There's no like template. If you're like, how do you become a lawyer, You're like, oh, well, study policy and undergraduate and you go law school and then like you take the bar exam and you're a lawyer. But in the outdoor industry is not like that. Here we have four people that work in the outdoor industry radically different stories. Well, think about the outdoor industry. I mean, it's not they're asking specifically, like to to do what you do or to do I want any of us here to do to say outdoor industry outdoor. I mean, the outdoor industry is gigantic. You could be a customer service wrapping the outdoor industry if you wanted to be, and translate that into into a career. You know, I'm assuming they want to have a career where they can hunt as their job. Let's say that they mean spending a bunch of time outside, and we all spend a ton of time outside. Yeah, I mean it's to me it can be as simple as finding your way into a company like First Light. Finding your way into a company, probably it's probably better as a smaller company, finding your way in a copy like First Light and getting yourself noticed. Maybe you're maybe you're an assistant, maybe your customer service rap. But being passionate about hunting an environment where there is opportunity. It's as easy, It can be as easy as that, you know, get into a place where you can get noticed by people that can pull the pull the trigger on you. Having a job where you can go outside. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a lot easier. There certainly is no degree for it for that specific purpose. There's no magical one. You can't major and want to be outside all the time, but man Field biology gets you outside a lot. I came into it where I wanted to be, like, I like to hunt. I wanted to be an outdoor water because I thought that would allow me to do a lot of hunting and fishing. And in fact I was correct, and just put up with a lot of years of a tremendous amount of uncertainty and then being really like really truly honestly broke not that I had feared, not that I was gonna go like unfed. Right, I had the luxury of always having like plenty of things I could fall back on, family that was there, Like, it wasn't like I was gonna wind up homeless, right, um, like a big support network of people who were not gonna let me nose dive and and and and burn out, but a ton of uncertainty about how this is all going to play out. But just like keeping going on it not um not being seduced by easy you're the less attractive options is is something well out the already specifically is not a profitable a venture? No not that's yeah. I want to being really lucky in that way. Now. I lived this like really like very comfortable existence that I never would have thought I've got I would have gotten into. You know, I always used to see the stream flow of the U s g S stream flow survey. Uh, setups on the side of the river. Go man, I need to work for the U S g S. I could just have my flyer out with me all the time, check all these years stream blow charts. Give me that job, but just doing maintenance on those right, yeah you think. Yeah, my wife is a wetlands ecologists and there were many years when I was you know, Guiden hunter fishing trips and then Guiden eight or ninety days hunting every year, and yet she still was spending more time in intent than I was on the core to be here. So yeah, go be a field scientist. I want to point out that might not be outdoors industry. But it wouldn't be outside of clarify, or if he did, we don't have that with us here right now. Have I told the story about you and me and sitting in Bozeman and you're watching a guide go by? Yes? I told it on the podcast. Never mind. Okay, here's a last one. This is This is a heavy hitter, never done. Where is this here? Sorry? That's a good I'm i gonna ask it. This is going on here? I'm not gonna ask this one. It's a good one. It's hunting to write or a privilege. Oh that's a good one. Um, privilege, damn it. Oh. As much time as you spend in the wilderness, do you feel the presence or calling of God or of a certain belief or spirituality? The wilderness gives me a yeah. The the wilderness gives me a sense of um, of it like and of itself. The wilderness in and of itself gives me a feeling of being higher than man. And I do feel like I have been moved tears by wilderness experiences. Where where, let's say, if you're going to define spirituality or something as a belief and something that can't be understood. Um, I think you accept sort of on like a notion of faith. Yes, I do feel uh like overwhelmed by its power, overwhelmed by an immense sense of time, of of the path, like of the quiet passage of time that happens in wilderness. Any one else cared to take that one? Huh? Yeah, My family is kind of built on I would first say the wilderness brings me closer to creation. And I think religion is a is it as us trying to figure out creation, trying to intellectually and emotionally figured out how we were created and what that means and what that means for our world. So like when you're out there and you're among this thing that you can't explain that was created you know in concert with you, it brings me closer to that concept, closer than Vegas. Yeah, I mean I don't have spiritual feelings about No, I never, there's no possibilities. There's a few things you could do that could fake that, but no, that to me, it brings me closer to creation. So that's where I connect through that creation and my my father, my mother, and my father, they are there. They were raised religious or their parents were we're very religious, and they both kind of got away from that, and now they go every Sunday they go down to to some national forests that that is near my house in Maryland, and they walk on this stream and they call that church and they just commune with nature. And when someone dies, they go there and they they take some part of that wild place, like whether it's an animal or whatever, and they assigned someone who died to that animal or to that place. That way they can go back and always visit that person. They try to, you know, assign some characteristic of that person to that animal or something, so when they see that animal they can they can then remember that person. So they've used you know, wilderness as a vehicle to explore their religious beliefs and figured out. My dad is, you know, kind of a songwriter in his own line. He writes sings songs about it and writes about it. Yeah, Artie FARTZI little family him. Man, you gotta have him on, like you're gotta have him on. I'd like to. He's a proper redneck though, don't okay, good good, good gilt, Yeah man, Yeah, many short answers, yes, of course like that. I think if you're not having those connections. Um, you may be out there for the wrong the wrong reasons if you haven't got it yet. I haven't hasn't clicked yet because you know, I was raised Catholic for at least half of my upbringing, and I truly enjoyed going to church. Um, but it you know, it dawned on me eventually that what I really liked about going to church was just kind of quiet contemplation and uh, you know, it was kind of going through the motions everything else. And um, as you may know, I kind of was like, yeah, don't be a dick, got it? And uh uh you know, so I just sit there and think and it was a great time to think and and yeah, I need like a good week alone in the woods and I can get all that him for a year. Um. So yeah, the quiet contemplation can be found in wild places and um and yeah, so yes, yes, straight up, oh yeah, big yes, characticks bound on that. No, I gotta cut you off quick concluding thought. Please, Now, I have many many times dogged on our very own meat eater store, but that son of a bit up and running up and running. We even got a meteor podcast t shirt coming out. We got men's and women's T shirts, hats, all kinds of ship even sweet rapid rifle cover. Rifle covers do you see on the show all the time with the mediate to logo on them? Get over there. When you're done doing that, go to Yanni's T shirt company, Hunt Eat. He's got a sweet meat or T shirt up on air. What else you go? Humpy states? Thousands, yea thousand states. I don't know the exact amount of states now, but we are up to uh forty different products they got, they got they got a new suite one called four Seasons and it kind of like in four nice little logo spells out good hunting fishing year. It's even got a winter cotton tail on it. Bank recluding thoughts, coluding thoughts. I mean, you got some deep, deep audience what I'm telling you. But these are these are cold, these are called which I appreciate but still still appreciate the people that listen to this and watch you care about it. Man curated, I should say, not cold curated. But that's you know, people asking good questions because they'll know you'll give good answers to it. Thank you. I just wanted to clothes with, you know, pumping you up. Please. I love it. You're flying fine human being kill I agree. I think I think good thank you is is in order. I'm getting an incredible amount of feedback, um ever since uh you know, a meat eater hitting Netflix, and it's it's crazy. I mean, it's the the fan feedback and the range of fans I've never seen attached to anything hunting related. You know, it's like over and over again, I get uh, you know, it's the only show my wife will watch. My little girls watch this episode over and over again like it's amazing. So yeah, thank you and keep asking questions. Good yeah, no concluding thoughts today. All right, thanks tuning it.

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