00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. 00:00:18 Speaker 2: You can't predict anything. 00:00:20 Speaker 1: The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I t E dot com. Is being a master fly tire a thing? Or is that just a description? 00:00:44 Speaker 2: That's just a stupid description. 00:00:45 Speaker 3: It's not like. 00:00:48 Speaker 4: Exactly, like somebody probably just labeled you that, right, Yeah. 00:00:53 Speaker 2: One time I got a labeled it was like one of the top five tires in the world. And the ironic part was that was only time for like three years. So it's not something that I wanted that label with because it causes a lot of haters. Oh really, Oh yeah, they're like, uh, like to me, fishing is fishing, but in fly fishing you have a lot of pretentious motherfuckers that. 00:01:15 Speaker 1: Are you recording, phill, Yes, I am recording that. 00:01:18 Speaker 3: I have cameras, but we've got it. Yeah, we're good. 00:01:22 Speaker 5: God, he's saying. 00:01:23 Speaker 3: It people saying this is greeting and tying that we are Actually we're. 00:01:28 Speaker 1: Joined today by one of the top five fly tires. Please out, top five in the world, the entire world, the entire world, one of the top five. SANTAO, welcome. Thanks. What do you trying to say that off air? Not he's trying to say it off air because he's saying it with a certain eye roll. I want to hear more, honest eye roll. 00:01:56 Speaker 5: I want to hear more about what you're getting that. 00:01:58 Speaker 1: Well, the uh. 00:02:00 Speaker 2: At the advent of social media, you have a lot of people that are on there more or less just for the insta fame. 00:02:06 Speaker 1: Non be talking about haters next, But what's your Instagram handle? Probably about five. 00:02:15 Speaker 2: Out of the ten people that you'll see posts on there don't even fucking fish. They just post flies just for the likes. And you would say, you could look at them and there'll be like these super colorful flies that I don't know what the hell they mimic, but they pretty much. It's for artsy and it is a form of the fly tying. Fly fishing industry is some people will just tie just for the tranquil aspect of it and for the mental health. But the vast majority of don't even tie the are fish that you see post up on there and then. 00:02:44 Speaker 1: So there's a so there's a social media. Uh, let me say something else too. The start of this thing is we have them described here as a master fly tire, but also a master sergeant. So you are a master like indisputably that's master sergeant in the US Army. Yes, questionably a master fly tire. Questionably lower lowercase m uppercase M in the military, lowercase M. As a fly tire, like you're not a certified master fly tire. 00:03:16 Speaker 2: No, that is just labels that will people give for whatever reason. People like the label everything. And in the fly fishing world like you got these master casters, master tires, etcetera, etcetera. To me's fishing is fishing. 00:03:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what you want to know? The most annoying thing fly fishermen. 00:03:32 Speaker 2: Do what catch and release everything. 00:03:34 Speaker 1: No, No, that is a bottom. I'm glad. I wish everybody did that because that's more fish for me to eat. 00:03:40 Speaker 6: Right. 00:03:42 Speaker 1: The most annoying thing they do is they have taken certain fish and they've broken their name down to letters GT so giant Travaldi becomes a GT. Why is a bluegill not a BG? It's like it doesn't mean it, or like a yellow perch. Oh, you know I was out for yps LB's yps. 00:04:04 Speaker 3: You know what, Debbie, why are you not hitting strike indicator? 00:04:09 Speaker 1: So obvious? 00:04:11 Speaker 3: That's just like he was. 00:04:12 Speaker 5: He was attacking pretentious carp fly fishman the other day. 00:04:16 Speaker 1: Which I totally agree I was doing that. 00:04:18 Speaker 5: Yeah, we were talking about how stupid. 00:04:20 Speaker 1: Listen, I fly fish this summer more than more than any person in America. Really, not how much I fly didn't see you do it, That's how much I fly fished this summer more than any other American master angler. 00:04:37 Speaker 4: I bet the uh at the spot up there, I mean I have hours, probably two. 00:04:47 Speaker 1: Into it. Oh then me and Yannie fly fish went fish and cutthroats on the I'm not gonna say like I'd love to talk greater. Do you tell about it? I have never seen anything like uh this lake we rode horses up to in Wyoming. I have never ever in my life seen cutthroat fishing like that. Nice fishing, crazy cut Bonneville. 00:05:16 Speaker 3: Now you're giving away where you. 00:05:18 Speaker 1: Were, dude, Like unbelievable unbelievable big black spots. What does that means? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry the fish. 00:05:29 Speaker 4: Did you release him? 00:05:32 Speaker 2: Uh? 00:05:32 Speaker 1: We killed three? 00:05:37 Speaker 3: How big we talking? 00:05:40 Speaker 2: Uh? 00:05:42 Speaker 1: Probably eighteen on the top end? 00:05:44 Speaker 3: Sweet? 00:05:45 Speaker 1: Probably eighteen on the top end, and you'd look for him, you know, Oh, so much fun man, Maybe maybe like fly fish because I'd kind of outgrown it, but it made me kind of love it again. 00:05:57 Speaker 4: Man, well you had fun with all the times you went fishing with me. 00:06:00 Speaker 3: Did you abbreviate cutthroat or do you call them cuts? 00:06:06 Speaker 1: Gantt their giant c cts? Uh, get back to the arts and joke. So so in the fly tying world, there is there's a social media element to the fly tying world, and there are fly tires that don't fish. They're just in the craftsmanship. Yep, the artistry. 00:06:31 Speaker 2: Yes, so uh like you got. You get a mix of people that will try to showcase their flies that do a lot of fishing. They showcase a lot of different guide flies, and you have other ones that will just explain that a guide fly guy fly is like basically fly that's really easy to tie that will catch sand wan warm and an egg or a midge or something like that. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: You bust them out and clients are gonna lose them. 00:06:55 Speaker 2: Then you have other ones that will tie, like these super intricate flies. I have like a ton of material, a lot of different wild colors, and so there's a there's a big difference flies that have been known historically to catch fish for decades in some cases even hundreds a year, like the Royal Coachman for example. Then you have these other funky wild color flies that people that are into fly fishing per se. They'll look at them and they see all these wonderful colors and they hit the like button. So that's that's disparity between two. And like my heartache with it is that you have a lot of new people that have no idea what the hell they're doing when it comes to fly tie or fishing. And they'll see some of these flies and they these some of these individuals have like pretty large accounts, and they think that's actually a fly that they should be fishing with or learning how to tie. In reality, they're they're totally wasting their time. 00:07:45 Speaker 1: But so do you like tying? You like tye and stuff that can be fish. 00:07:48 Speaker 2: Yes, that's what my pretty much my account is based off of flies that actually work. 00:07:54 Speaker 1: This is the most amazing This is probably I mean, I haven't you know, I'm not like a hobbyist, but this is probably the most amazing fly I've ever held in my life. 00:08:03 Speaker 3: That thing's awesome. 00:08:04 Speaker 2: It works, maybe, like. 00:08:06 Speaker 1: Yeah, it is unbelievable the artistry and then the the life that's in this thing. Yeah. 00:08:18 Speaker 3: So a lot of these are tum And do you feel like that would catch a fish? 00:08:22 Speaker 1: Steve catch a lot of fish. 00:08:25 Speaker 2: It feels like when I said that, I'd catch a lot of kinds of fish. 00:08:29 Speaker 3: But does a fly like that earn you a master title? Or do you have to tie specific flies in order to be a master? 00:08:40 Speaker 2: No, basically there's there's really no criteria. Like, to me, that's a stupid label master tire I. 00:08:48 Speaker 7: Put it in the script. You guys can blame me. 00:08:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, like I wouldn't even come close to Like, you have people that have been time for like forty fifty years that have set the foundation for everybody else that is starting or has just started in the last ten, you know, fifteen years, And they're the ones that came up with the innovations using different type of materials, where it was like using deer hair at one point in history, or parts of a pheasant or a muskrat or whatever the case may be. It wasn't me, It wasn't like anybody in this generation. Those guys are the master tires. They are the ones that you know, wrote the books that showed people that you could use hair from a lama and catch fish with it. None of us are very innovative nowadays. I mean there were people that will label themselves as such. But those folks that from forty seventy, one hundred and fifty years ago, they're the master tires. 00:09:38 Speaker 5: Is there some specific old school tires that you emulate or like, really you're into them? 00:09:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, more or less because of their personalities versus and a lot of cases. Also, you know, their flies are exceptional. But one of the local guys there, Kelly Gallup, he's the one that came up with a lot of these for flies here, like this sex Dungeon, the mini sex Dungeon, him and his crazy fucking names. But they actually work and they catch a lot of fish. And then other guys like Pat Dorsey out of Colorado that fishes a lot of tail waters and basically mimic. All his his guide flies off of what the fish are eating there and they work like crazy. That one Boxer as like a bunch of twenty four to twenty six is that are flies that Pat designed and they work. So those are just a few of the guys that that I have looked up to over the years, and they really want to know what they're talking about. And two also they catch a lot of fish, so it's not like they're just coming up with crazy shit that don't work. The stuff that they they put in their books and stuff that they talk about all or proven patterns that work everywhere in the world. 00:10:44 Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna cover off on your life history a bit, but just just to just to tee it up. Then we got to touch on a couple of things. You were born in Vietnam in Vietnam and then grew up in Pennsylvania, but you spent some number of months in uh In, not in Vietnam. 00:11:04 Speaker 2: Now, I for like the first almost a year and a half of my life, I lived in a refuge camp in Malaysia. So my dad was in the military in the Vietnam and as part of the South Vietnamese army. If we would have got caught or he would have got caught, he probably would have been executed yep. And so as after the fall of Saigan, the North Vietnamese and the Communist started, you know, sweeping down further south. And the town that I was born is called Baklu, which is all the very southern point of Vietnam. So that gave us a couple of years, but eventually they would have came through there anyways, and so. 00:11:38 Speaker 1: We gave you extra years, yeah, because they. 00:11:41 Speaker 2: Were still working from from what they renamed the Ho Chi Min city on the way moving down to the southern point of Vietnam. 00:11:48 Speaker 1: And it was not like you turned like post nineteen seventy five. Yeah, yeah, they were still fighting their way south or just moving there. 00:11:55 Speaker 2: Just moving their way south and basically implementing communism, and like every single town on that got it. 00:12:00 Speaker 1: So they weren't encountering like resistance all the way. 00:12:03 Speaker 2: So now now I see, Yeah, basically, I mean I was the opposite of most kids that I grew up in Vietnam. I came from a very well to do family and my grandfather pretty much owned the entire like port, so he got all the royalties of the ships and stuff coming in. I had pretty much everything that a kid could want growing up in Vietnam and then to baby basically know and and my this was my parents. I was so young. I had no idea this shit. But what they told me was that all that was gonna be taken away. And also at the same time, my father run the risk of being executed. So we literally left in a banana boat. I mean we fled out of there in a boat and landed on the shore. 00:12:40 Speaker 1: Talk about bad luck, an actual banana boat. 00:12:46 Speaker 2: We left there and went to the refuge camp in palal Badong, which is about the size of four football fields, but it housed that any given time about ten thousand refugees. So it was packed like sardines in there. And that's a sour subject of itself because I refused eat sardines because that's what we had. But we were given as far as a canas gardines and a vaga ris like every day who ran the camp on the Malaysian government they ran, yeah, I mean totally off subject well as well similar to the subject, but on the trip there where while we were on the boat, they suffered probably about thirty five percent casualties from dysentery and other diseases and so like as a at that time, I think I was four and a half and I was seeing like babies and people just being thrown overboard as they died, and that that like left an imprint in my head for a long time, because I started having nightmares when I was a teenager. Basically just waking up and. 00:13:44 Speaker 3: Well, also being able to avoid disease at four and a half years old, it seems like a minor miracle. 00:13:49 Speaker 2: The whole family made it, so that was a minor miracle in itself there. But there was a lot of people that died and they just like chucked them overboard. And it was actually Thay pirates that saved our asses because the tire ship was out of way and so we were getting raided and everybody was like swallowing all their jewelry and all that stuff because that's what they were going to set their their future on. But in exchange for basically pillaging the boat, they gave us water and then we made it the rest of the way of the Malaysia. 00:14:15 Speaker 1: What year were you born. 00:14:16 Speaker 2: I was born in seventy four. 00:14:19 Speaker 1: You're forty nine, yep, fifty in. 00:14:21 Speaker 4: March what was the island called again. 00:14:24 Speaker 2: Palau Bedung p u l a u b I d o ng. Then you guys spent how many months at the eighteen months there and then uh from there to US. Yeah, the US wasn't my parents' first choice because we had no family over in the US. We had family in Europe, Australia and other places, and so they they applied for political asylum and all those other countries and they all told us the fuck off, and the US was the only one that said yes. And that's how and then it was a men in Knite family. That's how I end up in Pennsylvania, was a Mena Nite family from this church called Grafdale Mennonite Church that end up basically picking our family name out of some refugee book and then sponsored as and helped us with the paperwork to get to the US. And we started off in like Oakland, California for the first I think it was almost a year there living in there in the city. And then eventually they got us to Pennsylvania where they helped my parents settle and find work and whatnot. 00:15:18 Speaker 3: The manner of speaking for The Mennonites didn't rub off on you. 00:15:25 Speaker 2: I think the military soury of those beliefs that I might have had grown up, you know, but they did lay a pretty good foundation because it's basically you learned to appreciate things a little bit more coming from that type of culture. I mean, we went to their churches for a little bit, but they allowed us the freedom to basically, you know, worship how we saw failed. 00:15:46 Speaker 3: That's awesome, that's amazing. 00:15:47 Speaker 8: You know. 00:15:47 Speaker 1: Art my mom and dad's church when I was a little kid, they had sponsored some South Vietnamese refugees who'd been in the military and for I don't know where they went, but they came in. They stayed there and my dad and him with ice fish together, which he had to have thought was the wildest thing in the world, right to like all of a sudden come to the US and like instantly be ice fishing. But but they just I don't know. I'd love to find out what happened to that family. Are we still actually I was probably four or five years old or you stay in touch. 00:16:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, we still stay in touch with them. My mom is still very close to them, so they she still lives like twenty minutes away from where they are. 00:16:29 Speaker 5: Were you guys near Lancaster? 00:16:31 Speaker 9: Yeah? 00:16:32 Speaker 2: Really yeah yeah, Lancaster County. 00:16:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, hang tight, I'm gonna talk about some stuff. If you've got any comments, feel free, okay. I mean as a master fly tire. 00:16:42 Speaker 5: Or a master sergeant or. 00:16:43 Speaker 1: A master Yeah you can. You can weigh in as a sergeant or a fly tire as you see fit. Oh, one thing, what was it? I gotta replug it. I got to replug it. Where is it? If you have an event planned, if you had an event plan in northern Michigan and you need a my Buddy's bar. My buddy has a new business. He has a camper trailer rigged out like a bar. So if you're having an event, wedding, whatever, and you want a bar, there's no change of money. Like when you hire his services. You buy the booze. He picks up the booze, pulls the bar up all the mixers custom cocktails at your event. So your guests just walk up to the camper trailer full bar back there. 00:17:37 Speaker 7: Love it. 00:17:38 Speaker 8: He's gotta he's gotta do like a tiki bar version of that, and then we'll do like a meat Eater podcast. 00:17:44 Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll send them some forest for foods garnishes first bar too. 00:17:51 Speaker 1: You better be serious, you don't know that. Roamingnomi dot com, Roaming n O m I so, roaming Northern Michigan dot com packages prices, phone numbers and all. Matt Droz very dear friend of mine from growing up. A lot of hunting, a lot of fishing, a lot of drinking, a lot of drinking, a lot of drinking. Sure h, too much drinking. What else we got? Oh? Season twelve announcement, So a bunch of new mediater episodes premiering. When is this? 00:18:32 Speaker 7: It launches on October twelve. 00:18:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, premiering October twelve. So you go find them. Go to our meat Eater website or our me eater YouTube channel. So the website or the YouTube channel October twelve, bunch of new episodes. We have the episode coming up of hunting black Bears in a wet suit, all kinds of stuff, Big mule Deer, Big Out, lots of cool episodes, Big Squirrels. October twelve on the met eater website and on the meat Eater YouTube channel. Brand new episodes. You can catch them first. There also have a live tour coming up in early December. We don't have all the dates yet, starting like the first week of December. Like we're gonna it's gonna be a bus tour. We're gonna do I don't know, like ten cities in thirteen days or something like that. 00:19:19 Speaker 7: He love those live tours. 00:19:21 Speaker 4: We're gonna be like Tails from the tour bus. 00:19:23 Speaker 1: Tails the tour bus, big trivia component to the tour. Spencer is Spencer Newhart has to go to all tour dates. 