00:00:00 Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is the best news to ever happened in the entire history of of everything. Individual Meat Eater episodes from our new season I'm talking to TV show, not this yere podcast are available for instant streaming and HD downloads right after they air on TV, so you get a new episode every Thursday. There's no embargo, you know where you gotta wait a long time to get a new episode. It comes out on TV, you go to your computer. You watch it on your computer, no problem. Head over to meat Eater dot vh X dot TV to instantly watch the new season of meat Eater and h D. Use the promo code meat Eater Podcast at check out and you get five bucks off any of our previous volumes. Go check it out Prime viewing for you everyone. Just the meat Eater Podcast were recording in the warm and sunny Juno, Alaska, the only state capital not joined to the International Highway System. But you can't drive out of Juneo. How many people live here? Oh? Was it thirty five thousands? No idea, It doesn't matter. Not many people live here. For a state capital, um surrounding us as Tongas National Forest, And we've been here in Juno for four days of action packed sooty grouse hunting, which is something you probably haven't heard of before. Honestly, lay some quick groundworld. Well, no, no, The first thing I want to talk about who's here? Um, we have our representative from the famous Hunt to Eat T shirt company. Honest tell us he's wearing his Hunt to Eat shirt. Garrett Smith, he's wearing a Hunt to Eat shirt. Did you buy that or get that free? Gurt? I can't say. You can say I was giving it so the people in this room get a free Hunt Eat shirt. But but really, if you wanna, um, we've got we've got shirts in stock. Janice long Tong, Yanni, Yanni Chamani whatever you want to call him, has T shirts in stock now at Hunt to Eat. And I want to point out I have nothing to gain a Steve the host. I have nothing to gain from you buying, um y honest the T shirts. Besides many thank you you know. In fact, I'll point out I have something to lose because if you get rich and famous from selling T shirts, you're not gonna work here anymore. That's not true. You don't know that. You might just do it like oh the goodness of your heart. So yeah, I like my job, you know, so I can only lose from telling you to go buy Onni Yanni's hunt eat T shirts. He's got him in dock. Why don't you sell him for un But wasn't there a special deal where people could put in a thing and get some cheap T shirts? There was? But this is tough because we're recording this now. It's uh may, who knows when this is gonna air, So it's tough. Anyways, check the website. Yeah, maybe I have a special goal full price man Um Garrett Smith Garrett, Uh, you weren't born in Miles City, Montana, Great Falls, Montana. Born in Great Falls, Montana. He's working with right now because his old man. In a roundabout way, not not to diminish your talents, but in a roundabout way, because you're old man's friends of my brother. Talk about nepotism, Yanni's friends of my wife. Full circle. Mike washed Leskie's here. He's not friends of anybody. He Mike got his Mike got his job the honest way. Man, How did you get How did you come to work here? Mike? Uh? Since? And he email to sence to me yeah, did you think about sending me one? No, I didn't have it. I watched an episode on television like a year ago or actually a little bit more year ago, and was very moved by the production and and this it was whenever you didn't pull the trigger on that bear at your cabin, and I thought, well, what did you think about the hosting? I thought it was excellent? Excellent? Yeah, no, it was. It spoke a lot the fact that you didn't take the bar. I was it's like, well, first of all, you know, not to diminish other hunting shows, but there was something that really stood out. The first episode I saw I was with Rogan. I was like, what the hell am I watching? Like, why is Joe Rogan on hunting show? And then I watched another one because it was like a marathon or something like that, and it was the episode where it was just you out hunting that bar and you didn't pull the trigger. And I was like, that says something because you know most hunting shows like you gotta put it down. I mean, that's the whole point where here is going to kill the animals like that. Then you came out to work shot yeah, sure to Yeah, And it you know, and no it got revenge on us man. Yeah, Mike's uh that was your first trip, that was my first trip. Yeah. This young kid, um, Mike washed Leski is out of Austin, Texas and he's up here right now. Because as everyone knows, Operation Jade Helm, the U. S. Military is in Texas. Um much fear in Texas that it's actually they're gonna they're overthrowing the government in Texas. Is that right? The U. S. Military is imposing martial law in Texas, take everyone's guns. That's fair. Yeah, So they sent uh, the U. S. Army into Texas and there it's a big movement. They're a big operation to declare martial law in Texas and disarmed Texas. That's what That's what people think is happening. That was gonna happen until the Texas governor very boldly said that he's gonna have the NA National Guard keep an eye on the U. S. Army while they're there. He's going to defend us from from the from the U. S. Army, Yes, and special forces. He's like, not only that, I'm gonna send some more cops out too. So but Mike' up Juno to all this blows over man because he doesn't want to have Marshal lawful duck out. Yeah I did duck out man. It was getting too crazy. Um also joined by Corey kaz Merrick Yes or cutch Mark or cutch Mark what nationality is that? Polish? Yeah, he didn't really get his job honestly because you came on recommendation from a guy. Yeah, well a small town zpc West moved to Bozeman, and I live in Bozeman, Montana. So that's an honest way to get a Job's on a good recommendation. That's true. It is, Yeah, you know, I like the way Mike did it. Send an email? Yeah, but come on, everyone's gonna send an email. But to come on recommend more I think about it. To come on recommendation now that it's something we'll see here. Who does here, Mike? So? But to get on the may they want to talk about blue grouse. Now, I as a hunter, I'm a fan of uh. I like hunts that that are underutilized, right, I like consider overutilized. You know what, there's like too many people trying to do it, which I would say that generally like hunting, you know, ducks right. It's like ducks high competition hunting typically you know publicly, and white tails high competition, turkeys, high competition. I like all that stuff, but I also like stuff that just no one does because I don't know why. It's just not something people know about, you know, I would say squirrel on people know about, they just don't do it. Or there's a way more squirrels and way more squirrel hunting land than are people interested in hunting squirrels. But one of the most underutilized hunts in the world is the blue grouse. Now a blue grouse, people used to call them blue grouse. And then some years ago, like seven years ago, I think oh six two six, Okay, figure ou how many years ago? That was nine? Yeah? Right? Net ballpark? Right, net ballpark thanks to the um right ned ballpark. The Ornithological Society declared or not declared, but suggested that it be split in. The blue grouse, which is a bird from the western uf so split into two populations dusky grouse, city grouse. Duskies live in the interior mountain range of the Rockies. Cities live on the coastal ranges. Now, people who run into and and and and inadvertently now and then. Sure, do not not, like, as an incidental take kill a blue grouse now and then because the birds are just kind of there and they don't really know to run away people. They're one of many birds that people call a fool's hen, which is like a disparaging term for a bird. And what they're getting at is that they would say, it's not that smart. The blue grouse isn't that smart, because yeah, I subscribe what happens when you walk up on a blue rouse. You were talking about this earlier, oh in the inner Mountain Rockies interior. But yeah, so what what is now since two thousand and six now? Dusky grouse? Well, often I've run into him archery, l hunting, and I used to I used to always have an arrow maybe sometimes too marked, you know, grouse on my fledgings. You'd actually write it on there. Oh yeah, because it'd be like a you know, slightly crooked arrow or you know, something to be wrong with it. But so you could wouldn't feel bad shooting at the grouse. But yeah, you're just cruising along and like you look over and you know, ten fifteen feet away there he is just chilling feeding sometimes just kind of like they see you, but they're not flushing, they're not running, they're just kind of slowly walking away, and enough time to take oftentimes multiple shots with bow and arrow. I've killed more now Dusky's blue grouse with my bow and arrow than I have with a shotgun. At one time, hunting in the Interior Ranges, shot a blue grouse with my bow and then grabbed a rock and killed the second one. The point I'm getting at is people look at the blue grouse, and you know, they live in the high country. Typically they look at a blue grouse, they're like, oh, there's a dumb bird. But that's that's that's a dumb way of thinking about it. A blue grouse, like blue growls. Generally, human predation is not something they're generally dealing with, right They live in areas where they have other stuff that they're worried about. And I think it's unfair to birds and fish and animals when humans declare them dumb, because their response upon seeing a human isn't to run away. You know, people be like, oh, those two are dumb. They didn't run away. But you might say, well, maybe he's really smart because he doesn't run from everything he sees and waste calories and put himself into risk from other kinds of predation that he might not know about when he inadvertently runs into other things, and so he knows the hold tight and assess whether it really is danger or not. And it's dumb to fly away and run away from stuff that means you no harm. That could be one way of looking at it. Yeah, it's like a an ignorant person's way of like it's personification, Like you're putting like human emotions and feelings to an animal and and saying