00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, all right, you freeloaders. There's two, uh two, three super important things. I'm gonna tell you about two of them, and then as a bonus, the Eagle, the Latvin Eagle, your honest who tell us, is gonna tell you about the third thing you can do for us. So this is a three for one um as a total freeloader who doesn't pay for squat and just listen to this the digital radio program with like no end of their own, no skin in the game of their own. The thing you can do to mitigate that some of your guilt for doing that is go on to the the the the sixty percent of you who are listening on iTunes, go on to iTunes and give the me Eater podcasts are ripping five star review. It doesn't really matter what you right, just's go give it a five star review. So like, do that right now and subscribe. Yeah, yeah, five star review and subscribe. Just do it right now. I'm gonna wait a second while you do it, So go click five. Okay, you got it. Okay, thank you. UM. If you listen to if you're part of the other percent, the twenty sum or thirty percent, to listen on stitcher, you do the same thing that that's thing one. UM. The second thing you need to do is that was it the right subscribe? Yeah? Yeah, subscribe, So that that was the easy one. Now the eagle is gonna tell you his little part of this this message. Mm hmm. You go to the meat Eater store which is at the Meteor dot com and look at some of the badass branded first Light gear that we have in stock bow coup Chalma hoodies in camo and it's solid patterns with a cool Meter logo on them. There are brimmed beanies. What else was there? Hats, T shirts, decals. Yeah, the new hats are nice. We have new um richardson one, twelves with the cipher new first Light cipher Camo on him with the Meteor logo. And Ridge Pounders. Ridge Pounder has been rocking one of those Yeah, yeah you are do you wear in Chicago when you're just kicking around town all the time? He says, yeah, But he's got that going for him. But he cannot cook squirrel and rabbit at all. That's it, right, that's it. Not for the program. Now, I know that listeners have grown accustomed to the impeccable sound quality of this year digital radio program, and that's gonna be a little compromised because we're in a teepee tent in the rain. And I know this has happened a handful of times throughout the history of this program, um, but you just have to bear with it. So if you're hearing a gentle pitter pattern punctuated by loud gusts of wind, that is the weather of a fog nack island, which not many folks have heard of. But a fog nack is separated by a narrow channel. Remember what's that channel called? You know? Uh no, not between the islands. I'm not sure. I think just fog net trade or something. Yeah, I don't quote me on that. I don't know. Well you're quoted, um, but well, well, yeah, I understand Raspberry straight straight, separated by a narrow channel from Kodiak Island and dirt here knows Kodiak as being an inferior brand of chew. No good Kodiak is good or not good good? Oh grizzly Yeah, do you think Grizzly was trying to nose in on Kodiak's business. Kodiaks known for big grizzlies. What's the chew? You said? It's like a low grade choo that you don't need to chew because you have a good job, Grizzly, that's what my pops choose, not that he has a bad job, but he's he's he's more frugal, he's better with what what do you got packed in right now? Dirt school baby? If anyone, if anyone's followed the saga of dirt trying to quit you, you can see that uh I wasna saying no progress has been made on the quid you have to try though? Really well? Yeah, because now he's hit to a homeopathic thing he's taking, which she feels is gonna mitigate the damaging effects of chew by taking what are you eating? Licening and fresh air? Licening is the pill? So you take a pill to just a prolong how long you can chew because it's it's counteracting the carson genic effects of your chew. What is my own theory? Yeah? No, I like it. I like it. Um, So we have a riding the storm Out, and you know, if anyone's spirit the Rio Speedwagon song Riding the Storm Out, it has you know, it's like a real powerful song that gets everyone amped up, and it's like really um dramatic. But in the song where he's really right, he's like at some kind of cabin scheme and he's just kind of saying like I'm not missing the thing Riding the Storm Out, and it's really sort of like, you know, it's kind of blase for his it's hard hitting of a tune. Riding the Storm Out is and if he was a real skier, he'd be out there. No, it's just like you feel like he's being more metaphorical, right, Like you feel like when he's like ride in the Storm Out, you feel like like it's metaphorical. You feel like he's in Miami during a hurricane. Yeah. Yeah, like but but if you listen carefully, just like he's in Colorado, I think, or more metaphorical, like he's got like a love triangle going on and just or he's going in to get um, he's going in to get a prostrate exam, which I just had my first stuff recently, so yeah, like going into that when I had to get on my elbows on the map. I was in my head was you know it might have been like I might have done better had I been thinking riding the storm out. But um, it's really like if you listen to it's kind of more of a Limp Dickey song because he's just up like skiing and he gets stuck in a cabin for the night. It's it's one of the songs. It isn't as good. Um, no songs better. This is just a quick diversion for you get back to what's going on in fog Nack Island. Uh. The Bob Seeger song Night Moves. Do you know what that song is about? Yes, tell me what it's about. Well, only because I've I've had a conversation with you while you dissected it and told me about what it was about. Night Moves is about senescence. It's about growing old where he for a lot of the song is reminiscing about being out with some gal behind back behind the corn field in the fifties, Chevy working on their night moves. So he's like, you know, perfecting the heart of love making I gather and but in the end of the song, it was like a PostScript to the song, and in the end of the song, Uncle Bobby Bob seeger crystals like you're from mission. You know what I'm talking about? What you're talking about? Uncle Bobby says, I woke last night to the sound of thunder. How far off I sat and wondered. So here he is. He's painting this picture of like someone wake up in the middle of the night, counting time. Right, I started humming a song from nineteen Isn't it funny how the night moves when you don't don't seem to have as much loose? He's it's it's from the perspective. It's an old man waking up at night, coming to terms with his own death and thinking back on this thing that happened to him. Isn't it funny? All the night moves and he just don't seem to have that much to lose. And now here he is, you know, maybe his prostates gone. I don't know. Um, Farnack Island, me break break it down fourth the island itself? Just do you have a whole spiel picture? Yeah, So we're in a valley, but the mountains jet up pretty high. It's all uh, most of its volcanic activity. What all these mountains come out of the ocean front A lot of vol can and hundred feet to be exact. When we were up at top Tony on the ridge we're camped at, three were camp blowing, not that doesn't matter, low enough, but about like a hundred yards most we got, uh, silver salmon jumping, oh yeah, fresh out of the ocean, clean salmon to being caught. Yeah, they're pretty aggressive. Ramy actually caught one on his first cast cast, which is a giant on his first cast. But anyways, there we are Farnack Island. Yeah, and so there's uh, just a few different animals running around. Elk Roosevelt elk, which were introduced. Then there's blacktail deer Cia blacktail deer, and then you've got the Kodiak brown were which is the king of the island. But it is biggest brown bears in the world, biggest brown bears in the world. You have pounds, so if you think about them, it's a bear that's about the weight of two standard Montana elk or more. That's a big bear. That's huge. But these elk are no These elk are no joke either in weight, they're about four hundred pounds. I would say somewhere in there some of the biggest body, biggest boggy dulk in the world. Yep, for sure. And I think it's just because there's there's what you've seen the grass. It's just head high, high protein grass from what I've heard. Yeah, we're kind of in It's weird about this island. Is you kind of in like a you're in almost like a grassland environment. Yeah, you would think, but I mean there's obviously there's spruce forests and then there's old growth forest on the other side, just this mountain behind us um. But this grass is you just notice all the seed and everything on the top of it. And this morning I found bear crap out back. There's just full of the grass seed. So it's obviously a pretty rich food source and easy to gather for the elk and the the deer and well, I don't know, I would imagine the deer do a little more browsing on some of the other plants growth. Yeah, everything grows larger here. Garrett was calling it, Kong Island is big. Yeah, And there's a thing like in in you know, we've talked about Bergman's rule or Bergman's principle number of times that mammals tend to be. Mammals tend to be the largest specimens of mammals tend to be at the most northern point of their range, which has to do with heat retention and heat dissipation. So if you just imagine, like imagine the white tailed deer um the most you know the diminutive forms of white tailed deer, like down in the Florida keys we have keys deer like very small deer, and everybody knows like the really big bodied bruisers from Alberta. So if you imagine the white tailed deer, like a large white tailed deer has a lower surface area ratio than a small white tailed deer, so which is beneficial for heat retention. A smaller bodied white tailed deer has higher