00:19:30 Speaker 5: Is he driving the bus. 00:19:31 Speaker 1: He's driving the bus. He's driving the bus. So it's gonna be We're yeah, we're doing a live tour over damn place, uh in a bus, which is I kind of like the idea of this bus thing in the tour bus spinal tap. So stay tuned for that. You better buy some tickets, man, better buy some tickets. Got a new calendar. I't called me Eater's dirty doesn't so it just so happens. 00:19:58 Speaker 7: Oh it's coming soon. 00:20:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, picture that. You make twelve seasons of a show and then you got twelve months in a year. At some point someone's going to be like, I got an idea, so this year calendar every year. Every month you follow me? Every month is a year? Eh, yeah, it's genius. 00:20:20 Speaker 3: A facial expression twelve twelve smirks of Steve twelve years. 00:20:26 Speaker 1: Twelve years of the show captured in twelve months, So like January is I don't know what the hell two thousand and twelve years ago. 00:20:35 Speaker 7: You can see Steve age ever so slightly. 00:20:38 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a lot, dude, No, no, no. 00:20:40 Speaker 4: I don't think a lot, just twelve years smirks. 00:20:45 Speaker 1: So check that out. Also, Oh, Phelps on Phelps Unleashed. 00:20:52 Speaker 2: Why is this? 00:20:52 Speaker 1: Say, don't read this. 00:20:56 Speaker 8: Because I put the whole description in it and it takes a long time to read all of it. 00:21:00 Speaker 7: Those are just some highlights, Oh that you can. 00:21:02 Speaker 1: Hit well, Phelps's bugle tube is is improved. I'm just gonna skim through it. 00:21:09 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:21:09 Speaker 1: So, Jason Phelps, who comes on the show often host of Cutting the Distance, founder of Phelps Game Calls, has a new generation of the Unleashed Bugle Tube. I didn't think that there was a problem with the old one, but apparently never satisfied. So basically, people that had the Unleashed tube had various comments about it, and Jason being the obsessive that he is is going on and address various condoms. Comments. One, the new version recycled plastic. That's cool, Uh, guys had some people had a problem with the mouthpiece, So now you can remove the mouthpiece, meaning your tube comes with a mouthpiece on it. But some people like the smaller aperture. So now when you get it, you either like the mouthpiece, which I think the mouthpiece is great. I don't know why you wouldn't like it, but some people don't want the mouthpieces just blow straight into the tube. Comes with the easy bugler and the flared mouthpieces. It's lighter, so twelve point five hours, twenty inches in length, so V two version two, he says, it gets the same exact sound in a little bit smaller package. They dress the whole thing and neoprene reduced noises from touching on brush and adaptable. So a complete calling system for any calling style with one purchase two comes equipped with a flared mouthpiece for diaphragm calling. Earlier, when I was talking about people not liking the mouthpiece, that's what I meant, meaning there's a read piece that goes on it too. If you don't like using diaphragm calls. You can use the red mounted on the bugle tube, or you can pull or read off put the flared mouthpiece on it if fits over your mouth better, or if you want to go ultra lightweight. I suppose a fellow could just pull the freaking the flared mouthpiece off as well and run it that way outstanding back pressure for no articulation, devastating bugles, mind bending screams. Who writes this copy? Is this Ukraine? 00:23:24 Speaker 7: Nope, let's think about it. 00:23:29 Speaker 1: Devastating bugles love it? Just knock them over dead with a mind bending screams. You bend their mind and devastate them thunderous chuckles and grunts. I'm sold. 00:23:43 Speaker 5: We need a sound effect there. 00:23:45 Speaker 1: The Unleash V two is a new standard that all beagles will be measured against. Now I gave a buddy my want to borrow. I let my buddy borrow one. Um, he went on. But he's got nothing to gain from this. He went out the way that text me how wonderful it was, and they killed a bowl. He said it was the ship and bitching. 00:24:11 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:24:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, So the new V two is out. Uh, here's a lengthy one. This is interesting. A lot of the news is full of uh, A lot of uproar going on around refuges. Okay's covered as fair a bit wildlife refuges in lead ammo. Okay, So certain refuges, you have states that are getting rid of that, that are banning lead ammo, banning lead sinkers, fish and sinkers, switching those over with sinkers that when you bite them, you hear your teeth crack. 00:24:59 Speaker 5: Uh. 00:25:00 Speaker 1: And there's a thing now where certain wildlife refuges are looking to ban or have they implemented it cal or not implemented it yet, it's a plan to implement a ban on led AMMO in wildlife refuges. 00:25:18 Speaker 3: I think that there's probably some that always have had for sure in the regulations. But you know, because one of the interesting things, right when you bring up refuge it, ninety nine percent of people go like, well, migratory birds, right, And for how many years now has it been illegal to use anything but non toxic ammunition for migratory birds. 00:25:44 Speaker 1: Since when I was a little boy, A long. 00:25:46 Speaker 3: Time, right. So I had to go through each one of these and make sure that there was big game hunting as a you know, legal means of recreation on each one of these things, and you can't hunt white till the year or you know, blackwater refugees on here for SIKA and so yeah, you would have to switch over. But yeah, I think in some regulations it's just straight up non toxic across the board, got it? Which is kind of an interesting thing, right, because we always complain about how complicated regulations are. 00:26:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, but neither here nor there. So the US Fish and Wildlife Service looking to add or there's a proposal or new rule going into place to ban traditional ammunition which we call that ammunition on eight national wildlife refuges, including Blackwater, chink fatigue. Don't even how to pronounce that? One Eastern neck, eerie, great thicket, Patuxent, How do you say that? Any? 00:26:52 Speaker 2: No? 00:26:53 Speaker 3: Close enough for me? 00:26:54 Speaker 1: Patux At Research Refuge, Rachel Carson Refuge, Wallops Island. UH. The NSSF n SSF National Shooting Sports Foundation UH shared a letter that they had written to Martha Williams, and Martha Williams has been on the on the show as a guest. Because Martha Williams, who heads the US Fish and Wildlife Service, used to head Montana's State Fishing Game Agency. So in that capacity. Martha Williams was on the show before. We have not had her on in her current capacity, but would love to have around and talk about some of this stuff. Note to krind you get that krinn it, so that'd be interesting. So the NSSF Shared a Letter is sort of an open letter challenging, challenging some of the assumptions within the led band tackling. First goes on like any like any good compliment sandwich. It congratulates the US Fish and Wildlife Service for expanding hunting and fishing opportunities on the refuge system and then gets into the meat of it, and it's lays out this interesting argument that the so the US Fish and Wildlife Service is tasked with protecting wildlife populations, okay, and because there is a lack of any evidence that lead contamination from ammunition is having any population level impacts on wildlife, there's no sound reason to ban lead ammunition. Meaning bald eagles are it's commonly pointed to bald eagles like a bald eagle can get onto a carcass. Anyone wants to argue the truth of this is just wasting their time, like this is a thing that can happen. A bald eagle can get onto a deer carcass, is someone killed with land ammunition. The bald eagle can eat that lead ammunition, and the bald eagle can die from lead toxicity. It's just like, this is not a debatable point. That is a thing that happens. And there is a. 00:29:27 Speaker 5: Very few bald eagles around at one point because of not because of lead, not because of lead, because of dt T. 00:29:35 Speaker 10: But now the eagles are back. 00:29:37 Speaker 1: To bring this full circle, partially full circle, we just mentioned the Rachel Carson refuge. Rachel Carson wrote if you've heard people over the years mentioned the book Silent Spring. Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring about the devastating effects of DDT on birds. It was so it was a insecticide. Is that correct? Prolific use insecticidey an insecticide. If you watch old movies that they like to have the thing where they're spreading DDT and kids are playing in the clouds as it goes down the road. Rachel Carson Silent Spring made the case of how DDT was devastating to birds. DDT gets into a bird system, how it would impact the bird is the bird. It would, for some weird reason I have never studied up on, would cause the bird's shell to get very thin. The bird incubating its own egg would crack its own egg. The shells got so thin that a bird would crack its egg trying to incubate it. And this devastated a bunch of raptors, eagles, peregrine falcons, osprays, all these other birds got devastated from DDT DDT. This is like DDT was having a absolute population level impact on birds. DDT was band. Since then, bald eagles have recovered so much that they were They're one of the very few species to ever come off the Endangered Species List. I think two percent of things that go on the ESA come off because of recovery they recovered. However, a baal to youle can eat lead ammo and it can die. A bald eagle can hit a wind turbine and it can die. A bald eagle can get hit by your car and it can die. 00:31:29 Speaker 3: A ball these strand barber wire fence a ball you. 00:31:32 Speaker 1: Can hit a three strand barberier fence and die. No no, no, no, no no no. One of the things that can kill a bald eagle is lead toxicity. So the argument here is, without being able to point to any population level impacts of lead AMMO, how can you ban lead AMMO in protection of wildlife populations? And this letter makes this case. This letter also points to a couple of things like this recurring and you see this all over the place, This recurring idea that there is a lead toxicity element to humans from eating harvested game, which is completely unsubstantiated. The only time they've ever gone to this they went into North Dakota and tested a bunch of hunters for lead, and the hunters all had lower lead than people that live in cities. The reason people in cities have high lead is because up until the eighties, they were putting lead in fuel and that was a soluble lead. So I'm not gonna go through the whole letter, but it's really compelling, but it's like it's this thing where if you want this is this thing that happens so much in anything contentious, anything political, is if you're pushing for a thing that you want to be true, like you're sort of pursuing in a gen that you have, and you welcome, you welcome information, but then you wind up welcoming like somewhat suspect information if it helps make your point. And I think that the issue here, the reason we keep talking about this is the issue here is as management agencies, states, whatever try to mandate a move away from LED ammunition, I think it's important, like at least tell people the truth. Stop acting like there's a human health concern when no one has been able to substantiate it. Don't act like there's a population level bald eagle concern when nothing substantiates it. If your argument is that if you kill a deer with leed amo and leave it out, you could kill a bald eagle, have that be that right? 00:33:56 Speaker 3: And people make commutigate this, which this is one of the there's some things in here that I don't like the way it's written, and there's some things that they included that I do like. 00:34:06 Speaker 1: But tell me some of the ones. Tell me tell me a highlight of each of those. 00:34:11 Speaker 3: So population level effect, right, And we've covered this many times, so it'll just be really brief. Right, they are talking about bald eagles and and most of the and it seems like all these refuges are in Bald Eagle territory, and that's the raptor of concern. But if you had a refuge system in an area that overlapped with condor populations, a condor death could have a population level effect, and then it would be necessary to take further precautions, right. 00:34:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, because a condor is a population, yes, exactly. 00:34:51 Speaker 3: The other piece of this is you can mitigate that raptor eating off your gut pile by removing the guts from the field or by burying the guts on site. So this weekend, and I apologized to some of the folks I know, but lead kills really well. And I went out and shot a bunch of upland birds with seven and a half shot lead, and I made the decision to package up, even though I was like way the hell out on BLM ground. I made the decision to remove all the guts and the carcasses from the field. 00:35:40 Speaker 1: So if you're in the heat, you're gutting birds, you're gutting into a bag and just throwing the bag into your game bag. 00:35:45 Speaker 3: Which eventually became a really horrible, disgusting bag. Yeah, but it's not gonna go kill something I didn't intend to kill. So I did like the fact that they provided a good alternative, like a common so it's alternative. 00:36:01 Speaker 1: Yeah. And then this letter from the NSSFY they applaud education efforts. They don't they're not chastising people that are making non toxic AMMO. They don't use the word non toxic. They're not chastising manufacturers of They're sort of pointing to they're sort of applauding the free market economy or the choice, but pointing out that I would not have guessed this, some of the percentages on some of the percentages on use of AMMO. Where's this stuff? 00:36:45 Speaker 5: Oh the one percent of were you looking at the rifle ammo? 00:36:49 Speaker 1: Yeah? 00:36:49 Speaker 5: Where that too? 00:36:52 Speaker 1: That copper is one percent of center fire ammo used? Yep. My social circle, like my social circle, which includes people that that use copper for a handful of reasons, some performance issues, some lead issues. I would it reminds me of one when I have a skewed sample size in my social circle. I say, we're doing the kids trivia and and my younger kid had to guess what percentage of kids went fishing during the pandemic, and he thought that ninety percent of kids went fishing during the pandemic, like he had. 00:37:34 Speaker 5: A very skin biases it, Like that's all I did. 00:37:39 Speaker 3: That's a friends here. 00:37:41 Speaker 2: It is non non lead. 00:37:43 Speaker 5: Center fire rifle ammunition makes up the smallest share of the market and is approximately one percent of all ammunition produced. 00:37:52 Speaker 1: So yeah, but produced, so that that includes all target sure. 00:37:58 Speaker 5: I mean when you're buying a ace of cheap two two. 00:38:02 Speaker 10: Three, I'm gonna, you know, just go do some shoot. 00:38:15 Speaker 1: I'm gonna make this. I'm gonna make this relevant to our guests. Watch this. When you time flies are using non toxic Could you ever tie a fly with lead? 00:38:23 Speaker 2: One of the most common means to weigh down to. 00:38:26 Speaker 1: Fly is using lead reps, and you're still using it. 00:38:29 Speaker 2: I use it partially. They have the alternative where it's stainless steel to also wait, but and some some patterns, the lead works way better. Let a flip shot. 00:38:37 Speaker 1: He's like, lead till I'm dead? Is that what you're trying to tell me? 00:38:39 Speaker 2: And then also wait with the split shots. 00:38:42 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:38:42 Speaker 4: It also wraps really nice. 00:38:44 Speaker 1: Yes, it does, it does. I would view I would imagine that. I would imagine that the amount of you see fishing get rolled into this I I do not see this being fishing this problem, do you know what I mean? 00:39:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a very few states to help all lead weights. I mean New York was one of them. I went out there for some lake run salmon and I was missing some weights, so I went to the local tackle shop to get some, and all they had was the alternate. I'm like, what the hell? I had no idea kind of like blindsided me that I couldn't get lead weights. 00:39:21 Speaker 1: I get the leads. So just for folks, listen, when we started talking about lead split shot, it's a different thing. Lead split shot is not. There's different ways that lead gets introduced into to wildlife center fire like deer Okay, deer hunting, that's introduced because you shoot the deer and you got the deer and your bullet fragments and is led around. You leave the guts whatever. Later on you throw the bones in the ditch, stuff eats that they ingest lead unintentionally, split shot and steal shot or sorry back when you could use lead to hunt ducks. In split shot, you have it can enter an animal by an animal could get hit by a chunk of that lead and not be lethal. Then it has lead in it, but they pick it up as grit so or they pick it up they just see something shiny and different and they're down there feeding and they ingest it. So the lead sinker thing is that they're just intentionally ingesting it. It's not getting like blasted into something. It's being picked up, not eaten along with flesh. Is that clear? 00:40:32 Speaker 5: And I think a lot of time, a lot of times they're just picking it up as they're feeding on the bike. 00:40:36 Speaker 2: It just happens to end up and. 00:40:37 Speaker 1: Happens oh yep, got it as straining through the bottom. But I just, man, uh, I just feel that the fishing thing has to be just like almost a non issue. 00:40:49 Speaker 5: I think there's places where there's a carpet of leadhead jigs on the bottom of certain places. 00:40:55 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I can name a few. 00:40:59 Speaker 1: I could go there, But I mean I could name one Lincott home that's got about forty pounds in my leg. 00:41:08 Speaker 5: But you know what I think is interesting about this is the NSF nss F is weighing in on something from the Wildlife Service, this agenda, But that agenda had to come from outside. 00:41:27 Speaker 1: You think it's being imposed on the Wildlife Service. 00:41:29 Speaker 2: I don't know. 00:41:30 Speaker 1: I don't know about that. No, it might be you know, like the stuff in Alaska with them trying to with them trying to subvert Alaska's ability to manage its wildlife. Right, that came from on high for sure. That came from like, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist generally speaking, but I believe that that was driven by donors. That that was driven by Now, when you see something in politics, it's so like, what do you remember when who the hell was it that got elected for mayor New York? And right away he goes after the Central Park horse carriage rides. Oh yeah, de Blasio wins to become mayor of New York and his first thing is Central Park carriage rides. He's sort of like, this has to be from a donor. It's so out there and so outside of the concerns of voters and so outside of what your mandate must have been when you were elected that there's no way this wasn't a quid pro quo from a donor. 00:42:41 Speaker 2: Class. 00:42:42 Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't even really. 