00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to hunt podcast, you can't predict anything presented by First like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt, first Light, Go Farther, stay longer, everybody. You've heard us talking about it for months now. My new book coming out, my third Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. Getting your family out of the house and radically engaged with nature. This book covers it all man many of the questions that I've gotten over the years of people, such as like how old should my kid be before allow them to start shooting? Twenty two's getting them started on a b begun? Um? Do I think it's damaging if a kid sees a deer die when they're really young? How do you get your kids interested in eating game meat? Um? How do you get kids engaged around gardens? Right? Like? How to? In my view, it's how to get your kids radically engaged with nature because a couple of reasons. If you're listening to this, you probably like to hang out outside. You're probably into hunting and fishing, and you want to have that be a family thing, and you want to introduce your kids to it in a way that it becomes a family thing that your kids like to because that's what you like doing. And there's nothing selfish about that. Man. If you're a parent, um, you play your best game when you're engaged too. You want to demonstrate authentic enthusiasm to your kids. You want to show your kids what it's like to be excited about something. You're excited about nature. This is just some insights and help about how to make sure that you can pass that along to your kids. And here's the thing. If they grow up and they never touch it again, that's fine. I still love them. But you know that they go into life armed with that toolkit that you demonstrated to them by living a life outside. It's a good book, if I say so myself. Anyhow, you have until May second to pre order and then be eligible to receive an additional fifty page free resource guide. So when we were doing the book, me and and Brodie Henderson, who you here on the podcast here all the time, we put together a fifty page the resource guide full of all kinds of extra advice and insights and gear tips and everything for keeping your kids squared away right, feeding them, dressing them, everything, safety information, resources about how to find stuff you might want to find. We didn't put in the book. It's a fifty page resource guide that we will email straight to you free once you share your pre order information for outdoor kids in an inside world. It's a crazy as you r l. I'm not eve gonna give you right now because it's of like weird. But here's a couple ways to find it. No matter where you buy the book. Are you buy it on Barnes Noble, you buy it on Amazon, we don't care where you buy it. Take that order information and go to this page to redeem the thing. The page will be in the show notes to this podcast episode. If you go to Instagram and go to at Steven Ronnella and my bio will just leave it. It will live there for a while, and my bio will be a link that takes you to where you put in your order information, regardless of where you bought it. Where you put in your order information in order to redeem and get the fifty page free resource guide. Thanks guys, I hope you enjoyed the book. I know you'll enjoy it. I have been thinking about writing this thing since the minute my wife was pregnant with our first child twelve pretty much twelve years and nine months ago. So thanks everybody, turning machine on phill. Uh Sam bates you. So you're better at both skiing and shooting than you? Honest I here, Um, yes, like you whooped him? I absolutely did, but I think we maybe had different strategies. She already had her like her post race big puffy jacket to stay warm on. By the time I finished the course, I was so far behind. I don't really understand what happened. You guys went down with an Olympic who's here with us right now? You went down with an Olympic by athlete by what do you call him? By athlete? By athlete? You doroduce yourself. I'm Paul Schumer. I'm on the US bathlon team and fresh from Beijing. Yeah a few a few weeks out, but uh yeah, So at this point, are you guys able to speak freely without getting new being worried about like retribution? Yea, it is still like you guys are still a little buttoned up. No, not really, I mean you gotta be like this snow is amazing. No, no, I mean you could speak freely. We're in like free speeches. We're back in going to say whatever you want, So hold on. This is something I don't know about. He told me all about all this, and he's a skier. So when all the skiers they were there, you guys weren't allowed to talk freely, and truly it was strongly discouraged. Like someone said, like, how is the snow? You had to be like, it is the best snow I've ever seen my life. The thing is, we're Americans and we take our American nous with us over there. So they there was it was kind of a caveat there, like we know you're probably gonna say whatever you want, but we strongly discourage you guys from saying anything negative politically about the conditions, about the venues, etcetera, etcetera. David introduced yourself. I'm David Wise, three time Olympic medal US in half pipe skiing. Did uh was that a nuclear reactor in the background? What is that? What was what was that in the back? That's a great question, uh, which I don't have the answer. Were they like flexing? Were they like just in case people forget nuclear superpower, I think so. I thought it was odd too with the Olympics sign on it, and it was like a big green space as well, so it was like both of them. It's like, hey, we have nuclear power, but we're also concerned about the environment. But was that an active cooling tower. No, it's like they decorate with cooling towers. I think they put that up. I think they intentionally built that in the background, but I don't know. Hey, just so you know, you know, we're cooking down some uranium. Blew my mind that that was there. Yeah, I don't compete in big air, and that venue was very far from I feel like every time I walked by a TV, I was looking at that cooling tower. Yeah, because especially the early events were all you know, snowboard, big air, ski, big air, women's, men's like that was a very well featured you know in Hanoi, Um, at least when I was there, not terribly long ago. All the parks are still decorated with down to American aircraft, like a wing out of the ground, a tailfin out of the ground, and it will be like the date they shot it down. Yeah, that's a little flexing and military power. Man. Now that we're above that, I mean we got general flex, We've got generals all over the place, not fake cooling towers. But I don't I don't want I don't want to say I don't want to do this because I don't want to detract from the experience. But I would need to go to our colleague Anny to interpret the Olympics for me. She's never been, but she like follows skiing. I guess I'm looking at Yah who sports. Right now to the title the articles reason trying built an Olympic ski jump next to a giant factory In the first sentences, No, they're not nuclear plant towers tower. I'll have to read a little bit more though, tell you what they are, all right, So I wanna get back to I want to get back to hell. Sam's better than you at skiing and shooting. You guys, tell me what you guys did yesterday. We did not ski. We were just like um walking very fast snow melt as if as if you had skis, as if we had Yeah, and you shot, and then we shot, and we shot prone twice and then standing twice, and then they had us do penalty runs. If we missed. So basically the way bathon works is you shoot. Every shooting, you have five shots. Any shot that you miss you get penalized with a penalty loop or time penalty. And so yesterday we had them doing penalty loops. But um, we took it easy on them in some respects and not in others because there's different sized targets as well. But yeah, they did well for the most part. We actually had to walk the course. The course is basically like maybe forty yards down and around a truck that was parked, and the penalty loop was maybe a five yard loop around two tripods with spotting scope set up on him. Got it? And what were you shooting? What are you were shooting the actual We'll get into that. We're shooting the actual buyathlon gun at actual byathlon targets. And Yanni had one on one training up to that race, So I don't know how his excuses are getting removed. So I just want to I'm not I'm just I'm honestly asking you guys were toe to toe and you out shot. I don't think out shot would be the worst. I mean, actually, like, do you guys know what you shot? Like, how many you missed each time, because that would be something you could think about. I think was we shot I shot dirty? As I learned was the phrase which means that the first round of prone, I missed all five. He did me too, You did too? How the first round? So that was on prone targets, So is the smaller targets, which you always get people like when they first start bath on. You kind of get their confidence up by having them just shoot standing targets in prone. But then we switched the targets to the smaller ones, and then it was a little bit of maybe maybe explain how like the race biathlon race actually works, because well, I want to say that for in a minute. Okay, we got some stuff we got to take care of. Okay, we're gonna getting all this. Do you want I mean, do you want to we can talk about sam strategy right now? That might That might be if someone could like, like imagine that I'm five years old, tell me really quickly, how said what Sam beat you at? Okay, so I would say my strategy that I didn't realize I had was to be accurate with the prone shooting as best as I could, which I don't know. I think the second round I got all five, but the first round I didn't. And then to just be fast with the standing because I knew I wasn't gonna be able to hit them anyways, and then I could just run my penalty laps really fast. And then oh so you just basically built the strategy where you're planning on missing. So just get it over with and then do the penalty ship because I can't hold that the gun up for that long. You know, It's like I knew I wasn't like without time, I wasn't going to be able to shoot accurately. Not that I was shooting accurately with time, But in my sport we call that skiing your strengths. They I just think the biggest send it the Yeah, I think the biggest thing just remember with blathon is that it's a race. It's not a shooting competition only. So as Sam demonstrated that, to get done with shooting quicker, you can get to your penalty loops faster, and then therefore you just kind of keep it moving where I don't know other people, sometimes you camp out on the range. I mean, if you're camped out there for a minute and a half and somebody else shot in thirty seconds, you can think they have a one more minute ahead of you on the course already. So it's kind of that fine line. And uh yeah, like there, you definitely see that on windy days when it's like super windy out people are kind of like, well, I'm not gonna hit all five anyway. I might as well just kind of pill some shots down range and get out here as fast as I can. But you know, it's a very fine line in any any competition where it's like, Okay, I want to shoot fast, but you know, if I'm going five seconds faster but I miss an extra shot, it's really not worth it. So you gotta it's a game of trying to play to your strengths. As if you imagine like an axis and on one is uh on one is fast skiing, and then the other is is being a dead eyed dick. Where is your strength? Um? I would say this year I was better relative to like the World Cup field. I was probably a little bit above average on shooting and right around average with skiing. Got it? So that's good to hear. Yeah, uh, okay, we got a cover cup. Things rint one thing that you misrepresent I'm not anti skiing. I'm anti my family skiing. If I could have my way, everybody in the whole world would ski. That's all they would ever do, and then anything I wanted to do they wouldn't be there. So like spring break, I had to take my kids to six Flags, I'd be like, no one's at six Flags, they're all skiing. I'm just at six Flags in my family. If I go ice fishing, no one's ice fishing, they're all skiing. But I'm with my family ice fishing. It's not I am not. I am pro skiing except for five individuals on planet Earth. But you don't feel like I want of an hundred seven hundred billion, nine hundred million. And you know what I'm trying to say, people ski. That many people ski, and then there's five that don't, but then don't. It's my family. Don't you knock your honest for not being a cheer outdoors in because he I want. I'm glad that he does it, but I look down on him for doing it, but I support support him doing it. I think just look down, I looked out. It just surprises me. It surprises me that he's not a true outdoorsman. I just want to say, Steve, that you might need to rethink how you're kind of framing this whole skiing thing. I know you're trying to do that actively right now, and I'm proud of you, but I'm trying to clarify. I'm trying to the public reaction to you. Do you are in brodies. I don't even know what to call it. Grievances. The other day I to them it up. I'd say they thought you were selfish and insane, kind of how I felt as well. Now my daughter, Now, my daughter was like, I'm gonna be a ski racer. Okay, what what about by athlon? What about by athlon? Do they do it on weekends? I'm sure if they do it on weekends, I don't like it week days, weekends, you know, every day every day? Now, Listen, my kids skied nine saturdays in the roll this winter. The Ronella household was