surface area, which is good for heat dissipation. The same way, if you think about an African elephant has big, huge ears and a wooly mammoth had very small ears because they use those ears to cool their blood by sending blood into their ears, which is exposed to the air to cool it. And then other things have strategies by which they try not to expose blood to air. But there's the reason that bring that up. There's a principle with islands were generally on islands, mammals tend toward diminutive form, and here you have but these are huge. See. The weird thing is they're huge islands. Yeah, they're they're huge. They become almost like not they become almost like an island, like when they're so huge because you know, like there's there's enough. Probably everything is smaller on an island because there's not as many resources, so they just tend to be smaller. But there's a surplus of food here. There's more food than animals, and there's large predators. So the populations, the populations here, especially for the deer, are an extreme flux. Last year was a phenomenal deer season. The year before, or maybe it was two years before, it was all you could do to find a buck. I mean, just hunting hard. Last year, bucks everywhere, good antler growth, unbelievable season. This year is kind of down a little bit. Yeah, but it most takes sometime, I am for that to even out, because I mean, like the thing has to be born and grow up. Yeah, I mean three to four. You know, you've got your babies and then about every three years or whatever to grow like a like a mature buck. Yeahs, the winners are a lot harder here. So like even the black tails where you're at, say, if you're hunting black sick of black tail and Prince of Wales, these black tails are way bigger, way bigger body. Yeah, and then their antlers get can get bigger. But they don't have as many trophy quality bucks all the time because extreme fluxes in the population and the horn grow antler growth. So there's good old days and not good old days. Yeah. When I'm looking at pictures of sick of black tails, I can pick out the cordiac black tails. Oh yeah, this is such a look to them. When you're packing one out, it feels like packing out a meal deer from Montana. People think black tails are just tiny deer, not the ones on Kong Island. On Kong Island, now Remy is here's a good segue. Remy is hunting blacktails. Remy does have a black tailed tag, but we're manly pursuing elk and so on Fogna Fognack Island, there are well, there are handful of islands and coastal Laska that have elk kirds. Edeln Island, Yeah, what's that? Raspberry Island, Fognack Island have elk kirds and they're all limited draw hunts. You know what the draw odds here? Um? Now, probably I'm just guessing from when I looked a while ago. And how many years ago was it that you drew this tag the first time? Oh I'm not four years four years ago? Yeah, and talk about what happened that made it be that you said you would never ever do this again. Oh, it's just brutal pack out, just such a large animal, and it was me and my brother on that hunt, and so it was. Yeah, it's one of those trips where you're doing it and you just are saying, why did I suffer through that? Why did I choose to do this? And then the day you leave, you think about it and you go, that wasn't so bad. You're like proud of yourself for accomplishing it. But the elk, we're not anywhere close to where we were camping, so we had to go up over the range, down the valley to the other side, shoot an elk, carry it all the way back up and his was another six miles past mind, same deal up over range, dropping down, going through brush and terrible. Yeah, there's nowhere to land aircraft around now. I mean you can land aircraft on floats in and you know you can land aircraft on floats. There's a couple like shoreline bars where you can down, like at sea level where you can land, Yeah, depending on the tide and the winds. But little there's some low lakes where you can land, but there's no way to get You can boat into some places, but then you got all but you got peaks out here that are a couple of thousand feet high. Yeah, so you're you're always going to be climbing from close to sea level to a couple of thousand feet And now you could have it luck out and they'd be where you camp, but it just hasn't been my experience. We tried that last year my dad drew in alk Tag and we had them spotted the day before the season, like near the coast right we're camping. Storm rolls in and the next morning they were three miles up and some other hunters were actually up there, and then by the time they got done getting spooked around, they were just in a place where you had taken five days to pack out. Talk about the time and the hours and distance you guys spent pack in the elk up here. I have it on my because I did log it, and I hate saying what wasn't right, but it was. I can't remember at this point. It was what I have on this thing that I saw the other day. It's eighty hours of packing. So that might have been forty forty hours of person or it could have been eighty hours total. I can't remember now. But you're going from this location, you're going up feet and then down. Yeah, because you're almost back down on the sea level. Yep, we're on his ball. We did to get from camp to visible and back was five thousand feet five thousand vertical vertical feet. So and we would start we started an hour before sun up, hike up there, get there, um, get there just about a noon lunchtime, and be back just after dark. And then you had to move of seven pounds, six pounds, six hundred pounds, and and that's boned out. You know. Over the I've been putting in for this tag for well, different versions of it. I've been putting in for like some version of these tags. Different spots because there's many units on like Raspberry Island, and here's a bunch of units, a lot of units here. Some are easier to draw than others. And I've been like putting in for him for over a decade. It never drew it. And then Rammy drew it four years ago and vowed to never come do it again. And then I said, let's put in his partners and he was like, okay, so we won't draw it anyway, so it doesn't matter. And then we drew it. And then we drew it. And so now you sit in the rain with fog in a tent. I would do it with you because I know that it would It would be actually easy. There's just a certain people I would do this hunt with my brother, helicopter ceties, celebrities and helicopters and you knew you were going to draw. Yeah, exactly, because that's how it works in Alaska. But it's a big like just to be totally transparent. Um, well, the like the guys that we the guys we work with on our crew, they were you know, we're here filming, and the guys who work with on our crew, um, we always split meet up after our hunts usually like even Stephen, everybody packs me. So it really is a like a tremendous advantage when you have because we're going up the hill with six packers. When you have six packs and six people, that's that is two additional days of two people. That's huge. So you think about we shot two bowls and we had two guys, So if it was one trip with six guys, well in each bull, you have three trips. But it was actually more than that. Uh yeah. What was what we did on on one of them was we did like point A to B two see two D to E to F and just had it in trees the whole way, so we the whole thing bounced the whole thing like in a continuous line, and then we got it to A so you didn't have to go all the way back every day. You're still walking the same amount of miles you are, but it gets the cash because you've got you've got bears. You just go from tree to tree, so you're never you don't want to. You can't just skin it out and just leave it at the kill site and I'll be back here, you know. And the other thing is we can check on it at a closer point, because my thought is if it's hanging in a tree at camp or hanging in a tree four yards away or a mile away, it doesn't matter. It's hanging in a tree at something and it needs to come back to camp. But you can utilize your time a little bit better if you get a bowl down, you start ferrying him from points because to go, and because you have a mountain in the middle, you know, so if you get everything to the base of the mountain or to the top of the mountain, it's a lot easier than having to walk up that thousand feet there that the main pass and then drop back down and then drop back up. You know, you get up there and do your work and try to move the whole thing. You know, when when you draw the tag um, the Fish and Game Department well sends you kind of like a little no illustrating some of the challenges, and with this one they seem to be they're particularly pointed about the challenges of the hunt. And I noticed that when I drew a Copper river um buffalo tag they had that there was like a long letter, was like a couple of page letter being like but now that you have this thing this tag here are some things you should pay attention to UM and it had to do with you know, ice flow and free and access issues and just really lays out for you in a way that's almost kind of pessimistic sounding. Here. The note that your tag comes with is about one, these things are huge and people shoot them too far away and get in over their heads. And two it says, you know, the carcass the killsite will be claimed by a bear. Yes, usually within the first night. Yeah, so saying you have to get the meat away from the guts. When I shot my bowl, we had to. We had to actually go a different route to stock him because there was multiple bears amongst the herd of elk, big bears like big boars, and there's a couple there's one south cubs on the other side, so we're kind of dodging bears. We watched one go into where we were actually planning on walk like this patch all thats we're planning and walking down through, So I mean rerouted around that patch of alders. I shoot my bowl. We get up to it. The