00:42:44 Speaker 1: Everybody in the city is like what, Yeah. 00:42:47 Speaker 4: That's what I'm thinking right now. I don't really understand, like what like he just didn't like the horse that. 00:42:53 Speaker 1: They were mean to the horses in Central Park, Meaning it was so outside of anyone's concern, It was so outside of the campaig and you get it, and you're like that is like I don't know this for sure, but that is satisfying a particular donor who made a deal like. 00:43:10 Speaker 4: Set the horses free. Kind of Yeah, I. 00:43:12 Speaker 5: Mean I don't know, cal Do you know of like outside forces that were pushing this agenda or is it just. 00:43:20 Speaker 3: I mean, the the lead free thing has been around for a really long time. The refuge system has certainly like a lot more traffic, right like think of like the bird watching community and refuges, So there could certainly be some lobbying from from different groups there for sure, you know. I I do think about like the where we were hunting seek a deer, Like think of the amount of copper in you know, like a fifty col Muzzleoderu Sabbot or whatever or the equivalent like twelve gage. I mean, that's a the chunk of that's a big chunk of copper. Like that's not just falling out of the sky, that's we're digging that out of the ground there too. 00:44:12 Speaker 1: That's the thing to have cost, right. So that's the point this letter raises, is that lead as comes from recycled car batteries. Lead ammunition comes from recycled car batteries. And it points up just the tooling and sourcing. Meaning if all you know, it's a little bit like uh, extremes, if all states right now were to somehow miraculously say that you couldn't use lead ammunition, there's no way they would ever satisfy. It would take a long time for the demand to be said. 00:44:41 Speaker 4: A hard time to find any bullets. 00:44:43 Speaker 1: The letter is a little punchy, says the service's unsubstantiated statement of possible risk to hunters due to the use of lead component ammunition to harvest game is very concerning, and it goes on to it goes on to attack this this thing that came out years ago. I remember when it came out, was like X rays of deer showing how many, how much, how much lead fragmentation. 00:45:14 Speaker 5: From the wound channel. 00:45:16 Speaker 1: But then it goes on to say that they never substantiated this leg fragmentation. Their jack, it's a jacketed AMMO, and all they're doing is showing that something showed up on an X ray, but no biopsy to show what or no digging around to show what it was. It was on the x ray, and then the study was only done with one specific kind of ammunition and then extrap so they do a study with one specific lead ammunition and loaded in a certain way out of a seven mili remmag and then they take what is there and then extrapulate out that all harvested venison has blank right, even though there's this huge variation and how people harvest venison and all the ammunitions used. But the statistic came from a study in which only one type of ammunition was used. 00:46:10 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, sometimes you know I've shot I have a seven meg. Sometimes, you know, you shoot a certain bullet out of there and the thing blows up, you know, and it lead everywhere. Other times, just yeap, clean a whistle. 00:46:26 Speaker 1: If I punched Brody ten times and gave them seven black eyes. 00:46:31 Speaker 2: A lot of lead money, would you. 00:46:32 Speaker 1: Be able to say all punches seventy percent of all punches result in the black eye. I might have talked about this for too long, but again I just want to continue to make a clear man. If you as an individual, Like if you, as an individual, don't like the idea of the of that you leave your gut pile out. You know, if you're using certain if you're using that ammunition and you leave your gut pile out, there is a chance that you will kill a raptor. Bear that in mind and behave accordingly, you might decide that you don't care about I think that most people thinking about it, like that gut pile right there, Like that gut pile that I'm walking away from right now has a chance of killing a rat, like it actually killing a raptor. 00:47:31 Speaker 4: No one ever, really, not a lot of people think. 00:47:34 Speaker 1: No of that. No, you have that in the back of your head, and have that in the back of your head. If more people had that in the back of their head. This speaking of cause and you know, causal relationships, I'm just going to go out on a limit and say, hypothetically true, if more people had that in the back of their head, we might not be talking about ammunition bands right now. I don't know is that a wild statement. 00:48:02 Speaker 3: I don't think it's a wild statement. We'd certainly because you know, there's a statement in this that I would follow in the list of things that I don't really like the way it was written into this letter. There's a really specific study on falcons eating lead paint off of water towers where these falcons nested, And in this letter it kind of says like, all birds land on water towers and build nests on water towers and eat lead off of water towers. But if you talk to the bird people, they're like, it's not all birds. There's two super smart birds out there, falcons and vultures that have a lot of free time because they are very smart and very efficient at what they do, and they mess around a lot and consequently getting a lot of trouble. 00:48:56 Speaker 1: Got it. Do you know we have a great horned owl roost. 00:49:00 Speaker 3: Under our saw the picture that awesome. 00:49:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, he lives in the He lives in the eve supports. 00:49:09 Speaker 5: Must You don't ever see skunks or raccoons or anything wandering around. 00:49:13 Speaker 9: You know. 00:49:13 Speaker 3: It's a fun parallel here for our guest is the fact that the millinery trade was one of the things that absolutely decimated all types of birds, mostly pretty birds, all across the world. Uh and fly tying has its hands in that. 00:49:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of blood on your hands. Buddy, it's a long letter. Oh Phil hit us with the fish and lures song. He'll appreciate this, son, Am I saying your name right? Son? This is one of the best songs ever written. It really is. This guy is the weird al of fishing. 00:49:54 Speaker 3: Email here, which was a niche we had? 00:49:57 Speaker 1: You've had You've had how many hours to get this thing scored? 00:50:03 Speaker 3: Only kind of little Jimmy Buffett vibe. 00:50:05 Speaker 2: Baby, this was not what I was respecting. 00:50:09 Speaker 1: Love fishing. 00:50:12 Speaker 11: I love to cast them while I'm drinking a course for a while on the rocks and drinking the doors. Clever, little mechanic, cold works of all. 00:50:29 Speaker 1: I love fishing. 00:50:32 Speaker 2: Scott wouldn't want any fewer. I'm a better fisher man than you are. 00:50:41 Speaker 11: When I'm at the morning good store, I love loading up my call. 00:50:47 Speaker 3: This guy who's like I can rhyme anything. 00:50:49 Speaker 1: Give yeah, just gonna cover it, tremble hook. Sometimes your lime gets not in some blooded some skitter on top of the water. Look at that big mass. I'm glad that I caught her. This guy's got a Rhydey dictionary. It's like Eminem. I think Eminem stole all his ship and this guy. 00:51:17 Speaker 2: Some of the red all. 00:51:19 Speaker 11: Kinds of exotic coups as your boating paddle. 00:51:27 Speaker 1: The solo is amazing, love. 00:51:33 Speaker 3: Can you imagine him doing that with one hand while he's recording here. 00:51:38 Speaker 11: I would be poor, so so effective. I think I could catch fishing the sewer design. 00:51:47 Speaker 2: Little These are real crooners joining. 00:51:57 Speaker 1: That professional mass fishing. 00:52:02 Speaker 3: I can see some success, like doing the old folks homes, like in around like something. 00:52:09 Speaker 1: He's from buying Falls Michigan the Artist. 00:52:11 Speaker 5: Uh oh, your buddy should get him to tour around with the barge. 00:52:18 Speaker 7: For a like three time Cola. 00:52:21 Speaker 1: George Peter Block, Junior Boying Falls, Michigan's the Artist. Unbelievable artistry. You think those flys are cool? That song. 00:52:33 Speaker 5: That's Grammy material, That's just unbelievable. 00:52:35 Speaker 2: I'm just gonna give this ship up now. 00:52:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're gonna like you're like, I went into the wrong business. I should have been a songwriter. All right, let's let's die back in, walk me through getting from well, let me let me let me do a quick recap. Uh, just because people might so blown away by that song. 00:52:58 Speaker 4: It's hard to focus. 00:53:00 Speaker 1: Your father fought, Your father fought for the n R no. 00:53:05 Speaker 2: How's it go in our the South Vietnamese Army h N r v N r v N was it? 00:53:10 Speaker 1: No, no, no no. 00:53:11 Speaker 2: The n v A was the the opposite opposition A r v N. I guess I know. 00:53:16 Speaker 1: Southamese Army got South Vietnamese Army. 00:53:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:53:20 Speaker 1: You were born the year before the US pulled out of Vietnam. Yes, US pulls out of Vietnam. Your family was from the south of Vietnam. The Communists came from the north. Your father saw the writing on the wall that he would wind up in a re education camp or wind up executed. Yep, you guys, flee, have a treacherous journey to Malaysia. Correct, apply for asylum all over the world, and get asylum in the US. Correct. But here's what part of a little curious about. Uh did you did your father Like did your father have colleagues, friends, whatever that he met from the US military or was he not working hand in hand with the US military during the war. Uh? 00:54:16 Speaker 2: He did prior to the actual official US involvement. I don't know, like all the details of it, but I know like in the fifties he had worked with some of the initial advisors that came over to the Vietnam and then from my recollections, I believe it was some of them that helped get. 00:54:35 Speaker 1: Us got okay. So that's what I wanted to jump to, is how you at this point you're in Malaysia and you're how old? 00:54:44 Speaker 2: Uh got there? I was about four and a half. 00:54:47 Speaker 1: Okay, fly tie and not on your mind? 00:54:51 Speaker 2: I was staring at with sardines. 00:54:54 Speaker 1: Sardines on your mind? And then you come to the US and what happens like like, how did you get accepted? You get your asylum, gets accepted, and all of a sudden, what a plane shows up? How does that work? You're in a you're in a refugee camp in Malaysia, Like how does it you get a letter saying you've been given asylum in the US? 00:55:15 Speaker 10: Well? 00:55:15 Speaker 1: Then then what uh? 00:55:17 Speaker 2: Like I said it was, I don't know like all the details, but that Menna knit family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania helped us with the paperwork and then eventually got us onto the plane where we end up landing in California and then was there for a couple of years while I guess with getting our green cards and all that other stuff. 00:55:37 Speaker 1: And then how many family members, five total. 00:55:39 Speaker 2: My brother was born in the refuge camp, so I got a younger brother, a younger sister, and mom and dad. Okay, and then eventually that that Men and Night community got us over to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and helped my parents find work and whatnot out there. 00:55:55 Speaker 1: And how what in the world did you get like, how did you ever even get introduced to fishing? 00:55:59 Speaker 2: Well? When I was when I was a young kid, basically being an immigrant, I didn't have all the luxuries of most other kids where parents spoil them with toys or whatnot. So here was poor. We were poor shit, and so we were playing like with sticks or hand me downs and whatnot. And then my first fishing round was like some old Shakespeare spitting a rod that my neighbor couldn't sell from a garad sale and he gave it to me. 00:56:22 Speaker 1: You know, you're into the real bottom end tackle, one of the shit that doesn't sell out a garage sale. Like when you go to a garage sale and you look at the rod and choose not to buy that rod. That's a rough rod. 00:56:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I recall, we had like thirty pound test line on it. I know the difference between four pound test line and eighty pound test line. Back then, all I knew was that I could use it to catch fish. 00:56:46 Speaker 1: And then the guy gives it to you. 00:56:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, he gave it to me. And then where I grew up there, there was a small creek that runs through the area. It was only gosh, maybe half a mile from my house. It runs through the little community park there and h Connostova River and in there everything from car up to all sorts of panfish and smallmouth pass and the homeline yards, and so that's where I pretty much spent most of my my child who was just basically fishing there that that creek. 00:57:16 Speaker 1: Were you self taught? 00:57:17 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. 00:57:19 Speaker 1: Were there other Vietnamese dudes running around or was it just your family? 00:57:22 Speaker 2: I think we were the only minorities in the whole town, Right. 00:57:24 Speaker 1: Did you guys feel some pressure on that or were people pretty accepting? 00:57:27 Speaker 2: People are very accepting. 00:57:29 Speaker 1: I mean, uh, they probably knew the history too, right, Yeah. 00:57:31 Speaker 2: Like Pennsylvania gets a bad rep because of like the Lester right, because of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but everywhere in between it is very very conservative. And that's how that that community was a very conservative community. And then the kids, they pretty much everybody just took them in. So there were a couple of kids there that went to the same school, most of them were on the older side. And then a lot of them helped me out too by basically just showing me some of the ropes. 00:57:58 Speaker 1: Do you this has enough to do with time flies or fishing, but do you feel when you were growing up and and and you were young and Vietnam was still fresh for people, what did you encounter like a feeling did you encounter among Americans? A like like a guilt for withdrawing Vietnam? Like when people met your dad, Okay, people meet your dad, and your dad served in the South Vietnamese Army, was there sort of an implied like, oh man, I'm sorry, no that thing. 00:58:38 Speaker 2: No not maybe if I had growing up somewhere else, But like I said, the area I grew up in, it was very conservative. People kept their opinions themselves. They pretty much left you alone, unless you know they you got involved in their business. 00:58:50 Speaker 1: Uh huh. 00:58:50 Speaker 2: So people had opinions, they kept it themselves. So I really didn't experience it any of that. If if my parents did, they shielded us from it. 00:58:57 Speaker 1: Yep. 00:58:57 Speaker 2: So growing up, growing up, going through school, well, I mean I really resaw. 00:59:01 Speaker 1: That got it. But you were the only Vietnamese kid around. Yeah yeah, And were you raised around people who weren't Mennonite too. 00:59:08 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like this, Uh, they're actually the very small minority there. There's uh Menonites, there's there's Amish, and then there's obviously all the other Christian non denominations and whatnot. So the school I went to, I mean I think there was maybe ten twelve minorities all together with the class of about a thousand, So it was predominantly Caucasian area. And I really didn't have any friends growing up there were other minorities. It was all the kids that I ran around with were all the Caucasian kids. 00:59:39 Speaker 1: And they these were kids that grew up hunting, fishing. 00:59:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's probably one of the reasons why I listened to country music. Also, very confused. 00:59:50 Speaker 1: Did your folks have any sense of did your folks have any sense of fishing as a as a sort of recreational pastime. 01:00:00 Speaker 2: They didn't care as long as I was bringing fish home. 01:00:02 Speaker 1: Oh so they liked the fish. 01:00:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, like my culture, they we don't waste anything and I catch a fish, they ate it. So I didn't know the difference between what was a good any fish and what was. 01:00:10 Speaker 1: A horrible mudfish. 01:00:12 Speaker 2: If I caught it, I brought it home. I mean, like a lot of fishermen out there is like they catch, they keep everything they catch, the conservation and none of that shit was really in the back of my mind as a kid. I mean, I brought carp home, and then it was finally my mom was like, don't bring this shit on anymore because. 01:00:26 Speaker 1: She got picky. 01:00:28 Speaker 2: She got picky because it's so hard to clean because there's so many bones in it. All I saw was just a big fat fished everybody. 01:00:35 Speaker 1: So let's say you brought a carp home. How would she prepared it when you were a kid? What were you eating? 01:00:40 Speaker 2: I think it was basically drowned in a lot of fish sauce and other seasonings to actually get rid of some of the mud taste at it. From my recollection, I only recall eating it a handful of times, and then she complained about it, and I never kept the carp again. 01:00:54 Speaker 1: So what if you brought a bluegill back or a small off pass back the way we prepared was. 01:00:59 Speaker 2: A little bit diff where generally American culture they'll filay the fish, you just eat the flats, and then with a lot of the Asian cultures, they'll got to take the gills out and whatnot, cut the fins off, and then they'll either broil or defried the entire fish after the scales are obviously removed. The like probably one of the tastiest part is the crispy skin. 01:01:19 Speaker 1: No, uh, you were getting introduced to American style food though. 01:01:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean at home almost everything was still Vietnamese food. But we were getting the slow introduction because like as a poor kid, I got foods the meal tickets, so all my lunches were the basically cafeteria food, and that's vast majority of the introduction I had to American food, where I thought that slop was like great, yeah. 01:01:43 Speaker 3: Like Salisbury. 01:01:46 Speaker 8: What'd your mom do with the her mom and or dad do with like the squirrels and deer and other stuff because he was hunting in a lot. 01:01:53 Speaker 2: You're un small game too, Yeah, I mean, uh, it was very very different being forty nine years old and when I grew up where I was riding my little bike with a shotgun on my shoulder for five miles next down to go hunting, and nobody would think any different. And I mean there were times where I rode my bike by the sheriff, like we had one sheriff in the town and waved him good luck. 01:02:15 Speaker 5: Were you were you self taught on the hunting thing too, or do you have buddies you ran around with? 01:02:20 Speaker 1: Or I started basically just. 01:02:25 Speaker 2: Squirrels were the first thing that we shot, yep. And I didn't have a weapon at that point, like a rifle or a shotgun, so neighbors let me won yep. 01:02:34 Speaker 1: That's how it went. 01:02:35 Speaker 2: Back then teach me how to use it. So I kind of figured how to use it on my own. I mean I took it out to the back of a farm they had gave me some twenty two rounds and figured out how to use a rifle. Common sense was a big thing too, like, you know, this thing's gonna fire a bullet. Might want to aim in a place where I'm not gonna kill myself. So I figured out how to use it. And then as time went by and some of the other caliber weapons and whatnot. Then I was taught by either the friends or their dads and whatnot. But my first my first rifle I shot was the twenty two and that was self taught and the same day with a shotgun. They handed me a shotgun, this twenty gage shotgun, I don't remember what brand, and just put the round here and pulled the trigger. 