00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is an eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, Jimmy darn How how many um when the Seahawks got like, how many pizzas did it cost you? When the Seahawks lost one of their playoff games? How many pizzas? Oh goodness, it's gotta be thousands of pizzas. It's quite a few because I had all that to go, the carryouts of phone rings out the wall for several hours a super Bowl games, being a Seattle pizza man, it's with the Seahawks and the super Bowl. It's a good day selling some pizzas. I was. I didn't go to work the next day output to that way. It was because just you're depressed about business done if I gotta look at it in two days, so you really feel it? Oh? Absolutely, Yeah. The team does well and it's good for the Hawks. It's good for me. We love when when they come around. We treat him real well when we see him, the players, players coach. Uh, Jimmy dorn Um, do you remember how we met? I do, so. I moved to Seattle and I put up a thing on social media of some sort of saying like, hey, man, moved. I moved to Seattle, And unbeknownst to me, Jimmy Doran, who's in the pizza business, can we tell the name of your pizza, Playtown Pizza. Jimmy Dorn was in the pizza business, owns Belltown Pizza. Unbeknownst to me, he says email and saying, hey man, I saw uh, Steve moved to Seattle. Tell him he's welcoming. Time to drop by my pizza place. We'll talk a little hunting. I had no idea this went on. So when we moved to see how we were in temporary housing for a little bit, and I took my youngster out to get a haircut and we had to wait a long from to get his damn haircut. Then by the time we got done getting his haircut, I knew I didn't have time to go home and make dinner because kids like there's a window when they want to eat. So we're walking down and lo and behold, here's this place called Belltown Pizza. And I walked in with my kid just to order a pizza. And also there's a dude stand and being like, I can't leave you came pretty much and I'm looking around like, I don't really understand. Man. There's a lot of people here eat pizza, and we've been we've been friendly ever since. But the thing I wanted to ask you, so this has nothing to do with uh, hunting and fishing and wild meat, but when the when the Seahawks they just like got kicked out with it? Was it the playoffs? Playoffs? Sex they lost the game they did. That's got like that sucks for a pizza man, right, Yeah, Well, we're obviously a lot busier if we're winning. We got a bunch of TVs, a lot of people. Do you like to come down and watch the Game's a good spot for it, and uh yeah absolutely. When we lose, it's you know, it's over a lot significantly less people come out next week. So if it's a game night or game day or game night, are you like, oh man, we're selling pizzas now, Oh yeah, no doubt about it. No ship, Yeah, no, it works like a champ. That's why it's, like said, very fortunate. We've had a pretty darn good football team here for a couple of years, so it's definitely been a boom, especially it comes to the playoffs, always called January February. Getting in the first quarters generally slow, and when we're winning, it's like the high clover. Scott's all right, all right? So that that that's the lovely and beautiful Jimmy darn Um. They'll Tom pizza and then uh. Also here as a guest is Matt Elliott. Matt would have to say for yourself. What do I have to say for myself? I'm a I'm a Patriots fan. Sorry, but around the ball, yeah, uh, nothing much do you. I'm happy to be here. We'll tell everybody what you do for a little work a bench bade knife company. I'm the director of marketing and I love hunting and fishing, big fan of the show and drove up here this morning. Came up to do a little talking about sounds like some Q and A. You know, now, the last time you were here, did we cover the fact that you are a obsessive fisherman, an obsessive fisher of smallmouth bass. No. The only thing I think we mentioned about fishing ones that I kind of grew in my tooth biting fishing line. Yeah. Well, he mass got like a souped up bass boat. It does a lot of bass fishing, and in conversation he uh revealed to me that he has never tasted a bass like you can't bring yourself. Yeah, I don't know if it's I can't bring myself to do it. There's a most hardcore at least competitive bass fish their catch release, and I just have never eaten bass. So I just haven't never a little curious. I'm not Oh yeah, I'm not against it. He told me. I told you I'd eat something you said if I came down and fish. But it's just like, never even a little bit curious. Well, I always have a freezer full of salmon. I've got halibit. I just I don't know. Yeah, with you, um and where I grew up, uh, small mouths were considered a food fish, like an eating fish. Large mouth were considered not not generally not generally regarded as a eating fish, but they were you know, as close as they are, you know, taxonomically, and the way people kind of lumped together they reviewed list and our circle their viewed is very different fish. Yeah, they're the large this is hearsay, but the large mouth, I understand, taste a little mudier, a little softer. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Small mouth are more aggressive. They generally live in cooler water. Yeah yeah, the good ones, like you know, at certain times you get them coming out of Lake Michigan and um yeah, like very high like a like considered like a very high quality, not just a frying fish, but a grilling fish. Yeah no, I'm I'll eat it. I think large mouths tastes a little like kind of weedy. Interesting. But a guy grew up by my fishing mentor would he would leave them skin on, soak him over night and milk and grill them. I've heard the milk trick before with other meats too, write yeah, you hear it oft times of fish. I've taken catfish and soaked the milk my body soaked stuff in butter milk and then fries it. He does. Salmon takes cubed up salmon, pink salmon like low grade salmon cubes it, soaks in buttermilk and fries and panco That ship is good man, And then you're honestly tell us that's it. It's very well, be honest. Thanks for having me on again. Nothing exciting, nothing exciting there. Land Tawny from Bad huntry, hunters and anglers believe that. And you're gonna say, I don't say, we're just keeping this train gone. I think we were just talking about earlier, like we do a bunch of stuff these a few months, going to shot Show and then Cheap Show, and then we're just taking their planes to each other here again in Seattle. So we're keeping the train on. Yeah, we're doing Fan Question Part five. This might be the last fan question one ever because we're kind of getting to the end of of like fan questions that come in all the time just being there. They get more difficult as we go. No, Land, I want to direct this one to you first out of Oh you be the sad. The question is getting more difficult here, this one first one out of the Listen to this one. This is for you Land. Okay, Easterners like Steve Ronella and others put their trust and liberal politicians, well us Oregon hunters and fishermen know how they preserve our soul called public lands. They gat them with huge steel gates and tell us that we can still use them. You just have to hike in. That's fine for good old Steve with his Hollywood stars and camera crew, I'm sixty five years old and my hike and five to ten miles in the wilds and packing elk quarters out or long past. But Steve Ronnella probably has a helicopter drop him and his cronies off and pick him up. By the way, the BLM and federal employees unlocked the gates and drive all over whenever they want public access. My ass is that a question statement? I love that guy. That guy, We're not gonna do that one. Ah, do you wanna do you wanna take that question up? What I like? I think it's a perfect opportunity to talk about multiple use of our Can we talk about helicopters that I've ever flown the helicopter on a hunting trip for my entire life. You just said it, like, yeah, that's obviously one of those things that doesn't make much sense. I think it's about multiple use right on our public lands. And does that mean that everything should be opened everywhere all the time. No, that's why you have wilderness, which by the way, is only two percent of our public lands. Some of those gates that I think are being put up, it's not because people trying to keep people out, because they can't maintain those roads because our budgets been going down for a long time and so they without understand that whole I think process. But I think the biggest one there is it's for multiple use. You should have places where you can go behind that that gate and ride a bike in for five six miles and get to a really good spot. You should have those places where, um, you can drive your truck anywhere you want. I think that's the beauty of our public lands. Is there managed for multiple use. So um, if it's open to everybody all the time and there's only certain people, they are going to enjoy that. So oh yeah. And the problem with this asshole is you just don't like the helicopter comments. No, no no, no, I'm finally the helicopter comment. This is ridiculous. But the problem his perspective, in my mind is like if he had his way and to gather in his mind, everything should be unlimited access. If you like to hunt, you'd be screwed. You have to have some sanctuary areas that give wildlife like a little bit of a break now and then well I think it's not only the sanctuaries for those wildlife. But you know, he may be sixty five and not doing that anymore. You know, I got a friend named Jim Posel its's eighty two and he's still out there hoofing it. And you know that's because he wants to do Um. I think again, like you got to have those places to test our limits. You know that are still a little bit younger. It's like, get that done. And I'm forty two now and I gotta stay in shape. I'm not gonna be able to do that. Um. But why is it one way for everybody? Like this? This this dogma? Right, it has to be only one way for somebody when these lands are managed for multiple use. And I think that's the bottom line of that question. Yeah, remembers you tell this dude's kind of a prick, is uh? The assumption that somehow like you have greater access to public lands if you have Hollywood cronies, Oh yeah, with their helicopters. That's what it is, right, helicopter that I'd like to just quickly point out to them. No matter how far you can drive in there, wherever you stop your vehicle, you're still gonna have to hike for the good hunting. So nont matter where that road ends. Whether it's at the end where there's like the old logging pad, or it's back two miles at the gate. Just because you drove to the end doesn't mean there's elk standing next to that logging pad. Like when you start driving rigs and riding bikes. Which, oh, here's the helicopter right here, choppers here, time to go hunting. Can we finish this podcast en route to the hunt? We're learned in Colorado from Belandre the game warden that hikers, mountain bikers, a t v s, snowobiles, they all have a certain impact on where. You know, the game is in relation to the road. Right, So just because you can drive in there doesn't mean like you have better hunting than if you stopped at the gate. You had to start hunting from there. It's just all going to move outward from there. In Michigan, UM, we would look for places where you had to Like you could drive up to the river, but then you'd cross, you'd bring a canoe and cross the river. Any little on public land, no matter where you are, any little thing you can do to try to move yourself away from high pressure areas is generally good. I mean, there's always exceptions, but like generally, animals huntable animals are going to congregate more in places where they haven't gotten hunted. I know you probably don't want to talk about this anymore. I know I really don't. Like he may drive around all year and just by happening circumstance, something runs across. He jumps out the truck and shoots it, which to me, um is not quite the hunting that we need to portray. Yeah, but their thing is so pouty. He's like, I enjoyed. This is a point that Jim Paz was brought up. He's like, he's like saying, I enjoyed it when I could, Like I enjoyed the remote public lands. I enjoyed the wilderness experience when I could. But now that I personally I am too old two enjoy it, I now think that it should all end. The future generation should not be able to enjoy it so that I can have another fifteen years of it. It's great while I could use it now that I'm out of the running, let me in there. If not, it's going to waste, you know, Heaven forbid you uh preserve it for the next guy down the line to have those same adventures and hopes and dreams and experiences that you obviously enjoyed back in your prime. I got one more problem for you before you quit taking care of yourself. He's saying it's a liberal it's a liberal issue. Punding is a liberal thing. You in reality, if you're quite liberal, to just let everybody on there to Willy Newly go whatever you want to do, it would be much more of a conservative attitude to say, you know what, let's keep it as is and protect it a little bit, save, save what we have A Matt Elliott, sir, fixable. Here's a dude saying this fixed blade, folding blade, or replaceable blade, what works best for what situation? Wow? I mean, blades are such a it's such a personal thing. What works best for what situation? I can I can tell you that replaceable blade knives don't work well for hard use like digging into joints. You're going to be left shorthanded if you get into a survival situation with replaceable blade knife. But they perform very well for tasks that require