bear decides to wake up out of the patch of alders. The winds blowing toward him and he's just got his nose up as we're skintting clean. I mean, he knew it was there, and and so we had essentially with the two of us, one guy on bear watch while the other guy's cutting it up because it's it was thick in there, and we knew that the bear knew where we were and he was coming our way. At some point, they're fully habituated to gunshot being a meal here enough, I don't think there's enough of that, but they know, they just know they smell dead elk, and I mean maybe they're definitely aware of the probably like kill elk, calves and kill well to interesting bear stories. So one has to do with what we're talking about. One does, and I'll tell the one that does. At first, we're doing a caribou a couple of weeks ago, and the pilot that flew us in and dropped us off from the bush while we were hunting, he was telling a story where he's flying along in a in a super cub and sees a big chocolate colored grizzly, like big mature grizzly dragging something and he gets curious what it is and circles around. It's a big grizzly dragon a subadult grizzly, and over the next hill is probably that bears litter me another subadult grizzly running off and the bear is still limp like he just killed the thing. The next plane that came over, the guy that this guy works with flew over and by that point the bear was burying the grizzly, and a couple of days later they flew over and he was sleeping on top of it, so he was full on eating it. The second story is the guy we flew in with here does some flying for biologists with fishing game. And they were out collecting collars like they have been working on a collaring project with brown bears, and they had a glitch where, um, I don't know if it's a glitch, but they had You know that the collars are times, so they're good for two years and the collar will fall off and they'll go out and pick up their collars. And they're out the other day picking up collars and they go to where they had a grizzly or brown bear the same thing. Um picking up a collar and the collar is laying next to a elk carcass, a big bull. So when his collar fell off, he was in the in the act of feeding on a big dead bull he had killed or found, Yeah, probably killed. Yes, that leads me to a question, because he weighs twice or not. I mean, he weighs like a lot more than I mean, they're big with big bears. But it's like, you know, lions will kill deer and elk a weigh three or four or five times that they weigh. He's not gonna care, no, I think that. I mean, I definitely think that they follow those herds because it's it's a food source. It's right there, and they'll eat other things along the way. But if something happens, or especially they're running now, I would imagine bulls get injured or wounded or tired from running really hard, and they're bedded up and they aren't thinking as clearly as they might other times a year. So this time of year right now seems to attract more bears, and there the elk are making a lot of noise. So I think that that's a an of audio que to the bears saying, oh food over here. You know, they can smell them, they can hear them, and he just attracts them. We were one time, pulls it up on a glass and tip watching a group of moose, and we went down to me and my older brother went down and start putting the moves on a bull that was in this group of moose, and our bodies stayed up on the tip. We're just observing from high above. And they saw a grizz they come in while we were stalking these moose. Agrees he came in and attacked calf. Really in the group we're stalking, I mean, they're just in there, mixing it up with big, giant freaking animals. Man, And if he uses out eating grass eating barries, why not do that in proximity to all these big, mewing, bellowing protein piles. He's like, why not? You might have an opportunity to get something a little better than grass. Yeah, it's like you could drink. If you're single, you could drink at home or drinking a bar. It's like, at least if you at the bower, who knows something good might happen to you exactly? You could be drinking anyways. Is there a different have they done studies on like ratio of plants versus like game protein on these brown bears versus other regions like these much higher animal because they because they eat so much salmon and they can't distinguish between that or like dear or elk as far as Oh, oh, I'm sure if you go and do yeah, I'm sure, if you go and look at like the actual isotopes in them, you would tell what they're eating. They can get a really detailed analysis on it, those like by looking at like stabilized stopes. We were down in Salt Argentina and my wife and we went to have you ever heard of those children that the inca's Um would sacrifice on mountaintops. They take them up, you know, fifteen sixteen thousand feet and make these little rock holes and just knocked the kids in the head and leave them in there as sacrifices, and they would just basically freeze dry in the high elevations. Well, yeah, we went to see that. These this one in Salt Argentina. This now in like a climate controlled thing in a museum. And this it was a boy. He's so well preserved. I can't know. There's three children. And they made a deal with the indigenous people that they only display one at a time, and why aren't even talking about this? Oh, I don't want to talking about this isotope. So they're so well preserved. They had feathers in their hair and the feathers are still perfect, and they still have coca leaves dried on their lips. I mean, this kid looks like he would stand up and walk away, but he was killed and probably like around right like just pre contact height of the Incan Empire. And it was three kids they buried all together. There was a thirteen year old girl and she had been hit on the head. They were all full of of of alcohol, fermented like a fermented potato drink, so they probably got them drunk, left them up there. The girl probably realized what was going on. Maybe they had to hit her in the head. One of the kids was later struck by lightning at some point. It's kind of burned a little bit. But no, they're perfect. They're perfect, clothing, everything bottles perfect. But they can by looking at tissue samples, they can tell that these kids had for most of their life eating nothing but potatoes, virtually nothing but potatoes, but in the last months of their lives had an extremely varied enriched diet as they were getting and also had hundreds of trinkets from around the Incan Empire. So they're like taking them around on this big tour of the empire, and we're probably being fed fish and llama meat and all this kind of stuff and giving all these gifts and partying it up in order to then be taken up and left on the mountain. And so they're able to tell not just like what it was eating, what they ate throughout their life, with the sequencing of it. Yeah, well that's so that does. I am curious then why these bears, these brown bears on the fog neck, are so much bigger than other bears that have the salmon protein and the black tail and elk options. It has to be some well you got like a genetic factor, because what's interesting about these bears, they've been genetically isolated for ten thousand years. There's been there's like they feel that it's the islands far enough off the mainland. There hasn't been any genetic exchange between these bears and other populations for ten thousand years, so they're kind of off on their own trip, right, And I think that you have phenomenal marine resources, like very rich salmon resources and in a large game and like great grass and it's a dry area so they're much pressure. That's a trophy area as well. But you know, the writer and the and the food plays a huge part and that's why it is. Yeah, but they're not I mean they're not. But the elker introduced so that hasn't like changed. I mean, the bear has been big for a long time. The hunting writer uh and guide Tony Ross, he's got a he's got a book about grizzlies and brown bears and he talks about that big board like an actual like food source. An important food source for grizzlies is grizzlies. That the older boars on these islands are full on praying on cubs and it's like a food source for them. So they're coming out of hibern nation eating grass for a while and then devoting time and energy to just eating bears, not to spread their genetics through breeding, but just for a food source. That's the thing you hear all the time that it's a it's a weird thing when it comes like behavior and people talking about like genetic and the reasoning what animals do. So boars tend to like large boar, bear, black bears, grizzlies, whatever, tend to feed more on bears than other bears do, and because it's easy to do, they tend to kill cubs and eat them. The thing that people say is that they're like, there's a real there's a there's sort of a uh, a sexual advantage or an adaptive advantage to the boar killing the cubs, because the like when a female has, a female will have her cubs in February or March in a den. She'll come out of hibernathan with hibernation with those cubs and will not be receptive to breeding. She'll spend the entire summer and fall with her cubs, den with them again, emerge from the den with them, and then we'll become receptive to breeding that June July. Yeah, so she's always skipping. She's always skipping a whole year. Like a bear doesn't drop. It's like a deer that will drop fun every drop cubs possibly every other year. So when a bore, so if you look like a bore, is the one going around doing the infanticide, the eating of one's own offspringer one's own species. They commit infanticide, the thinking being that that sound will come into rut that year that year. So if he's out in April and May austin off cubs, sALS that would not normally breed with him are now going to become receptive to breeding. He might breed him. And it's like, so