01:03:18 Speaker 1: Did your siblings get into it? 01:03:19 Speaker 2: Now? They're like one eighty of me. I mean, if you pictured, you were just like you were. 01:03:23 Speaker 1: You were just obsessed as a kid. But it wasn't universal in the family. 01:03:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, if you met me and my siblings, you would think I was adopted. 01:03:31 Speaker 1: Because of what they're into. 01:03:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, their total opposite is I mean, they're your your typical nine to five professional CPAs and finance And even when I mean I started off down that route when I finished college and then went and worked out for RCA own by Thompson Multimedia when I was an engineer, and but in the back of my mind, I was always just looking forward to getting off work so I could go fishing or go a hundred. It was a means to do what I wanted to do. Where both my brother and sister, you know, that's that's their career and that's what they enjoy. To me, working has always be been a means and tellten until I joined the military. 01:04:09 Speaker 1: That was yeah what, Uh you went to college first? 01:04:14 Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to college first. And then uh those years where they're kind of boring, was more or less just focuses on study. And then where'd you go to school? Lehigh? And then uh from there we uh just went to work. And then it provided an astronomical amount of money for a kid that my age, that had nothing before. 01:04:33 Speaker 1: So did you have a lot of pressure from your folks to go to school? Oh? 01:04:36 Speaker 2: God, yeah, like if we didn't get like they were into the whole American dream thing and all that. Yeah, I mean the stereo type for most Asian families. If you're not a doctor, you're not a lawyer, you're not my kid. So, uh, there's always been a lot of pressure. They always guild us with the fact that you know, we gave up everything to give you guys a better life, and they would give trip the shit out of us. 01:05:01 Speaker 4: Doesn't fall into that category. 01:05:03 Speaker 2: Uh no, but it does play big part into turning me into who I am today. Because of the upbringing I had and the rules and the strictness that my parents had and whatnot. 01:05:13 Speaker 1: Give me an example of the overrule the strictness. 01:05:16 Speaker 2: Basically, eat everything you have on your plate. So I was raised never the waste food. 01:05:22 Speaker 1: Because you guys knew starvation man. 01:05:24 Speaker 2: And so even to this day, even I do not like what is before what's in front of me, I will force myself to finish it. And sometimes it gets me pretty difficult, like and where my travel is going through Europe or some of these trying some of these local cuisines that I was just like, I would still force myself to eat it. And then so that's basically Appreciate what you have is another one because you never know when it's gonna be all taken away. So basically try not to take anything for granted. Yeah, like always just live in that moment per se. Uh. My first time coming here to Montana several years ago, I always like envisioned what Montana was like, and it was that way because my first experience with Montana wasn'm Bozeman. It was going up the Twin Bridges and then floating the Smith River and then saw on the beauty that Lewis and Clark National Forest had being surrounded by nature and the river and you're just with that small group of people, not massive crowds. So what I had picture of Montana was gonna be like was what I experienced. Now years later I realized Montana isn't always like that going through Yellowstone or the Madison River and then you got people everywhere, and it's one of the most popular tourist destinations. But it never changed the fact that I know what Montana has to offer, and then each time I come here, I try not to take it for granted. I just appreciate each day here and again that comes from the upbringing that I had for my parents. 01:06:49 Speaker 1: So what was it your decision like to get in the military. 01:06:53 Speaker 2: Well, nine to eleven happened. I was working. I think I had just gotten back from Paris. The like I said, the company zoned by Thompson, So I would spend several months at the year traveling to France, to Poland, to Mexico where they had their their factories. So anytime that we completed something with R and D, we would go out there implement that technology into the factories in the assembly lines and troubleshoot. And they were an engineer, yeah, in the applications engineering department, where we basically would took the pretty much the final products of everything that the physics labs and everybody else put together, and then we made the final product what it is. So nine to eleven happened. It was like a lot of people, you know, waking up turning on the news and I was like, what the hell? And I literally didn't I mean I don't think anybody went to work that day and I was set there, glued. 01:07:44 Speaker 1: To the TV. 01:07:45 Speaker 2: So like most other people, I felt bad. I wanted to do something. I went and gave blood. I mean, there was a lineup there were to give blood. So I gave blood, and I felt that still wasn't enough. And then I was thinking about things I could possibly do to to help like basically America. And then I got that phone call from also my dad, and he's like, hey, you you really needed to do something to join the military or something to pay back our you know, our family's debt to the US. 01:08:15 Speaker 1: Because where was he calling from. 01:08:17 Speaker 4: Uh? 01:08:17 Speaker 2: Well, at that point, my parents were divorced because all the years that they spent working all these long hours, their relationship kind of like just like uh disappeared. And at that point, you know, the kids are all growing up, so they were divorced. But I don't know exactly where he was calling from, but he just told me that I had to do something because I was the oldest, and oh, really, yeah, I'm the oldest, and I don't know if I should say this, but my brother's two week and my sister's a girl, so it was really up to me. And then h I had already thought about it a little bit, but that kind of like pushed me over the edge. And then literally the very next week, I was down in the Army recruiting station and uh submitted my two week notice to the company. Everybody thought that I was no uts because it was one of those companies that you got there and people left when they died, because it was really good company to work for. They gave you like thirty days vacation a year and another thirty days of six days, so literally you have sixty days year where you didn't have to shut the work and still got paid. It was hourly, very very good wages, where like the average media income in Pennsylvania back then or Lancaster then was about twenty four thousand, and I was making way more than that, so I was able to go do all these great things that I absolutely love and not I ever have to worry about the cause like muskie fishing. I mean I was a fly fishing back then, but going up to Canada or going to the Codes to shoot wild game and hunting wherever I wanted because I really didn't have any school, loans or anything. And it was a tough decision because I knew I had to give all that up. Another part was the fishing, and I fished a lot in the chest speak literally like when it was a hunt season, after work, I would drive an hour and a half down to the Chesapeake Bay and go after stripe bass to call them rock fished out there at the East Coast, or go flounder, or go and grabbing with some of my friends. And I knew all that was going to go away, because I mean I wasn't a idiot. I looked up the salary difference, and I knew that going from over sixty thousand a year down to basically making like twelve hundred dollars a month was going to be a drastic change in lifestyle. But it was the plan was only going to be three years and so and then you would. 01:10:17 Speaker 1: But you went in as a trained engineer. But you didn't go and become a you didn't be like, I want to be in the corps. 01:10:23 Speaker 8: No. 01:10:24 Speaker 2: The way I looked at it was, uh, well the corps was a different story. 01:10:29 Speaker 1: So they were actually I mean the Army Corps of Engineers. 01:10:31 Speaker 2: Sorry, but the Marine Corps was the first one to a corps. Yeah, but the recruiter was was a lazy son of a bitch, and he wanted me to run the background check and my fingerprints. He was actually having me do all this stuff, and I was I thought that was what you're supposed to do. So it was actually coming back to the Marine Corps recruiting station with all these documents and whatnot, and then I found out I was missing something and I had to go again. And then the Army guy was out there puffing on a cigarette and he's like, hey, what are you doing? And then he told me I'll take care of all of that for you. Like, oh, what do you guys have to offer? And they're like, well, there's college loan repayment and all this other stuff. And so went in there talk to him a little bit. He sold sold me. This guy was willing to cater everything to take care of all the paperwork, and I literally just had to show up and I was like, this is totally different the Marines. These guys really wanted me. So I was like, I knew the Marines had the grunts. Armies also had the grunts. I was like, all right, I'll go Army because everybody that pictures, you know, the fighting force, they always think Marine Corps first, and that was that was the same way. And then he told me all the different things that the Army had to offer and I ended up signing with the military. Now, everybody blames their recruiter for their miserable life in the military. 01:11:36 Speaker 1: They never lied to me. 01:11:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, But the difference was my recruiter actually was a really good guy, and he was actually trying to talk me out of going to the infantry because I had maxed out my ASVABA. My scores were off the charts and I could have done anything. They were offering me all these military intelligence MOS's the job, along with civil affairs, all the stuff that requires high test scores. And I was like, no, if I'm gonna give up three years of my life to make a difference, put where the fight's at. Put a rifle my head, and I chose to join the infantry with the mindset it was only be just three years. And uh, because if I was gonna join, I wanted to deploy and the them West that was the highest rated deployed was eleven bravo as an infantryman. And that's what I selected. MHM, Hindsight's twenty twenty. 01:12:28 Speaker 3: You know what you asked for. 01:12:29 Speaker 2: I got what I asked for and for. But uh, to all the young kids out there that might be thinking about the military, really consider your life choices. Infantry is very rewarding. You're gonna have a brotherhood of people and the combat of arms that you will never experience anywhere else. Do a lot of cool shit, and you're gonna do a lot of stuff that's really gonna test your psych and your your body. However, there's gonna be sacrifices that you're gonna give up, and that number one sacrifice is going to be your body in your brain. If you're willing to give up. That sacrifice is. 01:12:58 Speaker 1: The the body you gotta give up. The body and the brain you're gonna give up. 01:13:01 Speaker 3: Both those are two big. 01:13:02 Speaker 2: Parts what's left because after twenty two years of service. I've already had eleven surgeries to fix all sorts of different elements by me I have. I may look very young for a forty nine year old, but I probably have the body of a sixty year old. And then your brain will also start start failing you too, because you're gonna go through some some really troubling times when you're gonna you're gonna have to have some metal fortitude or intestinal fortitude alone. Was a metal strength to overcome a lot of the shit that you deal with in the infantry. 01:13:30 Speaker 6: But it is a very ruarding mos at uh. 01:13:42 Speaker 1: I want to keep on the chronology, but let me ask you this. At this point nine to eleven you going into the infantry, are you just eating and sleeping, fly tying. 01:13:54 Speaker 2: I wasn't even touching that yet once you're aware to some of it at this point right, nothing, I mean, you know, there is such a thing as a fly rod. For like ten years, my first ten years I was, I was gone a lot, so when I got back, I'll spent more less. 01:14:09 Speaker 1: Where all did you get sent to? 01:14:11 Speaker 2: Iraq, Afghanistan, Southern Philippines, Kuwait, so Middle East? When I got back, my first duty station was Korea. I was really upset because they weren't deploying all they do. 01:14:23 Speaker 1: But that's really common though, right, Yeah. 01:14:25 Speaker 2: It's really common. A lot of first assignments there are to places that you actually don't deploy out of and then your next one. Now, the fortunate thing for me and my mindset back then was it was only a year and then I was able to pick whatever assignment I want. So I knew that Hawaii was getting ready to go. 01:14:41 Speaker 1: Because did you. 01:14:42 Speaker 3: Get bumped up in rank because of your education? 01:14:45 Speaker 1: Yeah? 01:14:45 Speaker 2: I came in as a specialist four on an E won the E nine scale. 01:14:50 Speaker 1: I got another totally off the off subject, not off subject, but out of chronology when you were in So, when you're stationed in Korea and you had time off, would you drank? No? But can you with your background and your family, would it be inadvisable for you to go to Vietnam? 01:15:11 Speaker 2: Actually, Uh, that's a really sour subject because my grandfather was dying and I was out in the field training and my family, my mom called the unit to give them a Red Cross message to let him know that my grandfather was dying, and a flight from Korea to Vietnam is really short and it's very expensive, and it was I could have literally gone just like that on a whim, and they never notified me. So my grandfather passed away, I was within like a really short hop of getting there to be by his bedside, and they never told me. 01:15:46 Speaker 1: So. 01:15:47 Speaker 2: Yes, I could have gone to the Vietnam to answer your question, but that happened while I was over there in Korea. 01:15:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, and then and your family would not have been pissed about it. 01:15:55 Speaker 2: Now Yeah, Now, my family pretty much has allowed me to make my own life choices and do whatever I want. Is just live with the repercussions of my choices, and that's how they pretty much have treated I mean, yeah, there was always those pressures doing well and whatnot. But at the end of the day, all my parents wanted to be. 01:16:12 Speaker 1: Was just happy. Yeah. So you spent time in when you spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, these are long stints of time or short in and outs, or. 01:16:22 Speaker 2: They were all VERI the longest I was there for was fifteen months straight. Yeah, fifteen months straight. And then the shortest I was gone for was six months, and then you had nine, twelve, fourteen's all mixed in there and you were there, and what role combat operations for the most part. 01:16:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, as an officer, as a non commissioned officer. 01:16:44 Speaker 2: As a non commissioned officer, okay, because by the time I went on my first deployment with my second duty assignment there, which was Hawaii, I was already a sergeant and five then. So that's the difference with the military versus the civilian side. You could be like a twenty year old you wreck a sergeant or a corporal, and you're alread gonna have three to four people that you control their lives. And then with how many people usually as a fire team leader, you would have three to four people that fall underneath you and you're their immediate supervisor. And eventually when you make squad leader. In a typical infantry unit, you have anywhere from nine to eleven if it depends on whether it's you know, with the light infantry or a striker infantry. And then as a platuoncer once you get up, which is generally about twelve to fourteen years in then you have thirty six to forty four. And then as an infantry company first arm you would have anywhere from one hundred and thirty six to over two hundred and then that was my role for the last five years was as a first art And you're retiring now next year. 01:17:45 Speaker 1: Yep. Twenty years, twenty two years, twenty two years. 01:17:49 Speaker 2: Army has changed quite a bit. There's a lot of things that I absolutely love and I wasn't looking back on it. I wouldn't change anything I had done. But at the same time, the way it's right now with me coming up through basically the entire duration of my time in through all these wars and conflict and having certain expectations of how people should be and how soldiers should be has changed quite a bit. Now that we're considered like a peace time military, got it, And that's not what I signed up for. And now that I've I've done my time, it's time for me to move on. 01:18:23 Speaker 1: You just don't mean you don't want to, you don't feel the need to be there during peace time. 01:18:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, the drive isn't the same anymore, along with you know, other factors like my body is starting to give out. And I've always been one of those that you can't tell people to do something you can't do it themselves, You do it yourself, got it? And I'm now at the point where I cannot be as physically fit as I used to be, where I always pride myself that my fitness was higher than most I got it. Can run out with the best of them, with the seventeen eighteen year olds, and can't really do that anymore with like basically all the injuries that I've had. 01:18:57 Speaker 1: So when you talk about surgeries you had, you had, you had injuries within the military, yeah, I got you, I got you. 01:19:04 Speaker 2: And then within them from doing certain things, and then also just the wear and tear where we would do certain things as an infantryman where you have to be able to carry a thirty five pound ruck a pack on your back along with your weapon, your prograss I mean all in all, you end up carrying probably close to sixty five pounds wor a gear and you have to do that foot march twelve miles and under three hours, which you either can walk really fast or you have to jog some of it short legs like me. I had to run a lot of it because there's no way in how I maintain a fifteen minute pace with all that gear on with my short legs, So I had to jog and run, and you would do that every year along with all the other conditioning foot marches where it might be six miles, might be nine miles. And then when you go to the field, we do all these different infantry battle drills for training aspects of it. Some of them are like, for example, move into contact or move into daylight. Moving daylight is exactly what it sounds like. You start off walking at night and you keep walking until daylight on. If you don't find the enemy, then you basically you halt. Or if you do move into contact, you keep walking until you find the damn enemy and then you take the fight to them, or you're doing a reconnaissance. I mean, there's a whole lot of different aspects of it. And then there's no such thing as we can't walk there because of the terrain. You may do like in Korea that would really test you, that will break your freaking body because of the elevation and then the mountains that you're walking up and down. So you find all the different drawls, the different cuts, and you make your path and you would sometimes walk fourteen eighteen thirty hours. We had one combat operation after we had a soldier killed that we were hunting for specific people where it was a ninety six hour operation. We we're up four days straight, and fatigue and everything starts kicking in. And that's where the fitness has to come in. Because if you're not fit, you're tired, you're gonna fall asleep, and somebody's gonna die. So those are the things that start stressing your body and really start stressing your brain. You know, one incident like or a one event like that is it's not so bad, but you multiply that over the course of numerous combat deployments, twenty plus years of service, and it has its toll. 01:21:08 Speaker 1: When after Afghanistan had gone for twenty years and people started to draw parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, and then we pull out of Afghanistan in a way that seemed reminiscent at a minimum, right of our withdrawal from Vietnam. What'd that look like after having spent time there? What was that like? Emotionally for you? 01:21:35 Speaker 2: It was it was disheartening. And I'm gonna leave it at that because I'm still an active duty remember, oh, and I might actually say something. 