dead. The Ronella Household shut down, nothing like ground to a halt. The minute that ship ended, we went to Texas hunting. We went out fishing. Here this weekend, we're going beaver trapping. We're back on. Why are we back on? Because ski and ended? But here don't you there's two days every weekend. You know that, But it doesn't work that way. No, because I like to leave. I like to go Friday night out gone. Don't don't you feel like you're stance on this might actually be hurting you in the long Yes, because my wife doubles. My wife's like, my wife has taken now like a sort of screw you, I'm gonna make it worse. Yeah, she's she's digging her feet in. She's like, you ain't pulling me away from the now. She's like, yeah, you know so now listen, I got to be on at the ski hill when his kids are they're skiing. They're skiing right next to my kids, and the smiles on all three of Steve's children as they enjoy gravity pulling them down there. I love it, like like you wouldn't even believe it. It's just like pure joy and so much fun. And probably because partly the enjoyment there is because they're like dead like us doing this. Oh yeah, it's like the night right. Okay, But what if they did buy athlon and they're shooting, Uh, practice was increasing their their accuracy and their hunting prowess. If my kids all of a sudden said, Hey, you know what I'm gonna I like to do. We like to go up the mountains on our skis and ski around hunting snowshoe hairs. I'd be like, I think we should do that every weekend, and then would you take till we die? Yeah? Okay, if that's what the no, I'll be like, that sounds right up my alley. That sounds right at my Listen. If we get this trip to Sweden dialed in, where are we at with that? Sam, I'm waiting for someone to approve it? Okay for our capra Kelli's yeah, we're gonna be here. I hereby approve it. Do tell Ann and Tracy we're gonna be skiing on. I don't know. It was like held up on me and foot skis eleven. He probably bring some short right, they have to be they have to be long for flotation. So the one thing that I would say about I was like when I was ice fishing as a kid, I was definitely wishing I was out skiing. So I mean, but I was also in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is just like there's no skin around there anyway, So it just this fantasy thing you ever go to like sunburst, which is right. I didn't ski when I was growing up, so I just didn't. I was just like I wish. So when did you actually start? Um? When I was like sixteen, I started skiing before that was a wrestler. Okay, hold tit a minute. Yeah, I'm gonna reintroduce our guests. Let're gonna get serious about this show here. David watse Reno Nevadam first Light Ambassador. If you have to watched the Olympics and see a Feller run around and first light hunting clothes, probably you. It's probably me. I would have sup unless they're picking up ambassador's left, left and right. But I think I'm the only one. Two times Olympic old medalists and four times X Games gold medalists. So the Olympic gold medalist two thousand, two thou eighteen, four time X Games gold medalists twelve thirteen, fourteen eighteen, he took silver for half pipe and this year's Beijing Winter Olympics, that's not the one I'm wearing. I'm wearing his medal. I almost like three just one step shot at three for three? There? Really? What are these way like five grams and just over a pound. One that's old. I didn't know. I didn't know what this sill I read it today, you're like Tom Brady. Yeah, I've been getting some Tom Brady references. Plenty plenty of yeah, plenty of old old. Well, if you think about it, it's all. It all comes in, Like the comes down to the age range of the sport. And there's no collegiate competition for half pipe skiing, so for too much, you either drop out of high school and start as a professional at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, or you complete high school and then you have you have to launch your professional career fairly early. It's a young sport, Like I turned pro when I was eighteen, but some of my peers like started signing contracts and traveling the world at fifteen sixteen years old. So even though I feel like I'm young as a human in the sport, I'm old because I've been doing it for you know, old skier, yeah, old half pipe skier. Because because then you went back and if you went back and tell U isn't four years uh fo years, you'd be the oldest dude. Yeah in your competition, I would assume. So I was the second oldest in finals this time around by one year. And if I go again, I'll be the oldest. I'm sure in in in half not not not on the Olympic team and half. But there can't be many other athletes much older of the American Olympic team, right. Yeah. There was a snowboard cross guy in his early forties this year. He was the oldest guy. And Jacob ellis that one gold She was like thirty six or seven, right, yeah. Um, So this is what troubles me about this whole thing. You can be the best of the best and have like a whole career and then you're like thirty two or whatever and you gotta go do like a whole other one. Yeah, that's real pain in the app I guess you become a commentator. Yeah. Oh, there's so many different things you can do, Yeah, commentator, coach, whatever. Do you think you're going to the commentating business? Yeah, I enjoy that. I'll do a little bit of that. I've the last couple of years, I've gotten really into doing mental strength training. So just kind of taking this twelve year cycle of going to the Olympics and trying to perform at your best under pressure has taught me a lot of things. I feel like I've learned a lot of things the hard way, kind of like you do when you're hunting and you're like, well, I'm never to make that mistake again because they winded me and they're all gone. So that's kind of how my experience has been as a professional skier. So lately, I've just been picking young. I essentially look for athletes who are like I was when I was young, because I had all the talent and a little bit. But but I look more for people who are getting in their own way mentally, because when I was young, I was I could do all the same tricks as everybody else, but I could not land a contest run to save my life. I didn't win my first X Games gold medals. I was twenty one, which was already old for a for a first time X Games gold medalist. Target panic, major target panic. I would get there and I would just stress out of me, like I have to land this run right now, I gotta do it, and of course crash. So all those mental like strongholds that I built over the years, I'm like, man, I mean, I could just use these for myself for the rest of my life, or I could, you know, help out some young athletes who are like I was. So it's been pretty fun. Let's let's test your commentator skills. I want you to give a formal introduction to Paul. It's highlighted there like this young man otto. You know, I like going to baseball when they like do all their talking between swings. Oh there you go, apt Wisconsin swinging to miss alright, grew up joining us here on the Meteor podcast. Today we have Paul Schomer from Appleton, Wisconsin. He's a Wisconsin I like Cheddar nickname, Yeah Chester, the tester sometimes goes by Cheddar because of Wisconsin. He's a Wisconsin at like. Chester is a biathlete who represented the United States at the Olympic Winner Games. His first World Cup podium finished was a silver medal in twenty nineteen for the men's ten k sprint competition. And if you're gonna be a real commentator, you have to get good at stating very obvious ship. So you'd say, um, today, he's gonna need to ski fast and shoot straight and not lose his skis. I need my thing back. Job. You got a bright future I don't care. If you're into consulting, commentating, you get time to figure it out. Appreciate that, all right. Uh, the auction House of Bodities is back on. The auction house is open. It's live now. So it closes on four. You got another week to go bid on some of the following items. So five day Alaska king Salmon fishing trip dates. That's awesome, go bid on that. Go to Alaska fish king Salmon five days. I got for two people I don't know who donated that. The guide, the officer. We've got a custom silver smith belt, buckle and grave with the meat Eater logo. Listen, we have one of the streams. You know, does everybody know those things? I feel like they sell them in like what's that place where they sell those things? And airports and whatnot. The head scratchers, little k those little tingly head scratchers. Crean made one of those out of pheasant feet. They're cow's business. We got a raccoon hide, so one of Clay's raccoons, signed by Clay. We have my left handed mark weatherb Mark five and first, like Camo, we have my complete archery set up from so if you watched the season ten episode of Me Either where me and Phelps are hunting elk and I shot a bowl that bow like ready to go? I actually like had I had. I haven't really shot that bow since then because I had a shoulder injury and I'm just now trying to get back to be able to pull my ball back. Um Cal's pruning shears. That'll fetch a pretty penny. Lots of good stuff in the auction House of bodities, So go check out the auction House of bodities. Now, can I tell you one thing that's not on that list? It's going to be a bad stuff on the on the list. Yeah, James Miller, who you know. We had dinner at his house down there in Colorado Crafty Fellows. In my repertoire of stories, there's a James like I only have like a certain stories, Like I have like five or six stories I tell him, and one of them is about him. Do you can't render tell it now? I just probably told it last podcast. It wasn't. Do you try to beat him up? That's right? And uh, he is building a or has already built a quiver that goes on your back that is leather lined and then finished on the outside with a coyote pelt. And with that he makes custom wood arrows footed shafts, and usually he just sells the shafts themselves. So footage means you take another piece of wood that's heavier and with like, what do you call that connection? Is it just a dovetail chester? There's there's different there's a few different ones that you can use for He also tapers these wooden shafts, which doesn't happen. Often makes them tighter, stronger, and straighter. Usually he doesn't finish them, but for this he's gonna finish a dozen arrows. So if you if you bid on it, you're gonna just call him up and say, hey, I shoot seventy pounds draw length. Is this da da da dada? I need this spine of arrow, and he'll build you exactly what you want. Is one crafty craft. They're so beautiful that when you get them, you're gonna say, I don't know if I should put him on the wall and just look at him, or if I should go and shoot him. He would rather have you shooting him, but maybe you'll take two or three and just keep him as art and he's sending them in that kyote for a quiver, no ship. M Oh, you'll appreciate this as a as an archer bow hunter. Yanni and I were doing a little research on something the other day. UM three arrows recovered at the Battle of the Little Big Horn site sold at auction d dollars beautiful though steel steel aide points on them. Wood shafts, feather veins from a Little Big Horn. That's wild. Just picture one of them sticking right out of Custer's forehead. That what auction? We didn't get that far museum or something custards. How much did that chunk of Oh? I can't never mind, I almost just ruined something that. Oh, check this out. They were you know, uh, there's a thing called a copper light. You bloys know what a copper light is. They teach you that at the Olympics, no fossilized human or fossilized poop is a copper light. Okay, some guy drops a deuce in the thou years ago by becomes a copper light. They were analyzing the copper light in Texas. Was this near um bonfire shelter? Buffalo jump Ah, I do not know, Oh, did you see those pictures that me of me and cal posing with those dinosaur tracks down in Texas. I took them. Okay, well, no, here's the problem I have. Like I used to always because Yeah and I traveled so much together. Any time something happened, I assumed Yohni was there. And it's not always be like hey, yeah, do you remember when he's like no, because that wasn't there, Like, how would you not have been there? You're everywhere? Yeah, sorry, cran I thought that I was honest. Took those pictures. Uh. So they were examining a copper light and this feller, this fella that it took a growler years ago, had eaten an entire whole rattlesnake and past like the scientific term is shot. I out, Uh even one of the fangs a hungry dude vertib or the more because because well it was probably in the next right, in the next one the next day, or he had his coffee smoked cigarette so vertebra ribs, fang fortysome scales and as happens in this discipline in archaeology, and we've joked about this in the past. We've had archaeologists joke about it anytime you find something weird, you say it may have been some kind of a ritual. So of course there's the this may have been ritualistic. I'm picturing this being some kind of poetic justice. So I have chickens at my house, and we had a we raised a pig, and the pig was very kind and it's super lovable, and then at one stage it just kind of went feral and started eating the chickens. So when we butchered the pig and turned it into bacon, I took some of the got some stuff like that and fed it back to the chickens. Felt like it was poetic justice. So I think maybe this feller had a pet rat that was like his, you know, his homie, and he watched this rattlesnake swallowed the rat hole and he was like, I'm gonna kill you, and I'm gonna do the same thing to you. That's probably you should publish that. I just wrote it right