advantageous of a thing that seems like they will kill cubs that, because of proximity to their home range, are very likely their own cubs to rebreed that same sou. Yeah, so it's like, but it's like you look at and be like, so that's why the bear does it, but I don't, like, you can't really don't really know like why the bear doesn't. Right, It could be that the bear does it because he's just big. He's not he can confront a sow and not get killed buyer, because he's so much bigger than she is, and he can eat the cubs. It doesn't he doesn't need to get into a giant fight trying to kill the sow, And a result of that is that she becomes receptive and he breeds her. So it would like reinforce that behavior. But it might not be that the bears thinking huh, man, it's a bummer that she's not gonna want to do it this summer. If I eat her cubs, she'll become receptive and I'll be able to pour the coals that were and have like new offspring. So it's like when you say, like why he does it, it's different than what the result of he does. The geneticist Stephen Gould talks about that where people like, look at a tree and like, bark's brown. What is the selective advantage of bark on a tree being brown? And it might be like there is no advantage. It's like, what is advantageous is that bark is thick and protective. Maybe a result of it becoming thick and protective makes it brown. But the brown doesn't do any advantage for the tree. It's just some It's like some random offshoot that doesn't really matter. So when you look at like nature and you think that everything has a purpose, something's are the result just or yeah, the result of other issues like why do you salmon jump so much into getting ready to spawn? Some people say it's because they're trying to knock their eggs loose, which they have a very hard time believe. And do you hear that. No, I've never heard that they're trying to loosen their eggs act. That doesn't make any sense. I don't know why do they jump? There might be no doubt, only do he have reason for the females. You start to come up with the reason for the male and females jumping. So when people are like why do they jump, and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know that jumping is really doing them any good. It might be some other a product of something that does make sense that makes them have the tendency to do that, but it's not like they're getting something out of it. So they can get out of the water and see where they're going. Yeah, bears up there, so yeah, the bears are huge and that's a good point. So like the el we'll get back to elk. But bears out here are drawing. This is another draw I put in for every other you only put in every other year. Every other year I put in for nonresident non guided cody at counts. What that means is anybody wants to help with a guide can go anytime they want. No, they have to draw as well. I'm pretty sure they draw Outfitter sponsored tag. What you're gonna get, yes, something, yeah, something like that. What's hard to get is it's hard for a non guided resident to draw. And I can hunt here without a guide because my brother is a resident of Alaska. But that's a very difficult tag as non guided, nonresident. But there are a lot of outfitters sponsor. It's much easier to draw a tag with a sponsored outfitter, like their clients get preference. The resources managed the resource, the Brownberry Resources managed to support the guiding industry in this area. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how many tags they would get or whoever gets the tags. I haven't really looked at. Well, you have a you have a much money. If you sign up with the outfitter, you have a much higher chance of drawn then than a hunter host. But you I don't know if that's the case of having a much higher chance of drawing than a resident hunter. I believe that it is, man because I could be. I could because a lot of people. What's that you're in the same pool you are, as far as I recollect, we don't have the paperwork with us. I know it's in my tent um because I've put in for uh cheap tag in the chew catch. Yeah, but that's a whole different place and thing. Yeah, but if it's uh, you know, I don't. I honestly don't know. I don't think that you're saying that there's a draw an outfit or draw the outfitter. The brown Bear outfitters have a quota all their own. Oh I'm not Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I don't know. I would. I have no cliff. So I put in a ton of times. Well, every other years always be the spring hunt. So every other year I put in for a non guided, non resident spring Kodiak hunt and never draw it. Yeah, what's a tough tag to draw? So yeah, that helps have big gass bears. Then in an area where you're allowed to kill, in a road accessible area where you allowed to kill, where residents are allowed to kill two grizzlies a year, it tends to put a crimp on the biggins, tightens them up. Yeah. Now back to ELK. What are your thoughts on the whole deal on the ELK here? I mean, how do you come like what does it compare like in your mind to like hunting Rocky Mountain ELK? Yeah, I mean it's it's similar to hunting elk in an area where there's there's a big herd, but that one herd, you know, moves around. So there's a lot of similarities between Rocky Mountain elk and these elk um you know. I think the only difference is just the terrain that they're in might be a little more open, well at least or roar hunting. It might be a little more open than some other elk areas. But what I noticed both times is you don't really get those in Montana. You might have five elk here and a herd of twenty elk there, and these different basins. It's almost like they all group up right now, and they're in one group, and there's a lot of no elk country. It looks like there should be elk and you don't see anything. So there's a lot of miles in between where the elk are, But once you find them, you're in them thick, and then they might just be gone somewhere else. Yeah. The bull the bulk of the of the normal like Rocky Mountain elk hunting that I've done has been in an area where in the firearms season, like during the early archery season, they're pretty well dispersed. Yeah, but by the time the late firearm season starts in late October, they group up into these giant groups and it's like hunting them kind of well. People talk about where is the herd because you're chasing after these balls of three four traveling together, and it means that there's one place that has elk in a lot of places that don't, which I have kind of grown to hate. It's terrible, it really is. Because it's nice to get to go up on a ridge and glass this valley and go okay and think there's a possibility that there will be an elk here, but if immediately there's either a hundred of them or there's none of them, and that kind of sucks. It makes it tough because you have to travel a lot. It makes it easy to find them when you're in the area where they're at, obviously, but because you're not down to it's all that down time in between, you're not gonna miss the ball out that big no I mean socially, yeah, they'll be standing, they'll be making noise, they'll be doing something, so you can find them if you're in that close enough proximity where you have a line of sight to them, but that oh, I might bump one on the way there, and you just you just don't. What's preventing us right now from even hunting is rain and fog. Yeah, which you which is like that's a factor everywhere, But fog is like a peculiar thing of like the coastal environments, and there's nothing that shuts you down as hard as fog shuts you down. You need to be able to see. Rain is one thing. If it's high cloud and it's it's just wet, you can still figure out where they're at. But when you're talking about going five miles and they might be at the end of this and you need to I mean, you're trying to run into one herd. It just is not advantageous to do it when you can see twenty ft we I was on a goat hunt here in the Laska one time, hunting mountain golts, and we hiked into an area that we knew to have some and sat in the fog for three days, just going insane. We actually found an old mining camp and so we found a torch, a pro pain tank, backpack that stuff back to our camp and we're like spending time experimenting with heating rocks with a with a weed burning torch and then bring the rocks into our tent to see how warm we could make it. I mean, just like honestly killing time. And then one day the fog blows out and realized that the whole type and sitting there it's just there are just goats everywhere above us, like they would have been just there there the whole time. There's no way to see them. Yeah. You well, if you had a week of fog and you're hunting, you could do in two hours of clear no fog what would take a week of figuring in the fog? Or more like we might Yeah, if we wake up to my own clear it's it's gonna be like easya, you gotta go, Yeah, you just gotta go. It's a different it's a different game. What were you saying, The success rate of that of the harvest of the Roosevelt's extremely low, right, I yeah, I mean last the time. I think it's a combination of factors. I think that people get the tag and they don't hunt real hard, or they don't want to or can't physically get to the animals and get them back to and just don't show up and don't show up. A lot of people wants to have very low not just low success, but they have low participation because it's to get out because you think like, oh, I'll do like, I'll put in and then the more you find out about it, distance, time, money, whatever, people just like wind up like, uh, never mind. Yeah. Well. The other thing is, if if I was someone that says, you know, I'd really like to shoot at Roosevelt Elk, I would suggest them not come here to do it. I mean, there's a million places that you could go, and it would be a hell of a lot easier to get to, a lot easier hunt, and probably more animals. But