01:21:42 Speaker 1: I might We'll talk to you. 01:21:44 Speaker 2: We'll talk to you in a year Yeah, talk to you in a year and I'll tell you very passionate feelings about that. But it was very disheartening. Yeah, because there were there were there were good men and women that that lost their lives on how it was handled. 01:21:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, I got it. Still not time flies start. 01:22:03 Speaker 2: Time flies in the seven years ago is when I started. Okay, so what happened seven years ago? So I was getting ready to leave Hawaii. I was still recovering from some of the injuries that I was getting medical help for, and at that point right there, I was really not doing platoon sergean't work anymore where. I was just getting ready to PCs permanent, change the station and leave Hawaii. Packed up all the stuff, they shipped it off. We're living out of the hotel room until our flight. So I had a couple of weeks left and I was hitting the drink. 01:22:36 Speaker 1: Pretty hard in Hawaii. 01:22:37 Speaker 2: In Hawaii because the one thing I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. But one of the things that like with non commissioned officer or leaders in general in the military is when you have soldiers that you're responsible for, you will put it on a facade in order to present that appearance to those soldiers. So you put it on up a wall, and you always have to show because they're gonna mimic everything you do. So even if I wanted to be or pissed as drunk every day, I really could. And because I had soldiers that were responsible for But the minute that you take those leaders and you have them no longer in charge of anything, then that wall comes crumbling down real fast. And that was happening to me, where all the things I kept bottle up inside for years and years. You know, soldiers that were lost over in combat, people that I knew, that were very close to and no longer around, injuries that I felt, and then just a shearer amount of horror that you see over the Middle East, where you know they'll strap like one of the soldiers that we had passed away died from a suicide vest and it was like basically a little many metal, late handicapped child girl that they strapped the vest to. So so you walk in there, you know, selling cigarettes and whatnot to all the soldiers to get accustomed to see and seeing these local national kids, and they strapped the vester and they blew her up. Soldiers wearing what he mic rounds on his vest because he was grenaeddeerse rounds exploded and basically just tore his inside out. So those are the things that you'll deal with that you basically just have to pack away. There's some people that can't, and then they're the ones that will have like those mental breakdowns. And though uh they are the vocal about PTSD et cetera, et cetera. Well, I couldn't have that luxury because I had, you know, I had soldiers that I was responsible for. I at thirty six other men that if I broke down, then what were they gonna do? So I bottle a lot of that crap up. So the minute that I no longer was in charge of anything, I had all this free time in my hands. As I was getting ready to leave Hawaii, you know, I was drinking pretty heavily try to drown out some of that shit. And uh though, the time where I first started getting into the fly fishing aspect of it, I was at a bar and there was an old guy that kept on trying to talk to me, and I was kind of like brushing them off, and then he brought up the subject of fishing. So keep in mind. I absolutely loved fishing as a kid, but I didn't really dangle in it at all because I was so busy with the military for so long that it kind of like took a back seat to everything I was doing in the military. But that sparked, you know, my interest right away. It was brought back, you know, some of those fun memories. And that's how he got me to open up. And he took me out to Conniehiwaba and I don't even know what sized fly rod or whatnot. It was just some huge rod and showing me how to do some basic casts and Uh handed me this who was this guy was Korean War vet? Yeah, it was just another vet. Uh caught my first fish and it was the most exhilarating feeling. It was totally different than anything I had caught I had done with conventional gear because that rod was so long and you feel like every headshake, every movement, the runs and whole nine yards. I had no idea that it was the trophy sized bonefish as my first fish that I caught it. 01:25:55 Speaker 1: In Hawaii, Hawaii. It was huge bonefish, man bonefish. 01:25:59 Speaker 2: That was my first fish on a fly rod. To me, it was just a. 01:26:01 Speaker 1: Fish, but you caught it on a flat in Hawaii. 01:26:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, huh. And so unfortunately, soon after that we we left Hawaii and moved to my next assignment and again got all caught up in uh in the military, and didn't fly fish again for for almost like six seven months. And but were you like not at all? 01:26:26 Speaker 5: You weren't thinking about fish? 01:26:27 Speaker 2: No. You know how my mindset is when I get a focus on a very on specific task, I get like obsessed with making sure it gets done right. And the task that I had on hand was that we were certifying National Guard guardsmen before they deployed overseas, and we wanted to make sure that they knew what the hell they were doing, otherwise, you know, they could suffer casualties. So that was my main focus. I was traveling to places like Graling, Michigan, to Drumming, New York, all over the place, and we would get these battalions, brigades of National guardsmen and then we ran them through the gauntlet. And so that's what I was doing for a long time. And then the time that I got re rekindled with the fishing aspect of it was I was actually driving home. I lived about sixty eight miles or so from work one way, because a big part of my life is my kids, and I wanted to find the best schools I could put them in. So the area around post generally most military posts, not exactly the great is where you got a lot of strip bars, pawn shoves, and oh yeah, so it was the best schools was up about sixteen miles away in northeast Indianapolis, in the town called Fishers. And I made that commute every day, so long drive home, listen to a lot of radio, a lot of audible whatnot. And this one time I had the radio on and there was a commercial for the Indianapolis Sports and Outdoor Show and I was like, WHOA, maybe I'll check this out. It's only fifteen minute diversion from getting home. So I was stealing uniform, drove there and went started. 01:28:06 Speaker 1: I just went there right then, just went there right then. 01:28:09 Speaker 2: And it's walking around checking out all the boats and the hunting lodges, and I. 01:28:13 Speaker 1: Mean the radio ads work man. 01:28:17 Speaker 2: And so when I got over to the Fishing. 01:28:20 Speaker 1: Air and visited the guy that did the ad by, I want you to know I literally came here because of that radio. 01:28:26 Speaker 3: Ad when you said the exit now, yeah, yeah. 01:28:30 Speaker 2: It was very similar to the guy that does those four wheeling ads where they you know, they're yelling and screaming, come check this. 01:28:36 Speaker 1: Out right now, you know, I will, damn damn it, I will. 01:28:41 Speaker 2: And so I went and then when I made it over to the fishing area, they had a very little small corner there just for the fly fishing. I was checking out the no show and eventually I made over to the fly fishing area and then I got I was I was hearing, hey, soldier, come here. Who the hell's calling me? I realized I was still in uniform. So there's a organization called Project Healing Waters fly Fishing and they had a chapter there out of an Indianapolis, and they had a little booth there. They're trying to. 01:29:11 Speaker 1: You shit me because you had your uniform on. 01:29:12 Speaker 2: That's how I had a big target on my Bag's like, yeah, there's a soldier. So went over there and they start telling them about themselves and what they do and now they help veterans overcome disabilities, whether it's mental or physical. You're like, I having to know a guy and how they healed through fly fishing and whatnot. And I was like, oh, flyfishing is pretty cool. I did that once. They're like, we'll show you how everything else you need to know, so sign up with their email list and next thing you know, I got this notification. 01:29:41 Speaker 1: Intervention dude, and it's like God was like talking to you through your car radio. 01:29:47 Speaker 2: And I am was left though on my first outing that they had So being being a soldier, you kind of feel like you're almost an outsider to civilians at times. Uh. You change over the years, and one of the things that changed about me was I didn't like being around strangers. I didn't like being around crowds. I didn't like it being around in an environment I couldn't control. So it's that fight or flight mentality, and I was getting that like that first day I was at that outing. Even though there were other vets there, I didn't know who was a VET, who was a volunteer, who was what. It was just completely I'm the only one there that didn't know anybody. 01:30:23 Speaker 1: You know, man, I don't know if that's particular to that, because that might be your age shining through too, because I got that problem bad. Even ship. 01:30:33 Speaker 2: Could be that too, and you come found them with the military, and then you exceptlified it even more. 01:30:38 Speaker 8: So. 01:30:38 Speaker 2: I was actually getting ready to leave and I was walking back to my car and I was about to drive off, and this older gentleman my name, Oh, I'm sorry, you're getting ready to leave that first fishing outing. 01:30:48 Speaker 1: So they host you on a fishing outing. Then you get there and it was too much. 01:30:52 Speaker 2: There was too much going on, and. 01:30:53 Speaker 1: So you're almost say, never mind, this isn't for me. 01:30:56 Speaker 2: Yeah. I literally walked to my car, was hopping in and then. 01:30:58 Speaker 1: This this unannounced you're just leaving. 01:31:00 Speaker 2: I was just leaving. 01:31:01 Speaker 1: I was just. 01:31:03 Speaker 2: And uh, this gentleman like in a way that was weird. No, to me, it was normal, was like but I mean like in a way they would be like, wow, that guy just left. Yeah, I'm sure they they deal with that quite a bit because they deal with a lot of soldiers that and veterans that are going through quite a bit. But this guy named Joe Smith, he's uh find out you know, he's the program coordinator there. He's like, hey, what's where are you going? And then he kind of like talked me out of it, and uh partnered me up with somebody because I didn't realize that once you go there and then you sign up, and then they put a volunteer with you to be like your buddy for the day type of. 01:31:38 Speaker 1: Deal, and another veteran. 01:31:40 Speaker 2: Uh sometimes sometimes just a civilian that just wants to help out. 01:31:43 Speaker 4: I used to do that, and I was I just teach people how to cast and take him out on the river and the drift boat and stuff. 01:31:51 Speaker 2: And I had no idea where organization, no warriors and quiet water. And so they partnered me up with somebody and then took me out to the area where there was a bunch of crappies and with a fly rod, and they're showing me some basic gas and whatnot, start catching some fish and then kind of like slowly forgot about everything else, all the anxiety that I was dealing with, and all that melted away again. And when they you hear that cliche quite a bit, where you know, healing through fishing, healing on the water, It's very true because the reason why fly fishing works so well compared to conventional fishing or archery versus conventional honting is the amount of concentration attention to details that's required in order to achieve your end state If you don't pay attention to what you're doing, you're gonna hung up with the fly rod. You don't pay attention with what you're doing with the bow, you're not can hit your target. 01:32:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, and so an if you got a if you got a soccer ride out with a bell on the end, you can still be pounding some drinks and thinking about the war. 01:32:52 Speaker 3: Let, the circle, the job. 01:32:54 Speaker 2: But you're constantly so busy with a fly rod that you kind of like start tuning everything else out. And that's why that it really helps with with the mental healing aspect of it, because you tune out all that noise. And uh, that's what tying is. Was Also, so. 01:33:10 Speaker 1: When you were when you guys are fishing crappies, what were you do you remember what you were throwing? 01:33:16 Speaker 2: I think it was a little pheasant tail o. It was whatever he tied on then. 01:33:19 Speaker 1: But did you take any particular interest in it at that time? The fly? 01:33:24 Speaker 8: Uh? 01:33:25 Speaker 2: Sort of because of the engineering background, I was more intrigued on the howism to everything, So I uh, even to this day, like the first time I looked at the fly I was deconstructed on my brain, like how is this thing put together. 01:33:37 Speaker 1: Got it. I mean you just looked at the world that way. 01:33:39 Speaker 2: I look at the world, look at a camera system, and I think it's the same way, Like how how's this lens put together, how's the glass, how's the magnification, et cetera. Everything I look at I deconstruct. 01:33:47 Speaker 1: You've been eyeball and that old Triumph trap right there. 01:33:50 Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, it's probably why the Japanese and the Chinese are so far advancing technology because they steal all American ideas deconstruct everything to their engineer. But yeah, so I look at stuff and I started deconstructing. It was the same way with flies. It was the same way with the cast. It was the same way with how the fly rods built the physics behind it. So coming from the engineering background, I looked at it a little bit differently, where I like in the casting and using the lion the rod on basically catching that fish versus the the real is like the engineering behind it on applied pressure and whatnot, and using basically motion order the cast. And I mean, at the end of the day, some of the best casters in the world with the flywre can cast further than anybody with a bake cast or a spinning rod, because they know what they understand physics. So when I was looking at those flies, I was already starting to think that now I really didn't know exactly, you know, how you would do it. All I knew was the type of materials, but I didn't know all of the materials, And so that even piqued my interest more because then on another trip home, I was like, I was like, you know those flies. I kept on thinking about it. It was stuck in my brain, and I googled the. 01:35:01 Speaker 1: Fly as a thing. Yeah, and I. 01:35:03 Speaker 2: Googled fly shops in Indiana, and then there was this shop there called fly Masters of Indianapolis, and it was literally the exit that I take home. I passed by it almost every day and had never paid attention to it, small little corner shop that you just you wouldn't, dude. 01:35:18 Speaker 1: It's like it's like it's like it's like a screenplay. 01:35:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like this entire screenplay was going through. But it was like there, right there, that exit. And then I pulled that that parking lot and came in and uh, super friendly guys in there. Derek, he's the store manager there still works this day. 01:35:37 Speaker 1: Big shout out Derek. 01:35:38 Speaker 2: Big shout out to Derek. He's a great guy. 01:35:40 Speaker 1: He was the name of the shop again, fly. 01:35:42 Speaker 2: Masters of Indianapolis. So I went in there. Uh Now, the stigma behind Mo's fly shops is like, if you don't look like you're you can spend money, they kind of like ignore you because the stuff in a fly shop is expensive as heck, there's no going around there. 01:35:55 Speaker 1: You think that's true. It is not the not the price, but you think that that you think that, you know it is too like the one time of year I going to buy a few leaders and stuff. You know, I don't know. 01:36:06 Speaker 5: As someone who managed the fly shop for a few years, you know, you know who's coming in to buy a spool of tippet, and who's coming in to buy a rod? 01:36:16 Speaker 1: Got it? 01:36:18 Speaker 5: And you're gonna spend more time on the guys buinder. 01:36:20 Speaker 4: It depends on where you're at too. 01:36:22 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean you've got locals that are coming in that you're seeing every couple of days and they become your buddies. 01:36:28 Speaker 2: Sure you can also go to remember the last majority of the fly shop owners are still the old school, older guy mentality. Where it was like a a a gentleman's type sport. And there's a big difference in nine hundred one thousand dollars rod versus somebody that's gonna go to Walmart and buy, you know, a fifty dollars kid and the ones that looked like they would shop at Walmart. A lot of those guys kind of like tend to ignore quite a because the don't think they're gonna spend the money. 01:36:54 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:36:55 Speaker 2: Unfortunately that that's the case with some fly shops, not all. And unfortunately for me, that wasn't the case with fly Masters. When I went in there, they they were cool. They were really cool and answer a lot of questions. 01:37:05 Speaker 1: Okay, so if you're a dirt bag in Indianapolis and you want to be treated with respect at your local fly shop. 01:37:12 Speaker 5: Well, not all fly shops sell tying stuff either, Yeah, because it's a million different skews that cost three dollars. 