really precise work like caping right, uh in a survival situation or on something massive and you really want to dig in and and debone it get really dirty. A fixed blade is always the best choice and also is a good choice for something that you use multiple times on a hunt because it's easier to clean because there's no mechanism, and folders are good for utility. It depends on the shape of the There's so much more that goes into it, right, It's like shape of the blade, shape of the handle, length of the blade. There's a lot more than just fixed folder replaceable. But a folding blade is a good knife just to keep in your pocket have for general purpose utility. Like for me, I always have a folding knife in my pocket. I'll use it to do like cut tree limbs or open bag of mountain house or whatever. And then I have a fixed blade in my pack that only touches meat. That's exactly what I do, is um, yeah, I carry a folder like generally clip in my pocket or someone accessible The term I always used like a utility knife. I like the kind that has the first inch or so serrated then with a regular tip on it and use it for everything. And then in my pack I keep a fixed blade knife for skinning and quartering and whatnot, and I don't touch that thing. I don't whittle sticks with it. I don't guage out with grooves and ship with it or dig you know, roots out from under my tent. It only comes out if you just and it's like always sharp and always there. What what do you use the serrations for? If I might ask rope and whatnot? Yeah, yeah, or stuff where I don't want to marrow up if I'm doing something I want to marrow up my like the sharp part of my knife, I'll just use that for that. Yeah, But any kind of like cord rope, whatever, Yeah, I'd get by fine without it. Nice thing about serrations is even if it doesn't cut quite as well it's a really sharp plain edge, it'll tear at least even when it's not getting that And then also when I kind of outlas it does it does. It's not the cutting performance isn't. I don't think is as good as a plain edge when it's first sharp, but it will last longer because of the tearing factor once it's not sharper. Yeah, even if if I do break an animal down with it with my like us utility knife, like my folder, I'll use that serrated part to like, you know, it's the iced of saw joints on big animals. Now I just pop the joints to cut the joints. I'll use that part of the knife to cut him and sself because it just saves it longer. And the best way to trash you knife, I think is rubbing the rubbing the bone, rubbing the blade across bone. Yeah, yeah, I always give that caveat people say how many? How many animals can you do with this? Nice like, huh, depends how you cut them up. If you're dragging a lot of bone, you know, it's not gonna go through as many. Yeah. Or if you're like skin in the if you're skin in the skull cap out and you're working and you're doing all the work around the base of the pedicle, not that many, flathead, you're not gonna do that many deal with that. Gladhead screw driver is the best thing for that, you know, Go ahead. I was gonna have a follow up question to the knife. Oh please, so fix blade back country or even just on on a regular list, say even as a day hunt. But do you carry and if you do, what is your sharpening tool or system? Are we so bench made? We make this little sharpening tool called a tactical pro and it's it's basically like a little two and a half inch stick of ceramic and at the end of it, it's got this carbide V. It's like two square pieces of carbide that are laid over the top of each other, so they make a V and I'll just use that it really drag. Yeah, yeah, but it can be also used as a steel yeah. Yeah. It's got a little bit of ceramic on. It also has a little groove and that if you want to use it for a hookne And you guys like it, yeah, yeah, I like it a lot. But what about the guys who would like, uh, the guys that sharpened not because you guys have that deal where people send their nives, know those of you ask one of those dudes what they thought of it? What would they say? They probably would think it's fine for field maintenance. And I think that that was kind of questions what do I what my carrying around with me? And it's that right, just that just and one of the things people run into with those particular sharpeners is they push too hard in them and they're sharpening. It's just a really light almost like just barely more than the weight of the knife as you pull it through, because all you're doing right, but most people know this, But if you look at your edge like like straight up and down, you're looking down the blade of your knife. When it gets dull, the edge is just rolled over. So you're just trying to pull the edge back straight and then which is what you're doing with the sharpening steel, right, just straightening. You're not removing steel with a butcher steel. You're straight you're taking the curl out. Yeah, you guys had a word for that, curl the wire that so the wire is different. So the wires, so back to like what the guys back in the factory do. They're actually using belts and so they're sharpening on a belt and those belts are truly removing material and as they remove it, they pull the material up towards the edge of the knife on that standing belt, and it creates something called a wire. Good memory, it creates this thing called a wire. So if you looked at it on a micro at a microscopic level, you would see this little like jagged edge on there. And then you're sticking on the buffing wheel and you basically break that off with a buffer, and that's when the knife gets truly sharp. Before that, it's it's just gonna tear through stuff. And then and then after they do that, they then they cut newspaper. You'll see them doing that sometimes just to make sure that that edge is perfectly smooth, and they do not have to test it. They are to make sure there's should walk through a very nice you should go through with no catch. Jimmy Dormer. When you're outslaying all kinds of deer and elk, what do you what are you packing around? Color? I have a tabalon for gutting and and they have some a big old bonner, uh, big heavy sharp knife, but join your placeable blade for cutting ups. I do. It's about it's not as popular as some of the guys that hout with. But then was it you know that could have really so sharp and just dude, yeah, just let that in the the other man and I feel like I can do pretty much anything. No, it was a was a good argument to be made for him. Arguments like good argument made for him is you don't need to worry about knowing how to sharpen a knife. Yeah, they're like exceedingly dangerous. Then you run into the issue of disposing of those things. I see a lot of guys just kind of jabbing into the ground. So it's like then you get like toting around other ones break them. But like for its purpose, they're great as a walk around knife. Not No, I'm not so good. You can't talkt at all. You can't if you get handy with it, put force on it, it's it's not worth the ship. But if you're gentle with it and do what you're supposed to be do, it works for quite well. Um, here's a tough one. I don't want to get skunk down a hunt. What tips can you give me so that I can definitely be successful? I don't know, man, that might be one of those deals where you have to uh go on one of those guaranteed cow elk you gotta pay for it. But he's asking the wrong question, like like the payoff is and you may shoot something Like the reason I think most of us are going out there is for the actual hunt, which is like everything that leads up to that shot. Right, So every single time I go out, I'm getting what I want, and I mean that's I get kind of what I want. And then if I get an animal, it's on top of that. Now with that sheep, I hadn't shot that sheep, Yes, that would have been a big part of not like not not fulfilling that whole thing. Yeah, drew up, you know, basically a once in a lifetime big horn sheep permit this past fall, and you hit it pretty hard fifteen days days. Yeah, I thought it wasn't maybe gonna happen. But I will say again we've talked about this quite a bit, is that I felt the pressure of that hunt, and then I wasn't kind of having fun because of that pressure. And then once I let that pressure go, like I was enjoying the hunts again, and like that hunt in the place where I got to go chase that credit around, Like God, that made my whole season for me. And then that last little thing that happened. But though actually you didn't want to get around, oh I did. I did, And that you did, I mean, and you know, um yeah, so I just but if you're going out, like if you want to be successful every single day, I think that's a that's not that's not a good bar to measure yourself by. But let's just say the fella. Let's just say the fella didn't articulate this question quite like you wanted to, and he's just saying, like, what are some tips, Like, let's just say this, and there's nothing wrong with this. Let's say there's a guy and you know he's got you know, every year he gets a week off, he's got a week off. His primary thing is he wants to have the experience of, you know, killing his own meat. That's like his primary thing. He's more interested in what's gonna happen after the hunting. During the hunt, just really wants to have that happen. And he's like, I have no idea, what's a good approach. I would say, if that's case, and I'm not condemning this at all, especially nearly as vocally as Land condemned with poor fella, I'm not condemned that at all, And I would you're putting in different context now though I would be looking at I would be looking at uh antler lists hunts, hunts where even if it wounds up being a hunt where there's no antlerd season in at all, and it's just an antlerless hunt, because that really reduces the amount of pressure that's out there. And another thing is you might be hunting an area whether there's a there's enough of a surplus of animals that they're actually actively trying to lower the population, which is sort of code, not a hardly concealed code for shiploads of critters on the ground. Right now, most most department efficient wildlife will UH make available in their regulations or at least on their websites what success rates are in different units in the state freage game species to such a good place to look, And you're right, Usually the the antler lists hunts are the ones that have the highest success rates. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can go that. That's the things if you are looking at like a long term thing. Matt's right. I mean you can find a published information like I can tell you a non like you go look and you'll find some of the lowest success rates are non guided, non resident archery elk hunts. Where it winds up being that you got I mean, I'm not joking six seven percent success rate. So if you're like, I gotta make it happen, and you look and you see a six or seven percent success rate, that's not for you. You're never gonna if you see percent success rate, it's probably something where it's like, you know me, it's like some mountain goat hunt. There's a hundred and fifty goats on the mountain. They give out two tags. You know, it's just like not something is gonna generally come up. It's more of a once in a lifetime hunt thing. I think if you see hunts where there, um, if you look and there's a hunt, it's a fifty success rate, that's a very high success rate. That's kind of saying like it's a pretty pretty good hunt. This is all making you uncomfortable. No, No, I think I think it's not making me uncomfortable. I think there's lots of other things that make that success to write, like doing a lot of pre scouting of your area, um, and uh, you know, being out there and I'm trying different strategies and things aren't working. I mean there's I think there's plenty of other things that go into that. UM. But I guess I was uncomfortable with that. I thought we were talking about like every single time you go out hunting right like, and you're gonna be successful. And I think that's a that's a bar you don't really want to put on yourself. Yeah, I know, we wrote seven pages about it. Yeah, the guidebook series. But yeah, choosing easier species, I mean, certainly you're gonna have better odds at killing a white todo you do a cow, which is easier. This guy is saying, I thought we had is for Why do you mainly rifle hunt? Is it because it is a pain in the asked to attempt to bow hunt with a camera crew. Largely yes, largely yes, thinking about that, Johnnie, it takes a lot more time. Um, you gotta have a cameracruit. It's like, here's the trick this is. This is a show business thing, um, camera. Everybody's out there to do their job right. You're out there to hunt to the best of your ability. They're out there the film to the best of their ability. They are always under pressure between filming for a good show and getting their coverage and filming for a successful hunt. Those two things are not the same thing, even though I argue to them, if you want to have something to film, let's get a shot at an animal and kill it. Then we'll have all kinds of stuff to film. Caught it up, eating it, you know. But they don't see it that way. So camera guys are the hunter's worst enemy. You don't agree with real bad enemy. I think camera guys are a real bad enemy. What about those times is when the camera guys like spot game? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's they they do spot game. Now, the reason we called but you honest isn't a camera guy, but he is the eagle because he spots an extraordinary amount of game. That's great, that's great dirt myth. He the poor fella. I mean he's working on it, but he's getting laceick here like in a month or so. I mean poor. But the bastards about blind too, So you gotta like you know that that you know, I don't want to be too hard on him. But no, camera guys they want to get the shots. Man. You know, you'll be like all hunkered in and you and also you turn around realizes of just standing there because they can't see and they're doing their job. But you've almost always been like a pragmatic hunter where you're like, unless it's better for the hunt, better for me that I can choose right full over bo choose rifle. Yeah, I'm interested in bow hunts that are only bow hunts. Like, if there's a if I if I'm doing a hunt and you're allowed to use anything, I'm probably gonna go with, um, what's comfortable to me and what has the greatest efficacy, you know, Like I sell them. Uh. I have plenty ways in which I kind of handicapped myself, but yeah, I sell them. Um. I think to myself like, oh, you know, it would be a lot more challenging if I brought my boat. I'm generally like, if it's a rifle, I'm gonna use my rifle. I bow hunt when it's an archery season. Yeah, And a lot of like serious bow hunters are just gonna bring their boat. Matt, We're gonna go bear hunt in the spring, and this guy can't decide his brain is bow or his gun even though it's a rifle hunt. I'm having time having a hard time with that, and I'm talking about it with your wife and your therapists. I was telling you We're on Alaska hunt and I brought my bow and there we had a rifle there, and I just I had originally set out this is what I'm trying to figure out. It's like, am I going to intend on the rifle hunt or the bow hunt, because what I don't want to do is intend on a bow hunt. In a last guy, I intended on bow hunting. I had in mind that I was going to take a bear with a bow. And there was a moment in time when the guy said, you want to use a rifle? Guy was with I said, no, you know, I don't want to use a rifle because I would rather go home without the bear and and feel the success of the bow hunt, the experience back to defining success then to shoot the bear with a rifle and not have gotten what I came for, which wasn't necessarily because at least set your mind I'll to do something, you're gonna do it? Yeah, yeah, at least see it through. And then your wife bossed your balls about it. She was yeah, she Well, I got home and she's like, what do you mean, like I want I would have loven the bear rug she wanted. She wanted to have a bear rugs, but we didn't discuss that in advance. So and you and you uh shattered her dreams. I did, I shattered. I shattered her dreams. Uh can I can I tell a quick story? So? So archery I'm you're thinking archery versus rifle and the cameraman thing. I spent a few years in Alaska doing some guiding on the fishing side, and I remember I had my clients in the boat one time we look over and there's some guys on the bank, can't with the camera crew, and they're catching chinook. They're hooking chinook on conventional tackle and then dragging them over to the beach, pulling them up, and then hooking a fly. Oh yeah, hooking a fly into the fish and yeah, and then and then rolling camera hooked up on fly rods. You ship, no, not should yet. I think that there's yeah, not at all. That's a little bit sad. Yeah, it was terrible. So with an analogy, you think about shooting one with a rifle and then act like you try with the book. Absolutely, that certainly happens. So yeah, oh there's yeah, I mean, there's immense Yeah. I mean it's just like I think people even do stuff they don't that they would find distasteful, and there's certain amounts of pressures on you. I think that like one of the one of the nice things about the setup we have doing our show, as we've kind of just through experience like alleviated or steered clear and learned to avoid a lot of those pressures that make you feel like you like need to somehow perform. Like there's no company, you know, there's no company that we work with. It will ever be like, hey man, we really need you to pick it up and shoot a gigantic buck. It's just like not something that you know what I mean, It's just not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. I wouldn't be open to the conversation anyways. But I think it's I think some people maybe look at it that way when they're kind of looking at sort of the industry or whatever that you sort of need to make your name on, like shooting giant ship. I'm sure some people probably have, you know, made a name for themselves because they are phenomenal hunters. Um I never made the claim to be one people want to see. It's things that are more relatable, I think, anymore more approachable. It's like sometimes failure is appealing in some way, and huh, it's like the person that kicked off this conversation in some ways, like you don't necessarily need you un necessarily need success or at least from the question before the success can be defined a lot of ways, and and for a lot of us, like we don't have success, often don't have success. And so when I watch a TV show and somebody's just knocking everything down, there are always chasing it, just it's harder to relate to Yeah, yeah, I find out. Um we got into this. We were very reluctant about running what we call skunkers episodes that you don't get anything and uh. And the first time we ever put a skunker up, I was petrified. I was like, man, you can't. This can't be a show. No one's gonna And people loved it because they still was different to see like a skunker episode because they're like, dude, most times, I go on, I don't get anything, Like that's true with everybody in the world. Well, you know, growing up is like archery deer season start October one. We hunt pretty hard with our bows all through archery season. Then November fifteenth would come out and you had a ten day rifle season. You do hunt pretty are hard for the rifle season. After that you'd hopefully pick it back up and get out a few more times in your bowl until January one. If you got a deer, you were it was good. If you got two deer, you were kicking ass. After many, many many days in the field, you know, to have a deer coming to range was a big night. Almost had a shot, No ship, you always had a shot. Yeah, dude, so close. You know, it's like sweet. You know, you were invigorating. So I think, yeah, there's a lot of you know, it's still like that, except we just don't you don't see it. Oh, of course, it's still like that for everybody out there. It's like Facebook, Like people put on their best face on Facebook, right, you know, you don't see very often somebody like like talking about how bad things were, you know that day. It's always like your best foot forward. And so that's like a lot of this stuff. Like here's me in my bathroom realizing that toilet papers are all gone, trying to think of what a property, what an appropriate avenue about used to have vacation. Here's a good one, man, This is contentious. I'm gonna talk about it for a quick second though. How would a wall across the Mexican border impact wildlife? Who? Now, on the preface, this note, this Feller is not It does not say how would a wall across the Mexican border impact jobs? Okay, he's not saying how about a wall across the Mexican border impact international relations? He's not saying that how would a wall across the Mexican border impact wildlife? Um? So pulling that question completely outside of it's of the broader implications of the wall. Just speaking of wildlife, it would be there's a handful of species in that area. There's three large predators in that area that move back and forth between Mexico and the US mountain lions, black bears, jaguars, and like as we speak, there are jaguars in the US. They come up into Arizona and um and you have you know of course that you know it could be the Mexican wolf coming back and forth. Um people are you know, there's a lot of arguments that we made for and against having more jaguars in the US. Uh. You know, I tend to really love the idea of it. If you did the wall, you're gonna whatever's gonna happen down the road with jaguar recovery is gonna not happen because the jaguars that are coming in to the US, are coming from Mexico. At this point, it's always been males. It's been like far wandering males that could wind up in Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas. So that wouldn't happen anymore if in fact, you had like if you did the impossible and had sort of this this um this like impenetrable wall all extending across the entire border, which I think that you know, is not gonna happen in our lifetime. I don't think I think most people would say that just the financial you know, just the burden of building that financially, it's not gonna happen. But yeah, man, it would be Uh, it would be not good for um, any large mammal and it would really impede jaguar recovery. And it would impede genetic exchange, you know, across it would be like you're anywhere you're going make an impenetrable barrier, um, You're gonna really impede genetic exchange between animals. Again, I want to clarify, I'm not this isn't a political question, it's an ecological question. And uh, you can go find a lot more out a lot more about that. I remember years ago when I was working in my Buffalo book, I went to a sort of international bison conference, which means it had people from Mexico, they had people from uh Canada, and then a lot of people from the US. And I went to a lecture where a guy was lecturing on the potential for recovery of bison or buffalo and and he also addressed the idea of of of a border wall and what that would mean for in the future as we look to expand recover big game populations. Anyone else want to add to that. I was curious, are the animals that use it currently as a migration route will would shut anything down that's already taking place and doing well? Oh like things that are already kicking, as would imagine, probably always see some lessening. But I don't know that there's like a population that's that there's a population of animals that's like good now and would all of a sudden become bad with the wall. I can't think of an example like that. The thing you most hear about when that subject comes up is you most hear about jaguars. Um it's just a matter of time to the female. You know, a female jaguar is going to come across and and you're gonna have uh, you're gonna have some mammals. There's I guess I could be wrong with this book came out. It's like a bunch of the most influential trail cam photos taken the collection of trail camp photos from around the world. In there is a trail cam photo of a jaguar in the snow and the caption says it's the only image of a jaguar in the snow. It was taken in Arizona. I can't speak to jaguars. I don't know who. Hell a lot of bad moments, are they big big cat? My kids know they know a bad mofo, but they don't know what I actually stand for. And they talk a lot about bad You can talk about a lot of animals being bad mofos. The English teacher is gonna send home a note Jimmy needs to know what my kids really struggling right now. He learned he heard like he overhears a lot just because he spends a lot of time around fellows, you know, and he picked up that there's a thing called bullshitting, and he picked up there's a thing called the bull shitter, and he's not clear on why it's okay for bullshitting, but to be a bullshitter is very bad. He was seeking some clarification on that recently. It's awesome it's in that up that there is a difference, because I was, Yeah, I used to say to him like what it was. You know, like kids, you want to carry him on your shoulders. It's easier to carry on your shoulders. But with mine, they always got to the point where the didn't want to do that anymore, that they really wanted to be on your hip. And I would say, you want to be down here so he can be as and so he just say like he wants to be as, which meant he wants to be He just saw like a term for being on my hip. And then one day he like put together that b s and was bullshit. And then he got to hearing like, oh, he's such a bullshitter. I can't stand that guy that kind of sentence, and he's like, whoa blow in his mind? You're at that bullshit? It was good bullshit, that's good. It's bullshitters, Hey, Jimmy, don't here's good before you this. This might be good for you because I think that you're you're experiencing the pizza business. You're ready, Yeah, I'm ready. Do you have any tips as far as the process of carrying and smoking He's referring to me. I've read cold smoke and can cause bochuli is um and make people sick, So I won't be sure to know what I'm doing. You deal with any botchuli is um. No bochlism operates at Beltop. It's absolutely zero boschling free. Like it's a bochelism free zone. It is a free zone. You know. I don't know much about smoking. I do know that it's really good to have a friend who's really good at smoking and you just kind of hand them everything and then get it back later. Yeah. I do save practices, Mattie, smoke much. I don't, well, just fish mostly. Yeah. I tried to smoke some cheese the other day and then I opened up my smoker and had a big puddle of it. Yeah, my my little chief. I don't think if somebody has a tip on how to smoke cheese and guessing involves a lower temperature. Yeah, but I don't This thing is one of those like you plug it in or you unplug it, you know, all right, right, yeah, that's all we have any more sophisticated as the kids, like if you didn't have a little chief, you weren't smoking. Yeah, I'm gonna answer this without answering it. I'll say that, Um, there's a science of this, Okay. These these are not like bosl um and other food born ailments, are not mysterious anymore. Um. There we have very concrete understanding of what temperatures you need to avoid, how many minutes things can be at