it's just the fact of there's something different, it's in a cool place, and not that many people have done it, and you just so I'm just drawn to give it a try. The first time I ever put in for this, I had no clue about it. It It was more of an accident than anything I put in for everything else. So put in for Elk here, and my brother called and says like, hey, we drew Elk tags. I was like, what I forgot about that ship? I better try to figure out where these things even are. Yeah, I think that there's some things. There's just some like there's something to a handful of people, like really seductive about the idea of coming to this part of the world and come to these crazy islands and these crazy giant bears and hunting these giant damn elk call them, yeah, because I mean they're aunts are actually pretty small, but their bodies are huge. Yeah. They don't have big old no. I mean the last one I got was a giant like for this for Alaska, for the area, I mean, a pretty large six by six, which I think is you know, it was way above average. Um. But I was pretty lucky to get a good bull like that. And then we saw another one. My brother could have got one, but we ended up calling in. When we were trying to call the big bull, a small bull came in and he just said that was it was so cool to have that bull in his lap was five by five. He just shot it. I was like, all right, awesome, gave up on the big one. Yeah, he just he was like, it was more about the experience. We could have hunted and snuck in on the big one, but to have that bull just come right in and be calling and just that cool. I mean he just looked cool and him the bulls screaming, and my brother shot it pretty close. It was just a cool experience. So you know, is it just about the experience, not necessarily the rack or any thing, um. But yeah, I mean it's you can go other places and hunt the same species a lot easier, bigger ones or whatever. But it's just something to try and doing different. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, there's a lot of people that. Yeah, there's not a lot of people say, oh, yeah, I shot a knock on a fog knack Island. No. You know, I think about like the participation success thing. Um. The year earlier I was talking about, like John kind of a similar like a similar sort of hunt, which was the Copper River you know, bison hunt in Alaska. Remember that, like that year. Remember they gave out twenty four tags for that hunt and at the end and that's an eight month long season. Wow, you can start hunt I think sometime in September and hunt through March. Is that eight months? No, it's a big long season, six months long season, whatever it is, it's a long season. Well, I'm gonna add it up right now in my head it is, yeah, so so six months long season or so yeah, because I can't remember the exact dates, but like it's at least half the year long. Out of the tags, only four people got one of the animals, and I think the vast majority of the of the holders never did it, didn't go, or they might have gone and just said it's too hard, that's too far, that's too hard. Well, that hunt you either got to like you're you're either in it or not in. It's kind of like this one. There's no way to come and do a light version. Well you could. You could go and see him at the top of that rage and go, you're here, but you go, ah, I don't know if I want to carry one back up this mountain. I mean, that's a sensible way to approach it. It happens, Yeah, so I would picture of that. Yeah, people probably come and they're like, if we can get land somewhere and maybe have some come close, we'll maybe do it. Not well, hunt deering for salmon. That happens a lot, because to be honest, the killing, like to kill an elk here didn't seem to me that difficult. It was the the more of the hunt. Some hunts are you struggle all the way up to the point where you get one. This hunt was more the opposite, where it was medium tough to actually get one. Not. I mean, I shot mine the first morning of the first day, and but of the hunt was after you pulled the trigger. It was just the packing and the grinding and getting the dang thing out. Yeah. So yeah, I mean there's those hunts where you just struggle all the way up until to kill, and then everything afterwards is just that quick pull the truck up the process. And then there's those hunts where you can go out and get something fairly fast, but you're spending it entire week or more getting it back home. Yeah. We made an initial uh kind of a like a like a somewhat quixotic walk up the hill today, knowing that we would just walk up into the fog because you can tell from here it's very foggy. So we walked up there and said, wow, it's really foggy, and then walk back down. Um, And the whole time I was doing that, all I'm thinking about, well, the whole time we've been here, except for when we were like thinking about how great the salmon fishing was. All I'm thinking about is the pack out. Yeah, it's just like weighing on my mind. And maybe because I the sucking depending suppending suck, the depending suck is all I think about, and I'm worried about, like maybe I over oversold the suck. But for that, for the two of us where we shot our bulls, it was sucked. Like me and Jason both are per fashional elk packers. We carry elk for a living, like we guide out. We carried to elk a week most weeks for some years, ten weeks out of the air. It's like, we know what carrying elk is. You know, we pack out a ton of animals. Yet this was just a miserable pack out you were and I mean, and obviously I got. I drank some bad water and got really that was midway through because I drank it the first day, but it took a while for whatever I drink it. Yeah, So we're landed on a lake and we're on the lee. We're kind of on the know around the let the lead around the wind driven side of the lake and the lakes full of dead salmon and beaver chewed sticks, so you know, there's beaver fever and he's needs here waters. And we found a little trip coming in flowing off under a hill, and my first thought was that trip is great and drank it, and then remy talk about haven't gotten sick up here before, So now I'm kind of like half waiting around to get sick. Yeah, but that's I know that one will be fine. Yeah, Well I got I got me a little emergency pack of ciproal, so when things go down from water, I'm gonna be. You'll be fine, I'll be I'll give you You're always supposed to take full doses, but I'll share my sip rose perfect. Now I think, uh that water filtration is one thing that I should probably get better at. I hardly ever take water filtration well. Once we got on, like I used to take more shortcuts and be lazier, but then we got on the sterry pens and that's what I need to ultra violet ultra violet little ultra violet wands. And I've had the same one now. I think I've had the same sterry pen for five years. I think I'll start using that. I mean another typically just sterilized that part of it. I mean, I'm real careful about where I get my water. And I know I and my brother looks at you like shakes his head. Nah. And I tasted it and thought it was that that real soft water and it feels like that horrible taste in that like silky texture in your mouth, and I said, this is perfect for bacteria. Yeah, my girl got sick off elk water. What was that young? I was gonna say, you weren't really wanted to go the easiest, lightest way. You could always just drop I had done, Yeah, just purification tablets. Yeah, that's why I got sick in Arizona once, is because I didn't feel like doing that, and also because we kind of got screwed up a little bit and didn't have any water out in the desert and hit some water and I was like there was like, well, I'm gonna put some tablets of mine and wait, and I was like, I'm thirsty. This looks all right, And I got sick as a mofo man. Yeah, that was the beginning of a long with you for more than three days. I think I don't like I don't like using iodion for more than three days because it can mess you. It's not recommended for repeated use. Yeah, I carry iodi and tablets in my kid, but no one's in my emergency kit. But it's not recommended to just use that as a strategy. Now I'm spending day after If you're spending like weeks out of the woods ever, you just can't be drinking all that iodine. Yeah, kills the good bacteria in your system. You never feel refreshed. You always. It's that weird. I don't know. The water just isn't the same, isn't the same? No, ridgie, you haven't said anything. Hanging it in, man, I'm riding the storm out, Chris gil Ridge Pounder right in the storm. You have nothing that's on your mind. I did have a thing about Ramy's point about over exaggerating the suck and that I don't think that you are over exaggerating the stuck based on like the minor hike that we did today with like the waist tall grass, like grabbing at your feet and doing that with like a super heavy pack of meat. I feel like that's a I feel like that's going to be a pretty tough, pretty Oh the little our little foray today didn't make me be like, Oh, if anything, I think it's it's steep in that the grass. It's steep. Yeah, when everything in my power to go back face first down the mountain, you're a full summersault. Well we're I was looking for you to pop up. You were downhill, like twenty ft from where I started to disappeared. You took a roll in the grass of today. My foot got hung up and I just went straightforward, face forward. It doesn't look like shintang from a distance, but it's it's got some shintang qualities like New Zealand shintang. I thought we were introduced to shintang in British Columbia. I thought that's where it grew. What's the stuff that in New Zealand and talked about the really bad to walk through stuff. Oh, it's like come yeah, yeah, that's the real thick that's the sticker stuff. Yeah. Shintang is like, um, it's like carpet juniper. It's like when you get like stunted growth first because it too high wind bad or high