01:37:20 Speaker 3: You know what I mean. Change. I can't pinpoint the time, but it used to be like every fly shop, in order to be a fly shop, had materials and then all of a sudden. 01:37:31 Speaker 2: Like wall in my mind's eye, right, yeah, it's actually a dying art over in the East Coast, if you go to any of these fly fishing clubs, the average agent there is probably closer to sixty five seventy. Now, it's different out here in the West because it's still popular with the young folks, because it's it's activities. At most of the colleges you go to Colorado, it's it's the vast majority you'll see on the people in the river are you know, nineteen to thirty year olds. You go out east, most people you see on the water with a fly rod or late fifties seventies. Huge disparity between the East Coast and the West Coast. 01:38:04 Speaker 4: Whence it comes down, it's trent. It's trendy here. Yeah, it's like. 01:38:08 Speaker 1: A well, it's been that way for decades. It's not even it's not even trendy. 01:38:13 Speaker 4: Since the time I moved out here. 01:38:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, but I would even say it's like, at a point, it's just the reality. But it's not even trendy. It's just like it's it's a it's a discipline or a pursuit that remains alive and well in a part of the world. 01:38:28 Speaker 2: Yes, but unfortunately a lot of those older customer bays are starting to pass away, and then along with them the drive to tie flies, and there aren't enough replacements coming in to basically take up the helm of all these guys. There's more guys that tie flies and fly fars that are passing away than are guys that are taking up the sport parts of the US. 01:38:48 Speaker 1: I want to just pause for one mix. I want to make sure I'm clear on something. Going into a fly shop and having the big wall of all the hackles and you know, dubbing, that's becoming not a thing. I didn't. I didn't know this. 01:39:02 Speaker 3: A lot of Yeah, lots of shops have gotten rid of that because, like what Brody said is it takes up a lot of retail space and your return on that retail space is way lower than like your soft goods or your hard goods, and so like your clothing, your waiters, stuff like that, you have better margins as a retailer. 01:39:25 Speaker 5: On Yeah, you get someone like Sun coming in messing up all the materials and then you spend an hour putting everything. 01:39:32 Speaker 1: They ring it all up. He's got like thirteen bucks for stuff. 01:39:36 Speaker 3: Brody's got to get the ladder out getting up there. 01:39:38 Speaker 2: But there's a big However, that because depending on the market in the region of the US, some shops will survive solely on tying materials because the return on the tying materials is actually far superior than it is on hardware. Because you can go on there with five hundred dollars and you might walk out with a small little brown back with him cials. It adds up, yeah, five dollars, seven dollars. 01:40:03 Speaker 4: You know, you think about that that hackle that whites whiting hackle, like that stuff is not cheap. 01:40:11 Speaker 2: No, Like, just to buy a basic entry gate grade cape is forty five bucks just for one color of a specific ackle. And that's where a lot of people, when they jump into that rabbit hole is. They look at books, they'll see all the materials, and they think they have to follow exactly that material list. And those guys there will run into every fly shop and they want to tie this fly or that fly, and they will have a list and they'll buy this hackle because this one fly calls for it. They'll buy this, and next thing you know, you have boxes of shit that you will only have used once ever for one particular pattern. And then after you get into it for a couple of years you realize you get substitute a lot of stuff that you don't have. But a lot of beginner tires don't know that. And those guys there will will keep a fly shop in business because they will spend thousands of dollars just buying materials for stuff that they might not even ever catch a fish. 01:41:05 Speaker 1: It's very addictive. Do you know the editor and fly tire uh and writer Jay Nichols? You know him at all? 01:41:11 Speaker 2: I know the name. I've never met him though. 01:41:12 Speaker 1: We lived together, Okay, Yeah, and I remember going out and U shooting pine squirrels and their tails are awesome. Yeah, him taking that hair and putting in his coffee grinder, you know, bacon make it like because he used to tie for the shops. 01:41:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, right here, this is the claws on this crayfish or pine squirrel. 01:41:33 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, he used to have like he just sit there just like I guess what you're calling guide flies. Yeah, you know, not all the time, but he had a lot of times would spend time just tying and tying and tying and tying to go sell him at you know, Grizzly Hackle or whatever the hell it was. 01:41:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, but like fly shops are awesome, and for anybody that that hasn't gotten into fly fish and that's looking into it, develop a relationship with your local fla shop because they're the ones that if you if you don't one, they're probably going to go out business because all the big box store competitors is going to price them out. But if you go in there you develop that relationship, You're going to learn where to fish, where, what's biting, you know what type of flies are actually working, the time of year. You're gonna learn all these things and you never find out in a book because it's a local expert that's helping them out. And at the same time, you're also supporting your local economy and that will help you throughout the entire journey, whether it's time flies or picking the right gear, going to the right places to fish. It's spent certain times a year. There are just certain things that local guides know, local fly shops know that you can't ever find from Google or from. 01:42:37 Speaker 3: A lot of them. 01:42:38 Speaker 5: Do like tying seminars and classes and stuff. Did you did you do any of that at at that shop? 01:42:43 Speaker 2: And Indianapolis I did it with healing waters and eventually going full circle. I came back to fly Mass and I did some demos for them for customers. 01:42:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, so how do you become once you got into it? 01:42:56 Speaker 2: Uh? 01:42:59 Speaker 1: I guess ninety whatever, I don't know. Ninety nine percent of the people that start tying flies sit down and tie what they use, Okay, and they're just it's just functional, right, You're just tying them because you want to tie the flies that use Uh, how did it? What is the jump where it becomes artistry? Well, I would because you're you're not known now as just a dude that can whip out a shipload of pheasant tails before he goes out fishing. 01:43:27 Speaker 2: I wouldn't say ninety nine percent. I would probably say close to the fifty percent. Nowadays, with the influx of the younger generation getting into tying. 01:43:36 Speaker 1: I mean that people are into the artistry. Yeah. So more like your bread and butter fishermen are buying flies. Yes, and tying has become like like is it is tying retro now? 01:43:47 Speaker 2: Tying Uh? For many, like especially with guides, is a means to an end where they're supplying their own flyboxes versus having the buy. 01:43:54 Speaker 1: Out of financial considerations and so that's still a. 01:43:57 Speaker 2: Thing that's still think for others it's they the flies that they tie with their patterns. They know it's going to work better than anything they can buy, got it. So again it's still a means to an end, nop. And then for that other fifty percent, it's either for the mental health or just for the artistry. Just I mean, at the end of the day, if you look at it, it's adult arts and crafts. That's all. 01:44:16 Speaker 3: It is, arts and crafts. 01:44:18 Speaker 8: Sir. 01:44:18 Speaker 1: What was the first fly you tied that had some sort of merit beyond just being a thing that someone would go and snag in the bush behind them and write it off. That's another loss fly right. 01:44:33 Speaker 2: Probably Again, this here will be the obsessive compulsor nature of me. When I started learning, it was through books. Healing waters helped refine all that, but I was I had some books I was looking through there fly Masters of Indianapolis again, they gave me my first fice had no costs because they have, like I was telling you, on the East coast there and even the Midwest, you have a lot of people dying off. So these widows don't know what to do with their husbands. Or their grandparents' stuff, so they end up just giving it to charities or fly shops or whatever. And the fly shop there runs a lot of classes and whatnot on Saturday, so they had widows up bringing stuff all the time. So they had advice that they gave me along with the tools, some materials and whatnot. And you know, as I'm paging through this. 01:45:22 Speaker 1: Book, they gave it to you. That's bad business. Bad business. 01:45:28 Speaker 3: Hits free good? 01:45:30 Speaker 2: Is that right? 01:45:31 Speaker 1: What they had to repeat customer. And so. 01:45:35 Speaker 2: I was reading this book and reading about the history about the flies and how we got to start over there in the UK, and then how the early pioneers through to Gordon in the early nineteen hundreds took some of those British patterns and fashioned them to flies that would work in the fast moving waters up there in the Cassicall Mountain up in New York and turn them into you know, our modern drive flies today. So that really perked my interest because I'm such a history nerd that all I wanted to know the why isn't everything? And I read about it and then I looked at this one fly and I was like, man, this fly is just gorgeous. It's a pattern called the ginger quill developed in the early nineteen unders. 01:46:13 Speaker 1: The ginger quill. 01:46:13 Speaker 2: Ginger quill made out with mallard flank wings and uh strip peacock quill body hackle hold on yards. So I'm looking at this flies like I got to tie this thing. So look through the materials, didn't have it, went back to fly masters. But when I needed came back home start tying this fly. It looked like something that fell out of a bull's nose. 01:46:33 Speaker 1: But with the. 01:46:34 Speaker 2: Military background and the engineering background is like fur feathers threat ache at the best meat. I'm going to tie this damn fly. When it was all said, I tied about one hundred and twenty of these flies until I got it looked like wow, until it looked like that fly in the book, having no idea. That's not how you should start tying flies, because there's very simple patterns. You start off with the wooly buggers and all this I'm tying one of the most difficult lies there because in order to get those mallard flank feathers to sit right, they split real easily, and if you don't put the right amount of threat pressure on there, the feather. The strands between each of those feathers will just start frank. So it took over one hundred of these flies and a lot of so good, a lot of trips to fly masters. I literally bought them out of mautter of flank feathers until I got the fly look right. 01:47:25 Speaker 5: Yeah, if you just started with a San Juan worm, things could have gone. 01:47:30 Speaker 2: The funny part though, I was so proud of myself. I like, I tied this this ginger quilt, ginger quilt, just like the one in the book. And then I discovered Google and I typed ginger quill and the modern version look nothing like the ones that are in the book. Over time, it looks so much furtier the modern verses because we have better materials nowaday. 01:47:55 Speaker 1: And the modern version looked better. 01:47:57 Speaker 2: Because of the better quality hackle. When the materials there's you get genetic hackles where they. 01:48:01 Speaker 1: And you're you're working off some old ass book from the seventies or something. 01:48:05 Speaker 2: I'm taking working off a picture that was taking probably like nineteen oh five. Got it and my fly looked nothing like the modern versions. So I started all over again, and so I got it looking like the ones that I would solong on uh on Google. 01:48:16 Speaker 1: And meanwhile, are you at least fishing this thing too? 01:48:19 Speaker 3: No, I was gonna say, what what else did Google tell you about that fly? 01:48:24 Speaker 1: Dude? If you just saved those hundred and we could make a big display case the progression top to bottom, the one hundred flies lined out, it would be a nice little thing for the auction House of Oddities. 01:48:34 Speaker 2: So that fly right there was was the first. It was a fly that really right there. 01:48:38 Speaker 1: Oh, let me see this fly was, huh, the. 01:48:42 Speaker 2: One that really got me going down the rabbit hole. 01:48:44 Speaker 1: I was picturing when you when Chester just showed me the picture I was pictured something look like those old crazy Scottish like Atlantic salmon flies, right yeah, like like like Chester's crazy, not crazy, Chester's tattooed is uh. 01:48:59 Speaker 2: So when it got to me, I was tying for about eleven months now at that point, and a lot of it was just meet dabbling, figuring things out on my own and having no idea whether I was doing anything right. 01:49:10 Speaker 5: But no tying those flies on under the end of the lead where you were. 01:49:15 Speaker 2: I was fishing a lot of midges, pheasant tails, hair zier. 01:49:18 Speaker 1: So you're fishing meanwhile. 01:49:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, I literally tied every fly that was in that book, The Founding Flies, written by this gentleman my name, by the name of Mike Valaf from New York, so he's still around. Actually met him. 01:49:28 Speaker 1: Years later at he tried every fly in his book. 01:49:30 Speaker 2: I tied every fly in his book, and that included deer hair patterns, the streamers. These were all it's called like basically forty three masters guys from the nineteen hundred to the sixties that were showing their famous patterns there. And I tied like each of the ones that I saw in there. So I was figuring out how to do stuff. I was probably doing it very wrong, but I was spinning deer hair at that point because I wanted to mimic these irresistible atoms and whatnot. And it was through a lot of trial and air uh daky deer hair wrapping hackle. A lot of it was self taught, a lot of it was asking questions over at the local fly shops and uh, some of the guys over Project heilling Waters knew some of the answers, some did, and then so at eleven months they they Project Heiling Waters told me there's a national fly Time competition that they wanted me to enter, and I was like, what the heck, what is it. They're like, well, just a bit, you know, five of the same patterns, and if you you win in it, you know it's good for the program, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, all right, sure, so I I tied five fans. 01:50:37 Speaker 3: We're not aware that these competitions exist at this point. 01:50:41 Speaker 2: I had no idea how big this was because to me, I thought it was just like like a local chapter. 01:50:47 Speaker 1: This is so much like a movie. This is like the part and Karate Kid when he finds out about the karate contest. 01:50:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I tied five of these fan wing fan wing quote Gordon's and five of the stimulators, which is very popular was created out of here out west. 01:51:05 Speaker 1: And were you? You weren't You didn't happen to be like in a romantic rivalry with another. 01:51:11 Speaker 2: Tire where nobody even knew who I was. 01:51:13 Speaker 1: He was not like, you're not trying to win a woman's favorite. I'm just thinking about the movie here. You're not trying to win a woman's favorite through fly Time. Well, you gets like a real asshole who's good at times. 01:51:23 Speaker 3: Well, there's somebody at the fly shop and you guys reached for the same hackle at the same time, and he may have said something discriminatory and then you reunite the competition. 01:51:40 Speaker 2: So my buddy, his name is Joe Jackson. He's from Indiana. Also, he was also that that got out from from disabilities. 01:51:48 Speaker 3: There's another Joe Jackson from Indiana, the Jackson the family. 01:51:57 Speaker 2: Oh, never minding the competition too. 01:52:02 Speaker 1: At one time, Phil says something I had no idea that he totally derails the conversation. 01:52:06 Speaker 2: Nobody gets it, continued, He submitted flies also, and I didn't I didn't know that he had submitted flies if several people from that same program, and so they invited all the files. I was notified. You know, I was one of the top five finalists for this competition. And then there was this International fly Time Supposium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and they paid my way to get out there, put me up in the hotel, and then come check out the show. Who was tied at the boots so you have to tie him there? No, you submitted them. And then there was a panel of all these like renowned expert tires from across the US that analyzed the work, that analyzed the work, So it seems ripe for fraud could be. 01:52:44 Speaker 5: When they do when they do analyze them, are they deconstructing them? Are they just looking at. 01:52:48 Speaker 2: They're looking at them. They see if they all look the same, the proportions are correct. 01:52:52 Speaker 1: I'm surprised you don't need to tie it in front of them. 01:52:55 Speaker 2: Well, you eventually do that if you. I mean, they have a like a little boot there where you get an hour block and you said, had. 01:53:02 Speaker 5: You worked your way up to like a real nice souped up rotary ronsetti vice yet or you're just working on that same one that they gave to you. 01:53:09 Speaker 2: That was advice they gave me was ritt yea, they gave you. 01:53:13 Speaker 1: A good one. Tell me this vice again, I never heard of. 01:53:18 Speaker 3: I gave you. 01:53:19 Speaker 1: My daughter's is a rinsettie, the old one. Hey tell you. The only thing we tie on her his lead ahead. 01:53:26 Speaker 5: Well, either way, that's like that. 01:53:30 Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some other good companies that make them. Thank you. What's it all the rubber bands and whatnot on there? 01:53:35 Speaker 5: Well, because there's a little piece on there that keeps keeps the flex on the jaws and that rubber, you know what I'm talking about, goes around the jaws that broke. 01:53:45 Speaker 2: So I just put a rubber. 01:53:47 Speaker 1: It's a round zetti. 01:53:49 Speaker 2: It's a rubber zetti. 01:53:50 Speaker 1: I don't know. 01:53:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, they're based out of Florida. 01:53:55 Speaker 1: And that's the cats asked for. Cast me out for vices. 01:54:00 Speaker 2: No, I have, I think only eleven vices at home. 01:54:03 Speaker 1: What's your favorite? 01:54:05 Speaker 2: I really don't have one particular one. I use them all because they all serve a different purpose. There's a couple that I bought them because they're they were cool to look at, but functionally wise, they weren't as good as some of the other ones. But like Norvice is one of the ones I used quite a bit. Rensetti Regal was another good one. There's a lot of different companies. 01:54:22 Speaker 1: It makes the most kick ass pair of little scissors. 01:54:25 Speaker 2: UH company would call it the renowned because they're they're based off of German scissors. Yeah, and they're sharpes scissors by far. I mean, the engineering behind them is phenomenal. 