now. Alternate an alternate explanation. Really interesting now, halfle Finger, I can't tell how serious was halfle Finger when he was suggesting that. Yeah, never mind, I don't because he kind of made a flipping off the cough comment. I don't want to hold him to it. Um, Yanni, this is this is like a hard to explain thing. This is between me and honest. But I sent Karrent a screenshot of my text message exchange from Yanni, So yeah, I gotta gonna I haven't asked Yanni about this yet. Yanni shares with me how yeah, yeah, one day shares me how he and Mingus operatings together as a soul unit, caught a mountain lion. And this is like a threshold. This is a this is this is almost like a religious experience for Yanni because this is like, like the archaeologists always say, Yanni knew he would arrive, like him and his dog as a hunting unit would arrive once Mingus just caught a lion, because then it's like it wasn't that he was following one of his buddies dogs, He wasn't just along for the ride. He wasn't barking but didn't really know what he was barking about. He caught his own line irrefutable proof, which last time unless he just had me walking through the woods and noticed the lion in a tree, which doesn't happen. And last time we were talking about this on this year podcast. I was saying that that's you're asking me, like, what's next. I said, that's next. We gotta go out and hunt and do it on our own. And since caught three, Yeah, so that was number one. And then we got lucky and uh caught a trail of two lions together and Mangus treat them both. Really, yeah he did. He thought treat two separately that day. Well, did they go up the same tree? No, so it was he kind of we were in a creek bottom. He cut the trail and took off up the hill. And I've realized now this is one of the cool things about like getting to know what your dog does, is that if he opens up, meaning that he starts to like bark on trail, if he is not moving very quickly, he's on a bobcat because there just must be just less scent. The bobcat weaves and bobs through the woods more. That's where they got their name from, bob and weave. And uh. So he doesn't move very fast. I can usually catch up to him if he just lines out and all of a sudden, the GPS shews a straight line of like a hundred yards like it's a mountain lion track, so this is what's going on. And so I just started bogging up the hill, and uh, I imagine that he had those lions caught in thirty minutes. But I had steep deep snow, like probably crash deep snow going to get to the ridge. When I got to the ridge, I thought, oh, yeah, easy going now, But it turns out the south face and slope was covered in like screen and loose rock with like two to six inches of fresh snow. So even it looked like it was gonna be breezy, I'm just gonna grease right across it and not being so. And it was kind of treacherous, like slipping a slide and feet poking through into holes, smashing my shins on the rocks. So I had to slow it down. I haven't busted out my trek and poll, it's how bad it was bad. So he was there for a solid hour. I finally get there, making noise the whole time. I don't know, hopefully that's what he's supposed to be doing, right. All I know is that I get there. Right as I get there, he maybe quits barking like five or ten seconds earlier, and it wasn't until I was under two yards I could even hear him barking, just because of the curvature of the hill, you know. I get to kind of a rock out cropping and he's quit barking for maybe ten fifteen seconds, and I looked down below me and I see a mountain line on the ground slinking away to go in the direction I came from, but eighty yards below me, and Mingus is not barking, and I'm like, oh, I did it like your dog killed? Yeah, I got my dog killed because he's by himself. Bad news, you know, it was just in the back of my head. Even the daughters would have been pi. Yeah, but I could have fixed that problem with another puppy, but good news. I would have had a very heavy heart. So I'm like, Mangus, Mangus, talk to him, talk to him, like just like trying to just to get something out of him. And he immediately just comes kind of out of the woods and I can see him and he runs up to the base of this tree that I was not looking at. I was looking at the mountain walking away, and he starts, you know, treeing on that tree, and I look up the tree and about eye level with me, actually a little bit below me, there's a cat. And so, like I said, I knew I was following two because I was following two different sized tracks. Every now and then they would split, and I could see at the base of the tree that he had worn it all out. You know, there's no snow left, and he's a tree biter, so at about when he's on his hind legs and about head height for him, there's usually like an eighteen inch oval circle of where he's worn the bark off the tree. So he does that for a minute or so. I'm like, okay, Like, I don't know what the other cat. I don't know. Had he been going back and forth between two trees where the other cat was, I don't think the cat would have just been on the ground watch him treat the other one. That doesn't make sense. So I don't know what happened there for an hour, but he only trees there for a minute, and then all of a sudden he stops and you can see his nose kind of points the direction where that line was, and I think it was about ten ten thirty. I'm guessing that he caught like an uphill thermal. It must have caught the center of that other line that left and boogies down to that track takes off in two or three minutes later. I can hear embarking treed like yards away. So he went and caught that one. Was it a female and like a semimature kit exactly female and a subadult man. We gotta set some time. We gotta set like some time to hunt. But I'm telling you, I'm getting the lion yes over Mingus. So that's how we get back to this text chain. Oh so oh, but one quick thing U Yanni informed me before we started. Yanni has now secured permission with his spouse to get a second lion hound. Mingus needs a buddy. Are you gonna like a high test, like a you know, like a high test pedigreed. I've already had some offers for free to just take dogs. I think that there's plenty of hound trainers, handlers whatever. They might not even necessarily be breeders, but they like to see lineages keep going, and they're not in it to like make money. They don't. They're like, hey, I have great dogs, this other person has great dogs. We're gonna make some great dogs. We would like them to go to people that hunt and keep those dogs hunting. And then that line hunting. Yeah, and you like obviously takes super good care of it and hunt it. Yeah, you won't be like some guy who you know just watching TV. But it was going to be a lion hunter. Yeah. Uh so. And Paul, there's a there's a picture of Mingus change Textas texts me that Mingus caught his first line, and I texted him like, I don't remember the hell. I said, great. Then I text you on a photo of a fox squirrel eating a shad in a tree. Hold On, let's get exactly right, because I feel like I'm about to get thrown under the bus here, you said, just you and Mingus? I said, yep, I did get a tip from my body about two spots to check um and the cat was in the second spot. You said, that's gotta feel good, and right below that's gotta feel good, there's a picture of a fox squirrel in a tree eating a shad, all coated in blood. Yeah, and to which she has zero reply. I just sent him the most interesting photo in the history of photography. No, I said, I said, I'm on cloud nine, I said, coincidentally, I got to watch him find the tree she was in the first time she jumped twice. This is while sitting on the most groundbreaking photograph known to man. I said, it was beautiful, the fish eating a shad in a tree. This is like I think of photos that could compared, oh like Neil Armstrong, like on the Moon with that flag. I basically sent that to Yanni, but it's nineteen seventy or whatever the hell that was, right, Yeah, so I'm in like a very different headspace, Cloud nine. My dog's just treat its first mountainlin on its own, and you said, that's gotta feel good, and then just slip in this picture and I look at it like, oh, well, that must be one of those memes. But that's like Steven Ronella's style, like that's gotta feel good, just like this fox squirrel has to feel good munching on this chat because most fox squirrels don't get to comment on the squirrel eating the fish. There's a picture of the squirrel eating the fish. If you guys, I figured it was a meme, Jana says, is that real? I figured it was a meme, went with that's got to feel good. I want to clarify something for you and everybody. I have never, in my life, nor will I ever in my life, ever traffic in a meme. I'm right there with you. I'm on team no meme. I won't text a meme. I won't put a meme on social media. I will not. I do not traffic in memes or emojis, just like all of it. No, I don't traffic in emojis. I will never traffic in a meme. You guys, big meme guys. I mean I appreciate a good meme. I'm not. I'm not a trafficker of memes either, and I don't. I don't create them or you know, I to do that and then I share him. Quick note, this is the opposite of an apology to the falconer community. We need to get a falconer on it. I pointed out, they're not even taking on what I said, they're not even tagging what I said. I pointed out that I believe that I made an estimate. I believe half of all Falconers got into Falconry through a D and D took a path that went through D and D to get into falconry. That's all I said. This guy's like, we spend a hundred and fifty days in there. That's not what I said. His was not the only comment. He's representative of an upset. Yeah, but like some other thing. What is a LARPer? He said? Players. I had looked that up too, because alert there's alert, which was long range reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam. A LARP is not nearly as cool. It could be a LARPer about alert. You could large alert, you can LARPer liver um team. No. So just a clarification to the falconer community. I didn't say they don't go out a lot. I said, I believe that of all people that self identify as a falconer, came through a D and D took a D and D path, came through D and D rather than coming through relationship with the outdoors. I think you're wrong. We'll never know. Oh no, I think, well, what if we just pulled ten falconers? Do I need to pull more to find out? Because how are you gonna find them? I don't know through Instagram? Okay, that's fine, but you're actually gonna do that? Yeah, I'll pull ten? About it? Are you gonna be happy if I pull ten and zero of them say I've or of all of them say I've never played D and D. I will be happy with it once I see your methods. If your methods is going through your network of people who are big time hunters, I won't trust the data. I'll get with Chester the test are on it to make sure that how to test that that I'm doing the right All the falconers I know are pretty serious. I questioning whether they're serious. Marping festival and see if there's any falconers there and ask them if they got into it from D and D. If I said, if, I said after the movie Top Gun came out, um inductees into the Air Force skyrocketed, and then some guy said, but I wound up being in the Air Force for twelve years. You'd be like, but once they have to do with what I'm talking about, Yeah, you're not. They're not talking about what I'm talking about, and and you're not. I get it now. Is it a video game? Dungeons and Dragons? There was a class. There's there's a class and a lot of fantasy role playing called a druid that has that can like communicate with animals, and they're like theirs, their spirit familiars. It's sort of like like a ghost or or like an animal that they sort of have, like not like a spirit animal, but not too far off from that concept. And falcons are very common familiar that druids used to like, you know, they wear that little s and m hood the birds do. It's like leather. Yeah, that's like it's very like medieval. There's a lot of medieval symbolism, like like they're like blinders. Yeah, it's all there's all very medieval. So I get it. I get it. Did you guys know that, um m hmm. It's estimated that the ski was I'm just looking at some stuff Curt shared with me. The ski was perhaps invented before the wheel. Yeah, of course, Oh that's obvious to you. I mean it seems obvious to me. Maybe that's my ski background. But it's also much easier to construct a ski than it would be a wheel. That's kind of what I was thinking. It's a big flat thing. The first the first were glorified snowshoes, you think, so absolutely saying that there's I don't, I gotta, I don't, I gotta get this evidenced years worth of evidence of skiing. Cave drawings suggests man use skis during the Last Ice Age. The oldest ski artifacts come from the Mesolithic period. Fragments of ski like objects discovering the nineteen sixties date back to six thousand BC in northern Russia. You buy that, yeah, I mean you got much winters out there. You have to get around in the winter, so I mean otherwise you're gonna just be post holing around all the time. There are from four thousand BC rock carvings of a skier in Norway. There's skis, actual skis discovered in Finland that were three from three thousand, three hundred BC. In Sweden to skis and a ski pole emerged from a bog in Sweden dated to two thousand seven BC. From two thousand five b C, there are rock drawings that depict a man on skis holding a stick on a Norwegian island two b C. They got into skiing in China and check us out. The word ski comes from the old Norse word. I don't know what's that word. I'm not not quite sure, but it sounds it's probably like chia or something like