elevation where they grow not high but out. Yeah, it's very difficult to well that monkey scrub because you just like you look like a monkey crawling through it. No, here's the thing I want to bring up and get you guys o paint on it. We kind of touched on this and the reason that I want to bring this up is because it relates to a previous episode where my brother Matt was on and we were talking about stealing people's spots, stealing people's hunting spots, and we're having a debate, Um, if you go It started out like this, if you go hunt with a guide, so you're going to guided trip, is it ethical for you to just go back the next year and hunt that spot. Well, you're your guide. Know what you're gonna say. Give me your take on it. Here's my take on it. I am a stickler when it comes to hunting spots. I will never hunt a spot that someone else takes me into, and I expect the same from other people. I think that it's now Here's the other thing that is, if you communicate with the person and say hey, I'd like to go hunt this spot and they're like, yeah, that's cool, then you can do it. And the same as a guide. If there's somebody that hunts with me and they're like oh, you know, I'd really like to hunt this next year. Then I would be like, Okay, let me give you some really good spots to go into. They don't because the places I hunt or in proximity to what makes it convenient. There's a million places that I would love to hunt, but I'm not gonna go drive thirty five minutes. But if you're just coming from wherever, you might as well go hunt that spot because I'm not going to be there, you know, so let me help you out. Here's the places to go. We won't be we won't be interfering with each other. Yeah, because this last week, there's well we were talking about this is in Montana. It seems like there was an influx of nonresident hunters this year, and I think partially due to the fact that there was a world record bowl killed on public land in Montana. So everybody sees that and they go, oh, I'm gonna hunt Montana this year, So they pick a spot in Montana and maybe places where I don't know. I think the people that did this were from Minnesota or Michigan or Minnesota. But it's like in Montana, you especially elk season during the rut, you're doing a lot of calling. Don't really want to space yourself out between other hunters. You know, it's not advantageous to you or the other the whole lake. There's one dude, you go drill hole next to day. So they these two people, these two individuals had that mentality. They parked behind my truck and just like, walk into this small area. Were you guys hearing any bugle in? We are, well, no ship, you're here bugling right up on the ridge and you're walking toward it. Because it's it makes no sense. It's a different mentality, but maybe we're there from that's the way that they do it. They see a truck, that must be a good spot, hang our stand there. It's just fishing. I accept that with fishing. Like if I'm out on a lake right and I got some holes drilled and a guy shows up, I think he'd be like, I'm gathering the dance where the fish are and he comes over, and I would think nothing negative about that person. Duck hunting, it really bothers me. Well, yeah, and it bothers me even way more. Big game hunting now now rifle season, when there's people everywhere, Yeah, vehicles get stacked up at trailheads, this, that and the other thing. That's completely acceptable. But when you're bow hunting and you're calling and you're trying, the success is based on you working an animal and tricking its behavior is a certain way. And they're calling and you're calling, and you're calling each other in and the elk and all that ends up at the end is two hundred staring each other in the face. I mean, yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. So but but but you kind of veered off on me there. But I'm saying, that's the spots spots, so he so we had this conversation, were like, if you were on a guided trip, is it okay to go to that spot? And my brother was saying, I can't remember how how like fervent he was in his belief, but he's saying, like, it's different in that situation because you were paying. You were paying someone, so it makes it a different relationship. But you're paying for that trip, you're not paying for like the spot. If you guide, I'm gonna buy your spot. The guy would say, well then, because I don't view this as being me selling you the spot. Or if you're like, here's a blank check, give me all your hunting spots right now, and whatever number you think it's worth on it, and then you know, if you buy like his knowledge, then it's one thing. But I don't think it's I don't think it's ethical. So we're kicking it around. This isn't even what I'm meaning to bring up. I'm just as a prelude. He was pointing out that it is a different relationship than a friend thing, and he was saying he agreed with everyone. It's in the conversation that the primary crime, a capital crime, I'm talking out behind the wood shot twenty two round, behind your ear crime is to have a friend take you hunting and then to go in and hunt his spot. Oh yeah, without without sayings, especially if that guy were to say that, don't hunt this spot. Yeah. Now, the only crime worse than that crime is to go in there with other people, yeah, and introduce those other people to the spot to the point where we're young. My dad was like, it's just He's like, it doesn't work. You cannot do it. You never ever take anyone friend or not ever, no one into a spot, was his perspective on it. Yeah, that's that's I agree. So we're having this whole conversation, and Matt, after discussing this, just had it happened to him. He took someone he works with into one of his favorite spots. That person things along her boyfriend. Then apparently it just happened where that couple takes another group of people and they go in and hunt the exact spot, and he just found out about it. Yeah, that's so when I'm talking to someone about hunting or in areas that I hunt, I will never ask them intentionally. I will never say, oh, where'd you or because I I do not want to know anywhere someone is hunting, because I will find on my head. I don't want it in my head because I will find that spot on my own, and I do not want someone to So when I go to like a new area or whatever, I generally just ask questions. But I like to find my spot myself because I know that if I find a spot that's good, I want to be able to go back there as many times as I want. I would rather find it on my own than have someone tell me and me not be able to do what I want, because I probably would have found it either way. So that version of that happened to me where I got accused because my my again, my older brother. He goes hunting and turns out that there's a guy at work with standing at the trailhead of the spot that he had been really wanting to check out, and he right away it comes to me, He's like, what's up with that? And I'm like, I swear, I swear I did not say, and it turned out it was pure coincidence. In the investigation. Then the ensuing investigation, it turns out that that person was operating on a whole other tip that had its own lineage, and those pure coincidence. But dude, I was very nervous when confronted, like maybe I screwed up and said something. But this situation he's in now, yeah, he knows the story better. Am I doing right with the story? Yeah? You can nailed it. Oh, it's excuse me. It just makes me feel sick. It could be that water I drank, but there has been a long enough incubation period. It just makes me feel sick. Stealing people's spots, Yeah, and I think that that right there is the barrier to entry to hunting, because nobody wants to share their spots. Because people are apt to just jam because they'll just steal it. They will, and of course other people it's like, of course it's not your spot. People will find it on their own. But it's just like it's just a thing that I had a friend a few years ago line me out on some spots, you know, and I had them in my GPS, and they were in my GPS for a while, and I eventually went through and I was like, you know what, it's really not right. And I went through and deleted all those way points because they had names that were like, um, like Richard's Bowl. Yeah, nicknames. Yeah, like a way point that says Richard's Bowl. And I would look and see that in my GPS, like if I lose my GPS and so guys, like there was a shot of bull right right there, and I deleted it for fear of ever being the source of a leak. Yeah. I have a I have a smap book in this Nevada map book that I used to you know, I used to use a while ago, and I would mark my spots, but then I would mark fake spots because there was so many times that I'd have to give the map to someone. You're like, oh, yeah, you know, and they needed that map, but there was a lot of hidden so that thing coded. Yeah. I mean, let's just say if Hillary Clinton's emails were encrypted like that map problem problem. That thing was locked tight. There's markings all over. But now I looked at it and I was like, I have no clue. Way, You're like, I don't remember seeing shiploads of deer up there, but that's not true. Why would've written in this year map book? Yeah, big bullason. I'm always a little incredulous I'm looking at a map would be like Deer Mountain. I'm always a little bit like, it can't be that way anymore. No. I feel like at the time maybe it was an aptly named, but generations of dudes looking at Deer Mountain that's probably made it not so. And sometimes it's that Iceland Greenland thing. They just named it that. And then no buck Hills, the spot that really really strikes my interest. Another way, point I had that I deleted from the same guy that lyned me on and some elk spots is away. Point was called the laundry Shoot. His naming was because elk come pouring through there as though it were in a laundry shoot. So I had it on my GPS and I'm like, hey know, someday