01:54:36 Speaker 1: Now, what could have what could have fell a uh put into a pair of scissors? Good pair of scissors. Oh yeah, you're. 01:54:44 Speaker 2: Gonna say something crazy no, you can put more money into advice. 01:54:48 Speaker 1: I'm a scissors like a scissors enthusiast. Yeah, you want to. 01:54:50 Speaker 2: Get a pair of really good scissors. And so, uh, going back onto that time competition when I was there, they started announcing all these winners off, fifth place, fourth place, et cetera. And then finally it was me and Joe left and then they announced Joe. I was just, you know, the first runner up. I'm like sitting there like this. They really even down on me. I was like everybody else is gone and I'm still sitting there at the table. You yeah, that's one of like the guys around me. They're like congratulations sign and I'm like, oh ship, I want So they called off my name and then gave me. They gave me the Regal Advice as one of the prize, along with certificates and all this stuff like. 01:55:28 Speaker 1: First yeah, first runner up is confusing. I remember entering an essay contest and getting the letter when I was in high school, getting the letter that I was first runner up. I thought it meant at one, and then someone had to be like, no, that's not what that means. You're like despike the word first. It's like your second. 01:55:45 Speaker 5: It's a more flattering way of saying second. 01:55:57 Speaker 2: So first and second place ended up being two guys from the same program. It was me and Joe, but. 01:56:01 Speaker 1: Out of people from around the whole country. 01:56:03 Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was pretty cool. 01:56:06 Speaker 1: Did you guys have the same mentor Uh? 01:56:08 Speaker 2: He was there quite a few years longer than I was. I was just I was still relative that they knew there, So I really don't know how he Uh he was taught. I know, he was self taught a lot of stuff. He does a lot of deer hair stuff also, but he was very involved with the program at that point, and I was like the new guy coming in. 01:56:24 Speaker 1: And so what was the average these guys that are tying in this in this competition? Were you guys? Were you guys relatively young? 01:56:31 Speaker 2: I was always relatively old compared those other to other tires, Yeah, that are in the program. Most of these guys are either veterans that that did you know, three years, got out some disability, or got injured in their seventh year. So you had the vast majority of them are probably I mean, it's gonna vary between programs mid thirties to mid forties, yep. 01:56:57 Speaker 1: And but I guess that it's great, and that's an interesting thing that I could appreciate that because you stayed in for so long. But what I meant was the fly tying, the competitive fly tying community in general. Tens old. Yeah, okay, yeah, So I don't know if the eyesight thing eventually bombs ye out or. 01:57:18 Speaker 2: It does, but they make cheaters and everything you can wear for them, Like I have really good eyesight. I mean we see it about twenty fifteen or so, so I have that advantage with my eyesight. But the other part to it was like back then it was one huge competition where first place was against everybody, whether you've been tying for six months or you've been tying for six years, there was no difference. Nowadays they break it down my beginner, intermediate, advance. So it was pretty cool to have basically won that competition, and that opened up the can of worms from there because they started announcing I started my first social media page because I was still using like mass emails to attach pictures of flies that I'll send it on my buddies. It's like, hey, look at this one, Look at this one. They're like, dude, I only just open up a social media account, so everybody just look at it without having to open up emails and whatnot. And that's how I end up starting the insecretive account, was just so that people. 01:58:15 Speaker 1: Will look at these and what is the Instagram account? 01:58:17 Speaker 2: It's a Sun Underscore tel and so they they started looking at these flies and next you know, like I get these notifications. So and so is following. You were like, what the hell is this person doing. I didn't know what it was. And I started getting these messages and I had no idea what a DM was. And then it was my cousin that told me, hey, somebody just likes what you're posting up on there. And eventually I had a question if somebody could ask me like a. 01:58:43 Speaker 3: Demonstrator, like don't worry, you don't have to go kick their ass, like they just like what you're doing. 01:58:47 Speaker 2: I thought it was just my friends that were following this account. I realized that strangers that I could just follow your account. So somebody had asked me to post a like detail how I tie in a specific technique. It's like hackle wrap or something like that. So I tried to explain, but it was taking me long, so I just recorded the video and I posted up there and the next you know, like this video I had like over a thousand likes. And I was on social media at that point for like three months or something like, and so I was like, wow, a thousand people like this, And so I started posting more of these videos and these these flies, and the I guess the algorithm love these little videos or whatever, and the account just like like really blew up. And then it spanned of like a six years that you know, went up to somewhere in eighty thousand some range now. And then in the fly fishing or in the grand scheme thing, it's not a whole lot, but for the fly fishing industry itself, it's equivalent probably having like a million followers in like a mass industry because fly fishing is so small and so but this is like the fly tying world tying in fishing because the one difference with my account is I try to mix in the fish that I catch along with the flies that I tie, and then it's flies that that are proven patterns that work. It's just I show the techniques. It's basically sixty second video is what they boil down to on how to do the major portions of these. I'll speed up the mundane stuff with the raps, and they'll slow it down on the more intricate parts. And then somebody that has a general idea how to tie they could basically capture how to tie this fly in a span of like sixty seconds versus having to sit through, you know, fifteen twenty thirty minute YouTube videos on a tutorial. So somebody just wants the basic idea of how to do something, they were looking at these videos, and over the course of that time, I got to meet quite a few cool people in the industry a lot, Like I meant that author, he knew who I was, and it was his book that got right. 02:00:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh that's cool. 02:00:42 Speaker 2: Same deal with Like that's a good part of the movie too, right, manufacturers of most of these vices, Like when I went to Sims with Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundation, I mean, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring them up, And we talked about that a little more a minute. But when I first came here for my first outing with Warriors and Quiet Waters, they took us to the SIMS factory to outfit us with with SIMS gear and along give us you know, fly rods and whatnot taking the vets. At that point, I was already fishing for a little bit, but a lot of vets come here and they ain't never done it before. So when I went there, a lot of the guys that are working as SIMS knew who I was from from the social media aspect there and that was yeah, yeah. So one of the guys, he doesn't work there anymore, his name is Brent, but he came out he was like, man, do you have any flies with you? I was like, yeah, I got my fly box out here in my pack and he said, can I check the my house? And I was like yeah, sure. Brought him in there and he's looking through all these flies like you can have him when he's and he still has them on his man or he lives here in Bozeman, and but he never fished and we kept them. So I didn't realize that, you know, time, flies gonna have that much impact for some people, and there are people that really love the artistry and the uh the work that's behind in concept of fly. The longest time there for me was just basically a way to relax in a way to catch fish. I don't have a single fly, that's fright. 02:01:58 Speaker 7: Do you. 02:02:00 Speaker 5: Will you fish with a fly tied by someone else? 02:02:04 Speaker 1: Or is that no? 02:02:05 Speaker 2: I have no problems doing that, Okay, I won't fish with flies that are tied overseas and the sweatshops right because they're they're garbage. 02:02:13 Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I didn't know that that was the thing till till a couple of years ago that that had become a that there's a couple of countries that where is it somewhere? 02:02:27 Speaker 2: Yeah, Kenya. Now there are some companies that are very good and they take very good care of those workers, and some. 02:02:33 Speaker 4: Are what percentage of flies in these fly shops do you think are tied overseas? 02:02:42 Speaker 2: Ninety I bet I would say probably close to the ninety five percent, much lower in some of the local shops here, for example, like a huge fly fishing community like Montanam Bozeman. A lot of the fly shops here probably maybe fifty percent, maybe a little bit more. So the really good one will support local tires. And then there are some people that tie commercially and that's all they do, eight hours of a day is just tie flies for shops. I mean, I'd rather stick up food in my eye than do that for eight hours. But there's there's people that do that for a living. 02:03:12 Speaker 1: And it'll be like a carpal tunnel component to that shattoo. 02:03:15 Speaker 2: And then just the for me, I would get bored doing the same reea when you get. 02:03:21 Speaker 5: Into order for yeah, that's when inconyms and you just gotta do the same. 02:03:27 Speaker 2: A lot of people that ask me the tie flies, how much did I sell them for? And I don't sell flies for. 02:03:30 Speaker 1: That, So you don't make any jingle off fly time. 02:03:33 Speaker 2: Uh No, I don't sell anything, make any money off of it. I just do it basically. I enjoy it, you know, So yeah, you don't. 02:03:41 Speaker 1: You don't make like you don't just sell where I could just buy this. As a person that collective flies. 02:03:45 Speaker 2: Now, there are times where I will put together like a shadow box or something like that, or tie like two or three dozen flies for silent auxs and charities. And then because I don't sell flies, then those those shadow boxes, those flies that are meant for fishing and whatnot, they go for an astronomical amount that helps those organizations out. So maybe one the two times a year I'll offer flies for sale to help out a cause like I did one here for Warriors and Quiet Waters Foundations several years ago, and then they they paired it up with you know, nine nine rounds of golf with Jordan Speith, and so they pair they do that with alumni where will some guides will take other people on the trip. I donated flies and then I do some for Healing Waters, like I still stay active with them, and then donate flies for the fly Fishing film tour in in Indianapolis, and they have a silent auction there and generally one of those shadow boxing go for as much as like five hundred and six hund dollars because people want some of these flies and I don't have them for sale. 02:04:47 Speaker 1: So you just live off your army money. 02:04:49 Speaker 2: Uh not totally. I mean I would be lying if I said that, because like on Facebook and on TikTok for videos, I get paid for. 02:04:58 Speaker 1: Some of the views. 02:04:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's some secondary income that comes off of that. I mean it's not you can make a living off of it per se, because I don't have like the millions of followers on YouTube or whatever. But it's enough to pay for a fishing trip here or there. 02:05:13 Speaker 1: So now that you're retiring from. Now that you're retiring from the army, what's your plan? 02:05:18 Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it's gonna be boiled down to what my wife wants to do, because for twenty two years, she well she's her and the kids have followed me around the country and then pretty much had really no say in the matter other than where we're gonna live once we got there. So they're gonna play a big part of it. I know they're more tempted to go back up to the Northeast to be close to the family because my mom's starting to get up there in years, my sister, my brother lives there. But there are some opportunities. I do want to get into the outdoor industry. I cannot go back into the engineering world anymore. There's no way I could sit in a freaking cubicle for eight hours a day after spending the last twenty years in the military. So there are some offers that I've had it for. Most of it's for guides, some of the working fly shops, for services, stuff like that. I mean, there's one offer here in Montana working with Healing Waters Lodge. Basically Mike Gary offered me to be one of the guides on his expeditions through the Smith River. He gets the large portion of the permits that go through there, and so he's always looking for vets to hire, and another ones to help a buddy that runs a guide business in Wyoming up there in the northwest, and the Titans doing some of those cutthroat type chips. So right now, it's it's still very fresh because the decision was, you know, finally made that we're going to retire next year, and so at this point right now, I'm just trying to figure out all the different objects of war. I finally decide which one I want to do. 02:06:51 Speaker 3: Retirement making nervous. 02:06:53 Speaker 2: It does because after doing it's almost like prison. The military. You had a structured lifestyle for twenty years and now suddenly all that's gonna go away and you're going into that civilian force and you're on your own. So yeah, anybody that says otherwise that was in the service, they're lying. 02:07:13 Speaker 3: All my buddies say it's hard, it's hard, and I mean for years right after. So yeah, it's a challenge. 02:07:21 Speaker 2: The other challenge is basically because I've always been in charge of large groups of people for so long now that everybody had to listen to, you know, orders that I gave, and going to civilian workforce ain't gonna be like that. I might have to work for an idiot that is no better than somebody that should be sitting by a dumpster somewhere. 02:07:43 Speaker 1: But yeah, you should be looking my boots, buddy. 02:07:45 Speaker 2: And I end up being a subordinate to them, and I have to bite my tongue. So those are things that you know, I am concerned about because somebody didn't like something, or I didn't like some the way somebody's doing something, I'd give them a nearful and then they would fix their their shit. And that's how the military works. That's where the discipline comes in. And I realized I'm not an idiot, and I realized you can't do that in the civilian workforce. But that does scare the shit out of you too, having the work for people potentially that have no business being at charge of others. 02:08:14 Speaker 1: I got a friend I tell this story all the time. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it on the show here, but I have a friend who retired from the army, and then one of his teammates retired from the army, and right away as teammate killed himself. Yeah, I texted him, I said, I said, we were texting about this, and I'll always remember the text. The kind of one of the most compelling sentences I've ever received in a text message is I said, I don't understand, like, what is that? Why does that happen like that? And his reply was it was the wild West during those war years and then it's over in an instant, And that was all that's in his mind, sufficed as an explanation. It's a really. 02:09:00 Speaker 2: Difficult subject to talk about because it's such a huge problem with veterans. I mean, there's all sorts of different stats. I'm not going to bore anybody with these different stats, but on average, you know, you have veterans that are over fifty percent likelier than their civilian counterparts that ever served to commit suicide. And the early parts of the war, He's very correct. They threw you into the waywell west you come back, and there was no support system. For example, my first deployment, we were the theater QRF in Iraq. They had no basically area of operations assigned for US specifically, so every time there was a major engagement going on, somewhere or things were about to flare up. They would move my entire battalion to that engagement, not realizing that all these different engagements, firefights that we were getting too, would have a toll. And so those were things that people never thought about back then. Like my battalion there probably got into more campaigns than any other unit they're in the history of the Iraq War because we were just like the theater cure out for everything, bouncing around. We didn't stay anywhere for longer than thirty five days. And so you have a bunch of young men and women that you know, some of them seventeen years old, eighteen years old, and they're seeing firefights and deaths for the first time. Id's going off the whole nine yards, local civilians getting blown up, all sorts of shit, and uh so we did that for fourteen months. If things weren't bad enough. They had initially told the unit we were going to be home by Christmas because it was going to be twelve months at that. 02:10:37 Speaker 3: Mark, which is kind of a big deal for people. 02:10:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was something to look forward to. So we were all looking forward to it. We're gonna be home by Christmas. Tell any of our loved ones, et cetera. And then the first elections happened in Iraq in two thousand and five, and they extended us for an additional couple three months, and they moved us to another area up there in Missoil to help oversee the security for these first elections. So Christmas went out the window, and we end up being there for fourteen months before the fifteen month deployments were even the thing. They were extending unit. There was like unit up in Alaska that were on their way home and got rerouted back. Yeah, so they had family members that were waiting at. 02:11:13 Speaker 1: Their talking about some phone calls. 