like, in that situation, if a human did that, you would say it's dumb, you know, but humans humans like humans walk up on them. No, I know, but that's I walked up on a ton of people in that restaurant we ate at tonight. I saw running Actually, yeah, yours ran over some guys with your fan. So yeah. The word anthropomorphism giving it's kind of different than anthropomorphism is what people What people do with their dogs usually like act like their dogs are capable of emotions, you know. I'm like, you're like projecting human tendencies or human attributes onto animals, which most dog owners are guilty of you know, Ronnie being not Ronnie ban but most dogs look and those those those humans that are saying that you're saying, I just I just walked up to some people. But that bird had people sneaking up to it in camouflage with rifles. So if you had done that in that restaurant tonight, maybe not everybody would have been so dumb and just been hanging out. Some of them might have fled, so especially if you walk through the door where the rifle and camouflage. But we have so much ground to cover blue I want to I want to move the blue grouse storyline, like everyone's being real boring. So blue grouse are hunted in the fall now. Years ago, in probably in the late nineties and early two thousand's, I was out hunting black bears in the spring and the way one of the Montana the way we eventually started hunting black bears once we got good at it. As we would hunt uh southerly south facing, east facing, southeast facing exposures in really steep country where you had avalanche slides or snow slides would clear away snow on big hillsides so that you climb up into a high area in the Moun Mountains, and everything's covered in snow except avalanche shoots where the snow slid off, and then the sun warmed the hill up, and because the snow was gone, those hills greened up. Those strips would green up faster than all the surrounding topography, and you'd get skunk cabbage and glacier lily and all kinds of grasses would grow on these snow shoots. And a bear, a black bear who might dan you know, eight thousand, nine thousand feet above sea level. He comes out of his den around me earlier or later, but generally May six. Some people say May seven. I think my brother Danny thinks that's May eleven. But there's a day every year. And also like bam, all the bears come out. Some bears trickle out all the time. But like bears come out, Um, we s on these avalanche slides and now on then we'd be sitting at the foot of an avalanche slide and you would hear a noise. It would sound like it's who whose things they can do it best, not that's I'm gonna do. I'll do mine then, but someone else has to do there's next. Would hear this noise? Okay, picture it's April May, and all of a sudden, m m was that six seven notes? Almet m m m m M. You try yours. M that's one far away. Yeah, that's why. That's when we's all that's might might do the far away grouse? Who else wants to take a stab at? You're getting the point the bar set too high. I don't get it. Do one let one rip? Oh oh that was good. Yeah that sounds good. Here's this noise. Now, we were for a couple of years baffled by what this noise was because I grew up in Michigan, right we moved out west get into the hunting fishing action. We would hear this noise. Turns out that the blue growls, which is just kinda I was gonna call him blue grouse like everyone knows now right, dusky grouse, city grouse, blue grouse. Learned that it's it's it's a blue grouse, and that's his noise in the spring to call in ladies um and eventually figured that out and then learned that there's a thing in southeast Alaska where you can hunt blue grouse in the spring, and the Molaska they calm hooters spring hooters because you can hunt them in the spring. The hunting method is you go out into the mountains in the spring and try to listen for that hoot noise and then try to locate the bird. Now, three years ago, we were finishing up bear hunt and we had passed through the town to ketch A Can. Yanni was there. We had some time to kill and we're going to take some pictures and we drove up on the road system out of Ketchikan on revel A Gegado Island or Ravilla Island or Revy Island. We drove way to up the road till we got the snow got too deep, and then we walked for a ways and got to this high road and it sounded to me like from everywhere, from everywhere was Mike, what do the far away everywhere? You remember that you honest, I do describe your impressions. Yannest was so moved he started a T shirt company. Yeah, it was one of those things where it because we weren't focused enough, Like we weren't hunting him. So we're just like cruising around doing our thing. We're taking some pictures and no, because if you remember, I proposed we draw back into town and buy a twenty two, then drove back up there to hunt for an hour for our plane. I forgot about that. So, yeah, we heard a lot of hooters. It did sound like they were everywhere. It haunted me as haunting as a noise as it haunted me A year after that, well, so that year I started researching how to hunt spring hooters because like I had a spot. I got onto this idea where I was gonna um kill him, like how you killed turkeys. So I found this catalog online. There's like, here's one right here. I'm looking at the Macaulay Bird Sound Library. Here the libraries full of all the library things. Start this way. I'm gonna play one thing real quick. Four or five two. That dude says that, then you're here. That's a female. Okay, that's a female tending her chicks, HEARDing her chicks. So I started trying to find ways that you would mimic these noises, and I would send the noises to friends of mine who were musicians, first asking them like, if you had to figure out how to make that noise, how would you make it? I sent them both the female and the male sound. Now, everyone said that a blowing out a beer bottle would make the male noise, which you don't. And everyone said, there's some kind of Australian instrument. Did you re do? Yeah? Do you do? You like this? Do you no? That's a that's a that's something yeah, with the like thing on the end. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's like I roped up. You spend the rope real fast at that. What's it called? I have no IDEA boomerang? Bro, Remember they had a ghost caller toy growing up. It's like a tube you do that? Yes, yeah, that's the word. I mean it made that sound, yeah, know that. I think about it. Whenever I was out there, I pictured, like in like an old guy with the moonshine jug with like triple axes on it, just like softly blowing on it. Yeah, Mike, Mike. First thing, Mike said, we got in the moms like, she's just a lot old mood shiners out here, the all things mood shiners. Are you think we've find it still? So? Yeah, it sounds like an old dude blown on a moonshine jug. Anyways, I sent these sounds that everyone eventually sent uh the sound to the guys that down in dirty game calls, and they made me a box call and an open read call that I could use to try to mimic a hand and it's kazoo like that was the other musicians kept saying, like, you might be able to do it with the kazoo, but I couldn't figure out how to do it with the kazoo. But I got this open read call that sounds damn good, and it's like it's like, uh, is that right? Yeah, sounds like that. And I put out a thing on social media asking anyone if anyone had a dead female blue grouse laying around. This dude name who had become kind of like email buddies with this guy named Shad Brunson out of Utah. Runs out, He's like, hey, I'm going hunting them anyways, runs out, shoots me one I have it, go to a taxidermist that I know in Montana who stuffs that female and armed with a hand call and my decoy. I go out back one year later with Yanni and do where he was with us back out to Ravilla Island and spend four days trying to get under the tree of a blue grouse in order to call to it and present it with this decoy, thinking that I would pull the bird down out of his tree where they're hiding up in the tree, pull him down, he'd come down and strutt and I shoot him. And we got killed on that trip. Talk about why we got killed for what I know now know from what you knew then what I knew them. There weren't as many birds, we felt like, and we hunted the same. We didn't have a lot of room in room. We're kind of hunting the road system out of catch can. We had I don't know, maybe three five miles of road we could hunt that was National four something like that, and they're just I felt like we were working the same four or five birds. We named them all, Yeah, we had them all named It's a roast bird, lost Bird, Randy, new Bird, Houdini, Houdini. Yeah. Yeah, We're like, yeah, there's like we knew about these birds and we try to find them. You could not find them. Yeah. We kept getting cliffed out. We got cliffed out numerous times where we just could not we felt like we couldn't continue, you know, you know, moving on these birds. What these sons of bitches will do is they'll get up in a high spot like picture, you're at the head of a canyon, and they, like the walls of a canny kind of come together and peter out at the head of a canyon or the head of like a draw, you know, on a mountain slope, and there's some big, badass spruce tree rising up and towering over the head of the draw. A blue grouse will go up into that high spruce tree and start making is weird hit it like noise, and you it sounds like it comes from everywhere. Like you know, if you're out in the woods and you hear a sound and you'd say to your body'd like point your finger at the sound. Well, I noticed people do when a blue growlse calls. They don't point their finger. They sort of like gesture with their hand like uh, like, oh, it's over, like in this vague sort of direction. Yeah, what we started doing now is like it's like a two handed like pie kind of you hear a blue grouse, sometimes your pie thing describes degrees right, or sometimes you might a very narrow pie wedge would be a yeah, a very narrow pie edge is a lie. But I would say a narrow pie wedge is a fifteen to twenty degree pie wedge. Right. If you see someone get what if you hear annoy, you hear a grouse, a blue grouse off like you know, he's a mile away whatever he is, um and you drew a pie wedge more narrow than fifteen degrees, you the person's