maybe, But then I'm like, because the no one's gonna look at that and know what that means. But I got rid of that one. To the laundry shoot. Yeah, lest someone steal my GPS and look at that name and be like, m provocative title, let's go there to the shoot. Yanni got anything do you need to on the uh that topic there? No. I feel bad for your brother. He asked me first if he was being a dick for calling these folks out on going to the spot with other people, and I said, hell no, he did an ethics check on me about you. Oh where you went in to meet up with him? Somewhere is this year? Last year? Yeah, you know he called me about this. So Yan is going to meet my brother hunting and the minute Yanni gets there, my brother killed a bull already same day. Yeah. So you get there and he's like, I just killed the bull. So you went and helped him, uh pack up and he loads his elk onto his lamas and hikes it out. Yeah, but we had to cut it up and get it hung a tree. Yeah, that would take us until three o'clock in the morning. It's long night three in the morning because he lost the elk in there to a grizzly once, or lost a bunch of lost meat to a grizzly. That's the thing I should add. This is a grizzly hell, whole lots of grizzly bears. He refers to it so lovely as the grizzly pit. The grizzly pit um lots of bears, and they haven't been haunted since nine and do not give a ship about people. They just don't care. Ye, no fear. So he stay hikes out out to bring his elk up to a cooler where he can get it in a walking He gets in and gets an updated weather forecast and it's a bunch of snow coming. So he calls me, and I got him on speaker phone with my wife and he calls me. He's like, hey, man, I need to like do an ethics check with you, because I don't want to go back up in there just to get dumped down with snow. But Yanni's up there. What how would he sort of take or how would he view if I just didn't show up for a few days until the snow melts and everything and it gets all nice, and I said, you cannot do this to me. You can't do this to me. And he's like, all right, I'll go buy some warm clothes because he hadn't even packed his warm clothes with. Yeah. I wouldn't have been pissed. I would have been understanding. It just wouldn't have been fun on my end. Yeah, mostly because you'd be wondering, you know, you start wondering, Yeah, you mind up hiking out to go figure out that have them to him? So yeah, I told him I presented like he'd be almost kind of doing it to me a little bit, So you owe me. I appreciate it. It's nice to have company in the grizzly pit. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't see any um, but we saw a few of their tracks after that big snow. I mean some of these tracks we did it. We put I put both of my boot tracks inside of one pad. I put both my boots inside of it, and you could see the outline of the Grizzly Bear track in the snow. Well that's a big Bear track because too is how in the distance. Sometimes when you look at a grizzly bear track, you're like, oh, is that a human walking? At first, you know, because it's just like they're both tracks, right, But then when you really look back at your own track and you look at that thing, the only way you can confuse it too would be if a human was walking in snowshoes, because it makes you have that wider gate right, because we walk, we almost put like, you know, one ft in front of the other. That's saying even when when he's that's right, when he's walking or she, I mean there's you know, eight to twelve inches between you know, with wise between the two tracks. Yeah, um duncan Gil Chris, I remember reading this long ago, like like I gotta I gotta back up. When there's ways of measure of bears. Ways people discussed bears. There's three ways people discussed the size of bears. In the East, they talk about how many pounds the bear was. The reason they do that is because they have bears that you can get at right. You can like you can put them on a scale, shoot him, get him into a truck, and then go away the bear. So they'll be like this bear wade x pounds. No one like in Alaska, Like Jenny is never gonna tell you what a bear wade. It's extrapolated from other things, um so one the other. The second way to that people just gouss bears is it's squared hide. So you skin of bear, lay the skin out, and then you need to not stretch it, but like kind of pull it tight and let it lay there on on its own accord, not like pegged out, and you adjust it until you have the tip of nose to tip of tail measurement the same as the claw tip to claw tip front leg measurement. So he's splayed out arms outside of like a cross. And in order not tweak it where you're like really get the clause far apart, which shortens up the you know you're pulling hide and shorten up the length. It's called squared so you get him to wear tip of tail, tip of nose is Let's say you're looking at a black bear and it's six ft two. Then you measure tip of front claws to tip of front claw and that's six ft two. You'd say it's a six two bear. Squa aired guys that just pull him to grab the nose and grab the tail and pull and then measured. That's like just the bullshit measurement. The third and final way you measure bear, the official way as you dry the skull for I don't know, you clean the skull, dry it for six months, measure the length, measure the width. Add those two numbers together, right, that's it. That's it school size. That's like the main official way to measure, But it doesn't really reflect condition of the bear because theoretically you could have some freak bear that had a giant skull in a dinky body. Oh yeah. In fact, Prince of Wales bears genetic yeah, Prince of Wales bears tend to have a much bigger skull to bodies, a bigger skull to bodies aze racial than other bears, so they get big skulls without being giant squared hides. Same with bears in like Vancouver. But and I think a lot of it to you is uh the amount of time the bears spend out as well. But like California has bigger scold bears and they don't hibernate as long as say Montana bears and coastal bears don't, So I don't know why that would affect there, but the overall size there's yet it seems to be a correlation. There's interesting correlations with bears. I only get back to measuring bears um because what remind me to get back to tracks and Duncan Gil Chris and stuff. But another interesting correlation of bears is if you take a map that shows rainfall annual precipitation and lay over that a map that shows high prevalence of color phase bears. Color phase bears occur in arid areas. And I could be wrong, but I think it's like if a place gets twenty inches of rainfall, the bears are jet black. Less than twenty you get higher prep the the d ried is the higher prevalence of blonds, browns, reds. The more rain, the more likely with black bears that they're gonna be jet black. That makes sense when you start line ended up with like places you know, Yeah, you go down New Mexico, southern Colorado like dry places, it's like they get geeked out to find a black bear. Yeah, And then you go other places like California and or no black ones are rare there. But if you go the coastal coastal areas, you know, to find a color phase one there, it might be near impossible. I've looked at many, many, many bears in coastal like coast Alaska, many many you know they're just black because like bears are black. You do you think that if the Now what I'd be curious is if the area receives more rainfall. I don't think that they be more black because where I can it would be such a slow process. Where I guide for bears just it seemed like all we ever saw was color face bears. Now we can't find any color face bears or not as many. I think it would be too slow. I think to the to like track the phenal the phenological response to increase precipitation would take thousands of years. Where do you think it's something of like what they have to eat? My feeling is that it has to do with um the camouflage and the lushness of the vegetation the air bears just as a theory that bears that are living in lush vegetation where there's like a dark understory, right, they can get away with that jet black eridescence down in the shadows. And bears that are living their lives out in black bears are living their lives out in the open and sun baked areas. It's a couple of things. I think it's better camouflag lag and they're not sucking up as much heat. They're not getting as hot because they have that. If you're a bear in Arizona, right and you need to be out like eating uh prickly pear, you know, when you're out there in its ninety five degrees and your jet yourridescent black, it's gotta be a much more miserable experience than it is when you're a blonde face bear as far as he the same way, like in super hot areas they run rend angus and not black angers cattle, and they run black angers cattle in cold places. Back to Dunk. So the three ways to measure things. Duncan Gil Chris says that if you want to know what a bear is gonna square, you measure the width of his front pad and add one. And he says that I'll tell you what the barrel square. I've yeah, I've done that and it seems to be fairly consistent. Yeah, I've go by it. I don't know, I've gone and measured after shooting the bear like it's a five and a half foot bear, and be like, yep, and I'll just measure the pad. It's four and a half inch pad, just measuring on the multi tool, just casually, not like getting all scientific about it. But generally I found that it's generally kind of true. So if you find a six if you find a black bear pad that's six inches, you're looking at a nice big and you gotta do the front front pad should be the rounder one, not the elongated one. Not the elongated with the front, Yeah, the front widest. So if you're finding a track like that, I mean, you look at the real point being I haven't laid a tape measured with your boots. But if you're looking at the track that's full on that