such and such temperature. Um, how long you know what you need to do to make stuff safe. It can be as simple as making cold smoked salmon that the product never gets above a certain temperature. Should it get above that temperature and become, you know, a bacterial breeding ground, then you need to make sure to pass through a medium threshold and go up into where you're then kill anything by getting it plenty hot enough. Um. So my advice is just to get like a good book that breaks this stuff down and follow the guidelines because it's not it's not like a thing where it's like you don't play it by field. I mean, these things are very spelled out. There are food safety UM guidelines that you should follow. I feel that some of would take a little bit too far, like if you go and look at uh well, which is a good thing, So something's taken too far, which means you're gonna be extra safe. Some of the stuff I ignore a little bit, like, for instance, if you if you were to go on do a you know, uh, some websites you look up, like I want to make my own jerky, you'll find that they always say like, oh, you need to to quickly boil the meat before you make jerky, or you need to then put it in the oven afterward and bring it up to a hundred and sixty five degrees. Right, I just like, don't do that. But these are people who are telling you here's how to be absolutely safe all the time. It's the same people who don't uh let their kids taste cookie dough because there's a raw egg in there. Right, you're never gonna you know, you're never gonna regret doing it, except for like a flavor way, but it could be overkilling certain instances. But this is coming from a guy who's gotten sick by not following basic guidelines I mean me, you know, I've gotten sick by not following basic guidelines on stuff. But um, it's just not that hard, Like if you look at how to like do whatever you're fixing to do, like carrying smoking, if you look at how to do it, well, these aren't like mysterious things that are not difficult. I think the one area where you kind of can get into troubles with a lot of like you know, like you're saying cured stuff, um, where you have an item that's essentially raw sitting around for a whole long time, you should follow some basic guidelines, which suggests that it is risky. Is you know a lot of restaurants aren't set up to do that kind of stuff, Like you're not making your own No, no, no, I wouldn't take the risk. I know it to be done, but just not in my place. For sure. We buy like um, buy from a repulable purveyor like that. Yeah, I mean just the the labor involved in actually manufacturing that product would probably be cost prohibitive anyhow. So I got a buddy that does make e sausage, He has a restaurant, does produce his own charkoo tree. Is um, you know, spend a lifetime around that stuff. And he I don't want to name him, but he's remarkably sort of blase about the whole thing. He's like, I watch all for black fuzzy mold Byrne. I'm eating it all right, but yeah, any add Johnnie, Nope, no, okay, I've only made burger and steaks from the deer I've killed. What recommendations would would you make to begin the journey into more adventurous cuts and meals? Yeah? Good question, let me hear you want to hear it again? No, no, I got it. Um. The two to come to mind would be shanks. What you could do either whole or asabuko mean, you just take your shame and cut it into disks and then brownet braises. We're gonna take the whole shank and just brown it and braise it. And I like those were And then the other one too that I'll mention is the neck. I like both of these cuts because they're super easy. Like once my wife figured out how easy it is to braise, this is like now her like go to thing because you don't have to think about it. It's like in the morning, like after breakfast, you're like, all right, quick brown into the crock pot or into the Dutch oven, and don't want to think about it again until five. Yeah, it'll be ready in four hours. It'll be good still in twelve exactly. So yeah, we had a neck roast the other day. A lot of times I'll be like, just put it in the crock pot and I'll figure out how to finish it at five when I get home, like I'll have like this hot, seasoned, well cooked, falling apart, falling off the bone meat, and she doesn't want to take it to like the final you know, presentation, but I can roll in. And I looked in there and I was like, you know, we've never done classic pot roast. So I'm like, all right, some carrots, few potatoes, like half a million, finish that off and then through like side of peas. We had like classic pot roast. It's great. I used to look when I looked at my freezer, I used to like to see all the like loin and then your sir loins, you know, like the basically your back leg cuts and your loin. I'd be like, man, there's the good ship. You know, the rest of the stuff is just stuff. We're gonna eat. But that's like the prime I not. Look, I'm a little bummed when I don't see shanks, knacks, all that stuff that I used to many years ago kind of be a little bit apprehensive about because I thought they were difficult to handle, because there's not like if you take any of the non prime parts of yourself, any part of the front leg, the neck, the knee down, the shank, cut in the ribs, and you brown. You put a bunch of salt and pepper around that piece of meat, brown it in oil, put it in a covered pot and cover it just up to the top with stock or water and throwing a handful of garlic and a splash of wine and put it in your oven at three degrees. It's like it's just all good and then you can do anything with it, eat it like that, tackles, sandwiches. It just doesn't matter. Um. Yeah, man, I've over the years, I just really changed my stuff around, and I've actually got away from doing steaks, Like it's been years since I've actually had like venice and steaks on the grill, because now almost all those steaks something that you would cut into a steak. I'll just keep it whole and see it, bring it up two degrees, let it rest, and then slice it. And I feel like you're getting a much you know, moister rich or better product that way, unless it's drying out than if you have individual steaks that are getting cooked on all sides. Oh yeah, I know. I I rarely do steaks. And when I first started, you know, first started cut up deer. Like we always cut our own deer up when I was growing up, and we would cut them up and we would cut if you did a deer, we cut burger meat for the grinder. And then every other piece of meat we not just meant it for steaks. We cut it into steaks, the whole one. We cut the one into slices, back legs, cut them on the steaks, and you'd have burger packs that said Burger packs and said steaks, and that's how we cut everything. I don't cook deer steaks anymore now. And then in the transitional period when I still would cook like steaks, and in some rolls, we would mark all that meat s R S slash R, which meant steak roast, not my initials, but it meant like steaks or rolls mean, you can pull it out and cut your steaks later. What I was thinking at the time was, if you're gonna cut it into steaks, why not just do it later, because this way you have less exposed surface arey and less edges to get freezer burned, you know, because like the meat protects itself when it's in a large block. So we do that. But now I don't. I don't. I never cook steaks anymore. I cook whole muscle groups and then slice it because just you get much better product that way. Lastly, I think the thing I've gotten into the last few years that's an easy way to branch out a little bit is to uh make a sausage. Yeah, it's really not that difficult. There's some pretty easy recipes out there that I mean. If you have your burger or your stuff you're about to grind into burger, you might only be adding you know, a half dozen ingredients and you can choose to do it bulk. You know, you don't have to stuff it into case things. You have to be an idiot not know how to make sausages. I mean not to not know. I'll say this, you'd have to be an idiot to not be able to figure out how to make sausage. Not that you already know, but anyone who can drive a car, for instance, could make If you have it in you to drive a car, you absolutely have it in you to make a sausage. You're not running up again, not talking about like like you'd you'd find that you didn't have like the cognitive abilities to make sausage. This is not their heart. You want to add to that. Um. I think something that totally blew my mind this year is car Pascio and like like we're just talking about cured meat and that kind of stuff, and like what's the techniques and to slice a piece of meat, pounded out, put a little we used a him and hand salt. At this friend of mine, Eric has said smoked in a smoker Pepper smoked his own salt. I mean, you don't want to use much of it. But and then uh, and then they'll baby ruggle on there and some parmesan and then you just eat it like that. And like I was expecting to totally be sick the next day or even that night, and just talking about right now, I'm like salivating about it. Like it literally blew my mind and so everybody I'm talking about, you know, about like how the hunt go this year, I'm like, oh, you gotta do carpaccio so well, and even if I mean I'm gonna try it on everything, but did it with a big one that bloom. I mean, that's just that's a sweeter meat anyways. But he's telling that to enjoying eating your big Yeah, I mean I shot at you fourteen years ago. Um, and it's that very similar. It's like a sweeter taste. You know. It's pretty lean meat um, but a lot sweeter um than anything I've ever tried. So yeah, it's delicious. But again that car Posto like it's and it's just this weird thing like you're eating i mean, dark raw meat. And then he starts telling me that he just like when he's out in the field and he's boning something up, he just starts taking chunks like he doesn't even pound, I don't even just sticks him in his mouth. Yeah, I think I've never done that. I don't know if I can bring myself to do that, especially when I'm out in the field, and that might, you know, make things a bit more difficult. But boy, and the kids ate it. And they loved it. So I encourage anybody to try car postia at least look it up. Yeah, me and Remy um did tar paccio with tar, and then we did um tar tar stake tartar with tar. Okay, so tar tartar and tar pa your tard cute Like this goes back to that dude asking about food safety issues early. You're never gonna go on a government website and find where it says, hey man, this is a good idea. Good ideas. You eat yourself some raw dear meat, right, No one's gonna tell you it's okay. But if you're eating ungulates like raw ungulates, there's nothing that I can't think of what it would be that would happen to you. I've had food plasoning twice, and both times it was from cooked onions. There you go, watch all for that ship, right both times. I thought big horn sheep. We were talking about this the other night at the Sheep Foundation. Uh, it's my favorite meat. I haven't I've only eaten it once because I got it from a little bit and he said he wants some big horn sheep steak, and I was expecting to taste like kind of like mutton or something. You know, it is absolutely unbelievable how good it is. Years ago, my girlfriend killed a big orange. She drew a tag and we went out and got a big orange. And uh, I made a lot of corn to big horn just that like the sound of it, the same way I like tar tar tar corn big horn. I thought I had a ring to it. You know. Um, most people don't associate like a literally like alliteration with good taste. But I'm just such a sucker for a well phrased dish that that I tend to gravitate towards things that have a ring to it. You know, I thought I hit the promised Land. Remember when I moved to Bozeman. I haven't been there but a few days, and my buddy Brendan Burns calls me up and goes un any room your freezer? I got a big horn sheet. I'm like what he's like, Yeah, he had a client that didn't want to meat. Yeah, you know, guy was fine and had taken like a quarter, he had three quarters. His freezer was full, he had had a good season. I'm just like, dude, bring it onnown you know. Yeah, Like, and that's the kind of stuff. I like kind of had a special little box in the freezer. It's like every so often, you know, I've worked it for two years. Yeah, that will never happen again. I was starting to date my wife the first time I shot that that you and so it's that it's smaller, you don't get as much me And like she loved it so much that she was it wasn't that like parsing it out like you know, once like a month or once every couple of weeks. It was like like it was like it was like this's gonna last forever. And I finally I was enjoying that she liked us so much, but like, hey, hey, we gotta slow down on this thing a little bit. And once she slowed down, and when we got married, he here's I'm gonna read a funny one that no one needs a response. You got to think it's funny and never gonna jump into one that I do want response from. So this guy's like, what's up with the epidemic of flat brim and white sunglass wearing, energy drink pounding Western hardcore hunters that seemed to be taken over these days. I'm a young guy in my early thirties. But I feel like a grumpy old bastard every time I see another social media post from these dudes. There's a question kind of in there later, but that's just funny. All right, here's going. Are there any animals you will not hunt for moral reasons? Now? You're saying anything is fair game? Bald eagles his example, housecats, domestic dogs, whatever, What is something you just would feel too torn up inside to pull the trigger. Jimmy dorn h Probably i'd shoot Darnia or anything in North America. I don't