over excited, you know. To put it this way. One time, while we're trying to hunt spring hooters in Alaska, we had a grouse's location in our minds. Pinpointed to two trees, one of which I climbed. Hours later. We were probably about a mile away from there, trying to ascertain which mountain the bird was on. He never stopped hooting. I think we finally said he's probably up on that ridge. And we said we said we couldn't. We couldn't go on the ridge though even that's what it was, wrong, wrong, wrong landownership. For four days, we would just be like, we'd go we get burned by let's say it was Randy Newbird. We get burned by Randy Newbird one day. The next day would get exasperated, we'd go back up to try again. On Randy new bird, and we'd sit and just listen to him, being like, what portion of the mountain ranges that bird calling from? I got sober funneled, and it was so miserable that Uh. I called some buddies of mine, and I happen to have a buddy of mine named Matt Carlson, who's a he's a um, he doesn't he's a biologist, but he does a lot of ornithology, and he grew up in southeast Alaska. And I called him because I knew he'd hunted a spring hooter. Now, man, he said, like, you know, to be honestly, I never did it enough. Um, it's tough to find him. Let me ask around. He calls around and finds a dude who another biologist from Juno who knew a retired woman named Barbe who is a blue grouse master. And one day all piste off while we're hunting blue grouse. I called Barbe and asked her how to find him, and she gave me some tips that just explaining over the phone did me no good, and then we just got We continued. We had one more day hunted, the last day of the season, and didn't find any birds. Yeah, A year goes by and we email with and become friends with Barb and Fanagal and invitation up to come and hunt Blue grows with Barbed for four days which just ended, and we fucking slay them, slate them. We really, we really worked bar We just we kind of gave her the one to punch we could like we really A couple of phone calls, really had our tails tupe between our legs, were like, we have a good time to even hold this one on her. Um, you do you do what you pulled on her? But your daughter, my daughter, No, you're not your dog daughters. Yeah, y'alln't even got y'alln't even took it to this to to try to finagle an invitation on the bar. You went as far as to well, because it's not everybody that wants to jump on TV. There's a lot of people that do want to be on TV. Some people could give a ship, don't need, don't need anything to do with TV. There's people who want to come on a TV show because they they could be fun. They want to hang out, go on a free trip, it'd be fun. They've always curious about how TV shows get made okay. There's people who want to come on t VO because they gotta sell. They want to sell something like, oh, Yanni comes on the podcast, sells t shirts, like they got a thing. They're gonna get a specific, concrete thing they're going to get out of it. That's hunts Eat dot com. And then you got what were the other kinds were identified? And I tried to have it be three, but we identified five kinds of people that want to be on TV. They wanna be a guest on TV show. There's people who would just do it. They don't want to do it, but your buddies with them and they'll just do it, which is pretty much what happens as a bar. But anyways, the card I pulled on her as I said, look, I've got two daughters, and there are no great female hunting role models out there, let alone with blue grouse hunting, right, Please show them how it's done. And so Barbe has been hunting blue grouse twenty five years. She hits it hard. Yeah, And what was interesting that I realized about her this evening at dinner is that, um, she's got a very deep hunting resume. She passed around her a little portfolio of pictures, and Barb's kills just about everything in the state of Alaska and moves doll sheet her family daughter when she's a very little girl, which makes me like her even more because she's just into going hunt blue grouse. Yeah, she's un all the big game, but she is like a blue grouse hunter, and she took us out and taught us how to find those things. And I can't even I'm trying, I'm searching. I don't know what the method is. Corey today commented, the blue grows signing is good for It's like good for anyone who has good hearing, is in good shape. Did you quit it to golf a little bit? No? No, I well, I said the opposite's it's just I guess it's a you know, it's a hunt that's probably not meant for deaf people and people out of shape. That's how I put it. But yeah, you know, I meant barbed. The first day we got here, we flew in, I mean, Yanni, We're talking to her in the hotel and I was like thinking to myself, Oh, this is this is gonna be a breeze. You know, barns probably in her fifties, I would say, mid fifties, and uh, we're just gonna walk around in these nice parks, forest parks and look for these birds. And first day we're sweating, you know, within fifteen minutes because everything is straight up and down here cover to moss, sofer moss. Thank god it wasn't raining. And she crushed us. I mean, she pretty much left us in the dust. Really, I couldn't. Like, I still don't understand how she was doing it. Just a climbing fool. Yeah, she smoked us and maintaining. Day one she made one of our cameraman quit. It. Shouldn't even have pink accents on her gun. Nope, smiling, no paint, no paint needed. Yeah, did it without mascara. Just out there hammering the mountain and on point. She was always knowing what she was doing and looking forward. Yes, so barbed hunts, buy herself like that. Here's how she hunts. Her husband doesn't have blue grouse anymore, and he'll come out. They'll go out on their boat and sometimes they'll just go out and cut the engine on a calm day and drift off the you know, out in the ocean, listening up on the surrounding mountains to hear some hooters going off. Then Barbe's husband, well bring her up and beat or they got a flat bottom boat, like a big boat. They can sleep on the thing, you know, and carry his already act around on it. But he'll go up and beach around the beach, and then she'll go hunt all day um while he trolls for salmon. And then she carries a orange banner with her so she don't need to pay any attention to where she winds up. She usually belines it and I'm talking temperate rainforest, I mean rainforest. She blines it up to you know, hundred feet hunts, comes down, hits the ocean shore, hangs up her blaze orange banner so that her husband, while he's trolling up and down the shoreline will notice the banner and not to come get her all spring. She says that they don't start fishing hall but until spring hooter season is over. There is probably no other person who's that committed. If they if they are, please email me. You're honest, stop but tell us at zero point zero dot com. I would love to talk to you, because every I've read a handful, the only place that publishes blue grouse hunting articles. Is like uh Laska Department of Fishing fishing game because they try to promote it to new hunters and stuff like that, you know, And so they'll they're always every year they'll round up some dude who's gonna write like a blue grouse article, and the blue grouse article will be like, oh, there's this zany thing. Um. I'm usually into something else, but so every now and then I'll go do this anything. And the birds are like and no one can write an article without using the word ventriloquist. They're like a ventriloquist. And you know, it's just silly kind of anything. That's like what it brings out in people. I don't know why people are down on it, except that I think it might be that when you find the bird, you shoot it. Out of truth the twenty two. It's not wing shooting, you know, it's not win shooting. Except that the article that we read that was publishing the Juno newspaper wasn't he afforded to me before we came here. But this guy wrote an article about it, how he was so into it, and he said that I thought he wasn't into it. I thought. He's saying, I'm not a big hunting guy now and then I'll go do this. Well, my point is that all the effort that he put into finding these birds, he wasn't gonna shoot him with twenty two. He just took his dead. Guy smoked him out with truth with the twelve gage, which I don't know most of the birds we found, you were gonna kill the twelve gage too far away? Yeah, I was gonna say, man, they were high because bullet drop is an effect but affected by vertical distance. But shotgun spread is he's saying he's shooting, he's mostly walking away from a lot of birds, or he's not find him because he's not gonna be shooting him with a twelve gages seventy yards in the size of a softball the body unless he's go up there with with a bunch of heavy shot up super turkey choking a bunch of heavy shot. Maybe yeah, talk to that guy. Anyways, he did make a thing. He likes shooming a scatter gun. They don't jump, So that's the thing, is like, like, who do you guys ever, you guys ever hold ducks off the water with a shotgun. He's Texas. Did you not do it because because you don't hunt ducks, or you not do because you think it's unsportsman, Like I said, don't ut ducks? All right? Yeah, no, that's something I we go duck hunting, and we'd always I guess the etiquette was to let him get off the water first. Yeah, it's weird, man, because you're saying I see both sides of it. You know. When you're saying, yeah, I want this thing to be dead and I and I wanna give it a chance, we'd also be saying I'm also giving it more of a chance that it's gonna that I'm gonna hit it with a bb and not kill. It's like you want it, dad, but you can make it dead, you know, shoot it. But it is unsportsman. It's generally regardless unsportsman, like the hose a duck off the water. That's how market hunters used to do it too. But is that the same as like shooting a deer bedded to listen, man, I will fight that to the dead dye. It is not no listen. It's way different. I think that to shoot a betted animal is a sign of good hunting, not bad hunting. It's like you've done your work right. There has no idea there, like you put on you put such a good stock on that you found the thing laying. You know, you don't like drive up on a bedded animal. Mm hmm. Yeah. People might be confusing betted animal with like