that. My coach is Norwegian, so here we always butchered Norwegian words and it drives him nuts because he's like, no, it's not that. It's oh yeah, so the words derivation is a split piece of firewood. That's pretty damn interesting. Oh do you guys know what the alimal means? I don't know that. It meant cotton wood. Did not? I know that? Now? All right, do you explain to me because because as a bio like, let me ask this as a biathlete, Um, how much is like how much is the history of skiing and hunting? Like how much is it interwoven as sort of like a genesis myth? And how much is it that people are like, yeah, who cares? Um? Like how many by athletes? Yeah? Like is it like are you harkening back to the olden times? Or there are a lot of people who are like, I don't give a ship where it came from. Um, I would say a lot of people probably like I don't really care, but I mean it really depends what nation you come from to like, I mean, if you're coming from Germany, the sports just so big, you're like, I don't care. I just am like out here to compete. Um. But I think there are definitely other people who have like more of those those roots, like if you're up in Norway, Sweden, Finland. Um, but I mean it kind of went from like hunting also to the military side. So I mean I would say the military roots are still pretty strong because they still have like military world championships every year and stuff like that. Um. But yeah, because that one that one of the Finns we're whooping on the Russians prior to World War Two, Yeah, I mean they used to they kind of dominated them in winter combat, right, Yeah. I mean that's how like I mean in World War Two as well, like Norway the Germany they just like really couldn't hold Norway because they were just so one they knew the land so well, but too they could get around really really well. Um. But I mean they had trained their military um in their like border patrol uh, pretty heavily on skis for the longest time. Um. And that's when like those training exercises really started to morph into competitions and people are like, hey, this is pretty kind of this is pretty fun to watch and like do and um continue. It more came out of of of military units trained to travel by ski yeah, I think but that but like because it originally had come from hunting, because you know, back in the day and you're in the middle of winter up in Sweden, Norway, Finland, uh, Russia, I mean you just can't. It's so much more effective to get around on skis and so, um, I think the military adopted that, and I'm sure that back then that's where, um they kind of saw the success of it and we're like, hey, we're gonna we're gonna adopt what these people have been doing on on snow and um train our military because it was just like very effective. What what countries kicked the most? Asked them by athlon? Like who has the most gold h Norway for sure right now, um, And I mean it's it's pretty big. It's the most watched winter sport in Europe. So um it's really yeah. Yeah, Like the average World Cup has about thirty six million UH viewers on television. Um. He has some like huge market chairs in in Norway, Germany, Sweden's growing, Russia, France, but um, for the most part, I would say Norway has like a really uh strong development of younger athletes as well. So it's they just mean they have the numbers as well. I mean here in the US you kind of struggle to get more than like a hundred people at a race to to go where uh in Norway you show up and you may have like twelve hundred kids just like racing on a weekend. So you're you're sort of like testing. They're testing a much higher percentage of youths for talent, yep, and they have a lot of talent that we don't know about. But also, like in the US, you have a lot of talent going elsewhere. I mean in the U s it's like, hey, you could be really good at bathlon or you could be like really good at another sport that's going to have a lot more support. Um. Not to say that there's not talent in biathlon, but it's a lot harder to find as well. I mean most people don't even know what the sport of bathlon is. I mean back home, I say it and they're like, like, oh, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm on the Bathlon team that oh, so you're like running bike or swimming do something else and you're just like close, but it's skiing and shooting. And then they get even more confused. So it's I mean, it's just so David here, if he lived in Norway, he might be uh, it's more likely he might be a biathlon might be a biathlete. I mean, but Norway in general, they just have like a killer winter sports, uh, like across the board. Yeah, I mean they won the medal count in the last two Olympics. And they're a country of five and a half million people. So it's it's like basically Minnesota dominating the Olympics just as one stay. But they're an entire country and part of that is because they care a lot about it, um, and they have training centers and um, everything else set in place to develop all the sports across the board. Um. So I mean, I don't know who. I mean. I think the US is still like the powerhouse of freestyle skiing, but it's the example would be then, uh, like snowboarding. The US has always been really good at snowboarding. Why because we like kind of invented the sport, and Norway is kind of the same way. I mean, they they it's like their sport. Um, they've always been doing it, but like there's always there's also a huge following in Germany and Germany, uh have really good by athletes as well, but it's because it's it's really popular there as well. Do you have this experience where you go to Europe Scandinavia especially, where like you get off a plane and you're you're like almost an A list celebrity because you're an Olympic biathlete. Um, I wouldn't quite say like getting off the plane. Yeah yeah, yeah, but no, like if you if you go to these races, um, like my first World Cup and told Italy, uh, there was about like sixty sixty five thousand people at the race, and it's like yeah, it's it's like people I are just like, oh, can I get your autograph and stuff? And You're like yeah, sure, I don't know why, You're just kind of like confused by it all, but yeah, no, people are definitely into it um over there for sure. And then you come home and people are like you do what? Yeah? Well why I mean I landed in so I live in Fargo right now, and I landed there right like, flew from Beijing home for a week before I had to go back for the last World Cups. I land and I'm wearing like my team USA sweatshirt and this woman comes up to me. It is like, I hate to be weird and stuff, but like I was looking for him and you kind of look like him. But did you just come back from the Olympics. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I did actually, and she's like, oh, what's your sport? And I'm like, blath line. She's like, oh, so you're You're a summer athlete, so you're not actually competing right now. And I'm just like, well, no, I just said I flew home from the Olympics. And it was just like people just don't get it. And I mean it's like, okay, well whatever U as the U has any US team member ever placed the medal in biathlon, not the Olympics. We're the only US sport to not have meddled at the Olympics. Oh yeah, how how does that hurt? Or is that like a challenge? How many? How many more do you got any more? How many more Olympics you get? Any old? Are you? I'm twenty nine, I'm I'm like middle, I'm not old. But what's the old? What's an old? What's the oldest person to compete? Like nine? I think I guess you guys can squeeze more years out of it. Yeah, yeah for sure. I mean and during sports you're gonna have a little bit a little bit more time. Um, so you'll go back potentially. It's something I'm definitely thinking about. But I mean, twenty nine, like, I got all the things I want to do in life too, So I don't know, but you'll live to be like in your early eighties, Yeah for sure. So, but it's a lot of time on the road too. There's just a lot of different things to kind of balance. But do you think about wrapping it up? Um, I've at least two more years. It's a matter if I want to go two or four more years. Where's the next one going to be in Cortina, Italy? So it would be pretty sweet actually, And that's something I've definitely thought about because I've had my best races in on Told Italy, which is the venue that those Olympics will be yet and so it's kind of like, man like go back and um have a good thing going with the team and stuff. So yeah, it's definitely something I'm still thinking about. But um, going back to the question of like does it hurt, and I mean it's something that's always talked about any Olympic cycle. It's like, oh man, the last sport to not have won a medal and um, I mean there's definitely a lot of media hype and stuff around it, but um, it's not an easy sport to win, and that's for sure. I mean it's it's kind of crazy to think about how many nations are also represented in biathlon, um in the depth and I think you just look statistically, it's one of the most competitive sports at the Winter Olympics, which you think, like maybe cross country skiing or something like that would be easier, but um, blathlon is actually harder to get into UM for the Olympics in some sense than cross country skiing as even though there's uh the rifle shooting component because because you're shooting iron real quick. Yeah, for sure, Yanni said, Uh. Janie said the not you particularly necessarily, but he said the biathlon community is pretty loosey goosey about gun safety. Any comment, Well that I would say, in some ways we are, um, but like growing up hunting, Uh, the biggest thing on the rifle that you'd like talked about is like the safety. She'd be like, you always gotta have your safety on. And I was taught growing up. You know, when you're walking in, you put that live round in. You gotta be ready to shoot whenever. But um, my biathlon rifle does not have a safety on it. And the biggest reason for that is is I never have a live round in the chamber and tell him like ready to shoot, tell me what I'm looking at here. So it's a on Shoots Fortner Uh, slide action rifle. It's a twenty two long rifle. So yeah, it's a slide action. It's like a yeah, it's like a bolt, but you don't close the boat describe it. You don't need to go like when you think of working a boat. This is Yeah, there's no handle that moves up and down across the action. It's just a handle that just pushes that slides slides over a slight little ledge. Yep, damn. So it's it's basically it works with ball bearings, um, and that's how it locks into place. And then when you pull it back those ball bearings and then come out Yep, I'm trying to This is a complicated ass grip. So that's like the pistol grip there and then the ahead of yep. So so basically when you reload it, you pull it back with your index finger and then you close the action with your um with your thumb. I gotta do it left you just to get a sense for the trigger. It's really lights about five grams, so you'll feel the first stage if you pull it in super super light and then you hold it and then you can feel it get the last part. Oh so that's yeah? So uh that I mean there's a lot of big differences between like just a bosling rifle and a normal hunting rifle and what what what explained the site to me? They're all open sites. You have a rear aperture and then the front site. Um, basically it's just a circle that you line up around it. You have to put down out the snow. There's two on each site. There's snow um snowguards. Well. I mean, if it's like nuke and snow out there, you don't want to get all up in your sites and you can't see anything. So even by athletes used the term nu king. I mean, I don't know, do you guys use No, not really, We're actually not that like cool in a lot of ways. Do you ever say stoked. Yeah, for sure. I mean as I mean, I got a point, Stoked has gone very mainstream. That's been stolen away from the skiers no longer ours you guys lost that you guys lost from skateboarders in the first place. But I mean it's kind of cool. Like here the lingo too, because I was like in Beijing walking through the the village and i saw this Japanese snowboarder and I'm like, oh, how's the how's the courses here? She's like, oh man, they're like super sick, but like the weather is also really sick. And so it was like you're using like all this lingo and you're just like, oh, it's kind of funny. How like the rest of the world has adopted some of that that culture. What's that little burr on the trigger to help you with finger placement? Yeah, exactly, and just like being able to feel it, so I shoot with my gloves on, UM, so I'm not like messing around taking gloves off or anything else like that. So it just gives you a little bit better triggered. Funny little sweet spot. Yeah, So it's basically just like a little little pin to um. So that one, you're putting your your finger on the trigger the exact same spot every time. But then also you can get a good feeling for it and tell me what, um, how far are you shooting and how big you're trying to hit. The targets are all at fifty meters, so about fifty six yards um. Yeah, I pull up my notes, so I got everything right. But there's two different sized targets. Um, you're gonna have the prone target, which you would shoot when you're lying down, and that's about one in diameter and it's yep, yep, it's all hit or miss um and there's uh let's see here. Yeah, if you it's like it's all or nothing. So you're prone, you're hitting a target that's what size about the size of golf ball one eight inches in diameter. Open sites, open sites, just I'm not yeah, I'm not diminished because like most people think of open size or think of like a buckhorn site, right yeah. And I