really have a desire to shoot a bear for whatever reason. I don't know. I just look at it. And so he's saying, you gotta so you have a you have a desire to shoot a bald eagle? Oh heck no, will you listen to the question? I apologize everything is fair game in this hypothetical world. Okay, so the list would be too long. I can't listen to all the things you have no desire to shoot? I missed the question. Then, no, no, you were doing it. But you're doing like a game animal. Was there any animal that I wouldn't shoot? The list would be very long, would be like, uh not my ansters, my neighbors, my neighbors jogged the bar, stay at many dozens of species of whales as Sorry, but it's just taking like game animals. You don't have any desire to hunt bears do not. I can't tell you why. I just don't just look at it. That's something that I wanted, and I still I just just something about him, I just don't want to do it. Pretty much half the stuff in Africa wouldn't shoot it either, just don't know why. Well, with bears, it is is like I like, um, like, you know, if I'm out hunting, you know, you see a deer, I see like a white tail, Let's go get that deer. But when I see a bear, I'm kind of like torn between going and getting it or observing it. Yeah, I do like, but I still I like the hunt, and I continue to hunt bears. But I mean, I do understand there's sort of a it's just different, you know, And you could try all day long to act like it's not different. But for a lot of people, bears occupy a different space in their imagination. Another thing. Yeah, I just never just never never never. I like looking at him, for sure, but you just don't never really. And bald eagles yeah, definitely not red white and blue bird freedom. I kind of like them around the bird. Bald eagles. Gott a bald eagles are like they're not doing good pr management. They're breeding too much because they're like a lot of people in this country no longer like oh my, got a bald eagle, right, they're letting themselves. They should play the long game and slow down on reproduction in order to maintain that special status more d D T and like, yeah, to sell these Alaska, there might be a tree, you know, and I bring people out there for the first complements, it's like, oh my god, an eagle. Oh I got an eagle. Then later like yeah, another eagle. Yeah, I saw that having before my eyes when I first started guiding on the Eagle River. You know, it's like your job as a fish and guy, especially at the fishing slows, like oh check that out, check that out, see that, look at that plant, whatever, keep see a bald eagle and everybody ah and then like by the when did I quit, like two thousand eight or nine or whatever, and just be like well theg huh, you know, like nobody even cared like you're saying, everybody's just seeing them everywhere there. Oh yeah, we had those back in New Jersey now too, you know. I remember I remember in Michigan when we got done ice fishing and you left some out, you know, chives or shiners out on the ice and we got done pulling tipops. I remember one day looking out there and like, you know, it's a lake of houses and cottages all around, and looking out there's a couple of balls egos out there stand or eating our chubs. And I'm like, you know, something just changed for that bird, Like now he's right in front of my house. You know, good for them, Good for them. Um land, let's let's scrap the whole anything in the world like cats and whatnot, and just say, like game animals, is there a game animal you don't go after a lot of guys don't want to hunt lions. Uh. I would love to have been on a couple of hunts. I've never shot one, like you're open to offline definitely. Um. I think I'm with I'd buy a bear tag every single year, but if you have to pull the trigger on one, and I think it's partly because I do. I just think they're kind of a special species. I'm not saying I would never do it, um, but I think wolves are one of those things I don't think I would ever shoot. I think it would be such a special encounter for me to see one in the woods that like like that green fire you know and stuff that that Leopold talked about, like just to be able to witness that. Like I've heard them a lot, it seem lots of tracks, um, and I think I've been fairly close to them, but I've never seen him. So, I mean, what's the green fire? It's like that, that's that intense, like the way they have that look in their eyes. It's it's some Sand County eliminator as a refer to, right, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's like there's a story about like wolves and they can how to think like a mountain yeah yes, and like how the mountain doesn't have the wolves on there anymore. And I'm so the deer eating I mean, it's it's a longer story and stealing from a guy whose job was to shoot wolves, and so I I just I don't know, I think they're pretty iconic and pretty cool, you know. Um, I know that we need to manage those wolves and it's just not going to be me. Yeah, I'm at a similar place, like there's a I mean, I could talk about a ton of things that have mixed emotions on, but wolves are if anyone, because you know, i'd go out and get a wolf tag when I'm in areas. It's just like I sort of thinking, yeah, you know, some day I could see that I would get a wolf, kill a wolf um. But then on the handful of opportunities I had to go after one. When I'm looking at one, I don't even like really remember that I was thinking about it. I was kind of like looking at it. You know, it's and I still have you know, I still imagine some time in the future maybe I will. I was el COHNT in Montana this year and kept seeing wolf tracks. I'm kind of like, man, I should have got a wolf tag, you know, they're all over and then being like, but if one came out, you probably feel like you did every other time when you had an opportunity to go after one or had an opportunity to take a crack. Yeah, And it's like, you know, I'm a ardent supporter of Stay Game agencies. Having the right to manage him as a sustainable resource clapped down the landscape. But yeah, like to have on a landscape, like to have him managed as a big game animal. Um. And I understand that we're not gonna have him everywhere that they were before, but there's some places where it'll work, and I support making it work in those places. But I just like, and I was looking ahead and I was like, oh, it would be great. You know, when it happens, it's like it's just something dissolves. That could change too, because you know, like I went from being a very ambivalent mountain lion hunter to being like really wanting to get a mountain lion bad. Over time. You look at enough of those tracks and snow not your Why do I want to get one of these lyons so bad? Yeah, here's a question for you. So it's like speaking of lions, like her management is kinding all over the board. And now there's like these lion hunters that like super care about them and they have like there's like the Montana lion hunters, you know, like that's we're talking about mountain lions or cougars or whatever just for and so like they've really gotten engaged in the management of them, right, do you think at some point we're gonna have like wolfs on limited or something. You know, these guys that are like really good at howling on ridges, they like fall in love with that species because they're probably one of the hardest ones to hunt, kill one in every hundred that they call in. Yeah, but like but you know, but I mean, like, are really like I mean, I don't know because have you just said that if you just said in the fifties that people were gonna be where they're at now with mountain lions, right, you know who, Like you know, when when states are using quota systems and have female mortality quotas on mountain lines, that ship is coming from Houndsman. That's what I'm saying. Like that, like it's the that's who cares about those things more than almost anybody. It was Houndsman that said let's stop eradication efforts on lines. Let's treat lines like a big game animal, a sustainable, renewable resource. That came from Houndsman. So the question was not coming from New Jersey cat ladies. Do you maybe not um, but do you think that's gonna happen with pools? I mean, like, I mean, we look five years down the road, Yeah, think, I think, yeah, I could think if if we get where we need to be, which is putting you know, putting wolf management in the hands of you know, putting wolf management in the hands of you know, people who are operating on a scientific doctrine and not you know, some kind of subjective opinion. Um. And we have wolf funds to go on, and we have sustainable populations of wolves and places, and you're gonna have guys that like really figured out and they start to admire them as a game animal and they're like really into the chase and they want it being like a houndsman. There's a lot of houndsman out there who've killed who've been running lines their whole life, and they've killed old lion, right, it's like being around them. Yeah, So I could totaly see you got a guy that like likes to hunt wolves, likes to call wolves now and didn't kill the wolf, wants to make sure that the wolf hunting stays good. I wouldn't be surprised. Foundation of conservation in a lot of ways, right, this is the value you of wildlife. So people, people have to appreciate them in order to really want to conserve them, and eventually it becomes that state. It's like, Um, you know, a lot of the reason the wolves are in such a terrible place is because they haven't been able to be appropriately managed. So they're in this dog pun intended but like they're in a dog fight between two groups are pulling them back and forth, and all the while it's like the state departments are before they were allowing conservation, some of these states are going out with helicopters and gunning down whole packs of wolves because they're just running a muck, you know, in these management units instead of being able to be appropriately managed. And once we get to a state where we can appropriately manage all of these different areas where the wolves live, people start to appreciate them instead of them being seen as an adversary. You know, I was joking about eagle pr how they let themselves get too abundant. But um, a thing that that I think happened with wolves and why we have a lot of problems socially with wolves and a lot and why it's become such a thing that causes people to go into these like diametrically opposed corners on wolf introductions and and wolf hunting is that. I think some states were initially very reluctant right to do wolf reintroductions, and then they got on board based on certain assurances saying, we're gonna do this. Here's what how we're gonna define recovery when we've reached a covery. Here, when we reach recovery, here's some steps we're gonna take to ease tensions between livestock growers, other interests, right between big game hunters. Once they reach recovery, we're gonna, you know, strike this balance and and try to maintain you know, this number of animals. And then down the road, the the recovery objective just kind of like keeps moving and moving and moving and becomes an unachievable target. So you've got state you've got some state agencies who were with it and then later kind of felt like they got screwed because they went along with this plan once they're still like a certain idea, and then we've really changed what the idea looks like to now where it doesn't matter how many wolves we have, we're never going to stay there to recover. You know, we're gonna move the carrot out of your out of your reach. And so I think that that really has kind of made a thing where wolves have unnecessarily had to become this thing like this, you love him or hate him, you know. And I think there's a lot of game animals on the landscape that don't really inspire that level of you know, that don't really inspire that level of like a vehemence. But we've just set them up to In a social sense, I think we've set ourselves up for failure by not being totally transparent with people in some of these issues. Now, Matt, what would you not hunt for? I know you're going on a bear hunt. I am going on a bear hunt. I don't know if it was if I The only thing is I wouldn't hunt for are the things that I concerned with eating, because I don't really want to shoot anything that I don't want to eat, like hunt stuff that you're gonna Yeah, but even now, like cougar, I keep hearing from all sorts of people that cougar meat is fantastic to be shocked, Yeah, I hear, it's terrific, So you know, IM previously I would think, well, I don't really want to shoot the sugar because I don't want to eat the meat. But I hear it's it's great. Uh, I mean even squirrels whatever, it's all. It all sounds good. As long as the meat is consumable and and I and I like consuming it, then I'm doing Yeah. I like that. I get to nod when someone says, you know, squirrels and they look over at me. I become like the world's number one squirrel hunting advocate. Squirrel man, what hunts have you not done that you'd really like to do? Man? Um, there's so many for me right now. I'm really kind of interested in stone sheep. Um. I've never hunting a big orange sheep. You know, if you just to privas why I just said that. Where I'm going on with this is if you imagine, you know, sheep at one time, all the at one time, probably all the sheep that we have in North America. So you have doll sheep stones, and there's kind of like a fan in which is sort of a you know, an intermediary sheep between air and and you go down. You have rocky mountain big horns and desert big horns. Um. At one time during the Plyce scene we probably had. There was probably a species of sheep that extended from Siberia all the way