animals asleep and like you're fathering along after Thanksgiving dinner was passed out on the couch. Like that's not the animal you sneak up to. These animals aren't just snoring with their head and on the ground. You just having having stands across him and then get to boom them. No, betted animals like it's on full alert, you know, in its bed in a safe spot where you can see all around it. He's got the wind coming in the right direction, he's got covered behind him. And like you're saying, if you sneak in there, you've done something special. Now, if you opposed shooting bedded animals because the shot placement problems, I understand where you're coming from. The shot places was difficult on bettered animal. But we filmed the thing. We we filmed the animal uphunt. I belly crawled, I mean I spent a long time belly crawling up on an antelope, very hot, very uncomfortable, belly crawled on an antilope, got close to it in his bed, had a perfect shot, killed it, and never even stood up. Blamn dead. Some guy writes an email like I've hunted all six continents and that that that I never see anybody shoot a betted animal. I'm I don't know. You must be not looking, you know. He was like, morally outrage, not about shot placement, but just the coward you know, how cowardly it wasn't shooting better animal. So it's like, so is it cowardly to shoot an animal running away from you? Shooting him in the back? I think his bs. But the whole shooting birds out of trees thing, I think that that might be a thing is because guys and hunt birds like wing shooting, and it's not wing shooting. Garrett, you don't need to raise your hand, dude. Well, I was thinking with you talking about the better down animals and getting a good hunt on him. It takes that skill and effort. And it seems like with the grouse, the Souti grouse in particular, I mean to get up in that country to find out where that sounds coming from to find him in the tree to get a shot at him. That effort is there, so yeah, yeah, it takes work. Yeah, it's worse. So you earn or I mean you don't earn. But if it's an etiquette thing or a fairness thing, a sportsman's thing, the sportsman's things there with the Sudi grass not needing them to like if you got all you you go to South Dakota, right and you you go up and you get out of your truck, you have some coffee, eat a couple of doughnuts, walk down and do ditch row and start spitting pheasants out every which way, and you're shooting with your shotgun and you act proud of yourself on that. I'm telling you, if you're gonna measure effort, that is nothing compared to what it takes the final it's hard, man. It might be it's less than five percent. It's nothing. Nothing. No, I think it's like an excuse. I think they know what it takes to go up there and to like get a limit. We've been at it four days and had some great hunting, did not get a limit any day, and we're like trying to figure out what it would take to get a limit here and not get a limit. But he's hearing hoots, always hearing hoots. I think maybe people know what they have in store for him. I mean, you're talking about what do we hike for elevation, gaining loss in our bigger days? Yesterday? All right, that was, but that was just days. But I think you keep pointing out were talking about in rainforest. It's not like hiking that trail. It's off you get landed on the beach. We we'd go out and get landed on a beach with a boat. Boat pulls up. Everybody jumps off the bout and you're at tideline and you don't start hearing hoots till you're six seven ft up, typically straight up. And yeah, it's really I mean, it's a physically very challenging hunt. And there's no other hunt that I can think of, and I've been trying to think of it. Turkey hunt involves listen for gobbles, but there's no other hunt that just comes down to listen ning locating the source of the noise. But that's only half of it, because once you find where you got it narrowed down, you know what three trees in and neither. Trees that are a couple hundred feet tall, several hundred feet tall sometimes, Now that's why hundred tall before you get into optics of city grass something. Let's say a quick break. All right, welcome back. Uh, there's a couple we're gonna get back into blue grouse on. We're gonna start talking about like finding them by noise and finding them by sight. But a couple of things came up. One I meant to talk about this rout off the bat. Does anyone here if we're talking, we never quit. We're talking about before we started recording, we're talking about big Foot. No one here believes in Bigfoot? Right? Do you believe in big Foot? No? I believe that there's a some sort of archetype about someone larger than us humans. You know, yeah, I agree with that, Like a lot of cultures have a version. Yeah, yeah, Mike, not tell us he for I'm I'm undecided. What do you mean your own decided? Well, there was I saw, you know, with all the internet videos, there was an Asian bear that walks on its hind legs for longer periods. It can walk up to like, you know, like a quarter mile or something. I can believe that. And it looks like, does that mean I have the the well the big foot thing, Like yeah, I don't know. No, do you believe that there's a giant hominid? No? Actually no, yeah, you're right. No, No that's good. Not that. Take't care. So the other came up. We want to touch on that. What's something else we're just about touching on. Oh, the painting in the hotel room. It's like this painting from it must be some prominent saddle around. It's a big grizzly up on the on the mountains above Juno. He looks like he's headed down into town to go drinking. It's like he's coming. He just must have come. It's a lot of snow. He just come out of hibernation. It's like, yeah, he's like headed down to get drunk, like what is going on? Or eat a few people he doesn't have, like a man he doesn't have. If I was the painter and I wanted to make it that he was headed down to to kill people, how to have him look mean, I don't know. This guy's mouth open. He's like he's like the version of the lone wolf, you know, with the wolf in the village below was going down to get drunk or something. Yeah, back, so the trick. Now, there are parallels in this world the sound thing. Okay, listening for bugle and elk up, like you're you're listening to locate listening to a turkey, you listen to locate, but in but in those things squirrels, I'm always listening for squirrels barking. I'm heading their direction. Yeah, there's a big audio component too, Is that? Is that the right word? Big audio component to a lot of honey, auditory component to a lot of hunting, but nothing like where you're trying to track down such a difficult sound. And even when you get like what kind of happened? Is that, you'll be out hunting your your hero hoot right, and you'll argue about what direction it was, and you're going that direction and then you won't hear anymore, and then you'll crest like a slight ridge and it will sound farther away than it did before you started walking that way. But you know you're walking in the right direction because it's still you still agree on the direction, but just as less loud. Now then you walk in the sound goes away. Then you walk a little more into sounds louder than you've heard it at all. And then you walk a little more and it's really faint. You can't tell what's going on. And then you climb up the next ridge and it's booming loud, at which point you're like, oh, he's in this clump of trees, and then it might take on the way. Though, I gotta add, you're constantly, at least maybe today I wasn't, but up until saying walk, yeah, as as which is the wrong word, Oh that's right, Yeah, climbing, climb four points of contact through the rainforest, steep rainforest, your hands. The point I want to make is that you're constantly, like I said, up until today, kind of second guessing yourself. Yeah, just like wondering like am I going the right way? Did the bird I'm chasing quit hooting? Am I not chasing a different bird? Are we on the wrong ridge? Like it just goes on and on and on, it never quits. Well, that was the cool things, like you have three options. You here here, you know, you hear who It's like, okay, he either right, he's either center, he's left, and you have to just choose the direction and then and then you're or there's the other one where he's behind you. Well that's any thing too, is that like the topography really changes like the sound of the bird, you know, And that's why you have to get up, because like if you're gonna get on the beach and just like say, I'm gonna go hunt city grouse or you know, blue grouse or whatever, and just go up, you know, a hundred feet from the beach, you're not gonna get anything. I mean, you have to go up to get above them in order to like hear anything at all. And like and especially like this one thing you know, but that I learned, you know, in the short time I was here, is that like if you're down by a stream or if you're inside like you know, a sat or ravine. Because I've never you know, I've never been elk hunting, so I don't know how that bugle carries and like how that like the way the hell better than the hoop, right, So it's just like, okay, you got these like little thing. But even then if you're down by a stream, like the streams were crossing and the bulls bugling up on the ridge above it, you probably won't hear him. That's stream will drown it. Okay. So it's like, yeah, so you have to get up and and and get into essentially like where they're podcasting from, like on that same kind of level, because that's what they do. They're picking the big tree just to like you know, finding mate, you know, and just like then that and that's where we found him. Was all these big trees are not like you know, on a bush, yeah, exactly. And it might be that you hear him now and then like we've had it where we heard him all day. We other thing happened today where we heard a hoot chamber our something. We heard her who We're like, well, let's just going that way a little bit and see what happens next. And we go down and and Corey, you proposed to go up on a little knob to listen from a knob, and I was like, well, no sense and all being on the knob. So I was down off the knob, but we're close enough for we can communicate. I'm hearing that something going loud, loud and clear, and you