mean there's no magnification a lot, so it's all just like open peep, there's no nope, nope um. And then yeah, so it's at fifty about fifty four yards um or hut. And because it's so because it's fixed. That's why you have such an elevated you don't need to worry about well, what of the shots at forty yards? What are the shots that? Yeah, it's all the same. And every day every yerio very specifically for fifty yea and every day before we shoot zero, so zero every single day. You're not like showing up and um, you know like pulling it out and going. Part of that is one if you're going from range to range, you don't know like what the and there's just like airs moving and because we shoot standard velocity, Uh, you're gonna have wind affecting where where your bullet goes. Um depends on elevation as well, when you might push more at elevation or um if you're at sea level, that all changes. And then also lighting can change things. But then lastly, um, you take your part, your rifle apart, you travel with it, you put it back together. Um. How the rifle reacts in the cold. So like on race day, once our rifle goes outside, like before zero and stuff, we leave it outside because you know, if you bring it in and then it's getting warm and then you go back outside and it's getting cold. UM. So, I mean it says little things like that. And at the end of the day, we're accuracy shooters, not precision shooters. So I'm sure like precision would basically be like how close to the center can you get? So like precision shooters UM in the Olympics, they'd be looking to get tens every single time. For me, it's like I just gotta hit that prone dark down. That's about it. And we we also have the race aspect where it's like you want to do it pretty quick, Like I don't want to be sitting there trying to shoot tens every single time. I just to like make sure I'm hitting prone targets or standing targets. And how big is a standing targeting targets? About four and a half inches in diameter? So at what range? Still fifty same thing if you when you go squirrel hunt and do you do you bring this? Do you got do you to use a different thing? Um? I have, But it's like it's a little different because I mean this is just so dialed in at fifty meters. UM. I mean I've shot a grouse with my rifle before, UM, just like I was out. But I mean it's just like so specific for for byathlon, it's like, man, yeah that if that whatever is at fifty meters, sweet, I'll get it. But like it's but you don't know where it's at at forty you know, I haven't really done a whole lot of um, a whole lot of shooting at other distances. But also because it's a standard velocity, amm oh, it's going to have a little bit of an arc on it. So it's still all your magazines. So I mean so for during uh, during races, you got it. So if it's a two or four shooting race, you gotta reload each time. So each magazine holds five hounds, and um, you get up to five five shootings. So that that's the prone sling. So that prone slang uh goes into my cuff which is on my arm, which the guys were doing yesterday. They were looking pretty good with the with the cuff on. Yeah, it's pretty slick. It's like just basically an arm band on your bicep, and when you get into prone, you take that little hook and lock it in, and you lock it in you can just basically just go all skeletal and relax that front hand and it's you know, like a nice platform. Do you guys all use the same gun smith? Um, pretty much everybody used the same action and barrel, so the on shoots Fortner and then but there are like other guys that are like renowned for ranching on these biathlon guns. Partner just as like small little basically a farm in Germany. Um, if you go there, it's just like this rinky dink shop. But um, they basically manufacture and work on all the the rifles. There's there's a few other guys that do, but they're pretty much all based in Europe, like not a lot of guys in in the US. But um, yeah, is your community under a lot of pressure to get rid of lead? Not not yet, it's coming for um, yeah, for sure. It's something we've thought about where we're like because there are the Paralympians sometimes use laser rifles, but like laser laser rifles would kind of ruin the essence of blathlon. I think that's something that a lot of people people recognize. But I mean, the big thing that affected us this last year was the banning of floor carbons, and so we can't wax with foil carbons anymore. So the waxing industry has kind of been making a big change. But yeah, I think lead might be that that next one and just trying to find something that can still be still be accurate and work well in blathlon. I gotta buy athlon question for you. Yeah, Um, in order to meddle, so we talked about, hasn't findled it yet? You should put it on with those straps. We might have to build another sling. I'm gonna fall in love with that. I wish we had more time because I want to shoot that thing for sure. That looks I think I question ahead. Uh So, I'm just curious in terms of meddling, because I'll be honest with you, I watched your event every four years, similar to how you probably watched my event every four years. Uh. If in terms of being able to be on the podium in biathlon, do you have to shoot perfect? That really depends. Um, that's a good question you I would say to be successful, and I would say I'll take that one. I'll feel that one. Let me answer this way. If I would want to me all as like this year, yes, I would have had to shoot perfect. Um. Other people maybe not, because they're really good on skis, you generally have to shoot or better. The chances of someone winning a race having shot under happens maybe when there's really crazy wind conditions and everybody's missing and then just kind of turns um in like sometimes the fast gears can kind of ski ski off the penalties. But um, yeah, generally it's about I would say, yeah, uh, walk through how you how your sport came onto your radar being not from a country that yeah, a country that doesn't delve. Yeah. Uh so, I mean, like I had said a little bit earlier, I actually grew up wrestling in Wisconsin. I had no idea what was what Bathlon even was growing up. Um, really, like you wouldn't have known, No, I mean I maybe would have seen a picture of me like yeah, that's something that's like in the Olympics. But um, but yeah, I had not done done. I had not skied or anything like that. Um. In high school is when I started getting into cross country skiing and then went to college, and it was at it was in college where my my coach used to be a bathlete himself, and he knew like the opportunities and how big Bathlon was and my talents and He's the one who kind of started putting Bathlon in my head. What I was reading about you, um about this deal like with the weight cutting and wrestling that that got dangerous. It's funny because I've talked about on the show. I've talked about like buddies of mine in high school doing the you know, run around with garbage bags on and spitting into mountain dew bottles all day and sucking on marbles or whatever the hell they're doing all the time to try to like work it up. You went down that. You went down that rabbit hole pretty good. Um. In some ways, Yeah, it was kind of weird because like when I was in middle school, I was always like super against it, um, like the cutting weight culture. But it was mostly because I didn't really have a reason to at that time. I didn't have a specific uh weight classes I was trying to make. I was just like wrestling other guys around my same weight, and most of the time my dad was in in the rooms trying to put me in heavier weight classes anyways, just to like get me to so some like heavier guys. Um. But in middle school, I mean I never really felt like much of an athlete. Growing up, UM, I was really good at the sports that were big in my hometown football, baseball, basketball, and so in eighth grade, actually saw an opportunity for myself to like maybe be distinguished against amongst my peers by getting my name on a weightlifting board. And so that's when I had like my first reason to really um cut weight. And so I did and got my name on the board and stuff. But then I thought, oh, maybe I'll be be careful and like I can keep my weight down for the upcoming season. I can try and uh be prepared for the fall. I don't want to like getin extra weight and stuff like that. And it just kind of turned into this uh being disorder. Yeah that I was just thought I was being healthy to try and make right decisions. But you know, I was a young kid. I didn't know what I was doing, and eventually I just kind of developed this addiction UM and struggled with that for for a while heading into my freshman based around competing UM. I mean at the beginning maybe, but not really towards the end. UM. At that point it just became like I thought I was like being healthy, but really I was just like I was being super unhealthy. Um. I took a lot of things and that I learned from like health class and you know media that was telling me. Um. But I was like thirteen fourteen at the time, I couldn't really know. I didn't really know much of the difference. Um. Now, when you look at now that you're you know that you train at such a high level and obviously have access to legitimate professionals, do you look back and be like what in the world? Oh yeah, for sure, Like I look back, I'm like, man, why was I doing that? And like it's really hard to think about because like at that time, you're, um, you're not thinking straight. I mean, like with most addictions, you're just really struggling through something. It was a new teens. Yeah, when I was like uh so, I mean it was between my eighth grade and freshman year of high school. Um, and I mean I struggled with it for um about a year year and a half and so um yeah, during that time, it was it was it was definitely difficult time because, um my my dad really struggled to understand it. Um. I mean he was just like, why is my kids so much different than like every other guy? Um, just not eating food and stuff, and my dad ended up dying in a car accident that that winter that I was struggling with it as well. On what age were you then? I was fourteen at that time, so um and then so how so all of a sudden, like someone just called me on the phone or whatever there, Um, I was actually at school and my brother and I got called down to the uh to the office and we're just like, oh, what's going on? Like why is my brother here? And then um, they ended up taking us over to the middle school because that's where my sister was and my mom told us and I didn't tell you why you're going to the middle school? No, not not at first, and they just like my mom wanted us to wanted to tell us at school because she's like I don't want them to associate that sort of news like in our house. But how what did they Why did they tell you're going to the middle school? They didn't. They were just like your mom's over there, and you know, at that point, we're just like, what's going on? This is kind of weird, And UM, I don't think that they it was mean, Yeah, it's a hard situation. You know, you don't want to tell your kids, like, hey, you gotta go over to the middle school because your mom has some hard news for you. It's like, um, but yeah it was. It was a tough time, but um, thankfully I that uh that summer, I still was like struggling, and um finally went to treatment at Rogers Memore Hospital in Wisconsin and um got my got my life back there. And UM when I when I first went in, I like never thought I was going to compete again as an athlete one because I thought high school sports was kind of like the end all be all of sports. You know, only if you were like really good would you go to college and profession For both people, it's the like exactly, And like my relationship with high school sports at that point was like not good. I was just miserable. I wasn't really good. I was, um just doing it for the wrong reasons. Um. And it was after that that I actually got introduced to cross country skiing and just was like on the weekends going out and to be honest, like getting out of a gym full of yelling parents and being out in the woods by myself was was a great change. And just like I got really passionate about the sport, and people like, hey, pretty good, you should try some races. And by the time I was a senior in high school, I was like racing, um, traveling around the Midwest. Uh, qualified for junior nationals and then I was like, I'm gonna go to college and give this thing a go. But no guns yet. No, that wasn't until about my junior year of college. Um, someone's like, hey you should I mean with you yeah, And so I graduate high school in two thousand and ten, and that's when the Vancouver Olympics were going on, and so I like I saw some blathlon. I was like, man, that looks like super cool, but like, I don't even know where to start to get into that because it's like I didn't even know where the nearest like blathlon range was. I didn't know anything about the sport. Did you go up to like Hayward, Um? So I yeah, I actually lived in Hayward for a couple of years. Um when I first started blathlon. Um, I had some friends who who had a cabin and like, I was just broke at that time, living on my car, and so for like two three years of my black line career, I didn't pay any rent, but was just like living in where I could and I was kind of doing some rocky train at one point, just like living in this cabin and Hayward and um, well you mean like when he has to fight the Russian guy. Yeah, kind of where I'm just like I had like my own blathlon target that I bought from and yeah, in some ways, I set up my my target on the side of the ode and that was just like roller skiing and shooting off the road and it was a good