down. There's probably like a species of sheep, and then through a lot of climate factors, geologic factors, those sheep species were broken up where you had genetically distinct populations of sheep, and over time we wound up with the array of sheep we have. So leaving outide Cyber you have snow sheep, leaving out those you know, you have dull in Alaska, and then some portions of northwest Canada stones, and then you get down into continental US and big Orange. I've been on big orang hunts a few of them, never drawn a big Orange tag. I've uh been lucky enough to been on a handful of doll sheep hunts. Hunting with my brothers up in Alaska, killed a couple of doll rams. I would really like to hit that middle ground and go out and see some stone sheep country and chase after a stone sheep. That's one thing I'd like to do. The regard it as a thin horned sheep like a doll, but there darker, for dolls are white and these are a darker furred sheep. It's not so much like that I need like, oh, you know, imagine having one that had a dark hair. But it's more like just kind of like understanding this whole spectrum of mountain sheep and kind of seeing them in all their variations and all the landscapes they live in. So that that's very high my list is exploring the Canadian Rockies. It's really why you're going there. Yeah we'rech is some wild ass rocky mounts. Man, Yeah they're there. They got they got parts of the Rockies that smoke anything we have in the lower forty eight as far as remoteness and just wildness and having all of their animals on the landscape. That's a funny thing about wolf got like people that hate wolves categorically. It's like all the everydy wants to go hunt in Alaska, everydy wants to go hunt in Canada. They got wolves on the ground. Why if wolves mean that you can't have good hunting and there's no such thing as like big game and wolves, why do you go to Alaska? You should know that you should steer clear because it's wolves, so there can't be any game there. They occupy ninety of their historic range in Alaska, So that would that would lead me to believe that, like there's no point in going to that ship hole to hunt. You know, it's so weird there's that, like there's that misperception. But they you know, they managed wolves hard corn Alaska. But yeah, where we just were recently. I'll probably an email about this because they're not even to have given this info up. But we're hunting mountain lions. There's a lot of mountain lions, good mountain lion hunting, and I mean the deer tracks, Oh my god. Yeah, they were hand in hand. The lions are there because of you were there. Yeah, it's a I saw a thing with time to speak about lions and wolves. I saw a thing one time where, uh, they figured that out of every one hundred, out of every one hundred elk calves, thirty are killed by mountain lions, and in one particular area, every one hundred elk calves thirty get killed by mountain lions. Wolves came in and everyone got real upset about wolves. But they think additively wolves are killing ten per hundred. So people just got used to their being a survival of seventy of elk calves would survive, and that kind of became like how our whole management structure was built around this idea. Now that it's sixty it's noticeably different. It's changed everything, But all of the blame has fallen to this new thing, when meanwhile you have your primary predator has always been on the ground, but no one had to deal with the idea that it used to not be there, and now it's there. You know, it's like this sudden change rather than this old thing that was going on. It's such a it's like, I hate talking about it, but I'm just so drawn top about it. Because the wolf thing is so rich for investigation, it's really hard to find consistent information on wolves, on wolves in general, in predation of wolves. I hear people talk all the time about, oh, you know, one wolf is a hundred elk er you know, consumes thirty elk a month, and I don't I don't know. That's seven pounds of me today, So that's coming from somewhere. And then people's people talk about how they just hamstring all their animals and kill for fun. And I'm not advocating for one or the other. I'm just saying that I hear a lot of um, pretty dramatic attitudes on how much wolves take. And you've got people to tell you that they eat nothing but nuts and berries, right, They're like, oh, has no impact. I'm like, how could that be? They eat seven pounds me today there's three and sixty five days a year. They're eating something. Stop telling me that there has no impact on wild game. Does? It seemed to be a whole lot of middle ground on it. Polar as see their pollar eyes the other but there's not They did that study down the Bitter Route, right. I think the old Foundation paid for it. I know my little local rod and gun club played a little bit of money into it. They found out the biggest uh impact on those calf populations was black bears. Yeah, and so they increased the quotas on black bears. And like there's many factors. There was those fires that you know went on down there, so now there's a lot of like brows and stuff, but black bear it was a major contributor. And they started to the change the quotas and how that population is rebounding, Like, you know, everybody kind of knew it, could you know, the black bears were the ones that were working. The main factor that's been interesting to see in my lifetime, the uh, the sort of transformation that our understanding of black bears has gone through, where the people used to sort of SMS is kind of bumbling opportunists who would eat some carrying primarily vegetarian diet. And there's been so much research and just you know, the last couple of decades about how effective they are on fawns, and that they see these things moving into fawning areas before, like our calving areas before the elk even show up in anticipation of them coming in to drop calves, and they just know about that resource. And I think people used to look right through them and and see other stuff, and now we're seeing they have the black bears are heavy hitters. There's that Mulder. They're doing a Mulder study obviously controversial. They're doing the mule to your study down in Colorado right now, UM, and it's in a base and where you have sort of the semi isolated population the mule deer. They're finding that, um, the deer are getting plenty of food. When they weigh the fawns now, the fawns weigh more than past generations waged at the same time, suggesting there's plenty of food, but there's just no recruitment, and that they're looking at it's got to be a predator issue, and so they're going into this area and instead like when they generally done predator control in the past, they've done it where you just sort of throughout the year kind of target predators to try to drop numbers. But now they're trying to do in this particular study, they're trying to do targeted predator removal at the same time as they're dropping fawns, thinking that this way, you know, you're getting the ones that are in the area, and they're gonna see if that method might be a method where you're actually removing fewer predators and maybe moving the needle in favor of animals that are not doing so well, because instead of trying this like shotgun approach where you're getting animals that may or may not even be in the area when they're dropping fawns, but to go in there and they're removing coyotes and black bears, oh and mountains right, kyles and black bears and mountainins in may to try to test, among other things, to try to test this the idea that you might really help a population of animals out, like a declining population ungulates. You might help them out by like specifically giving them like on the ground support at the moment they needed, like covering, fire covering. Yeah, coilets are supposed to be really hard on deer fawns, are they? Again? I think it depends so much on the area. But in places, yeah, and in other places people are kind of surprised and they find out that there that they're not. But one of the reasons I think people like look at coyles is coyles are going through such a big range expansion that it's like this new thing now, right, It's this thing that used to not think about when I was a kid um where I grew up. I remember half my life there weren't none in the area. Half my life. There's a ton of them in the area. And so when people see something new and they see some changes, yeah, I think that you can wind up having sort of a simplified impression of what's going on by accounting for this new thing, as demonstrated by people's people's response to wolf predation as looking at it like as the reason something happened rather than being like a component to a very complex picture. Um, what happened with your This is something that comes up so much that's too complicated to get into. What gear do you recommend splurging on up front versus what gear can you work around invest in later? Boots? Boots, splurge boots. Imot spend as much on my boots as my gun. Yeah. I remember a guy used to hunt with. He was a packer for a guide out on the on the Alaska Peninsula. And the guy's thing was if he had a you know, if you had a thousand dollars spend I can't remember how it went. I think it went like, if you had a thousand dollars to spend on hunting gear, he'd spend a hundred on a rifle and nine hundred on his binoculars. It took me a long time to realize that ship. I went through a lot of my life without ever looking through a good pair of knockers. The minute I did, I'm like, oh, now I see, now, I see what this is all about. That was a big change for man good binos. I've looked through mediocre ones, and I've looked through really good ones, and I've been kind of hard pressed to make the to jump from that, really I have. I don't know why. I'm buddy mine looking through the right end. He had like the two thousand dollar Swatski, like the amazing binos and my four Nikons. It's like, I'll put him side by side, take the Pepsi challenge, like you like to say, And I don't. I don't understand how. I don't understand how you can think that way. I've been. I don't know, I've been, like I said, I felt like the really expensive I mean, sure, if I want to see the color of the thing's eyes, and but I mean I can see real well. I mean I'm deaf as a post for and I can see. I don't know. You spend a lot of time glassing when you're hunting, no, oh, pre hand it. Yeah, it's the greatest I can't do. Like you guys have the spot and scopes and stuff like tripod. Man, I'm trying you'll be like, oh, I didn't realize that all of this ship lived out here. When you start doing that, it's like, oh, there's a quail five miles away, right, Just a little movement it's not like my knock is like my binos are good, you know, yeh, you put them on a tripoddle, blow your mind. Almost never pull the spottings. Almost never pull my spottings go up out anymore unless you they're like my buddy's got my bonos on and I don't have my bonos, or I need to see closer what I'm looking at. Like a lot of times, all you just have such a wide feel of you and you can see everything moving on the tripod, so i'll, you know, I pick out you can pick out the body, maybe it's hard to see the horns behind the branches or whatever, and then you put the spotting scope on and dial it in. Yeah. I I seldom pull out very stilldom pull out my spotting scope unless I'm already looking at an animal. In fact, the guys out on with like me and Yanni are up on a glass and tip and he gets out is he like reaches over. You know, you got your eyes to your bvinyals, but you're sort of like looking in your pack for your spots. Gope, I know what that means. So he sees something and he wants to get a more careful look at it now and then it might be some little hell hole shadowy area. And I started getting real curious about on and I want to take a gander in there, and I'll pull my spots scope out. But generally it's like I'm like, oh, there's something, what is it? Tell me more, and I'll pull spotsk about to figure out what's going on, or I'll glass up. It's just like glass in the hill and I see a buck stand up and then lay back down. Or let's say I see a dose stand up and lay back down. I'm like, this gotta be more dear bed in there. I look with my binals, don't find them, get out my spot scope and that start going like, oh yeah, there's actually four of the men there. There's one's ear, there's one's hoof. You know, it's always to do that like detail work. The first time I ever put a pair of binoculars on a on a tripod was hunting couisedier. I couldn't believe it. Then probably shortly after that went on a Mulder hunt and was spot Mulder. I would never have spotted if I hadn't, if I wasn't running that because you don't feel it but you're shaking, and it makes it that like one movement disappears when you're moving things that are moving, their movement just blends in with the movement that you're doing. And the other thing is you just notice parts of ship right, you know, you know us you I used to like, hey to be reading articles and they're like, you're actually looking for a deer. You know, you're looking for a little flick of antler tow or you know, and it winds up being like, yeah, that's kind of true. But it's like you're not looking for a little piece of antler either. You're just like looking and you develop a search image of all these different things and you just wind up like picking up on natural lines. Daniel Boone said that you have during the Indian Wars, you had more of a chance of spotting an Indian's rifle then you did the Indian m because you know they were using those five ft long Kentucky rifles. Yeah, you just get in your head like there's like certain shapes that just don't occur now that