guys couldn't hear him. He was only away. I'm like, there is they're like they kept giving me like they don't they don't hear anything. I'm like, no, dude's right, So we want to finding that bird, and that want to be in the bird that we spent close to two hours looking for it. I think it was after we identified his clump of trees. Um, we spent an hour and forty five minutes trying to find the burden in the trees. Thrown off by this fact, we found fifteen a total of found, not killed, but found a total of something like fifteen blue grouse and spruce trees, to the point where I was like, oh, they're in spruce trees. And this when we couldn't find was an a hamblock. So you get to an area and I started in my head, I would get to an area, clump of trees, you gotta low. He's like, he's got to be one of these five six trees. I mean we're talking about big gass old growth timber, right, he's one of these five six trees. And I would usually go like, where's the spruce, you know, and there will always be a spruce in the some bitch of always be in the spruce way up high, like how many feet up are they hunter feet up? Yeah, I'd say eighty foots. I mean the roots systems are twelve inch round roots coming out of each tree on those big trees. I mean they're old growth trees and they got the birds sit on top of big limbs that usually if you find a bird you can see from below. What you usually see is beak in his tail, and if you move a foot or two either way, you want to see him. And it's a dense forest and so you got all you got covered from other trees. So it's not like there's just like the one lone giant towering, you know thing that's like just like you know with blue skies behind it. I mean it is, there's dense frisbee size. Yeah yeah, yeah, No. Coming back to parallels glass in these suckers office right out there with like glassing up a bedacus here, but instead of looking a mile away, you're looking fifty yards away, right. You know what I noticed Barb is running eight and I was. I know for a fact, if I ever come back to grass, I'm gonna have some etes on me. I'm not. You're not you gonna stick with the tents? What? What? What do you what? Are you gonna get out having eats? Just less shake it. I don't need, I don't need thefation you have less shake and just I mean you're looking yards for birds. It's actually making noise perched up there, even moving while he's making noise, and they are tough to glass. Although he had ten, what your binals are ten? And your scalpe was listen this story. So today I had ten binals in a seven power scope with my double juice. Okay, I found a patch of the bird? Did We spent an hour and forty five minutes trying to locate I found a patch of that bird in my tempore knockers couldn't see that patch in my seven power scope. So I eventually had to look through my binoculars and study the cones on a hemlock, the configuration of cones on a hemlock, and then look through my rifle scope and try to identify those hemlock cones. Go back to my binoculars and study some more like, Okay, there's a black patch of limb. Then I see those four cones. There's just one little stick coming down and he's there. Go back to my rifle scope and find all that stuff never made would identify that. I was seeing the wing patch on the bird. Wow, Corey was holding a hat up to block the sun because I was staring into the sun while doing this. So seventh isn't good. Mm hmm. I'll have you know. I want to on that bird. After two hours and a couple shots and shots, I didn't have any binoculars. Had eyeball him. Yeah, I gotta give my credit. He found our first bird. We put thirty minutes into it. Mikey naked eyebald him. He's doing like the hound circle around the tree. Once we isolated, like, Okay, it's got to be it's his tree, it's history because like that's the That's the cool thing about it too, is it's like, okay, I think it's these three cheeries in this general area because that that sound really just kind of like kind of rolls around, you know, and and so like and that's a nice thing doing it with two people because then that person can go down and like hear it from different directions, like you kind of triangulate, you know what. Okay, it's gotta be this tree. It's the tree. So I'm looking right in here and so and that's a nice that's that's a cool thing about it. But I didn't. Yeah, if I was gonna give one tip to a new city gross hunter, I would say, Dude, once you're in the area where you're like, okay, I think this bird is here, do some circles and get a hoot from you know, all sides of where you think he is. And I feel like after you do one circle, you're about ninety plus percent sure of what tree he's in, and that gives that much more confidence of where to glass as opposed to just kind of hanging back and looking up there and going, Okay, he's in one of those four You're not glassing four trees. This sounds weird. You know, people are gonna be like, what you're glassing into four trees? What four trees is a lot more country than you want to cover. And they're not like flapping their wings and like you know, like displaying and like strutting around on the limb. They're not like, you know, right at the tip of the limb like all silhouette and stuff. I mean, they're like close to the trunk and they're just there the seam. They're always sitting at the seam of a big gass limb in the trunk and they're just like very very slightly but these are big. I mean they're big birds, but not as big as a pheasant, but close. But they're hunter feet in the air in dense you know, uh, you know, the canopy is just dead, and so it's just like you have to isolate that tree and just like you have to narrow down otherwise you're just looking at limbs and shadows and moss. Like I saw it, like, I was like, it's like Joanni. I was like, there's a bird sit on top of that tree right there, and he's like, no, that's just like part of the tree. I was like, oh yeah, it's like you're serious. It's like that looks like a's like, no, I agree with you, but that's not a bird. No, no, no, this was like it well, and then he described because I hadn't seen anything because I'm filming you guys, and so I hadn't actually, you know, seen a burden a tree, so I don't know what I'm looking for. And he's like, so he describes like whenever he hoots, the tail just kind of bumps a little bit. I was like Okay, well, then that's something for me look for. Whenever I hear the sound, I'm looking for this one particular emotion. And so I like, I was like, okay, well, I think he's in the general area. And then as soon as you told me that, it's like I saw the tail, you know, kind of float. I was like, there he is. It's like boom. My piece of advice. If I wasn'ting someone a soudy girls hunting too, the whole sound thing like finding them, there's nothing I can say. There's just you have to just trial and error, um, or go with someone to watch someone do it. It was helping to watch I couldn't believe. Trust yourself, don't second guess yourself, trust yourself. If you pick a direction, keep going that direction, trust yourself, and know that he's probably always a little bit farther than he thought he was in the beginning. That first day we went out with barbed we hiked up and we most have hit probably like I think we hit six d feet and we heard her who and um. Based on my experience from the year before, I'm like, if you know who cares about that, like, you'll never find that bird because he's just one of those like he's one of those like thirty degree certainty birds, you know, like one arm out here, in one arm out here, you're trying to like draw the pie wedge, like a pie wedge bigger than anybody would want to every eat a piece of pie. So I'm like, well, clearly that's not gonna matter. And Barbe says, no, we'll get under his tree, and we did. You just start going. You gotta be a hound dog man, just got it. And what would mess me up the year before is I could never get my head around the idea that you'd hear a noise and get closer to it, but it would get fainter. So I would think that I was doing something wrong all the time, Like I couldn't accept that the noise will get fainter as I get closer, and then all of a sudden it will get loud again and all that. So I'd go and get painted. Well, that must not be right, and I turn and go the other direction, thinking that that I had misread it's direction. But the tip I was gonna give is these things live on such a steep pitch core. You know pitches, what are those pitch what are the hillsides? How would you describe the hillsides? It's probably like five seven climbing standards, which is maybe at some point we were fifty degrees. The fifty degree pitch not a little plus maybe even you're just grabbing a root, grabbing another root, grabbing a tree, you know, and you're just sticking your feet in this moss. And yeah, I tend to like wear you know, big heavy angled boots and just kick my toes in. Yeah. Yeah, Look, if you're climbing with crampo ons, most like kick my tone and the moss now, and then just climb up like that when my heels out, like in the mid air, you know. But my my suggestion when you're looking at when you get where you think you were, maybe you don't know which trees, but you gotta my my strategy became to pick a tree and work that treat and rule the sun bitch out right, be like, I'll rule that's like the hour and forty five minute bird. We ruled out the three spruces, and then I started looking at the hemlock, and that's why it took so long. So but at one point I was like, this is this is for the birds. Man, I was ready to go. I proposed leaving. I proposed leaving, going looking for another hooter. Well, like he said, Steve too, like when they shift the direction that they are actually projecting the sound, it changes where it's like when you throw your voice. You know, So they got three dimensionals. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. You know, Yeah, it does because you'll be sitting there and it'll like be like the birds moving from tree to tree. But just because but then when you do see one, he is always doing that. He who's on one side of tree. You'll step over in our limb face the other way and who in our direction? And it sounds like you kept Garrett, you kept proposing that there's two or three of them up in the tree. That's what it sounded like, there's two. That's why it's so important to do the circle around like the base I keep getting what my suggestion is. Yeah, but on top of yours, the going around, go up hill and get eye level because the pitch is so severe that you can do this, go up hill and get eye level with the canopy. So you might wind up being I remember today, I wasn't even close to eye level with the top of a tree. I remember ranging the tree trunk. I was thirty seven yards from the tree trunk. I'll pill behind it, looking into its canopy, kind of looking into its canopy. And then so you kind of read, like, what direction should I go uphill where it's not going to be obscured by a bunch of twigs and ship from another tree? And if you can find a little gap and then climb up there and look into the tree rather than looking up. We found I think one bird from looking up. Yeah, Well, because you got all the branches below it, and they're at the top. I mean they're not halfway up, you know, I mean at least from what I saw. I mean they're they're so looking straight up. The tree is just like you know, it's garbage. I mean, you gotta like do concentric circles out find those little pockets. Yeah, which brings me to to the kind of a final not not the final thing, but you know an important part of this. You go up, up, up, and you're getting away from the trunk tree looking in when you find it, you invariably wind up in tricky shooting situations, you are not gonna shoot a blue grouse by lying down prone in the angle. The shooting angles are usually much too severe to shoot over your knee. You're shooting up. I shot one lying down on my back. You know. It's like it's like your contortion is trying to get in the shooting position on him. But it's the most rewarding shooting I've ever been involved in. It's not like it's in its own way. I would say it's as difficult as wing shooting. Oh definitely. It's very demanding. Especially you're not gonna blow the breasts out of him. If you're trying to hit him in the neck and head. It's very demanding. It requires. Yeah, it's a great attention to the heads, you know, so you head shooting squirrels not easy to do. I love hunting blue grouse. I don't think it's gonna catch on. Yeah, that's tough man, which is part of the peel too. Doesn't get sad and it's just not I mean, you gotta come like like dudes aren't dudes from down Dude from Lord forty eight aren't gonna when they do their big Alask trip if they're up here spring bear hunting, they just tack onto you because no one's gonna be like clearing it up with your wife and shipped to like come up to hunt blue grouse, getting time off work, you know, buying a bunch of garbage on Lyon for hunting gear and then come up and shoot birds. I don't know why, but if I wasntna last after their first time, if I was a sheep hunter experience, yeah, then they'll do it. I'll tell you what, you do this all spring and I don't know how whatever you'd have to do for June and July to retain that shape. But if you did this all studio cross season, you would be ready to smoke the brooks range and look for dolls. So this is so this is the the the the primer, the your your work out getting ready for that. So this is a good Like this is CrossFit, Yeah, this is this is your you know, your rainforest cross fit prior to it's better CrossFit because like my brother criticized the CrossFit all texts crossfits the only thing it does it makes you good a CrossFit. What I'm saying, yeah, like we're I'm gonna go hunt with someone, like if I'm gonna take someone on a hunting trip, I usually tell him, like you're sitting there thinking about what's sleeping bag you need, right, what gun you're gonna bring, whether you got to this kind of scope or that kind of scope. Is like, here's the thing that's gonna that's gonna make your hunt. Here's the thing that's gonna make it that you're happy and successful or miserable not successful, Your ability to your ability to climb hills, whether or not your feet are gonna hold up. Yes, I mean, well this is a good pise. It's like the only thing if you're gonna go on a mountain hunt, you're going on a sheep hunt, elk hunt, mule to your hunt. All the garb would you think you need to worry about, Like who do I want this kind of pants or that kind of pants? That is largely bullshit. It's like, can you walk a long ways up and down hills and have your feet stay in good shape and that you can keep doing that day after day after day after day on your face with a smile on your face, because the minute you don't want to go to that next ridge, you're done. All right, everyone, I know you're enjoying the Meat Eater podcast and you're especially enjoying it because it's free, and to keep it that way, we got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. The minute you start finding reasons to not go to that next ridge, it's over for you. I was kind of curious, what do you guys think about whenever you're looking at just straight up, like, what is it? What you're talking about? These fifties degrees? Okay, I gotta get up there. Whenever you're just you're having to grind to get up to the top. What do you guys think about whenever you're doing that and it's just your legs are screaming. I don't know if your legs are screaming and stuff like physically what you're going through, But what what's going through y'all's mind in those situations to get you to the top of that. Me lying there, dying on my deathbed as an old man, Yeah, that keeps you grind. Yeah, because I always think about this when I'm dying. Okay, I will not be like man, I sug glad I didn't climb that hill. This is no way. Yeah, there's no way. Today we got up on a ridge. Remember we're on the ridge top yeah, okay, and there was a hooter down below. I'm like, man, I don't want to go the ridge top because we're up on the rooftop. Then we have to go down there to kill him or try to kill him, and then climb back up the bridgetop. Then I'm like, why in the world are you thinking this way? Go down there and climb back up, because it's I mean, there's a mental component of day four for Yeah. I mean I have a lot of curiosity too. I'm always curious about stuff, like they're I was gonna find something weird laying on the ground or I don't know, right, there's a rewarded, So yeah, it's like I'm always like, oh, you know, maybe we'll find something weird laying there, or he's all benched out, you know, there there are bench as. It wasn't inconsistent. I mean it's something you're just like, yeah, maybe maybe like two bucks, maybe two bucks got tangled up and died with their antlers locked. Yeah, and also I'm gonna stumble across that, or I'll find a dead guys did actually get to the treasure. I always look in the holes under the trees and thinking there's something in there. I was sparked to something to jump out. Wolverines coming at you. Yeah, so there's that. There's like do I will I ever, that's what you're thinking of, Like I need to get to the next bitch so I can look underneath that tree from I'm always like, where's barb right now? Way out there? I think about this. There's a direct correlation. There's an undeniable direct correlation between how much weird ship you see in the woods and how much time you spend in the woods. M sure you know what I mean. Guy spends a lot of time in the woods, has a lot of things, like stories that begin with I'll tell you what you know what I mean like that, or he's got sh it on his shelves. He's like you see that. You know you learned a lot about porcupines. Yeah, well about you a lot, Like what do you what's going on in your head? Whenever? It's just like it's it's flipp in front of flip in front of foot to get to the top the grind, the grind in the grind, Yeah, depend depends on how long the grind is. But just going, I mean like I try to like to go just in my head and like try to push myself to the plateau without stopping like that. That's it. There's nothing else in that that time that that if it's the longer, if it's a longer like we're talking trying to go two thousand feet, same consistency now on the pitch, then you can get in more of a rhythm. But this was kind of like steep bench. Listen, stop, that's the point you raised because Core used to be a competitive like a professional snowboarder, and you you gotta walk up a lot of those hills. Yeah, but you're, like you said today, like but doing that every step is the same. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like the same step. It's like the same step over and over again. Goes but here every step is different. Okay, yeah, every step you're twisting an ankle, different degrees every step. You know, we're thinking or of turknees and holes that were covered by you know, moss stuff, and every step, every step is different. Crawling over logs, under logs, trees, grabbing a dead tree, knocking over the whole tree. You know, like out of the sound, I got a different But I think to your question is just so you guys are all. I think what you're trying to ask is really like what is like there's a motivating kind of a factor, not just like what happens in your head, but like you're in you're in the grind, and like what do you say to yourself to be like, yeah, I'm fired up to get to the top. Just what I just said. No, I know you answered it right. I just just wanted to make do you want to be the kind of guy that goes up the hill or not? No, No, you're still gonna get to the top. You're still gonna get to the top. But that time before you get up there, I mean your brain is you know, what are you thinking about your taxes? Or you oh think about like that? Like what yeah, like what is going on in your mind during that that that grind and trying to Blue Rose the whole time? The hell are you thinking about? I started playing? So you answered it right the first time. You said. No, he's not asking that. He's not saying what motivates you. He's wondering what the star point? There might be some pain involved, well the pain you're thinking about stuff besides what we're doing while we're out there, whenever I'm climbing, whenever we're going straight up and like we have to get up there, and it's like we're not like okay, we hear the sound. We gotta go up right and it hurts and it's painful and stuff, and so there's nothing going no mash you what should call my mom or often, well, your mind doesn't wander whenever you're like in that, whenever you do that, just