time. I love Hayward. It's it's a great spot roll. Yeah, that's basically just skiing on roads. But it's it's like skis are they're a little longer than rollerblades and the wheels are a lot slower too. Um because if I saw a guy coming down the road with roller blades in the gun, I get a way different idea in my head. Yeah, the skis with the gun they perfectly make those wheels slow so that there's more friction and more because if you think about how fast cross country skiing is, like you don't want to be out there just like going. I mean, inline blades are fast, so are our wheels are a lot softer? Rubber um and we use the same same boots that we use on skis um in the winter and stuff. And then yeah, so it's it's to simulate skiing. Oh you know, speaking of the wrestling, you know you might want to fight his chester here. Yeah, he wrestled. I don't want to fight. Yeah, that's kind of behind me now. Uh, it takes a it takes a lot to piss me off. So what age was it that you first, like, uh like actually did a buyath lot event. I mean that it doesn't need to be the high level, but you went to an event and competed. So my first bath On race was actually over in Minnesota and Elk River, and there was this guy gave me this like old Bathlon rifle day before it like basically this is how you are position before, yeah, day before, and he's like, all right, go out and send it. And then that's what I did. And that was when I was probably looked through this hole. Yes you put that on that little thing, and shoot, did you do well that first? Um? I can't even remember. Honestly, I know I didn't hit a lot of targets, but uh, I don't think I ever dirty. So that was like a success for me at that point. The dirty dirty in is when you miss all five targets. And so when you when you hit all five targets, that's when it's that we would call that a clean So dirty is not good in high in are you you're holding off target? It depends depends how what your strategy is. So, uh, if you adjust your sites, we call that like clicking, so you'll do that. Yeah, So it's like the there's wind flags on the range and so um, depending upon what the wind flags are doing, you might click. Do you guys use the m A or do you use or Emerald? Like what system do you use? Uh? Just looking at the wind flags and you don't know what I'm saying, Like when you click, I think, yeah, it's just like I mean, so all I know is like on my rifle the site when I So if I come in and the wind flags are like straight out, I may have to go four clicks, which is about four bullet holes um of adjustment. So if I'm shooting center and I take four clicks, I'm like on the edge or just outside of the prone ring. So it can't be make a difference, similar to making adjustments on your archery set up. Yeah, yeah, you're not thinking. Yeah, you're just I mean you have the little lines on your site that you're like, okay, I've moved it that far. Each click is a certain amount. Yeah. Uh and that was what age again when you first did your first But at what a what age were you a headed for the Olympics? Like I'm trying to figure out, like how many years? Yeah, is when I graduated college and went full time blathlon um and unfortunately, like just missed out in pyong Chang Olympic trials. I got sick and was like the first alternate, so um didn't go there. But I would say those three years were pretty tough. But um, the biggest thing with that is like the skiing aspect of the sport, like you have to be a fast gear and thankfully, um, like through college I really worked on all my skiing development and stuff, and so at that point it was really just about learning how to shoot um, which to learn how to shoot a blathlon rifle well probably takes about one and a half years to two years of like failing pretty miserably at times, and then you're like, oh, I think I got this, and then the next day, it's like, man, I can't hit anything, and so there's a lot of ups and downs. But it's just it takes a lot of persistence and you have to be willing to to not do well for a little while if you right now went in, Like what event in the Olympics most closely mirrors the actual skiing part of what you do in terms of equipment and course and all that. A cross country skiing is like basically the same. So the skis aren't any difference. I mean, like, yeah, but athletes are about as close to a cross country skiers you can probably get like any other sport. I don't know if you guys had if your gear was more tweaked out, for certain, So how would you do? Would you just get smoked in a cross country skiing event? Um, depends your definition of smoked, like what you can hold your own? Yeah, for sure. I mean talking about like how competitive bathon is in the Olympics. There was actually a few guys from some nations, um, including one guy from Latvia that I know. Um, he actually went to cross country skiing because he it was easier for him to qualify for the Olympics. Across country skiing than bath So you guys are high test skiers. Yeah for sure. Well I'm trying to sort out the like the and the things and the ski and things, but the skiing is it's top not skiers, Yeah for sure. Is there any crossover? Is there? Are there any athletes to do both? Yeah? I mean you definitely can have the Olympics, like at the Olympics, not anymore because it's just like really specialized. Bathron does have a little bit different type of skiing. So like our longest race is gonna be twenty k, which is like thirteen miles or something like that, Whereas when you have if you're a cross country skier, your longest race gonna be fift k, so you're gonna change train a little bit different. But we also have like seven eight pound rifle on our back, so um, and we're doing loops, so there are a little bit of differences. Um. But like it isn't unheard of for for us to like jump into a cross country ski race at times, um, like in the off season and stuff like that. So how if if it's the twenty k race, how long would it take you if someone just said, like, uh, put your gun on your back and just go ski though, uh, depenning ponds, snow conditions, I'd say round forty five minutes and then and then on average in that twenty k event, how many shots I know it's between one and five for every target, depending on how let's say, like perfect conditions you're shooting great, how many shots you gonna touch off? Um? Ideally, so in a twenty k race, you're gonna have four shootings, so you're gonna have twenty shots. Um. The best I've gotten his nineteen so nineteen twenty. And I understand you hit, you hit one target, you hit, you hit targets of one bullet, no leased one shooting steel, but you didn't keeping to hit it. Noo. There's five targets. There's you have five shots and you shoot each one one time. So I'll explain it. So you had five shots, you had five chances to hit it. You should just break it down from start. Yeah. So so so with the range, So the range is set up with the targets are a fifty meters and each point, which would be like each shooting lane has five targets, and so every time you come in, you're taking five shots at those targets. If you hit the target, it goes from black and turns to white, so you know you hit it, and if you miss it, it just stays black. So you could get up there and with all five your shots on one target. Yep. But okay, I see, and that's what we call dirty. So it's like the way you're you're dumping when you stop, you're dumping five rounds, yep, exactly. And so so say I come in and I hit four of those five shots, that one shot that I missed, I get penalized. And so in the twenty k race, which is the individual, you get one minute added onto your time. So say I finished the race in forty four minutes, I'm gonna there's one minute added on, so my race time is then forty five minutes. So so say, and then with a twenty k race, there's two prone shootings and two standing shootings, so you have twenty shots total and five shots at each shooting. Man, I really feel like you should commit yourself to try to do one more Olympics. Man, that's what I was gonna say. This. This story has got so much grit. Yeah, because then when they make a movie about it, like you'd be like one of the Jamaican dudes won the or didn't win a cool runnings. Yeah, they didn't win the Olympics. They just went to it. Maybe be more like a miracle one. Yeah, but yeah, because you could beat the Russians yea, and everybody doesn't like them again. Yeah, if they're still in the Olympics, we'll see. So, uh, I think you should go one more time. Like I said, it's not entirely up to what you decide the right, like you gotta like earn your spot again. Oh for sure. I mean it's like I mean, that's the reason why I'm giving it some serious thought right now, because if I'm going another four years, I'm all in. I gotta be prepared and like, uh, I mean, these things don't happen overnight, and so you gotta gotta be committed to that long term vision. And like, so you're here in deciding. It's not like do I want to go to the Olympics again, it's do I want to spend the next four years entirely committed to this one thing? Yeah. So like for me, um, since like April thirty of last year, I've been home for like less than thirty days because I'm on the road all the time training and racing. So like, yep, your kids. Now, I've long been married about three and a half years. Now, what a story with that? How did you meet her? I met her at the bike shop that I worked at in Duluth, Minnesota during college, and she was working there before she went to med school, and meet just hit it off. Yeah, that's good. But like I left November ten of this last year, and I was in Europe until I went to Beijing, so through Christmas, and then I came home for one week and then after that week, I've been now back on the road since um for about four or five weeks. And so I mean, just all in all, it's a lot of time on the road. Any endorsement deals in your world, yep, yeah for sure. So I worked with Rainbody Fuel Errands out of Wisconsin, J. J. Keller Foundation and Rogers Moore Hospitals. Yeah. So you don't have you don't need to have a day job. This is my day job. If I had another day job, I would You can't make it work with Blathlon. It's just I mean, it's it's full time training. Because as we said, you have to be at a super high level ski ski wise, and in order to do that, you have to train on skis probably seven or fifty hours to a year, and then you have to add in the shooting component. But then I mean in order to train well, you have to also recover well. And so I mean if I'm like at a job trying to figure it out, also, I'm just down the road all the time, and I mean, this is this is my job. But people in curling they have to have day jobs. Yeah, yeah, that's a different thing. Yeah, and I could. Yeah, but that's what makes blathlon so difficult is it's like such a demanding sport and the level of the sport has only gotten higher. I mean, the field itself is just getting closer and closer, and then uh like the ski ski times are just getting faster and faster. Um. And part of that really came from ole ear Bjorne Dollin out of Norway. He just took it to a whole another level. And I think we see this with a lot of sports, where like one guy takes things super super seriously, and when he does that, everyone else is like, man, I have to also just like commit my life to this. If I want to have any sort of success um, And I mean it's probably the same with hunting. In the hunting world, you know, one guy is like super dialed in and everyone else is like, man if I want to like compete on in some ways, like on that, like you gotta you gotta be dialed in? David? Uh? Do you go by David Weisser? Wise? It happens a lot to the point where I've just given up on correcting it. I'm like, if you want to call me wise, call me wise. Did you guys bump into each other the Olympics? No, not this time around. No, but you're in Jean Jaco, right, Yeah, so we were in the same village, but there's a lot of people there. Did you know each other before today? Now we just met. Oh so you might have bumped into each other not knowing it. Yeah, we might have walked past each other in the village and not even know possible. Huh uh? Do you do you are you? Do you like hang out with other disciplines? Are you like so into the moment that you just focus on what you're doing? Oh? No, That's one of my favorite parts about the Olympics is going and hanging out with people who do other crazy things, So there's like a social component to be in there totally. I mean you try to find the balance for sure, because I've seen some folks go over to the Olympics and fall a little too heavily into the social component, seriously, and then they get to their event and they're like, oh crap, I haven't actually prepared for this at all, really like oh hung over. And it depends what sport you're in. Now, you grew up in the outdoors, Yeah, did you feel that, you know what I'm talking about, the tension right, the tension that I'm having to my family between between traditional hook and bullet activities in in ski? Did you feel that there was a compromise you had to make a little bit? Yeah, I would say, did your old man fall on this whole thing? Well? I think for the most part they complimented each other because tell me more being well, I guess the best, simplest, shortest way I can describe it to you is that really good strong skiers can carry a really heavy pack. So if you're trying to rig your your children up to be good packout buddies, keep them on the skiing program because the training that I did, they wouldn't be able to go help well. They would in the archery season because I heard when you get real serious, you start spending a half of your year in New Zealand. Yeah, did you ever do that? I did one that in one season, and