you don't occur in the natural because the deer is part of the natural world. But there's certain shapes just don't belong to plants, I guess, and now and then you're like, I know that weird knee look and things sticking off under that tree. And I started to blow it up when I started running tripod. I mean, you completely changed the way, just that it changed. Yeah, you'll feel like your nikons are a different binocular. The first time I ever made my dad use a tripod, I was going to hunt across this valley and I just had him glassing for the same hillside, just you know where I wasn't for the next one. And that evening when we reconvene, he's like, man, I had no idea how good my binoculars were, Like same binocular has been using for because you can live up to the you can let them see there full. You let your knockers realize their full potential. And I almost feel like, what the question is, uh, what can you what are you laughing about? Just after that? Oh? Yeah, you know like nice knockings. Yeah that's all about yours, bro. Yeah, and he's got nice knockers. The what gear can you lurge on? Or should you splurge on? I'm not done talking about knockers, because I want to say another thing Um, we didn't really use but when I lived in the Eastern I was still talking about binoculars. I thought you were switching to other gear. I'm sorry, go ahead because we originally we everybody blurted out boots, and I do agree with the boots are right up there. But I feel like binoculars. If you buy a good pair of binoculars now and really do splurge, it might be the only pair of binnoculars you ever buy. And maybe if you take really, take really good care of them, you can pass on to the next generation and they could use them for almost a lifetime. You unless the technology gets that much better where a pair of boots will wear out. And I know that early on in my ELK cunning career, I think I did hunt in Um. I mean they were like a hundred dollar I don't want to say they were high text, but it's definitely just something out of Cabella's And I was like, I just need something you know, that can afford, that will get me through, And you know, I would say splurge on the binos. Yeah, if you're hunting your daddy's boots. Your dad, you didn't do much hunting, right, They just don't last uh binyls, man, I don't really And you can't really buy good binyls that aren't covered by a good or not that you can don't buy good binyls that aren't covered by a good warranty. All the all the good companies have a good warranty. Vortex has what there's is called v I P warranty. It's like if they break you to send them in, get new ones um and by I would say to buy a kind where the manufacturer covers them. Don't rely on who you bought them from to cover them, Like don't get knockers where if something happens, like you break the eye cup on them, you're gonna go back down to the retail location, figure out which companies you can use that you send it into the company, they do the repair and send them back because it's just a way better approach. And also by from a company that's you know, been around. I don't know if I don't even know if anybody makes like fly by Night optics companies, but it really changed. And you know, we always had binoculars when I hunted, when I lived in the eastern half of the country. You know, we had binoculars didn't rely on it as much then in Western hunting, I really developed um a real love with binoculars, and like I said, it kind of changed my way to hunt. But even now when I go back and hunt, you, if I'm hunting squirrels or hunting deer, I'm glassing up stuff that was that twenty years ago I wouldn't have found. Last time I was sitting there hunting Dug Durns wait Till Deer Farm in Wisconsin. During the middle of the day, I just take out my knockers and not on a tripop, but just leaning them on the rail of the ground blind, start looking down in the creek and the brush on the creek, and I'm picking off beded deer down there that have been there the entire time I've been sitting in that blind without knowing they're there. They were already laying there when it got light there a hundred fifty yards away from me. And it was until one o'clock in the afternoon, and I was bored out of my mind that I decided to tear that little brush patch part and realized was all kinds of deer landing there. And in the old days, I would have gone the whole day and not knowing they're there, and then hunting squirrels, you think like, oh he went in the hole halftime. He didn't half to him. He's like laid up on top of some branch and you get your knockers up there and you see some little tuf to tail for blowing in the breeze you would have never found without vinyls. I can't stand being on the woods with aut vinyls. But that you're pointing that with me, all right, anybody else any other gear? Well, the only thing I would I would say that's uh, maybe not printed into this conversation, but something that I splurts it on a long time ago. It was a raft that raft has gott me out of raft. Yeah, it's got me out on so many like I mean one fishing like I just use it way more. But it's also got me on hunting trips to that probably wouldn't have done. So, Like I mean, that's a big ticket item, um, but like like one, I think you feel like you know, you want to use it because you did spend that money, but man, it gets you in some really cool places and uh yeah, So I'd say I'd say it raft on top of the glass, and I think the glass is super important. No, I like the way you're thinking, man, I think you know, um, I think a big thing the thing that I'm usually always owned. You know, it's a big end. But like I typically always will own a canoe of some sort, and then it really having that in your tool kit, you know, helps you in hunting all the time. Squirting across even just like squirting across some mars are squirting across the river and getting a little bit away from where everybody's parking. You know, that's a good thing. We'll we'll do the one last one that we'll do some concluding thoughts. This is directed towards me, but we everybody can speak to. This is how does Steve draw so many tags? I don't think I draw ship for tags, if you like. Here's the thing I put in every state. So every year when I do my tags, I put in I put in for starting in the top left corner of our country. I put in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, in places elsewhere for everything. Oh, I forgot about Alaska. I put it for every draw in Alaska. I don't skip anything unless I'm not eligible, because like you know, for instance, I drew a Muskox tag, and you gotta go a certain number of years before you putting for musk Ox again. I put it for every damn drawing. I don't draw ship this fall. I don't think. What do you get that idea we didn't hunt? Well? I think that they're confusing some of the hunts that we go on thinking it's a drawing, it's hunt. But this fall we didn't do a single Okay, there you go, so yeah, this we hunted our asses off from August till Christmas, never did and all over the counter, and we didn't do a single private land hunt. Did we? I didn't think a little bit. But I don't think. I don't think we stepped foot on private land for big game this year. This person in the West, he does he doesn't say the one I have in front of He doesn't say what he's from the west or not. Was the last time you hunted a special draw like a tough like a tag where people are like, how did you draw that? Two years two years ago, I hunted a unit in Oregon, that's like a good job. Yeah, but it was because my buddy had a whole ton of points and and I had actually drawn a good tag the year before, which took me seven years to draw. I'd drawn a good tag before the year before, and he had fourteen points or something and said, hey, you want to just on this hunt. So he just split the points. I had zero. He had like twelve I think, and so this unit took five or six and so he split them. And this is the kind stuff this. I want to use this question as a springboard. Talked about a little bit of this, that kind of stuff. I know. There's a very renowned archer who people are like, well, how can he do all these amazing hunts? And it's because he's very good. And there's a lot of people who would love to spend time with him in the woods, and he teams up with them on draws. He hunts with eyes who have twenty points in some unit, and he's like, we'll go in together, we'll split your points and and we will hunt together and I will show you what's up. Just a friendship, you know, no money exchange in hands, just like a friendship arrangement. So yeah, people are like, how's he drawing all those tags? Because it's something he cares a great deal about and does the time and puts in the work and makes it that he gets to go do those hunts. He's got expertise in the area or something that he can trade for that trade for some opportunity. Um, that's one way. But yeah, I got no magic when it comes to tag draws man at all. Do you ever hound a special tag? No, Washington is really tough. I wouldn't even know have the stuff that him put in for it her. I mean like you just you just hunt by go down to the drugs. They're gas station by life pretty much. I put in for a couple of like six eighty Montana archery. I put in for pronghorn. That's really about the Yeah, I mean most of the stuff I do, I said, it's just over the counter. I've killed, like in my life, hunt all the time, and I've done a ton of hunt for a ton of big games. I've killed one like world class animal, okay, and that animal I killed in a on a tag I bought at a gas station on National forest Land. You're going to be like, I want to do your license, please, Okay, that'll be and then you walk on the woods and hunt. And that's like the one world class animal I've killed. I had to put in for a tag for the elk that I shot this past year. But the whole areas private, so I mean I had yeah, and Oregon, like I had to click off twice and I understood that all private land. So you had a body, idea, have body Yeah, rust took down. Yeah, your body that has a cattle operation. Cattle at least that some grazing on their place. Yeah, it's good stuff land coming off big big horn sheep hunt. Yeah, I mean, here's that fourteen so you put it in for big horns fourteen years. Intrew a tag and then the other hunter there's only two in that area, and he put in for thirty one years. How do you draw so many tags? I will say that like I drew another. I drew a mountain goat tag that year my daughter was born. She was born in July twenty one. That tag started August and that was our first kid. And I didn't get out. My my wife told me I couldn't do no. I went. I went like five six days, but she which wasn't even that much. But that wasn't in a row either, and it was only out for the day, and so I would bike in as far as I could go, then hike in sea goats start to crawling, those goats, and by that time it's almost, you know, it's almost starting to get dark. I mean no joke. That was like I saw goats every single time. So I ate that tag and that was painful. And I know how old my daughter is because I have you have to wait for seven years and I just started be able to put him again for this year. So every time you look at it is a little bit of resent. She's gonna know about it, you know, forever, and like you ruined my life. And what I hope happens. What I hope happens is that someday she draws him out and go tag and we get to go do it together and she shoots him out and got that whole thing is completely That would be like in our Big Game guide book. My favorite picture in our Big Game Guy book is my brother's um. His wife drew him out and go tag and then by the time her hunt date came around, she was six months pregnant. But yeah, I killed a goat a giant gut. That's awesome. Giant gut. She's got like this sort of like in this picture, she's even wearing like one of those things that gals put out on her. Super pregnant's almost like this like high waist like spose. Yeah, yeah, with a big old billy six months pregnant. She's she is a bad ass. It sounds like, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, she's a badass. I foresee you start to draw more tags. I'm building up a lot of points, man, Yeah, but you get him an they're gone, you know, So what happens? I mean because also when no do overkill on a tag, you'd be like, oh, yeah, you could draw this tag with three points and they'll be something I got like six, did you did hunt? Yeah, Colorado was draw I spoke. You know there's a lie. I drew it with how many points? Three? Okay, so yep, I do draw a lot of tags. Drew this last year. I drew a Colorado deer tag that you can draw with certainty with three points. Oh, you can probably draw it with a certainty with maybe even just two. I think I got a lucky and drew it with one. Okay, so probably not what this guy's getting at. No, I draw a lot of tags by Okay, I'll give you a straight dope. I've been lying. Um, when you're in show business, does the thing called the show business tag? And you you call up the state and be like, hey, I'm in show business and they're like, who are your Yeah? Do you have Hollywood cronies? Do you have a helicopter? You just tell us what tags need, will send him over. You have pictures of you and these celebrities together, and I'm like, yeah, I can back about like what tags you like. I really haven't found that the draw tags I've ever drawn I've had any more success on than the over the counter tags. In fact, I think I probably have had more success on over the counter tags than the draw tags that I've drawn, even when you factor out per day per hunt day. Yeah, yeah, I just I'm working. I'm working just as hard on either one. I don't necessarily know that I've seen the opportunity go up. Might it be that the over the counter areas are areas you're hunting often and have friends that hunt them often, and so you build up like a database and in a rare tag opportunity. You're going into a place you've never been before. That's yeah, that's possible. Yeah. I drew a very coveted uh doll sheep tag in Alaska in two thousand ten, and I found that hunt to be wildly different than the general dolls shehep hunts we've been on, Like, I felt it was a lot different. Yet it could have just been lucky moment better. Oh yeah, I mean, it's just you know, it's yeah, it was a thing that has normally like this nine day gruel fast that turned into like a pretty you could have kept going and looking, but I was like, didn't take long with well there's a ram My buddies like, hey there's another ram over there, and hadn't been our finding in the past, you know. But um, in other cases, I'm sure I talked to every year. I talked to guys who draw some tag. They think it's gonna be the hunt of lifetime. They go out and get their ass handed to them. There's no reason to think that you can't go out on a public land if you if you do your homework and you're working hard for it, and you spend enough time, you can't go I don't know pub about land hunt and have the hunt of a lifetime. Yeah, I mean that's been the over the counter, the bulk of my honey until you got your Hollywood cronies. Yeah, in the helicopters and the helicopters. All right. Concluding thoughts, Matt, I want I think I need to get more experimental with my meat preparation consumption. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, well we'll do that for sure. I should have I should have thrown that in. It's an animal that I just can't eat. But you sent me a picture. I think it maybe some moose bone marrow or you know. I had a knife late on top of it, and I justought, man, I'm so boring. When I saw that picture, it just looks so cool, all the colors, and but you would have eaten it or not? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I just need to get I'm I'm still kind of stuck in the like sausage steak, burger rut. I need to start doing some more experimenting. Yeah, is another easy one. Yeah. But braised shanks, braised ribs, braised shoulders, it's the it's the it's like the um if I you know, like we said earlier, if I was gonna like hand off someone a tip, I'd be like, that's a rich field of inquiry, one area inquiry right there? Do I get to you want to plug your company? Yeah? Yeah, soe not not even just not even just bench made. I mean Benchmaide's obviously cool. I think we make then we do make some of the highest performing knives and not the highest performing production knives you can you can buy and on the hunting side, for sure. But what I was gonna say is we were talking about the first question we talked about with knives was fixed blade folder, replaceable blade knife. I'm down for replaceable blade knives. People want to pack them, but I would just encourage anyone to please pack a hard use knife with you, especially if you're going out and doing back country stuff. Any survival expert would tell you that after food and water, the next number one thing to have is is a hard use knife. Yeah. I think two people hear survival and they imagine being like a bigger thing. So you can almost say, like any shitty situation or any like even kind of dicey situation. Yea, yeah, absolutely, it doesn't need to be like this idea though, you know you strand in the woods for a month. Just be like a really bad night, Like a really bad night can be made a lot better if you have the ability to do a little bit of woodcraft, make a fire, strike a flint whatever it might be. Yeah, hard use knife is really important to find some dry slivers of hartwood to get a fire gone without a rough out, a little spot to get out of the wind. I hear you, Jimmy Dorn. What's that het gun on the Is it a fish spear and hat? It's Seattle Mariners logo baseball with some kind of suckers here. Uh, well, I'm probably gonna start looking for a lightweight tripot. That's another too I didn't add, is if I always look at those things, is more weight that I gotta hump? Tell you what's more money? If you're gonna get go, you know what? The bots get a good one, get out, get out Doorsman's call all doorsman's and Phoenix Area of one and tell them you to ask that you want to talk to Cody. Cody, because you'll hook you up with the tripod the adapter that fits your bino can you could you could beat a person to death of their tripods not that i'd recommend as No, they're made out of They're made out of you know, it's like machine aluminum parts and stuff. They're pricey made in the USA. Man, Yeah, get up, tell you what I want to talk about. That red, white and blue bird of Freedom. If you flies, he flies over the outdoors. If you say it's something should be done, and you know, I'll probably take your word for it. You'll, yeah, when you're laying on your deathbed, you won't be like, man, if I had only not bought that tripod yea for me, it's always been just about to wait one more thing. The stuff just waste stuff, stuffing such a baby. I'm not a baby, man. I'm just told like lightweight, don't need anything. I'm like, what, what when did everybody become so afraid of carrying something as well? Because we're always walking straight up? Bill, I'm like, what a friend of the military. I got a friend of the military, who's I mean like when he when he was in Iraq and Afghanistan and he would set out and you know, set out with all different times a day and get posted up on a rooftop somewhere and um, he said when they grew up two guys okay, and I'm like, well, how much all that way? Hunter fifty pounds and I was like, oh yeah, I got my kid down to twelve pounds. I'm like, okay, sure, I could like not bring all kinds of stuff with me too, but some stuff is just like really nice to have more animals. Huh. Well, I'll give it a shot. Man. Uh this is kind of a question. So I don't know if everybody's ever done this, but I kept the nuts off that sheet. Oh buck nuts, yeah, and nuts. Just I'll say exactly how to cook him. Okay, get yourself a lot of butter, more butter than you think, and get it in a pan and then put the pan over medium low heat and tip the pan so all the butter collects in one edge of the pan, and lay your buck nuts in there, and just baste that buck nutt and baste that buck nutt and baste that buck nut with butter, and keep rolling and rolling and rolling it and basting it with butter until it's cooked through. What is basting me? You're know, basting me? What it means spooning up butter and spooning up hot butter and pouring it over the top, so you're just like bathing it right, and then you can make hot but hot buttered buck nuts by adding them. And I know you like, I know you like hot sauce. Put a little dash of hot sauce in that butter towards the end and paste it up and you're making like a like a buffalo wild nut, right, um, or a hot buttered buck nut. Or don't do that, just salt and pepper. Let it cool because if you if it's super hot, you cut it'll it'll burst. Let it cool, little bit slice it. Do you like octopus? Okay? Do you like bacon? Yeah, you're gonna love nuts. Okay, it's like an octopus. It's like an octop plus made it a bacon bacon. That is a beauty, beautiful baby. Um. Yeah. The last thing I would say this is your concluder is that you guys said this is like the last questions that you're gonna do. I think you can take a break whatever on it. But I like this is pretty cool, like the last Meat Eat Podcast Fan Question episode ever. Yeah, I think I think it works. They're just gonna keep coming in now, they're gonna flood the inbox. I can see it. Well, it's it's largely like a thing for me, Like it's almost like psychological or it's so taxing. Um, Like, I'm so sensitive that some of the questions like about the helicopters and whatnot, hit me so hard personally that it becomes very so now we're getting down to the root. It's like it's so mentally and emotionally burdensome for me. And then we get to talk about wolves and ship and I'm so torn about that subject and I see all all sides of it, and I'm trying to wrestle out a livable, meaningful compromise that can please as many people and still kind of get where I think things need to be. It's just really difficult for me emotionally. When you get off that I would rather watch my babies be born. That's like easier emotionally than it is to to wrestle with these questions. Alright, Well, maybe this is the last one telling you that's how because those are some emotional moments, not when your babies are born, but when mine. Well, yeah, you guys do it like a little house on the prairie, man down to the hospital, watch watching movies. Um, I don't know what happened. What was that fellow's name out of Maryland. He was helping us out with the sick of deer hunt that we postpone. I can't remember now, but he's I mean emails that he tried the base in buck nuts and they sort of he explained it as they turned inside out and became very much got them too hot. I'm guessing that's what happened, got them too hot. So yeah, definitely like a that's called that's called bursting us and that's not what I recommended. Resting doesn't sound good. Medium low medium low on the heat. And then you get that nice octopus. I've got a pair of my freezer for first time. Easy. I cut you off on the pizza train, all right? Did they may not get um, they may not get a concluding thought. Oh, I have a concluding question from Matt. Since we're I don't know when we'll get to hang out again. Jimmy, Jimmy question. You didn't get a cote. Oh? Sorry, it's good to go. Two most common type shapes of blades for a hunting knife would be trop point and clip point. Okay, and then can you just quickly explain why somebody would go with one versus the other. So, a clip point that's more like your your traditional lock back knife your grandpa had, that kind of has the blade sweeps down and into the tip. That generally creates a sharper point on the knife. You get less radius that way, so less blade, less curve surface in your blade edge, so that that gives you the ability to do more finite work. So like a caping knife, off happens to be a clip point. Uh, A drop point has a stronger tip than a clip point, so it's gonna you're gonna be able to do a little harder stuff with it. I think it's a better general purpose utility knife. And it also has a larger blade radius, so you can do more skinning with it. So it's good. It's it's really good to have both. Yeah, in the perfect world, I like both. Use one for my opening cuts and my detail work, and use the other one for the big sweeping things. Um, but I was not going to carry two of them. I I I kind of I always go back and forth, like if I bring one, like if I bring a clip point, I like it when I'm you know, un zipping everything and then later I'm like, hey, you know, I like my other one better. Right, when you're doing like all that skinning and trying to do a nice job and leave, like especially trying to clean skin and something like if you're doing a bear, you want don't want to leave, you know, pounds of fat meat on there. You get such a nice job. But then when I bring that one, it's just the opening cuts aren't is fun. They're not. They're not if you were only if if I was going to recommend only bringing one, I would recommend it be a drop point. I think it's yeah, I think it's it's more it's it's better generally for all things. But you're right, the opening cuts aren't is fun. It's harder to get the tip of the knife up under the skin because it just doesn't have the steep angle. But like that the one, I like that one won all the awards to the steep country. Is it pretty like dramatic drop point? It is, yeah, but it's durable, and so is that kind of you're doing that on that drop point too, kind of blend the two worlds a little bit. And so, I mean the steep country is a it's a pretty tip cold drop point except for a fixed plade. We were able to make the blade itself wider and I mean like taller if you're looking at it from the side profile, and that gives us a larger radius. So that's what we did. So yeah, we we did that so that you could have an increased ability to make longer cuts. And then also when you have a bigger radius, you're spreading the cut across a basically a longer surface, so you get better edge retention that way too, because you're applying it to a more edge, so it equals better edge retention. The Old mountain Man, you ever go to mountain Man museums and stuff, the Old mountain Man definitely drop point guys. They were not clip point guys. I don't know clip points existed back then. But they like those big bellied like the old skinning knives, like big bellied knives. Yeah yeah, but it is like it's like, you know, you see a lot of those companies that made those little kits where it's one of each, but it feels a little overkilly to me, you know, and this is more junk laying around. I got a real problem with like when you leave the kill site. You know, it's one in the morning or whatever. It's just like the less stuff. I'm kind of like trying to remember to grab the better That would help you achieve that minimum packway that you're looking for is if you had a couple of extra if you had both types of blades. No, that would not do it. Oh, I'm sorry, you're making a funny joke. Um, I don't have that, you know. My concluding thought is about being emotionally taxed Land Jimmy Matt, thank you very much. You guys a great wealth of knowledge. Um, I appreciate it. If we ever get to go to do questions again, we'll do it. If not, we'll come talk about just we'll do like an all Wolf episode sometimes all Wolf, all our all right, thanks for listening.

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