mean this question packing meat or something like that, it does. But I'll doing this. I'm just hoping to find right, he's just getting out there, yeah, like a drudgery. Like if you're just like, oh yeah, we got a nine a mile walk, we're all done. It's like just hiking out. Oh yeah, I'm thinking about crazy ship man. Right, that's what I'm talking about. That's that was a question. And I'm trying to learn how to think about something like I'm trying to be like, because you know, I write a lot, right, so I'll be like, why don't I take this time and actually write something in my head word for word for word, memorize it. And then I got home, I said to type out what I wrote in my head. Your body is gonna I can't do that because then I'd be like, man, I should really call my mom. Or often I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to be writing my article, but then I can't, you know. But I mean I'm onne of some other thing, like man, I gotta remember that, you know, like I gets some new finger paint for my kids. You know it's uncontrolled. But Blue Rail's hunting, I'm thinking, Mike, I am constantly training for the next hunt. Every time I get into that position where it's the grind and it heard to my legs or like please stop, please stop, and I'm like, shut up, legs, And in ahead, I think the six point bull that I've been looking for for twenty years is at the top of the next bench. Who does the top six um killed a lot of cows, calculate machine. But no, I'm just like constantly thinking, like this is good for me. That's how I make it good for me, and so I like enjoy it because I think in this fall, this higher that I'm doing right now next fall is gonna help me hopefully be successful in whatever. But doesn't that wind up being real circular, because yeah, of course, because yeah it's helpful, right now, do I mean, I'm helping myself right now in order to help myself in the future. It's kind of people who like, you get dumped by a girl and people like, yeah, it'll only make you stronger. It's like, well, for next time I get dumped, I'm I'm with you, guys. Yeah, Absolutely's like this is like this is gonna pay off, Like this is the effort involved is you know, I'm not gonna find a dead guy or two. Think Mike, because Michael Ridge was asking of like how like you make it okay in your head to like deal with the pain of like keep keep pushing, don't take a break right now, keep pushing. Yeah, there's a hooter at the end of the road, but you said it. You're like, when I'm on my deathbed I'm dying, I would be like, you know, yeah, but you guys talking about motivations, like you got that motivation to get up there, like where does your mind go? And this I may be off off here, but when I'm like I'm maxed out, I'm thinking, man, I need to stop, and I know I need to go, and I'm gonna keep going. I actually go to really calm water, like sitting on a lake with a beer and that's where my mind is. Okay, So yeah, that's not be worried about whether the fishure button. I'd be like, I've better walked down the beach. I mean, because it's about keeping your heart, you know, keeping your heart, Oh, I got you know what I'm saying, Like your body is gonna do I mean, you're sucking wind, your legs are screaming to keep that heart rate down. So you go to a place of you can climb like you do technical climbing. Yeah, like ice climbing, technical clim and it's all about that, Like your body's maxing out, but you can go way beyond as long as you keep your your heart right down. It's being able to separate your mind from all the physical pan of your feeling. Right Like you guys say, you gotta stay focused. Your motivation is going to take you there, but to get there, you know, and even further, you know you're gonna get there. You're gonna get there. I mean, there's no doubt that you're going to the top of place. But it's just like you know, it's just dealing with that like internal turmoil at least for me, And I was just like, go to fucking hurts, go to that lake. Yeah. Yeah, Like if I want to call myself um all sometimes just focused on breathing in and breathing out. Or I'll picture a really old dog on a really hot day down south on a porch. That will change your Yeah, that would change your and that makes me feel sleepy. But your body is still like and sue for supermode and you just carry a picture of yourself taking a nap. Just look at that. Well that's what a beer on the beach is pretty much. You know. I earlier mention getting dump How many you guys did all you guys get dump way ass hard in your twenties? Yeah, funnies, No, no, really dumping down the dumping. I got married, Oh yeah, I got married young because I was observing that long ago. How like, you get dumped in your twenties by someone for me, with someone named Maris, and it killed something in me that never grew back. He didn't need that anyway, So that you know what I'm saying. I'll saying about when people say, oh, yeah, I only make stronger, It's like that made me stronger. It killed something in me that never grew back, something agree with you. But that happened to me. I feel like when I was like, it was like, yeah, I had an exhaustible supply of disappointment that was killed. It was replaced by awareness of that. And that's for that's and I've been trying to fill that spot in me with It's the heart meat. That's what the Sudi Groundse call mimics. It's a yeah, it's relationships, isn't The city grouns is just like, hey, babes, I kept the top of the hill while we were hunting studies. I kept trying think what's the fun part and a very stided that thought all the fun part shooting them, you know, like picking your shot. Then I thought the fun part, you know, like bounced around, like what's the fun part, the fun part, the funnest part. Like if you could make a drug, if you could, you know, go to Bristol Myron and make it up a little No, they wouldn't really that kind of drugs. Who does that kind of Who's like? Who makes like drug? Drugs? Fighting? If I was gonna go to fires and I'm like, I want to drug to me makes me feel like X but not X to see But I mean like why, I want to drive me to feel like why? Why would be the moment when you think I will find this bird's cluster of trees? Yeah, it's that. For me, it was like, Okay, this is the tree. Let's let's figure out what what branches on. Yeah, it's like, okay, that was the happy part. We isolated it. That was the fun part. The fun part was once we figured out what tree it was and we started doing the circles and like looking around and stuff. That I enjoyed that because it was you know, it was a detective work. Now you're wrong. It's when you it's when you realize, Yeah, any was your fun part, Like if you could get any in capsule form, buck a pill somewhere right in there. I don't know if it's the cluster of trees or isolating the tree, but right in that moment where you're like, you know you're underneath him, but you haven't found him. So that's the funniest part you just said it was, there's the same thing. For you. It's one I know that I'm gonna find the cluster trees. Oh so you're still a couple of hundred yards out, but you're like this something's gonna get found. It like gets loud. We talked about this earlier today about how now we've got seven or eight days of city across hunting under our belts, and now as you hike, climb, trudge towards the bird, and there's a there's a long time where it's so faint. It's the you have to stop to hear the sound. You have to stop every now and then and go, okay, there's my straight right left. You keep going, You keep going, and then the next time you stop, it'scott just a little bit more of a and you're like, okay, we're kind of bearing in that. You keep walking, You keep walking, and then all of a sudden, there's a point where you hear the bird over the sound that you're making, whether it's your your boots or scratching through the brush or whatever. And at that point now it's like, okay, we're in that. We're probably within two yards, and you're probably gonna we're gonna find this tree, we're gonna finds, we're gonna find his cluster. When the needle starts doing this instead of like doing this, it goes like that. But I felt like last year all that honey, we did. We didn't have that dialed in only one time. One time. Yeah, but I didn't know what was happening. And yeah, what was the bird that was right off? Like when we hiked up the trail got to the snow and then he was off. That was Lost Bird. We were under Lost Bird Street, we were in his cluster. Yeah, we could go back, and I've played that back a hundred times. He's a year older. I know right where he is. I got I got him, I gotta weight, I got a GPS way point on him. Yeah, he's looking back, and I was like that lost Bird. I not realized. After multiple visits to Lost Birds area, I now know that we were actually standing beneath the Lost Birds tree, walking in circles, because I thought it would be that you look in the tree and there he is, right So I'm like, oh, no, he's not that tree. Almost be insane. And then we just start going down these bridges and trying to like go down these little cliffs and trying to get the angles. Like no, I realized, yeah, we're standing and even if someone tells you no, you're gonna have to glass up into the trees. It's the classic story of like the first time Cruiser Hunter when like our buddy Jayscon says, yeah, going to that ridge and that ridge acrossing you going glass it And you come back twenty minutes later and you're like, yeah, man, glass it. He's like, no, no, you didn't glass it because you picked up your bloculars, didn't put him on a tripod, looked over the hill and then left. And it's the same thing here. Like first thing Barb does pretty much does the circle, narrows down the tree, and then lays down, takes off her backpacks, that's her rifle down, bust out of binoculars because she's not gonna eat him until then, and then lays down and gets comfortable and starts glassing straight up in the air. I remember Chris Denham uh the poblish your Western Hunter and Elcounter magazine. I was talking to him about hunting couis deer and I said something him along the lines of how long do you sit in no spot? You know, how how long do you glass one area? And I remember him saying sometimes all day, I mean like without moving, hes like without moving I was sitting once all day. I