I just realized. I mean, for me, it's all about balance. And part of why skiing complimented why hunting complimented skiing so well, is that I could kind of put the skis on the shelf for a while and really focus on something else. I was passionate, and then I would hang the bow up on the wall and and really be passionate about skiing again. But I wasn't all one thing all the time, because I think, you know, talking about how I over pressured myself as a young athlete, that was a huge part of it. Was like I was waking up every single morning and just dedicating my entire day to being the greatest skier I could possibly be, and to the point where I became too focused and I was over pressuring myself. And so having those alternate passions has always been really good for me competitively. I don't know if it's good for everybody there. There are certainly some athletes that I know who live their sport every day, day in, day out, and they do it well. But for me, having those balancing passions was always good. So it's even and like, um, like you view it as strategy. Oh absolutely, like actually been not just like, hey, I it would be better if I just did this one thing, but I can't. You're like, it's it's good to have a split. It's great to have a split because I mean think about for me, I think about all the mistakes that I've made in bow hunting and how much that's translated to making mistakes at skiing. Because if you if you really beat yourself up about missing a stock bow hunting, you're gonna be miserable because you know, five minutes later you're gonna make another mistake and learn another lesson. Five minutes later, gonna make another mistake and learn another lesson. And like life is like that, we're constantly it's trial and error. You're constantly trying to do new things, you're trying to do something innovative, and you're not always going to succeed. So the bow hunting crossover has been very mentally like just beneficial for me, and I mean just in my soul too. I need that time in the wilderness. I'm I'm naturally an introvert, like I really like to read a lot, I like to just be I like to be alone quite a bit. And so I mean there's two to three weeks in the fall where I just turned my phone off and go off with my bow on my backpack and hike into the wilderness and and just completely detached. And that sets me up well for traveling all around all around the world, competing every other weekend all this other stuff, because I can get to like a spiritual medium. Is it like a little is there like a little ritual when you like go and hang up your your bow and pick up your skis is it like today is the day? Yeah? I always kind of laugh because I I know for a fact, I always have these high goals. I'm gonna shoot my bow in the off season more than I did last year. But pretty much every time, it's like it's like mid to late November, I hang the bow up on the rack and I'm like, that's probably the last time I don't touch that thing until spring. Yeah. Then you just started on it. Yeah Yeah, what uh? Walk through how you like sort of your you know, at at whatever point, like how you progress up to the point where you're in the Olympics. Yeah. Well, like I said, it's a it's a young sport. I started competing really young. I transitioned over from alpine racing. My dad was he raised in college and um wanted me to be a racer. My older sisters, who are twins four years older than me. You did what your dad said you should do at the beginning. Yeah, it's good. And then but I always wanted to jump even when I was even when I was like neck deep in racing, I would skip race practice and go ski the train park. So I think that everybody kind of knew at an early age this kid's gonna transition to free skiing at some point. Um. So I switched over and competed in moguls and aerials and all the traditional uh freestyle events early on, But that was when terrain park skiing, so half pipe, slope style and big air we're kind of coming into the scene because you know, most people don't even know even to this day, a lot of people don't even know that we have skiing half pipe in the Olympics and I'm like, dude, we've done it three times now. But um, it started with snowboarding. Snowboarders created the train parks, like they took things from skateboarding and they're like, oh, half pipe would be cool snow and so when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, that's when free skiing was becoming big and growing up, I was always wanted to be a snowboarder because those are the guys I saw it doing flips and spins because they were yeah, they were the rebels. I wanted to be a rebel. I always was, so uh yeah. I just at the point where I probably would have transitioned to snowboarding was when free skiing was getting cool and I was like, I already know how to ski. I'm just gonna do this, and started traveling and just chipping away at it. I went to my first Junior Olympics when which was would be Junior Nationals the College Junior Olympics back then Junior Nationals when I was thirteen and won an event that I just was surprised I even won, and um kind of just chipped away at it from there. Like I said, in the early years, I was really bad at competing, but I would always get one or two wins per season to kind of keep me in it. I never had like a full season of failure. I always won the last couple events of the year because I finally just found my zone or found the swing of things. It wasn't actually until uh twenty eleven. Uh So in eleven, I got married, had a little girl, and all of a sudden my world changed, and it was that it was actually that detached, super young. Yeah, my daughter was one of one. Yeah wild times so but how so, how did your daughter know she's ten? Okay, yeah, I had Seriously, it feels that way sometimes when she's getting salty with me. But I just so, what was cool about parenthood for me is everybody thought my career was over. They're like, oh, Dave went different route. He got married young, he had kids young. It depends on who you're talking to. Phenomenal look with Dave's okay, that's good. Yeah, Dave's good for me. Whenever people get uh whatever, one of my buddies is going to have a kid, I always say, dude, name him Dave. I really appreciate that. The odds are they're gonna be all right, all right. I went from over focusing, over pressuring myself, wanted to be the greatest skier of all time and never performing well in competitions, to this whole new aspect of life where I kind of realized, this whole game I play on a pair of skeys doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter as much as I thought it did. And what really matters mean matters like in a in a sort of global existential way, like like in a in a an eternal way, you know, like what really matters. And I've realized what really matters is how I treat my wife, how I love my daughter and now son, And all of a sudden, the pressure was off for skiing, and I started seeing it as an opportunity rather than a necessity. Before my daughter was born, skiing was something I had to be good at because that was what my identity was. I wanted to identify as a great skier. And then when I just decided to identify as Dave, the human whose husband and father, skiing became like something I did more nonchalant, nonchalantly, and uh, that's when my string of success started. I just started cruising. I was enjoying it. You know, I got a friend of ours Mo. He expressed something similar to me that once his once he had his, all he ever did is work right, and then once he had he got married and had a kid, he felt more like um, like when he went to work, he stepped into a role and it just changed changed for him. I got better, But he said, he started thinking of like putting on the hat, like put in your top hat and grabbing your briefcase and like going and doing that thing. And then at a point in the day you stopped doing that thing, and it gave him like clarity into what it was like, into what his job was. It wasn't just that that was Mo, right, It was like, well there's Mo, but he does this thing, yeah, you know, and and it was helpful to him. I think for me it comes down to quality over quantity, because uh, before NAILI, my daughter was born, Um, it was all qual quantity of skiing, like quantity in the gym, quantity just thinking about skiing all the time, and there wasn't a whole lot of quality there. I wasn't as I wasn't as focused training for skiing as I had to be. When I had to wear the two different hats. I would come home from training at the gym or whatever, and I would take the skier hat off and put on the husband and father hat. And actually being able to focus on those two different things was really good for me, because, Yeah, my quality went way up even though the quantity went down. Do you uh what about uh? If you like, if you're introvert, you like things to be quiet and like to be by yourself, but you gotta have also like an obligation to be out there right in the public eye, Like you can't just be that no one ever hears a peep out of you, and then all of a sudden you turn up at the Olympics. Right, you need to be like a yeah, especially like a personality, right, especially around the Olympics, because if you're in a niche sport like Paul and I are we we you don't get a lot of attention except in Olympic years. So it's kind of daunting how much attention you do get in those years because you're like, Wow, I have twelve interviews scheduled this week. Last year I had zero. And because they want you to market, they want you to market the competition. Yeah, they want you to market the Olympics, and you want to market your sponsors. Your sponsors want you to market them, you want to market yourself. There's so much that goes on. It's it's a very focused time of doing a lot of media and stuff like that. And actually that's where my like deep addiction with hunting kind of came into the picture. Was after I won gold in I was stressed out and overwhelmed by all the attention the introvert and me was just like, dude, you gotta stop. In what form did the attention come? Interviews going to like going to weird stuff like doing a lot of interviews, like I got to go on Ellen, the Ellen Degenerous show, like things that are totally outside of a professional Yeah, did you guys get into that? Now? We didn't. They very very staunch, like, hey, I got a question for you. I would have loved to have had the time. Those those shows are produced down to the second. It's crazy. So yeah, I was just overwhelmed, Like I went to Oscar parties, like they treat you for a couple of weeks, especially when you win gold, they treat you for a couple of weeks, like an A list celebrity, the Hollywood or the media or the people of the United States from you. And so you got a manager comes in and they like, are you fielding the inquiries? Hopefully your agent or somebody else's because if you were feeling all the inquiries, that would just drive you into the ground. So you're like, no, no, no, yeah, I'll do that. And there's and I guess, especially because I was young, I was like, well, I'm gonna do it all. I'm gonna do everything because my I know, my windows is tight here, so I have to do all these things. They all seem like great opportunities. And I just wore myself out. What do your wife think about all that? She you don't have to ask her, but I think she was pretty worn out too. She didn't like all that. I mean, she she was riding the wave along with me. She went to the Oscar parties with me. She went to do this stuff Oscar parties. Yeah, it was, it was wild. It was a wild time. I said note to all those things the second time because I I felt like I just played, just played my last interview. When you come back, you remember hell, I mean, yeah, I guess, but I totally simplized with him where it's like people come out of the woodwork and they're like, man, you haven't cared about me for like the last two years. They come up, they care about you for about three or four weeks around the Olympics, and then they just like drop off faces and they do a good They do a really good job speaking to my old young self after I won Golden They do a really good job of making you feel like they actually care about you. And so it's really hard to say no to a lot of things because you're like, oh, no, this person really cares. They did their research, they know all about my back story. And the reality is, yeah, you kind of have to go in knowing this person doesn't really care about me. They only care about what they can get from me in this moment. So anyways, back to my long winded story telling, we care about you, guys. We appreciate that. Yeah, you know what I want you to come. We need to do the math and find out what day is the most far away from the Olympics and you guys come back that day. Okay, So back to the bow hunting thing. Uh Remy saw who's a lifelong friends saw that I you guys are both from the same state, and uh, he saw that I was stressed out and he's like, here's a bow. Just just I think this will be good for you. And like the meditative aspect of shooting I really fell in love with because I was just a recreational hunter. I would hunt, especially living in Nevada. Basically I would just hunt when I drew tags on the rifle side of things. And then I got I just fell in love with the sport of archery and it was it was really grounding for me during that crazy time. And then I was like, oh, well, now I could shoot, I might as well hunt. And the seasons fit better, everything fits better. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, because archery season in Nevada arts eight August first, like nine degrees. It's so it fits perfectly. So that's why you know, skiing doesn't really detract from hunting, and hunting doesn't really detract from skiing for me. There are certain tags that I can't put in for yet because I'm still competing, but they definitely compliment. Yeah, the mule deer ruts out. Yeah, I've never shot a running running butt with my belt. Maybe you'll have to get it in you got to get it in wh it get is good? Yeah? Uh so you put in for tags the over the place. Now, yeah, each year I put in for a new state along with all the other ones. I'm sure you guys have have experienced that progression. So you call it hunting fool and be like, listen, man, I can only hunt in August, September, early October. Yeah, where can I go? And what do they? Yeah? Where do you live now? Still in in Reno, just outside Reno and Verde. How far from where you grew up? Twenty minutes? Huh m? Your folks still there? Are they all proud of you? National National state? David? There's yeah, the community, the Reno Tahoe community is very proud of me after I won. Uh. The governor at the time declared David Wise Day. Soy February just remember that it's David Wisday. Do something cool? Is it hard for you to go out around town? No? No, it's I mean, yeah, there are people come up for autographs and photos, but it's not like that doesn't hurt my feelings? Did you like because you have the mask on? I mean, let me be honest. The level of fame that we're talking about for me versus the level of fame for somebody very famous is in your town? Yeah, well in my Even in my town, it's like it's like once a week. It's not like every single meal I go out for And we kind of live off in the woods, like we eat. We eat at home most of the time, mostly cooking wild games, so it's we don't we don't eat out very much. So maybe every time I go and eat out, somebody comes up to me. You do all your best work with the helmet and goggles. Yeah, exactly. It's not like I'm recognizable. I have. The funniest experience that I have is usually when getting my oil changed or you know, at the sandwich shop. People will just stare at me with that like where do I know you know? They don't even know that, they're like, I know you and they'll say that though they're like did we grow up together? Did we go to school together in elementary school? Where do I know you from? And that's just kind of funny for me. Uh, do you cook in your house? Yeah? Did your wife cook? She cooks mostly she does. Yeah, there's kind of a running she'll cook with wild game. She she will, She'll tolerate hunting. She like I put her in for tags, for rifle tags. I'm like, all right, baby, drew this tag, let's go. But but it's not her passion. But she loves cooking. She's a great cook, and she prefers that you guys eat game meat. Oh. Absolutely, when you went over to the Olympics, did you did you bring some game meat? I thought about it. I mean, I do it everywhere else, but I was like, I probably don't want to get caught with wild game meat. And there's this whole thing with moving animals across the board exactly. So no. But the funny thing is when we travel in this amongst my peers and skiing, I'm kind of the cook because I'm the oldest guy. I have kids, And so if we're all staying in one like if there's four or five guys staying in one condo, I'll cook the meals and I usually bring wild game and they're all excited about it. And so I have this like reputation amongst my peers and coaches and support staff that I'm this amazing cook. So every time anyway of them talks to my wife, they're like, wow, it must be so great having Dave around to cook all the meals. And she's like, yeah, that'd be nice if you ever actually cooked, because I don't cook when I'm home. But my daughter, my daughter stayed over at Yanni's house. I'm still pissed at her about this. My daughter stays over yet, she's nine years old, stays over at Yannie's house and tells him, Oh yeah, my dad, he has a cook breakfast at all. I told him that he just looks at his phone, which is her bold faced. I think she got caught up and just like, guy, do you go to someone else's place, they could cook the exact same thing you cook all the time. Because someone else cooked it, it's gonna taste be different, you know. And she got caught up in that. I happen to make some like lemon ricotta pancakes. My kids are like, and Rosie's like, oh my gosh, the best pancakes ever. My dad never makes pancakes, you know. And uh, I forgot what else there was whatever we had for dinner. She was a real big fan of two. Oh yeah, Yanni made us a wild turkey. And she gets to telling Joannie, I've never had this before. I'm like, I'm like a staple. Yeah, I'm like, I think most of American things that your dad invented. This DIY so funny. Man. So, uh, when you at what point you gotta decide if you're gonna go to the Olympics again? You know, I don't mean go would try to go you already you already got invited. No, I didn't already get invited. You could like go to ship make it. Oh absolutely, yeah, I mean at least for I mean, I was thinking about hanging it up after the last Olympics and just kind of moving you Like, what's his name? You are like Tom braid him and Han every year? Well, no, I wasn't. Never. I'm an introvert. So all this is going on in my head. I wasn't saying it out loud, like thinking, but but I was considering. I just had kind of lost my love for the sport. I had a couple of seasons agrow where I was injured a lot of the time, and it was just it just got to the point where I was like, man, do I really love this anymore? So I got out of that place and decided to do another one here and now I'm kind of like, man, I'm pretty motivated. I think I want to do one more. Have you touched pair of skei since you got off the off the podium there? Yeah. I I bruised my heel pretty good this year and it was just causing me great pain while I was skiing. So it's hard to be motivated to go out and creationally ski when you're dealing with injury like that. But I skied last weekend. It was fine, So I'll probably be back out cruising now. If you decide when you need to decide by and when you need to start acting on that decision, oh, it all comes down to your talent level, uh or in some in some ways, um, because I know for a fact that I'm not talented enough to not stay in it for the next four years and try to make it for four years from now or three and three quarters of years from now. So if I'm gonna go for another Olympics, I kind of got to stay in it, stay competitive, be training, be doing all the same stuff that I've been doing right now starting now. Yeah, with that ski And it's just so crazy how progressive it is though, and how you have to stay on top of it and just watch some guy probably on Instagram do something crazy and be like, I don't know, it's just it's just so progressive. It seems like, yeah, just with the tricks, you know, or do you not feel like that, you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Part of my early success was because I was was that guy. I was the pioneer. I was the one who was like just looking at the sport and picking off things that nobody else was doing and saying, I'm gonna do this. And that's why I was able to win so many contests in a row is because I was just like I had this on paper, I had on a demandage at the start of the day, so all I had to do is land it in order to win. And so now I'm not in that position anymore. I'm I'm kind of like looking at the younger guys and watching I'm just all washed up. But like, what's a trick? Like, what's what's the one of the best halfpipe tricks? So right now, all the tricks with you are are counted in degrees of rotation, So three sixty degrees is one spin. And uh. In the last Olympics, I won because I did double corks, which means you're flipping twice and spinning in four are different directions. So I took off backwards to the right, did a double cork, took off backwards to the left and did a double cork. And those were ten eighties and twelve sixties. This time around at the Olympics it was all fourties and sixteen twelve. So it's like really like, yeah, people are now like spinning stopping themselves right in some stuff and like landing the opposite. Yeah, you call that a pretzel when you when you spin one direction and then almost hold it and bring it back the other directions. So that's in. That's not in half five yet, but but it may. We may get to that point. But Paul's all kinds of Paul is gonna be like shooting over his back and ship, you know, I mean pretzel shooting. Uh, that's yeah. I hadn't really thought of that part of it. It's like it's not like this like thing that's always existed and you just do it faster, right, And that's what That's what it's like. In most of the traditional freestyle events like aerials and moguls, for the most part, they're doing the same tricks and just trying to do them better. But my sport is all about innovating and doing something new that nobody else is doing and differentiating ourselves that way. Well, man will be watching. I appreciate it. I'll be rooting for you. Thanks you Now. I feel invested. I always get interested. I can't get interested in sports. I know someone that does it. Yeah, both of you, guys, I feel like we're invested. Well, you guys gotta send me a text when you decide or not. Paul, How does the average Joe American UH get to watch like your next big race or just biathon in general because there's a streaming service or website that you recommend. Yeah, Um, I think the easiest way is Peacock. Peacock generally has all of the races live. If you have a VPN, you can watch it on your euro Sport or if you go to Bathlon World dot com they have live broadcasting on there as well. Um. NBC Sports at times does have it, um, but Peacock is generally the easiest, or Eurovision as well, and that's the same for my sport. To Peacock is a really good way. I think everybody has peacock now because of the Olympics. Once the next big showdown our first World Cup this next season. So we just wrapped up. Um. I was in Norway a week ago and that was our last World Cup of the season and our next World Cup for to kick off the three season will be in Sweden on November. You've got a long break right now. I have. I have about a month break and then I gotta get back to training. You guys call it a shootout showdown? What do you call it? World Cup? Okay, yeah, I was gonna say, I think like a biathlon shootout or showdown even like yeah, yeah, But in general, is the like worldwide biathlne um trending up boards, like more people getting involved in Yeah, for sure, it's a it's a huge market. Um. I mean they signed some the IBU, which is the International Bathlon Union, they signed some like pretty hefty uh TV deals and they're broadcasting has all been um with with Eurovision and euro Sport, which makes it a lot more accessible for people to watch worldwide. And as a result of that, it's been a growing, a growing sport. What's the trend in the US, um that I don't know, statistically, it's definitely growing, probably not as much as other other countries like um, but the IBU is definitely trying to target those, uh different markets that aren't quite as big yet, like including Finland, which is more historically across country nation. But yeah, they're definitely growing. It seems as if just in Bozeman here I hear more chat about the sport because that place up there's that place up the road that does all the cross got like cross cut, they got all the you go down and people shooting away. Yeah, so cross Cut Mountain Sports here in town. They just put in a brand new thirty point range which is like a regulation size range to hold international competitions in there. Currently starting a fundraising campaign to build a full training center and lodging everything else like that, which is super exciting. UM. So it's gonna be a really sweet facility once once they get that put in and so yeah, it's fear in Bozeman, shoul definitely definitely go check it out. Uh how do people find you? Are you active on social media? I am? I'm on Instagram, Paul Ti Schomer Um that's my main my main one. Otherwise c h O M M E er that's correct. And then I also have a website, Paul Schomer dot com. I don't I don't update it a whole lot, but they can drop your note. Yeah, I think I mispronounced your name when I was introducing you at the start show. Yeah, okay, what's what what's the best way for people to find you? David? Same thing? Instagram? Uh, my skiing page, just my personal skiing pages. Mr David Wise, m R David Eyes. And then if you're interested in the hunting aspect of things, I post that all on wise o t G, which is short for Wise off the Grid. And I'm on YouTube too. I vlogged here and there. I'm not super consistent about it, but I I do hunting an skiing stuff on the block. And how did they find that? That's at Mr David Wise as well? Mr David m R David Wise. Alright, well guys, thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having us. I'm pulling for your asses. Don't let me down. You thought you felt pressure before. I can't wait to look back on this and be like, you know, when Paul decided was when he's sitting there and meat eater Bozeman, But then he went on yeah, I think. I think. I mean, honestly, even if we did it without the skis, we should maybe try to do another little meat eater get together so you could just like shoot that rifle. It's a real joy. I'd like to shoot the rifle. Yeah, your kids, I want I'm bummed I missed out. I don't want to bring my kids because then what if they get into it? It sounds more weekends away. Did they get into it and it's a weekend thing. I mean it could be a weekday thing too. It's here Bozeman. You know, it's not like you gonna be traveling places. I guess you could do that or something. They got weekend programs, get programs and stuff, so you're super close. Tuesday's Wednesday's about it? All right, guys, thanks for coming off