02:11:14 Speaker 2: Man, oh yeah, I mean, holy shit. There were zero shits given about the repercussions of some of these actions because the war had to be fought as soldiers. You know, it sucks, but we did what we were told, So we went through all that. We get back and you basically start taking thirty days of leave right away. Now the military is like a mountain pot of all different cultures, upbringings, backgrounds, and whatnot. You have some kids that never had a friend in their life and now suddenly they're surrounded by people that are watching their six all the time, and they have a supports system there. They're going through all this crap, getting into these engagement and these firefights, seeing him all sorts of stuff, but they had buddy there that we're dealing with the same stuff, and that's why it makes the military is very unique. The only other agencies that are very similar to that as like some of the the HRTs SWAT because they go through a lot of crap too, and so any organization that goes through a lot of heartache and a lot of suck fests in essence, the people get closer because you're enduring that same pain and all the horrible things that go with it. And so that's why the infantry is very unique. Like the special forces community and all the branches, whether it's the Seals, the Air Force, whatever, it's a very close knit group because all the things that you're dealing with, somebody else is dealing with too. So you have these young kids that had fellow buddies that were dealing with all that, so they never felt like they were alone. We get back from these deployments and then everybody's scattered to the four winds, and now suddenly you have these kids that never had a friend of their life until they joined the military or buy them cells for thirty freaking days after just going through all that crap overseas, and then those those demons start coming and they started getting those nightmares, they started hitting the bottle, they start taking drugs, and there was there's a major problem with basically suicide because the initial part of it was the PTSD from combat soldiers. Nowadays, the vast majority of soldiers that are committing suicide and activity have never been deployed. Veterans that have gotten out, some deployed, some don't. The vast majority have PTSD or from deployments. But there was never really a good support system in place for that entire global war terror on how to deal with soldiers come back from wars. We didn't learn a damn thing from the Vietnam War because those Vietnam vets came back with the same shit. They were dealing with the same issues soldiers from World War One, world War two. So you're talking about the entire history of America's wars. We didn't learn a thing. Basically, soldiers were just once you were done with you and they spit you out, you're off in your own and society didn't really know how to deal with soldiers and having all these these these different issues and demons. And for the soldiers, when you when we have a tendency to do something we don't have as it, we just go full bore. There's no different with suicide. There's a difference between crying out for help and if you actually want to commit suicide, soldiers will do it. And a lot of times, uh, there are sums that have warning signs that you could tell there's something wrong and then uh, just be be a buddy and ask direct, are you going to hurt yourself? Is something? Is everything? Okay, just be direct. But there are other ones that will hide all those demons and have no idea that you have, no idea that they're contemplating suicide in the side that brings because they would put on that facade and I ran across that multiple times. My last unit over in Colorado, we had five suicides in our battalion alone in one year, and none of those kids deployed. 02:15:02 Speaker 1: What's the battalion size? 02:15:03 Speaker 2: Italian size was roughly about nine. 02:15:05 Speaker 1: Hundred and five suicides in one year. 02:15:09 Speaker 2: We had I think it was close to eleven and three years, and these were most of these kids were nineteen and twenty five, never deployed, So it's it's there's trauma that that soldiers that deployed have, and there's also trauma that soldiers never deployed have because the lifestyle sometimes is enough for soldiers to push them one way or another, and a lot of vast majority and I think this also applies probably to all civilians too, where you start mixing alcohol, drugs, financial merital issues, those are usually the big ones right there that will push people towards suicide. And you combine those things together and you're talking about it recipe for disaster. And unfortunately, the stigma with seeking help is still strong and prevalent to this day the longest time for my vast majority of my military career. If you told somebody you had to go see a behavior health specialist for some mental health stuff, you were labeled and then you were basically like an outcast. And then the military eventually realized that I was wrong, and then they start encouraging people to go seek help to deal with all these issues without having any repercussions. But for a while, there were repercussions if you sought medical assistance for mental health. But even though people say no, nobody's gonna judge you for that, there's still that strong stigma and people are afraid of being labeled or having that sigma. And I think it's military and civilian side, but I'm telling you it's like, no matter how bad it is, it's never that bad where your life is not that important, and there's a lot of different agencies out there that can help you. The most important ones, like I said, are the ones that are available twenty four hours a day, regardless of where you're at, and you could talk to them and nobody will know. Ninety eighty eight is a really good one. 02:16:58 Speaker 1: So say that one again. 02:17:01 Speaker 2: You could text, call, or chat and it's completely anonymous, and they're a nine. 02:17:04 Speaker 1: Eight eight short core and well it's like nine but different. 02:17:09 Speaker 2: Just text ninet eighty eight yep. 02:17:11 Speaker 7: And then let me explain a little bit about that one. 02:17:13 Speaker 8: And I'll put a list of organizations and resources in the show notes, but if we can verbalize some of that on air, it'd be helpful. 02:17:22 Speaker 2: They're available to military and civilians, it's to everybody. And if you ever are feeling down and you think that you may possibly hurt yourself. You could text, call, or chat with somebody and then they will get you professional health and no cost to you, and it's available twenty four hours a day. The other one stops soldier suicide. They have the the one eight number that's also twenty four hours a day where you can get professional health or active duty military regardless of branch. And then those that are transitioning within are three hundred and sixty five basically one year from the time your separation and under You could also utilize Military one source dot com. I know a lot of my fellow brothers and sisters don't like that stigma of seeking behavioral health. So if you go to Military one Source, you will get five counseling sessions with a professional that's completely anonymous that never gets reported to your chain of command, So that way you can get that help. But there the VA also has a hotline that you can call. There's multiple agencies. Like Corn said, she'll publish a list. But your life is important because the minute you're gone, you leave avoid in somebody's life. I mean, it's a difficult subject to talk about, but it's a reality. And then the problem is there's a lot of leaders that don't know how to deal with it, so they either brush it off turn a blind eye to it. And then leaders also fail to change with the times. So like this current generation, like I label. I know people hate label, but I call them the meat generation. Because everything's instantaneous. With the push of a button, you want something tomorrow, Amazon one day delivery, within two days, you're gonna have something else. Everything is instantaneous at the touch of the phone. So social media and smartphones are have been great to the network and reach out to others, but also it's been a curse because you could hide behind being an anonymous person, behind that and show a different facade, and then the same deal with when you start suffering it through through all these mental pains or life issues that you're dealing with. Just like ordering something instantaneously, you could just not deal with it instantaneously. And it needs to stop. And the only way it can stop is to educate people that it's okay to have issues and to seek out that help. Because everybody, regardless you know what ma Maye joke about, has an important role to play because there's people that care about and that's military and civilians. 02:19:42 Speaker 1: I like, well, man, I appreciate the you being so open about it. 02:19:49 Speaker 2: It's tough and there's some things you know, I'll be a blunt I don't like talking about it because it brings back bad memories, it brings back people that I've cared about. But I feel it's important because there's so many people that are taking away their lives way too soon, not realizing there's more to come. I've gone through my fair share heart ache two and try to utilize different means to drown out that pain. And I still get nightmares nowadays. But at the same time, you have to find basically an outlet, like a a useful outlet. I don't know what the right word is, but something constructive. And for me it was fly fishing. For me, it's being outdoors, whether it's taking photographs because I love photography also, or hiking or whatever the case may be. And then my kids are another big part of that. For you, it might be something else, but you have to find something that is constructive means if you're so focused, because for so long I was focused on just military military and military combat, combat combat, and then I was destroying my own self. If you go down that route, that that route, then you're going to be in a dark place. So regardless of whether you're in your service for the first year or you're in your fifteenth twenty year service, find a constructive outlet because you have to do something that will take your mind off of all the crap that you deal with on a day to day basis. And if you're not in the service, same deal, it's no different. It's anybody out there. You can have some type of constructive hobby. That's why hunting and fishing is so great for that. 02:21:25 Speaker 8: And there are organizations like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Armed Forces Initiative, others that are in the outdoor industry that are vets support. 02:21:37 Speaker 7: I know that you. 02:21:40 Speaker 8: Work with Warriors and Quiet Waters a lot too, so feel free to share about that. 02:21:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I came here. Gosh, it was like I think two thousand and seventeen or twenty eighteen, and the program was a little bit different than they brought. I think it was six of US veterans. There were three Navy Seals guy, two other guys that were out of the service altogether because of injuries they had sustained. And then you had volunteers. Some were prior militaries. Some had kids that were in the military. My my buddy that was that was partnering with me was a gold Star family member where he had a son that died in combat, but the honorest son he wanted to give back still, so he was a volunteer there over the Quiet Water's ranch, and they brought us in together and then they they basically immersed us into fishing, teaching us how to fish. And then it's just like most most veterans, like the first day, nobody's really talking because you don't know who's who. Day two they started chatting a little bit, and by day three they're talking to their buddies, the volunteers, and then by day four, everybody's hugging and laughing. By day five, people are sharing their experiences, and it's it gets to be pretty emotional because you think that you're going through some shiit and you hear some of these stories of what people are dealing with. Like the one guy there that was at that ranch during my first encounter with quiet he had entirely his entire insides like blowing out backwards, and he was he was in pain all the time, the scars that he had there because like missing parts of his intestines and whatnot. Sow He's he was a vet that lost both legs from California. He came back here. Now he's one of the program leads that over there and Quiet Waters ran they do a lot for veterans and they immersed them here in Montana and show him that there there's ways to heal through the outdoors. But the great thing about those organizations like Quiet Waters is like when you're done with the program, you're not done. They don't just like check you off. Like I still stay in contact with Jesse, who I met, you know in two thousand and eight. I'm going fishing within tomorrow. And you're part of that outreach or that reach. Their outreach to you is all year long, and you're just because you went through there, you're not forgotten. You're always gonna be an alumni. And I've came back again a couple of years later. It was last year I flowed the Smith River them and then coincide in this podcast here to go to Warrior Taste Vest this Friday to reconnect with a lot of the members. There are the volunteers and they're sixteen alumni that are coming back so they're one of the great organizations out there. There's a lot of them. We don't have time to show to mention all these different veterans organizations, but there's a lot of organizations out there that will help. And regardless of your level expectees, you can have no idea what you're doing and they'll teach you everything you need to know. The same deal with if you don't have any interest in fishing, there's hunt for a Purpose. They'll teach you how to hunt. They'll teach you how to fire a rifle, they'll teach you how to use a boat. 02:24:36 Speaker 1: Warriors for Quiet Waters. I went and gave a talk there because they're doing some stuff unhunting right now. 02:24:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, they have like basically, I think it's a six month hunting program yep, where you teach o the fundamentals of hunting from you know, selecting equipment to all the way the end result of stalking and firing that boat. 02:24:54 Speaker 4: A lot of those guys probably know their way around to rifle pretty well already though. 02:24:58 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Let me hit you with one last question. Twenty two you've been married twenty two years? 02:25:05 Speaker 2: No, No, I've been married eighteen years. 02:25:07 Speaker 1: Eighteen years. 02:25:08 Speaker 2: Yep, I met her after being in service for about four years. 02:25:10 Speaker 1: Hit us with some marriage Hit me with your best marriage advice. 02:25:13 Speaker 2: You're never the boss, that's the god. 02:25:16 Speaker 1: Honest. 02:25:17 Speaker 2: This goes out to men and women, men and women, but mainly to the men, because most of the men thinks they wear in the family the pants in the family. How I kept my marriage together compared to most other soldiers is every time I deployed, I came back like a different person. And then while I'm gone, despite my what you may think, life goes on. There's still bills that have to be paid, there's still kids that need to be fit, there's still diapers that gotta be changed. And your significant other is the one that's doing all that while you're going out there fighting for your country. So when you come back and you try to basically take over all those same responsibilities again, you're about to get into the boxing match because they also changed. They got used to you being one, They got used to handling all that shit that you used to do. So you have to ease yourself back into it. 02:26:02 Speaker 1: If they come in pissing on your post. 02:26:05 Speaker 2: And that's how like that was the success to my marriage is coming back and then allowing her to still do whatever she wanted to do while I was gone, and then she wanted me to take over something she would vocalize it. I never pretended like I was in charge. I knew after my first deployment there, I was no longer in charge because she was strong enough to handle an entire household with kids while I was going. 02:26:29 Speaker 1: Because I travel a lot for work and have the whole time I've you know, known my wife. She a while came up with a thing where she said, if it's not going to be a big deal when you leave, it's not going to be a big deal when you come home. And there's a lot. There's a lot to that. 02:26:50 Speaker 2: I also had one thing before we end it. So with fly fishing, regardless of your level expertise when it comes to it, there's a these shows that it around all over the US. If you ever want to dip your fingers into it, just check what I was like to see some tying or see people demonstrate casting. The fly Fishing Show has shows all across the US, from California all the way in Massachusetts down the Georgia and then during my first exposure with this show, I met a lot of really really great people all across the industry. I met several people from Montana to California, all ver like you get tires that come over from Europe to come there, and these different authors. And then one of the great organizations that I met, well there is Uncharted Outdoors Women. They're based out of Colorado, and they're also trying to break the stigma of having women in the outdoor industry, where they take it upon themselves to take women fly fishing, taking them on hunts, whether it's duck, geese, animal calls. So my grand friend Aaron spearheads all that and she basically takes takes the role of the lead for Colorado, Montana, Oregon Ome. She just does all this stuff here to get more women out there. So there's a huge stigma that this is a male dominated industry is so far from the truth. Yeah, you have some idiots out there that may say that, but we welcome all genders, regardless of whether you're male or female. Pick up a bowl, pick up a rifle, pick up a fly rod, You're welcome in this industry. And I just had to give that shout out to Aaron, and. 02:28:21 Speaker 1: Then thanks man, Good luck fishing tomorrow. 02:28:25 Speaker 2: Hopefully it should be a good time of year with a hopper season here in September. This is like literally probably the best month of fish here in Montana. 02:28:32 Speaker 3: Got some cooler tamps. 02:28:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. And then, so here's a litt unknown fact, useless fact that I'm really good at. Is these hoppers, grasshoppers, crickets or whatever, they have a parasite called the horsehair worm that they ingest when they eat grass. They grow us right, and they grow into this parasite inside the grasshopper or the crickets or whatever, And when it's time for those pairs to breed, they take over those hoppers' brains and they make them jump into the water commit kamakazi suicide so that they can basically expel themselves out of the hopper and then get find a mate, lay eggs in the grass, and the cycle starts all over again, because when the water level drops, grasshoppers eat the grass they get effect again. So that's why grasshoppers jump in the water at this time of the year and dry dropper rigs work. 02:29:22 Speaker 1: I thought it was all accident. I thought he meant to land somewhere else, But landing in the water. 02:29:27 Speaker 2: They all land in the water for that reason, because those horse hair worms need the water in order to find a meat. So that's why September at early, my. 02:29:35 Speaker 1: Kids must be infected with that parasite land in the water, no matter what they're doing. All right, man, thanks for coming on. Man, it's been a great conversation. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate all the you know, I don't want to call it advice, but the guidance for people who might be who might be in a you know, in a bad state of affairs, but fear that stigma or fear reaching out. So I think it's it's great for you to speak to it from that, from that position of having been there. So thank you. 02:30:03 Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if I'd reached one vet that's listening to the this podcast or watching the YouTube, then yeah, I don't care how much it hurts to talk, then it was worth it. 02:30:12 Speaker 1: All right, Thank. 02:30:12 Speaker 2: You, Thank you. 02:30:14 Speaker 1: A ride on on. 02:30:26 Speaker 8: Seal Grey shine like silver in the sun. 02:30:36 Speaker 11: Ride ride on alone, sweetheart. 02:30:44 Speaker 9: We're done beat this damn horse today. Taking her new drive. We're done beat this damn horse today, So take a new one and ride on 02:31:11 Speaker 5: MHM