didn't really, I couldn't even really comprehend what he was talking about. Now I understand what he's talking about, but yeah, what I made that original called barb she said. I'll usually look for the bird for an hour. If I can't find it, I'll sometimes move on and I'm like, yeah, you know, and then one thing after another, all right, yeah, honest closing thoughts, go if you if you're up here for whatever reason, cruise ships, bring bear hunt whatever, take a couple of days and go city gross hunt. It's a blast. That's it. That's the best you can do. That's my closing thoughts. Yeah, I'm trying to sell I mean, Derek, I would say in response to the fun moment, that scenery like just oh that's touching. Well, that's that's that's the kind of thing I wanted to get out of, you know, when I break out of that lakeside, you know, trying to calm my heart. Right, you look around here and it's just I mean that moss and like the light. I mean it's beautiful. Whales, yeah, whales, and the way when you hit one with it, hit a grouse with twenty two ft No, no, not that the feathers. Oh yeah, when the sun's right, and dozens of feathers are filing, Yeah, falling from a hundred feet up in a tree, and it's just like they're it's just as nice. Yeah, it's a nice juxtaposition. There's like death and life in the affirmation. You know. I had a thought today that when I didn't feel bad shooting the burden, but I felt bad as he fell out eight feet up and he hit the ground so hard. But no, he didn't do any of that. It was one of those where there was like it wasn't a single limb, so he's like gaining speed. He was almost hitting terminal velocity, you know, and I couldn't even see where he landed. But I don't know. It's that juxtaposition of like I don't feel bad killing you, but after you're dead, I don't want you to slam the ground from a hundred feet up. I feel bad shooting a lot of stuff, particularly bears. Like whenever I shoot a bear, I feel pretty bad. Not that I stopped doing it, but um man, just not a trace with blue grouse. I think because you're shooting primary, you know your goal. You're shooting males. You know, females are gonna get bread you're shooting males and then something like that. You think, like every year seventy five percent of the birds alive or dime. A four year old blue grouse is ancient. I don't feel bad shooting him. Yeah, it's like they're they're like they have like pretty high for country is super high mortality. You know, they're just dying all over damn place and that just you know what I mean. It's like if I didn't get him something, you know what I mean, Song's gonna get them now Bears. I killed a bear one time. They with the tooth dental analysis was seventeen years old. I was in my early monies. Well he's about die old age anyways. Yeah, but I'm saying I can't be like, oh, if I didn't kill you something, you know what I mean, Like if you killed blue gross like you blue gus So's gonna kill them anyway. Now bear, you might shoot him and I can't say that you might live in our ten years. I don't know what is the blue gross as a predator or what predator feeds off the blue grass. Pine Martins kill a lot of them. Weasels, long tailed weasels. Ermine's kill a lot of them. Rafters kill them, and then you got all the nest predators because they nest on the ground. Even pine squirrels will steal the eggs. We found a big gass egg today way up the hill, did you guys really some yeah, seabird like a like a like a ducker, the duck hagers big robbin's robin egg blue but the size of a chicken egg way up in the woods, like in the nest. Something carried it up there. Look okay, oh you know what happened there day? Man? We had a robin building nest maybe weight big their egg and be like that, yeah, like a you know a quarter. Uh. Robin built a nest up in my out the out our kitchen window, and me and my boy were out in the yard, and uh, I see the nest fell out the tree. So I'm like, oh, Jimmy, look you know the nest fell out of the tree. And walk over. We're looking at the nest, and I realized all that the babies had gotten pretty developed inside the egg and all the eggs. When the nest fell the tree, all the eggs broke. So he's four. He didn't like that a bit. Little baby birds laying every which way. He talked about that for a few days, concluding dos Mike Hunt dot com. Um, I enjoyed the the I enjoyed the hunt. It was, you know, another new experience. And then in an adventurer and it was it was awesome, and you know it was it was a it was an adventure. I liked it. I liked it a lot. And what I think about whenever I'm grinding and going to the top as I get a songs, it just keeps going over and over and over, and for the past few days has been Fleetwood Mac and I can't get which which one? Can't get it up? No, I can't get out of my head, No, out of my personal head. Well Fleetwood Mac. If it's silver springs, I'm with you there, man. Yeah, I don't know why. It's silver springs in your head. Man, that's a good tune. It's like, uh, lady singing to a man and the man she loved the man, the man didn't love her. And she says she's telling them that, you know, my voice is gonna haunt you for the rest of your life. So like these guys in there twenties, Yeah, fun time, you know her voice is gonna follow him down and haunt him. Um Corey concluding thoughts. Closing thoughts, How's one of those hunts where I think anyone could maybe not anyone, but those who want to pursue soudi grouse can you probably have quite a few encounters if you gave it, you're all. You know, it's one of those where you're probably gonna have a good opportunity to see what you're chasing. And you know, especially if you if you've got a pair of ears on, you'd like to walk around the woods. It's perfect hunt for you. Bring your kid out. You can't be a little kid though. My kid couldn't climb mean, my five ye old, he's five now, he if you made a goal to find one a day, if you're like, I could take my boy out and be like, our goal is to find one and we're gonna bring a ton of snacks and looking a lot of holes under trees and have a general good time and maybe you know, but yeah, you're not gonna have it downhill though. Man, it's well, I'd wind up carrying it. I'd wind up carrying it. Yeah, it's hard. You can't really carry someone not gonna carry anyone down that. Yeah, I got he's gonna get a little older. Is that your concluding thought? Yeah? And then uh yeah, besides this Devil's Club. You know what my comcluding thought already planned out my concluding thought, which is freaking Devil's Club. Yeah. God, that stuff it's terrible. There wasn't too much. There was a little bit. There was more in the Alaska Range whenever we were there with Rourke that we were going through that was thick. But man, that stuff is just it's terrible. I like it better than poison oak. Absolutely a lot better than poison oak for two reasons. One, where you get it is where you get it right. It doesn't spread, there's no surprises, and it doesn't get on your packer unless I mean unless you're like, unless you pee different than I do, because it doesn't get on your packers. So it's like, when you come out of the wood, you're like, I have Devil's Club in these places, right, it's not like poison Like a week later it's like, oh no, I have Devil's Club. You know. It's like, did I really touch myself there while that was going on? You know what I mean? Um, did you grab, did you? I mean, I know you did. You talked about it, but like you know, you're grabbing for vines and stuff when you're going up and you grab a line of spikes to put yourself up, and just the main the main I got bit slapped where I was. I moved one out of the way with my foot, you know, bent it out of the oil of my foot, and it slipped from out of my toe and came up and just door nailed me. So that like my most Devil's Club action is from that one thing. But also one time I caught one on the leg and thought that my pants, but that didn't happen. I thought my pants would stop it, but I got like a thigh full of Devil's Club. Do you my packers clean? I bring this up only because Yanni's Yanni permanently, permanently deformed his packer with poison outen. He told me it was so bad that if he was to meet I mean, he's happily married, stay married rest his life, but if he was not, somehow, in a hypothetical situation, was not and had to meet a new gal. The new gal would wonder what was going on? Right exactly it was only one way to etch it. Um all right, Yeah, I guess Michael cleaning thought was Yanni's uh little thing either. Um, thanks for joining. Oh a couple of things, a couple of yeah by one on his t shirts. Also check out the show meat Eater UH Sportsman channel Thursdays at eight when around the air. UH. If you don't do that, go to meat Eater dot v a x dot TV. You can download and stream all kinds of meat Eater. We just finished our best episode ever. I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to figure out a way. I'm gonna put some episodes up for free on vhex man Um, but don't wait for that. Just go buy one for now and then, and and and and buy one his t shirts, but don't buy so many of the quits. That's job, all right? Is that it? That's it? Good night? Hey listen up. This sounds like an advertisement, but it's not. It's it's it's different than the ad. I need you guys and gals that listen to go check out the Complete Guide to Hunting, butchering and Cooking Wild Game, which is written by myself and some people from the Meat Eater team, and a collection of the best hunters from around the country. It's a two volume set. Volume one Big Game it's coming out in August. Volume two, Small Game comes out in December. Um again. It's called The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game. It totals about seven hundred and fifty pages of content dealing with gear, tags, hunting basics, advanced hunting strategies, field butchering recipes. Everything you need to know to be a better hunter or to get started in hunting if you haven't done it before. If I had had this book when I was a kid, it would have changed my life. It's gonna change gears. I'm not joking. You can pre order now Amazon, barn A, Noble, Indie Bound, Target, Powell's, Walmart, wherever books are sold. It's out there. It's beautiful, it's huge. It's two volumes. Do yourself favor, do me a favor, Give this book a look.

Save this episode