big, you're looking at like a legit, Well yeah that's I mean, I'm doing it right now. And outside the outside probably nine inches, maybe even a little bit bigger. See that's where I feel. That's what the reason the kind of reasons bringing it up. There's there's no way that there's are ten foot There's no way there's a ten foot grizzly down there. Remember that was in the snow too, like deep snow because you know, so that changes the change like a track that you found in the mud, you know, or the dirt. Yeah, because if I find a track in the mud, that's five inches, I don't add an inch the mud where it splayed out. Yeah, And when I was checking it, when I've checked it, I was checking it, like I said, measuring the actual paths you need, like a nice good track, not that he's all splayed out in some sandy beach trips, you know, squishes out to the sides um dirt, you final and it comes to your mind. Yeah, we're talking about the the inevitable suck upon us, hopefully. And it conjured up a quote I always hold in my mind that came from a buddy and as Rusty Willis. We were talking about he built a cabin or he's building a cabin. Uh, kind of a hard to reach place, and I asked him about, you know, why why put all this effort towards something kind of like what you were saying. You can get a Roosevelt elk in many places. But uh, He's like, you know, people are always wondering, you know, is the effort versus is the effort worth the reward? Like, what you're putting into something, the struggle does the payout you know sufficient? And he said, mind my old man, he's building the cabin with his old man. He said, are our mentality is the effort is the reward. And I think in a case like this that you know that is like you're saying, when you guys got done with that packout, that effort was more satisfying than the actual you know, lining up and shooting this this nice elk. So that's on percent true because the story I tell is about the pack out. The last thing I talked about is how big the plus and the most times first thing, Oh, I got a giant, big old six by six, big old heavy bases scored me to you know. No, you're like, oh yeah, the pack out all fifty Yeah, you bring your story like that one time we were hunting. I was like, one time we were packing elk. Yeah, it's not even not even the hunt partner, just the pack part That was the whole, the whole kid in caboodle. Yeah, well you'll remember forever. So I'm looking forward to the effort on this trip kind but I'm I'm kind of looking forward to well before Steve when you asked if I wanted to put in. I said, yea'll put it in if you get packers. It was like the condition because I was like, I've done this, I don't I did it with two guys, I don't need to do it with you guys again. I mean, I think if it comes easy this time, great, But now I got my bows, so I figured that'll be the challenge in itself. You know, Yeah, it'll be a little bit easier with six of us. Well, quite a bit easier. Yeah, three times easier. Right. Well, I don't know, it's it's like an in the moment kind of thing. You know. We could be all out there a couple of days from now and uh feeling in our own heads that's the sock is just as bad. Yeah, I don't think it's It won't lessen the suck. And yeah, and you can't look at a guy and quantify his suck level. It only lessens the suck for me because I'm the only one with the memory of the previous suck. But it can still suck. So I would be going, oh, this sucks, but this is man ever really sucked before. This is great, And you guys be like this yeah. But the meat, Oh, the meat. That's one thing I will bring up. This is the best game meat. Those olker that it's the best game meat I've ever had in my life. I'm saying it's very good. It is. It is like the wago beef of elk. It is the just the tenderloin, the inner tenderloin that's all you packed. Yeah, that's sock. It is softball size. It's the size of an elk or a beef filet mignon. I mean, you could cut fatty flame mignons out of that tenderline because the way that they're just compact there like a they're built like cattle, just short and squat and stout, and just the muscle every muscle group is just extra large. That's were all the way over the final one. Now it's that meat is almost I know I'll say it about it, but black tail meat is really good figure as well, and it almost has that same quality. Is the black tail meat where it's almost like it's a marbled fat. It's almost like that when you cut into that steak you can see the the meat broken down into those lines. I don't know how to explain it. When I'm talking about where it's Yeah, it's like that tender, fat, good piece of meat. It's funny mentioned black tails. I always think of like the really really good meats, um doll, sheep, black tail, elk of course, and then uh, select mule, deer, select resold. Just be like when you and I don't care if it's a big buck or not, when you start skinning that deer and he's got like an inch and a half tall on his realm. This is good. This good, dear man. No, I've had some range muled here too, but I mean select mule they are extremely good. So now I don't I will pick your brain on this because some people say, like the black tails, at least the ones around here, like most deer have that tallow type fat. It's that real waxy fat. But these black tails melted down and put wax our boots with it. Yeah. Now these back black tails have almost a less tallow and more of like a regular fat, like a bear fat. Like they're fat is like bear fat, not like deer. Somehow diet related. Yeah, I don't, I mean, but and it makes the meat it almost like we would will me and my dad on the last time we had. We shot two bucks, cut off the bacon and fried that bacon like deer bacon on the rocks. And it's good, like the fat good to eat. But it's like, I don't even know. I you describe it squishy fat. Yeah, it doesn't doesn't wax up in your mouth real bad. Yeah, it doesn't wax up. It's not waxing only deer. But people are saying that I've heard, you know, the old timer thing around here is that it's a different kind of fat because they need to absorb it faster. I mean, different animals have different kinds of fat process different ways, Like like a buffalo in the summer's got like full on orange fat, looks like a carrot. Yeah, you know that's how that when they're eating green certain green feet, it's like, so I'm open to the eye. There's something about what they're eating that gives they're fat different quality. Um. Sure they don't have a bad winter here too, either, these critters, which must help them there. I think they do. Yeah, they generally do have it. They can have tough winters. They it's judging from the weather that these like the bother was just talking to the pilot about the winter. And yeah, the reason that the fluctuation and uh is so different than like say Prince of Wales is because they have the hard winters kills. A lot of animals die in the winter here. I think that I can it's about that. Is that like in Prince William Sound. In other is the southeast Alaska, the deer you know, the high country fills up with snow, but they have such good shelter down in the big old growth forest and there's a lot you know, there's a lot of like protection from weather down there. Yeah, they go down to the shore lines in the old girls and can do pretty well here. It's just there's so much more exposure here. If I'm not having that those those giants the exposure because I was just accounting for the snow because they're like, yeah, the snow doesn't really hang around, you know, at sea level especially, Yeah, I can see it being like maybe a little bit nastier conditions and a lot of that stuff, like southern part of Kodiak is that more open, more like that. A lot of the lot of it's like this where it's got it's got, but doesn't have those giant swass of old growth I mean there are something. I mean, you can see him around, you know, when you're flying over. We saw we have to see it because it's being fogged in. But if you go over the ridge and down to the water, do you ever hit like thicker forest at the water's edge? Is it stay open like this the whole way stay scrubby, scrubby. But I mean just on this side it's all forest, So the you should be the north part. Yeah, did you do your concluder? No dirt? Did the effort? Is the reward? I like that that was a good conclud No. I didn't really have a concluder. Yeah. I just continue to talk and ask questions, Oh, is there more things you need to know? By all means, I'm feeling good. I'm ready for a house. Yeah. And then uh, we still have like to do. We still need to do our hunt. There's two things we didn't get the top about. I wanted to do like a status update on public lands, which we're gonna have to talk about next time we talked. And I wanted to talk about, um, why Remy is packing around his bow and arrow this time and what happened for him. So we're gonna return to those thoughts. Yeah, we might have more packing and shooting iron, we might have more time sitting in this TP possibly talk about that, um Rich tod, yeah, blank man, Remy, anything you want to add. No, I mean, I hear the rain stopped. I would love to just take this headset off and go glass off a buck right now. Yeah, I didn't even notice the rain did stop. Stuff. The sound quality went back to normal sound quality right now. Uh, here's my concluder. Uh, this is a cliffhanger episode. This is like the episode we did one time when Yanni couldn't get a turkey and I we did an episode and everybody had all tagged out on turks and then I had to get up the next day and go out and get Joanni squared away on in Turkey. But we left to hang him or no one really knew if he was gonna be able to pull it through. So this is one of those situations where you're gonna have to come back to find out did those fellers really get to experience the suck or did they have to go home with no suck? So stay tuned and find out

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